Cover Story
Bernard Ramm
Can Protestantism escape relativism in theology? . . . If so, how? By accepting agnosticism? By turning to Rome? By revitalising the Reformers?
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Can Protestantism escape relativism in theology?… If so, how? By accepting agnosticism? By turning to Rome? By revitalizing the Reformers?
By definition a labyrinth is a complex or indecipherable maze. Calvin used the word to describe the confused state of the mind as it stood before the problems of the universe without the light of revelation. And extensive reading in contemporary theology shows that it too is a labyrinth. Degeneration of faith has gone so far that some theologians engage in a kind of self-flagellation for their Christian belief, as if it were a sin against the modern mind to believe anything.
When Protestant theology abandoned the concept of revelation as the disclosure of the infallible truth of God and gave up the corollary that Scripture is this revelation in written form and thus the authoritative norm and controlling canon in theological construction, it inevitably entered the labyrinth. Or, to put it another way, when Protestant theologians destroyed the one principle that makes the knowledge of God scientific, they destroyed the possibility of theology. Into the resultant vacuum came the endless reinterpretations of Christianity that in turn created the labyrinth of contemporary theology.
Many forces caused the destruction of the one possible principle of scientific theology. The Renaissance, the new humanism, the Enlightenment, all turned their backs upon the past and thus rejected the light from the ancient writings of the prophets and apostles in Holy Scripture. Descartes’s principle of radical doubt as the starting point in philosophy eventually infected all of modern philosophy with radical doubt that inevitably extended to the authenticity of Holy Scripture.
In the progress of modern science from Copernicus and Galileo to Einstein and Heisenberg, Christian revelation was replaced by the view of the universe created by modern science as the natural backdrop of philosophy, ethics, value, art, and politics. Radical biblical criticism dissolved the Old Testament into a patchwork of redactions so filled with historical errors, ancient mythology, and sub-Christian ethics that it could not be taken seriously in situ as an authentic part of revealed Scripture. The critics reduced the Gospels to fanciful reconstructions of the uncritical religious community of the early Church and demoted Paul to a Hellenistic synthesizer, with the resulting conclusion being that the New Testament presents us with no materials on which to base a valid Christian theology.
With the destruction of the historic doctrine of Scripture as the authentic Word of God and therefore of the principle of control in the construction of all theology, there no longer exists a single principle of control in modern Protestant theology. The demolition of the unique principle for the construction of Christian theology mean that orthodoxy—i.e., orthos (“correct”) theological statements justified from the canon of Holy Scripture—no longer exists as a vital option in recent theology. The converse of this is that if no single version of Christianity can possibly be the true or orthodox one, then several interpretations are required, for perchance each of them will in some sense reflect a valid aspect of the Christian faith. But to say this is to ask for the labyrinth in Protestant theology.
At this point, a bit of digression is in order. The labyrinth also prevails in philosophy. Philosophers have not agreed on any one principle, except in the most vague and general criterion that philosophy should reflect reality. Because no fundamental principle informs philosophy, we have such utterly diverse works as Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein) or Being and Nothingness (Sartre).
But science is completely different. Scientists know the unitary principle that informs their discipline. Positively it may be called the principle of verification; negatively, the principle of falsification. Thus a Christion American, an atheist Russian, and a Buddhist Chinaman may set off an atomic explosion, because they follow the unitary principle of science. Philosophers endlessly disagree because they have no unitary principle; scientists form a worldwide society—with differences, to be sure—because they have a unitary principle.
At Ease With Young Turks
Returning to theology, we affirm that in its present labyrinth no orthodoxy is possible. The only thing possible is a cafeteria of options. And John Cobb can write on Living Options in Protestant Theology and ignore orthodoxy as an option. The spirit of modern theology is to encourage the production of all sorts of options. Even religious theists who see nothing special in the Bible or in Jesus Christ are honored among our Christian theologians and given important chairs of theology in our seminaries and graduate schools. The situation has degenerated to the point that some young Turk calling for a total and radical reconstruction of Christian theology causes little apprehension within the Church. One can almost hear the sigh: “Well, thank God [sic], his ideas at least show that we are not in a rut.” We may not be in a rut, but we are certainly in a labyrinth!
For modern theology there are many practical consequences of this labyrinth. For example, seminary professors are almost uniformly hired because they are technicians, and because they hold degrees from prestigious universities and have published scholarly books and articles. Great theological convictions, deep loyalty to the historic versions of the Christian faith, authentic sainthood—such things are no longer the coin of the realm. Calvin’s insistence that piety inform all theological learning provokes a smile as a bit of anachronistic pietism. As a result of all this, our important seminaries are noted, not for Christian depth, but for a team of “all-American” theological specialists.
Another practical consequence of the theological labyrinth appears in denominational life, which is conducted on the ground that all expressions of the Christian faith deserve representation. Attempts to call a denomination back to its historical creedal foundation are branded as divisive. Cooperation with denominational structures is the sine qua non of pastoral success. Preachers who march on Selma are in good standing, because they do not disturb denominational structures; preachers who speak in tongues are disciplined because they are like monkey wrenches thrown into the well-oiled machinery of denominationalism. To be outspoken on social issues is to be called prophetic; to be outspoken on the spiritual and theological bankruptcy of a denomination is to be labeled a crank.
What are the alternatives to the labyrinth of modern theology?
1. We may be honest in following through the logic that the labyrinth implies. If Christianity really is compatible with any number of interpretations, then it is obviously not true. If any other science were to break with its fundamental principle of knowledge, it would cease to exist. If Christianity has no fundamental principle of knowledge that controls its statements, then, in keeping with the rugged honesty of the logic involved, we ought to abandon it. Any logician will agree that a proposition compatible with all possible conditions is no proposition at all.
2. We may return to Roman Catholicism, in which the revelation of God still has control over theological utterances. In spite of all the forces and stresses of the past few centuries, the Roman church has remained loyal to its anchorage in divine revelation. Is not this the resolution of the labyrinth? But as confusing theologically as the times are and as inviting as the Roman ark seems to be, we cannot retreat beyond December 10, 1520, when Luther burned the Canon Law and the Papal Bull.
3. We may follow Gerhard Ebeling (Word and Faith, p. 51—one of the most courageous pages in all modern theology) and simply keep up the program of destruction. We must burn and burn, criticize and criticize, until we eventually find that version of Christianity which withstands the most vicious critical attack. Ebeling admits that this is a terrible course to follow and that it will involve many dark and confused hours. But to him this is the only way out of the labyrinth.
4. We may return to the synthesis of the Reformers, which was characterized by four programmatic principles: (a) The Holy Scriptures are the infallible authority of God and therefore the principle of the construction of Christian theology functioning as both the source and norm of theology. Thus an orthodox theology is possible, although many of its details remain open questions. (b) It is the Holy Spirit who establishes the Christian faith in the believer, in the Church, and in the world. (c) Jesus Christ is the norm, substance, and criterion of both scriptural exegesis and the construction of Christian theology. (d) There is to be the fullest use of the best of human scholarship in the interpretation of Scripture, in the criticism of Scripture, and in the construction of Christian theology.
Scripture And Scholarship
Yet in all this the authority of the Word of God must not be compromised. If scholarship is not exercised under the Word of God, then the concept of the Word of God is empty. In the modern debate, Barth is right as against Bultmann, for if the Word of Scripture is capable of the radical criticism Bultmann suggests, this Word is not truly God’s Word. Thus the Reformers were to this writer sounder than religious modernism, Bultmannism, and the new hermeneutic, because for them the criticism of Scripture could never be merely a technical matter.
But this does not mean we ought to have a mere repristination of Luther and Calvin. It does not mean that theology will be simply a rehash of citations of Scripture texts mixed with quotations from Luther and Calvin. Neither does it mean a denial of the vast biblical knowledge gained in recent decades, or a defense on pietistic or obscurantist grounds of the Reformers’ synthesis. The pressures of modern theological learning would crush this kind of theological program. Orthodoxy must critically and creatively come to terms with the forces behind the mentality that abandoned the fundamental principle making theology a science and governing its intellectual construction.
What Biblical Authority Means
The Scriptures as the infallible authority in theology are under constant misrepresentation in contemporary theology. (a) That the Bible is infallibly authoritative does not mean that all the Bible is on the same level, so that a verse in Numbers is as important as a verse in Romans. (b) To affirm the infallible authority of Holy Scripture is not to deny progressive revelation. Certainly the law of love in the New Testament (Rom. 13:8–10) is advanced over the Mosaic rules. To insist that conservatives have no sense of the progress and movement in Scripture is just to reveal that one has not really exposed himself to the best in conservative exegesis. (c) To regard the Bible as infallibly authoritative is not to drain faith of all its existential juice and make it equivalent to assent. The Reformers insisted that faith means trust (fiducia). Therefore, evangelical theology does not reduce itself to the “theological faith” of Roman Catholicism but rather retains in all its force the dynamic character of faith taught in the New Testament. (d) Nor does the full acceptance of biblical authority mean that conservatives are afraid of the existential, the symbolic, the mythological. But we have sturdy respect for truth. We simply do not see how issues of truth can be settled in terms of existential sobs, symbolic pictures, or mythological ambiguities. We want all the life, vitality, existentiality, emotion, and voluntarism there are in religion, but never at the expense of truth. We wait for those who believe otherwise to show us how they can thread their way through these alogical and non-rational materials and show how to differentiate truth from error. (e) We do not believe that we can produce a theology of glory, i.e., a perfect and inerrant theology. We agree with Luther that, in our brokenness of sin and in the partial character of revelation, we must be content with a theology of the Cross. We therefore admit that within the orthodox and conservative camp differences will always exist. But such differences are not the same as the differences created by those who scrap the orthodox calculus—the modernists, the liberals, the Bultmannians, the followers of Bishop Robinson, and the adherents of the new hermeneutic. In principle, differences within orthodoxy can be settled, though our sinfulness and brokenness prevent this; but in principle differences cannot be settled within modernist, liberal, and existentialist versions of Christianity. Therefore the latter perpetuate and complicate the labyrinth, with all the spiritual agony and ecclesiastical confusion it produces.
If there is to be a revitalization of the historic orthodox position in contemporary theology, certain matters of policy must be followed.
1. The optimism of modern man born at the Renaissance and nurtured by the advance in all departments of human knowledge must be seriously challenged by a fresh investigation of the doctrine of original sin. The invasion of sin into reason itself requires the absolute necessity of special revelation. As long as we deny this invasion of reason by sin, we shall be optimistic about man. Modern science, modern education, modern learning have neither challenged nor negated this fact.
The same thing holds for theology. Only that theology which can come to terms with the invasion of reason by original sin, and which shows the possibility of theology in view of this very invasion, is a realistic and biblical theology. Therefore, Christian theologians must point out with great power that, despite all our modern advancements, humanity still exists within the pale of original sin.
2. Christian theologians must show that philosophy without revelation does as a matter of fact wander in a labyrinth. Calvin’s judgment that philosophers exhibit a shameful diversity (Institutes I, 5, 12) is still true. We do not wish to belittle philosophy. It has made great progress in refining logic, in developing rational alternatives in ethics and value theory, in showing the nature of concepts, in working diligently with the problem of perception, in showing what is involved in any metaphysical system, and in tackling such diverse but important subjects as aesthetics and political philosophy.
But philosophy too comes under the judgment of original sin. It cannot be modern man’s secularized substitute for theology. The ultimate answers to the great questions about man, nature, and God can be found only in the pages of revelation. For this confrontation with modern philosophy no pietistic or fundamentalist eschewing of philosophy will do. The criticism must come from those Christian theologians who have fully exposed themselves to the great philosophical options of the past and present.
3. Christian theologians must show that science and Christian faith are not inimical. At present, there is no uniform plan among evangelical theologians as to how this is to be done. One method, essentially Platonic in orientation, is to show that scientific knowledge is useful and pragmatic but is philosophically empty. Or it may be pointed out that the presuppositions of science are outside science and can be supported only by theology—i.e., the ethical basis of all scientific work; the uniformity of nature, which can be grounded only in the doctrine of creation; or the use of logic in science, which can rest only upon man’s being in the image of God. Others may attempt to show that science is but part of man’s mandate to culture as the lord of creation and hence is a biblically sanctioned activity. Still another approach is based upon language analysis. Scientific explanations are of one order, theological explanations of another. They do not conflict; rather, they exhibit the principle of complementarity. The same phenomenon may be described from two different perspectives, each perspective valid in itself, although no principle of harmonizing the two is forthcoming. Thus it can be shown by one of the foregoing methods that the supposed cleavage between science and historic Christian theology is fictional rather than real.
4. The most difficult problem facing the Reformation synthesis in theology is certainly that of biblical criticism. Ebeling, in his famous essay, “The Significance of the Critical Historical Method for Church and Theology in Protestantism” (Word and Faith, pp. 17 ff.) certainly put his finger on a raw nerve.
The Reformers were aware of the critical understanding of the Scriptures and knew that a critical treatment of the Scriptures must accompany their theological use. Luther’s rejection of the Apocrypha and his free attitude towards such books as Esther, James, and Revelation are examples of his openness to criticism. Calvin’s occasional admission in his Commentaries of insoluble difficulties in the text and his thesis that critical problems of Scripture are to be settled by humanistic scholarship and not by church fiat are typical of his hospitality to criticism. But in none of this did the Reformers ever think of challenging the Holy Scriptures as the infallible source and norm of Christian theology. It was only in subsequent developments in theology that the theological norm of the Reformers was broken.
Even the most consistent fundamentalist admits the necessity of textual criticism, because one cannot translate the Bible until he has first determined the text. The same fundamentalist must also engage in the historical study of the canon, because that which he considers the Word of God is a specific list of books settled upon at a specific time by synagogue or church. Again, the same fundamentalist must say something about authorship, dates, and integrity of the books of the Bible, even if he only painfully reproduces the most traditional views.
The Reformers’ synthesis demands that if the Scriptures are the infallible document of revelation, they must be authentic. From the scraps to which radical criticism reduces the Bible no great Christian theology can be built. But neither can evangelical scholarship accept uncritically a whole battery of presuppositions about the nature of authenticity. In this writer’s opinion, the most trying and difficult days immediately ahead for evangelical theology have to do with the necessity for it to come to terms with what the authenticity of Scripture really is. Evangelical scholarship must show how it can intelligently interact with biblical studies, remain free from obscurantism, and yet maintain the theological authority and literary authenticity of Holy Scripture. A major step in this direction has been the publication of The New Bible Commentary and The New International Commentary. And an increasing number of young evangelical scholars give promise of effecting the synthesis between valid criticism and biblical authenticity.
