Page 6259 – Christianity Today (2024)

Intrinsically Christianity is an Easter religion. The resurrection of Christ is like a fire at the heart of the Gospel. The theme blazes through the reports, letters, and sermons of the New Testament. The Resurrection motivated the swift, hard thrust of the early Church. Behind its puissant evangelism stood the unchanging conviction that Jesus had overcome death and is eternally alive.

Nor did the primitive Church rest its case in historicity; Jesus’ resurrection presaged the future resurrection of believers. Yet the Resurrection was confined to neither the past nor the future. Its present-tense impact on the Church was terrific.

The New Testament reporters did not see Christ as having attained “immortality,” as the Greeks thought of it; he had returned from the grave wearing the wounds he had gotten at Calvary. The modern divine who said that Jesus’ body lies in some nameless Syrian tomb while his great spirit goes marching on would, according to Paul, make Christianity a miserable institution (1 Cor. 15:19). Moreover, Paul contends, if Christ rests in a “nameless tomb” preaching is a futile business; faith is meaningless; living believers are yet in their sins, and dead believers are all lost. Paul states flatly, if not grimly: no resurrection of Christ, no redemption for man. At this point, however, Paul rings a clear trumpet: Christ is not dead, he is alive! Redemption is a reality—because Christ did death in and left the grave empty.

Emphatically Paul links a man’s personal salvation to the Resurrection. Phillips’ translation of the Apostle’s word gives us an impressive message: “If you openly admit by your own mouth that Jesus Christ is the Lord, and if you believe in your own heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9, 10).

Paul binds the very deity of Christ to the Resurrection (Rom. 1:4). Justification, that startling doctrine which upsets our moral accountancy, is possible, if we can believe Paul, because Christ outwitted death (Rom. 4:25). Such an essential sacrament as baptism is invalid, if we can believe Peter, unless Christ rose from the grave (1 Pet. 3:21). The doctrine of regeneration depends upon Christ’s being raised: “… God … in his mercy gave us a new birth into a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet. 1:3, NEB).

Deathblow To Legalism

The Resurrection puts the believer in a new position before the Law. Easter is the deathblow to legalism. A man is married to a woman, says Paul; the man dies. So the woman is free to marry again. Scarcely would we expect a woman to remain wedded to a dead man! “So you, my friends, have died to the law by becoming identified with the body of Christ, and accordingly you have found another husband in Him who rose from the dead …” (Rom. 7:4, NEB). This argument is given also in the Colossian letter. Christ has been raised from the dead; believers are forgiven, have been made alive through Him. The decree that stood against them is spiked to the Cross. Now, says Paul, allow no man to take you to task by legalistic dictations; do not follow human injunctions and orders. If one be raised with Christ let him reach for the things of Christ; no earthly rulebook can compete with the Gospel of a risen Redeemer (Col. 2:12–23; 3:1).

Here we touch another relationship between the Resurrection and Christian behavior: Jesus’ triumph over the sepulcher does not leave unaffected the believer’s ethics and conduct. “… Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection” (Rom. 6:4, 5).

New Spiritual Power

However, the Resurrection affords more than an ethical dynamic; it gives a spiritual force to the individual. Paul puts a price tag on all he has given up for Christ—rubbish! And what does Paul seek? He is aware of a strange power outflowing from the fact of Jesus’ rising from the grave; this he wanted—“the power of his resurrection” (Phil. 3:10). This “power” was not just a mystical something; it was a terrific reality, associated with Christ’s sundering of the grave-bonds. This force reached into a man’s life-cells and nerve-strings (Rom. 8:11). The open tomb was like a silent shout of God, emphasizing the availability of this power for the believer. “I pray that your inward eyes may be illumined, so that you may know what is the hope to which he calls you, what the wealth and glory of the share he offers you among the people of his heritage, and how vast the resources of his power open to us who trust in him. They are measured by his strength and the might which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead …” (Eph. 1:18–20, NEB).

It would seem, too, that Paul linked the Resurrection to stewardship, as it involves not only our time and talents, but also our treasure. He delivers his immortal piece on the Resurrection to the Corinthians—then urges his readers to get busy helping the needy: “Now concerning the collection.…” (Perhaps ministers might discover more money for missions after an address on the Resurrection!) Does it appear incongruous, Paul’s moving from a risen Lord to an offering plate? The Resurrection should affect a believer’s pocketbook! An open grave, an open purse—is this so strange?

It is interesting to observe how Paul brings the Resurrection to bear on a man’s personal difficulties and problems. Over against man’s oldest and deepest grief, the loss of a loved one, the Apostle sets the fact of Christ’s conquest of death. “… Sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him” (1 Thess. 4:13, 14).

The Sound Of Trumpets

Jesus predicted his overthrow of the tomb; the Gospels report it vividly. But after that the Resurrection becomes a thundering message in the New Testament. Easter is like the bright ring of a thousand trumpets. One wonders where the modern Church lost so much of that massive music. For the impact made by the Resurrection on the primitive Church was not meant to be lessened by time. We stand today in need of a renewal of the Resurrection theme—rather, we need to repossess the dynamic that the Resurrection-fact affords.

What joyful impetus might be given to the Church in our time through its receiving “the power of the resurrection”! Should the modern Church feel that dynamic as the first believers felt it, we would need argue little whether Christ quit the grave! Should we have the joy, the faith, the invincible thrust of that young Church, men would know we do not serve a dead Christ. The hope of a future resurrection for believers is prophesied by men who demonstrate the resurrection of Christ in their lives here and now.

An Easter Christian is not one who attends church on a particular Lord’s Day to celebrate the Resurrection. Rather he carries Easter about in his daily life. The man who truly believes that his Christ arose from the dead cannot keep Easter out of his personality! The doctrines of justification and regeneration burn neonlike in those who are witnesses to Christ’s being raised. Resurrection Christians also outlive legalism. Ethics, spirituality, good stewardship, missions—these belong to those who have looked in on the everlasting aliveness of Christ. And against all grief and despair glow the invincible joy and hope felt by men in whose lives bums the force of the Resurrection.

If there is anything in the universe that will make men equal to the challenge of this hour in history, it is the same conviction that gripped the early Christians: Christ is not dead, he is alive; and over him death has no dominion! An Easter Christian is not satisfied with celebrating Easter once a year, or even 52 times a year; he must have 365 Easters every twelve months! Every day is Easter with him. He is a witness to death’s Vanquisher. His life is a part of the Resurrection story.

END

WE QUOTE:

RELIGION AND SOCIETY—As far as long term solutions are concerned, it is obvious that religion can only contribute to the greater wholesomeness of the social fabric and the individual personalities who are members of it, if firstly it lies within the field of vision of those members and secondly when it is capable of embracing the individuals sufficiently to have an influence on their patterns of behavior. This means, in other words, that the Churches must fight the inevitable struggle of maintaining (and preferably enhancing) their institutional position in society. It also means that the Churches must attempt to regain or maintain their power over the implementation of the norms which they think an individual ought to have. It is no use referring the problem children of our society to Churches which are in no way whatsoever redeeming groups, where there is no close cohesion, where the norms are not binding and where the entire life of the individual does not find a meaningful focus. Both for the survival of the Church in a rapidly changing world and also for the needs of the confused individual, a religious institution which has an independent goal and which has an all around system of norms can be positively functional. Every human being likes to feel the warmth of a group which has a clear goal and which helps him to gain a unified perspective of his individual problems and experiences. In order to fill this need the Churches ought to be theologically distinctive and make it clear that their heritage is not determined by short term adaptation, but by long term acceptance of what God has done in His self-revelation for the redemption of a world which is constantly attempting to create its own gods.—DR. J. J. MOL in a lecture on “Religion and Social Problems” at the annual meeting of the Christchurch Presbyterian Social Service Association, New Zealand.

Christ is the first fruits of our resurrection. By understanding what happened on the first Easter morning we gain insight into the meaning of our eternal destiny. Because it is this way and not the other way around, the same may be said concerning the meaning of death. We cannot understand Jesus’ death by looking at our own death, but we can gain comprehension of our own death from the death on the Cross.

In talking about death we are talking about what happens to the life of the creature. The life of the creature is the soul, but since the body has life we necessarily ask what happens to the body in death and how the body is related to the soul both in life and after death. In a little book called The Shape of Death Jaroslav Pelikan exhibits the views of some early church fathers in terms of neat geometrical figures. He begins with the observation that since there is no Christian doctrine of the soul, theologians have had to borrow conceptual tools from non-Christian thought. Taking the concept of the soul as life substance, the ancient fathers described the path of the soul as it travels through death in various ways. Thus Tatian saw its course as an arc, Clement viewed its path as a circle, Origen described a parabola, and Irenaeus saw a spiral. Besides being an artificial over-simplification, this scheme is misconceived because the original question was formulated wrongly. Pelikan is right when he says there is no Christian doctrine of the soul, but Christian theologians need not borrow non-Christian metaphysical categories to provide one, nor have they always done so in the past. Pelikan asked what the shape of death is because he thought of the soul as a thing. Things have shape and form, and if the soul is a thing or substance it must be defined (since it cannot be described) in distinction from other things, particularly in distinction from the body.

This then raises other questions, such as what happens to the body in death—and all this means for funeral practices. Was man made mortal or immortal? Was he made mortal in body and immortal in soul? Did man in Adam have the possibility of living forever and does this mean in time or out of time? Or finally must we infer that originally man did not have immortality because God sent Adam and Eve out of the garden “lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”?

These are all wrong questions because they assume that the soul is a substantial thing distinct from the body, a thing which can have a life and shape of its own. Such was the view of ancient man. Modern man is a positivist and an existentialist, and to him only that which is concrete is real; hence all questions about the soul are meaningless.

Paul Tillich, however, makes a monumental effort to retain an essential conception of the soul in the midst of modern existentialism. For him the soul is the real being of man. It is created in essence finite and mortal. In its fallen existence, however, it becomes estranged from its real being and confounds its ontological anxiety with a fearful and sinful anxiety which brings a sting to death. The decision for Christ involves release from this sinful anxiety, giving man once more the courage to be—that is, the soul can rise above its estranged existence in a new being made possible by the vertical dimension of the eternal Christ intersecting the broken line of our horizontal existence. This intersection brings the Moment between the moments, the life eternal which transcends the narrowed transitoriness of temporal existence. There is no future resuscitation of the flesh in a personal resurrection; there is rather a new quality of existence in the new being realized in the eternal moment of the present. There is no redemption from the annihilation of death; there is rather release from the sting of anxiety in death. Hence the shape of death for Tillich is a broken line intersected by a vertical dimension between the segments.

I submit that both ancient and modern man have views diametrically opposed to the Christian view set forth in the Bible. The Bible, it is true, does not have a metaphysic of the soul, for the soul is simply the life of the creature. The soul is not something distinct from the body; it is the body insofar as the body lives. Man is not a soul which has a body, nor is he a body which has a soul. He is a creature who comes into existence by the Word of God and continues in existence only as long as God speaks. He has neither mortality nor immortality in himself, but he has life insofar as God says so. The soul does not have a substantial or essential being which could conceivably be either preexistent or immortal. The soul has a given existence from the creative Word and Spirit of God, an existence which depends for its life each moment on the gracious divine locution. But because of man’s rebellious disobedience this existence has been separated from God. The existence itself is not in jeopardy. If it were, suicide might be a way out. Since it is not, suicide only widens the separation. This is the meaning of death: separation from God the source of life. Death is not annihilation, not the passing from being to nothing, not the fall from essence to estranged existence. Death is the fall away from God, the separation of the creature from the creative and comforting Word of life.

Death In Three Stages

Since the creature is a unity and not a duality of body and soul nor a trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit, death means separation of the whole man from God. Hence Paul can speak of the man who is still breathing as walking in death: “You he made alive while you were yet dead in the trespasses and sin in which you once walked following the course of this world.” Death as separation from God then has various stages. The Bible speaks of death accordingly in three ways:

1. There is the death which we share with the whole of fallen creation and in which we now walk as sinners even though we still breathe.

2. There is the death which we experience as the cessation of our earthly functions. Because we see the decay of physical death we tend to think of it as a passing into oblivion. We fight against this by embalming the deceased and buying expensive concrete vaults to extend the semblance of physical life as long as possible. While an expensive ointment may be rightly used to perfume a corpse for its burial, this should never degenerate into a fearful disbelief in the new heaven and new earth in which all things are made new. But what does the Bible mean when it speaks of the place of departed spirits? Does death after all bring a rending of the flesh from the spirit such that while the flesh molders in the grave the spirit dwells as a shadow shape in some mysterious realm of the dead? This is precisely the idea: in death the flesh is returned to dust and the real person is shorn of his shape. Although personal consciousness survives, the person becomes a shapeless shadow. But the work of Christ in regeneration is to give us bodily shape until the final resurrection, when we shall be raised with incorruptible bodies. Paul affirms this in Ephesians when he speaks of Christ’s leading a host of captives out of the captivity of death. Peter also speaks of Christ’s preaching to those imprisoned in death. And to the Corinthians Paul speaks of the flesh as an earthly tent which he longs to put off so that he can put on Christ. Actually the biblical conception of the place of departed spirits does not give credence to the concept of a substantial soul. It deepens the meaning of the splitting separation of death which now is seen to be a separation not only from God and our fellows but even from ourselves.

3. Finally there is the “second” death or the death of the last judgment, which is an ultimate separation in outer darkness. Even here there is no indication in Scripture of extinction, though this is not completely unthinkable. Thus death in all three senses has a double dimension: it is the wage of sin and it is the mark of our estranged transience. Death is both a judgment and a willful separation. God did not create us with mortality. This would be to say that God created us separated from himself. Death is an enemy that intervened between us and God, and the path of the soul is to return to fellowship with God when that enemy has been vanquished. This has been accomplished by Christ, and it is effective for us when we are joined to him as members of his body in the Church. We can pass through death with him and rise in newness of life even as he is the first fruits of the resurrection.

And the marvel of our faith is that we have a sacrament (guarantee) of this already in this present stage of our journey. The symbol of the Christian understanding of the life and death of the soul is a broken line which is intersected in one of its moments (not between the moments) where Christ became flesh, and the moments of my life are joined to that redeeming moment through the re-presenting of Christ in the moment of the Eucharist in which Christ gives himself both to God in continuous intercession and to us, the celebrating congregation. As the broken moments of historical time are united in the eternity of Christ’s intercession, so the broken bits of bread join my flesh and guarantee the restoration of my real self with the real presence of Christ.

