Page 6028 – Christianity Today (2024)

Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms lists secular, temporal, and profane as parallels to the term lay, while spiritual, religious, and sacred are given as contrasting words. I doubt if it takes deep religious psychoanalysis to see that this use of words points to a basic heresy that has been with us for years. What we have here is a heavy semantic hangover from the Roman Catholic concept of priesthood. Luther’s recapture of the concept of the priesthood of all believers has not yet influenced the dictionary.

The New Testament clearly teaches that all Christians are to be ministers. Anything else clearly violates Christ’s demands of discipleship. When he spoke of self-denial, of taking up the cross daily, and of comradeship with him, there was never the vaguest hint of a select upper crust of professional Christians under which lay a stratum of amateurs for whom a lower level of dedication was acceptable.

Not only the demands of discipleship hit hard at our traditional thinking on this issue but also the structure of the New Testament Church. This was intended to equip the saints (all of them) for the work of the ministry (Eph. 4:12). Christ has reconciled us to himself by the cross and has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:15–20). If reconciliation is for all, then obviously the ministry is for all as well.

Hendrik Kraemer points out that in the New Testament the words kleros (root of clergy) and laos (root of laity) both refer to the same group of people. I defy the idea that because a man makes his livelihood in the secular world, God expects only a partial commitment of his life. In medicine, technology, and science, “layman” means the casual, indifferent, uninformed amateur contrasted with the dedicated specialist. If “lay” Christianity means that, then I am unalterably opposed and favor abolishing the word.

In the profoundest sense, all of us have been called, not to a work, but to Christ himself. This is central. Within our life in him, we are given our work and callings. Some are designated pastors, teachers, and evangelists for building up the total ministry of the total church.

The picture of the clergyman on the front lines, fighting the lonely battle for God, while the members in the rear areas send up supplies so their paid representative can fight harder may appeal to the selfish, lazy, and materialistic inclinations in us, the members. It may also appeal to the pastor whose ego is gratified by his position of religious authority, prestige, and recognition. But it clearly does great injustice to the scriptural principles of Christian witnessing and the mobilization of the Church. The layman is out on the front lines away from the church building—in his home, office, shop, and club. He is there being God’s man. The pastor is in the fighting, too, but he concentrates on training and equipping the troops for the battle they are fighting. I confess I’m tempted to identify with Ernie Pyle’s comment during the war: “I’m a rabid one-man movement bent on tracking down and stamping out everybody in the world who doesn’t fully appreciate the common frontline soldier.” Maybe I don’t quite want anybody stamped out who doesn’t appreciate the potential of that common frontline layman, but there is such a thing as Christian straightening out.

Elton Trueblood feels so deeply about the modern confusion over ministry and laity that he doesn’t like to talk about “laymen”; he prefers to speak of the “ministry of common life.” I have not yet abandoned the word “layman,” for it points to a distinction for which we as yet have no other term. But I eagerly hope for a better word, one that would describe the facts, yet rebuke the error. Perhaps “lay-minister” at least stabs at it.

The Bible stresses that every Christian is a priest. We are a kingdom of priests unto God. The biblical and Reformation doctrine of the priesthood of every believer does not mean there are no more priests. It means that we all are priests of God.

Many people conceive of a ladder of dedication. At the top is the missionary, particularly the one who goes overseas. Just below comes the pastor. Then the professional religious worker. Finally, down on the bottom rung is the lowly layman, sometimes looking as if he is barely on the ladder at all. The layman thus becomes a sort of also-ran Christian whose chief function is to pay the bills for the pastor and fill up the pews for the public services of the church.

This is the age of the spectator. The stadium sporting events—football, boxing, and basketball, where most of us only watch others perform—draw the big interest. And the age of the spectator has moved out from the athletic field to engulf the American home. We are a nation of TV addicts, professional watchers. Fred Allen predicted that if the television trend continues, we may become a race of people whose heads are dominated by huge saucer-sized eyes, our brains having shriveled away to nothing. And, since most of us watch television in the sitting position, the posteriors will become more significant. We may look something like A1 Capp’s Shmoo—all bottom, no head, just big eyes on top.

We can still smile at these possible consequences for watchers instead of participants. But the result in our churches is not humorous. It is cause for tears and repentance. We have developed a spectator Christianity in which few speak and many listen. The New Testament Church began with Jesus’ command to everyone of his followers, the apostles and ordinary believers alike: “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel.” But what started as a lay movement has deteriorated into what has been acidly but accurately described as a professional pulpitism financed by lay spectators. The Church was intended to be a vibrant, redeeming community of compassion, mission, service, witness, love, and worship—not a fraternity of fans of the faith.

Professional spectators almost always turn into critics. The football fan becomes the Monday-morning quarterback. The professional theater-attender develops into an amateur Brooks Atkinson. The professional observer of government who never becomes personally involved is the cynic who informs us that all politicians are crooks anyway.

Spectator Christianity ultimately becomes critical and contemptuous, cold and cynical, sterile and unproductive. It observes and criticizes others but never gets committed to life with Jesus Christ. And therefore it is not Christian, even though it sits in church or works in religious activity.

Theodore Roosevelt described those timid souls who refuse to become involved:

It is not the critic who counts, pointing out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, but knows great enthusiasm and great devotion and spends himself.

The true Christian is involved. He cannot avoid it. He is a participant in the redemptive mission of God through the Church, not a critical onlooker. He is involved in the world—its business, its government, its culture, its hunger, its travail, its tears—because he loves its people. Here he cannot be a spectator either. In his prayers for believers, Jesus said, “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” The layman is sent into the world in exactly the same way Christ was sent—as an agent of redemption.

When Jesus said, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel,” he meant it geographically, yes, but also vocationally. Go ye to Africa, Korea, Indonesia. But go ye also into the worlds of business, law, education, mechanics, art, music, government, agriculture. Go ye into all the worlds and preach the Gospel there. Go to the end of your world—where the influence of our Lord Jesus stops in your job or society—and start preaching there.

The layman has a life in the church for worship, fellowship, instruction, and strengthening. From there he moves into the world of unbelief to be a witness, a minister of reconciliation, a servant of God.

Canon Bryan Green contends that though America may be ahead of England in many technological spheres, England is “ahead” of us religiously:

Fifty years ago our English churches were full like your American churches are today. But we were satisfied with big congregations that focused on the pulpit, routine attendance in the pew … and our shallowness. Consequently, people became disillusioned by an ineffectual church and indifferent to her message. And today our churches are empty.

Your American churches are crowded with people today, but there is no biblical or spiritual depth among your laymen. Religion is largely a sentimental Sunday affair which does not radically influence daily life. If something doesn’t change, fifty years from now your churches will be empty as ours are today.

If I were an American minister, rather than concentrate on the people outside the church, I would spend all my time seeking the conversion and deepening of those people who are already church members.

I think Canon Green hits the heart of the problem. If there is to be any large-scale lay witnessing, then there must be large-scale conversion within the Church. The word is conversion. The conversion may be from an unregenerate, nominal church membership to a personal experience of grace, or from a lukewarm, defeated Christian life to a life of power and victory. In either case a radical transformation is demanded.

Much exhortation to witness is futile and may actually be harmful. If men do not have a vital, up-to-date relationship with Christ, witnessing can become a Pharisaical religious proselytizing stemming from the desire to hang more scalps on our ecclesiastical belts or pad our religious pride by the number of visits we made. Or witnessing may be done out of fear and guilt more than out of faith and guidance. The result? Not much! Compulsive witnessing may have the thresher going wide open, but not much wheat comes out.

The answer lies in our relationship with Christ himself. If we are totally committed to him, Christian witnessing will be neither optional nor mandatory; it will be inevitable. He assumes the responsibility for our effectiveness. “Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you and ye shall be witnesses unto me” (Acts 1:8).

For a long time I was confused over the nature of Christian witness. I thought witnessing was something to do. So I tried to do it, and I exhorted others to do it, too. “Let’s get in there and witness!”

Now I realize I was missing a lot of the point. Christian witnessing is not really something we do; it is something we are. A relationship with Christ through the Spirit produces the fruit of Christian character, Christian living, and this draws men to Christ. It alone overcomes the priggish religious self-consciousness that stifles true holiness and effectiveness.

Jesus, describing the mighty work of his Spirit within us, said: “Ye shall be witnesses to me”—not “ye shall do witnessing.” If we do something, we can be proud of it. Is this evangelical Christianity’s own form of works religion? Like the foolish Galatians, we, having begun in grace, think we shall carry on by human effort.

If our current straining, striving, evangelistic promotion is God’s way, why doesn’t the New Testament have the same tone? Did Paul try to pistol-whip the Christians at Rome into soul-winning activity? No, he clarified the quality of life produced in Christ as men, “rescued from certain death, put [themselves] in God’s hands as weapons of good for his own purpose” (Rom. 6:14, Phillips).

In a life filled with God there is a calm, continuous outflow of witness. Sometimes it is in the silence of a friendly ear as we take time to listen to others’ problems. Sometimes it is in the openness of admitting our own failures, telling how Christ has worked in them. We often help others most from our weaknesses, rather than our strengths. Christ’s grace is perfected in our inadequacies. Strong saints are not ashamed to own up to problems.

The pulpit can become a coward’s corner, as Stephen Olford says, and so can the Sunday-school class lectern. If a man is not bold, open, frank, across a coffee cup, he has a serious short circuit in the sanctuary or classroom. Can we confront men in face-to-face personal encounter with the same courage we show on the platform? Only Christ gives this. It is a matter of relationship, not nerve, technique, or a dominant personality. The Holy Spirit’s work is characterized by relaxed boldness. This makes for easy, natural conversation.

Sam Shoemaker describes this kind of witness: “They have lost completely all shyness about speaking of these things. Shyness usually means you are pretty shy on religion itself. When your heart gets full of it, so too does your talk. You don’t talk dogmatically or self-righteously, but you lard your spiritual experience into your ordinary talk, and people get intrigued.”

The Christ-filled life produces durable relationships. Often the culmination of evangelism takes place only after long cultivation of a friendship. Patience is essential, and this comes hard for an impetuous activist like me. God set up a nine-month preparation period for human birth. Too many times I have wanted the whole spiritual process to take place in fifteen minutes—from conception to delivery. And at birth, growth has only begun.

So a witness must be a Christian involved in other people’s lives. Some pastors admit they don’t want to be too close to their laymen. This is a sure way to produce nothing: nothing of depth, growth, or reproductive capacity. And laymen who don’t want to be intertwined with the stuff of people’s lives in Christian companionship and evangelistic concern will bear scant fruit. When Christ is ministering to men through us, in his calm, shattering honesty, outflowing concern, and transforming power, we can expect anything to happen.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Second of Two Parts

The Harvard astronomer Shapely sees us as now living in our “fourth adjustment” of cosmic perspective: the shifts have been from an anthropomorphic universe to a geocentric universe to a heliocentric universe to a galactocentric universe to an agonizing realization that man is very likely not the highest form of life. This is a moving description, for it speaks to our condition. But in reality, Christian man has known all along that man was not the highest form of life in the universe, for his life is derived from a Source above all other sources. With the psalmist he looks up at this juncture and confesses, “In thy light we shall see light.”

It was Newton more than any other scientist in the seventeenth century who helped shape the new astronomy. Laplace reminds us that Newton was “not only the greatest genius that ever had existed but also the most fortunate, inasmuch as there is but one universe and it can therefore happen to but one man in the world’s history to be the interpreter of its laws.” This is perhaps excessive praise, but Laplace, like a good umpire, was calling it as he saw it.

Actually, Newton believed the laws he had discovered were God’s way of maintaining the stability of the universe. He felt that continued divine activity was necessary to avoid collapse. Surely here is robust, admirable faith in a God who continues to work in his world. After allowances are made for the difference of the time in which he lived, we still find Newton anchored in the concept of a living God who cares about his creatures.

The words of Laplace are valuable for another reason. In them we see a tendency to regard the scientific model of a particular epoch as virtually final and literally true. This, from the side of the scientists, was the main reason for such tension over the apparent inconsistencies between theology and natural science.

In his Pensées, Pascal complains that Descartes made God seem superfluous. Descartes needed him to “press a button” and start the world moving, but after that was done, he dismissed God as no longer necessary. This is a kind of ballistic theology. The temptation for the educated mind is ever the same: to use learning as a screen for shutting out the ever-present Lord.

In biology, too, we see attrition of true faith as the direct damage of the demonic presupposition that science renders Christian faith obsolete. What can the nomad patriarch, it is asked, possibly have in common with the clean, white-robed, objective scientist who probes the secrets of the world in behalf of truth? Could any calling be higher?

The conflict here is not so much with biology as with evolutionary theories of the universe. If “evolutionism” is a new faith, its first prophet and high priest appears to be Julian Huxley. In New Bottles for Old Wine Huxley asserts that “the human species is now the spearhead of the evolutionary process on the earth, the only portion of the stuff of which our planet is made which is capable of further progress.”

More recently, in a letter to the editors of a magazine, Huxley expanded his views:

Of course, too, Humanism requires an act of faith, maybe … a more strenuous one than that required by religious systems.… But in this, it can rely on entirely new knowledge of facts and new organizations of knowledge in the shape of concepts and ideas—most notably the fact and ideas of evolution, with all its implications. Chief among these is the fact that we, the human species, through no merit of our own, have become responsible for the entire future of ourselves and the planet we inhabit.… It can only discharge this responsibility by a faith in the vast and as yet almost untapped resources of human nature.… On the basis of our knowledge of history and comparative religion, he is convinced that the idea of a god as a supernatural but somehow personal being, capable of influencing nature and human life, is a hypothesis, set up to account for various awe-inspiring and mysterious phenomena in man’s experience which do not seem to have any natural explanation.… It took time and hard thinking to make the necessary change-over from a geocentric to a heliocentric view of the solar system. We must now be prepared to abandon the god hypothesis and its corollaries like divine revelation of unchanging truths, and to change over from a supernaturalist to a naturalistic view of human destiny [Fortune Magazine, Feb., 1965, p. 101].

But, as an editor of the magazine answered him in a footnote, “it can well be argued … that ‘knowledge about human nature’ is what drives men to God.”

Emphasis upon the religious possibilities in evolutionism leads directly to the naturalizing of religion itself—another case in which the camel pushes his nose into the tent and finally takes over.

The Psychological Yardstick

As Darwin has left his stamp on the biological world, so Freud has left his on the psychological. But the importance assigned to his dicta about another field—religion—is undeserved. People who are not acquainted with the claims of Christ upon a man’s life and who have not even read Freud’s works often assume that religion must be an illusion because Freud said so. Religion is not so much attacked frontally or ridiculed or criticized destructively as it is simply explained away. Of course; men have always tried to shake off the responsibility of answering God’s call; but Freud’s effort to free men of “religious shackles,” as he would view it, seems to have met with a more enthusiastic response than did previous efforts using psychology.

