Page 6306 – Christianity Today (2024)

The priority of Scripture over tradition ought not to blind us to the genuine value of tradition. Tradition, as Herman Bavinck was fond of saying binds generation to generation, keeping each from falling into spiritual individualism. But tradition always seems to give rise to misunderstandings and tensions within the Church, especially when respect for tradition gives way to suspicion of everything new.

There are strong tradition-oriented elements in the Church which remind us that our strength lies in holding fast to what has been ever true. These elements usually express fear that the Church is in danger of losing what it has received. The voices are loud when the Church seems to be passing through uncertain and strange times and ways. The finger of warning is raised then, and the spector of Daniel’s great outlaw is seen, the one who “thinks to change times and laws.” Falling away is to be observed in many places, and the Church is ready to fall victim to apostasy. So it is to the traditionalist.

From another camp we are likely to hear that the signs of change are really tokens of renewal. The dynamic of life is held at a premium, as it shapes, forms, creates new paths that lead us into new forms of work and worship. This camp does not accept change as impoverishment, but as enrichment. It dare to accept the challenge of a new day.

These two tendencies can easily lead their representatives into opposition. Estrangement can then be caused between men who ought to be united in a common task. In the tension between traditionalism and progressivism, men often fail to come together, to understand, sometimes even to speak with each other. Now and then tension breaks the Church apart. As both sides speak from a sense of responsibility to the Church, it is especially tragic when their differences cause schism in the Church. We have seen what the forming of two camps, the conservatives and the progressives, can do to the Church.

The harm that such group forming has done and can do to the Church is strange and tragic when we consider that the very dilemma is an utterly unreal one as far as the Gospel is concerned. One can recall many texts of Scripture which put the dilemma aside. Paul exhorts Timothy to “keep that which is committed to thy trust” (1 Tim. 6:20). But the arrival of the Kingdom of Christ is such a new thing that we are warned not to try to “put new wine in old bottles” (Mark 2:22). The New Testament is wholly taken up with the radically new, but it never forgets God’s old ways. The former ways of God were directed at nothing other than the coming of this new age. Surely in the light of God’s ways, the dilemma between the progressive and the traditional is a false one.

Our trouble is that we are not personally in such a spiritual and intellectual frame as to grasp the scriptural harmony between accepting the new and preserving the old. This is why the dilemma has had such perverse power in the Church. We lose sight of the biblical wholeness in which both old and new have a part. The Gospel not only has room for both camps: it corrects and reforms them both, pointing the way for both to walk and work together in the fellowship and task of the Church universal.

According to the Gospel we may also say that the phrase “conservative theology” has no significance in itself. The expression stems from the Church’s historic polemic against modernism. Conservatism still has meaning, then, as a reminder that We are to keep our trust in the face of attacks against the Gospel. But a biblically defined theology cannot be described in terms of conservatism. For it is and must be progressive. The Gospel must be allowed to lead us into whatever new and surprising paths it has for us.

We cannot assume that we have exhausted the biblical resources for our understanding of the truth. Consider such mysteries as that of the Word of God coming through the word of man, of God’s electing grace, of our eschatological hope, and many other biblical themes. We have not yet come into the inheritance of complete understanding.

The dangers in conservatism lie in its temptation to forget that the riches of the Word of God are inexhaustible. When it yields to this temptation, it fails to do justice to the Scriptures it seeks to defend. For when one assumes that all has been known and said in the past, he closes the door on new truth that God has yet in store for us. And he shuts the window to the breezes of self-reformation.

Only as we realize that faithfulness to old truths open up new doors of truth to us can we keep the false contradiction between conservatism and progressivism from haunting us. The message is too great for this dilemma and our task is too urgent for us to let it hamper our fulfilling it. There will be need for keeping our eyes open to the dangers that lurk in new and strange paths. We shall have to warn and correct each other. Perhaps just now, in the face of the rich field of biblical studies that has opened new questions and new opportunities, the need for watching closely is especially real.

We may dare hope that God will spare us from the burden of having to accept either progressivism or conservatism as such. We do not have to make a choice between them. Indeed, we shall do the Church a distinct service by refusing to accept the banner of either camp. The future of a rich and fruitful theological effort depends in great measure on our being able to steer clear of the brand-mark of either conservatism or progressivism. We must work, not as progressives or conservatives, but as students of the Word of God.