The labyrinth prevails! And it poses these alternatives: agnosticism; a retreat to the absolutes and infallibilities of Roman Catholicism; the endless burning of options as advocated by Ebeling; or the revitalization of the synthesis of the Reformers. To this writer, it is only the latter that can end the labyrinth of contemporary theology. For only the synthesis of the Reformers can truly make Christian theology a science instead of a mere congerie of opinions.
T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.
- More fromBernard Ramm
Cover Story
George N. Patterson
What is the Comunists’ strategy for dealing with churches in Red China? A veteran journalist reports on the fate of Christians and evangelism.
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
What is the Communists’ strategy for dealing with churches in Red China? A veteran journalist reports on the fate of Christians and evangelism.
All activities in mainland China today are influenced by the increasing necessity being forced on the leaders in Peking of keeping the Communist revolutionary spirit alive. The recent and continuing “socialist education” campaign and the “intensify the class struggle” movement, both initiated to overcome the growing disinterest among second-generation Communists, sternly remind all concerned with education and information media of their “special charge” in molding the Communist party’s image of “worthy revolutionary successors,” and of their disappointing record to date. As one newspaper, the Canton Southern Daily, explained the task on December 18, 1964: “We must educate and influence the younger generation with proletarian thinking and socialist trends and splash bright red colour on the pure souls of children.” It is against this background that any evaluation of the state of Christianity in Communist China must be made.
While there is no evidence that the Chinese Communist authorities have reason to fear a resurgence of revitalized Christianity after fifteen years of uneasy coexistence and adjustment, there is evidence of a concern in Peking over the part religion could play in the present widespread second-generation weariness—to put it cautiously—with austerity, slogans, incessant meetings, and unproductive sacrifice. The possible threat from religion in this present phase seemed to become apparent in 1963; since the winter of that year increasing numbers of articles have appeared in Communist periodicals indicating that the leaders are aware of an unhealthy and even dangerous interest in religion.
As a professional journalist based in Hong Kong, I have found that it is one thing to collect information on broad lines of policy from China, and quite another to get first-hand authoritative reports of the political or religious situation. In seeking the following information I interviewed as many Christian leaders, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, as possible in Hong Kong and Macao, questioned recent arrivals from the mainland, and read all the official, monitored reports put out by the leading government and news agencies. But what, in my opinion, has made all the foregoing really significant has been my opportunity to talk with a former leading Chinese Communist party official who had been in charge of the Communist religious policy at a high level since the Communists came to power, but who recently escaped to Hong Kong. He has been using the code name Hsiao Feng for reasons of security.
Hsiao Feng, a senior cadre member of the Chinese Communist party working with civil affairs and a non-religious man, was given sole responsibility for managing religious affairs in Canton when the Communists took over in 1949. What was decided in discussions in other cities, especially Peking, came to him in the form of detailed minutes and official memoranda, so that he was fully informed of Communist party treatment of religious activities throughout the whole country. Since arriving in Hong Kong, moreover, he has been receiving at least two letters a week from friends and former colleagues. He was responsible for meeting religious delegations to mainland China, for escorting them, and, of course, for briefing the various Chinese church leaders as to what their replies should be before the delegations ever set foot in China.
His primary responsibility as a senior ranking cadre member in the bureau concerned with religious affairs, he states, was to ensure the extinction of religion from Chinese society. But this was not to be brought about by “rough or severe measures.”
“[Chinese] Communists adopt another course,” Hsiao said, “by which they can derive some benefit from religions, reform the nature of religions, and make the religions serve Marxism-Leninism. Even in its most confidential documents the Chinese Communist party does not use the word ‘destroy’ or ‘ruin,’ as is also the case in purely theoretical journals or the press when religious problems are referred to.”
In support of this he quoted what Hsi Chung-hsun, vice-director of the propaganda department of the C.C.P. Central Committee, said at the first National Conference on Religious Work held in Peking in 1953:
Outright prohibition is useless; it will only hurt our Party. Religion is a form of social consciousness. If we prohibit it by administrative order, fanaticism will result, possibly bringing with it religious riots. Therefore, if we are to destroy it, we must do it gradually by other methods.
These methods were being used by the Religious Affairs Bureau when Hsiao Feng left China for Hong Kong, and still are. Briefly, his interpretation of his duties and analysis of his department’s activities in the ten years he was in charge, from 1953, is as follows:
The provisional Constitution of State had said that “the people of the People’s Republic of China shall have freedom of religious belief.” But, Hsiao says, except for regulations for the protection of religious buildings and objects of religious and cultural value, there was no detailed regulation issued by the central government (or by provincial, municipal, or district governments) for implementing this constitutional provision. “We only had a secretly understood way of dealing with religious affairs and personal interpretation of this religious policy.” The actual management of religious affairs was the responsibility of the subsection on “social organizations” of the “social affairs” section, which in turn was a section of the Civil Affairs Bureau. The only work guide the Civil Affairs officials had was Foundations of Leninism, by Stalin.
Hsiao’s own directives to religious leaders and church workers were for them to follow the directives of the Party’s Central Committee. The three main directives were: (1) People who believe in a religion have freedom; (2) people who do not believe in religion also have freedom, including the freedom to be against religion (but religious believers were not usually allowed to hear the last phrase); (3) people have freedom to change religious belief.
In practice this meant that all religious activities of any group could be held only in that group’s place of worship—e.g., Christian activities in churches, Buddhist activities in monasteries or nunneries. The reason given for this approach was that it “protected” religious activities from being disturbed by non-religious people, and at the same time protected non-religious people from being disturbed by the religious. Thus Christians could sing hymns only in their churches, Buddhists could not liberate living creatures out of doors, and Buddhist or Taoist priests could not be engaged to conduct a ritual for the dead in a private home. Even more strictly prohibited were pilgrimages to holy places, street distribution of tracts, and street meetings.
The application of these directives resulted in a redistribution of Christians among the various denominations. A Catholic or Protestant could change his faith if he chose. One could join several groups at one time. Anyone could introduce some different “religious” idea into his church or could openly oppose the accepted doctrines, rules, and practices. Since it was impossible to obtain permission to establish a new church, the only way for any new group to be established was for it to take over the authority or position of one already in existence. According to Hsiao, the indigenous Christian Assembly (Little Flock)—a group similar to the Plymouth Brethren in the West—has been the greatest beneficiary of this movement, not only in Peking but also in other leading cities in China. The Roman Catholic Church was the most resistant, but the authority of the priests was undermined gradually and it became difficult for them to enforce discipline. For instance, it was impossible for them to enforce the rule that a Catholic should not marry a non-Catholic.
The Three-Self Movement
When interreligious and interdenominational conflicts arose all over the country because of these directives, the officials concerned with religious affairs were instructed not to get directly involved but to take advantage of such conflicts in order to bring participants into conformity with Communist party principles. The Three-Self Movement, with its concern for self-propagation, self-support, and self-government of the churches, was under government pressures to receive no foreign funds and in every way to dissociate itself from agencies outside China. The aim was for “an autonomous church in China.” The propaganda department of the Communist party sent out an order saying: “The Party neither prohibits nor supports the development of religion, but seeks actively to lead religious people to carry out the Three-Self Movement and gradually reduce religious influence.” This policy has produced two trends of major importance to the future of Christianity in China: increasing secularization of the churches associated with the government-sponsored Three-Self Movement, and the growth of “underground home congregations,” to use Hsiao’s own term.
According to Hsiao, the bureau that deals with religious affairs held a secret “National Religious Works Meeting” every year at which the conditions and activities of every religion in the country were reported, examined, and discussed. Various policies were planned to deal with the different situations, and the conclusions were presented in a confidential document for members. Hsiao claims that by the time he left China, the emphasis of the Three-Self Movement was no longer “self-propagation, self-support, and self-government”; it now seeks to indoctrinate all priests and pastors in political and current affairs, and to make every church activity conform to government policy. The Peking leaders hope that politics will replace religion and that the church will become simply a propaganda organization.
The conclusion of the last “National Religious Works Meeting” report was that Catholics were more united, stricter, and more conservative religiously than Protestants. The Protestants, with their many sectarian contradictions, were easier to control. The “social gospel” Protestants were enlightened, comparatively speaking; the fundamentalists were conservative and obstinate, and were opposed to the Three-Self Movement. Fundamentalist pastors were reckoned more likely to become “objects of struggle” in any political movement. Catholicism was viewed as being reactionary and obstinate, openly opposed to the Three-Self Movement, while Protestantism was seen as crafty and cunning, participating in the movement while secretly trying to upset it.
The Central Committee directive instructed each religious affairs division throughout the country to “infuse Marxist thought into positive doctrines which can be used in each religion.” This was taken to mean that each religious affairs leader had to search out influential and reliable persons—Party members, if possible—in the various churches, who, after strict tests, might be absorbed into a “hidden strength” organization. Their task would be to collect secret information about other church leaders or members, train themselves to manage church affairs, and in time replace older pastors.
The Union Theological Seminary, Peking, is supposed to be free from government control; but it is run by influential Party members, and most of the students are government-selected and are expected to carry out the above policy. Although there is a smaller proportion of Party members in Nanking Theological Seminary, the policy is still the same, and the results can be seen in the diminishing number of applicants for the ministry. The Union Theological Seminary in Canton was closed down altogether in 1960 “because of a shortage of personnel.” In their teaching, the new Communist-line graduates oppose “supernatural sermons,” especially those dealing with the “final judgment” of Catholicism, the “second coming of Christ,” and “the last days of the world” of Protestantism. The Christian Assembly (Little Flock) was ordered to “abolish its women’s meetings, its weekly breaking of bread, its personal interviews with church members before the breaking of bread, and its rule against women speaking in church.” All men and women are equal in the New China, and all Christians must now preach world peace, patriotism, love of the people, and “support for the actual world.”
Religion On Record
The officials in charge of religious affairs keep a confidential record of every preacher and administrative worker of every religious organization. This record contains his (or her) photograph, a sample of his writing, his biography, and a list of his activities regarded as political. Catholic priests and fundamentalist pastors who “emphasize the conflicts between religion and the world, or the thought of dying for one’s religion,” with texts taken from the Bible, cannot be prohibited openly since this is their legal right (“This,” Hsiao says, “is a very difficult problem”), but they are called to the religious affairs department office to be “persuaded and educated.” They are also warned that this is being recorded against them in their report; and officials wait until they find evidence of some other misdemeanor and use all the evidence in a “determining judgment.”
The second major trend to result from the government’s religious policy is connected with the first: because of the increasing secularization of churches, there has been a proliferation of “underground home congregations.” Until 1958 there was no law against having meetings in private houses; but because of the growing number of these groups (whose exact figure was never known), and the Communist conviction that the successful early spread of Christianity in China was due to this method, it was decided to stop the spread without actual banning or persecution. Party members would go to church leaders and “persuade” them to discourage church members or persons known to be gathering in houses, to “keep the meetings in the church, since house meetings are beyond the scope of religious activities recognized by the authorities.” Hsiao told how he had closed the Kwangchow Christian Assembly when he discovered that members were distributing a pamphlet entitled “Christians and Communist Party Members,” which stated that because Christianity and Communism professed different faiths, cooperation between them was impossible. The church was declared a “reactionary group” and closed by government order. But the congregation, although scattered, began to gather in small groups in houses, while continuing to petition the municipal and central governments to restore their church to them. It was decided officially that to give them back their church would be better than to run the risk of multiplying clandestine “underground home congregations.”
Jack Chow, Hong Kong-based correspondent for the “Voice of America,” is from mainland China and an outstanding Christian. In 1962 he wrote an article, entitled “Invisible Church on Mainland,” based on interviews with new arrivals in Hong Kong. In it he describes the growth of “home fellowship groups”—which he says are still multiplying.
One of the arrivals, the wife of a former professor at Peking University … says that there are many such small groups formed by people whose churches have been either shut down or taken over by the Communists.
They meet irregularly but not infrequently at different homes for prayer meetings, Bible study and fellowship. They preach privately whenever and wherever possible. They have won many souls who have found God a great help in time of trouble.
This widespread and significant development was confirmed to me from other very divergent sources recently. A non-Christian Chinese merchant friend of mine now living in Hong Kong who visited Peking last year called on a longtime bank-manager friend who had become a Christian at a private house meeting. In the ensuing conversation and later correspondence, my Chinese friend’s wife has become a Christian. Another Chinese doctor has just heard from her doctor brother in Sinkiang, who writes glowingly of opportunities for witness and encouraging conversions. And one of the Catholic priests I have interviewed also says that news from his former parish in Anwei Province indicates that Roman Catholics, too, are leaving the large churches for the more personal meetings in private homes, ministered to at considerable risk by Chinese priests and lay believers.
T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.
- More fromGeorge N. Patterson
Philip Edgcumbe Hughes
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
The voice of the prophet who faithfully and without favor proclaims the Word of the living God is urgently needed today. The authentic prophet (and his kind still exists) is unlikely to meet with popularity. His message will be belittled as outmoded, irrelevant, and puritanical. People will say: “Prophesy good things, not evil. Tell us that all is well, that all is subjective, that all is relative; don’t speak to us about absolutes and about judgment.” But the true prophet is one who cannot keep silence. The Word is as a lire burning within him, and he must speak, whether the people heed or whether they spurn his message. We are thankful, therefore, that the voice of two witnesses has been raised again through the publication of another book by Sir Arnold Lunn, the distinguished Roman Catholic author and Alpinist, and Mr. Garth Lean, who is an Anglican. Like their earlier book, The New Morality, which was published last year, the new volume entitled The Cult of Softness sounds a call of alarm to our Western world.
The point is made that the cult of softness “is a recurring phenomenon in the history of nations, and becomes pronounced in a period of decline, as was the case in the sunset of the Roman Empire,” and the warning is given that “today the Communist nations, who are less infected by the cult of softness, may be destined for a role in the modern world analogous to that of the barbarians who overthrew the Roman Empire.” This, of course, will be prophetic fare of the most unpalatable kind to those who are intent on the soft and selfish way of life. The joint-authors, however, are not prophets of inevitable doom. Their main purpose is to call our civilization back to the old paths before it is too late. In their judgment, the most disquieting feature of our age is to be seen in the open revolt against absolute standards. They produce an amplitude of evidence to prove their case.