Just prior to Freud, Feuerbach, often called the classical skeptic in theology, had tried to translate theology in such a way as to show that God was simply a reflection of man himself. This was another example of the “reductive fallacy” at work: making religion nothing more than the projection of human hopes and desires. Such projections, like mathematical projections, always lose something in the process. It is like moving about on a plane instead of in three-dimensional space; much is recognizably the same, but a dimension has been lost. When the lost dimension is one as essential as the spiritual, the truth projected becomes falsehood, for it destroys the totality of the perspective, which is the essence of the theological dimension.

Freud assumed that psychoanalytic categories applied to all religious phenomena whenever and wherever they occurred. This assumption cuts the supernatural nerve at the root, making it impossible for man to acknowledge God as the Source of certain of his experiences. Freud’s application of psychology to religion was not a mere passing fancy. His writings on Moses—all his writings, in fact—show that problems of religious faith in the widest sense preoccupied him throughout his life. As more than one psychoanalyst since then has observed, however, Freud’s atheism is not a necessary condition for the practice of good psychoanalysis.

Unfortunately for both Freud and religion, he turned his study of religious and moral issues into an attack. His reasoning was as follows: “Since religion is not scientific, it is fantasy, an illusion; but we are men of science, devoted to its canons of clarity and explanation. Hence we must somehow explain religion, using the categories of science.

So strong has been this point of view that a modern follower of Freud, Erich Fromm, finds it necessary to “analyze the character structure of Luther and Calvin to find out what trends in their personality made them arrive at certain conclusions and formulate certain doctrines” (The Fear of Freedom). The categories he uses for the explanation are purely psychological. Luther is found to have been a compulsively authoritarian person whose life continually revealed radical masoch*stic tendencies. Fromm shows no interest in what Luther meant or even in what Luther thought he meant. His possible sincerity and his possible accuracy are completely set aside. Luther’s writings are made out to be one long symptom of an unconscious authoritarian compulsion. Lewis Mumford pushes the conversion of Augustine through the same psychological grid and comes up with this explanation: Augustine desires to regain the devotion of his mother, Monica, which he had lost because of his wild youth. Even Jesus’ divine personality is reduced to terms of human psychology. The suffering of early Christians is explained as an “intensive expression of social masochism” and thus loses its power to inspire and to become the “seed of the Church.” In our generation, we are witnesses of a new martyrdom of the saints, this time by psychological swords.

Historians of a hundred years hence will surely record as one of the great myths of our time the attempt to measure religious truth by the yardstick of psychological mechanism. Is poetry grasped by the identification of its meter? Even men who apparently want to remain in the bosom of the Christian Church feel the compulsion to readjust their views of Christian faith à la Freud. E. R. Goodenough, professor of history of religion at Yale, is among those who believe that Freud’s theories have convinced all intelligent people, whether “consciously or unconsciously,” that the supernatural construction we impose upon reality (including belief in God, the actuality of angels, the value of Jesus for us, and all the rest), acquired during and since childhood, is but wish-projection. All fantasies! Yet he wants to preserve these fantasies, because they contain an element of truth.

There is but a short step between this kind of adjustment to Freud and the final one of rejecting religion because it is mere wish. Thus the Viennese doctor provides the rebellious with just the necessary equipment for cleverly escaping the pertinence of the Gospel: simply write off the Gospel as a convenient human scheme that has been uncritically auctioned from one generation to the next until its worn-down condition makes it worthless.

This is but another case of resisting the Gospel and the ever-gentle pressure of God. For the Apostle Paul, that Gospel was both a gracious offer and an implied judgment to come. He spent a considerable part of his time as missionary in exposing the shallowness of man’s resistance, especially that of the worldly wise and the philosophically wise. “We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).

The Limits of Vision

Our intellectual inheritance from the nineteenth century has had a consistently deterministic flavor blended from three potent ingredients: Darwinism, Freudianism, and Marxism. All three have stressed factors outside man’s control, forces that have helped to make him, his human nature, and his society so many prisons. Modern man, particularly modern man, feels the relentlessness of these forces and, most keenly of all, his inability to escape.

The casting of a die is one of the most appropriate symbols of the mood of our generation. The world itself is just Las Vegas writ large: from game table to sex to the bar to the hangover to whatever else comes along—without meaning, without purpose, without hope. And so it always is with the man who tries to regenerate himself. But as dismal as this picture is, I am convinced that the only real difference between our world and that of the Apostle Paul is the explicitness with which the various unbelieving presuppositions are identified. Things seem to be more out in the open today. Paul was quite aware of the thought-world of his day and imbued with a strong tincture of Jewish background. But the glory of his life was that when the Holy Spirit showed him his error, he repented. Paul’s life was remade and he went out a new man, truly to serve the God of his fathers.

Today we seem to be at another impasse in science. Some think it is a final one; others see it a fresh opportunity to advance. P. W. Bridgman describes this impasse:

There can be no difference of opinion with regard to the dilemma that now confronts us in the direction of the very small. We are now approaching a bound beyond which we are forever stopped from pushing our inquiries, not by the construction of the world, but by the construction of ourselves. The world fades out and becomes meaningless. We cannot even express this in the way we would like. We cannot say that there exists a world beyond any knowledge possible to us because of the nature of knowledge. The very concept of existence becomes meaningless. It is literally true that the only way of reacting to this is to shut up. We are confronted with something truly ineffable. We have reached the limit of vision of the great pioneers of science, the vision, namely, that we live in a sympathetic world, in that it is comprehensible by our minds [Bulletin of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Feb., 1950].

This view will startle some. Let us not forget, however, that if we can proceed no further in describing the world in the direction of the atomic, there still remain other directions to explore. And the Christian, of course, is not dependent upon detailed knowledge of the structure of physical reality for his conviction that the world has meaning and purpose; these, after all, are part of God’s gift in revelation to us. It is the centrality, the preeminence, of Christ that gives the spiritual context to human existence. In whatever way the story of the universe ends, we may be sure that its author is God and that he will vindicate our faith in his own time. And when we look back upon our little visit to this planet—physical nature, science, belief, presuppositions, and all—we shall yet praise Him who is all in all.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Something of a renaissance of evangelical interest in literature and the arts is under way. In the wake of growing scholarly productiveness and renewed concern for the social outcomes of the Gospel, there are signs that evangelicals are becoming increasingly aware of their responsibilities in aesthetics. Annual Writers Conferences on the Wheaton College campus, meetings on Christianity and the arts at such colleges as Houghton, use of religious drama at Gordon College and elsewhere, the openness of many a department of music and of fine arts to contemporary modes of expression, and the appearance of groups like the Fellowship of Christians in the Arts, Media, and Entertainment—these are signs of what is going on.

At the root of evangelical Christianity is its biblical heritage. The great company of Christians who hold the basic doctrines of the Gospel are pre-eminently people of the Book. For them, the written Word is the inspired source of knowledge of their divine Saviour and Lord; in its pages they find what they are to believe about God and what duty he requires of them. They are obligated to see every aspect of life in relation to the incarnate Word and to the written Word that bears witness to him.

“But,” thoughtful Christians are asking, “what about the relation of our biblical heritage to literature and the arts?” What about it indeed, in these days when none of us is exempt from the influence of the mass media and other powerful aesthetic forces?

Some think commitment to the Holy Scriptures as the inspired Word of God and the rule for all of life is a hindrance to aesthetic expression and appreciation. Complete fidelity to Scripture, they say, leaves little place for anything but religious use of the arts; they consider the arts as generally worldly and thus outside the bounds of biblical truth, mere marginal activities for those determined to be about the Father’s business. But this is wrong in principle, because it assumes a gap between sacred and secular truth and thus violates the unity of truth. Truth, though on its highest level incarnate in Christ and expressed in the Bible, is not confined to religion. All truth is God’s.

In a baccalaureate sermon entitled “Secularism and the Joy of Belief,” President Nathan Pusey of Harvard spoke of “the cultural ignorance [italics added] which comes from neglect of the Scriptures, unexamined persistence in immature conceptions of God … above all perhaps the loss of the practice of prayer” (The Age of the Scholar). If anything, the biblical heritage of evangelical Christianity affords a head start in the arts; it does not inhibit their practice and appreciation. Through the ages Scripture has been the single greatest influence on art. It sheds more light upon the creative process and the use of the arts than any other source, because in it are found the great truths about man as well as God that are at the wellsprings of art.

This leads to a challenge. Among the rank and file of evangelical Christians, aesthetic standards are generally low. The evidence is abundant. The pictures on the walls, the books on the shelves, the records played—so many of these things are products of a sentimental, pietistic dilution of the aesthetic integrity that should mark the Christian use of art. But, and this also must be said, evangelicals are not alone in their habituation to the mediocre in art and literature. A similar kind of cultural illiteracy runs through much of liberal Protestantism, and indeed through most of American life today.

The need among Christians is not for avoidance of literature and art they do not like or understand but for responsible criticism of it by believers who know the Scriptures and who also know the arts. T. S. Eliot has said, “What I believe to be incumbent upon all Christians is the duty of maintaining consciously certain standards and criteria of criticism over and above those applied by the rest of the world.…” And he adds: “We must remember that the greater part of our current reading matter is written for us by people who have no real belief in a supernatural order” (“Religion in Literature” in The New Orpheus, ed. by Nathan A. Scott, Jr.). Eliot’s words apply, of course, to forms of art other than literature. Observe that he says, not that Christians should not read what is written out of a purely naturalistic context, but rather that they should measure it by Christian criteria. The condemnation out of ignorance in which some Christians indulge simply is not honest.

This leads to the all-important question of Christian criteria for the practice and criticism of art. Here the basic document is the Bible. Not that the classical writers like Plato, Aristotle, and Longinus, and all the other non-Christian critics down through the centuries should be neglected. Under common grace these thinkers have some very important and even indispensable things to say. But an essential requirement of good scholarship is the use of primary sources. And for a Christian aesthetic, the primary source is Scripture. Surely the chief reason for our confusion about the meaning and use of art is the neglect of the biblical pattern for art through a onesided emphasis on secondary, extra-biblical sources.

There are two approaches to the Bible as the basis for a Christian aesthetic. The first is to examine all its references to art, most of which are to music. It is significant by the way, that according to the Book of Revelation, which John Milton called “a seven-fold chorus of Hallelujahs and harping symphonies,” artistic beauty is prominent in heaven.

The other approach is through biblical doctrine. Consider, then, the very beginning of everything. This we must do because true art is not merely imitative, as the Greeks taught, but also in its creaturely way creative. And it is not Plato or Aristotle or any other non-biblical writer but only Scripture that gives us authoritative knowledge about origins and the creation of man.

What the Bible says about God’s creative activity and man’s origin and fall and redemption is centrally related to a Christian aesthetic. But to understand that relationship we must look closely at the concept of God as the great Maker of all things and of man as his creation.

In a remarkable book about the relation of the human to the divine creative process, Dorothy Sayers reminds us that the author of Genesis points in his first chapter to one basic thing about God: that he creates. “The characteristic common to God and man is apparently [just this]: the desire and the ability to make things” (The Mind of the Maker, p. 17). Moreover, the pattern for this making is the relation of Father, Son, and Spirit in the Trinity. So the image of God in man has its creative, its “making” implications. God is the great Maker, the only true Creator, from whom all other creative activity is derived. That we are made in his image is probably the greatest thing ever said of man, and takes us deep into the nature of our human creative ability. For one of the marks of the image of God that we bear is that we, too, in our creaturely way, are makers. And in no human activity is this aspect of God’s image more evident than in our making of art.

Six times the first chapter of Genesis tells us that God looked upon what he had made and “it was good.” Then we read that when creation was finished “God saw everything that he had made and it was very good.” God is, as the ancient creed says, the “Maker of heaven and earth,” and what he made was “very good.”

There are great spiritual depths in the Hebrew word for “good” in Genesis 1, and its connotations surely include the concept of beauty. Some contemporary artists and critics today are inclined to downgrade the place of beauty in art. The cult of the ugly has its disciples. But Scripture links beauty to God and approves the beautiful. Moreover, by very definition aesthetics is the philosophy of beauty. Art cannot possibly be divorced from beauty. Beauty is inherent in the universe. If “the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork,” as they so gloriously do, it is with a beauty that transcends in majesty, power, and diversity all the works of men. The problem is that there are many, some Christians among them, whose idea of beauty is not broad enough to include dissonance in music or big enough to go beyond what is merely pretty in painting or blandly nice in poetry and literature. Beauty has various manifestations. It can be strong and astringent; it has disturbing and shocking as well as calm and peaceful moods.

Man in his making of things follows the pattern of the mind of the triune Maker of all things. This concept shows us the incarnational aspect of art—its down-to-earth here-and-nowness, in which the idea takes to itself a real body, an actual form, whatever the aesthetic medium may be. In his making of art man does indeed reflect the image of God. To hold this firmly is the best answer to the irresponsibility of those Christians who turn their backs upon the arts as mere luxuries, frivolous side issues that are not to be taken seriously in these urgent days.

Nevertheless, some of the distinguished Anglican and Catholic thinkers (like Dorothy Sayers) who have written so helpfully about the incarnational aspect of art and the analogy of human to divine creation are open to the criticism of not giving enough attention to the relation between man’s creative faculty and his sinfulness. They stress Genesis 1 with insufficient reference to Genesis 3.

For there is another side to the idea of man’s aesthetic capability as a reflection of the image of God. This side has to do with man’s fall through sin, the primordial tragedy that resulted in the marring of God’s image in man. No biblical thinker, whether in aesthetics or in any other field, can afford to slight the fact that, because of the fall, man has an innate bent toward sin, and that this bent is reflected in what he does. Christians know how God has provided for the redemption of fallen man through our Lord Jesus Christ. They also know that the redeemed are not now exempt from sin and that, while in the inner man they have been restored, they too bear the marks of the fall in their lives—and in their art.

To be sure, God in his grace enables artists, including some great non-Christian ones, to produce glorious works. Yet there is among us finite men no perfect artist. The only perfect artist is God, and the only perfect works of art are his original creation and his written Word, and the only perfection in art is exemplified by Christ, the God-man, who in his mastery of spoken word spoke as never man spoke. Knowing these things should keep us from arrogant pride, of which artists have their share.