In this way, theology shall be in a state to serve the pulpit. As long as theologians listen, confident that there is still something to hear, they can be of fruitful service. If they understand something of Job’s feelings, expressed, indeed, while he stood amazed at the wonderful works of God in nature, but relevant also to theology, they will be on the right path. “Lo, these are parts of his ways; but how little a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can understand?” (Job 26:14). G. C. BERKOUWEH

To prevent A slump in church attendance next summer, begin now to make ready for sermons from Philippians. Keynote, “In Christ.” Commentaries: J. B. Lightfoot; H. C. G. Moule. Read the letter through every day. Study it by paragraphs. On file keep careful notes. Good housekeeping!

The opening sermon may show the lay reader what to look for at home: The joys of an elderly believer (ch. 1); of church people (2); of Christian progress (3); of Christlike living (4). What a letter for devotions and family prayers!

“Being a Gentleman toward God” (1:3). Christlike joy comes through praying for others. Or else, “The Christian Secret of Perseverance” (1:6). Joy comes through relying on God when things look black (12–18), and through living in hope (19–30). To be happy, keep looking up, “in Christ.”

Church people should rejoice because of Christian habits, ideals, and leaders (ch. 2). “What It Means to be Christians” (2:5). A difficult paragraph about the Incarnation, but clear ideals for believers: humility, service, sacrifice. “O Joy that seekest me through pain!” “Christian Joy through Work” (2:12–13c). As in oldtime bread making, work out only what is first worked in. For a believer all labor should be joyous, “in Christ.”

Chapter 3 speaks to the young in heart. Christian progress here appeals to imagination. Business: “The Inventory of One’s Soul” (3:7–8). Long distance running: “The Gospel of the Forward Look” (3:13–4). A locomotive needs a powerful headlight, only a little light in the rear. Another topic, borrowed, “The Christian’s Point of No Return.” Government: “The Ideal Church for This Community” (3:20a). “We are a colony of heaven” (Moffatt). To Philippi, a colony, Rome sent a band of soldiers to “Romanize” the city. On a similar basis Paul established churches all around the Mediterranean. What an ideal for missions today, and for a church!

In pastoral work and preaching some of us use Chapter 4 repeatedly. In counseling from the pulpit, or at a bedside, the meaning of Christian joy in personal relations, through Christ. “Women as Church Workers” (4:3). What a text for Mothers’ Day! “Christ’s Cure for Anxiety,” formerly known as worry (4:6–7). “Troubled about nothing, prayerful about everything, thankful about anything.” A wise churchman says: “My Lord taught me long ago to live without worry, work without hurry, and look forward without fear.”

“The Christian Secret of Contentment” (4:11b). Paul here uses three Greek verbs, in this order: “I have learned as a lesson”; “I have seen in others”; “I have been initiated into the secret.” Who can wonder that while in prison, elderly, penniless, and facing death, he had heavenly joy? “The Christian Source of Power” (4:13). Writing from Rome, where people worshiped power, he testifies to power that God releases to faith. By learning the will of God for his life work, and by doing that will gladly, he could accomplish all that God desired. In history, who else has done so much, with so little, and for so many? Like other golden texts, this one calls for two main stresses: the Fulness of spiritual power; and the Source. If you believe, God releases power.

“The Basis of Christian Security” (4:19). The promises of our God—the riches of his bounty—the grace of the Living Christ. What a testimony from a saint who had suffered second only to his Lord, and was living on money from the friends to whom he sent the letter of joy! For examples, turn to the life of Mary Slessor in Calabar, or David Livingstone in Central Africa, but first to Paul in the Acts of the Holy Spirit. So the epistle ends with “The Simplest of Benedictions” (4:23). What a text!

Minister of Christ’s joy, live with this letter until you know it as a whole and in every part. Linger with the difficult paragraph until you enter into its secret of joy. Then with words as simple and beautiful as those of John Bunyan lead many a lay hearer to “have this mind” that was in the Christ of Calvary.

Lay reader, you wish the pastor to be a happy preacher of the Good News, which he himself most enjoys. So pray for him without ceasing. Then do all in your power to set him free from countless details that the Lord intends other servants to handle (Ex. 18:13–26).