The lostness of contemporary “culture” which frenetically attempts to locate meaning in the meaningless, normality in perversion, and the absolute in the relative, and for which the only standard is the repudiation of all standards, finds expression in the theater, where homosexuality and the lavatory are now approved themes; in the incoherent blatherings of avant-garde “poetry”; in the vulgar impostures of modern “art” that would insult the intelligence of a dog; in the novel that canonizes filth as a form of beauty; in the situation-“ethics” that reduces morality to the relativity of inter-personal relations; and in the “theology” that banishes the absolute of the Gospel and the objectivity of God.
Again, in the field of crime and social justice the doctrine is rapidly becoming fashionable that the real victim is the criminal, whose actions are conditioned by heredity and environment and irresistible impulses for which he is not responsible, and who therefore must be pampered and not punished. The doctrine is put forward on compassionate grounds. “But,” our joint-authors ask, “is it compassionate to tell people that they cannot help committing crime? Does this fill a weak man with hope and resolution? Or does it encourage him in the illusion that resistance to temptation is useless? We may also ask whether this attitude is compassionate towards the victim of the crime.” It would be difficult to imagine anything more destructive of the dignity of man, let alone the health of society. Dostoevsky had something to say of the advocates of this kind of doctrine in Crime and Punishment: “Their point of view is well known,” he wrote; “crime is a protest against bad and abnormal social conditions and nothing moral. No other causes are admitted. Nothing!… Human nature isn’t taken into account at all. Human nature is banished. Human nature isn’t supposed to exist.”
In the sphere of theology, some much publicized churchmen are charged by our joint-authors with a seeming lack of intellectual integrity. “It is not honest to God,” they say, “and it is certainly dishonest to man, the man in the pew, for a priest to repudiate, if only by implication, the basic doctrines which he is ordained to preach.” These basic doctrines are defined as the belief in a personal God who hears and answers prayer, the belief in the deity of Jesus of Nazareth, and the belief that he proved his claims by miracles “and by the miracle of the Resurrection in particular.” A minister who rejects any of these basic beliefs is advised that he should join the Unitarians.
In this connection, they insist on the importance in theology of “semantic honesty,” or honesty in the use of theological terms. “It is dishonest to man,” they affirm, “to confuse ‘repudiation’ and ‘reinterpretation.’ The more extreme modernists who reject the Resurrection are not reinterpreting, they are repudiating Christianity.”
With reference to the ecumenical movement, they urge that the essential and only practicable way forward is for cooperation in the militant proclamation of the faith and morality of Christian orthodoxy. “We are convinced,” they say, “that there is a very real possibility of a great Christian revival if authentic Christians can achieve a courageous and co-ordinated resistance to the confident and militant secularism which has made such inroads on what was once a Christian civilization.” “But,” they add, “we need not only a concerted defence but still more a concerted attack, for defence was never intended to be the main activity of the Church militant.”
The cult of softness has eaten into the very Church itself. Brethren, let us rouse ourselves and march forward to do battle in the name of the Lord of hosts!
This fortnightly review is contributed in sequence by J. D. Douglas, Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Harold B. Kuhn, G. C. Berkouwer, and Addison H. Leitch.—ED.
- More fromPhilip Edgcumbe Hughes
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Man’s most desperate need is spiritual. But in the pace of the world today, this need is often obscured by physical, emotional, and social problems. It sometimes happens that a man seeks medical aid when he should sec his pastor. Or it may also happen that he asks for his pastor’s counsel when what he really needs is psychotherapy. These and related concerns are explored in the panel discussion moderated by Assistant Editor Frank Farrell and participated in by evangelical psychiatrists (see the opposite page); in the essay by Dr. Finch (page 7); and in a news feature (page 38).
The lead editorial (page 20) is relevant to Independence Day. Another major editorial considers the problem of premarital sex in the light of scriptural principles.
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
NEWS: Summary
What happens when a doctor finds that the one method he sees for saving a patient’s life conflicts with the patient’s faith? How can medicine and religion help each other in such problem areas?
Early this spring a dozen men, meeting in Salisbury, Maryland, began cautiously exploring these questions. The venture was noteworthy, for those taking part were medical doctors, national officials of the American Medical Association, and members of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religious group that opposes blood transfusions and that has an active contingent in Salisbury.
Although the statement issued afterward was long on such phrases as greater “understanding” and short on details, the confrontation itself was termed unprecedented, and it will probably be followed by more meetings. The Witnesses informally invited two of the men to their New York headquarters for further talks.
The two men were the Rev. Paul B. McCleave and Arne E. Larson, the director and assistant director of the Department of Medicine and Religion of the American Medical Association, and the meeting was only one of a number of results of the department’s formation in 1961.
The aim of the department is to “create the proper climate for communication between the physician and the clergyman that will lead to the most effective care and treatment of the patient,” says a department brochure.
After getting advice from the leaders of fifteen major religious bodies and leading physicians, the department went straight to the local level, conducting, through county medical societies, pilot programs in twenty-seven counties. The idea has caught on to such a degree that 637 county society programs have been carried out, and forty-nine states have approved a program of medicine and religion. The Maryland Stale Medical Journal devoted most of its March issue to medicine and religion, carrying articles entitled “What the Clergyman Expects from the Doctor” and “What the Doctor Expects of the Pastor.”
The Department of Medicine and Religion is also beaming its message at hospital chaplains, young seminarians, and medical students. So far three state medical schools (in Kansas, Indiana, and South Dakota) have introduced programs on medicine and religion. Kansas University Medical Center offers a ten-hour course on the subject, and the University of Colorado is to begin a post-graduate course for physicians and clergymen.
The AMA’s venture in dispelling distrust on both sides and establishing rapport is one of a number of efforts stressing the care of the “whole man” that have grown up in the United States in recent years.
Under this heading come the Academy of Religion and Mental Health, the Committee on Religion and Psychiatry of the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Association of Pastoral Counselors. The last group has not yet solved the problem of general standards and accreditation, and for this reason it is viewed with some suspicion. However, a number of physicians and psychiatrists attended, as individuals, the AAPC’s last conference.
One of the pioneers in the field is the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry, started in 1937 by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and a medical doctor, Stanley Blanton, who studied under Sigmund Freud and who is the present director. Until recently its activities have been confined to New York, but it is now opening three clinics in the West and Midwest and is expanding its pastoral training program. This group was instrumental in getting the AAPC started two years ago.
Are so many different organizations necessary? Wouldn’t it help to coordinate them?
Arthur M. Tingue, executive director of the AFRP, says that coordination would be “very useful” and that it is already developing to some extent. As an example he cited the merger of the Council for Clinical
Training and the Institute of Pastoral Care, made possible by a grant by W. Clement Stone, chairman of the board of directors of the AFRP.
The movement is still organizationally diffuse, but it is doing what its backers hoped it would—bringing together doctors and ministers, sometimes in bedside consultations with patients. But the AMA’s new department sees the present challenge still as establishing rapport and studying problems. Some of these are:
—How to clear up confusion in the roles of medicine and religion and still treat the “whole man” without dividing him into compartments;
—How long a doctor is morally bound to sustain the life of a dying man;
—How the churches should educate their people regarding the meaning of disease and death;
—Whether and when ministers should make referrals to physicians and psychiatrists, and vice versa;
—The role of the clergyman in shaping healthy public attitudes toward psychiatry and mental illness.
The last point was underscored recently by the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Stanley F. Yolles, who envisions a network of 500 to 600 community mental health centers throughout the country by 1970.
“It is apparent,” he said, “that, as community leaders, the clergy of all faiths have a very important part to play in developing and promoting the centers.… The clergy not only know a broad cross section of the population, but also know it in depth. From this vantage point they are in the best position, excepting perhaps for the family doctor, to make referrals. The neurotic and the psychotic are often frightened as well as confused, so it is important that the suggestion that they seek help come from a person in whom they have confidence.… Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy can often put the patient on the right track. But it is religion that can help him realize that the track leads somewhere.”
Protestant Panorama
The Methodist Board of Missions announced last month that it had become the recipient of a $2,000,000-plus bequest. The gift, from the estate of the late Holbert L. Harris of Arlington, Virginia, is one of the largest sums of money ever contributed to Christian missionary effort. The estate is in the form of income-producing property that is expected to support sixteen missionary couples a year. Before his death Harris donated to the board a $750,000 motel near Richmond, the income from which now supports three medical missionaries.
The Latin America Mission’s “Evangelism-in-depth” team in the strife-torn Dominican Republic has moved its base of operations away from the capital, Santo Domingo, and team members have been visiting other parts of the country without hindrance. The mission estimates that $5,000 will be needed to cover expenses incurred as a result of the Dominican Republic crisis.
The Rev. Peter Deyneka, director of the Slavic Gospel Association, preached at Sunday services in the Moscow Baptist Church to audiences of 2,000 and 2,500. In Leningrad he spoke at a Wednesday night prayer service attended by 1,000 people.
West Indian Methodists and Anglicans have concluded a series of talks on cooperation and possible union, and will resume the discussion in November in Barbados.
Miscellany
A silver plaque presented by Pope Paul VI to a Jewish children’s organization was sold at auction in England for $1,470. Proceeds will go to the Italian Anne Frank Haven for Youth Aliyah in Northern Galilee.
The Constitutional Court of Italy has upheld laws making public insult of Roman Catholicism a crime.
Four theological faculties (Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and one non-denominational) have formed the Association of Theological Faculties in Iowa. They are of, respectively, the Aquinas Institute of Theology, the Theological Seminary of the University of Dubuque, Wartburg Seminary, and the School of Religion at the State University of Iowa (Iowa City).
Personalia
Milo A. Rediger, former vice-president and academic dean of Taylor University (Upland, Indiana), was elected president of the university.
Kendig Brubaker Cully was elected dean of the Biblical Seminary in New York.
Dr. Kurt Schmidt-Clausen has resigned as general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation to accept a staff position with the Lutheran Church of Hannover, whose 3.8 million members make it the largest territorial church in West Germany.
John R. Beardslee, III, was elected to the Abraham Messier Quick Chair of Church History at the Reformed Church in America’s New Brunswick Theological Seminary, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Dr. James Allan Munro was elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
Leslie R. Keylock has been appointed assistant professor of theology at St. Norbert College, West De Pere, Wisconsin, and will thus represent classical Protestantism at a Roman Catholic college.
The Rev. Dr. D. Reginald Thomas, minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Germantown, Pennsylvania, has been called to be the pastor of the Brick Presbyterian Church on Park Avenue, New York City, succeeding Dr. Paul Austin Wolfe.
The Rev. Claude A. Horton was elected president of Lorne Park College (Free Methodist), Port Credit, Ontario. He succeeds the Rev. Byron Withenshaw, who resigned.
Herman J. Ridder was elected president of Western Theological Seminary (Reformed Church in America), Holland, Michigan.
Ralph P. Martin, visiting professor at Bethel College and Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, was named lecturer in New Testament studies at the University of Manchester, England.
They Say
“As Student Body President at the University of California at Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement controversy I was intimately exposed to many agonizing, painful hours and days of political strife between students, faculty and administrators.… Into this life of turmoil and frustration stepped Jesus Christ. I was encouraged by a Campus Crusade for Christ staff member to invite Christ into my heart and life and to let Him take over the controls. Although hesitant at first, I invited Christ in, and His calm, sure, confident way settled the deep unrest of my soul. I have begun to experience the peace and the great adventure of life which God said is available to all, if we but ask.”—Charles R. Powell, in Collegiate Challenge Magazine.
- More fromGeorge Williams
James Daane
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
NEWS: Church Assemblies
Reformed Church Moves Toward Union
On a sticky hot June afternoon, delegates to the 159th annual session of the Reformed Church of America General Synod debated a proposal to begin drafting a plan of union with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern). Arguments in favor of moving toward union were diversified if not profound. Some argued that the loss of the church’s name would be a gain, since comparatively few people know the name, and some think it representative of a “funny sect”; the 384,000-member church in fact claims to be the oldest with continuous service in the United States. Others argued that union would make for a more effective witness and deliver the church from its sectional character. The chief argument against union was based on the fear that merger with the 930,000 Southern Presbyterians might eventually carry them into a union with the 3.3-million-member United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., for which most delegates apparently had little heart and less stomach.
After a protracted but good-spirited debate, the proposal to draft a plan of union was adopted by a 246–16 vote. A similar proposal was approved this spring by the Southern Presbyterian General Assembly. If no delays are encountered, the merger could be consummated by 1969.
In other action of the General Synod, held June 3–9 at Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, permission was granted the members of the Reformed Church to engage “in acts of civil disobedience.” In taking this stand, the synod adopted the position of the World Alliance of Reformed and Presbyterian Churches: “There may come a time in spite of efforts to correct it when a law prevails that keeps people from receiving justice and thus conflicts with the purposes of God revealed in the Gospel. At such a time … a Christian … may engage alone or with others in an act of civil disobedience … [if] … his actions are taken first in the spirit of a faithful servant of his faithful Lord, and in sight and knowledge of authorities, and with a full willingness to accept the consequences imposed upon him by society under existing law.” The synod also called on its classes (regional jurisdictions) “to sustain and encourage ministers and laymen in their churches who may find themselves in difficulties because of their adherence … to official pronouncements of the General Synod in the area of race relations.”
In response to an overture of the Particular Synod of Michigan that the General Synod withdraw from the National Council of Churches, delegates voted almost unanimously to retain their affiliation with the NCC. The synod also approved distribution among its membership of the booklet, “The Truth about the National Council of Churches.”
Sharing the concern of the World Council of Churches over the millions of evangelicals outside the ecumenical movement whose “theological convictions” and “missionary zeal” could enrich the WCC and the whole ecumenical fellowship, the General Synod placed the problem in the hands of its Interchurch Relations Committee.
The synod’s 294 delegates also called for:
•Preparation of a statement asserting the “church’s firm position against the abuse of alcoholic beverages”;
•A definitive statement of the Reformed Church’s position on the “so-called New Morality”;
•A change in the church’s constitution that would allow for the ordination of women to the offices of elder and deacon—a change that would require the approval of two-thirds of the church’s classes.
Delegates expressed disapproval of the “retention of capital punishment as an instrument of justice within our several states.”