Most of us, evangelicals included, use the words “create” and “creative” too loosely. God is the only true Creator, and his Son is the only truly creative man. For all others, the words “create” and “creative” must be used with reservations and with the awareness that their application to man is only an accommodation. To say, as Dr. Rosemary Park did in her inaugural address as president of Barnard College in 1963, that “truth not only is to be uncovered but created” is a perilous misconception akin to the Promethean error.

Consider, then, fallen man—the artist included—and his redemption. It is not art—music, painting, poetry, drama, or whatever it may be—that can be redeemed but only the man or woman who makes it. Christ did not die for things; he died for persons. Yet redemption does make a difference in art through the kind of person it makes the artist. Bach was an evangelical Christian. No one knows just what his work would have been had he been an unbeliever, but it is safe to say that it would not have reached so high as it does in the St. Matthew Passion and in the B Minor Mass. Or take Rembrandt. Would the largest category of his works (including some of his very greatest) have been on biblical and religious subjects had he been an atheist? And what about Milton? Could an unbelieving man have written Paradise Lost? Or, to look at a modern example, what of T. S. Eliot?

The point must not be pressed too hard, lest we become involved in judging the faith of others. Only God knows those who are his. And we must always grant that the sovereign God is great enough to allow unredeemed men to achieve supremacy in the arts; that he has indeed done this is a fact of which all of us, Christians and non-Christians, are beneficiaries. The honest thing for the Christian student of the arts is simply to say that the God who “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” does as he wills, and then to rejoice in the special qualities of the work of the redeemed artist that might not be there were he not a Christian.

Whether art is made by Christians or non-Christians, all aesthetic achievement that has integrity comes from God, who gives men talent as he wills. Therefore, it is to be enjoyed with gratitude to the great Giver of every good and perfect gift. Art, though it has tragic depths, is not in itself tragic. The artist reflects the mind of the Divine Maker, and when He created, “the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” Art may be, as Calvin Seerveld says, a happy act of praise to the Creator, a humble celebration of his greatness. In that way it makes its own noble contribution to man’s chief end, which is “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Education is not simply accumulation of facts but the molding of an outlook that examines all things from a given center

“But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his son.…” If we grasp that phrase of Paul’s (Gal. 4:4), we are well on the way to grasping the nature and purpose of Christian education. But the phrase is not easy to comprehend. Paul’s meaning must be put together bit by bit, and only when all the pieces are in place does the overall picture come clear. Thus we must do three things: first, lay out the parts and pieces. Second, put the pieces together to see Paul’s overall thought. And third, try to determine what this tells us about Christian education.

First, then, the parts of the puzzle. One part is the work of Posidonius. Centuries before Jesus was born, Posidonius journeyed overland from Greece to Spain, to Gades on the Atlantic seaboard. There, through careful observation, he learned that the rise and fall of the sea was directly related to the moon. Posidonius went on to reason that if even as mighty a body as the surging sea was controlled by the moon, what chance did puny man have? He too must be determined, his destiny spelled out by the rotation of the heavenly bodies above. With this there arose the conviction that man was a slave to impersonal celestial forces, and the word “lunacy”—from the belief that helpless man’s madness was molded by the moon—became a part of human language and literature. Out of England came the werewolf tales—when the moon was full, the nice chap next door would sprout hair on his teeth and bite his neighbor’s wife in the neck, sucking her blood.

Just when Posidonius was arguing that man’s fate was sealed by the celestial orbs, men were giving those orbs the names they still bear—Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, and so on. The gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon were identified with the planets, the forces that were believed to control man’s mind. But these gods were totally unpredictable. Pick any adjective—good, evil, benevolent, capricious—and it fitted them. And in their whimsical hands lay the fate of man.

The idea rooted and flowered that man was overwhelmed by forces he could neither cope with nor control, a slave to cosmic deities who made mockery of all his plans. What Gilbert Murray in his famous phrase described as the Greek “failure of nerve” took place. The optimism of Hellenism collapsed; man was but a pawn pushed about by impersonal fate. Nowhere is this pessimistic view of fate more clearly expressed than in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the story of a man whose fate is described at his birth: he will grow up to murder his father and marry his mother, no matter how he resists. At the climax of the drama, Oedipus, having discovered that he has indeed done what was decreed, blinds himself and runs out of the room. There is the Greek view of man—helpless, blind, running into the darkness, a slave of forces he cannot resist, in need of a saviour.

For the second part of the puzzle, we swing eastward from Greece to Palestine. There Antiochus Epiphanes, a contemporary of Posidonius and the blackest name in Jewish history, was destroying temples and butchering the Jews. In time the Jew—battered from pillar to post, executed for observing the Law, a victim of convulsive chaos that shattered his world and ripped at the heart of his religious convictions—came to the conviction that evil of such a dimension was possible only because a cosmic catastrophe had taken place. The belief in the fall of the angels became a part of Jewish theology. Satan emerged in the apocalyptic literature as an awesome fallen prince of an evil age, exuding malignant power that was fed upon by the forces of Antiochus, and the whole world lay in the power of the evil one. Man was a slave, helpless, blind, running into the darkness, overwhelmed by evil forces he could not resist, in need of a saviour.

This is the second part of the puzzle, and we now can see Paul’s thought taking shape. Different as the Graeco-Roman tradition and Judaism were in many ways, here they were united. Both agreed that man was in need of a saviour. This, then, lies behind Paul’s assertion. “When the time had fully come,” when the minds of men were ready, when the world stage was psychologically set, when men had come to see their need of a saviour—at that moment “God sent forth his son.”

But the stage of the world was also set geographically or historically. That is the third part of the puzzle. For seven hundred years before Jesus was born, an enormous writhing had been taking place, as one world empire after another was raised up only to fall. Assyria emerged as a colossus and swallowed up all the little lands and tribes around her. But Assyria fell, consumed by Babylon. Then Babylon fell to Persia, and then Persia to Greece when Alexander strode out of the Macedonian mountains to conquer the world before he was thirty. With each new empire the frontiers were pushed further. Alexander’s rule reached across three continents, but even then the crest had not been reached. Greece fell to Rome, and under the great grey eagles of the Roman legions lay the whole known world, from the fog-shrouded moorlands of northern England to the sunny sands of Africa and all the way to the fabled cities of the Orient. The Pax Romana prevailed. For the first and only time in all of human history there was one world, one government, one language. Travel was fluid along the great Roman roads, for there were no robbers to fear, no borders to cross, no money to exchange. For the first and only time in all of human history a wandering evangelist could go where he would, preaching to all he met in one universal language.

FROM GALILEE TO MOUNT OLIVE

And standing by the wet salt

No fish spoke,

No clouds knocked.

No—all sat and knelt and stood

Inside the bubble of Heaven

Now there.

Then came men—

Who had been already Waiting

For the breaking

And the dogmatic spilling

Of it—

Of Him.

But they waited worlds

Without end swimming,

Fishing,

And suffering

Into a bubble

Unbreaking.

From the weakest

The great came

And another

Relieving.

Of the breaking

Emerged a solid.

ALBERT SCOFIELD KNORR

All this lies buried in Paul’s cryptic statement, “When the time had fully come, God sent forth his son.” He is making the staggering claim that the rise and fall of nations was no accident. God had been active in all this, setting the stage of the world for the birth of the Saviour. History was “his story.” Psychologically, spiritually, geographically, historically, the time had come. The world was unified in such a way that one like Paul could walk the Mediterranean basin preaching to all he met. Both halves of the ancient world—Jews and Greeks—knew their need of a saviour. At that point in history Christ was born.

This is the powerful context of Paul’s assertion. Surveying the sweep of centuries, he sees in all that has gone before the hand of God, preparing the world for the proclamation and reception of salvation in Christ’s name.

But all this, someone may say, is only interpretation, a Christian reconstruction of independent and unrelated facts. And besides, what does it have to do with Christian education?

What I am saying is that every area of academic life, in one way or another, is ultimately saturated with religious thought. Look at the ground we have fleetingly covered. We spoke of philosophy, Posidonius; of literature, the werewolves and Oedipus Rex; of geography, history, and anthropology, the rise of Rome and the emergency of Western civilization—of almost every area represented in the ordinary college catalog. Each of these is essentially a religious area and ought to be tied to the proclamation of Christ.

Of course what I have done is to interpret. Nowhere does Sophocles say that he wrote Oedipus Rex in order to depict the despair of the Greeks and thus pave the way for the coming saviour. Nowhere in the mad rantings of Antiochus will you find him saying that he persecuted the Jew simply to show him his bondage to the devil and his need for release through Christ. Nowhere do we find a Julius or an Augustus explaining that he wanted to weld the world together in order to enhance the ministry of itinerant Christian evangelists. To deny that my view is an interpretation, a Christian conviction I insist on placing on certain facts, would be ludicrous.

But that is precisely what education is: interpretation, the impartation of a point of view, the modeling and molding of an outlook that examines all things from a given center. Education is not simply the accumulation of random facts and figures and dates. Knowing when Frederick Barbarossa died, or how many mistresses Louis Quatorze had, might win you a TV set on a quiz program, but it will not qualify you as an educated person. Education in the deepest sense is the formation of a perspective, the building up of a position, the development of an outlook from which all life’s problems are analyzed and evaluated. Education is a creation of a sense of values, the establishment of priorities. The truly educated man is an integrated man. He has a comprehensive, single-minded view that includes all of reality (an insight known to those who first named a center of higher learning a “university” after the vastest thing they knew, the universe—a far cry from the muddleheaded pedagogues who today speak of a “multiversity,” as if learning could be chopped into pieces like a salami).

Christian education is the impartation of a point of view that puts Christ at that vital integrative center, that insists it is with him as Alpha and Omega that all human history and knowledge is to be comprehended. Christian education is indoctrination. It is a deliberate attempt to cultivate the conviction that it is not only proper and legitimate but also vitally necessary to see all things from the vantage point of the Cross.

Many within the Church and most outside it consider “indoctrination” a dirty word, one that has no place in educational circles. In a way, the Church may have brought this on itself. There has been and still is an abuse of the principle of Christian education, a substitution of piety for intellectual effort, of close-minded indoctrination for courageous examination of the facts. In this system, one who can write “I love Jesus” in a nicely flowing hand gets “A” for English. But an abuse of indoctrination cannot be allowed to force the pendulum to the other extreme—to cause us to forget that education is education only when it creates a sense of values, when it takes a stand, argues for commitment, zealously proclaims a position.

We live in a pedagogical age of permissiveness and openendedness. The professor should never take a stand, we are told; to assume a position and argue for a conviction is authoritarian and medieval, a form of totalitarian brainwashing. The professor is simply to present the facts, all the competing theories, and to argue for none. Let the student make his own choice. Allow the competing philosophies of life to gallop freely and the best will win.

But this is absurd. A true ideology will not necessarily win the race. A false one can sweep over a whole nation—think of Hitler, or of today’s Communism. Education is not some mechanical process in which the student is simply exposed to a raw bundle of facts and miraculously comes out, on his own, with all the right insights. He needs guidance and direction, he needs professors who profess, who take a stand. A neutral, non-professing professor impoverishes education and betrays his calling.

Even if neutrality were desirable, it would still be unattainable. To take no stand at all is a stand. It is not neutrality but relativism, a denial of absolutes. And it is as doctrinaire as any deliberately Christian stance.

All education—not just education on the Christian campus—is indoctrination. Those who would argue that education is to be free-swinging and open, with no commitment to any cause, simply do not know what education is. For every institution, every area of academic life, begins with its givens, its assumptions, its unargued absolutes, things taken as truths beyond all debate. In political-science courses and in law schools, the student is not given the luxury of deciding whether the Constitution is valid or not; he simply assumes it is. From this absolute he moves on into his studies. In science courses, we do not ask the student whether he accepts the scientific method of observation, measurement, and evaluation as valid; we simply assume its validity and ingrain that assumption into him.

Christian education rests on the conviction that every area of academic endeavor must be tied to the Cross, related to that event that split apart human history. Approximately nineteen hundred seventy years ago Jesus was born, and his life and death are the center of all time. That conviction undergirds, establishes, and informs all that we say and teach.

Certainly it makes a difference to the work of the psychologist whether he is Christian or not. Is man a self-contained entity not open to the interference of supernatural powers, determined only by heredity and environment? Or is he open to grace, influenced by the Holy Spirit, able to be renewed by spiritual forces outside himself? A man’s religion, his Christian conviction or lack of it, cannot be shut out of his teaching of psychology and the nature of man.

Christian education is the conviction that all academic endeavor must be so related to the Christian proclamation. It is the insistence that behind ordered chemical equations and mathematical formulas we see the hand of God, who is able to bring design and beauty out of primeval chaos. It is the insistence that though philosophers can wrestle forever with the great and enduring questions of what is man and what is life, only when men look at the Cross are those questions answered. For in the Cross we see the truth of man’s depravity, that he will crucify the good. We see also that, even as we throw Christ’s hands apart to crucify him, he spreads his arms to forgive us; and in that is man’s worth. In history we insist that life is not chaotic, without purpose or meaning. And great literature is great because it speaks of man’s desire to be more than an animal—an aspiration affirmed in the first book of the Bible, which says that man is made in the image of God.

This is the purpose of Christian education, to show that Christ is the center of all learning and pervades every moment of life, giving answer to man’s cry for meaning.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

The last three issues of Volume XII of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, of which this is one, will be unusually large. This issue serves as the Fall education number, and has an eye on Labor Day concerns as well; in addition, it contains the last bind-in booklet in the “Fundamentals of the Faith” series. The next issue, dated September 13, will be the Fall Book Issue. The September 27 issue, which concludes Volume XII, will contain the annual index.

At month-end, Dr. Carl F. H. Henry and Mrs. Henry will fly to England, for a year of theological research and writing in Cambridge. Dr. Harold Lindsell, who with Mrs. Lindsell has been leading a tour party through Bible Lands, will then take up his new duties, with full responsibility for the October 11 anniversary issue, which begins Volume XIII.

Very rarely is one given the ambiguous privilege of experiencing a revolution personally. For the theologian, such times are especially valuable, since in the absence of actual revolutionary conditions, it is easy to content oneself with a smug quoting of Romans 13, as if this single passage presented all the Bible has to say on (i.e., against!) political action. Werner Elert, in his Christian Ethos, noted on the basis of his experiences in Germany during the nightmare of World War II that both those Christians who support and those who reject the political status quo do so in a crisis of conscience, for God’s Word stands in judgment not only on irresponsible change but also on the irresponsible exercise of power by the establishment. The last two months in France have indeed reinforced this interpretation for sensitive Christian participants in the drama of revolution, counter-revolution, general strike, and election upheaval.