If we wish to understand the meaning of death and the destiny of the soul, we must look to the death and resurrection of Christ. For him death was an enemy of both God and man. Socrates found death to be a friend, and he drank the poison hemlock gladly because he thought it would release him from the fetters of his flesh. Jesus fought death with all his might. His soul was anxious, troubled, heavy with sorrow. He met death crying out bitterly in the night: “Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from my lips.” But then from the cross with a final loud shout he refused to give death the victory, saying: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Not into the hands of the enemy death does Jesus give his forsaken spirit, but into the hands of his Father.

Just as in death the whole man dies, not just the body of flesh as Socrates thought, so likewise the whole man rises in the resurrection, not just the soul. This is the meaning of the Empty Tomb, and hence we confess in our creed that we believe in the resurrection of the body. But this is not to say, as some might think, that Jesus’ flesh was merely resuscitated. This is what Lazarus experienced, only to die again. In the resurrection a new creature is made with a body that is clothed in incorruptibility instead of in corruptible flesh. Thus the risen Lord was quite different from the raised Lazarus. He was not limited by the simple location of space and time. He appeared not to all, but only to those chosen by God (Acts 10:41). Yet he had bodily shape, and he ate and drank with his disciples.

On this model we may say that in the separation of death our flesh becomes a corpse and returns to the dust of the earth. Our tombs become empty, too, and our spirits go to the place of the departed spirits. But if we in faith belong to Christ, then we shall be with him in paradise. Without flesh, since our flesh is moldering in the grave, we wait for the last day when we will be raised with all the dead and given new bodies which are holy. In the meantime we rest with Christ in paradise clothed with the body of Christ. We are hid with Christ in God, as Paul says. We are not naked disembodied spirits. We are dressed in the goodness of Christ, and we walk with him from glory unto glory.

END

STRAWS IN THE WIND

THE WINDS ARE BLOWING—You might call these “straws in the wind,” little indicators of which way the religious winds are blowing.

The first of these “straws” appeared in Life magazine last year when they presented the pictures of the one hundred outstanding young men in America. Young clergymen were conspicuous by their absence. Rev. Martin Luther King was the rare exception. One wonders what this augurs for the Church in years ahead.

The second “straw” was called to our attention a few days ago by Casper Nannes of the Washington Star. He observed that in listing the Ten Top News Stories of 1962 no religious event was considered of major importance to break into this listing. Yet he mentioned that 1962 saw the Supreme Court hand down its ruling on the New York Regents’ prayer in school, a decision that had terrific reactions everywhere in America. 1962 also saw Pope John XXIII call the first Vatican Council in over one hundred years, and Time magazine had featured Pope John as The Man of the Year. Both of these stories were missing from the Top Ten.

The third “straw” is the President’s tax reform program. It has been pointed out that whereas presently up to 30 per cent of income can be deducted for contributions to church and charitable organizations, the pending tax reform “proposes a 5 per cent floor on itemized deductions to non-profit groups.” This would deal a blow to church support that would be devastating. Particularly would this be so, coming at the same time when the churches must face the probability of the removal of exemption from taxes on their property.

The fourth “straw” is the Monday morning report of the sermons in the Washington Post which is usually consigned to the obituary page. This is an affinity that is not very flattering, and furnishes another insight as to the place the Word of God has in the eyes of an influential newspaper.

I am not sure just what all these things say, but it would be hard to argue from them that we put much of a priority on the Church.—Dr. LEE SHANE, Minister, National Baptist Memorial Church, Washington, D. C.

SPECKS ON A STAR—Five nations lead the world in alcoholism, a high divorce rate, juvenile delinquency, and mental illness. These are the United States, Switzerland, Britain, Denmark, and France. These are the western nations which have it made. None of us are starving. But not all is well with us. What we are going through is a religious conflict. Physically, we are advancing. Every day there is a better chance we will live longer. We have improved social skills. And we are intellectually gifted. Any generation that can invent something to wipe out civilization isn’t stupid.

With all this the prevailing mood is that we are specks thrown on a third-rate star, and life is empty and without meaning or purpose. The ultimate thing about a culture is its religion. What does it believe? What are its values? What is its faith?—Bishop GERALD KENNEDY, Past President, The Methodist Council of Bishops.

LAST ON THE LIST—In medieval times they debated whether an archdeacon, involved as he necessarily was with matters of property and finance, could hope to be saved. Today also, there are many who would question whether a man who occupies an archbishopric and who is thereby plunged into a whirl of organizations and public appearances, can hope to exercise an evangelistic ministry.—PAUL JACKSON in Outlook, London.

WHO COULD ASK FOR MORE?—Based upon the latest archaeological research, this illuminating book by a distinguished editorial board contains over 100,000 words of text. The entire work is non-theological.—Advertisement for Our Living Bible, quoted in Prism, London.

On the night of October 27, 1955, I was delivered of an inauguration address when I became President of Pittsburgh Xenia Theological Seminary. This address was called “Theological Conflict.” It is not my purpose to commend or recommend either my inauguration or the erstwhile effort of my address. Very briefly the plot was this, quoting William Temple (Douglas MacArthur, et al.), “All our problems are theological ones.” I tried to draw up a series of conflicts in the general areas of philosophy, world religions, and Christianity, and I finally zeroed in on Protestantism itself. I quote: “We come now to conflict within Protestantism itself. Who shall number our sects and who shall assay our differences? Some conflicts among us are fundamental. One I hold to be absolutely basic is how we shall construe our Bible as the word of God?” I still think now as I thought then that the basic conflict in Protestantism has to do with authority and that the question of authority for us is the question of our interpretation of our creedal statements on the Bible. Do we hold the Bible to be the Word of God or to contain the Word of God? Or to serve as a channel for the Word of God in the total existential situation? Every seminary professor and almost every seminary student has known (a) what his own creed said; (b) what he has really thought about this statement; (c) the differences between the seminary approach and the “grass roots” approach; and (d) the very real strain which exists in the Church as men move along the spectrum from “so-called liberal” to “so-called fundamentalist” positions regarding this problem.

The Presbyterian Outlook, a magazine published by Outlook Publishers, Incorporated, but believed by most to be the voice of a great many members of the so-called Southern Presbyterian church and certainly the voice of Aubrey N. Brown and to some extent Ernest Trice Thompson, finally has opened up in a very vivid way this whole great question. For weeks now letters have been appearing in the Outlook, and one could guess more letters have come in to their office than have appeared in their columns. What is perfectly evident from these letters and the articles on which they are based is that the issue is a live one and is indeed “a theological conflict” which has needed open action for a long time and may now begin to get it. A considerable straw in this theological wind has been the discussion raised among the Southern Baptists over the interpretation of Genesis. The Presbyterian Outlook has swung into action again with a front-page treatment in the issue of February 25, quoting, I presume with agreement, from Iris V. Cully’s article “Imparting the Word.”

At least two questions within the question will have to be faced. The first is the relationship between the Word and the words. We can evade the problem of infallibility or verbal inspiration by insisting that it doesn’t matter too much what form the writings take so long as the Word comes through. The question which will not down is the question of how sure we can be of that Word if we are indifferent to the words. Can the content of the message be correct if the form of the message is incorrect? The Chuang Tzu makes a helpful statement: “Words are for holding ideas; but when one has got the ideas one need think no more about the words”; but until one has the idea are not the words then of definitive importance?

We are not surprised when a church committee haggles incessantly over the wording of a motion. We expect a diplomatic note to a foreign government to be couched in absolutely exact words. Court trials involving great sums of money will turn on the wording of a phrase so that a very careful legal language has arisen to protect wills and contracts, and yet we presume that in the eternal issues set before us in Scriptures we need not concern ourselves with the words so long as we get the “general” idea. Companion to this kind of thinking is the belief (and you can refer to the Iris Cully article again) that we can pick out matters of faith and practice and eliminate the rest and expect that we will have an authoritative word for some of the material and not for the rest, assuming we know which material is which. This approach has been worked over so long in theological circles that I am surprised that the Outlook thought it was front-page news.

In the December 29, 1962, issue of The New Yorker there is an advertisement for Saturday Review (now you know I am “with it”—The New Yorker and the Saturday Review in one sentence!). Here is what they say: “Try for example, paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence. What happens to the ideas when they are restated outside the dimension and authority—which is to say outside the tone of the original language? Diminish the language and you diminish the idea.… The dimension of the language is inseparable from the dimension of the idea. If a mind is keyed to tinny language, the greatest ideas will emerge from it as tinny as the mind itself.” This, it seems to me, is the issue. Can we really talk about the ideas of Scripture without the words of Scripture? All exegesis assumes that the words themselves determine the meaning.

The other problem we will have to face comes under the general heading of hermeneutics, and much of our confusion regarding the Bible as the Word of God is a failure to distinguish between what the text says and what the text means. For example, our Baptist friends may be arguing with their brothers over hermeneutics in the early chapters of Genesis while both sides are accepting the material as absolutely authentic.

We can assume that the story of the Good Samaritan never happened, which still leaves us with the truth embedded in the story and still leaves us with the possibility of varied interpretations. The parable, however, in the form in which it appears is still the Word of God even though it is in parable form. By the same token it is possible that the third chapter of Genesis is an allegory the wording of which is inspired and the Word of which requires some interpretation.

Bultmann raises an even more basic question, that is: what parts of the Bible are to be accepted as the text for either the words or the Word? But all that is another long story.

He’S There Before He Gets There

Upon the Earth, by D. T. Niles (McGraw-Hill, 1962, 277 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, Vice-President, Fuller Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Niles has written a fascinating and important book. He evidences tremendous gifts, writes interestingly, and has amazing insights in many instances. This book should be read by all who are concerned with the missionary task of the Church. Niles represents that branch of the Church involved in the WCC, or what is called the ecumenical movement.

Niles argues that Jesus is there before the Gospel arrives. The Holy Spirit is at work accomplishing the reconciliation of the world. The kingdom of God has come, is here, and God’s design for all creation will be achieved. The Church is here until Christ comes and has for its business the proclamation of Christ. The believer is part of the Church, has a discipleship, and is called to obedience.

The Church itself has a selfhood, and has an identity which includes Romanism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Pentecostalism. This Church is bound to the younger churches, and the problems of this relationship are delineated. Niles pleads for new financial arrangements between the younger and older churches. He argues that the younger churches must also engage in missions, and that despite outward appearances of defeat, victory is at hand. He concludes by dealing with the encounter of the Church on the religious and the secular frontiers.

Niles’s book suffers from at least one glaring theological defect. This defect, part of a growing problem in missions, has to do with universalism. The author declares that in his judgment the Bible does not say whether all men will or will not be saved ultimately (p. 96). But then he proceeds to imply universal salvation again and again. He unfortunately speaks of all men as being in Christ (p. 40) and concludes that we need to bring out the Christ who is already in men. Niles says: “All those to whom I am privileged to speak about my Lord are already one with me within His saving ministry. I believe Him and confess Him, they do not: and yet the essential facts of the Gospel remain true for them as for me. God made us. God loves us. Jesus died for us. Our trespasses are not counted. When we die we shall go to Him who will be our Judge. These affirmations are true of all men and for all men whether they know them or not, like them or not, accept them or not” (p. 104, italics mine).

Here, as in many other places, Niles seems to say that all men, here or hereafter, will be redeemed. In this he shares the view of Ferré, Neill, and others. It is the opinion of this reviewer that a universalistic theology which does away with the eternal sanctions of life and death, heaven and hell, has three significant results: (1) it emasculates portions of the Scriptures, treating them in a cavalier fashion; (2) it cuts the nerve of missions and vitiates precisely the objectives which Niles professes to believe in passionately; (3) it inevitably cancels out the differences between Romanist, Protestant, Buddhist, and atheist—all of whom ultimately arrive at the same place and receive the same salvation.

Niles’s practical universalism should not keep anyone from profiting from his able treatment of many aspects of the missionary enterprise nor from coming to grips with many of the problems he discusses. But he must be read against the background of this serious theological defect and the implications which spring from it.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Feet Or Seat?

While I’m on My Feet, by Gerald Kennedy (Abingdon, 1963, 208 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by C. Philip Hinerman, Minister, Park Avenue Methodist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Someone has said that no one can write an autobiography but an egotist. Is this not the kind of cynical but clever word that makes the modest ones smile and nod their heads? But do the modest ones possess the ability to write? Or is there anything in their life sufficiently interesting to write about? Would it really sell?

Bishop Kennedy has evidently decided to throw caution and critics to the wind. Everything else has come early to him in life (a wife, a Ph.D., a world tour, big churches, and a bishopric)—why not an early biography? Once a soured bishop warned Kennedy that he had been elected to the episcopacy too early, and that the latter years of his life would be anti-climax. Gerald Kennedy says that he took a dim view of the warning, but what is interesting is that he has remembered the warning, and printed it. Perhaps he has now decided to do the autobiography (is it his nineteenth book?) before the lean years set in.

The man knows how to write, and this book contains much guidance and help for the parish minister who has always promised that someday he will write “something.” Chief among the exhortations of the book is the command to simply “write!” And do it now. Do not put it off. Do some of it every day, whether you feel like it or not. For, like doing one’s daily dozens, he who never gets around to writing is also the man who arrives at the end of middle age with nothing to show for his busyness except middle-age spread.

The best part of the book for this reviewer was the passage on preaching; it reminded him of Kennedy’s first book (and his best?), His Word Through Preaching. It makes the spirit both sing and soar, and makes one not be ashamed of that which was once called the High Calling. Perhaps the poorest part of the book is that which resorts to a kind of travelogue reporting of places visited and seen, churches pastored, and prejudices held. But the greatest lack in the book is the person of Gerald Kennedy. An autobiography, to be justified, ought to reveal the author, not merely things about him. For this reader the real Gerald Kennedy did not stand up.

What psychological damage did he suffer all of his life because he was the son of an unlearned, fundamentalist, local preacher, whom he neither admired nor greatly loved? Why his present antipathy to things psychological, when psychology would attempt to probe the depths of a man’s being? Who is the woman to whom he is married? And what more than a “very beautiful relationship” exists between them? These and many other questions, whose answers might have told us much about the man, remain, after 200 pages, unresolved.

But the style is there, and the book carries the reader along in spite of its blank spaces. There is something terribly alive about this most unconventional of modern Methodist bishops, and he will not permit you to be long bored with his own story. For whatever is hidden, much is also reported, (although truthfully not much is revealed that has heretofore been unknown). But if this hiddenness is the book’s weakness, the vigorous style of the man and his apparent joy in living are the book’s strength.