The assembly elected the Rev. Donner B. Atwood of Pompton Plains, New Jersey, as its new president, to succeed the Rev. Gorden L. Van Oostenburg.
In a stirring address, President Don Lubbers of Central College, Pella, Iowa, described the serious problems facing the denomination’s three colleges, bluntly telling the delegates that “the colleges are asking the church if it wants to continue in the business of higher Christian education or not.”
After fifteen years of efforts to revise the church’s liturgy, the General Synod sent down to its forty-six classes a revision of twelve of its obligatory liturgical forms. This action was preceded by much theological discussion, part of which turned on the question whether baptism administered in the Reformed Church was a baptism into this church or into the “Holy Catholic Church.” Delegates accepted the latter, but only as qualified by the term “visible.”
Although its membership totals 384,065, the oldest church in America increased the number of its congregations during 1964 only from 921 to 922. Yet the vitality of its 1965 General Synod showed that old churches neither die nor fade away, but live and revive as the Spirit moves within them.
Maturity In Schism
Encouraging signs of maturity were shown by Conservative Baptists at their May 31-June 4 annual meeting in Denver. They took with equanimity the news that a dissident group is breaking away. They displayed, moreover, a deep concern for relating their biblical thrust to contemporary ethical, moral, and social concerns.
The order of business was changed to allow time to discuss and pass a resolution on race relations. With hardly a ripple of dissent, the “messengers” resolved that:
“We, as Conservative Baptists, while proclaiming the saving gospel of Christ to the ends of the earth, be equally concerned to welcome to the hearing of the gospel in our churches people of every racial and ethnic background in our midst, and be it further resolved that in keeping with New Testament principles, membership in the local church be based upon faith, not race, upon personal relationship to Christ, not color, so that all who are ‘in Christ’ can participate fully in the worship and witness of the church at home and abroad, to the glory of God, without regard to race or ethnic origin.”
A small minority trying to gain control of the Conservative Baptist movement apparently had given up hope, and in preconvention sessions it voted to form its own organization under the name, “New Testament Association of Baptist Churches.” The most optimistic leaders of the dissident group predicted that 150 churches might unite with the new organization.
At least one leader of the splinter group has reportedly refused to endorse the new organization, feeling that “hard core” churches should align with the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches. The ideology of the two groups is quite similar.
There are very few doctrinal differences between the “hard core” and Conservative Baptists generally. The separatists focus their criticism on the evangelistic ministry of Billy Graham.
In spite of the prevailing tensions, the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society reported a 13 per cent increase in giving. The society did not yet have a new general director to present to the constituency. The office has been vacant for over a year.
The Conservative Baptist Home Mission Society also reported that income had exceeded its budget. Its director, Rufus Jones, called for fifty missionaries for an inner-city ministry in twenty major urban areas in the United States. As an example of concern, the society plans to involve the entire constituency in a ministry in the inner-city area of Philadelphia when Conservative Baptists gather there for their 1966 annual session.
The messengers took a strong stand against glossolalia. They said that they do not believe “this so-called phenomenon of speaking in tongues, as taught and practiced by the modern tongues movement,” to be scripturally based, and that it “therefore cannot have any part in our Conservative Baptist church life.” But the messengers encouraged the constituency “to give greater emphasis to the total ministry of the Holy Spirit in our churches.”
The new president of the association is Dr. Herbert Anderson, minister of the Hinson Memorial Baptist Church of Portland, Oregon. Dr. Lloyd T. Anderson, minister of the Bethany Baptist Church of West Covina, California, was re-elected president of the Foreign Mission Society, and Dr. Russell Pavy, minister of the Bethel Baptist Church of Denver, was re-elected president of the Home Mission Society.
ROBERT P. DUGAN, JR.
Joining The Bandwagon
Some 7,000 Christian Scientists, attending the annual meeting of The Mother Church in Boston recently, were urged to climb on the ecumenical bandwagon.
The message from the Board of Directors made it plain that the time has come for members to seek “areas of agreement” with people of other denominations rather than regarding themselves as “entirely different or exclusive.” On the basis of its spirituality, “Christian Science has much in common with other denominations.”
The board called attention to the fact that “we are confronted with one of history’s deepest, most divisive social upheavals. Marking this upheaval is the churning drive of the individual to find the real meaning of life and to establish his legitimate place and identity in an increasingly complex and impersonal society.”
The directors stated that “social and governmental organizations … helpful and important as these efforts are … do not get to the root of the trouble.” They noted that “people everywhere are crying out for healing—healing in its larger and broader sense: the overcoming of sin and fear, of ignorance and sorrow.” “Sooner or later,” the message said, “both the individual and society must become willing to face up to the start and tragic results of rooting their faith in the disappointing promises of matter.” This reliance on matter not only “cuts men off from God” but “pulls them down and pulls them apart.”
The Christian Scientist solution to these problems is to be found in the working basis of their religious persuasion: the “understanding of God as divine love, all-inclusive spirit, is the one force [our italics] that can truly hold men together in understanding and harmony.”
Founded in 1879 by Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Science has long been looked upon as outside the pale of the historic Christian faith.
Denying the reality of matter, sin, disease, and death, it has altered basic Christian doctrines beyond recognition. It adds to the Bible Mrs. Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures; is Unitarian (p. 256 of Science and Health); believes that the Comforter or Holy Spirit is Divine Science (p. 55); denies that Christ died on the cross (p. 44); rejects the deity of Christ (p. 361); and spurns justification by faith alone (p. 22).
From The Prairie
The Apostolic Church of Pentecost of Canada discussed plans at its annual meeting to expand its ministry in the heavily populated Province of Ontario. Described as “prairie-oriented,” the fellowship’s 130 churches are located chiefly in other provinces.
Plans call for groups of several married couples to move into communities where the denomination has no church and to establish one. Several couples have already volunteered.
The church, which combines Pentecostalism with a Calvinistic orientation, has 12,000 members and sixty foreign missionaries. The Rev. E. L. McRae was elected to the office of moderator for a three-year term.
- More fromJames Daane
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
In Montgomery, Alabama, eight days of evangelistic meetings with Billy Graham in mid-June produced a new potential for personal and social reconciliation in the estranged South.
The most explicit purpose of the racially integrated Montgomery crusade was to win individuals to Christ, and the 2,000 decisions recorded in the first five services reflected a bountiful harvest of changed lives. Some observers, moreover, were hopeful that the joint evangelistic effort of whites and Negroes in the “Cradle of the Confederacy” would conspicuously alleviate racial tensions.
Graham found the city resplendent with the bloom of crape myrtle, but Christians and unbelievers alike retained vivid memories of the historic racial tension in Selma and Montgomery three months before. The evangelist chose, therefore, not to issue any reminders. During the first part of the crusade he made only broad references to the race problem. The city proved generally tolerant of his stipulation of integrated seating, and the reaction of the local citizenry to this significant break in the segregationist pattern was surprisingly mild. The only occurrence to mar preparations for the crusade was the defacing of three billboards advertising the meetings.
“What is your god?” Graham asked the crowd at Cramton Bowl, the 24,000-seat stadium that is the site of the annual Blue-Gray football classic. “We all have something we believe in. You may even have a caricature of Christianity as your religion.”
The crusade began in the rain. A heavy, hour-long downpour delayed the start of the first service and soaked the crowd in the open grandstands. Hundreds left but about 8,000 stayed, and some struck up an impromptu song service while waiting out the rain. The service was held, and the sun eventually broke through to cheer the persevering.
After the rain of the opening day, most of the remainder of the week was cloudy and cool.
The weather was but one of the difficulties that had worried crusade organizers. All the preparations had to be completed in record time. “We had to do in six weeks what usually takes six months,” said Willis Haymaker, veteran organizer of evangelistic crusades. Graham’s choice of Haymaker to head the Montgomery effort was in itself a significant decision. The genial, 65-year-old Haymaker has laid the groundwork for scores of crusades dating back to Gypsy Smith in the 1930s. His experience and sense of diplomacy provided key ingredients.
The decision to hold a crusade in Montgomery was made in the early spring. As the racial crisis in March approached its climax, Graham dispatched three associates to Alabama. The team had received several invitations to hold a crusade, but it was unclear whether the interest of local pastors was intense enough to assure broad participation. Unanimous invitations from the two local ministerial associations convinced Graham. Several April meetings were scheduled in calmer areas of Alabama, and June 13–20 was set aside for Montgomery.
Would there be agitation from racists? Would white Christians refuse to participate side by side with Negroes? Where would committee meetings and planning sessions be held (the bi-racial crusade leadership was able to meet in few churches, for most white congregations still bar Negroes)?
The first public crisis was faced at the opening choir rehearsal. As the singers came in and took seats, they quite naturally segregated themselves. Pianist Tedd Smith broke the ice by sitting down with the Negro group and starting up a conversation. The mixing seemed to come easy after that, even though a white soprano complained that “I had to change my seat four times.”
Negroes outnumbered whites at the first choir rehearsal by about two to one. But more whites showed up as the crusade progressed. Eventually the race ratio in the choir, as well as in the audience, reflected remarkably well the whites’ two-to-one population edge over the Negroes in the city of Montgomery (population: 150,000).
Perhaps the most moving sights in Montgomery occurred at the close of each service, when white and Negro inquirers assembled to pray together on the Bermuda-grass turf in front of the platform. In a number of cases Negro Christians counseled whites who had responded to the invitation.
Such achievements will not easily be forgotten. National news media, however, took little notice of the crusade, and the outside world, which considers Montgomery a marked city, was left uninformed of the noteworthy advances. Montgomery is still best known for its resistance to racial integration, as a target of marchers, and as the place where the civil rights movement had its start with the bus boycotts in 1955.
Graham’s personal engagements in Montgomery included an 85-minute talk with Governor George C. Wallace, a Methodist, at the historic state capitol building (the first capitol of the Confederacy, where Jefferson Davis was inaugurated president). They talked over Coca-Cola, and the tee-totaling, cigar-chomping governor was invited to attend the crusade. Wallace did not immediately indicate whether he would accept the invitation.
During the week, Graham also addressed a special meeting of more than 200 ministers and laymen and a joint session of civic clubs with some 500 persons in attendance.
All in all, the people of Montgomery seem to be giving the Graham team a warm welcome. The rapport stemmed partly from the fact that the evangelist and his closest associates are themselves Southerners. More significant was the gentle, patient reliance upon persuasion.
Attendance at the crusade increased each day, from the 8,000 of the opening Sunday to 15,000 by Thursday evening. Graham challenged his listeners in the middle of the week to invite enough people to fill the stadium on the closing Sunday.
Among the special guests participating in the crusade were Miss Ethel Waters, Negro actress-singer famous for her rendition of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow”; Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, noted socialite who became a devotee of the Bible study movement after her conversion at Graham’s New York crusade in 1957; and Miss Carol Self (see succeeding story).
Thousands of feet of movie film were taken of the Montgomery crusade and will be edited into a special documentary for public showing. A number of prints of the film will be sent to Great Britain for use before the opening of Graham’s second London crusade, scheduled for 1966.
The local leadership of the crusade in Montgomery was in the hands of a thirty-member, bi-racial executive committee headed by a chairman and three co-chairmen, one of whom was a Negro minister, the Rev. A. W. Wilson, of Holt Street Baptist Church. Dr. J. R. White, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Montgomery, was chairman. Dr. Robert Strong, minister of Trinity Presbyterian Church, was a co-chairman, along with Robbins Taylor, a layman who is vice-president of the Standard Roofing Company in Montgomery.
Dr. Frank Tripp, noted Baptist hospital administrator and fund-raiser, headed the arrangements committee.
The crusade drew whites and Negroes from a wide area of Alabama. Some came from Selma, fifty miles away. Most of the more than 300 churches in the area were represented in the nightly crowds. Among these was the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King became famous. The church, located across the street from the state capitol, is currently without a pastor.
No one would prophesy that the crusade meant an end to street marches, fire hoses, and cattle prods. Demonstrations in the Deep South have stirred the consciences of some. They have intensified prejudice and hatred in others. One pastor said that many people in the Deep South now see all major ecclesiastical and political issues in the light of the race question.
Upon such matters, the crusade had no spectacular effect. One Graham aide, a native of Mississippi, did predict that the meetings would provide a new basis for communication which could mean progress for the future. “It’s only a small step,” he said, “but it was worth taking.”
A Candid Confession
A comely coed, standing before a crowd of 17,000 at Cramton Bowl, candidly confessed to religious misgivings just hours before she took the platform.
Miss Carol Self, a junior at the University of Alabama, had been invited to give a Christian testimony to the youth-night crowd at the Billy Graham crusade in Montgomery, Alabama. That afternoon, however, she tearfully admitted to Dr. W. Stanley Mooneyham, a Graham team member, that she really had nothing to say, that she had fallen victim to a succession of doubts.
As she described it, “I had dedicated my life when I was sixteen and I was completely on fire for the Lord. But in college I began to have doubts. I even went through a period of atheism.”
Mooneyham, an ordained minister and moderator of the National Association of Free Will Baptists, offered sympathetic counsel that afternoon, and Miss Self, a Methodist, seemed convinced at last.
When Mooneyham left, Miss Self recalled, the doubts returned. “I thought he had brainwashed me. I felt that I was just fooling myself.
“I said, ‘Okay, God, you better send him back,’ and about that time he knocked on the door.”
Miss Self, winner of a campus beauty contest, closed her testimony on a note of triumph, asserting that she had finally exercised her faith:
“I tried it,” she drawled. “Now I’ve got it.”
‘The Restless Ones’
An unusual plea in behalf of a new film appeared in the June issue of Decision. published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
Here is an excerpt from the plea by Dr. Sherwood E. Wirt, editor of Decision:
“I want the people in the church to see it.
“I want the people who never go to church to see it.
“I want some of our avant-garde clergy of Britain and America to see it—men like John Robinson and Erik Routley and George Target and Ted Gill and Malcolm Boyd and Harvey Cox and Don Benedict.
“I want Lyndon Johnson to see it.
“I want to have it shown in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Seaside, Oregon, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Newport, Rhode Island, and Selma, Alabama.
“I want it shown in the Greek Theatre of my alma mater, the University of California in Berkeley.
“I want the Gold Coast crowd on the Australian beaches to have the chance to see ‘The Restless Ones.’ And the Mods and Rockers at Blackpool and Brighton in England.