The outline of events during and after the historic “days of May” is now quite plain. Paris Match of June 29 and July 6 gave a superb retrospective coverage of the revolutionary period in terms of “eight episodes”: (1) The student uprising at Nanterre, which under the aegis of wild-eyed sociology student David Cohn-Bendit grew so large that the university had to be closed. (2) The transfer of the revolutionary spirit from the youngest to the oldest French university: the start of organized resistance by students at the Sorbonne, followed by police intervention (a supreme tactical error on the part of the dean, who requested aid despite a centuries-old tacit agreement that town must not interfere with gown) and, as a consequence, thousands of students demonstrating in the streets, barricades, the burning of automobiles, the introduction of tear gas by the authorities, and uncontrolled fighting. (3) First Minister Pompidou offered concessions to the Paris students, but these came too little and too late. (4) The French workers, following the student example (though suspicious of them as future “bourgeoisie”), declared a massive general strike to protest the status quo. Soon nine million Frenchmen were on strike, almost totally paralyzing the French economy. (5) De Gaulle stepped in to announce a referendum, but, again, events had gone too far. Demonstrations choked the streets, and the workers refused to accept the negotiations between their union bosses and the state. It appeared that de Gaulle’s government would surely fall. (6) After a secret trip to confirm the army’s support in case of a left-wing coup, de Gaulle delivered a master stroke: he legally dissolved the General Assembly, thus calling for new elections and forcing everyone to cease striking in order to make them possible. The immediate result: massive counter-demonstrations in support of the General. (7) A final “night of flames”—the last desperate move of the anarchial spirits. (8) The self-imposed exit of students from physical control of the Sorbonne, and the commencement of electioneering.—And then: a stupefying victory at the polls for de Gaulle’s party, with a loss by the leftist opposition of half its former power in the Assembly.

What were the motivating elements in this amazing series of events? Who was “morally right” and who “wrong”? Predictably, simplistic interpretations have not been lacking. After having just made it in and out of Paris to deliver my biweekly courses at the Lutheran Study Center at Châtenay—and having seen the frenzy, the fighting, the hopes and the fears in the Latin Quarter—I returned to Strasbourg to hear the pastor of perhaps the most active evangelical church in France argue from the pulpit that social chaos is the devil’s work and that the government represents order, stability, and (presumably) divine approval.

Now it is certainly true that the student rebels were an unwashed, disorderly, generally irreligious group, and that their idealism was often incredibly naïve (for example, the motto plastered on walls everywhere, Tout est possible—“Everything is possible”). It is also true that anarchists and Maoists tried to turn the days of May to their own evil purposes. But these facts do not touch other, more basic considerations.

De Gaulle, in spite of his unarguable assets as the French head of state, suffers from a clear case of Messianic complex. He has not been able to distinguish his own ideas from the “will of the people,” and, indeed, has regarded the French as sheep needing to be led by himself as shepherd. That leading has been in the direction of a disastrous foreign policy (the Force de frappe, the Quebec incident, anti-Americanism, and so on) and a woeful neglect of internal economic and educational reform. (Only 16 per cent of college-age persons go to university in France, as compared with 44 percent in the United States. In terms of number of telephones, TV sets, and kilowatt-hours of energy used per person, France is today far closer to reactionary Spain than to progressive, industrially developed Sweden.) And Gaullism has thrown its weight around in a most non-democratic way: while the bourgeois Communist party in France (to the irritation of international, orthodox Communism) has consistently taken a stand for democratic procedures, Gaullists have managed all TV news, and, here in Strasbourg during the chaos, nearly succeeded (with the active support of the Gaullist secretary of state for the interior) in burning down the Palais Universitaire to “clean out the Communists”!

The biblical Gospel most certainly condemns irresponsible opposition to constituted authority. But—and this is a fact consistently forgotten by well-meaning conservative Christians who confuse political with theological conservatism—Scripture also opposes totalitarianism, whatever its political garb (left or right). Freedom of decision is vital to the free course of gospel proclamation (John 7:17), and the arbitrary removal of such freedom in one area soon leads to its removal in others. “Power corrupts,” shrewdly observed Lord Acton, “and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.” The fathers of our American Revolution—even when not themselves Christian—saw this clearly, and they are our benefactors both politically and religiously today.

How then de Gaulle’s recent election triumph? Some quoted Emile Ollivier: “When one has lived much history, one is not surprised at any inconsistency.” But J.-J. Servan-Schreiber, the most astute of France’s young political analysts, saw the true picture: in the face of demonstrably impotent leftist party options, de Gaulle’s new party slate was ironically in the best position to enact the reforms the electorate had demanded by three weeks of revolution; the election, in other words, gave the General his last chance to democratize (L’Express, 1–7 July, p. 39).

The natural man, said Luther on the basis of Romans 7, perpetually swings between extremes. Let us hope that between anarchy and messianism, la belle France can find her way to genuine political and economic freedom whose exercise will make the freedom of Christ more readily comprehensible to her citizens and her friends.

The World Council of Churches edged closer to Roman Catholicism last month. But the WCC’s Fourth Assembly got embarrassingly sandwiched between a pair of papal pronouncements that stalled doctrinal detente.

Five days before the assembly opened in the tradition-filled university town of Uppsala, Sweden, Pope Paul recited a few traditions of his own. Besides ecumenical beliefs, his “Credo” reaffirmed papal infallibility, transubstantiation, and the immaculate conception and assumption of the Virgin Mary. Paul’s version of ecumenism was the hope that “Christians who are not yet in full communion of the one and only church will one day be returned in one flock with only one shepherd.”

Then nine days after Uppsala closed, Paul produced his long, long awaited decision on birth control. It was a thumping endorsem*nt of traditional bans (see page 41).

Uppsala advocated family planning, though it recognized Eastern Orthodox objections to artificial methods.

If the World Council spoke with difficulty on birth control, it said nothing at all of the momentous liberal changes in Czechoslovakia, or of the ominous response from a Soviet Union fearful its satellites would hurtle completely out of orbit. John Meyendorff, Eastern Orthodox theologian from the United States, said the Orthodox of the Soviet Union and East Europe exercised “a sort of implicit veto power” over mention of freedom of speech and religion in Red lands. A church pronouncement on the delicate Czech situation, however, might have done more harm than good. Washington was equally silent.

Czech churchmen at Uppsala were understandably circ*mspect. If the liberal evolution succeeds, Czechs may see the Prague-based Christian Peace Conference leaders so prominent in World Council affairs as the advance guard of the new atmosphere, or as outdated apologists of the Soviet policy line. The only notice of cold war tensions was news that two Lutheran bishops from East Germany had been refused permission to attend Uppsala. Others absent were delegates of the Orthodox Church of Greece, despite their apparent success at muffling WCC criticism of the military regime there.

With 140 of 704 voting delegates, the Orthodox formed the largest confessional group in the assembly. And if Orthodox power was seen in the handling of politics, it also had an influence for traditional theology. The sermon by Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad had more Bible and more Gospel than many. And Metropolitan Ignatius Hazim of Syria cut across the assembly’s secular orientation: “The structure of this world is not only that of a dialogue animated by the gift of the Logos; it is also demonological, traversed by the Devil.”

Orthodox lands were exempted from criticism, and the WCC did not arbitrate between its friends on both sides of the tragic Nigeria-Biafra war, but things got specific on Viet Nam. The assembly asked the United States to stop—immediately and unconditionally—bombing in North Viet Nam, and called on “all parties” to stop military action in the South. The resolution said Viet Nam shows “the tragedy to which unilateral intervention of a great power can lead.” Here again, Uppsala was upstaged by events elsewhere, this time at the Paris peace conference. The harsh tone of discussions caused dovish U. S. Senator George McGovern, a Methodist delegate, to say, “The delegates from no nation come to this assembly with clean hands.”

Some 200 U. S. participants announced support for four men convicted of conspiring to evade draft laws. The assembly also appealed for support of conscientious objectors to particular wars, thus winning praise from the anti-Viet Nam war spokesmen. But the progressive Washington Post attacked the WCC decision: “An individual’s passionate dislike for the war in Viet Nam (as distinguished from war in general) is likely to be related to his political views, his attitude toward Communism, his concept of the United States’ role in world affairs, or other factors only indirectly related to conscience.”

The assembly renounced war, and weakened radical advocacy of violence in the context of internal revolutions. But a statement that such violence is “morally ambiguous” had an ominous ring amid escalating threats from militant blacks and whites in America and disorders in the two U. S. cities with elected Negro mayors.

International development was a major theme. The assembly vowed Christians would tax themselves to aid poorer nations, and 400 delegates skipped a noon meal to symbolize commitment. The WCC channels $13 million a year through 600 church welfare projects. Yet the plea to affluent nations to give 1 per cent of their gross national product to poorer nations by 1971 was poignant in a year when France and Britain were beset with economic problems and in a month when the U. S. Congress slashed foreign aid to a twenty-year low.

Development, at least, is one area where the WCC and the Vatican can work together. A “Joint Working Group” between the two won official status. Paul became the first pope to send a message to a WCC assembly and said the presence at Uppsala of forty Catholic observers confirmed “mutual intention to extend the collaboration.” By adjournment, the first nine Catholic theologians had been added to the Faith and Order Commission.

Beyond cooperation, most buzzing was about formal Catholic membership in the council. Jesuit editor Father Robert Tucci, the first Catholic to give a major WCC address, said that the question of Catholic membership “cannot be evaded,” and that Catholic ecclesiology provides no insuperable obstacles. Although Tucci spoke as an individual, his major themes had been approved by the Vatican’s ecumenical office. Some sort of affiliation someday now seems inevitable, despite such practical problems as how to represent the vast Catholic membership.

German Pentecostalist leader Christian Krust also addressed Uppsala, and offered a new note by telling how he came to “a living faith in Jesus Christ.” Fie said that if the ecumenical movement leaves basic Christian faith and regards the gifts of the Floly Spirit as “identical with the human intellect,” it might prepare the way for the Anti-Christ. Undismayed by the massive black-clad bloc of Soviet delegates, Krust struck another seldom-heard note in urging the WCC to aid persecuted Pentecostalists in the Soviet Union. A Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod speaker was also on the program, and the denomination’s theology director joined Faith and Order.

Of the six major documents discussed at Uppsala, the one on “Renewal in Mission” got the roughest treatment. It passed after coming to the floor twice, but not before some Scandinavians had threatened to pull out of the WCC if there were not more emphasis on preaching of the traditional Gospel. The final version was an effort at synthesis.

Minnesota Governor Harold LeVander, a Lutheran delegate, lamented the lack of “Christocentric” standards in the statement on human rights and said he couldn’t see “much distinction between this assembly and governors’ conferences I have attended.” A respected non-American politician likewise said the assembly was spiritually sterile.

The typical delegate was 51.7 years old, and what with the university setting and loud protests from 130 specially invited youth observers, it must have seemed like class-reunion time for old grads. On the assembly’s enormous graffiti board someone had written, “Is Jesus a delegate? Only 1 per cent under 33.”

Outside the first service at Uppsala Cathedral—before the WCC had had a chance to say anything—a Cambridge postgraduate student seized a TV ladder, mounted it, and in three languages called for debate on the WCC. Police grabbed him, and also a student pastor from Strasbourg.

Continued police presence long after the King of Sweden and President Kuanda of Zambia had gone home was one of the enigmas of Uppsala. An unsigned document at Fyris Hall, the 2,250-seat sports arena where sessions were held, protested the police. But a motion for their removal by one of the German delegates was not seconded after the chairman, Ernest Payne of Great Britain, intervened to say the world had become a dangerous place.

Besides the protests of youth against the establishment in general, other demonstrations sprang up sporadically: National Liberation Fronters against the war, Ian Paisley against the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Greeks against the current Greek regime. There was also a fleeting glimpse of Carl McIntire. Some wished the protestors’ enthusiasm could have been injected into assembly proceedings, where delegates were inundated by ten pounds of paper apiece, kindly donated by a Swedish mill. Wags had a tag for the jargon thereon: “Uppsalalia.”

UPPSALA BUSINESS

Elected as the new World Council presidium: U. S. United Presbyterian Moderator John Coventry Smith; Patriarch German of the Serbian Orthodox Church; Ceylon Methodist D. T. Niles; British Baptist Ernest Payne; Anglican Bishop A. H. Zulu of South Africa; and German Bishop Hanns Lilje, who defeated a floor move for Swedish laywoman Mrs. Birgit Rodhe. Honorary president: former General Secretary W. A. Visser’t Hooft.

Central Committee: Chairman, M. M. Thomas, layman from India who headed the 1966 Church and Society conference. Among the 120 members are five U.S. Negroes, three of whom were added after white nominees withdrew.

New member denominations: the Kenya Methodist Church (13,000 members) and three groups from South Africa: United Congregational Church (104,000), Evangelical Lutheran Church (110,000), and Moravian Eastern Province (23,300). As associate members: the Methodist Church of Cuba and the Eglise Protest ante Africaine of Cameroon.

Budget: The assembly cost $506,000, not counting travel. Churches are asked to increase WCC support by one-third next year for a budget of $1,320,000.

OUR MAN AT STATE

One person who didn’t get to Uppsala (see above) last month was Harry W. Seamans, U.S. Department of State executive and a veteran visitor to church conventions. He was barred from visiting World Council of Churches sessions by an old friend, WCC General Secretary Eugene Carson Blake, who cited space limitations.

Seamans had expected harsh indictment of the United States, and was somewhat relieved that the proposed one-sided anti-U.S. assaults underwent de-escalation at the assembly.

Seamans, 70, as State’s chief liaison officer with private organizations, upon request “interprets” the administration’s foreign policy to the nation’s churches, and he keeps boss Dean Rusk informed of church trends and any “new questions” raised by denominational officialdom. He also seeks to dispel or to tone down what he feels to be undue criticism of U. S. policy in proposed church pronouncements. He does this by addressing “pointed” questions of fact to resolutions committees and key leaders. He claims success in a number of instances but declines to divulge details.

Seamans began working with churches for State in 1946. Upon mandatory retirement this year he received State’s “Superior Service Award,” then was promptly rehired on special orders from Rusk. Before joining State he held other administrative posts in the government and in the Young Men’s Christian Association. At one time he was National Executive Secretary of the Student Fellowship for Christian Life Service.

An author of publications in his field, he holds degrees from Presbyterian-related Park College (Missouri) and Columbia University. He once wanted to be a minister and studied for a while at Union Theological Seminary, then later served as a visiting lecturer at Yale Divinity School. At age 30 he left Presbyterian circles for what he saw as the more liberal theological climate of The Methodist Church. As a Methodist layman he has on occasion drafted his denomination’s resolutions on international issues.