C. PHILIP HINERMAN

Adam’S Sons

Palestine Before the Hebrews, by Emmanuel Anati (Knopf, 1963, 495 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by William Sanford LaSor, Professor of Old Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

In 1952 the Israel Department of Antiquities assigned a young man to escort us over the important archaeological sites in the land. His name was Emmanuel Anati, and we have many fine memories of those days. I lost contact with him until recently, when his publications began to come to mv attention. With the publication of his book Palestine Before the Hebrews, he has once more put me in his debt. This is one of the few books that can be called “monumental.”

Anati (pronounced uh-nah′tee) first sketches the geographical setting and the cultural areas, and then the geology and the changing environment. He follows this with “A Bird’s-eye Look at Cultural Evolution.”

Part Two is concerned with “The Age of Hunting and Gathering,” or the Paleolithic Age, in which the various stone cultures are explained and the progress of Stone Age man is traced. This occupies the period from c. 600,000 to 14,000 or 12,000 B.P. (before the present). Part Three is concerned with “The Transitional Cultures” (often called Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age), which in the Middle East lasted until c. 9,500 B.P. It is a constant source of amazement how numerous and how widespread are the remains of the Early and Middle Stone Ages. Certainly we can no longer claim that the Stone Age man is composed of “a tooth, a leg bone, and imagination.”

Part Four deals with “The Age of Early Farming,” and Part Five with “The Urban Age.” These chapters, about half of the book, will be most useful to the Bible student, since biblical man is portrayed entirely within the cultural framework that begins with the Neolithic or food-producing stage. Adam’s sons, let us not forget, domesticated cattle and cultivated cereals. Anati has offered a new system of terminology—as have a few other scholars recently—and it is constantly necessary to make correlations with the standard system. The Age of Early Farming includes both the Neolithic and the Chalcolithic, and The Urban Age is subdivided as follows: Proto-Urban (transitional), Early Urban I, II, and III (approximately equivalent to Early Bronze I, II, and III, respectively), Intermediate I and II (Early Bronze IV and Middle Bronze I), Middle Urban I and II (Middle Bronze II and III), and Late Urban I and II (Late Bronze I–III, or [according to others] I-A, I-B, and II). The terminology is at least an improvement over some that have been suggested, but I still see no urgent reason to forsake the well-established terminology.

Chapters on the Hebrew Patriarchs and the Hyksos Period are particularly valuable.

The book is lavishly illustrated with photographs, line drawings, maps, and charts. Anati has the splendid ability of being able to keep his reader interested and informed in technical matters, and he has summarized each division. A good bibliography is included, and there is an index—but one wonders why both the Introduction and the Index are paginated with duplicate sets of Roman numbers.

WILLIAM SANFORD LASOR

This Is It

The Coming of the Kingdom, by Herman Ridderbos, translated by H. de Jongste and edited by Raymond O. Zorn (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962, 556 pp. $8.95), is reviewed by Richard C. Oudersluys, Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan.

In the face of an already sizable literature on the subject, some readers may view with apprehension the notice of another book on the Kingdom. This is, however, not the kind of book that can be polished off easily in an hour. But if one is interested in one of the most comprehensive and scholarly expositions of the Kingdom available in the English language, this is it. Here is a study of the theme in theological depth by a scholar of international reputation who obviously possesses the skills in exegetical and biblical theology requisite for the task. It is a discussion that makes the word “definitive” more than a cliché. The nature of the Kingdom in its present and future dimensions, its bearing on the related themes of salvation, Church, commandments, Lord’s Supper, are laid out with consummate skill and thoroughness. The stress falls on the message and meaning of the Kingdom in the preaching of Jesus as reported in the Synoptic Gospels. Texts of long-standing difficulty are freshly studied, and some eminently sensible interpretations are given to the abused parables and miracles of Jesus and the little apocalypse of Mark 13.

Throughout his discussion Ridderbos enters into lively dialogue with Barth, Bultmann, Cullman, Dodd, and others, and one is quickly made aware of the author’s courage and competency in establishing positions of scriptural validity in an area where speculative and tendentious interpretations are rife. The exposition is of such comprehensive character that it provides a fundamental reference work not only on the Kingdom concept, but on the theology of the Gospels as well. A full compend of notes and extended comments together with three indices enhance the work for those who delight in scholarly exactness.

The importance of the subject in contemporary theological discussion and the quality of the work fully justify the publishers’ courage and investment in making it available in English translation. Perhaps some form of financial subsidy should be provided for books of scholarly scope such as this one, in order that their price tag may not prevent them from reaching the ever widening audience of which they are indeed worthy.

RICHARD C. OUDERSLUYS

Riches For Sermons

The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, by Handley C. G. Moule (Pickering & Inglis, 1962, 165 pp., 20s.), is reviewed by R. Peter Johnston, Vicar of Islington and President of the Islington Clerical Conference.

The late Bishop Handley Moule’s great-nephew has gone to great pains to compile this devotional commentary from various sources.

Those familiar with Bishop Moule’s commentaries on other Pauline Epistles will at once recognize the general approach. There is an original translation of the text given in heavy type, and connections of thought are printed in lighter type. Comments of varying length come between the paragraphs. The text is taken straight from the Bishop’s lecture notes, but for the accompanying comments the compiler often had to turn to other sources. As a result the treatment of various passages seems somewhat unsatisfying.

Despite the inevitable deficiencies which result from this method of compilation, the careful reader will find here some rich spiritual treasures, and the preacher suggestive sermon material. There is, in the comment on chapter 4, an interesting suggestion regarding the state of the believer between death and resurrection. The Bishop’s gift of homely illustration comes out in the same section: the one in whose heart Christ dwells is “not only kept going, somehow maintained in some sort of tolerable working order, beating like an old clock not quite worn out … [but] filled ever afresh with a strong, bright, life.”

The appendices include an interesting and suggestive section entitled “Coalescent Inspiration,” in which the author develops a suggestion made by Canon T. D. Bernard.

R. PETER JOHNSTON

Relief For Dialectitis

What Is the Incarnation? (Vol. 24, Sec. II of the Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism), by Francis Ferrier, translated from the French by Edward Sillem (Hawthorn, 1962, 176 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by L. B. Smedes, Associate Professor of Bible, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Anyone suffering intellectual distress from prolonged indulgence in the dialectics of certain Protestant theologians can find temporary relief by taking up this unparadoxical and unequivocating study on Christology by French Catholic Francis Ferrier. Ferrier knows that the Incarnation of our Lord is the Christian mystery, but believes that it can be made “intelligible and thinkable” to anyone willing to try to understand what the Church has tried to say. When the Church confessed that Jesus Christ was a concrete, historical being with two utterly distinct natures united in One Person, it was not talking nonsense or paradox. Understand that by person is meant a “metaphysical source or foundation of a man’s whole being,” an entity distinct from a man’s self-awareness or moral consciousness, the suppositum which any nature must have in order to exist as an individual thing, and you have the materials for an intelligible Christology. The human nature created by God was united with the preexistent Divine Person who became the suppositum or “metaphysical foundation” for that nature and thus the basic Ego of Jesus Christ. But, what if one simply believes that such a suppositum or “metaphysical foundation” is not required for the existence of things—indeed, that this suppositum exists only in the mind of the theologian and nowhere else? Ferrier would answer that such a man, if he be theologian, is going to have a hard time with Christology and would likely tend either to heresy or to confusion.

At any rate, Ferrier writes a fine book, covering the ancient Christological controversies with verve and clarity, discussing the problems of Christ’s human knowledge, the “beatific vision,” and the communication of properties, as well as the hypostatic union as such. If the volume is not as forceful an apologetic as Karl Adam’s Christ of Faith and if it does not enter the lists against contemporary heresy, it does set out in clear and unequivocal language the doctrine of the Catholic Church. And this reviewer is always grateful for the faith in the Divine Lord that he discovers in Catholic theology. The book is one in the vast series of minor Catholic works published as the Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism. None in this series is likely to be controversial or trailblazing in Catholic circles, but every one that I have seen is well written and edited, and most probably a reliable source of Catholic thought for the Protestant reader.

L. B. SMEDES

Poetic Probings

Images of Eternity: Studies in the Poetry of Religious Vision, from Wordsworth to T. S. Eliot, by James Benziger (Southern Illinois University Press, 1962, 324 pp., $6), is reviewed by Calvin D. Linton, Professor of English and Dean of Columbian College, The George Washington University, Washington, D. C.

This is a work for the professional student of literature rather than the lay reader. But when one has said so, a problem at once emerges: while the weight of scholarship, the technical nature of the vocabulary, and the meticulous use of footnotes clearly aim it at the professional, the lengthy sections devoted to summarizing the content of well-known poems would seem to be useful chiefly to the amateur. The section on T. S. Eliot, for example (seven pages), does little more than touch on the most familiar peaks of religious meaning in the chief poems. On the other hand, the sections dealing with the Romantics and with Browning are substantial and filled with keen insights into the working of the poetic imagination.

The term “religious vision” in the subtitle is taken broadly to mean any use of the creative imagination to probe beyond the world of sense, whether the channel used be Platonism, pantheism, mysticism, Christianity, or some other transcendental philosophy. The emphasis, therefore, is upon romantic writers (with a small r), who have traditionally depended upon the inner light (or intuition, or Imagination—in the Coleridgean sense—or whatever the capacity for spiritual insight may be called) to produce a “natural religion” of wonder and reverence. The Christian orientation of the author may be hinted at (though perhaps partially and unfairly) by a quotation: “The historic fact is that the long emergence of the human race is more like a rise [than a fall], and that most of the rise occurred before the advent of Christianity.” And again: “In the presence of the figure of Christ as portrayed in the New Testament, even the most mature may still feel themselves transcended.”

Mr. Benziger, who took his bachelor’s and doctor’s degrees at Princeton, has taught at Southern Illinois University since 1950. His book, born out of ten years of work devoted to the metaphysically oriented imagination of the chief poets from Wordsworth to the present, amply attests to his wide reading and painstaking scholarship.

CALVIN D. LINTON

A Unique People

Jews, God, and History, by Max I. Dimont (Simon and Schuster, 1962, 463 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Carl S. Meyer, Professor of Historical Theology, Concordia Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

Jews, God, and History are three factors with which any Christian theologian will have to reckon. The Jews were God’s chosen people, the people of the Covenant. That Jesus Christ Was Born A Jew is the title of a pamphlet by Luther (1523) which expresses a historical fact and a factor in Christian theology. Mr. Dimont—who is neither a professor nor a doctor, but a personable St. Louis businessman with a facile pen and a flair for history—has linked these three factors together in the title of a work which pulls together 4,000 years of Jewish history.

It is a “popular” work, and scholars will find errors. There are generalizations that come off too easily and “facts” that cannot be substantiated. Too often the author simply states several interpretations of an event or a movement and then lets the reader decide which to adopt, or even tells the reader he must choose for himself. He holds, he says, “with the psychoanalytic, philosophical, and existentialist interpreters of history, that ideas motivate man and that it is these ideas which create history.”

“It Happened Only Once in History!” No other people has had a continuous living history for 4,000 years, and for 3,000 years the Jews have been an intellectual force. They preserved their ethnic identity among alien and often hostile cultures. Six major challenges confronted them during these millennia, and they survived.

Apikorism, with its “baited pin-up culture,” challenged the Jews. Centuries later, after their slaughter by the Romans and the coming of Christianity, the “‘Ivy League’ Yeshivas” preserved Jewish culture. The ghetto and the yellow star of ignominy helped them maintain their identity.

Ganz schrecklich is the murder of the Jews by the Nazis, estimated at about 4,500,000. Dimont does not tell the tale in maudlin fashion, but his telling will not leave consciences unpricked.

The strength of the volume is its veer and freshness. Its weaknesses will vary for various classes of readers. Few, however, will miss its excitement; some will even see for themselves the covenant people of the God of History, “beloved for the sake of their forefathers.”

CARL S. MEYER

Book Briefs

In Spite of Dungeon, by Dorothy C. Haskin (Zondervan, 1962, 150 pp., $2.50). Interesting stories of modern men and women who suffered, and sometimes tasted death, for Christ in the Orient.

Representative Verse of Charles Wesley, ed. by Frank Baker (Abingdon, 1962, 413 pp., $11). 335 poems selected to show Wesley’s representative verse. With 50 introductory pages by the editor.

Jungle Doctor’s Progress, by Paul White (Paternoster, 1962. 215 pp., 16s.). The author of the famous Jungle Doctor series highlights more than a quarter-century of progress in African missions, medicine, and nationhood, and discusses current developments and problems.

14 Africans Vs. One American, by Frederic Fox (Macmillan, 1963, 171 pp., $3.95). A minister, onetime Eisenhower White House staff member, tells what the new African thinks of himself and of us.

War and the Gospel, by Jean Lasserre, translated from French by Oliver Colburn (Herald Press, 1962. 243 pp., $3.75). A serious, scholarly defense of pacifism in the name of Scripture.

Daily Life in the Time of Jesus, by Henri Daniel-Rops (Hawthorn, 1962, 512 pp., $6). The author conveys the detail and spirit of Jesus’ times and the land where he lived.

The Dawn of Modern Civilization, edited by Kenneth A. Strand (Ann Arbor Publishers [Ann Arbor, Mich.], 1962, 422 pp., $7.50). A series of essays on diverse aspects of the Renaissance and the Reformation in honor of Albert Hyma, recently retired professor of the University of Michigan.

The Better Part of Valor, by Robert P. Adams (University of Washington, 1962, 363 pp., $7). Study of humanist (More, Erasmus, Colet, and Vives) attempts by satirical and other methods to undercut the scholastic view of a just war. The author is associate professor of English at the University of Washington and a specialist in Renaissance literature.

Paperbacks

Shorter Atlas of the Classical World, by H. H. Scullard and A. A. M van der Heyden (Thomas Nelson, 1962, 239 pp., also 112 pp. of illustrations and 10 pp. of maps, $3.95 or 15s.). Polished account, fine maps, and excellent photographs convey the spirit of ancient Greece and Rome.

Audio-Visual Resource Guide 1963 (National Council of Churches, 1963, 450 pp., $2.95). Classified evaluations of more than 3,750 current, church-related A-V materials; for use in religious education.

The Beginning of History: Genesis, by Bernhard W. Anderson (Abingdon, 1963, 96 pp., $1; Lutterworth Press, 5s.). Genesis is interpreted as the story of “the formation of Israel,” parts of the story being regarded as non-historical. Brief, readable.

Outposts of Medicine, by Steven and Mary Spencer (Friendship, 1963, 126 pp., $1.25). A heartwarming story of medical missionaries grappling with disease in distant lands.