“I want the night lifers swarming the top of the Montmartre in Paris every night to have a look at it.…
“This is a picture that tells the world the truth.”
The 105-minute film produced by World Wide Pictures focuses upon the teen problem. It was shot against the backdrop of the Billy Graham evangelistic crusade in Los Angeles. Premieres are scheduled for mid-September.
After The Earthquake, Two Schools
“The tragedy in Alaska is that we have not been producing spiritual leadership,” says the Rev. John M. Gillespie, general director of Arctic Missions. In an effort to meet the challenge, two new Bible schools are to be established next year, one by Arctic Missions and one by Central Alaskan Missions.
Arctic Missions, whose headquarters is in Anchorage, will add a Bible institute to its high school near Palmer at a minimum cost of $65,000. The high school now has sixteen students. A number of its future graduates are expected to choose to continue their training at the new institute.
The thrust of the mission is toward the interior. Gospel teams sent to isolated interior areas have reported a number of conversions, says Mr. Gillespie.
Central Alaskan Missions has allocated eighty acres of land adjoining its headquarters at Glennallen for a Bible college. Each student will carry a Bible major. He will have the option, however, of a three-year diploma course, a four-year degree course, or a business course.
CAM’s priority project last year was a 5,000-watt radio station, which was completed just twelve hours before the Good Friday earthquake struck. The station did emergency duty for five days, then signed off to await final clearance from the Federal Communications Commission. “In all probability, KCAM is the only radio station to begin broadcasting as the result of an earthquake,” says a spokesman.
The Rev. Vincent J. Joy, CAM director, says that the freshman program for the new Bible college will begin in 1966 and that other classes will be added in succeeding years. Construction costs for the first year are being tentatively estimated at $100,000.
Free Time And ‘Freethought’
The Federal Communications Commission advised Mrs. Madelyn Murray last month that she is not entitled to free time from thirteen radio and television stations in Hawaii to reply to their broadcasts of religious services.
Mrs. Murray, who initiated a case against recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in public schools that led the Supreme Court to hold such religious exercises in the classroom unconstitutional, now resides in Honolulu. She complained to the commission that the stations carried from two to twenty-eight hours of religious broadcasts a week but denied her organization public service time for a program to present “freethought,” which she described as “the opposite of religion in every respect.”
The commission, in a brief letter to Mrs. Murray, said that the stations had been asked to reply to her charges and that they told the FCC that “freethought” is not “a sufficiently controversial issue of public importance in their respective service areas to warrant presentation.” The stations also said that they believe “the mere broadcast of church services, devotionals and prayers is not the presentation of a controversial issue of public importance within the meaning of the fairness doctrine.”
The commission said it could find no fault with these replies. The licensee, they said, is required only to make a “reasonable judgment in good faith” on the merits of each situation “as to whether a controversial issue of public importance is involved.”
The FCC said its task in passing on any complaint is not to substitute its own judgment for that of the station owners but merely “to determine if the licensee can be said to have acted reasonably and in good faith.”
On the basis of the facts presented, the commission members told Mrs. Murray that they believed the stations acted with reasonable judgment in granting her occasional appearances on free public service time but denying her any regularly scheduled program.
GLENN D. EVERETT
Ncc On Right-To-Work
The National Council of Churches drew fire last month when it entered the political debate over right-to-work laws and threw its weight in congressional hearings for repeal.
Prior to the testimony of Dr. J. Edward Carothers, secretary of the council’s Commission on the Church and Economic Life, nearly a hundred clergymen sent protest telegrams to members of the subcommittee-holding the hearings.
“No person may presume to speak on this issue on behalf of the Council’s membership, inasmuch as member congregations have not been polled on the repeal or retention of Section 14 (b),” the clergymen said.
This section of the Taft-Hartley Act authorizes the states to outlaw labor-management agreements requiring employees to pay dues to unions as a condition of continued employment.
Dr. Carothers said that he made no claim to speak for the 40 million members of the NCC-affiliated denominations, but he also said that the NCC General Board supported the repeal of the right-to-work provision and that the board was broadly representative of member churches.
Nineteen states have “right-to-work” laws. They are favored by many leading churchmen (who regard enforced union membership as an impingement on workers’ rights) and by several religious minor ity groups (such as the Mennonites, Amish. Seventh-day Adventists, Christian Reformed, Protestant Reformed, and Plymouth Brethren) who oppose joining unions on grounds of conscience. Several churchmen testified for these minority groups.
Ncc: Between Church And World
What distinguishes a church organization from a secular agency? With “the world” registering so much influence on the program of the National Council of Churches, officials of that far-flung organization are beginning to ask that question aloud.
To members of the NCC General Board gathered in New York for their June meeting, General Secretary R. H. Edwin Espy suggested that the council should be careful not to lose its unique place in American life.
The council has been consciously increasing its involvement in “the life of the world” in recent years, Dr. Espy reminded board members. On the other hand, he continued, “there is a subtle sense in which the life of the world makes many of our decisions for us.” “There is scarcely a program of the National Council that is not affected, consciously or unconsciously, soundly or mistakenly, by the impingement of the world,” the general secretary said.
Secular life is shaping a new role for the NCC, from one end of the organization to the other, Dr. Espy told the board; the council “has become a new factor in the life of the nation.” Various government agencies, private organizations, institutions, and individuals are coming to the NCC for answers to their questions about religion, he reported. And churchmen of every rank and stripe are coming to the council for a word on the world. The NCC’s chief executive said this might suggest for the organization a role of “mutually recognized central telephone operator” through which church and world could call each other.
Beside the practical reasons put forward by NCC officials for council involvement in secular affairs, are there also theological ones? In bringing this question before the board, Dr. Espy said it may now be time to re-examine what have been the “common theological assumptions” of NCC personnel.
“For the most part heretofore we have assumed that we have these common assumptions,” he told the policy-makers. “But the world may be getting us into trouble not only practically but theologically.”
Will the NCC be forced to develop a theology of its own, over and above the theologies of its thirty member denominations? The question is being seriously discussed. Can the council continue without more than the minimum statement now in its constitution?
At this point there is “a certain ambivalence in our expectations of the ecumenical movement,” Dr. Espy reminded the board members. On one hand, he said, “it is not appropriate” for the council to have a theology if it is to represent a variety of denominations with creeds of their own. On the other hand, “it is not possible for it to represent the churches soundly and effectively without some common theological assumptions.”
The board, which had asked for some kind of theological study of secular involvement at its meeting last December, listened with interest. No formal action was taken. The general secretary said only that the requested study is “under way.”
Entering a new field of political activity, the board approved a policy statement opposing the proposed Dirksen amendment or any other plan that would change legislative apportionment procedures. The debate over the issue drew to the microphones some of the council’s top leaders. David B. Cassat, a United Presbyterian layman from Iowa who is council treasurer, made a rare speech against “the establishment” and the proposed statement. Quick to defend the document, however, was his denomination’s stated clerk, Eugene Carson Blake.
When the question was called, only 100 of the more than 250 board members registered a vote. The tally was 77 for the statement, 16 against, and 7 abstaining.
The vote pointed up a problem brought before the board by one of its member denominations. At its April General Assembly, the Presbyterian Church U. S. asked the NCC to amend its rules to provide that at least half the board members would have to record votes before a policy statement could be enacted. In answer, the board reaffirmed its current procedures “as being a responsible representative form of government.” Present rules for adoption of policy statements require the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the board members present and voting. However, as little as one-fourth of the total board membership can enact a policy statement.
Board members indicated that they were aware of mounting criticism over pronouncements. After much debate, the second resolution on Viet Nam in as many board meetings was passed. The document reaffirmed the February action calling for negotiation and asked the government to reappraise its policy, particularly the bombing of North Viet Nam. Suggestions that the NCC policy-makers were not competent to advise the government on such specifics were pushed aside as the resolution was approved by a loud voice vote.
Speaking out on another trouble spot where American troops are involved, the board associated itself with a cable sent from one of the NCC divisions to Santo Domingo “questioning our government’s unilateral military action and insensitivity to the implications of such action.…”
The board, meeting at New York’s interdenominational Riverside Church, also:
—Approved a resolution on world hunger, asking the government to change a number of its policies to provide more food for the undernourished.
—Sent to the churches a message on “Christian Responsibilities for Education Through the Week,” calling for support of public schools, for teaching “about” religion in the schools, and for more effective Christian education within the churches.
—Authorized a national-level “working group” to consider possible collaboration with the American Roman Catholic Bishops’ Commission for Ecumenical Affairs, and seated the first official Roman observer at a board meeting, Msgr. William W. Baum, executive director of that commission.
ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS
Antidote For Smut
Across this country there are 55,000 drugstores, as familiar to the American way of life as baseball or apple pie. One out of five of these drugstores is identified as a Rexall store, and this month many hundreds of the 11,000 Rexall stores have a new sign on their newsstands. The sign invites the customer to call any objectionable material to the druggist’s attention, with the promise that it will be removed.
A strictly voluntary effort, the program has met mixed reactions. Ministerial groups, parent-teacher associations, and the like are overwhelmingly enthusiastic. But in some cases the refusal of the druggist to accept objectionable publications brought an ultimatum from the distributor that he take everything or nothing. And in some communities the Rexall druggist announced that his newsstand was empty, because he was sticking by his convictions.
Asks druggist Harry Powell, president of the International Association of Rexall Druggists: “Do we have any more right to allow the poisoning of the mind than we do the poisoning of the body?” Parent of teen-agers himself, Powell conceived the idea and has paved the way by cleaning up the newsstands in his five Southern California stores.
Ataturk Undone
Although the bells of scattered Orthodox churches still sound out every Sunday morning in ancient Istanbul, it is the city of mosques—nearly 2,000 of them. Most famous of all religious edifices there is the Cathedral of St. Sophia, which was a part of Orthodoxy till the Ottoman triumph of 1453, when it was turned into a mosque. This church with its striking Byzantine features is regarded as having had a greater influence on the history of art than any other single building. Kemal Ataturk (1881–1938), father of modern Turkey, converted it into a museum and center of archaeological work.
A few weeks ago, out of the anniversary celebrations for the Islamic conquest of Istanbul there arose demands that the building once more became a mosque. A meeting organized by those advocating this significantly closed with a special prayer for the soul of the conqueror, Mohammed II.
Here is signified the fundamental division among the Turks at the present time. The religionists hold that Ataturk’s reforms damaged the cause of Islam; the progressives (including most intellectuals) support the reforms. Ataturk had decreed that the Koran be read, and the call to prayer given, in Turkish instead of Arabic; vote-seeking politicians have now restored Arabic. Pilgrimage to Mecca was formerly prohibited; Turkey today of all the Muslim states sends probably the greatest number of pilgrims—and millions of precious dollars sorely needed for internal economy are annually carried out for no tangible return.
Continuing disagreement about educational methods instituted by Ataturk has resulted in a national illiteracy figure of 60 per cent, but since his death in 1938 the mosque-building business is booming. The trend is thus reflected in the Istanbul daily Cumhuriyet for May 31, 1965, under the headline: “4,130 men of religion are trained each year, and 500 agriculturists.” Commented an agricultural expert: “Who will undertake the development of the country, we or the priests?”
Evidence suggests that the priests have a clear lead at the moment (a fact not unrelated to the parliamentary elections scheduled for October) and that Ataturk’s power is fading. He strictly forbade polygamy; today it is widespread. He separated church and state, but the religionists have made great strides in their aim to restore a thoroughly Islamic constitution.
F. F. Bruce
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
The Epistle to the Hebrews, by Hugh Montefiore (Harper and Row, 1964, 272 pp., $5), is reviewed by F. F. Bruce, professor of biblical criticism and exegesis, University of Manchester, Manchester, England.
This latest addition to a distinguished series of commentaries admirably maintains the high standard set by its predecessors. English biblical scholarship has made contributions of peculiar value to the exegesis of the Epistle to the Hebrews, but there is always something new to say about this fascinating book, which has now found another able commentator in Canon Hugh Montefiore, vicar of Great St. Mary’s, Cambridge, and canon theologian of Chichester.
No one knows who wrote Hebrews, and no one knows to whom it was written. That it was written in the apostolic age, before the fall of the Jerusalem temple in A.D. 70, is a reasonable inference from its contents. Canon Montefiore agrees and would date it rather early in the apostolic age, between A.D. 52 and 54, in fact. The arguments that its author was Apollos, while they “fall short of proof,” seem to him to be impressively strong. He suggests a life-setting for the letter which links up with Paul’s reference to Apollos in First Corinthians 16:12, “As for our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brethren, but it was not at all God’s will for him to go now.” So Apollos did not go to Corinth just then; instead, he sent the church there a letter (the Epistle to the Hebrews) that reached it before the full development of the situation addressed by Paul in First Corinthians. Canon Montefiore is not the first to suggest that Hebrews was sent to Corinth, but he has sustained this thesis more persuasively than any of his predecessors. The reviewer, who has preferred a rival thesis, is not convinced by Canon Montefiore’s arguments. But before the thesis is rejected, due account must be taken of the impressive list of undesigned coincidences between the situation of Apollos and the Corinthian church and the Epistle to the Hebrews which he marshals in support of his case. For example—and this is but a minor one—“they of Italy salute you” (Heb. 13:24). Who are “they of Italy”? If Apollos stayed in Ephesus instead of going to Corinth, were there any Italians in Ephesus who would send greetings to Corinth? Of course there were—Priscilla and Aquila, well known in Corinth, and the only people in the whole New Testament who are mentioned by name as having “come from Italy” (Acts 18:2)! Here is another: why “baptisms” in the plural in Hebrews 6:2? Because Apollos had had to do with two baptisms, the baptism of John and Christian baptism; and perhaps the reference in the same verse to the laying on of hands indicates that Apollos underwent such an experience as the other disciples in Ephesus in Acts 19:6. While the arguments in the epistle would be directed chiefly to the Jewish members of the Corinthian church, Canon Montefiore thinks that some of its injunctions (e.g., in Heb. 12:16; 13:4) would have been more relevant to former pagans.
But the straightforward exegesis of Hebrews is unusually independent of the exegete’s conclusions on such matters of introduction. Canon Montefiore agrees that “details of authorship, date, destination and structure commonly convince a writer more than his readers,” and so he has constructed the commentary proper “in the hope that it may be of use to those for whom there is as yet no convincing solution to the difficult problems which this Epistle poses.”