To keep abreast of things for State, Seamans monthly skims more than 300 periodicals, maintains files (some are classified) on denominations and leaders, and writes summaries of church conventions. He frequently ushers ecclesiastical emissaries to interviews with Rusk (Blake is a regular visitor). And when he travels with Rusk, who is a friend from pre-State days, they invariably talk about the current church scene rather than about politics.

Milk Run To Starving Biafra

Estimates that one million persons will starve to death this month in secessionist Biafra have spurred escalation of church involvement in the Nigerian war.

Protestant, Roman Catholic, and other agencies were reportedly flying several planeloads of relief supplies a night into Biafra. The planes land on narrow, dimly lit roads after dodging radar-directed fire from Nigerian gunboats. Two have crashed. (The same planes, under different charter, often haul munitions.)

Less than thirty tons of food is airlifted per night, but daily needs range from 200 to 1,000 tons. Stockpiles rot at Lagos, since no land route is open. Meanwhile, thousands of the 14 million Biafrans are dying each week, many of them children.

Biafrans have refused to accept food through Nigerian channels for fear of poisoning, and Nigerians have refused to permit air corridors or to lift a port blockade. (German Catholics said they would attempt to run the blockade with a small relief ship.)

The World Council of Churches reported that it had sent $3.8 million of food and medicine to both sides, then appealed for another $3 million, one-third to be raised by United States denominations.

The Assemblies of God, with more than 400 churches in Biafra, will channel appeal funds through the World Relief Commission of the National Association of Evangelicals. Other U. S.-based groups with major missionary commitments in both federal and rebel areas, such as the Sudan Interior Mission (900 churches) and the Southern Baptist Convention (1,400 churches), have declined to engage openly in relief work. They cite fear of political reprisals.

Church efforts are coordinated by the International Red Cross and supplemented by government grants. The United States has funneled $1.4 million through Catholic Relief Services and has promised to pick up the ocean freight tab for Church World Service, relief arm of the National Council of Churches. And the West German government gave $500,000 to German Catholics and Lutherans for African aid.

There are prominent churchmen on both sides of the conflict. Some, including a WCC president, Sir Francis Ibiam of Biafra, were delegates to the WCC at Uppsala, where they engaged in a verbal skirmish.

Hostilities between Hausa and Ibo tribal factions erupted in 1966 in a series of military coups and counter coups, followed by a massacre of thousands of Ibos in the north. Nearly two million other Ibos fled to their native eastern region, where independence was declared last May. Christian Ibos charged that northern Muslims aimed to exterminate them.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

SUDAN TO ADMIT MISSIONARIES

Tanzanian Roman Catholic Fathers Barnabas Temu and Mark Riwa this summer will become the first missionaries allowed into southern Sudan since the purge four years ago in which a million Christians reportedly lost their lives. The Sudan admits only missionaries of African origin recommended by the All Africa Church Conference.

When the Sudan government changed in December, 1966, an AACC factfinding mission discovered that church leadership had been liquidated and asked permission to send in aid. The government announced that the hour of peace had come and that missionaries were welcome.

For a year and a half this seemed an empty diplomatic gesture. The regime refused to issue any missionary permits and did not grant amnesty to Sudanese Christian refugees in neighboring nations. But after the June assassination of an opposition leader in the Sudanese Parliament, the Sudan came under heavy attack in the African press. The government hastily granted entry permits to the two Catholics, who will teach at a seminary in Malakal.

What the pair will face is difficult to determine, since foreign journalists find it near-impossible to get into southern Sudan. Two Nairobi reporters who managed the trick this spring found an unpromising region of waterless scrub forest and grasses, and came across a ragged rebel army preparing war against the northern government.

The trouble is longstanding. When the Sudan became independent, the northern Arabs hoped to Islamize the blacks of the south and applied social and economic pressures. Yet the Christian community continued to prosper. The government then announced a secession plot and rushed troops south, and the confrontation began. Now northern Muslims are beginning to realize that to save the Sudanese nation they must ignore differences of culture, mentality, and religion, which are the sources of the present drama.

ODHIAMBO W. OKITE

EVANGELISM, AFRICAN STYLE

Delegates from thirty African nations last month convened the West African Congress on Evangelism in war-stricken Nigeria. The 459 participants met on the University of Ibadan campus, 200 miles from the fighting (see story above). Some other delegates were barred by Nigeria because their nations recognized Biafra, the breakaway rebel government.

The congress, sponsored by the Nigerian Evangelical Fellowship and the New Life for All saturation-evangelism organization, was the first continental outgrowth of the 1966 Berlin World Congress on Evangelism and the Wheaton missions conference.

Speakers generally avoided the war issue and confined themselves to evangelism topics: the biblical definition, methods most appropriate for Africa, and cooperative programs. Speeches were translated into Hausa, English, and French.

Congress Chairman David Olatayo, head of NEF, predicted stepped-up outreach as a result of the meetings.

Coordinator Wilfred A. Bellamy of the Sudan United Mission reported that NLA successes in Nigeria had sparked so many requests from other countries that a traveling NLA workshop team was being organized in response.

Lagos businessman A. T. de B. Wilmot said the evangelism cause could be furthered if boards and denominations surrendered control to the local churches. They could then be linked along “fellowship” lines for common evangelistic objectives. “Most of our rules,” he said, “create distinct denominations, but never a distinct people for God.”

Kassoum Keita, a Mali pastor, urged continued efforts to reach Muslims despite threats of “violence.” (Direct missionary work is prohibited by law in many Muslim areas.)

Much time was devoted to prayer for the souls of Africans. Delegates also prayed for peace in Nigeria; among those kneeling together while their countrymen warred were Hausa Christians from the north and Assembly of God Ibos from the southeast.

DONALD BANKS

EVANGELICALS AND ARCHAEOLOGY

The electrically charged atmosphere of a victorious Israel and a united Jerusalem provided the setting for the most ambitious joint convention ever held by the Evangelical Theological Society and the American Scientific Affiliation, a body of evangelical U. S. scientists.

Before the 1967 Six-Day War, the host American Institute of Holy Land Studies on Mount Zion looked down on Jordanian gun emplacements (courtesy of the Soviet Union) and a military no-man’s-land. G. Douglas Young, director of the ten-year-old, degree-granting graduate school, organized a superlative program focusing on current archaeological work.

Even those whose reading had been limited to such popular treatments as Werner Keller’s The Bible as History saw the amazing degree to which archaeology of the past fifty years has confirmed the precise historicity of the Bible.

One field trip was to the dig where Mosche Kochavi has located a gigantic Canaanite Bronze Age city, comparable in size to Megiddo, that is almost certainly the biblical Debir (Joshua 10). W. F. Albright identified the site ten miles to the east; he could not accept the biblical location in high country, doubting Canaanite remains could be found there. Kochavi, taking the Bible more seriously, found them. Kochavi’s possible clincher is the “upper” and “nether” springs at Debir (Joshua 15; Judges 1)—a rare phenomenon in such arid country, yet present at Kochavi’s site.

Eminent Israeli archaeologist Johanan Aharoni, who supports Kochavi’s claim, discussed Ai, presently thought to have been at a site that apparently does not correspond in time to the Old Testament city. “We don’t seem to have located biblical Ai yet, but I am sure that it is somewhere,” he said, calling for “fresh data” on the subject. Institute researcher Thomas Drobena cautioned that where archaeology and the Bible seem to be in tension, the issue is almost always dating, the most shaky area in current archaeology and the one at which scientistic a priori and circular reasoning often replace solid empirical analysis.

In New Testament studies, a case of speculation-gone-wild was provided by Hebrew University’s David Flusser. Following the lead of a few professionals (Allegro) and numerous amateurs (Charles Francis Potter, Bishop Pike), Flusser saw definite Essene sources for certain phrases and ethical concepts in the New Testament. Hypothesis yielded to fact as ETS and ASA members examined such firm sites of Jesus’ activity as the Antonia Fortress, where he was judged (not scientifically investigated until 1930).

Needs of the present were brought home dramatically when an Israeli government lecturer alleged that Jewish references in the Fourth Gospel were the basis of Christian anti-Semitism; when contacts with local clergy showed the degree to which universalistic theologies have reduced stress on missions to the Jews; and when knowledge of state interference with evangelism dampened the positive evaluation participants had of the young State of Israel, whose citizens, ironically, have undergone much unjust religious persecution themselves.

And always haunting the picture eschatologically was the sealed Golden Gate of the Old City, which, tradition says, is destined to be reopened when the Temple is restored and Messiah comes. JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

CHRISTIANS IN A NUTSHELL

Pre-publicity in Cincinnati newspapers for last month’s North American Christian Convention told the story in a nutshell: “Your Kind of People … Intelligent, Conservative, Progressive, Patriotic. 15,000 are coming to Cincinnati this week.”

At the city’s cavernous new Convention Hall (with ashtrays removed and beer taps dry), the visitors heard inspirational preaching, sang militant gospel hymns, and scurried around to workshops on everything from teaching retarded children to the work of elders and deacons.

The basic conservative position of the convention was expressed by President W. F. Lown of Manhattan (Kansas) Bible College, who blamed liberal theology for the restructure that is expected to win approval at this fall’s convention of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ).

“It is assumed that nothing we could say in this session would in any way stay the onward sweep of restructure,” Lown admitted. “There is little reason to doubt that the urgent emphasis upon restructure is to put ecumenically minded Disciples in a political position which will enable them to officially negotiate with the ‘emerging ecumenical structure’”—a reference to the Consultation on Church Union.

Restructure would modify the traditional autonomy of local congregations treasured by conservative Disciples in the NACC group. Although the NACC is drawn mainly from this denomination, increasing participation is coming from the Churches of Christ, who share the common spiritual heritage dating from Alexander and Thomas Campbell.

A Churches of Christ minister, Dr. William Banowsky, won hands down as the most popular speaker at the convention. The young and handsome new vice-president of Pepperdine College in Los Angeles told college youth about the two days he spent with Hugh Hefner, ruler of the Playboy empire, in preparation for a public debate with the magazine’s religion editor.

Banowsky accused Hefner of being a non-Playboy who is committed to the success of his magazine and to making money. “He doesn’t practice what he preaches,” Banowsky said. “He would have neither the time nor the energy to edit the magazine if he did.”

Banowsky says the hedonistic Playboy philosophy is without social conscience and debases sex. He advised his listeners to stop buying the magazine and lining Hefner’s pockets.

“I haven’t bought a copy since the debate two years ago,” he said, adding: “They send it to me free.”

Dr. Sam M. Hamilton of Fort Hays Kansas State College struck a little closer home with a learned, scorching treatise on “entrenched clericalism,” charging that it threatens the simplicity of churches that boast they are patterned after New Testament principles:

“I read and reread the Book of Acts and the Epistles, and I seek in vain the notion that evangelization is the exclusive responsibility of a class of officials, whether they be apostles, prophets, or evangelists. I look in vain for the notion that it is the sole duty of some ‘to pay and others to pray.’

“I look in vain for a New Testament church scrounging all over the ‘brotherhood’ trying to find a ‘preacher’ (call him preacher, minister, or resident evangelist—I care not what the current euphemism is) so they can have some ‘preaching.’ I search in vain for young ‘Timothies,’ with not-so-young ‘Timothies’ jockeying for the power and prestige of the more important pulpits (it’s called, euphemistically, ‘seeking larger fields of service’).”

This year’s convention president, Burris Butler of Standard Publishing Company, was succeeded by Douglas A. Dickey, a campus minister at Purdue University.

JAMES L. ADAMS

ACTS 29

A stormy chapter has been added to the history of the burgeoning Campus Crusade for Christ organization (see April 12 issue, p. 40).

Three of its top five campus staffers have quit and formed a “non-institutional church” movement dubbed “Acts 29” (the Bible book ends with chapter 28). They are: Jon Braun, 35, formerly Crusade’s national coordinator, and former regional directors Pete Gillquist and Robert Andrews, both 30.

They were joined by 150 others (an estimated one-third were Crusade people) last month in La Jolla, California, for a week-long strategy session in which eleven “ruling elders” were appointed, among them Braun and his two colleagues. Another leader, Louis Meyer, 51, who left the Roman Catholic priesthood after a recent Luther-type conversion, vowed to take Acts 29 to “underground” Catholic circles.

Braun describes Acts 29 as “a fellowship of Christian activists calling for a reformation in the contemporary church and advocating the emergence of a first-century-type church both within and without the organized ecclesiastical establishment.” One hoped-for exclusion in first-century practice is glossolalia, but, says Braun, Crusade’s ban on the experience will not be binding.

Small Acts 29 groups will reach the “secular-oriented” person who dislikes traditional structures, explains Braun, and thus will complement—not compete with—the organized church. These groups will meet in dormitories, homes, job sites, even restaurants. Acts 29 “churches” are already established on some two dozen college campuses, Braun says; their “membership” is composed mostly of former Crusade-related youths.

Braun and the others have been banned from Crusade appearances for one year by Crusade chief Bill Bright, who is said to fear alienation—and financial shutoffs—by mainstream churches should Acts 29 be mistakenly associated with Crusade. Bright resisted for more than a year Braun’s suggestions that Crusade form such a movement for follow-up of its converts.

Acts 29 will forgo incorporation and a “clergy class”; local “elders” will coordinate “free” services of “spontaneous” testimonies, discussion, and prayer. Adherents will administer communion and baptize one another. When a prominent evangelical pastor questioned the “authority” of such practices, Braun charged him with having a “closed-shop mentality” and said he would explain his position in his forthcoming book, Mandate for an Open Shop.

Acts 29’s major emphasis, Braun said, is on “real-life righteousness” that is devoid of legalism and based on the love of Christ.

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

CHURCH PANORAMA

The Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) assembly urged its 2,261 churches to end any racial segregation immediately, its national agencies to seek Negro employees, and its state assemblies to merge remaining black and white organizations.

The 65,000-member Evangelical Covenant Church called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference “the most effective available non-violent means” to racial justice; said dissent on Viet Nam should be “lawful and orderly”; and created a world-relief commission.

Minneapolis pastor Robert Featherstone was elected moderator of the Baptist General Conference, which this year reported income over $2 million for the first time; membership is 94,000.

The 170,000-member General Association of Regular Baptists attacked civil disobedience, the new morality, and “ecumenical evangelism.”

The United Missionary Church and the Missionary Church Association merged into the Missionary Church, which has 21,000 members, 354 churches, 194 foreign missionaries, and four colleges.

Northwest leaders of the former Evangelical United Brethren admit defeat in trying to keep congregations going at two churches that were among fifty-four that withdrew from the United Methodist Church.