The Medieval Church, by Roland H. Bainton (Van Nostrand, 1962, 192 pp., $1.45, Canada $1.75). The story of the role of the medieval Church in the formation of Western civilization, told by a competent historian. Brief, readable.

Africa at the Crossroads, by James H. Robinson (Westminster, 1963, 83 pp., $1.25). Writing calculated to unsettle the American and bring him to a mature, Christian understanding of Africa and its modern problems.

The Unity We Seek, ed. by William S. Morris (Oxford, 1963, 150 pp., $1.75). Short lectures delivered by Roman Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Anglican, Greek Orthodox, and other writers, on the kind of church unity we should be looking for.

Young Married Couples in the Church, by Wayne Saffen (Concordia, 1963, 87 pp., $1.25). Advice for starting and maintaining an effective “couples’ club” in the church.

The Use of the Bible in Teaching Youth, by Charles M. Laymon (Abingdon, 1962, 175 pp., $1.50). An author with a faulty view of the Bible shows how it should be used.

One Life to Live, by Arndt Halvorson (Augsburg, 1963, 93 pp., $1.75). Five Sunday-evening, after-church lectures; readable and helpful for both Christian and non-Christian.

The Methodist Church in Urban America, by Robert L. Wilson and Alan K. Waltz (Board of Missions of The Methodist Church, 1962, 94 pp., $1). A book of sociological facts. Valuable for reference.

Sermons from the Upper Room Chapel (The Upper Room, 1962, 149 pp., $.75). Short sermons from such men as John Knox, Brooks Hays, Kenneth Scott Latourette, and many others.

Dating Tips for Christian Youth, by Robert A. Cook, Clyde M. Narramore, Mel Larson, and Jim Smith (Back to the Bible Publishers [Lincoln, Nebr.], 1962, 63 pp., $.15). A wide range of practical advice by evangelical youth leaders.

The Church and Social Welfare, by Alan Keith-Lucas (Westminster, 1963, 84 pp., $1.25). A brief but substantial discussion of the Church’s stance toward the wide spectrum of social welfare. Provocative material for group study.

DEATH IN THE SNOW—A Colorado minister and his two daughters were swept to their death by a snowslide this month. The Rev. Marvin Hudson, a Congregational minister and teacher at the Silverton, Colorado, high school, had stopped his car along Red Mountain Pass to fasten tire chains. A snow plow stood nearby, its driver watching helplessly, as the avalanche struck. Hudson and his daughters were en route to Sunday morning church services.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA—The second in a series of theological talks between Lutheran and Reformed representatives was described as “constructive and promising.” Closed-door conversations in Chicago served to clarify issues “revealing significant areas of agreement and also pointing up differences in position regarding which further study will be required,” according to a statement released by participants.

A steering committee embracing Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, and members of the United Church of Christ is laying the groundwork for a new church-related, four-year liberal arts college on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Planners of the $6,000,000 school hope to see classes meeting by 1965.

Arrival of the first Protestant missionary on the island of Tahiti 100 years ago was commemorated with a series of celebrations. It was in February, 1863, that Pastor Thomas Arbousset of the Paris Mission landed at Papeete at the request of the legislative assembly of Tahiti made to Emperor Napoleon III. Today about 70 per cent of the population of French Polynesia are said to be Protestants.

Congregations of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod have ratified a constitutional amendment providing for biennial, instead of triennial, General Conventions.

Disciples Board of Higher Education will probe “new standards and procedures” for distributing church funds among its universities, colleges, and seminaries.

MISCELLANY—Mrs. Sara Bartholomae, who recently won a 4.5-million-dollar divorce settlement, says she will build a one-million-dollar Mercury Space Capsule Chapel in tribute to Astronaut John Glenn, Jr. The shrine would overlook Brea Canyon, 30 miles east of Los Angeles.

President Kennedy became the 31st U. S. Chief Executive to visit St. John’s Episcopal Church, thus preserving its tradition as the “Church of the Presidents” which dates back to 1816 when it was built. Kennedy’s visit this month came on the Sunday on which the church’s new rector, the Rev. John C. Harper, was installed. He signed a historic prayer book used in the President’s pew but did not stay for the service.

Roman Catholic bishops in West Germany strongly criticized a German play that portrays the late Pope Pius XII as having failed to denounce Nazi crimes against Jews. They said that the drama entitled Der Stellvertreter (The Vicar of Christ), written by Rolf Hochhuth, 31-year-old Protestant, misrepresented the work of Pius XII and debased his memory.

British and Foreign Bible Society won Spanish governmental approval to resume operations in Spain. Activities had been suspended since 1956. A government announcement said Enrique Cardinal Ply y Deniel, primate of Spain, had notified the Spanish Foreign Ministry that the Spanish metropolitans had given their approval for the society to operate again.

Awards “in recognition of total design including special design features” were presented to four churches during this month’s National Conference on Church Architecture in Seattle. Winners are Newport United Presbyterian Church, Bellevue, Washington; St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Greek Orthodox Church, Belmont, California; and Broadmore Community Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado.

A fire in downtown Macon, Georgia, swept through the abandoned campus of historic Old Wesleyan College. Buildings had been readied for demolition following sale of the property to the federal government for a post office. The new school is now located about five miles away.

U. S. Supreme Court rejected appeal of Navajo members of the Native American Church to use the drug peyote in religious ceremonies.

Internal Revenue Service revoked the tax-exempt status of Fellowship of Reconciliation, religious pacifist organization. The ruling declared that “the pursuit of peace, disarmament, and reconciliation of nations is not religious activity, but political.”

A bill authorizing civil marriage was approved by the Maryland state legislature after being considered “dead” in committee. Until now, Maryland has been the only state in the union to bar civil ceremonies.

Trustees of Davidson (North Carolina) College are weighing a proposal to abolish a statement of faith required of full professors. In a secret ballot, two-thirds of the Presbyterian school’s faculty voted opposition to the required oath.

A hospitality center for American servicemen, sponsored by the National Christian Council of Japan, was formally opened last month in Yokosuka, home port of major units of the U. S. Seventh Fleet.

PERSONALIA—Dave Hyatt, director of public information of National Conference of Christians and Jews, begins three-year leave of absence to join U. S. Information Agency overseas as cultural affairs officer.

Dr. Carl J. Bihl elected president of Youth for Christ International, succeeding Dr. Ted C. Engstrom, who will retire April 1.

The Rev. Carl R. Key named executive director of the Louisville Area Council of Churches. Key has been executive secretary of the West Virginia Council of Churches since 1958.

The Rev. John W. Sanderson named dean of the faculty at Covenant College, St. Louis.

Dr. Caradine R. Hooton, retiring general secretary of the Methodist Board of Christian Social Concerns, named national director of the National Temperance League.

Dr. C. H. Dickinson, general manager of Ryerson Press (United Church of Canada publishing house), elected president of the Protestant Church-Owned Publishers’ Association.

Dr. William Toth, professor of history at Franklin and Marshall College, named executive director of Foundation for Reformation Research.

The Rev. Halleck N. Mohler named pastor of the American Protestant Church in Brussels.

Pastor Klaus Wilm named director of the “Token of Repentance Action” of the Evangelical Church in Germany. The group seeks to work abroad as an expression of contrition for suffering caused by Nazis.

WORTH QUOTING—“Protestants should abandon religious exercises in the public schools which combine the Lord’s Prayer with readings from the Protestant King James version of the Bible, and Roman Catholics should drop their drive for tax funds for parochial schools. Both programs are unconstitutional.”—Paul Blanshard.

“It is perfectly true that the First Amendment forbade Congress to pass any law ‘respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ These are great provisions, of great sweep and basic importance. But to say that they require that all trace of religion be kept out of any sort of public activity is sheer invention.”—Dean Erwin M. Griswold of Harvard Law School.

Deaths

DR. SPRIGHT DOWELL, 84, president emeritus of Mercer University (Southern Baptist) and former president of Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University); in Macon, Georgia.

DR. WILLIAM AXLING, 89, retired American Baptist missionary to Japan and one of the founders of the Japan National Christian Council.

DR. SHERWOOD EDDY, 92, retired leader of the Young Men’s Christian Association; in Jacksonville, Illinois.

THOMAS H. WEST, 74, prominent Methodist layman and ecumenical leader; in Winnetka, Illinois.

For years there have been rumblings that the Soviet Union wanted to adopt official state relations with the Vatican. A series of events in recent months tended to confirm these rumors. The private audience granted by Pope John XXIII this month to Alexei Adzhubei, Premier Khrushchev’s son-in-law, seemed to consolidate the speculation.

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

WHAT SOVIET CHURCHMEN SAY

What did the delegation of Soviet churchmen visiting America think of a possible agreement between their country and the Vatican?

Archbishop Nikodim, acting as spokesman for the group, said in a press conference in Washington that establishment of good relations between all countries is beneficial. But he added that the specific case of Soviet-Vatican relations was “not a matter within my competence to discuss.”

The youthful Soviet delegation (only 5 of the 16 were born before the Revolution) did not include any Roman Catholics.

The Rev. A. I. Mitzkevitch, associate general secretary of the Union of Evangelical Christian Baptists, flatly denied reports that he wished to defect to the West. Mitzkevitch said the reports were “insulting.”

The reports were traced to a Russian refugee who appeared at protest rallies spearheaded by Dr. Carl McIntire. The refugee said he had talked at length with Mitzkevitch.

NCC spokesmen blamed McIntire for putting Mitzkevitch on the spot and expressed concern for the churchman, who may have to answer the accusations when he returns to Russia.

“It’s the most reprehensible thing McIntire has ever done,” said one NCC aide. “He’s playing with human lives and he may end up with blood on his hands.”

Osservatore Romano, Vatican City newspaper, stated as far back as 1948 that Rome is willing to enter into friendly relations with Russia “as soon as possible,” just as with all other countries.

There were rumors in 1960, moreover, when leaders of Italy’s Christian Democratic Party paid a visit to the U. S. S. R. and met Soviet officials who said Russia hoped for some agreement similar to that signed between Poland and the Holy See.

The following year saw Premier Khrushchev surprise the world by sending greetings to Pope John on the latter’s 80th birthday. Il Paese, Italian pro-Communist newspaper, was quick to note that this was the first time since before the 1917 revolution that a head of government in Russia had directly contacted the Roman pontiff.

Early this year L’Unita, another Italian Communist newspaper, reported that Pope John exchanged New Year’s greetings with Khrushchev.

Then last month came the announcement that Ukrainian Rite Archbishop Josyf Slipyi had been released after 18 years of Soviet imprisonment.

Adzhubei was asked at a press conference if his visit to Rome was to prepare the ground for the opening of relations between Russia and the Vatican. He replied with a generalized statement which neither denied nor confirmed the possibility.

Religious News Service reported, however, that his 18-minute audience with the Pope and the pontiff’s reported assurance that he was willing to receive Khrushchev himself tended to confirm belief in religious circles that the Kremlin was, in fact, actively interested in the establishment of some form of agreement with the Holy See. Adzhubei is editor of Izvestia, top Communist organ, and is the first leading Soviet figure ever to meet a pope face to face.

RNS also reported that there is now speculation that the fine hand of Soviet diplomacy will show itself again in making it possible for Josef Cardinal Mindszenty to leave the shelter of the U. S. legation in Budapest and go to Rome to accept a Curia post. There is even said to be talk that eventually Archbishop Josef Beran of Prague, arrested and banished from his see 12 years ago by the Czechoslovak Communist regime, may be permitted to resume his episcopal office.

Asked if he believed that there could be “any understanding between the Holy See and an atheist state like the Soviet Union,” Adzhubei replied by saying that coexistence involves states but not ideas, and it is an extremely grave question “even if we believe that ideological controversies should not be solved through war.”

In his talk with journalists in Rome, Adzhubei spoke of a possible “concordat” between Rome and Moscow. However, this could not conceivably be the type of agreement that Moscow wants, says RNS, since “it involves a whole range of religious guarantees and safeguards which the Soviet Union would not tolerate.”

According to Catholic informants, any agreement between the Vatican and the Soviet government would most likely be confined to assuring satisfactory communication between the Holy See and the faithful in the U. S. S. R.

Adzhubei and his wife called on the Pope after they had gone to the Vatican Palace to attend a group audience at which the Pope was officially notified of the 1963 Peace Prize ($51,000) awarded him by the Italian-Swiss Balzan Foundation of Zurich, Switzerland. Later Adzhubei disclosed that the Pope had given him “a sealed envelope” to deliver to Khrushchev. Khrushchev’s daughter, who like her husband claims to be an atheist, said the pontiff had given her a gift for the Soviet leader. She declared:

“I looked closely at his hands when he gave us several symbolic gifts for me, for Alexei and for my father. He said simply: ‘This is for your father!’”

One report said the Pope indicated the informality of the visit by stepping from behind his desk to chat with the couple.

It is estimated that the total Catholic population in Russia is about 10,000,000, mostly Eastern Rite believers living in the Western Ukraine, and Latin Catholics in Lithuania and Latvia.

Catholic informants are generally agreed that obviously Russia’s desire for an understanding with the Vatican has political motivations, especially in relation to Catholic populations both in Communist-aligned countries and others where the Communist party has sizable support. They say an early agreement would have a strong propaganda effect in Italy, where elections are taking place soon.

At the same time, the informants insist that a Moscow-Vatican agreement also has spiritual potentialities.

In 1847, when a concordat was signed between Rome and the former Russian Empire, there were about 11,500,000 Catholics in Russia. Some 7,000,000 belonged to that part of Poland absorbed into the empire. The concordat remained in effect until 1863, when the Poles rose in revolt against Emperor Nicholas I and Russia severed all diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

G. Bromley Oxnam

Retired Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, 71, a leading liberal churchman of the twentieth century, died March 13 in White Plains, New York.

Oxnam had undergone surgery in December. His death was the result of complications arising from the surgery—a rare brain operation employing a freezing technique to relieve symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

Oxnam was president of the Federal (now National) Council of Churches and was the first U. S. co-president of the World Council of Churches.

He drew wide attention in 1953 when a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee cited Oxnam’s association with a long list of Communist front organizations. The bishop demanded the right to be heard by the committee and was subsequently cleared of all charges of Communist membership or affiliation.

Sidelined Again

For the third time in four years, illness has interrupted the crusade schedule of evangelist Billy Graham.

In 1959, when Graham suffered an eye ailment, the opening of a major campaign in Melbourne, Australia, was delayed for a week to enable him to recuperate fully.