Let us then sample his handling of a few of the crucial passages in the epistle. What of the difficult reading “apart from God” in Hebrews 2:9? Mainly because it is the more difficult reading he accepts it in preference to “by the grace of God” and gives the rendering: “so that, separated from God, he might taste death on behalf of all men.” (The reviewer likewise accepts the more difficult reading but regards it as originally a marginal note interpreting Hebrews 2:8 in the light of First Corinthians 15:27.) And who are the fallers away of Hebrews 6:6 who cannot be renewed to repentance? Apostates. Is the “covenant” sense to be maintained, with Westcott and others, in Hebrews 9:16, 17? No; the word “inheritance” at the end of verse 15 suggests to the author the “testament” sense of Greek diatheke, and it is this sense that is uppermost in his mind in the next couple of verses. As for “we have an altar” in Hebrews 13:10, the author “is referring not to the altar itself but to the victim upon it.… Calvary is meant, not some heavenly altar of the true sanctuary.… Our author is simply not thinking of the Eucharist at all.”
As in the other volumes in this series, the commentator supplies his own translation direct from the Greek. Canon Montefiore bases his translation on the Greek text of the new diglot at present being prepared for the British and Foreign Bible Society. He does not clutter up his exposition with technicalities or with summaries and refutations of what other commentators have written. He acknowledges that he has confined himself to exegesis and not gone on to hermeneutics (the interpretation of the lessons of the book for the situation of its readers today); the remoteness of the sacrificial ritual with which Hebrews is so much concerned makes the hermeneutical task specially difficult in this epistle.
Yet Canon Montefiore is surely not the man to be deterred from a task because it is difficult; may we hope that one day he will address himself to the hermeneutics of Hebrews and put us further in his debt? There are few scholars who are better equipped for this task. Meanwhile, he has earned our great gratitude for this scholarly, helpful, and readable commentary.
The Pastor’S Life And Work
Parson to Parson, by Adolph Bedsole (Baker, 1964, 149 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by H. Franklin Paschall, pastor, First Baptist Church, Nashville, Tennessee.
Every pastor will be greatly blessed by this book. The author, a pastor of wide experience and long tenure, writes poignantly of the problems and privileges in the life of a modern minister. His insights and suggestions are helpful and inspiring.
Most writers today criticize the preacher for using worn-out clichés that have little meaning to the people of our day. Dr. Bedsole observes that many a minister has lost his audience by using the technical terms of the scholars and by revealing his own uncertainty on vital doctrines and issues. He admonishes the preacher to “march those scholarship stallions back to the stables,” “bridle the champions of academic freedom,” “corral the fillies of higher criticism.” He recognizes the value of true scholarship but believes that it should not be on parade and should not be thrust upon people who are not intellectually equipped to receive it. He deplores the despair and uncertainty of many contemporary religious leaders. The foundations of God stand sure.
The chief contribution of Dr. Bedsole concerns practical affairs in the pastor’s life and work. He deals with such subjects as “The Preacher’s Other Cheek,” “The Preacher and His Time,” “The Preacher’s Burdens,” “The Preacher and the Staff,” “When Halos Sprout Horns,” and “The Preacher on the Shelf.” His analyses and recommendations are based on a knowledge of the Scriptures and a rich experience of Christian living and pastoral ministry. He knows first-hand the problems, privileges, responsibilities, and possibilities of a minister of Jesus Christ. If a pastor wants to be more like Jesus in all things, this book will help him attain the goal.
H. FRANKLIN PASCHALL
The Cover’S The Thing
Protestantism in Suburban Life, by Frederick A. Shippey (Abingdon, 1964, 221 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Ivan J. Falls, associate professor of sociology. Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota.
When Harold Larrabee evaluated Vilfredo Pareto’s Mind and Society, he said: “Pareto disappoints all those who look for completeness; his wisdom is in insights and details” (Harold A. Larrabee, “Pareto and the Philosophers,” Journal of Philosophy, XXXII [Sept. 12, 1935], pp. 507, 508). Shippey may be summarized in much the same way.
Like a patchwork quilt done by a large number of chatty women, Protestantism in Suburban Life has a few pieces that are done extraordinarily well; other parts are of only passable workmanship, and still other patches are simply worthless. One cannot say categorically that it is a bad book without pointing to some paragraphs that approach belles lettres in quality—paragraphs that will be quoted from the pulpit and in popular magazines. Overall, however, the book is a string of miscellaneous items held together only by the covers of a book, with a facade of orderliness (1, 2, 3, 4 …), a mirage of documentation, and clever verbiage here and there. If his frame of reference were deliberately interdisciplinary, then one would be able to put his comments into some meaningful perspective. This is not possible with a book that appears accidentally eclectic.
In his attempt to provide the Protestant reader with a rationale for ministering in suburbia, Shippey comes off badly. An operational definition for “suburb” is not apparent, and he does not characterize Protestantism in a way that gives it uniqueness. In the first chapter he commits himself to the necessity for empirical data, the dangers of generalizing beyond one’s sample, and the mandate to make reliable information available to relevant persons with suburban church problems, and then he throws a scorching indictment against some who, he thinks, have fallen into errors in these matters. When any author opens his book with a volley like that, the reader takes a “wait and see” attitude and asks himself, Can this author do better? And, unfortunately, Shippey does not.
Despite his page-after-page insistence on the need for empirical proof and his intention to use primary sources, the author leans much too heavily upon quasi-sociologists and novelists who have written about suburbia. Many of his sources could be found on the book rack at a suburban drugstore. He promises to present new information, some of which he has personally researched; but it is not properly footnoted, and he displays a remarkable inability to distinguish between fact and opinion. A sociologist should know better.
It is not clear how he feels about the reality of spiritual phenomena. The reader will wonder if the social gospel is the same as the Gospel of Jesus Christ, if sin is indicated only by the crime rate, if membership growth is the same as population growth, and if “Satan” (with quotation marks, p. 108 and elsewhere) is really Satan. Shippey is perceptive when he says: “What needs to be held in mind is that a profound evangelistic motivation underlies the impulse to establish new congregations” (p. 163). He is on the way to a crucial point about those Spirit-directed urges that lead the Protestant Christian to establish the work of Jesus Christ in the suburbs—a point he embraces very vaguely.
Christians need guidance concerning God’s work in the suburbs and would be favorably disposed to accept a book that promises such. But when a book like this fulfills so little, they will have to wait for another try.
IVAN J. FAHS
Many Excellent Things
A Body of Divinity, by Thomas Watson (Banner of Truth Trust, 1965, 316 pp., 15s.), is reviewed by W. J. Cameron, professor of New Testament, Free Church of Scotland College, Edinburgh, Scotland.
“By popularizing ancient works, their readers are multiplied and their meaning may often be more readily apprehended.” In this belief the principal of Pastors’ College, London, carefully modernized the style and vocabulary of Thomas Watson’s seventeenth-century work, A Body of Divinity. for reprinting in 1890, at the request of C. H. Spurgeon. But such had been the demand for this posthumously published book that it already had been reissued several times since its original printing in 1692. Readers of successive generations evidently found themselves in agreement with William Lorimer, who remarked in his preface to the first edition that “there are many excellent things” in the sermons of which the book is composed. Not even the vast and varied output of religious literature in the second half of the twentieth century has served to extinguish interest in this Puritan classic.
Seven years ago the Banner of Truth Trust made its debut in the publication of older religious works of value with a reprint of Watson’s book, based on the 1890 edition. The book’s reception so commended the judgment of the Trust’s editors that this year, recognizing it as one of the best sellers in their considerable list of publications, they felt justified in issuing a revised edition in a more attractive format.
The author, who was no mean scholar, ministered to an appreciative London congregation until the Act of Uniformity imposed such conditions upon the clergy of the Church of England that he felt unable to retain his living. For a period he preached in secret as he had opportunity, but accepting the Indulgence in 1672, he began again to preach publicly in London, where Stephen Charnock became his colleague at Crosby Hall. Watson is regarded as the most readable of the Puritans, and competent judges esteem his published works very highly. A Body of Divinity, as originally published, consisted of 176 sermons on the Westminster Shorter Catechism. The present volume contains the earlier part of the original collection, which deals with the first thirty-eight questions. Its main divisions are God and His Creation, the Fall, the Covenant of Grace and Its Mediator, the Application of Redemption, Death and the Last Day.
At a time when the conflict of many opinions on matters of belief is productive of much confusion of thought, few things are more necessary for the establishing of personal Christian faith than judicious and balanced instruction in the teaching of Scripture. It is the great merit of this book that it faithfully expounds biblical doctrine in a clear, concise, and very practical manner.
W. J. CAMERON
A Preferred Freedom
Religion and the Constitution, by Paul G. Kauper (Louisiana State University, 1964, 137 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by William A. Mueller, professor of church history, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Professor Kauper of the University of Michigan, well-known author, lawyer, and expert on constitutional law, gave the lectures contained in this book at the University of Louisiana in March, 1964. After some introductory considerations he confronts the issue of religious liberty in chapter one. Is religious liberty but one aspect of a “broader freedom of expression” or does it denote “an independent substantive liberty of American citizens”? What, essentially, is religious liberty and how may it be properly defined within the First Amendment of our Constitution? Moreover, to what extent is religious liberty encompassed in the freedom of speech, press, and assembly? Surely, freedom from discrimination on religious grounds in, for instance, securing a government job is part of religious liberty. Likewise, a man’s religious beliefs are not subject to any governmental restraints or coercion or denial. Since government is not capable of determining ultimate truth, it is in our way of life forbidden to sanction or forbid religious practice or belief. This latter interpretation of government is traceable to the thinking of men like Thomas Jefferson whose ideas are rooted in the Enlightenment and its secular interpretation of limited government. Hence, religious liberty is a multi-dimensional issue, and our author credits the United States Supreme Court with having elevated religious liberty to a preferred freedom within the larger freedoms all citizens enjoy (pp. 43, 44).
Chapter three deals with interpretation of the First Amendment. Shall the Supreme Court interpret the establishment clause in terms of (1) a no-aid or strict separation theory, (2) the strict neutrality theory, or (3) the accommodation theory? Although the Supreme Court, according to Kauper’s measured judgment, has not yet fully committed itself to an overall rationale, the trend seems to be in the direction of the third alternative. “The problem we face cannot be solved by simple rules or absolute propositions. The accommodation theory recognizes the task of the judiciary in arriving at judgment by weighing a variety of considerations” (pp. vi, vii).
What of the present attitude of the churches toward this burning issue? How may they, in a pluralistic society, best approach the issue of religious liberty? It is far easier to recite ancient traditions than to solve concrete issues bearing on church-state relations. What of parochial schools wanting support from the government? Here we think primarily of demands made by our Roman Catholic friends. In the Southland, Southern Baptists have established, since 1954, their own elementary schools, primarily with the aim of evading the law calling for integrated public schools. As a people with a rich religious heritage we feel uneasy about a government that is outspokenly secular in character. Kauper, in his concluding chapter, wisely warns the churches against the perils of government assistance. Our author is convinced that “the American experiment in religious liberty, buttressed by the separation of church and state, has vindicated itself” (p. 118). May the churches continue to rely on their own spiritual vitality rather than on handouts from the government in order to perpetuate and enlarge their witness to the living God and their contribution to the common good.
WILLIAM A. MUELLER
The Retarded
The Church’s Ministry in Mental Retardation, by Harold W. Stubblefield (Broadman, 1965, 147 pp., $4), is reviewed by Dorothy L. Hampton, publicity and scholarship committee chairman, Metropolitan Association for Retarded Children, Denver, Colorado, and member of the Colorado Governor’s Committee for the Employment of the Mentally and Physically Handicapped.
This volume is an extremely fine informational tool that should be required reading for every pastor and seminary student. There is a national upsurge of interest in our 5½ million retarded persons, and the Church must not be left behind in an area calling for authentic Christian concern. Stubblefield’s book will help clear away a great deal of confusion about the Church’s and the pastor’s role with the retarded and their families. Through up-to-date and relevant observations, many based on his experiences as a chaplain at a state institution for the retarded, the author makes telling points; yet he never resorts to material that is too technical or uninteresting.
This book has a challenge: the ministry for the retarded is a total ministry, not just a fragmented condescension to a group otherwise outside the Church’s fellowship. Most encouraging is Stubblefield’s constant reference to a retarded person as a “whole person,” as a human being whose need is to be understood relative to his developmental stage and social adjustment, as well as to his level of mental ability and degree of retardation. Pastors will find the sections dealing with a comprehensive ministry to the retarded very helpful. The author confronts such subjects as confirmation and baptism, church membership, and partaking of communion, as well as the retarded person’s understanding of death, need in bereavement, and problems of marriage and childbearing.
The chapters on the religious consciousness and Christian education for the retarded are excellent. The description of comprehension levels of theology and doctrines in the various I.Q. ranges will be very useful. Many ways for a total ministry are given, and many misconceptions about retardation are treated. The author shows the necessity for secular parent associations and for professional workers in the field as referral sources. He clarifies such points as the meaning of “trainable” and “educable” and the difference between mental retardation and mental illness. A good bibliography points to further reading on such subjects as the causes of mental retardation and the meaning of terms like I.Q., brain damage, and mongolism—terms used in this book but not fully explained.
Our responsibility to the retarded is clear. Challenged by this volume, many a church and pastor will be able to see the responsibility and act upon it sensibly, practically, and immediately.
DOROTHY L. HAMPTON
Essays For Protestants
Word and Revelation: Essays in Theology I, by Hans Urs von Balthasar (Herder and Herder, 1964, 191 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Franklin van Halsema, instructor in philosophy, Grand Valley College, Allendale, Michigan.
Although no Christian theology worth the name ever neglected to take Christology seriously, it has become a fashion of our time to demand of a theology that it be “Christological” before anything else. And although verbum caro has recently been made the persistent theme of theologies of diverse and even antipathetic types, it is an interesting coincidence that this first volume of Father von Balthasar’s essays shares the Vulgate phrase as a title with the journal of the Reformed community at Taizé. The fact supplies a perspective in which to take a measure of the new book’s importance. The book is based on a conception of what comprehensive and consistent Christological thinking means that comes closer to the conception basic to Taizé’s de-puritanizing of Reformed theology than to the conception basic to Barth’s de-scholasticizing of it. The novelty and importance of these essays, and to a degree of the movement at Taizé, can be compared with that which belongs to the Theologie Nouvelle as a whole. However full the information in the Church Dogmatics about the theological tradition, there is little (it can be said without disparagement) of that information by the tradition, notably biblico-patristic, which gives the Christological emphasis of the Theologie Nouvelle its distinctive character. Father von Balthasar is not a Protestant theologian, but the general method and resources of his theology, if not his stance as a churchman (most recently illustrated by his position in the Opus Dei controversy), show him to be a Protestant’s theologian; he is unlike the official Roman catechists in the way the theologians of Taizé are unlike the Presbyterian catechists of Westminster.