The Rev. Randle Dew, 44, of Louisville, will head the as-yet-unnamed domestic “peace corps” of the United Methodist Church.

An inter-racial group of forty Churches of Christ ministers met in Atlanta and criticized “the sin of racial prejudice” among their constituency of 2.5 million. They offered two pages of specific cases.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe issued its first public financial report, showing annual receipts of $252,676.

PERSONALIA

Sister Ann Patrick Ware, religion teacher at the University of North Dakota, was named a theological consultant to Church Women United—first Roman Catholic nun on the permanent staff of the National Council of Churches.

David O. Moberg, 46, of Minnesota’s Bethel College (Baptist General Conference) is new sociology-anthropology chairman at Marquette University, a Jesuit school.

David M. Howard, assistant general director of Latin America Mission, has been loaned for three years to Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship as its missionary director, replacing Eric S. Fife, who is on leave because of poor health.

Executive Secretary Philip S. Hitchco*ck of United Presbyterian Men, a former Oregon state senator, represented his denomination before the Republican Platform Committee this month.

The U. S. Tax Court ruled that Robert Lawrence, unordained full-time education minister at a Baptist church in Springfield, Tennessee, must list his housing allowance as taxable income.

Charles W. McKinney has been promoted to editor-in-chief of Moody Press, replacing Robert K. DeVries, new director of publications at Zondervan Publishing House.

Dennis F. Kinlaw, 46, Old Testament professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, Kentucky, is new president of neighboring Asbury College, site of turmoil over December firing of its president.

H. Conwell Snoke, executive secretary of the $21 million Methodist Investment Fund, was elected president of Goodwill Industries, which aids handicapped workers.

Former Southern Baptist staffer Bill Dyal won the highest award given to an American by Colombia, where he is Peace Corps director.

French Father Damien Boulogne held a press conference ten weeks after he received a heart transplant and enthusiastically upheld the morality of such operations.

The Rev. S. Loren Bowman, 55, head of Christian education for the Church of the Brethren, was named the denomination’s new general secretary.

The Rev. Harry Loving, 39, of Emmanuel Baptist Church, San Bernardino, California, pleaded guilty to grand theft of $ 150,000 in loans he floated by using church property as collateral.

Methodist Turnover

The Rev. Roy Nichols, 50, pastor of a 2,400-member Harlem church and a new member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, is the first Negro ever elected a U.S. Methodist bishop by an integrated conference.

As eleven of fifty-four United Methodist bishops reached retirement, this summer’s conferences also elected as bishops: Dean William Cannon of Candler School of Theology, Professor Alsie H. Carleton of Perkins School of Theology, President David Mertz of Lycoming College, and the Rev. James Armstrong of Broadway Methodist Church, Indianapolis.

Retiring bishops are Fred Pierce Corson, Paul Garber, Edwin Garrison, Walter Gum, H. R. Heininger, Fred Holloway, Paul Martin, Otto Nall, Angie Smith, Richard Raines, and Donald Tippett.

MISCELLANY

Governor Raymond Shafer signed a bill making Pennsylvania the first state to give public funds directly to private schools. A pilot $4.3 million program that began July 1 faces immediate court challenges. Editor Frank N. Hawkins of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette quit the state Board of Education in protest.

A Christian Churches minister in Lexington, Kentucky, said a $4,000 denominational grant to his urban-training center for seminarians should have gone to ghetto groups instead. But director John Compton said much of the $373,500 in national grants went to white service agencies because “someone has to pick up the pieces” in case of city turmoil.

Of 127 draft-counseling centers listed in a new directory by the New York State Civil Liberties Union, nearly half have a church or synagogue connection.

Military police arrested nine U. S. servicemen in Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Marin City, California, two days after they took sanctuary from military service and chained themselves to clergymen.

Fourteen Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish bodies have formed Metropolitan New York Project Equality, committing their purchasing power to equal-opportunity employers.

Irving West, 20, of Westminster, Maryland, is appealing his thirty-day sentence under an old state law against swearing in public.

An aged man and his granddaughter were sentenced to two years in jail and fines of $166 each for proselytizing for the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Greece.

Holiday Inns of America will soon feature a series of thirty-minute Sunday worship services, using local ministers, who will be treated to dinner. HIA president is Wallace Johnson, a Southern Baptist of Memphis.

At a Jerusalem convention, the body representing the world’s 1.5 million Reform Jews demanded equal treatment under Israel’s laws, which recognize the Orthodox branch alone.

A crusade led by Ford Philpot in Kinshasa, capital of the Congo, drew estimated attendance of 200,000, with 25,000 public commitments to Christ. The meetings capped a two-year evangelism program of the Congo Protestant Council.

DEATHS

FRANCIS CARDINAL BRENNAN, 74, Pennsylvanian and prefect of the Vatican’s sacramental discipline congregation, thus the first American to head a Curia office; in Philadelphia, of cancer.

LEO SOWERBY, 73, distinguished U. S. composer of church music; longtime choirmaster of the Chicago Episcopal cathedral, then first director of the College of Church Musicians, Washington, D. C.; of a stroke at Camp Wa-Li-Ro, Ohio.

ROBERT W. MANCE, JR., 65, Washington, D. C., physician and treasurer of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; of a heart attack while attending the World Council of Churches assembly in Sweden.

CHESTER L. QUARLES, 60, administrator of the Mississippi Baptist Convention; of a heart attack in Cuzco, Peru, en route to a Brazil planning session for the Crusade of the Americas.

MRS. WALLACE PADDON, 61, former president of the Women’s Union Missionary Society, first board to send single women as missionaries; of cancer, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

RICHARD E. WEINGART, 32, new dean of the Hartford Seminary Foundation; in an auto crash in Worthington, Massachusetts.

JACK HOLCOMB, 46, gospel tenor; in Dallas, of a heart attack.

MRS. RALPH AINSWORTH, 26, active Baptist and fifth-grade teacher in Meridian, Mississippi, who led a double life; in a gun battle with police as she and fellow Ku Klux Klan member Thomas Tarrants III allegedly tried to dynamite a Jewish businessman’s home.

In a 7,500-word encyclical released July 29, Pope Paul VI flatly refused to temper the Roman Catholic teaching that “artificial” contraception is evil. The document, entitled Humanæ Vitæ, evoked a groundswell of dissent among the pontiff’s ecclesiastical subordinates. It was hard to tell which would prove to be more historic: the Pope’s reaffirmation of traditional Vatican views on birth control, or the crisis it seemed to be precipitating among the half billion members claimed by the Roman Catholic Church.

“God has wisely disposed natural laws and rhythms of fecundity which, of themselves, cause a separation in the succession of births,” said Pope Paul. “Nonetheless the church, calling men back to the observance of the norms of the natural law, as interpreted by her constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marriage act (“quilibet matrimonii usus”) must remain open to the transmission of life.”

The Pope had a good word for family planning but said that only the rhythm method is moral. The rhythm method is simply abstinence from sexual intercourse during the woman’s fertile period. Because it is not possible to determine with precision the time of the fertile period, the method is unreliable. The Pope echoed Pope Pius XII in asking that medical science provide “a sufficiently secure basis for a regulation of birth, founded on the observance of natural rhythms.”

The first major sign of defiance was a statement signed by more than a hundred American Catholic theologians. The statement is openly critical of the Pope and takes issue with the encyclical, citing numerous “defects.”

“Many positive values concerning marriage are expressed in Paul VI’s encyclical,” the statement says. “However, we take exception to the ecclesiology implied and the methodology used by Paul VI in the writing and promulgation of the document.”

Never before in modern times has there been such open resistance to a papal edict. The theologians appealed to the “common teaching” in the church that Catholics may dissent from authoritative, non-infallible teachings of the magisterium when sufficient reasons for so doing exist. They concluded that “spouses may responsibly decide according to their conscience that artificial contraception in some circ*mstances is permissible and indeed necessary to preserve and foster the values and sacredness of marriage.”

The encyclical was presented to newsmen at the Vatican by Monsignor Ferdinando Lambruschini, moral theologian at Lateran University. “From a theological viewpoint,” he said, “the document was not to be considered infallible, but an act of great courage in its condemnation of spreading artificial methods of birth control.” He was also quoted as saying that it was not “immutable” dogma.

Humanæ Vitæ rejected the findings of a majority of a special commission appointed by the Pope to study the morality of birth control. The Commission included a number of lay experts, but the Pope said that “the conclusions at which the commission arrived could not, nevertheless, be considered by us as definitive, nor dispense us from a personal examination of this serious question; and this also because, within the commission itself, no full concordance of judgments concerning the moral norms to be proposed had been reached, and above all because certain criteria of solutions had emerged which departed from the moral teaching on marriage proposed with constant firmness by the teaching authority of the church.”

A particularly vulnerable aspect of the encyclical’s argumentation is its labeling of the rhythm method as “natural” and all other methods as “artificial.” Many Catholic medical men believe the rhythm method to be more artificial than other means.

Dissenters appeal to Vatican II for an out, but the council adopted a statement that leaves little room for interpretation when it says, “Religious submission of will and of mind must be shown in a special way to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra.”

As popes have been doing for centuries, Paul VI relied heavily upon the natural-law theory. With this rationale he addressed himself not only to the Roman Catholic faithful but also to those outside the church.¹See “How to Decide the Birth-Control Question” by John Warwick Montgomery, March 4, 1966, issue. Montgomery is among twenty-seven evangelical scholars who will discuss birth control and related issues August 28–31 at a symposium in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, sponsored by Christianity Today and Christian Medical Society. He spoke specifically to rulers: “Do not allow the morality of your peoples to be degraded; do not permit that by legal means practices contrary to the natural and divine law be introduced into that fundamental cell, the family.”

Pope Paul acknowledged the gravity of the demographic problem but added, “The only possible solution to this question is one which envisages the social and economic progress both of individuals and of the whole of human society, and which respects and promotes true human values.”

The Pope was very aware that Humanaæ Vitæ would not be well received. Two days after its disclosure he issued a special plea from his summer residence fifteen miles south of Rome. He expressed the hope that “Christian married couples will understand that its teaching is but the manifestation of the love of Christ for the church.”

“The knowledge of our grave responsibility caused us no small suffering,” he said. “We well knew of the heated discussions in the press. The anguish of those involved in the problem touched us also. We studied and read all we could. We consulted eminent persons. And we sought in prayer the aid of the Holy Spirit in interpreting the divine law.…”

It was a statement of pathos, almost of apology. Probably it has no counterpart in papal history.

Humanæ Vitæ not only condemned mechanical and chemical contraceptives but also repeated the church’s opposition to abortion and sterilization, “temporary or permanent.” Also reiterated is the Catholic teaching that medical intervention with an indirect contraceptive, sterilizing, or abortive effect is permissible for health reasons when this effect is secondary, not used as a means.

The gravity of the ecclesiastical crisis growing out of Humanæ Vitæ may not become apparent for a time. But already the church faces a serious situation over the celibacy rule as important priests regularly renounce the church. The latest to get married were Edward J. Sponga, 50, head of the 830 Jesuits in the Maryland Province; Joseph F. Mulligan, 48, director of higher studies for the Jesuit New York Province; and Joseph Lemercier, 55, of Mexico, disciplined by the Vatican last year for using unauthorized psychoanalysis.

What will be the effect upon humanity of the Pope’s decision? Theoretically, those who restrict their birth rate will ultimately be engulfed by those who do not. But surveys have shown that most Roman Catholics are ignoring their church’s ban on contraceptives. The resulting integrity gap may be a more serious threat to the church than open defiance or mass exodus.

SINCE ST. AUGUSTINE

Contraceptive medicines were known and used in biblical times, and were condemned on various grounds by the early Church Fathers. By the time of Saint Augustine’s Marriage and Concupiscence, the belief became explicit: Couples who “for the sake of lust” obstruct “procreation by an evil prayer or an evil deed” are not really married. Some, with “cruel lust,” even “procure poisons of sterility,” and if these don’t work they resort to abortion, the saint lamented.

The opinions of bishops and theologians first gained authority over an entire province of the Church in the sixth century when Bishop Caesarius of Gaul condemned birth-control “potions” and affirmed that procreation was the only lawful reason for sex. Gregory the Great, first of the strong medieval popes, not only repeated this idea in his Pastoral Rule but also said any pleasure in the act was unlawful.

By the high Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas had worked Augustine’s ideas into his natural-law framework, but explicitly approved sex even if the couple was sterile—thus allowing an exception to procreation as the only motive.

In 1588, Pope Sixtus V issued the bull Effrænatam, which condemned those who “induce sterility in women, or impede by cursed medicines their conceiving or bearing.” He advocated punishments equal to those for homicide. But two and one-half years later his successor, Pope Gregory XIV, repealed penalties except for abortion of a forty-day-old fetus.

In the first papal encyclical on marriage after the papal-infallibility decree of 1870, Pope Leo XIII avoided mention of contraception. Meanwhile, belief and practice outside the Catholic world were shifting. In 1930, the bishops of the Anglican communion overturned their position of 1908 and 1920. Their statement permitted deliberate birth control “in those cases where there is … a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence.”

Half a year later Pope Pius XI issued his landmark encyclical Casti Connubii, with these key passages:

“Since the act of the spouses is by its own nature ordered to the generation of offspring, those who, exercising it, deliberately deprive it of its natural force and power, act against nature and effect what is base and intrinsically indecent.… Any use whatever of marriage, in the exercise of which the act by human effort is deprived of its natural power of procreating life, violates the law of God and nature …”

And by normal theological tests, it can be argued that this is an infallible decree, writes John T. Noonan, Jr., law professor at Notre Dame, in his monumental book Contraception. But the emphasis on “the exercise” of the marital act could leave room for chemical preventatives.

In his 1951 address to a convention of maternity nurses, Pope Pius XII approved deliberate use of the infertile period (the “rhythm method”) to avoid procreation for “medical, eugenic, economic, and social” motives.

World Council On Birth Control

Last month’s World Council of Churches assembly at Uppsala approved a document on “World Economic and Social Development” that included this statement on birth control, modified to mollify the Eastern Orthodox:

“The implications of the world’s unprecedented population explosion are far reaching with regard to long-range economic planning, the provision of food, employment, housing, education, and health services. Many churches are agreed that we need to promote family planning and birth control as a matter of urgency. An ever growing number of parents want to exercise their basic human right to plan their families. We recognize, however, that some churches may have moral objections to certain methods of population control.”