Another disabling illness struck on the eve of a crusade in Manchester, England, in the spring of 1961. Graham remained bedridden with a throat infection while associate evangelist Leighton Ford preached for the first several days of the crusade.

This month, as he prepared for an extensive evangelistic tour of the Far East, Graham found himself in a hospital in Honolulu.

Doctors diagnosed his affliction as a severe intestinal infection accentuated by overwork.

It was decided that the Far Eastern crusade would go on as originally scheduled, using associate evangelists.

Graham had arrived in Honolulu February 13 to recuperate from an attack of bronchitis and pneumonia. Taken ill once more, he entered St. Francis Hospital for five days of tests.

Editorial Dialogue

High over Manhattan this month, an ecumenical breeze parted the paper curtain which divides the U. S. religious press. Representing a comprehensive assortment of theological, denominational, and social views, 33 editors met to compare notes on their role(s) in a pluralistic society. In the well-appointed 31st-floor penthouse of the St. Moritz, overlooking Central Park, discussions roamed far and wide and agreements were sparse. But every participant went home with new insights. And as one young priest-editor quipped, “It’s always harder to insult a person once you’ve met him.”

The inter-faith editorial meeting, financed entirely by the National Conference of Christians and Jews, was said to be a first in American religious history. Notwithstanding journalism educator Roland E. Wolseley’s jocular crack that of the thirteen Protestant periodicals represented nine were “modernist or left-wing,” the overall scope of the conclave was indeed diverse. Protestant representation did embrace evangelically oriented publications such as Christian Herald and CHRISTIANITY TODAY along with the liberal Christian Century, Christianity and Crisis and several denominational periodicals, including the Seventh-day Adventist These Times. The Brooklyn Tablet and Commonweal represented the far right and far left, respectively, for the Catholic press. Jewish editors from Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist. and Reform ranks also were on hand.

Missions Swindlers

Missionary swindlers are mulcting evangelical churches of thousands of dollars a year.

Dr. Clyde W. Taylor says a recent round the world trip disclosed that some mission stations which U. S. churches thought they were supporting “simply do not exist.”

Taylor, executive secretary of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association, issues a warning in the March number of United Evangelical Action, published by the National Association of Evangelicals.

He urged that evangelical churches check carefully the credentials of all independent mission agencies that do not have direct affiliation with a recognized denomination or interchurch organizations such as EFMA or Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association.

Most solemn warning came from NCCJ President Lewis Webster Jones:

“Our society depends on a very delicate balance. The frustrations of contemporary pressures are so great that we face a dangerous situation.”

Jones called for “a viable public philosophy which would restrain all of us.”

By design, the three-day program included general debate on current social issues, mostly on aid to education and related matters. Some participants expressed disappointment that the debate did not focus more on the role of the religious press in reflecting these issues responsibly. The editors did manage some extensive discussion on one solid journalistic issue: Do publications speak to their constituents and sponsors, or for them? Every editor defended the degree of his independency, so much so that the tone of the discussion became somewhat unrealistic. A Catholic editor appropriately emphasized, however, that the teaching authority of bishops was involved.

Among journalistic ideas promoted at the meeting were suggestions for formation of a religious press association, for publication of a religious periodical index, and for more editorial seminars.

The meeting was the second in a broad series conducted by the 35-year-old NCCJ, which has taken a new lease on life with the current ecumenical spirit and a $325,000 Ford Foundation grant. The meetings are part of a long-range NCCJ project, “Religious Freedom and Public Affairs,” spearheaded by the brawny Rabbi Arthur Gilbert, who is aptly equipped for the role with an affable spirit and diplomatic candidness.

An increasing number of evangelical leaders are recognizing the potential of expounding their biblical views in ecumenical dialogues. They are realizing that in this context their witness will strike into minds and hearts otherwise unreachable.

Textbook Aid

The state of Rhode Island enacted legislation last month providing for textbook aid to private and parochial school children.

Spokesmen for the American Civil Liberties Union and for Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State indicated they may support a court test of the constitutionality of the new law.

Governor John H. Chafee signed the Democratic-sponsored bill, which passed the House, 67–8. It had earlier passed the Senate on a voice vote with no audible dissent and no debate.

Out Of Controversy, Affirmation Of Faith

Against a backdrop of denominational controversy and unrest, a special committee of the Southern Baptist Convention released a 4,500-word “Statement of Baptist Faith and Message,” which was offered with the hope that it would serve as a rallying point for harmonizing differences within the convention.

To be presented for approval to the denomination at its annual sessions in Kansas City, Missouri, May 7–10, the document is a development from a controversy which has rippled through the entire convention since 1961 when its Sunday School Board published a book, The Message of Genesis, by Professor Ralph Elliott of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Some conservatives declared the book heretical on the doctrine of biblical inspiration, and it provoked hostile resolutions at last year’s San Francisco convention, which unanimously voted creation of a committee composed of state convention presidents to study the possibility of rewriting or adding to a statement of faith and purpose adopted by the 1925 convention.

Chief concern in 1925 was with naturalistic liberalism. A preamble to the present document says: “The 1925 Statement recommended ‘the New Hampshire Confession of Faith, revised at certain points, and with some additional articles growing out of certain needs.…’ Your present committee has adopted the same pattern. It has sought to build upon the structure of the 1925 Statement, keeping in mind the ‘certain needs’ of our generation.… In no case has it sought to delete from or to add to the basic contents of the 1925 Statement.”

Included was the caution that Baptist statements “have never been regarded as complete, infallible statements of faith, nor as official creeds carrying mandatory authority.” On the other hand, while Baptists “emphasize the soul’s competency before God, freedom in religion, and the priesthood of the believer,” this emphasis “should not be interpreted to mean that there is an absence of certain definite doctrines that Baptists believe, cherish, and with which they have been and are now closely identified.”

The statement itself, intended to “serve as information to the churches, and … as guidelines to the various agencies” of the denomination, contains 17 sections of Baptist convictions on the Scriptures, God, man, grace, salvation, the Church, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the Lord’s Day, the kingdom of God, last things, evangelism and missions, education, stewardship, cooperation, the Christian and social order, peace and war, and religious liberty. Hundreds of Bible references are included.

The first section is on the Scriptures, crucial area in the present controversy: “The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is the record of God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. It reveals the principles by which God judges us; and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.” Italics indicate statements not included in the 1925 document.

Midwestern Seminary’s dismissal of Professor Elliott served to intensify already existing debate on the question of academic freedom. In the new document’s section on education, the following statement has been added to that of the 1925 declaration: “In Christian education there should be a proper balance between academic freedom and academic responsibility. Freedom in any orderly relationship of human life is always limited and never absolute. The freedom of a teacher in a Christian school, college, or seminary is limited by the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ, by the authoritative nature of the Scriptures, and by the distinct purpose for which the school exists.”

In an era of increasing ecumenism, the statement on cooperation remained substantially the same as in 1925. Part of it: “Christian unity in the New Testament sense is spiritual harmony and voluntary cooperation for common ends by various groups of Christ’s people. Cooperation is desirable between the various Christian denominations, when the end to be attained is itself justified, and when such cooperation involves no violation of conscience or compromise of loyalty to Christ and His Word as revealed in the New Testament.”

Following are excerpts from the sections on the social order and on religious liberty:

“Means and methods used for the improvement of society and the establishment of righteousness among men can be truly and permanently helpful only when they are rooted in the regeneration of the individual by the saving grace of God in Christ Jesus.”

“The state has no right to impose taxes for the support of any form of religion. A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal.…”

Chairman of the committee was Dr. Herschel H. Hobbs of Oklahoma City, president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

F.F.

Dramatic Departure

The entire 13-member faculty of Baylor University’s Drama Department resigned this month, charging “a lack of confidence in us and our work.”

Their protest stemmed from the cancellation last December of Eugene O’Neill’s prize-winning play, Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

Dr. Abner V. McCall, president of Baylor, largest Southern Baptist school, had charged that the play’s profane language “is not in keeping with the university’s ideals.” His views won the support of the state Baptist convention leadership.

Within an hour of the resignations at Baylor, Trinity University, a United Presbyterian School in San Antonio, announced that Paul Baker had been named chairman of its Speech and Drama Department. Baker had been the chairman of the Drama Department at Baylor.

“Long Day’s Journey” had six more nights to run when it was cancelled. At the time, McCall said his objection was not to the “general message of the play, but to the excessively strong profanity used to convey the message.” Earlier, it was reported that the university had received complaints that the play contained “vulgar, profane and blasphemous language.”

In a statement issued after the resignations, McCall said he had sent Baker a letter explaining that it was “the policy of the university that plays containing vulgar, profane or blasphemous language should not be produced by the Drama Department without deletion of the offensive language.”

Baker had been on the Baylor staff for 28 years, and McCall observed that “this was but a reiteration of the policy under which Mr. Baker has been operating for 28 years … often producing plays after deleting objectionable language.”

“We are not in favor of profanity,” a resignation statement said, “and by presenting Long Day’s Journey Into Night we were not endorsing profanity any more than murder is endorsed by the presentation of Hamlet.”

Canadian Conflict?

Evangelist Billy Graham and his team will not be able to count on official endorsement from the United Church of Canada if they choose to hold a dominion-wide crusade. The United Church’s Board of Evangelism and Social Service voted last month to withhold official approval.

Dr. James R. Mutchmor, United Church moderator and a staunch supporter of Graham’s evangelistic efforts, stressed that local churches and presbyteries may still be free to participate on an individual basis.

Mutchmor said the denomination is planning a three-year evangelistic effort of its own to be climaxed in connection with Canada’s centenary in 1967. The board, he declared, felt that the denominational effort might “conflict” with the Graham crusade if official support had been pledged.

Wheat And Tares

The 100th Archbishop of Canterbury has done it again.

In October, 1960, when he was merely the 92nd Archbishop of York, he crossed the border to Edinburgh. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was about to hold a special session to celebrate the fourth centenary of the Reformation in Scotland. The Queen was present, and representatives came from many churches throughout the world—but not, significantly, from the Church of England. “The bishops, I know not where they are,” murmured one minister; “they are the Kirk Invisible.” Dr. Ramsey’s destination was the Episcopal cathedral; there he preached a sermon lamenting the loss of much sacramental life, the Apostolic Succession, and the Christian Year. “Good and evil, wheat and tares being so mixed,” he mourned, “is it conceivable that 1560 gives us the ground on which to build truth and unity in the future?” It was not regarded as a model of timely utterance, nor was the statement of a local rector who gained some notoriety by publicly proclaiming that the Queen’s presence was “an unhappy blunder.” Presbyterian reaction was sharp.

In June of this year, a great ecumenical Communion service is planned for the island of Iona, to commemorate St. Columba’s landing there in 563. The celebrant is Bishop Lesslie Newbigin of the Church of South India. Representatives from many churches plan to attend, including one sent by Dr. Donald Coggan, Ramsey’s successor at York. Ten days later, the Scottish Episcopal Church (56,000 communicant members) will hold its own service on the island. The preacher: Arthur Michael Ramsey.

Comments a correspondent in Prism this month: “Those of us who, as loyal Anglicans, have worked and prayed for a new spirit of understanding in the Christian Churches can only gape, sad and uncomprehending. Our friends of other denominations may be forgiven if their reactions are more violent.”

J. D. D.

Our Servant The Bishop

The British Labor Party, it is sometimes said, owes more to Methodism than to Marx, and the Church of England is the Tory (Conservative) Party at prayer. While such alignment is not now so obvious, some still determine social status by allegiance to “church” or “chapel.” This is one of the facts illuminated by the mass of newspaper material resulting from the release last month of an Anglican-Methodist merger plan in Great Britain.

The Times of London in a somewhat frigid editorial doubted if “even the infusion of over a million Methodists” would alter a situation which features “empty churches, clergy who accept that they are fighting a losing battle, a society that pays religion lip-service and little else.…” This pessimism (but not the inaccurate statistics) was shared by the Roman Catholic Universe, which characteristically added that “there may well be some who will now reconsider and come to accept, however ruefully, the Holy See’s condemnation of Anglican Orders.”

Generally, however, the British press, religious and secular, gave the plan a good send-off. According to the London Daily Mail, acceptance would exorcise the “snobberies, prejudices and misunderstandings” in the typical English village: “At the centre is the old parish church, dreaming away the ages. Down the road, or in a side street, is the plain Methodist chapel, dating from 1800-and-something.” Professor T. F. Torrance of Edinburgh, writing in the British Weekly, described it as “a document of very far-reaching importance that may well transform the entire ecumenical picture all over the world.” He added: “It will be up to the Methodists in the intervening period to show the Anglicans, and the world, what an unpretentious bishop in the form of a servant really means”—an intriguing remark which landed the professor in some controversy. On the theological issues of the proposal the evangelical English Churchman objected that the proposal seems to advance the doctrines of baptismal regeneration and eucharistic sacrifice, and concluded: “All of us want to take ‘a step forward in Church relations.’ But is this the right step?”

At a press conference in London questions were dealt with genially but sometimes evasively by Dr. H. J. Carpenter (Bishop of Oxford) and Dr. Harold Roberts, joint chairmen of the committee which drew up the merger document. To a question about why there was a Methodist, but no Anglican, dissentient view, Carpenter neatly countered that perhaps the Church of England was more united than many think. Asked about how this union would affect Methodist relations with other non-episcopal churches, Roberts first promised that these would be safeguarded, but then pointed out that such inter-communion could “never be an end in itself,” and should be the consummation of a unity extending over the whole of church life.

Official wariness was most noticeable when Carpenter and Roberts failed to face squarely questions around the “establishment” issue (i.e., whether the new Anglican-Methodist denomination would be the state church), and one about how Anglicans could accept this report unanimously and yet reject a merger plan for Ceylon—the proposed United Church of Lanka. Both proposals include a mutual having on of hands in a service of reconciliation.

A certain touchiness was also evident in the Church Times. Denying that disestablishment is involved in the report, it admits the necessity for “a drastic alteration in the relations of Church and State.”

When all the wild geese have been chased and the red herrings cleared away, it is clear that the battle will be fought not merely around three or four major issues raised by the four dissentient signatories, but also around the subtle and complex domestic problem of the Church of England as at present “established.” The next chapter will be written by neither church, but by the British Parliament, which is shortly scheduled to take up routine discussion of suggested ecclesiastical amendments needing civil sanction.

J.D.D.