Neither Barth nor Taizé holds to the evangelical doctrine of revelation and Scripture. Among evangelical theologians inspiration is usually regarded as a completed act of God by which the biblical autographa were preserved from error; infallibility and inerrancy are generally used interchangeably; confident appeal is made to the historic Church in support of the claim that verbal inspiration is a classic, not a modern, conception; and the “true” meaning of Scripture is generally identified with the one discoverable by historical exegesis. The formidable array of questions that such features as these give rise to is seldom recognized. Is restricting inspiration to the biblical originals compatible with the conviction that our Bibles are infallible divine revelation? If the meaning of biblical infallibility is exhausted by the concept of inerrancy, which accounts for accuracy, by what complementary concept is the relevance of biblical truth accounted for? Does the classic theory of verbal inspiration retain any utility if it is divorced from the equally classic, closely related theory of the “spiritual senses” of Scripture? Historical exegesis can determine what Paul of Tarsus meant; but is it able to disclose what good preaching must disclose, namely, what Saint Paul means?
Here these questions have been introduced, not in order that they may be pressed, but in order that certain aspects of our author’s Christological approach to the subject may be set in relief. “Just as the word Christ spoke as man is inspired by the Holy Spirit, so also is the written word; its inspiration is not something past and concluded but a permanent, vital quality adhering in it at all times.” The principal effect of inspiration is not to be seen in the absence of error, which is only “a by-product” of it and cannot explain how Scripture is “food of the soul.” Inspiration means that “the Holy Spirit as auctor primarius is always behind the word,” and guarantees that “the primary content of scripture is always God himself.” If that is so, “the idea that one has understood a passage of scripture finally and completely, has drawn out all that God meant in it, is equivalent to denying that it is the word of God and inspired by him.” To affirm inspiration, then, is to affirm that the Bible has that fecundity of meaning classically referred to as the sensus plenior. But we must take care to affirm Scripture’s transliteral meaning with due regard to its content, which means, once more, a Christological affirmation. The problem of how to relate the literal and spiritual meanings is soluble if we grasp that they “are to each other what the two natures of Christ are to each other.” In so far as “the spiritual sense is never to be sought ‘behind’ the letter but within it,” the literal sense has a kind of priority; but just as “Christ’s divinity cannot be wholly comprehended through his humanity,” so cannot “the divine sense of scripture ever be fully plumbed through the letter.”
This sample conveys nothing of the variety or continuity of the thinking embodied in the book’s six essays. There is, for example, the extraordinary meditation on silence, or “the dialectic of word and superword,” which, as a Christological attempt to tread the via negativa, appropriately concludes the book. (Whoever knows the author’s first published work, now entitled Prometheus, should read this essay.) Another essay is a highly original and provocative contribution to theological aesthetics, which develops the theme that “Christ, God’s greatest work of art, is in the unity of God and man the expression both of God’s absolute divinity and sovereignty and of the perfect creature.” It is sensitivity to the “form” of Christ which accounts for the place of eros in catholic theology. “The loss of the erotic element of the Canticle and of the esthetic element of the dionysian writings has resulted in a dessication of theology. What it needs is to be steeped anew in the very heart of the love mystery of scripture, and to be remolded by the force it exerts.” But one’s way into such essays as these is a reward earned only by traversing the territory of the essays that precede them. These, on revelation, word, history, and tradition, are basic.
If it is true that Roman Catholic theologians are “rediscovering” the Bible, it is also true that Protestant theologians are rediscovering the catholic tradition, and along with it a less familiar side of the Reformers themselves. If Father von Balthasar’s volume of essays is a good specimen of the “new” Roman Catholic thought, it is also a good chance, from which evangelical Protestants are not the least prepared to profit, to learn some old, classic, catholic theology and its relevance to modern theological concerns. And one thing more. Whoever seeks a respite from the many mansions of the Church Dogmatics will find the charterhouse of these few, neat, compact essays a perfect place for retreat.
FRANKLIN VAN HALSEMA
Book Briefs
The New Testament in Modern English: Student Edition, by J. B. Phillips (Macmillan, 1965, 558 pp., $3). With verse numbers, index, and introductory notes.
The Dead Sea Scrolls: A College Textbook and a Study Guide, by Menaham Mansoor (Eerdmans, 1964, 210 pp., $4). An outline-style, fact-packed presentation.
The Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma, by Maurice Blondel, translated by Alexander Dru and Illtyd Trethowan (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, 301 pp., $6.95). The first book of an influential twentieth-century Roman Catholic philosopher to be translated into English.
Jesus and Logotherapy: The Ministry of Jesus as Interpreted Through the Psychotherapy of Viktor Frankl,by Robert C. Leslie (Abingdon, 1965, 144 pp., $3).
Planning for Protestantism in Urban America, by Lyle E. Schaller (Abingdon, 1965, 224 pp., $4.50). How long-range urban planning and church planning interact.
Renewing Your Faith Day by Day: Based on the Christian Herald Daily Meditations with a Supplement for Special Days, by Robert W. Youngs (Doubleday, 1965, 198 pp., $3.95). Very brief but often very much to the point.
Constitution on Ecumenism, Constitution on the Church, and Constitution on the Oriental Churches, promulgated by Pope Paul VI (Daughters of St. Paul; 1965; 28, 85, and 14 pp.; $.25, $.40, and $.15).
So You Want a Mountain: 12 Evangelistic Sermons, by Ford Philpot, introduction by Bishop Nolan B. Harmon (Baker, 1964, 113 pp., $2.50).
The Shoemaker Who Gave India the Bible: The Story of William Carey, by James S. and Velma B. Keifer (Baker, 1964, 63 pp., $1.95). For children.
Shechem: The Biography of a Biblical City, by G. Ernest Wright (McGraw-Hill, 1964, 270 pp., $7.95). An account of the archaeological excavation of Shechem.
Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey, by Kenneth Ch’en (Princeton, 1964, 560 pp., $12.50).
The Epistles to the Corinthians, by Julian C. McPheeters, from the “Proclaiming the New Testament” series (Baker, 1964, 154 pp., $2.95). Homiletical applications with little exegetical interpretation.
The Pulpit Speaks on Race, edited by Alfred T. Davies (Abingdon, 1965, 191 pp. $3.95). Colorful sermons.
The Holy Spirit and You, by Donald M. Joy (Abingdon, 1965, 160 pp., $2.75). Practical discussions in a fireside style.
Father Coughlin and the New Deal, by Charles J. Tull (Syracuse University, 1965, 292 pp., $6.50). The story of the colorful, petulant Roman Catholic Michigan radio priest of the 1930s.
Preface to Bonhoeffer: The Man and Two of His Writings, by John D. Godsey (Fortress, 1965, 73 pp., $2). An excellent introduction to the life and significance of Bonhoeffer, plus two of his shorter writings as substantiating evidence.
- More fromF. F. Bruce
The Editors
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
Now and then we read Playboy—not often, confessedly, but when Hugh Hefner, its editor, occasionally sends a copy hoping CHRISTIANITY TODAY will debate his philosophy of sex and give him free promotion. There seems to be only one aspect of grammar that interests Mr. Hefner as an editor—gender, the feminine particularly, so exposed as to suggest a maternal attachment that Mr. Hefner hasn’t yet outgrown. Some of his magazine’s enthusiasts, ministers included, have the gall to commend Playboy for an interpretation of sex more authentically Christian than that given in the churches.
Today new currents of opinion are gaining force. This is not necessarily bad. Some man-made codes have too long been invested with divine status—for example, the Roman Catholic rule that sex is only for the procreation of children and that any other intention is wicked. The tardy revision of such misconceptions often raises doubts that would have been avoided had the authority of Scripture always been respected.
In the Republic, Plato asks whether one can accumulate all the benefits of being just by merely appearing to be just. If one could make himself invisible, would he hold up a bank or ravish a beautiful girl? Is the fear of being found out what really keeps us straight? This issue is raised in a new way by the scientists’ discovery of “the pill.” For the pill promises intercourse without physical consequences. What it does not promise is ideas without consequences.
The “new morality” asserts that love alone justifies intercourse and that, if two persons intend to marry, love is the only other precondition for sex relations. Christianity does not say “No” to sex; it says “Yes” on the basis of divine creation. But it says “No” to premarital sex on the basis of divine commandment. The Christian view is that sex relations are legitimate only within the marital institution.
As a protest against marriage without love (of which there is little deficiency in our time), or against marital intercourse without love, or, for that matter, against prostitution as a relationship in which both marriage and love are lacking, the plea for the centrality of love is wholesome and necessary. The Christian emphasis on personal love in the very nature of God and on Christ’s love for his bride carries an implicit protest against the discounting of agape in the sexual life of the modern world. Our confused generation has lost the profoundly Christian meaning both of monogamous marriage and of love. It needs the example and guidance a generation of evangelical young lovers and young married couples can bring it at this moment in history. Any generation that prizes intercourse above all other intimacies and thinks that through physical love alone, apart from any transcendent relationship, the sex act unlocks life’s deepest secrets and exhausts its mysteries, is doomed to deadly superficiality. What the world needs is couples capable of such a tremendous love that they want love as God gave it before Adam and Eve lost it, couples aware that in accepting the new morality one is in danger of falling, not into love, but into sin, and that love is something that one stands up for, reaching for the stars rather than the spirit of the age.
The proposition that intercourse is validated by love, not by marriage, is simply not true, Ideally, romantic love, monogamous marriage, and sexual intercourse are all bound together, and intercourse is last in order. No marriage is legal and binding until the conjugal act is performed; the courts will annul a marriage incapable of sexual consummation. Intercourse validates marriage but does not always reflect love. Outside marriage, intercourse always violates love, since it shatters the divine framework of sexual morality. Any person who loves self-indulgence more than obedience to God is ready neither for marriage nor for intercourse. Someone has aptly described mature love as “union under the conditions of preserving … integrity.” If love in the New Testament sense is present in the intention to marry, it will insist on marriage before the conjugal act.
To justify sexual indulgence before marriage by identifying modern engagement with biblical betrothal has three weaknesses. First, it obscures the fact that modern engagement is neither so formal nor so binding as biblical betrothal. Betrothal included payment of the dowry (Gen. 24:58 ff.) and hence involved parental consent. After the betrothal, the parties were legally in the position of a married couple, and unfaithfulness was adultery (Deut. 22:23, 24). Second, the identification of modern engagement with biblical betrothal lacks direct scriptural support; for its assumption that intercourse is permissible during betrothal depends upon the argument from silence. Finally, the comparison fails to stress the scriptural view that intercourse belongs to the divine institution of marriage.
If the unmarried cannot wait, there remains only one way to please the Lord—that is, to marry. The apostle says of the unmarried: “If they cannot contain, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn” (1 Cor. 7:9). Nowhere does he approve marital privileges without marital obligations; he insists on the very opposite. It is to the husband that the wife is to give the conjugal due, not to the intended husband; it is to the wife that the husband is to give the conjugal due, not to the intended wife.
The woman who indulges in premarital intercourse because she intends to marry may not be a prostitute, but she is neither wife nor virgin (1 Cor. 7:34, 35). The man too is a fornicator (v. 1). Although a wife cannot claim her body as her own, the wife-to-be can and ought to do so. The single girl is to give her husband-to-be only what is due the husband-to-be, not what is due the husband. Paul differentiates “the wife and the virgin” (v. 34); nowhere does he refer normatively to premarital loss of virginity.
In the same context Paul clearly states that fornicators, adulterers, and sodomites, along with drunkards, thieves, and idolators, shall have no part in God’s kingdom (6:9–10), and that professing Christians must put such sinful works to death or fail to inherit that kingdom. Both fornication and adultery detach intercourse from the institution of marriage, whether the offenders intend to marry each other or not. Fornication is used figuratively in the Bible in the sense of idolatry—of “whoring after” false gods.
If intention to marry justifies sexual intercourse and the actual fulfillment of that intention (or marriage itself) is not immediately relevant, then how is such intention distinguishable from emotional passion only? Recently the writer spoke at the junior-senior banquet of a large Christian college in Oklahoma. Twenty couples publicly announced their engagements that evening. The class adviser, asked for a fair estimate across the years of how many would go through with it, said 25 per cent would not. On that basis, the percentage of engagements of evangelical college students that are broken is higher than the percentage of worldly marriages that end in divorce—quite apart from the issue of premarital intercourse. This estimate is based only on formally announced engagements, and these at the college level.
The notion that two persons are free to follow their desires as long as they love each other is an invitation to exploit passionate impulses irrespective of moral restraints. Love is not self-defining; in this twentieth century it has been equated with pacifism, with socialism, and now with sexual license. A few years ago, when a divinity student at Howard University killed a young Washington woman, he said he did it because he “loved her” so much. Love that spurns the commandments of God always destroys and kills. In the nature of God, love and righteousness are equally ultimate, and agape is self-defining; but in the nature of man—finite, fallen, not yet fully conformed to the divine image even in redemption—agape is not self-defining. If our love of God and our love of neighbor are sullied and need divine direction, why do we think that the ideal direction of sexual love is self-determinable? “If ye love me,” said Jesus, “keep my commandments.” And some of his most serious indictments bore upon the failure even of the religious leaders of his day to understand the depth of God’s claim in the area of sex. “Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her …”—how seriously do we take that? There is considerably more temptation to look and leer today than in the past, and the line between appreciation and lust is getting more difficult to draw.