In 1962, Pope John XXIII created a small commission of advisers to study birth control. Two years later Pope Paul VI expanded the group to a major sixty-member body of experts. In 1966 the experts made their report. Last year, as Pope Paul VI struggled with his decision, Catholic papers printed pro and con texts from this secret commission and reported that a solid majority had urged change in the church position.

On July 29, 1968, Paul issued Humanæ Vitæ.

OUTSIDERS’ REACTIONS

Eugene Carson Blake, general secretary of the World Council of Churches: “It is disappointing that the initiative taken in 1964 to re-examine the traditional Roman Catholic position on family planning and birth control seems with the encyclical Humanæ Vitæ to have ended up approximately where it began, despite such a long and careful study.

“Some member churches of the World Council of Churches, particularly some of the Orthodox theologians, take a position very close to that expressed by Pope Paul. It is, however, a disappointment to many Christians in all the member churches of the World Council as well as to many Roman Catholics, that no early breakthrough to a solution to this problem can be envisioned.

“My personal reaction to the encyclical, at the first reading of the central parts, is that the distinction between artificial and natural means of birth control must be more thoroughly examined. It also appears that the Roman Catholic position as now stated depends too much upon an old conception of natural law to be persuasive to twentieth-century man.”

Arthur Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury: “… The moral teaching given by the encyclical on the use of so-called artificial means of contraception is widely different from that of the Anglican Community.… The means adopted to limit the number of children in a family are a matter for the conscience of each husband and wife. The use of ‘artificial means’ of contraception is not excluded. The changes in human society and world population as well as development in the means available for contraception which have occurred since 1958 seem to me to reinforce rather than challenge the arguments employed and conclusions reached at the Lambeth Conference in 1958.”

Billy Graham, evangelist: “In general, I would disagree with it.… I believe in planned parenthood.” Graham spoke of seeing the effects of the “population explosion” in his worldwide travels.

Literature That Lives On

A Reader’s Guide to Religious Literature, by Beatrice Batson (Moody, 1968, 114 pp., $3.95, paper $2.95), is reviewed by Thomas Howard, teacher of English, St. Bernard’s School, New York, New York.

“What actually makes a work live as literature is a vividness and depth of perception in presenting honestly and realistically the conflicts, dilemmas and experiences of life.” This statement from the preface of this book does two things: it gives us the criterion by which Dr. Batson chose works from the almost infinite number of “God-oriented” works in Western history since the first century, and it articulates for us the principle that is the watershed between worthy and mediocre literature, whether religious or non-religious.

What makes some pieces of writing last, and others molder? Why are some works worth keeping alive in a book like this? Talent, for one thing: the ability to say the thing well. It is the simplicity as much as any observable complexity that beguiles us about things well done and fools us into believing that we could do as well. We can all see that an excellent table is excellent, and, if it is not intricately carved or painted, we might think we could make one, too. It is the same with works of literature: if we take any given phrase apart, there is nothing particularly new or unknown to us in it. All the words are in our vocabulary. The author has not done anything that we could not have done, we think. But the rub comes when we try to equal his work. Talent is an elusive thing.

But prior to talent is the vision that sees things that are worth saying. It is this “vividness and depth of perception” of which Dr. Batson speaks. It is greatness of imagination, that is, the ability to see the antiphonal relationships that exist among all the data of experience (what T. S. Eliot called seeing the fear in a handful of dust), so that the plain stuff of daily life becomes a paradigm of the eternal.

This kind of talent and vision is exhibited in all worthy literature. The writer (the great writer, I mean) always addresses himself to what he sees to be the truth of the matter. And since the first century there have been many writers whose notion of the truth of the matter has been Christian, and who have addressed themselves to human experience in these terms. This book is a guide to the works of the greatest of these writers.

It is both a reference work and a book you can read through with pleasure. It is scholarly, thorough, and systematic, but not plodding. It is descriptive rather than critical; you may find out what a work is all about, but you are not told why the author gives it a place in the canon of good literature. The study is organized in the logical way, according to the periods generally used in the description of literature: the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, including Augustine, Dante, Kempis, early drama, and the mystics; the seventeenth century, with studies of Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw, Browne, Bunyan, Taylor, and others, and extensive studies of John Donne and Milton; the eighteenth century, including Cowper and Law, as well as a number of American writers; the nineteenth century, with Newman, Hawthorne, Browning, Hopkins, and others. The twentieth century presents special problems to today’s critic and historian of literature, for he can never be sure which works will last. Dr. Batson has done the only thing possible, which is to include the writers whose works have so far seemed the most significant: Eliot, Mauriac, Auden. C. S. Lewis is there, too, a choice that seems obvious to Christians but that might be contested by critics who would not quarrel with the others (it is rather fashionable to tut-tut Professor Lewis).

Each chapter begins with a study of the historical and cultural context of the works included in that chapter. There are also biographical sketches of the authors. The work is fully documented in footnotes, and a helpful bibliography for further study is appended.

Dr. Batson has done a job that seems so obvious and so necessary that one wonders why it was not done before. But it was a happy delay that left the doing of it to Dr. Batson. Her trustworthy scholarship, her vigorous and economical way of summarizing, her sophisticated judgment in making the selection, and her understanding of both religious and literary canons have combined to make this an extraordinarily helpful book.

Special note to CHRISTIANITY TODAY readers: There is a great deal of discussion in the conservative Protestant wing of “Christian” literature, and a growing awareness of the cultural penury of our sort of religion. This might be an excellent book to recommend to people who wonder whether their understanding of the religion of Christ has perhaps inclined them to a less than fair appreciation of the humanistic tradition, but who boggle at the sheer unapproachability of the literary pile. If they are timorous about approaching, say, Dante, let them allow Dr. Batson to lead them, in the same way another Beatrice led Dante to realms he found intimidating.

God’S Envoy In Society

The Social Conscience of the Evangelical, by Sherwood Wirt (Harper & Row, 1967, 177 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Robert Strain, assistant minister, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Bethesda, Maryland.

Sherwood Wirt, editor of Decision magazine, offers in this book an easy-to-read size-up of social issues to which evangelicals should address themselves. He shows how Christians have shaped Western society. Recognizing that for a hundred years evangelicals have tended to neglect the homeland in favor of foreign missions, Wirt searches for ways to activate evangelical social concern. In his search he gives due attention to precedents set by churchmen of the past.

Wirt realizes that today’s evangelical has a real hang-up about duty on the social scene. But why? Redemption, both temporal and eternal, emanates from Jesus Christ, and Christ’s representatives ought to be the ones supplying answers in our cultural crises. If evangelical Christians shaped society in generations gone by, why are they not doing so today? Faith and works must once again be found in the same package.

History shows extensive evangelical involvement in the social realm. Zwingli provided bread for the poor of Zürich. Wilberforce in the British Parliament helped rid his nation of slavery. John Eliot, New England schoolteacher and pastor, demonstrated the social side of the Gospel in his work with the Indians. Finney in Ohio hid the fugitive slaves who came through town. The same social concern characterized the lives of such men as Morrison of China, Livingstone of Africa, and Gilmour of Mongolia—as well as Moses, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, James, and John the Baptist. All these persons had two things in common: evangelistic fervor and an active social conscience. Today’s evangelicals must not surrender to religious liberals the “good works” dimension, which sprang from the message and impact of evangelical revival.

Wirt claims that the big reason for social rigor mortis in evangelicals of the 1960s is confusion. He writes:

To sum up, the evangelical emerges from his Rip Van Winkle sleep to find that the issues are already being defined for him. Even as he opens his Bible and draws on the Scriptural resources that are available, he is tossed on the horns of a dilemma. For if he chooses one position, he chances being branded as a Himmler-type reactionary; but if he chooses the opposite, he risks being herded with atheistic pinks and hom*osexuals. If he proposes to make the Bible his touchstone and guide, he is engulfed by a torrent of literature purporting to show that the Bible’s social teaching sanctions everything from state lotteries and genocide to ship-picketing, blood donations to the Viet Cong, and tossing Molotov co*cktails at heads of state. If he withdraws to seek the witness of the Spirit and the whole counsel of God, he is cited as a quietist and obscurantist. Hyperactive churchmen hold him up as an example of irrelevance of faith to works.

Church and state power structures, poverty in the land, highway safety, capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, unnatural sex, alcohol, and dope—these major problems that evangelical churches have not seen as their own press hard for solutions. The evangelical must decide whether he will act as God’s envoy or live in air-conditioned isolation.

Wirt’s evangelical is a healthy, well-balanced man. His only real problem is noble inertia. He is bewildered, and wonders where he can take hold at this late hour. Wirt reminds him that Jesus came not to split theological hairs but to minister to a world of need and to save men out of it for eternity. He writes: “Capture a man for Christ, and in the evangelical view as he grows in faith his usefulness increases. His integrity becomes established and he becomes a dependable center of influence for good.” The answer still is God’s reconciling love in Christ. This book seeks to move reconciled men to lives of action-packed love.

Here is great reading for the general Christian public, though a serious student of social issues may find it rather simple. Its social critique sometimes lacks sharp teeth, but it is nonetheless the best discussion of Christian action I have read. Many evangelicals will find that it accurately diagnoses their problem and points them to a responsible solution.

New Vistas Of Heaven

The Biblical Doctrine of Heaven, by Wilbur M. Smith (Moody, 1968, 317 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Henry W. Coray, minister, Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Glenside, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Wilbur Smith, professor emeritus of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, is a great bibliophile. In this extensive study of the doctrine of heaven, he includes quotations from some 160 authors. Almost every page flashes a jewel from one of the masters, such as Augustine, Baxter, John Brown, Calvin, Goodwin, Whately, and Whyte. Dr. Smith is at home with modern expositors as well. But as one would expect from a biblical theologian, the Scripture, from which he cites 850 pertinent passages, is the basis for this solid piece of scholarship.

Smith presents helpful treatments of such absorbing topics as “Heaven—the Abode of God,” “The Intermediate State,” “Occupations of the Redeemed in Heaven,” and “New Heavens and a New Earth.” While not exhaustive, the development of these subjects is not at all shallow. At the same time, Smith is healthily undogmatic on many texts where sound expositors show exegetical gaps and differences of conclusion.

Of interest to many will be his comments on the catastrophic purging of the new heavens and the new earth. Smith suggests that the language of Peter (2 Pet. 3:10) seems to coincide with the idea of the release of atomic energy by the fission of the nucleus:

Reading For Perspective

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

• Grace Is Not a Blue-Eyed Blond, by R. Lofton Hudson (Word, $3.95). A lively and creative look at concepts that pertain to personal predicaments of people today: grace, sin, friendship, temptation, forgiveness, love, faith, guts.

• Christianity and the World of Thought, edited by Hudson T. Armerding (Moody, $5.95). An evangelical “brain trust” brings biblical convictions and broad scholarship to bear on contemporary issues in sixteen areas of study.

• A Leopard Tamed, by Eleanor Vandevort, with an introduction by Elisabeth Elliot (Harper & Row, $5.95). A Presbyterian missionary presents an honest account of thirteen years of service in the Sudan, highlighted by her friendship with Kuac, a small boy who became a minister.

What I am getting at is that when Peter said that at the end of this entire age there would be a great conflagration of the heavens and the earth, he expressed it in language that implied that the elementary particles of matter, which we call atoms, would be dissolved or released, or, as it were, their energies, hitherto imprisoned, set free; and that this would cause the fire [p. 229].

The Biblical Doctrine of Heaven will for many open new vistas on the life to come. And many will gain great comfort from what the author says about the state of loved ones who have preceded them to heaven. To Wilbur Smith we owe a great debt for making more vital and thrilling the glories awaiting us in heaven.

Fall-Outs And Push-Outs Speak Out

The Underground Church, edited by Malcolm Boyd (Sheed and Ward, 1968, 246 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Don DeYoung, pastor, Elmendorf Reformed Church, New York City.

The seventeen persons who have contributed the eighteen chapters in this book have one thing in common: acute disappointment with the Church. The writers are from within the underground church. One should not, therefore, expect a critique or systematizing of this new form of religious demonstration.

So, instead of asking “what” is the underground church, we might better ask “who.” The representatives we meet here are a rather weird (I think they would be flattered rather than insulted by that adjective) assortment of what I would call high-church “fall-outs” and low-church “push-outs.” The predominant background is clearly Roman Catholic and Episcopal. God has not been revealed to them in what they see as aloof structures and cold formalism. The ritual seems to lack relevance to life. Furthermore, they see no real hope in the venture toward a compounded sterility through “institutional ecumenicity.” For them, the warm immanence and stimulating vitality of faith seems to have been vaporized on the high altar, and they are now looking for the touch of a hand and the assurance of a face in the liturgy of life itself.

The “push-outs” are those whose pain arises from the seeming indifference of the Church to race, peace, poverty, economics, and other social problems. The dominance of the status-quo hang-up within the wide range of churches (not excepting the evangelical) has pushed these people outside the narthex to places where they feel God is more involved. This experience is related in a compelling way to the black Christian. For me, the most helpful chapters were “Black Power vis-à-vis ‘The Kingdom of God’” by James E. P. Woodruff and “The Missionary and the Black Man” by Speed B. Leas. Whether fallen or pushed, these strangely varied people have found one another through informal meetings, “homemade” liturgies, home Bible study, and social struggle—and they are part of the underground church.

The pervasive tone is urgency. Time is running out for America and the church tied to the Establishment:

The Church Establishment is sometimes disturbed by the lack of patience among their more active elements. Sometimes the formal channels of protocol are not utilized nor the traditional diplomatic maneuvering exercised. The impatience is caused by the growing realization that time is not something that catches up with you eventually. The temporal and spatial compression mentioned previously obligates us to make the best possible use of the here and now. The respected formal systems of communication are in many cases archaic to present needs and will fall into disuse by those who feel the urgency of their existential situation [in chapter 16, “The Invisible Christian,” by Robert E. Grossman],

I recommend the book for its challenge, and for the understanding it will bring. It has, for the most part, passion. It is open toward the future, though that is limited to the future of time and space. Its stance will certainly not replace the more balanced one of the person who takes a stand on the transcendent relevance of the Gospel, but it should help to correct a myopia toward the immediate context in which God’s people are called to live and witness. To me, the reverse values represented in the book were engaging. For instance, “Faith becomes a way of living rather than a way of thinking.” Or the riddle: Q. When is a Christian most invisible? A. When he is witnessing to his Christian commitment. The status and power values that provide their own grotesque form of escalation within most churches and denominations are wonderfully undercut. I applaud.

The book will at times exercise your patience. For example, Episcopalian Paul Moore, Jr., writes:

I am not sure it can be truthfully and fully said, and yet the tendency of the freeing spirit is pushing us to that logical conclusion, namely, that the Church is coterminous with humanity itself, that no rigid line can be drawn between Christians and others.