A Church In Crisis

A wave of resentment swept across Greece following reinstatement of former Archbishop Iakovos of Athens and All Greece in his diocese of Attica and Megaris. This was the post he had held at the time of his election to the primatial see of Athens in January, 1962. He resigned after facing charges for “unmentionable actions.” Last March, a special ecclesiastical court cleared him of the charges, and the Holy Synod said he could return to his former diocese. The Holy Synod’s ruling, however, still needed ratification from all bishops.

A special meeting of the hierarchy was called early this year to consider clergy salaries and the nomination of a home mission director. After 12 days in session, the bishops reported that they had not acted on either matter. The only thing they had done was to reinstate Iakovos as bishop of his former diocese under the title of the “President of Attica and Megaris and former Archbishop of Athens.”

In the resulting turmoil the state expressed its dismay in no uncertain terms and suggested study of the case by a legislative committee preparing a new constitutional charter for the Greek church.

A number of leading Greek newspapers criticized the church in front-page articles. A leading member of the hierarchy, Metropolitan Germanos of Mantinea, suggested that Iakovos enter a monastery to avoid further distress in the church. Sympathy of the Greek populace was undeniably on the side of the state.

Another factor in increasing church-state tensions is the hierarchy’s attempt to ease restrictions on transferability of bishops. Early ecumenical councils have been interpreted as stipulating the marriage of bishops to their respective dioceses (a bishop’s desire to leave a diocese, therefore, has been considered adultery).

According to the present constitutional charter of the church, transfer of dioceses is prohibited except among the dioceses of Athens, Piraeus, and Thessaloniki. The hierarchy has asked the Greek Minister for Cults to modify the charter to allow transfer. Meanwhile, the church delays appointment of new bishops to nine dioceses where deaths have created vacancies. The state has refused to make any changes in the charter until the new charter plan is unveiled by the special legislative committee.

Cleared Again

Angered at the persistence of four newspapers in Kalamata which continue to publish the Rev. Spiros Zodhiates’ weekly Gospel messages as paid advertisements, Greek Orthodox Bishop Eustathios asked the district attorney to launch a suit. The charge: conspiracy to proselyte the Greek Orthodox population of his diocese to Protestantism, a criminal act under present state church laws.

After months of investigation, the district attorney asked the bishop to produce evidence from Zodhiates’ messages that he was attacking the state church and endeavoring to proselyte. No such evidence was forthcoming, and charges were dismissed.

Zodhiates, general secretary of the American Mission to Greeks, has been publishing his Gospel advertisements for four years. They appear in nearly every newspaper and magazine in Greece. Advised of the dismissal of charges, Zodhiates observed:

“This is to the honor of Greek justice and the Greek Orthodox Church. I was tried once before in Thessaloniki, once in Crete and once in Halkis, and was exonerated in all three cases. Even if the case were to be heard in court, justice and freedom would have triumphed once more and I would have been given a renewed opportunity to preach in court and witness to the saving grace of Christ. My effort is not to change the religion of any people but to bring them to realization of their need of a Saviour.”

Ruffled Relations

Thus far, 1963 has been the crisis year for Christian elements in Israel. It all began when a band of Yeshiva (Jewish Talmudic school) students attacked missionary institutions along Jerusalem’s Street of the Prophets. While denouncing violence, numerous apologists for Jewish religious domination in Israel argued that some Protestant groups had brought it on themselves by engaging in unscrupulous missionary activities. There was talk of a possible anti-missionary law.

Dr. Zerah Wahrhaftig, Minister of Religious Affairs, was quoted as favoring anti-missionary activity on a voluntary basis—without violence. Several hundred rabbis and Orthodox lay leaders attended a “Council to Combat Missions” in Tel Aviv. Wahrhaftig told the group that he was disturbed by proselytizing activities of missionaries. He called on Jews to overcome a public indifference toward “danger” inherent in some Christian-supported activities involving youth. He emphasized, however, that there was not much prospect that the government would outlaw missionary activities. The government, he said, was vitally interested in retaining the sympathy of the Christian world.

Last month, another incident brought on more tension. Bishop Pier Chiappero, O. F. M., Latin Rite Patriarchal Vicar in Israel, sharply criticized what he charged were police efforts to cover up an assault on a Franciscan priest in Acre. Father Gaetano Pieri, 45, was wounded in what the police described as “a quarrel between neighbors.” His alleged assailant was Yitzhak Elmaleh, who recently purchased a store adjoining the Franciscan monastery in the Old City area of Acre.

Subsequently, a nun was attacked in Jerusalem by young hoodlums while she was chaperoning a group of children. She was rescued by a Jewish shopkeeper, who, when he attempted to pursue the attackers, was reportedly blocked by other persons on the scene.

One priest said lie is often jeered when he passes through the Orthodox Jewish quarter. He said he frequently hears cries such as “Jesus is dead.”

In New York, meanwhile, the Rev. William L. Hull hailed an Israeli Supreme Court ruling requiring registration of a mixed marriage of an Israeli Jew and a Belgian Christian woman.

“It is the first break in the solid wall the Orthodox have built up in the Knesset,” said Hull, veteran Canadian missionary to Israel who tried to convert war criminal Adolf Eichmann before his execution.

Hull is retiring after 28 years in Jerusalem. He and his wife indicated that mounting Orthodox-sponsored pressure against proselytizing activities was one factor in their decision to leave Israel. Prior to going to Israel in the thirties, Hull was a buyer for the Eaton department store in Winnipeg. He left to become an independent missionary supported by individual contributions from evangelical friends.

Viet Cong Victims

Viet Cong guerillas opened fire on a group of missionaries at a roadblock 66 miles northeast of Saigon this month. Four persons were shot to death. Another was seriously wounded.

Two families who served with Wycliffe Bible Translators were traveling along the Saigon-Dalat highway in South Viet Nam when they came upon the roadblock and were ordered to climb out of their Land Rover. The two fathers, Elwood Jacobsen of the Malmo Evangelical Free Church of Isle, Minnesota, and Gaspar Makil, a Filipino married to the former Josephine Yvonne Johnson of La Junta, Colorado, were killed on the spot. One of the Makils’ four-month-old twins died the following day. A three-year-old son was seriously wounded.

Wycliffe spokesmen said the victims were shot down “without apparent reason or provocation.” They said they regarded the highway as one of the safer highways in the country.

Mrs. Makil had been in Saigon for medical treatment and was returning with her family to an outpost at Dran.

From Dalat, Viet Nam, meanwhile, came reports that three American missionaries taken captive by the Viet Cong last May 30 were seen alive. The leader of a Viet Cong group which raided the Christian and Missionary Alliance leprosarium at Banmethuot is said to have been captured and interrogated about the safety of the three missionaries. One of the three is Dr. Eleanor Vietti, a surgeon who served as administrator of the leprosarium. The others are the Rev. Archie E. Mitchell, a veteran Affiance missionary, and Dan Gerber, a Mennonite medical assistant.

Early this year, in neighboring Laos, three pioneer Japanese missionaries were taken captive by Pathet Lao forces while on an evangelistic tour in the province of Champassac. Yutaka Baba, Fumio Ito, and Akira Nagahra had established a home base at Muong Kao, on the right bank of the Mekong River, and were on a four-day trip to nearby villages. When they failed to return, a Japanese colleague set out to find them and learned that they had been taken into custody by the Pathet Lao. Baba, his wife, and their one child make up the only family in the group of Japanese working as independent missionaries in south Laos. In addition, there are three single women and six single men, representing a loosely associated group of evangelical churches in Japan.

Laos is currently in a transition period. Overt hostilities ceased with the adoption of an agreement worked out in Geneva last year. General elections have been promised.

The present situation, however, is not the most conducive to missionary activity. Missionaries find it difficult to travel about. On the other hand, relocated native refugees have been concentrated in several large centers, and opportunities for Christian witness have been enhanced.

Working Against Time

Lutheran missionaries in New Guinea, realizing that their days may be numbered, are trying to set up a united indigenous church. Representatives of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod and a sister church in Australia appealed to the Lutheran Mission New Guinea, reputed to be the largest Protestant mission in the world, for joint negotiations.

The place was Denver. The occasion was the February business meeting of the policy-making General Board of the National Council of Churches. On opening day a block away from the meeting site, the barbershop gossip went something like this:

BARBER: “New in town?”

REPORTER: “Yes [edited from ‘yeah’], here to report the National Council meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel.”

BARBER: “I read where some Russians are coming to the meeting.”

REPORTER: “That’s right. Sixteen Soviet church leaders are returning a visit of American churchmen sponsored last year by the National Council.”

MANICURIST (working on someone else): “I didn’t know they had churches in Russia.”

REPORTER: “They do, but their activities are pretty limited.”

BARBER: “I see that some fella from New Jersey is coming out here to protest the visit.”

REPORTER: “Oh? First I’ve heard of it.”

So much for the tonsorial topography of the NCC meeting. Yet, in this humble session of mutual hairline education were sketched the rudiments of a situation which would involve in some way all three of the major U. S. church councils and/or associations and would reveal something of the political and emotional posture of each.

Despite Republican Governor John Love’s plea for hospitality toward the Soviet churchmen, their arrival at the Denver airport provoked a picket-line response which included signs like “Wolves in Sheeps’ Clothing.”

Soon after, black beards glistening under flashbulbs, the clerics sat patiently in the Silver Plume room of the Brown Palace, awaiting their initial press conference. Beginning a three-week tour of the U. S. by observing NCC sessions, they represented the Russian Orthodox Church, Georgian Orthodox Church, Armenian Church, Evangelical Lutheran Churches from Estonia and Latvia, and the Union of Evangelical-Christian Baptists.

Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., introduced them as professing Christians who enjoy a limited amount of freedom under the Soviet constitution. He pointed out that “all freedom is limited.”

Youthful Archbishop Nikodim of Jaroslavl and Rostov (35), pink cheeks glowing above full beard, read a prepared statement in Russian which included the following optimism:

“We have come to you from a socialist state where our people, seized by labour enthusiasm, are creating a new dynamic society.… While blessing its flock for labour exploits, the Russian Orthodox Church also blesses them for peacemaking efforts and fully supports the aspirations of all our people for peace and friendship with all peoples of the earth and for realization in the practice of international relations on the principles of peaceful competition and cooperation of states with different social and political systems.…

“The state does not interfere in the internal affairs of our churches. Soviet legislation provides for strict responsibility against wounding the religious rights of believers.…

“We churchmen get indignant over the attempts of the champions of the cold war to distort the picture of the real position of religion in our country, and to try, for purposes of propaganda so alien to the interests of the Church, to present the problems of the existence of Church in a secularized society—which axe common for the whole of Christendom today—as an indication of the alleged lack of freedom of religion under the conditions of socialism.”

During the rather limited question period, Nikodim said that the question of anti-Semitism does not exist in the Soviet Union. Asked concerning Christian growth in Russia, he described the Russian Orthodox situation as “stabilized.” At a tea-break later on, Nikodim told CHRISTIANITY TODAY through an interpreter that the 32 Siberians who recently sought refuge in the American embassy in Moscow were “fanatics.”

Accompanying the Soviet delegation was Dr. Paul B. Anderson, NCC consultant on relations with Orthodox churches, who has written: “Realizing that churches pray and Christians long for peace, the [Communist] Party welcomes the participation of Soviet churchmen in furthering its peace program. It is at this point that Soviet churchmen enter the field of propaganda and find themselves charged with being Soviet agents when they issue or sign statements which press the Soviet side on international issues, or when they attend and assume a prominent place in ‘peace’ rallies abroad.”

Nikodim’s statements to the press were really quite mild when seen in contrast to some which have appeared in Russian Orthodox publications. The following were cited by Frederick Brown Harris, chaplain of the U. S. Senate, just before the Russian Orthodox Church was admitted to the World Council of Churches:

On the Korean War: “The United States interfered in the internal affairs of the Korean people.… The Russian Orthodox Church condemned this intervention and the inhuman annihilation of the peaceful population of Korea by the American air forces who disseminated Colorado beetles and resorted to the use of bacteriological weapons.”

A sampling of Russian Orthodox eschatology: “Capitalistic America, the trans-Atlantic octopus, is trying to fasten its greedy tentacles around the whole globe. The resurrected Babylon is trying to seduce the people of the world while pushing them toward war. The freedom of the Western democrats is but liberty to rob, coerce, and slaughter. They are merchants in human blood sitting on a bag of gold, ready to exterminate all people who have the nerve to protest.”

The Denver Association of Evangelicals, representing some 300 churches affiliated with the National Association of Evangelicals, avoided either applauding or actively protesting the Russians’ visit. While calling for “the courtesy which is characteristic of Christian hospitality,” the association warned: “No one should be naive enough to believe that the Soviet government—which is even now engaged in an intensive persecution of true believers in Russia—would permit these leaders of the officially recognized churches to travel outside the Iron Curtain if it were not sure of their social and political views.”

The Denver Post thought the association had a point here. But the newspaper termed “irresponsible” charges of “an out-of-town evangelist who is following [the Russians] around the country [calling] them all ‘spies and agents reporting directly to the secret police.’” Reference was to Dr. Carl McIntire, founder of the American Council of Christian Churches, which in conjunction with local pastors organized a Denver rally protesting the Russians’ visit. McIntire told an audience numbering about 1,500 that the Russians’ dark robes reminded him of a black company of the Ku Klux Klan. They were part of the Soviet intelligence system, he charged. “The N.A.E. brethren are afraid to fight,” though they profit by “our fight for freedom.” McIntire called for an investigation of the State Department, citing its exchange program whereby “secret police” and “spies” enter the United States “robed as churchmen to deceive our people.” He also pointed to State policy which turned back the Siberian refugees. Petitions were circulated; the hope is for thousands of signatures to be collected throughout the nation.

Meanwhile, back at the Brown Palace … the NCC General Board received a wide-ranging study calling for major revisions in the governing and operating structure of the council that may be used as a guide for proposed changes in the council’s constitution. Centralization of authority over the various NCC agencies is projected by the study. Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen, president of New York’s Union Theological Seminary, strenuously objected to the study’s “intense preoccupation with authority,” which “weaves its way through almost every page.” He declared the basic question to be: “Are we going to put ourselves in a unified, hierarchical straitjacket?” He urged abandonment of the study and the undertaking of a new one. But he found little if any backing as thirteen speakers rose to defend the report. Its supporters claim the changes will enable the constituent denominations to be in effective control of their council.

Final action on constitutional changes is expected at the NCC triennial General Assembly, meeting in Philadelphia next December.