Love is responsible to the commandments; it is responsible also to family, to society, and to the state. Its requirements are not exhausted by the private life of two persons. The lovers are to leave father and mother and cleave to each other, becoming one flesh. There is to be no cleaving before leaving. The family is the basic unit of society; young lovers who destroy the claim of the family are indirectly destroying themselves. Love does not overlook responsibility to parents, and those under eighteen or twenty-one are under the guardianship of their parents and should secure parental consent for marriage—or, if they prefer, for premarital intercourse! Moreover, the state is divinely willed to preserve order and justice in a sinful society, and marriage includes a responsibility to the community. Marriage is established by God and confirmed by the state; it is not dissolved by the absence of love (1 Cor. 7:10, 11) nor constituted solely by the presence of love (7:8–9). The bonding element between man and wife is not simply their private love and sexual privilege. (“Art thou bound to a wife?” asks Paul. “Seek not to be loosed” [7:27].) The couple are “bound by the law,” Paul says (7:39). Private intention is not the same as a public ceremony; the connection of sex with marriage attests its answerability to both love and justice. A liberal theology, which telescopes God’s wrath and God’s justice into his love, has produced a liberal ethics, which artifically narrows the moral claim to agape alone, and in so doing falsifies the content of agape.
Assume now that not marriage but preferential love justifies intercourse, and that marriage is built on this prior premise. What happens if—in some hard hour—love evaporates in the home, even for a season, and the wedding expectations turn for the “worse” rather than for the “better”? And if one of the partners then loves a third party (assuming that intercourse-approving love is love for one at a time)? If marriage is really binding, then intercourse with other than one’s wife is spiritually and legally excluded. But if love is the only bonding factor, the implications of this view will swiftly undermine the social order. If marriage binds in a way that preferential love does not, then the unmarried—for all their intentions—simply are not maritally bound. The revealed will of God sanctions monogamous marriage, but it nowhere sanctions extra-marital intercourse. The fact that such a relationship is pursued outside wedlock with one person at a time and continues over a long period with but one person does not sanctify it; what is wrong once is no less wrong through a process of multiplication or addition, even by the addition of the wedding ceremony.
Assume again that preferential love, not marriage, justifies intercourse—and that professors and students are free to act in this way, and unmarried ministers in their congregations. Assume that a Christian would be quite willing to tell his sister or daughter that she ought to let some young man possess her, even if the prospect of marriage is years off (remember, the intention is decisive), so long as they wave the banner of love and carry the pill. If, in fact, the connection of courtship and intercourse is permissible and proper, normative and ideal, then no lover ought to withhold this relationship from the loved one; in that case it is morally and spiritually due, so long as unmarried couples make it clear that they are courting each other, and for as long as they prefer courtship to marriage.
We can assure the Church that no doctrine it has ever propagated will be as welcome as this one. For in a single stroke what has been regarded as gross sexual immorality down through the Christian ages will be protected and promoted as an ideal fulfillment of a moral and spiritual imperative. The world will hail this late twentieth-century “insight,” and the Church may count upon an innumerable host of “converts” to this notion—in fact, many unregenerates were already “converted” to it before the church’s discovery, and almost every young couple in the churches will now want to follow suit.
But any such development will mark the day when the Church has gone out of the business of morality and defected from her role in the world. By maintaining the morality of sex, the Christian community fulfills a divinely given role in the world—not simply of proclaiming the standards by which God will judge the world, but of illustrating the blessings of obedience.
The new doctrine is simply a by-product of the existential spirit of our times, which has lost contact with objective norms and standards and, above all, with divinely revealed truths and precepts. In the name of agape it destroys agape, because it transgresses the Word of God. In the name of personal love it violates Christian personality, because it impairs the divine image in man by neglecting the will of God. In the name of sacramental love, it forfeits the sacredness of marriage in exchange for a few months of premature self-indulgence.
Since God is the opener of the womb and man may prevent life but only God can create it, the next step will be to honor children born outside wedlock as the fruit of agape. When that happens, little or nothing will be left for marriage to add. And, in the eyes of a Sodom and Gomorrah generation, marriage will appear as the enemy of love. But the devout believer will recognize this trend for what it is—a rationalization of human passions, which one man applies in the world of sex, another in the world of economics, and another in the world of international affairs, in an age whose heart is set against objective moral standards.
Exemplary Goals Of The Southern Baptists
At their national convention in Dallas last month, Southern Baptists not only voted to continue the present practice of allowing for a second presidential term but also re-elected without opposition their vigorous and able president, Dr. Wayne Dehoney, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Jackson, Tennessee.
Dehoney told the press of his goal for Southern Baptists: “to face realistically the business of launching the greatest missionary thrust the world has ever known.” His presidential address gave a compelling push in that direction.
On the global level he urged: (1) Supporting Billy Graham’s crusades and next year’s World Congress on Evangelism, to be sponsored in Berlin by CHRISTIANITY TODAY; (2) uniting of North and South American Baptists in 1970 in a simultaneous hemispheric evangelistic crusade; (3) undergirding with prayer, money, and surrendered lives an accelerated program to bring the number of missionaries on the foreign field up to 5,000. At the local level, Dehoney set forth a plan for Southern Baptist penetration into urban centers.
The convention responded with appropriate resolutions and a record missions budget of $21.8 million. We salute the Southern Baptist Convention for exemplary goals worthy of the attention of all Christians.
When Psychology And Theology Meet
Many interesting dialogues occur today at points of contact between religion and psychology and between religion and psychiatry. In this twisted secular world, having one’s own psychiatrist has become a status symbol for many suburbanites, and the German theologian Helmut Thielicke even warns that in the cult of psychiatry America faces the snare of a new religion.
A much more constructive attitude is possible at these frontier points, of course, although the dangers are not to be denied. The panel discussion in this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY is a contribution toward better understanding in these areas.
Another helpful effort is the summary of an address by Dr. John Finch, a Tacoma, Washington, psychologist. Regrettably, however, a reading of an interview with Dr. Finch, entitled “Coping with the Stresses of Life” and published in the May issue of Christian Herald, raises more problems for evangelical faith than any psychologist can solve, and leaves us wondering how effectively evangelical Christian faith can operate in a climate of incompatible beliefs.
In this interview Dr. Finch tells us that “one must be very discreet in introducing new ideas … making the new so approximately like the old that he can accept it.” But one will find that the way the Apostles proclaimed the Gospel to the first-century Jews gives no precedent for such an approach, even though the modernist dilution of historic Christianity may. Dr. Finch tells us that “the more insecure” one is, “the more dogmatic” he is—a verdict that has strange and remarkable possibilities if applied not only to the systematic theologians but to the Apostles. In fact, Dr. Finch thinks evasion of one’s personal responsibility “is almost the reason for dogmatic systems: the system relieves us of our own experience.…” The manner in which a haphazard working of both sides of the street strengthens one’s personal responsibility is nowhere made clear, nor, we suspect, can it be. The contrast of “dogmatic affirmations as against the attitudes and experience and indications of real love” rests on an imaginary contradiction which does not exist in fact; Dr. Finch substitutes one set of arbitrary affirmations for the dogmatic affirmations of Scripture, in which love is not opposed to divine disclosure of objective truths.
One wonders how any reader of John 5:47 (“But if ye believe not his [Moses’] writings, how shall ye believe my words?”), or 8:58 (“Jesus said unto them … Before Abraham was, I am”), or Matthew 11:29 (“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls”), can square such verses with the dogmatic assumptions that “Jesus was … the first existentialist” and that Jesus’ “whole attitude was existential” (italics ours). Or how passages like Matthew 4:4 and Luke 16:29 (“Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them”) are to be reconciled with Dr. Finch’s emphasis on experience as “the basis of an understanding of truth.”
What happens to divine revelation and to reason, we ask, in the declaration that we must “display such an intimate acquaintance by our own experience with truth that [we are] persuaded by the facts of life, not by the logical arguments of life”? By the frank declaration that “truth is true only when it is true to you” and “otherwise … remains a theory,” the existence of every absolute truth is denied, and how anything can ever become true remains unclear.
The doctrinal content of the Christian religion is repeatedly divided and downgraded. Dr. Finch recalls Kierkegaard’s protest against the mechanical catechizing of children, and repeats SK’s question whether a parrot that passed the course should be baptized and confirmed. The evangelical reply is, of course, that Christianity expects children (but not the parrot) to understand and believe; it is not that scriptural doctrines may be abandoned or ignored whenever they are beyond one’s personal experience. It is true enough that, as Dr. Finch notes, Jesus did not say, “If you repeat the parables …,” but it is equally true that Paul said, “If you … believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead …” (Rom. 10:9, RSV).
Dr. Finch obliquely handles a question raised by one of the editors of Christian Herald that goes to the heart of the matter: What then happens to “absolute truth, something that is a fact whether I accept it or not”? The illustrations Dr. Finch gives of “greater [or later] truth” displacing earlier “truth” do not really focus on the question whether such earlier “truth” was really truth or whether truth in fact exists at all.
If, as Dr. Finch contends, “all we can really understand even of God is what we ourselves personally experience,” the logical conclusion would seem to be that God does not tell us anything outside our own experiences, and that the historic Christian view of an authoritative written Word from God containing statements and standards of what is to be believed and practiced must be discarded. Dr. Finch contends that Christians should sing hymns of the faith “only to the extent” that they “can experience” them. But a single trial run in a morning church service should serve well to dramatize evangelical Christianity’s great dependence on realities of another world revealed in Holy Scripture and the poverty of what an experience-based psychology proposes as a modern substitute. The creation of the world out of nothing, the virgin birth of Christ, the miraculous atonement, the bodily resurrection of Christ, the future judgment of all men, and much else would vanish; in fact, once personal experience is made the sole arbiter of truth, every tenet of evangelical Christianity is subject to moment-by-moment revision.
In the present intellectual turmoil, coordination of various disciplines of learning is imperative, the more so if evangelicals hope to show the way. Even mosquitoes emerge from a whirling lawnmower, humming the refrain “Let’s get together.” Evangelical theology and psychology ought to do no less, as Dr. Finch himself says in his essay elsewhere in this issue.
- More fromThe Editors
Ideas
The Editors
- View Issue
- Subscribe
- Give a Gift
- Archives
What, if anything, has Christianity to do with American national power? Consider the relation of the Christian faith to the establishment of the country. The founders of the New England colonies came to these shores because of religious conviction. Here they sought and found freedom to worship God according to conscience. Our national independence has two chief sources: on the one hand, the deism of men like Jefferson and Paine, who were strongly influenced by the French enlightenment and the philosophy of John Locke; on the other hand, the Calvinism of our Puritan, Scotch-Irish, French-Huguenot, and Dutch forebears. The Calvinistic idea of the sovereignty of God, and its correlate of man, responsible to God with a dignity upon which others may not trespass, was one of the great formative influences in our national origin. As the historian Leopold von Ranke said, “John Calvin was the virtual founder of America.”
While the dominant spiritual force in America has been, and still is, Protestant Christianity, constitutionally Protestantism has no more official status than Roman Catholicism, Judaism, Mormonism, or Christian Science. To say this is not to imply that America is committed to secularism. The First Amendment to the Constitution was meant in no sense to banish religion but simply to keep the government from establishing any church. Our founders openly acknowledged God and his sovereignty.
In Young John Adams, a study that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Catherine Drinker Bowen tells of an incident at the Continental Congress, meeting in Carpenters Hall, Philadelphia, in 1774. A clergyman was asked to lead the Congress in prayer. A report came that Gage’s soldiers had seized the powder stores “at some town near Boston.” The author tells how the Reverend Mr. Duché in his black gown walked into the hall the next morning, followed by a clerk bearing the Bible. He took his place before the desk and, after reading prayers, announced the Thirty-fifth Psalm. “He had a voice of great sweetness and warmth; he read slowly with no show of dramatics: ‘Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler and stand up for mine help.…’ The effect was electric. Men bowed their heads and wept.”
The acknowledgment of Almighty God is a part of our American tradition. Indeed, the public recognition of God is woven into the fabric of our national life. The inauguration of a president partakes of the nature of a solemn religious ceremony. There is deep meaning in the opening of Congress with prayer, though to some it may seem an empty formality. The phrase “under God” in the flag salute and the motto “In God We Trust” on coins are things we take for granted. But in times of national emergency, as in the tragic experience of President Kennedy’s assassination, the nation instinctively reaches out to God for help.
The founders of our country showed farsighted wisdom in providing such a clear safeguard against the establishment of religion in the First Amendment. But it must not be forgotten that the First Amendment also guarantees “the free exercise” of religion. Thus religious initiative is left to the people. Just as no man may be required to pay lip-service to the living God, so no man may be prevented from confessing and practicing his faith.
Christianity may exercise a vital and determinative influence in the nation, but only upon its own terms. It is never to be used merely to bolster patriotism, or just to support the political, economic, or military status quo. To think of finite man using the infinite God for his own ends is impious folly. Every nation, the United States included, stands under the judgment of God. It is, therefore, a great and dangerous perversion to consider the Christian faith merely as a kind of national convenience to be turned on when we need it and to be used for our own purposes. Christ is not subject to our direction; he directs us. God’s ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts our thoughts. The power of Christianity in national life is effective only when men submit themselves humbly to God and to his Christ.
This is why churches, ministers, and laymen need to keep their priorities clear in these critical days. Christianity speaks to every aspect of life. It relates inescapably to spiritual and moral questions—and most issues having to do with human beings involve ultimately spiritual and moral issues, because man is a creature not only of time but also of eternity. But Christianity meets these issues primarily through regenerated persons who know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation and who are committed to his teaching every day and in every area of life.
What is the place of Christianity in American life today? The answer is that the great and awesome role of ministering the most powerful thing in the world belongs to the Church and to its members. Said the Apostle Paul, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” The word translated “power” is the Greek dunamis, from which we get the word “dynamite.” Paul knew nothing of atomic power. But it may well be that, had he known it, he might have said that the Gospel is the atomic power of God unto salvation. Yet even that would be an understatement. The Gospel can do what even atomic power cannot do. It can take broken, disintegrating human lives and put them together into new persons reconciled to God and living in peace and love with other people. The Gospel creates. As Paul elsewhere says, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
Lord Acton’s dictum that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, admits of only one exception. There is an utterly incorruptible power. It is the power of the living Christ, the only uncorrupt person who ever lived, and his power is available for the healing of the nations.
The obligation of the churches and their members, stewards all of God’s power, is so to proclaim and live the Gospel and all its implications as to send into the life of the nation men and women who are new beings in Christ—who know, not theoretically but practically, his power, and who are committed to personal witnessing and to applying his truth to shaping the society in which they live and work. Greater than all the military, industrial, and cultural resources of the nation are the spiritual forces resident in Christian men and women and in various forms of our national life.
- More fromThe Editors