Whenever two or three are gathered together in the name of love, Christ is present through the Spirit, though no one may call him by name.

May all of us live and grow within the eucharistic kingdom.

Yet, through the fog of this kind of theology, there are some unlikely messengers trying to bring some light to the collision course that we sense is threatening all the structures. Ecclesia est abscondita—the true Church is determined not by works but by faith—is the view of our Reformation tradition. The claim of this book is that the invisible Church is one that struggles with a performance of radical obedience and may be invisible by its works. This is something to struggle with indeed.

Wild Pitch!

The God Game, by Karl A. Olsson (World, 1968, 238 pp„ $5.95), is reviewed by Nelvin Vos, associate professor of English, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania.

The novel comes on strong. David Horne, young cleric, in a fantasy of glory imagines himself as the heroic relief pitcher who strikes out the big hitter while the crowd shouts. He sees himself as “a baseball saviour,” for he is playing that devilish role, the “I” game, with the ego as center.

The name of the game is the God game. Karl Olsson, writer of both fiction and non-fiction and president of North Park College and Seminary, has chosen the contemporary concept of role-playing as the narrative framework for this novel. The problem for David Horne is one of love and loyalties. In what order of priority should he place the roles demanded of him? His wife needs him desperately, but only her running out jolts him; Becky Cushman, parishioner, wants him to help uncover the mystery of her husband’s suicide; he knows he is overly concerned about his own status; and, amid all this, he is aware of his calling as a servant of God. Eros, fraternitas, ego and agape—the conflicts among them are the strength of the novel. Horne’s predicament is universal, and the novelist has made it realistic.

But the trouble is that the novel attempts to play too many games, and the result is as distracting, but not as pleasant, as a four-ring circus. In the main ring is the story of David Horne. This action is well handled, though a bit too self-consciously at points: Horne “blushed boyishly. ‘What is it they call it, “a moment of truth”? Well, I’ve had it.’” His wife Sarah seems to be in an important ring at first, but she inexplicably disappears in the second half of the novel. The focus of the reader’s vision becomes exceedingly blurred in the story of Sam Cushman, whose suicide is the opening event of the novel. Cushman too is playing the God game, but here the novelist forces the role into almost parody: “The changer kept feeding in St. Matthew’s Passion while he was bleeding on the floor of the library”; the only note he left was typed in lower case, “it is finished”; a liberal minister refers to the death scene as “our friend’s Golgotha”; and a pious maid indicts the family by quoting: “He came to his own, and his own received him not.” The name of this game is Figure Out the Christ Figure. In the final ring is Becky Cushman, wealthy, wily widow, who persuades Horne to attempt to penetrate the mystery of her husband’s death.

The people he meets on his Conradian journey are fantastic, if not a defiance of Aristotelian probability: a folksy, golf-playing M.D. who seems intimately familiar with the letters St. Jerome wrote to women, a hard-driving executive who becomes violently drunk by guzzling Old Crow from a pure violet plastic glass, and a small-town Southern Baptist preacher who quotes Emerson, Graham Greene, and Swinburne while the Klan is threatening his home. And instead of the climactic revelation that the Baptist minister, as former chaplain to Cushman, is expected to convey, the focus is on a miscegenation affair that the minister himself had in his youth. Some readers are apt to get lost.

Perhaps the basic difficulty is that the novelist is playing too many styles in a single game. One style is melodrama: “‘Go on,’ he said with a tense smile. ‘Nothing will mean anything until I’ve heard the story.’” Another is satire, found particularly in the Waugh-Huxley-like tour of Cushman’s plastic factory, in which an inspector says: “Cleanliness is godliness at Dynaplast.” And, finally, in refreshing deviation from the old-fashioned religious novel, there is earthy, blunt realism: “You get the Hell out. Get your fat reverend butt out of here.…” The lack of tonal unity frequently flaws the narrative.

Mr. Olsson has the ear and the eye of a novelist: “Across the road were the tangerine battlements of a Howard Johnson’s”; the minister’s wife sputters that “ministers have got to be divinity. The most disagreeable candy I know is something called divinity—the sweet, smooth droppings of the dove of peace.” But what it seems necessary to add is that in the game called novel-writing, one mandate seems central: Control the ball!

Lost And Found

Where You Find God, by Walter Russell Bowie (Harper & Row, 1968, 116 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Ronald B. Rice, chaplain, Whitworth College, Spokane, Washington.

In the aftermath of the “God is dead” movement, Bishop Robinson’s questioning of the traditional conceptions of God, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity,” and Paul Tillich’s concept of God as the “Ground of Being,” amid increasing vagueness and ambiguity about the existence and nature of God, comes Dr. Bowie’s stimulating and helpful book. Writing for the layman and certainly for the pastor, Bowie grapples with the ways to find God in one’s own life. He attempts to speak in a new idiom to the man who has rejected the Church and a message he considers tradition bound, cliché ridden, and out of date. Where You Find God is a refreshing and commendable effort to couch a fairly traditional view of God and of Christ in terms that speak to modern secular man.

“Most people who have been brought up religiously are not going to swallow the raw assertion that ‘God is dead,’” Bowie observes. “But they do get vastly troubled when they try to find some answer to their wondering as to what he may be and where he may be found.… The person who has supposed that he already had a religious faith that was sufficient may discover that it was built on foundations which are sinking under him.” It is to this man that the book is directed.

“Human souls that have tasted life most fully will not be persuaded that a ‘secular meaning of the Gospel’ is enough: that we can get along without any transcendent Lord and work out our own salvation—or maybe find out that there is none,” the author concludes after a close and readable look at much of the contemporary debate about the nature and existence of God and the Incarnation.

Where You Find God finds God “In the Intensity of Life,” as “The Presence Back of History,” through the “Changing Thought and Unchanging Reality” of the Incarnation, and as “The Experienced Reality” in human life. In a brief look at the faith of Dag Hammarskjöld, Bowie concludes his book with a crucial observation about the life of faith in God: “The contemplative life and the active life belong together.”

Although some conservative readers will not like Bowie’s treatment of Old Testament passages, the Atonement, and some other points, the book as a whole is a valuable statement of faith in the God of Creation, the God of the Scriptures, and the Lord of History. It will be most helpful to the modern man previously described, or to the pastor who speaks to him.

Is Hargis’S Crusade Christian?

The American Far Right, by John H. Redekop, (Eerdmans, 1968, 232 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by William R. Harrison, lieutenant general (retired), United States Army, Largo, Florida.

John H. Redekop has given us a careful, objective, and well-documented analysis of the political far right as represented by the Rev. Billy James Hargis. It is recommended for anyone—particularly the Bible-believing Christian—who is concerned over political trends in the United States.

Redekop feels that Hargis is sincere and honest, and that his ideological position is a variant of the traditional conservatism held by many Americans since the founding of the nation. Hargis is not a racist, says the author, and advocates only peaceful and legal methods of political action.

According to Redekop’s fully documented findings, Hargis is a biblical fundamentalist, believing in the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible. He apparently believes that the country was founded by true Christians and has remained a Christian country ever since. In fact, he practically identifies Christianity with nationalistic Americanism, claiming that in a special sense the United States is God’s country, corresponding to ancient Israel. He is opposed to liberalism in both religion and social matters and leans toward a laissez-faire social system. He advocates no positive action by which the people as a whole, acting through their government, may try to alleviate the troubles of the poor and needy. He is governed by strong feelings of anti-Communism. Redekop writes, “Ultimately, Hargis’s anti-Communism is out of joint with the Christian faith of which it claims to be a part, for in its positive assertions, it is frequently an idolatrous faith in a man-made culture.” In all this, Hargis is firmly convinced that he is fighting God’s battle.

I too believe firmly in the plenary inspiration and authority of the Bible as the Word of God, to be believed and obeyed. My study and experience lead me to be against Communism and to consider the Soviet Union’s imperialism a dangerous threat to the security of the United States. But if the facts Redekop presents are correct, I cannot but feel that Hargis’s Christian Crusade is not at all consistent with the Bible, and that it identifies God with his own preferred national culture. He makes his fight against liberalism, socialism, and Communism a substitute for the Gospel of Christ in the same way that many religious liberals do with the social gospel.

By contrast, Christ’s kingdom in this present age is not of this world; neither is he redeeming the world. He came into the world, died for men’s sins, and rose again from the dead so that individual men through faith in him could be forgiven and reconciled to God. God is taking out of mankind a people for his name (Acts 15:14). As a warning of ultimate judgment, he has given men over to those personal moral evils that cause most of the social troubles in the world (Rom. 1:18–32). The liberals’ optimistic belief that they can cure the world’s ills is totally unjustified.

Nevertheless, every reasonable and legitimate effort to alleviate the problems of the poor, the needy, and the persecuted is fully in accord with Christ’s compassion. The primary mission of the individual Christian and the Church is to be a faithful witness to the world that Christ saves from sin. A person’s own life is the best testimony to the truth of his verbal witness, if he is obedient to the biblical injunction that he should love his neighbors and do good to all men. Doing good certainly may include corporate action by the citizens, that is, through government and other bodies, even though such action will not bring in the millennium. I cannot but feel that the Christian Crusade is not actually Christian, and that it may be as dangerous to the country as the radical left or Communism.

Book Briefs

Not Quite So Simple, by Senator Mark O. Hatfield (Harper & Row, 1968, 302 pp., $6.95). The popular senator from Oregon, an evangelical Christian, reviews his academic and government careers and sets forth his political views, particularly his dovish position on the Viet Nam war.

While Six Million Died, by Arthur D. Morse (Random House, 1968, 420 pp., $6.95). On the basis of extensive reresearch, Morse upbraids the United States government for its apathetic response to Hitler’s acts of genocide against the Jews.

Four Religions of Asia, by Herbert Stroup (Harper & Row, 1968, 212 pp., $6). A primer on Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism.

The Real and Only Life, by Nancy Peer-man (Word, 1968, 102 pp., $3.95). A housewife’s testimony of her Christian faith.

God’s Program of the Ages, by Frederick A. Tatford (Kregel, 1967, 160 pp., $3.50). A British scholar offers the dispensational viewpoint on prophecy—pre-tribulation rapture, pre-millennial.

Genesis, by Derek Kidner (Inter-Varsity, 1967, 224 pp., $3.95). A lucid evangelical commentary on Genesis that also provides materials of introduction and analysis and notes on special problems. From the “Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries.”

Illustrated History of the Reformation, edited by Oskar Thulin (Concordia, 1967, 328 pp., $10). A limited edition of a solid work in Reformation history that incorporates superb photographs and art work.

Operation Brother’s Brother, by Cyril E. Bryant (Lippincott, 1968, 206 pp., $4.95). The story of a dedicated servant of Christ, Dr. Robert A. Hingson, whose jet immunization gun has relieved the suffering of thousands throughout the world.

Illegitimate births are not a new problem, even in Christian circles. What is new is the size of the problem today. Approximately 300,000 children are born out of wedlock each year. In addition, many brides are pregnant at the time of marriage.

Without doubt the breakdown of family life, the tendency of some parents to push their children into adulthood at too early an age, and the so-called generation gap are part of the problem. Among other factors are the turn away from objective standards of morality, theories of progressive education that glorify self-expression, an undue emphasis on permissiveness with children, Freudian psychology, and the emphasis on sex in our culture, particularly in the fields of art, entertainment, and advertising.

No minister can assume that his congregation will be exempt from the problem. Sooner or later every pastor will be confronted by situations involving sex outside marriage, either by members of his church or by people in the community to which the church is called to witness. Most often those who come for help do so because the girl is pregnant. Sometimes they or their families will frankly admit the problem. Often, however, they will not mention it and will only ask for a hurried marriage. What should the pastor do?

Whether the couple confess their problem or try to hide it with a request for a quick marriage, the pastor must avoid moralizing or being judgmental. They have come to him for help, and he, in the name of Christ, has an opportunity to minister. Remembering the way Jesus dealt with adulterers and harlots, he must accept them no matter how much he may be repulsed by their sin. He must remember that though Jesus never minced words about the sins of the flesh, he was far more scathing in his dealings with the spiritually proud than he ever was with the morally bankrupt.

Situations like these offer the minister a great opportunity to convey Christ’s grace. Those who have sinned know it only too well. They come with feelings of shock and fear. Some will think they have committeed the unpardonable sin. Others may feel they simply cannot face life any more. Ideas of self-destruction and abortion have doubtless entered their minds.

The pastor’s primary role is to make known the love of God and help the couple find forgiveness and a sense of worth again. “The way of the transgressor is hard,” but the good pastor will help him find deliverance from his guilt and sin through the atoning work of Christ.

But the pastor must help with more than spiritual needs. He should be ready to help the couple decide what to do next. Should marriage be encouraged or discouraged? No one “has to get married,” as the common expression puts it, and sometimes marriage only complicates an already difficult situation.

In deciding whether marriage is advisable, the couple should consider, first, how they really feel toward each other, how long and how well they have known each other, and how ready they are for marriage. In no case should a marriage take place in the absence of love. To marry simply to give a child legitimacy may mean that he will be subjected to the damaging environment of an unhappy home, and perhaps a broken home. Someone has said that marriage is not so much a matter of finding the right person as of being the right person. One who engages in sexual activity to hurt someone else, or out of a sense of rebellion or insecurity, or for a lark, is hardly ready to settle down into a mature family life.

Another consideration is the attitude of parents. Serious thought should be given to any reasons for opposition by either set of parents. A union that alienates one or both families is subjected to a great strain beyond the ordinary problems of marriage.

Again, marriage may be inadvisable if the couple is financially unable to establish a home. Even where conditions seem nearly ideal, adjustment in marriage requires real effort. The added stress of an unwanted child and financial problems may make achievement of a good relationship nearly impossible.

If marriage does not seem advisable, two alternatives present themselves. One is that the mother keep her child, the other that the child be offered for adoption. Only rarely does the first work out satisfactorily. Usually if the couple do not marry, it is best for all concerned to offer the child for adoption. Reputable agencies such as Florence Crittenden Homes and Booth Memorial Hospitals, which are found in most large cities, as well as county and state agencies and church institutions provide channels through which children can be placed in stable and loving family situations.

The pastor should never make decisions for those who come to him with the problem of pregnancy outside marriage. His responsibility is to help them explore all aspects of their situation so that they can make a wise decision about their own future and that of the child, and to make known to them the love and forgiveness and renewal God offers to all who turn to him.—Dr. CHARLES N. PICKELL, Wallace Memorial United Presbyterian Church, Hyattsville, Maryland.