The General Board also:

Reviewed the churches’ role in the struggle for racial justice and committed the NCC to participate in the continuation of interreligious activities in the field of race relations for a period extending through June 1, 1964, with the understanding that this support may be extended after future review and evaluation;

Resolved that the principle of equal pay for equal work without discrimination on the basis of sex should be supported as a matter of basic economic justice; Urged that Congress and the Administration consider carefully the concern of the churches over the Administration’s proposal to “place a floor” under the legally allowable itemized deductions for individual income taxpayers. A statement approved by the board asked whether the proposal would not in the long run have the effect of “discouraging what hereto-fore has been encouraged by the tax laws of the Federal Government; namely, support of the broad variety of voluntary associations of our citizens which assume personal and private responsibility for programs and organizations freely established for social ends in which they believe.” The statement also questioned whether the proposed new tax law may not “be a crucial step in that too prevalent modern tendency to remove social responsibility from individuals in the form of a greater and greater reliance upon officially planned and federally supported social programs.”

At Calvary the path of every man crosses the path that God has chosen to walk in this world. At this point of convergence God will do business with every man and every man will contact his God. No man can avoid this confrontation with his Maker and Redeemer, for at Calvary God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. Here God accomplished his greatest work, greater than which even God can do nothing. Here he took upon himself the sin of the world and his own curse upon that sin. This, his most wondrous work, he will not allow to go unnoticed, not even by a single man. What he did, he did for all, and all must come to Calvary to see this thing that God has done, to approve or disapprove.

God wills to be seen and known as he truly is, and nowhere is he more fully revealed in his heart of hearts and inmost being than on that hill outside Jerusalem where the Son of God died in love for those who did not love him. Here is the act which declares that God is love; here is revealed a love that knows how to satisfy justice within a continuing love. To this place of Calvary God will bring every man to behold and see his God—and to approve or disapprove.

As Jesus moved closer toward the Cross, the people moved away from him, and left him alone. Multitudes forsook him, turning him to his disciples with the heart-rending question, “Will ye also go away?” They all answered that they would not, but as the Cross approached they all, as Jesus predicted, forsook him and left him alone. The song is right: “It was alone my Saviour died.”

Momentarily the movement away from him is reversed. As his own people abandon him, Greeks come and say, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” In a most significant response Jesus tells his disciples that the coming of the Gentiles does not mean what it seems. I am, he says, like a seed, which abideth by itself alone unless it fall into the ground and die. Only by dying will it bear fruit, and be no longer alone. Jews may go and Gentiles come, but I go my nonetheless lonely way to the Cross, for unless I die, like the seed, I shall abide alone. But, says Jesus, “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” As he moves toward the Cross, he walks more and more alone. But once crucified, he will as the Crucified attract all men to himself. Not without but by means of the Cross every foot will be turned to climb the hill where Jesus had his rendezvous with death, because there every man who ever lived must have his rendezvous with God.

Drawn to the Cross, each man stands in the time of God’s judgment and salvation. Standing between heaven and hell, he must make a decision, react to what God has done. As he stands before the revelation of the inmost being of God, his own inmost being is revealed. Here every secret thought of his heart is disclosed. Here he must either accept such a God with thanks and praise, or turn his back upon Him and spurning and rejecting His love go his way, proudly asserting that he can go it alone. At the Cross he cannot avoid deciding whether God’s greatest deed was necessary—or quite unnecessary; whether the Son of God died for any good or necessary reason. Response is inescapable; approve or disapprove he must. Refusal to respond, even utter indifference, is in fact a response and a decision. It is a response that declares the death of the Son of God to be a thing of no significance, a decision that God’s greatest work of love and grace is an indifferent thing.

They who are willing to allow God to bear the Cross for them find release from sin, death, and hell, and discover freedom to live, the freedom of a blessed future.

They who reject the Cross—and many do—do not escape, for they are doomed to carry their own. Under it they will stagger, and finally be broken by it. Judas refuses the Crucified, who was nailed to the Tree for him—but how lonely he goes to select his own tree on which to hang.

Friedrich Nietzsche had a promethean defiance for the Cross. It was, he averred, a symbol of weakness, unworthy of a real man. In his defiance he went mad, but in the last days he lived by the tender ministrations of a woman, a Christian nurse. Significantly—and tragically—he who rejected the Crucified signed one of his last letters “The Crucified.”

He who will not accept the Son of God set at nought will himself be set at nought. He who will not accept the Crucified will himself be crucified. All roads lead to the Cross; beyond the Cross the paths of those who reject Calvary exhibit the folly and futility of dying on self-chosen crosses—beyond which there is no Resurrection and no Light.

Either one accepts the Cross and is crucified with Christ, or one goes his lonely way to his own crucifixion. He who rejects the Cross selects his own. There are no alternatives.

END

The Role Of Religion In Civic Life

The nation now awaits the Supreme Court’s ruling on Bible reading and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in the public schools. The verdict may not be given until June (controversial decisions often are not announced until just before the Court’s adjournment). Like other recent decisions, the ruling is likely to reflect not the nation’s past character and traditions but rather the growing pluralism of American society. In defining the kind of nation the United States shall be, the Supreme Court more and more conforms its pronouncements to the temper of the times rather than to the heritage of the past.

A number of American theologians, ironically enough, are promoting a secular non-theistic view of the state due to a misunderstanding of the nature and content of divine revelation. This misunderstanding is a baneful fruit of Karl Barth’s theology, which denies the reality of any general revelation and considers all divine disclosure to be saving revelation. The proper emphasis that all divine disclosure is revelation of the Logos (be it the redemptive revelation of the incarnate Logos or the general revelation of the cosmic Logos) is distorted to mean that all revelation is Christocentric and hence always redemptive or saving. On the basis of this error these theologians oppose all religious affirmation in civic life and in the public schools; these they consider to be either necessarily sectarian acknowledgments and therefore contradictory to church-state separation, or meaningless incantation.

This theological misconception underlies some of the support given the controversial study on “Relations Between Church and State” which will come before the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. in May, and for which some denominational leaders now predict endorsement despite the wide flurry of earlier hostility. In properly opposing the disturbing American trend toward “multiple establishment” in national life, the report commits the egregious error of promoting an objectionably secular state which in its public functions will tend to act as if there were no God.

There is, of course, the constant danger that theistic affirmations under civic auspices will become either a meaningless routine, or the uncritical pronouncement of a divine benediction upon national policy, or an opportunity for sectarian exploitation. There are those, too, who oppose religious elements in civic life simply on anti-Catholic grounds: what if the Methodist chaplain of the Senate or the Presbyterian chaplain of the House of Representatives in another decade were to be a Roman Catholic priest? It is always pertinent to ask how much of our program springs from genuine church-state concerns, and how much from sectarian bias that is dignified with the motive of pluralistic sensitivity.

The far greater danger, however, is the possibility that through its neglect of civic recognition government may lose also its sense of civic obligation to the transcendent God and to objective justice.

Voluntary prayer by congressmen and by citizens is not only highly desirable, but is indispensable if the nation is not to sag into the gutters of expedience. But the plea for voluntary religion does not demand a conformity of public institutions to secularism. The contention that the United States might well dispense with the rule that requires each legislative day to begin with prayer, as long as prayer is pursued individually on a voluntary basis, deserves penetrating scrutiny. What are the implications of “free exercise” of religion in civic life and in public schools? Is it possible that negation by the Supreme Court may constitute an unjustifiable “free exercise”? Is not the tradition of religious devotion in public life which the founders approved and encouraged alongside their repudiation of religious establishment a sounder guide to the distinctive character of the United States than the pressures for obliteration brought by some expositors of a pluralistic society? The concept of a pluralistic society itself is susceptible of varied definitions, and ought not be summarily equated with the ambitions of atheistic crusaders who renounce unchanging morality and objective justice.

It is true, of course, that theistic emphasis in national life opens a door to inter-religious cooperation that is not specifically Christian. A possibility even arises thereby among the higher religions for an inter-faith ethos working for world peace. Wherever religion recognizes something beyond mere national interest it poses a problem for the totalitarian state; every recognition of an eternal order of morality and justice is therefore to be welcomed. This kind of cooperation need not necessarily lead to religious syncretism, since the promotion of justice is not the only dialogue in which Christianity must engage, particularly if it is true to its claim of being the religion of redemptive revelation.

Among church leaders there is growing interest in an inter-faith congress to promote world peace. More than twenty Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic leaders outlined such ambitions recently to Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Dr. Dana McLean Greeley, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, asserts the effort springs from a conviction that “the various religious bodies should not lag behind the nations in a cooperative or concerted effort” but insists it has “no ready-made answer and no ideological axe to grind.” The effort could be worthwhile if it really promotes justice as the foundation of peace. But if it reflects the mood of “peace-at-any-price,” propagandists inevitably will exploit it for partisan ends.

The founders of our nation guarded against the dangers of religious establishment, whose perils we are prone to overlook. At the same time, by their emphasis on the supernatural source and sanction of man’s inalienable rights they guarded also against the dangers of naturalism. To erase this theistic affirmation and recognition from the nation’s civic life and public schools leads just as surely to national chaos as does the path of religious establishment, be it pluralistic or otherwise.

Footnote On Glory: Who Is Mr. K.?

Low-flying planes discovered a religious community in the remote Siberian swamplands of Soviet Russia. Its members had never heard of Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev. The moral is not that many people could wish as much. It is rather that a world figure who works in season and out—shoes off, shoes on—at prestige must find it disconcerting to discover that some of his own people can get along without him, and do not even know that he exists.

Christians honor one name above all and take a dim view of trying to make oneself world-famous. They know the futility and ambiguity of such efforts. They remember that one of the best-known Roman emperors, Caesar Augustus, derived his fame from an infant in Bethlehem, and that another, Nero, derived his from his persecutions of the followers of Christ. And who, they ask, would know anything of Pontius Pilate had not the early Church mentioned him as the Nazarene’s crucifier in their apostolic confession of faith in Christ? In more ways than one, men borrow their glory from Him to whom alone glory belongs!

Some names thought imperishable are reduced to footnotes in biblical history—others are remembered only by becoming such footnotes.

The Passing Of Winter And A Lingering Lesson

Winter was rough all over. (This is simply a generalization, and our Australian readers should not take it as a prophecy.) Some scientists relate worsening winters to the H-bomb, and a theologian has said that our generation should be reminded of the tower of Babel.

The British have been sorely beset by angry weather, but a cheering word came a while back from a London correspondent:

We’ve had more snow these past few days, and many football teams have not had a game for the best part of two months. Villages are isolated in Western England (and, naturally, in Scotland), and they are calling it the worst winter since records began to be kept (1875). It’s still rather cold, but parts of the country are thawing. London’s buses have kept running most of the time, happily, and there’s been a return generally of that wartime spirit of good fellowship. The Postmaster of Lynmouth in Devon has stated that people who have not spoken to one another for years are now chattering away with the greatest camaraderie because flooding has threatened this low-lying little town.

We hope that the coming of spring and the voice of the turtle will not mean the resurgence of a measure of human silence in lovely Lynmouth, which has heard the praises of Shelley and Southey. But it is curious how adversity can bring out the best in men (as well as, at times, the worst). Centuries ago, Thomas a Kempis in commenting on the “fewness of the lovers of the cross of Christ” observed that “many love Jesu when no adversity happeneth.” He added:

But they that love Jesu for Jesu, and not for any consolations, they bless him in every tribulation and anguish of heart as in the highest consolation; and if he would never give them consolation vet would they ever praise him and ever thank him.

And, again curiously, in the midst of this thanksgiving in tribulation comes the highest joy, the most profound consolation.

END

Secondary Concerns Blur Missionary Vision

The Church of Jesus Christ in its worldwide mission is suffering for want of men and women who are willing to place themselves under the complete Lordship of Christ and, having done so, to serve him in his way and under the conditions of his choosing.

The sense of missionary urgency is often lost in a maze of unwarranted speculation, wishful thinking, and attenuated conviction. The clearly stated alternatives of the Bible have become blurred so that absolutes are willfully rejected in favor of a relativity which is nowhere to be found in the divine revelation. The lostness of men outside of Christ has only too often been rejected in favor of a neo-universalism which substitutes “knowing” for “believing” so that men need merely to be informed that they (supposedly) are already saved. Repentance and faith towards Christ as a part of the Gospel message are thereby lost, and the holiness of God is easily forgotten as men think their sin no longer separates them from God.

Oswald Chambers has put his finger on that need by which all should be confronted: “The key to the missionary call is the absolute sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ. We must get into real solitude with Him, feed our soul on His Word, and He will engineer our circumstances.” Few of us know what it is to bow in humble and complete surrender to the sovereign will of our Lord. We temporize, compromise, and seek to dictate the terms on which we will serve him, and nothing happens.

We live in a world where the biological birthrate exceeds the spiritual birthrate by at least four to one. Certainly part of the reason lies with us who refuse to surrender to the divine will. Too many of us who consider ourselves churchmen are playing around the periphery of Christianity, concerned chiefly with secondary matters.

These have their rightful place but only after the central message of the Gospel is believed and preached—Christ crucified, dead, buried, and risen from the dead, the only hope of the individual and the only hope of a lost world.

END

Decline Of The Role Of Truth In The Quest For Togetherness

The ecumenical mood muddies the waters of religious discussion with a great deal of confusion about unity and diversity. Some of its spokesmen deplore a monolithic church structure in the interest of diversity. What this comes to mean is not that denominations really have an ultimate right to survival alongside the growing ecumenical monopoly, but rather that heresy has a right to respectability within the framework of ecumenical inclusivism. Dean Robert E. Fitch of the Pacific School of Religion declares that “the continuity of Protestantism is not, in a clean-cut sense, a doctrinal continuity” but “rather a continuity of faith, hope and love as defined by St. Paul in the famous passage in 1 Corinthians, 13 …” (Religion, a pamphlet issued by The Fund for the Republic).

Now to most students of the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 1–8 are as famous as, and no less authoritative than, 1 Corinthians 13. Dr. Fitch concedes that for Protestants “historically, our authority is the Bible. Then the question arises: who has the correct interpretation of the Bible?” (Since Dr. Fitch is able to discriminate the truly definitive passages, ought he so modestly to refrain from nominating himself?)

Dr. Fitch speaks of “the preponderance of the members of the student body and faculty” of Pacific School of Religion as coming from non-creedal churches. But, he insists, “they have a faith; and they have articulated and defined … their faith and hope and love in God and Christ, and in the Scriptures, and in the destiny of man within that framework.” By this time the reader, no doubt, will he thoroughly confused by the way in which Scripture is invoked whenever it can lend sanction to notions not derived from an authoritative Scripture in the first place, but which are happily invested with the authority of Scripture when that is serviceable to the articulation of private recombinations of beliefs. If this process somehow seems to do violence to logic, Dr. Fitch is prepared for the final tribute; of his students and colleagues he adds: “They do not define their doctrine with rationalistic precision; in fact, they are very skeptical of that approach.”

Verily; one can say that again! Dr. Fitch’s rationalism seems in fact to avoid precision of any kind (rationalistic or otherwise) in the definition of essential Christian doctrines.

END

Some years ago the head of the department of radiology of a great medical center complained of indigestion. One of his associates on the staff urged him to have a series of X-rays. This he did.

At that time all patients went through the clinic by number, not name. The following day the series of films was on his desk with a large number of others taken the previous day.

When the radiologist looked at his own films (not knowing to whom they belonged), he immediately said, “Inoperable carcinoma (cancer) of the stomach.” And it was.

In the spiritual world man lives in a state of ignorance, self-deception, or God-given humility. Not until he sees himself in the light of God’s perspective is he in a position to yield himself.

All of us are tempted to compare ourselves with others, especially those in whom we see glaring faults. Paul makes this foolish attitude very clear: “For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves; but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise” (2 Cor. 10:12).

God has given us one perfect Example, and before him we see ourselves for what we really are.

One of the curses within Christendom is that we inordinately compliment each other, instead of giving glory to God. For one motive or another we build up each other, forgetting the One who should be the center of our adulation. Only of Christ can it be said: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor. 5:21).

Christian courtesy demands credit where it is due, but on a number of occasions we have read or heard words of praise which should be given no man. What are man’s accomplishments compared with the perfect interposition of Christ for our sins? “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).

Only as we see ourselves in comparison with the One of whom it is said, “who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth,” are we ready to say from the heart: “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

It takes some of us a long time to realize God’s omniscience. We think we can hide from the One who knows our words before we utter them, our thoughts before we ever think them. “Shall not God search this out? for he knoweth the secrets of the heart,” says the Psalmist (44:21). In Jeremiah God says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings” (Jer. 17:9, 10).

Because of self-deception so many of us are weak Christians. Because of spiritual illiteracy we fail to grow in the things of the Spirit. That which we need to do with humble hearts is pray with the Psalmist. “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked wav in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:23, 24).

We experience a revelation of self when the X-ray of the Holy Spirit—the Holy Scriptures—discloses our true nature, for they search out and convict: “The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:12, 13).

“A discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart”! What a disclosure and how hard to take—and how good for our souls!

All of us fully “manifest in his sight”! Humiliating, but necessary for spiritual diagnosis and acceptance of God’s cure.

“Him with whom we have to do”! Once man comes to acknowledge that it is God with whom he has to do—that it is God who redeems, and also God who judges—he is ready to cry out, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”

Then it is that David’s words to Solomon take on significance for us: “For the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off forever” (1 Chron. 28:9b).

The effect of such searching of heart—of permitting the clear rays of God’s Word to probe and convict—is to sense the need of God’s mercy. Like the trembling criminal before the judge who on being assured that he would “receive justice” cried out, “What I need is not justice, but mercy,” we too come to realize there is nothing we can do except rest in that which Christ has done for us.

Overwhelmed by the enormity of our sins and their offense against a holy God, we receive for the first time some inkling of the meaning of the Cross.

Out of such a confession and the wonder of God’s redeeming love in Christ, there comes a peace unspeakable, an assurance that all is well, not because we are good but because our Saviour and his divine sacrifice are all-sufficient.

The Apostle Paul describes this change in the seventh and eighth chapters of his letter to the Roman Christians. On the one hand he cries out, “O wretched man that I am!”—only to lead on to the completeness of God’s love in Christ, from which nothing—and he means Nothing—can separate us.

We live in a world of turmoil and flux. Our own personal problems are many, but once we have passed through that period of self-recognition and have accepted God’s terms of surrender and salvation, the uncertainties disappear and we begin to understand the meaning of “peace which passeth understanding.”

Once we admit the “inoperable cancer” of sin and accept the divine remedy, we have passed from death to life, from darkness to light; the “sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart” becomes a reality, for we have God’s promise: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Why write all of this? Because we try to deceive ourselves and others. But we cannot deceive God, and the sooner we take a look at ourselves by means of God’s diagnostic unit—the Word of God—the sooner we will be led to capitulate, to acknowledge ourselves as lost sinners and trust in his redeeming grace.

Such an experience, activated by faith, brings healing and peace of mind and soul—and a heart of worship, praise, and obedience to the Great Physician.

“Don’t enter the ministry if you can possibly do anything else and be happy.” Young men often hear this kind of advice from working preachers. I myself have tried to quit a hundred times! During the sleepless gray hours after many a Sunday I have worked countless letters of resignation to be read the following week to what I hoped might be a stunned congregation. But the letters have never been read, never even been written.

One day, perhaps, the gnawing sense of personal inadequacy and the mounting pressure of humanly insoluble problems may be too much, and I will write and deliver such a pronouncement.

I’ve been in the ministry twenty-seven years now. I started preaching my first sermon while a sophomore in college. The vision began, however, at a Christian youth camp when I was sixteen. Never have I forgotten the vigor and enthusiasm of several young ministers who at the time stimulated a burning and abiding idealism.

My father died suddenly when I was eleven, and I was deeply impressed with what I can only call a “God-consciousness.” My attitude toward church became less casual. One summer the usual interests in sports and girls and the long hours of after-school work in a grocery store were capped by a special climax. In those depression days one week of camp in a rented fairgrounds was all either the church or the church families could afford. During such a week came my crucial decision. Standing alone under the stars on a warm, sweet summer night, I knew I had to preach. Unsophisticated as it may sound, I was aflame with the desire to spend my life in sharing with all whom I could reach the transforming power of Christ that I had come to know.

My courageous widowed mother sold everything, and we moved to the state capital college town so I could secure a good liberal arts education. Ten dollars a week from my paper route sustained us for months, until mother got work. Then at nineteen I preached my first sermon. I hitchhiked to and from a small open-country church, occasionally arriving just after the benediction! My “salary” was the offering, usually about five dollars.

But I really got ever so much more. These saints were patient and encouraging, long-suffering with my crude sermons and pastoral ministrations. Slowly in the course of several student pastorates my illusions took on more realistic form. I learned that quarreling, hypocrisy, and sheer evil can infiltrate any congregation.

After graduation I moved to the smallest county seat in our state, a town of 1,200 population. There a preacher’s daughter, who had said the parsonage was not for her, gave up her teaching career and joined me in a ministry that has continued in that small town for twenty-four years.

Ours is hardly a typical town or ministry in these days of crushing cities and sprawling suburbs. Yet America still has thousands of towns like ours—population now 1,300—and countless congregations like the discouraged handful that welcomed me in a damp dungeon of a building here twenty-four years ago. From such churches people flow into distant colleges, factories, and offices. Too often such churches have no relevance for daily living, too often are not even respected. Too often, too, success-mad seminarians have abused and trodden them under foot in their ambitious ministerial climb. Realizing this despicable fact I vowed, by the grace of God, to bring relevancy and respect to at least one such church.

This, I suppose, is one reason I have remained in the ministry, and for so many years in a given pastorate. The adolescent dream of sweeping the world with the love of Christ has admittedly grown dim at times. But the conviction has remained, and grown stronger, that the small towns with their neglected churches are a vital key to America’s overall religious, social, and moral condition.

We have seen changes in our small church. Three major building programs have replaced the little crumbling concrete-block structure with a striking edifice of semi-modern design. The brilliant young architect was a boy in the Sunday school when we came. We have seen the baker’s dozen of discouraged people blossom into a strong congregation of over four hundred. The once ineffective Sunday school has grown into an educational organism whose young superintendent last year was selected “Superintendent of the Year” by a national Christian education magazine. We have seen young men and women go into medicine, teaching, business, and the arts with a mature Christian faith. We have seen new families firmly established, and older families reestablished. I say “we” because these results came through the work of many God-empowered people who found joy and vigor in their Christian faith.

One of my teachers used to say that “God made the country, man made the city, but the Devil made the small town.” Wife-trading, alcoholism, secret dope addiction, stone-cold indifference to even the simplest spiritual truth are no strangers to the small town and to its churches. Small towns present unique problems of survival, too. Our first baby died at nine months of age with spinal meningitis; his strong little body, nearly ready to walk, was not equal to the stove-heated, outhouse-supplied, cold-water shack we rented for ten dollars a month.

But when I faced the decision of moving to a better church, leaving the ministry, or finding part-time employment to augment the seventeen dollars a week from the church, I decided to apply for work in a steel foundry. Steel foundries were busy in the early forties, and I went to work almost immediately; there was no chance to consult with the men of the church. The next Sunday, before I could call the board together, the church treasurer, who worked in the payroll department of the foundry, handed me my weekly preacher’s check which he had reduced to fourteen dollars. The board upheld his action, a gesture that sorely threatened my loyalty to the ministry. For six months I divided my energies between foundry and church. Now, nearly twenty-five years later, the men on that board have grown in Christian spirit no less than the church and I have grown.

Yes, the Church is full of human weakness, and spiritual progress is agonizingly slow. Yet it is an important finger in the dike against the chaos that threatens our very existence. Carl Jung has said, “Among all my patients in the second half of life … there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.” And according to Rollo May, the question “Who am I and what is the meaning of my existence?” most tersely reveals the basic anxiety of our time. Who but Christ can be the answer for mankind and for the Church?

How else except through Christ and his church can we adequately meet the problem of race relations? Or take the matter of nuclear power: can a small congregation in a small town somewhere do anything about this monstrous horror? It was General MacArthur himself who said the world’s only hope lies in “spiritual recrudescence.” The only power that can control man, any man who in turn controls the released atom, is found in Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church.

I remember the successful salesman who hit my doorbell very late one winter night and blurted out, “I don’t know what I’m living for!” Drinking, divorce, debauchery were not his problems—just the stark meaninglessness of life without God. He was a victim of today’s unbalanced emphasis upon scientific progress. Even if we escape nuclear annihilation, we still face the concept that life has no purpose, a theme which modern literature hurls at us from every side. It is precisely here that the Church, despite its faults, alone can offer healing and creative power. The young salesman, we ought to add, is now entering the ministry, for all my warnings! God still works through the Church, still changes people’s lives!

The Apostle Paul knew something about incest, drunkenness at the communion service, and general debauchery in the church at Corinth. Yet his letters to the Corinthians are an important reminder that to desert the Church because of its moral weakness is to beg the question. God still changes human life through the witness and influence of the Church.

Remaining in the same small church for twenty-four years lets one observe these changes which occur only in God’s own time. Recently a handsome young basketball coach met with his boys before a game for prayer. For these kids who live in the moral jungle of a modern high school this coach, who twenty years ago was a little thief and liar, is a moral guideline. I remember the time when we seriously thought of banishing him from our Sunday school and youth meetings! Slowly through the influence of the church youth program, summer camps, a good, church-supported liberal arts education, plus marriage to a fine Christian girl, this onetime delinquent became an excellent coach and Christian leader.

Let me share only one more of countless experiences that have encouraged me to stay in the ministry. Five years ago a baby was born to an older couple in our town. The father, a retired state trooper, was slowly drinking himself to death. The mother, a county official, active in politics, capable at her job, was surprised at this late motherhood. The baby, as babies will, brought changes into this home. Listen to the mother’s own words before the congregation just a few Sundays ago:

“I’m happy to tell you of my faith, and I would gladly shout it to the world!

“A little over five years ago we received one of the greatest blessings of our lives. The birth of our little girl was a near miracle, and I was sure she was a gift from Heaven. I felt that I wanted to do something about it, but I didn’t know what to do or where to go.

“I shall always be grateful to the young man from the church who came to our home and gave us a warm and personal invitation to attend the services. Without this, I might still be sitting at home wondering what to do.

“A year ago this Sunday my husband and I made our confessions of faith and were buried with Christ in baptism, and it was a true rebirth to a new life! I couldn’t have believed the difference it can make in one’s life. It has been a wonderful year.

“I used to sleep late in the mornings trying to put off having to face the burdens, troubles, and worries of another day. I still have troubles.… I think we are supposed to, but I find that by getting up a little earlier and having a period of quiet meditation and prayer before beginning each day, the troubles are not nearly so big and, with God’s help, not nearly so hard to meet.…”

Her husband has lost the shakes, and is slowly conquering the drinking.

Teacher Annie Sullivan, after weeks of bleak failure in trying to reach the imprisoned mind of Helen Keller, has been quoted as saying: “It is my idea of original sin, giving up!” Perhaps with something of the same conviction I have remained in the ministry, often in spite of myself and often wanting to quit. I remember once during my years as an army chaplain in World War II writing to Harry Emerson Fosdick. Whatever our theological differences might be, I knew his ministry had been far-reaching. Could he recommend a book, I asked, that would help me solve some of the hundreds of counseling problems I faced in the chaplaincy? His wry response said, in essence, “Son, if you find such a book, please let me know. I need it too!” I called him recently to indicate that the fact of his long ministry and rich life had encouraged me to keep on in the ministry, especially as I grew older. “How old are you, son?” he asked. “Forty-five,” I answered. “Well, I’m eighty-eight. But I must hang up now and get back to a book I’m working on!” What book? A life of Saint Paul for teen-agers!

In a recent biography of his artist father, Jean Renoir tells about one day when the painter was confined to his room by a lung infection. The seventy-six-year-old master needed someone to place the brushes in his arthritis-stiffened hands while he worked on what was to be his last painting. “I think,” said Auguste Renoir, looking at his work, “I am beginning to understand something about it.” After these years of struggling with what is always too big a job for any man without the grace of God, I am beginning to understand what the old painter meant.

Let me close with a story that expresses the feelings of most of my friends who have remained in the ministry. A veteran missionary to China was approached by an American businessman to accept a position with his corporation. The firm would pay him well for his knowledge of the country’s language and culture. Salary offers grew to $25,000 as the missionary refused each successive proposition. With some exasperation the corporation man finally asked, “Well, just how much would it take to get you?” “Oh,” said the missionary, “your first offer was more than enough. The salary is fine, but your job is too small.”

Perhaps a few more men like that in China might have changed the course of history and of the Christian faith in that part of the world. Men with that kind of faith might well turn the tide in the present terrifying crisis. To the young men who may read this story of the old missionary, let me just say this: If his words strike you with a peculiar force, if you cannot forget their challenge, then do not enter the ministry if you can do anything else and be happy.—DOUGLAS A. DICKEY, Minister, First Christian Church, Williamsport, Ind.