Thus by the grace of God may the pastor give himself to prayer and the ministry of the Word (Acts 6:4), all “in Christ,” and with apostolic power.

In later years, through his Expositions (17 volumes), this man became known as “The Prince of Expositors.” Earlier volumes also excelled, notably The Secret of Power (1882), from which the present sermon is abridged.

Only let your conversation be as it becometh the Gospel of Christ (Phil. 1:27a).

Philippi was a “colony.” The connection between a colony and Rome was a great deal closer than that between an English colony and London. A colony was a bit of Rome on foreign soil. The colonists were Roman citizens. To Paul those Philippians were citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem. In that outlying colony of earth he would stimulate their loyalty to heaven.

I. Keep Fresh the Sense of Belonging to the Mother City. Paul was writing from Rome. The idea of being a Roman gave dignity to a man, and became almost a religion.

A. This is a great part of Christian discipline. We speak of the future life, and forget that it is also the present life, “ready to be revealed.” It is so close, so real, so solemn that it is worthwhile to feel its nearness.

B. There is a present connection between all Christian men and that heavenly city. As Philippi was to Rome, so is earth to heaven, the colony on the outskirts of the empire, ringed about by barbarians, and separated by sounding seas, but keeping open its communications, and one in citizenship.

C. So let us set our thoughts and affections on things above.

D. Nor need the feeling of detachment from the present sadden our spirit, or weaken our interest in the things around us here.

II. Live by the Laws of That City.

A. The Good News of God is to be believed, and obeyed.

B. That law is all-sufficient. In Christ we have all the helps that our weakness needs.

C. So “live worthy of the Gospel.” All duties are capable of reduction to this one. Nor is such an all-comprehensive precept a toothless generality. The combination of great principles and small duties is the secret of all noble and calm life.

D. It is also an exclusive commandment. Let us take the Gospel for our Supreme law, and so labor that we may be “well pleasing to Him.”

III. Fight for the Advance of the City’s Dominions.

A. Christian men are set down in some Philippi to be citizen-soldiers, who hold their homesteads on a military tenure, and are to “strive together for the faith of the Gospel.”

B. Stand fast! Defend the faith, and like the frontier guard, push the conquests of the empire, to win more ground for the King.

C. Such warfare against evil has never been more needed than now. When material comfort and worldly prosperity are dazzlingly attractive to many, win hearts to the love of Him whom to imitate is perfection, and whom to serve is freedom.

IV. Be Sure of Final Victory for God.

A. We have no reason to fear our adversaries. No reason to fear for the ark of God, or the growth of Christianity in the world. Why preach in words that sound more like an apology than a creed?

B. Such Christian courage is based on a sure hope, and is a prophecy of victory. “Our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Lord Jesus as Saviour.”

The little outlying colony in this far-off edge of the Empire is ringed about with foes. The watchers from the ramparts might well be dismayed if they had to depend only on their own resources. But they know that in His progress the Emperor will come to this sorely beset outpost, and their eyes are fixed on the pass in the hills where they expect to see the coming of their King. When he comes he will raise the siege and scatter all his enemies as the chaff of the threshing floor. Then the colonists who have held their posts will go with him into the land which they have never seen, but which is to be their home. There with the Victor they will sweep “through the gates into the city.”

Never be anxious, but always make your requests to God in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving; so shall God’s peace, that surpasses all our dreams, keep guard over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:6–7, Moffatt).

The first part of the message deals with anxiety, with a number of cases from life. When Paul says, “Never be anxious,” is he mocking? Not when he brings God into the scene, with prayers of supplication. (A case—Allan Gardiner—a missionary in Patagonia.) Release from anxiety comes along three lines:

I. Prayer Sets Things in True Perspective. Like an artist at work on a canvas, stand back and look at your life in the healing silence that is the presence of God. Prayer steadies the jaded nerves, lifts the fevered spirit into a purer air, and brings a blessed silence into the din of life’s conflict. Thus prayer makes firm the staggering soul.

II. Prayer Brings Our Will into Line with God’s Will. At a time of civil war within, we say what Jesus said in Gethsemane: “Not what I will, but what Thou wilt!” To do that may call for some kind of Gethsemane, but after such prayers we shall always find release, with serenity that the world can not destroy.

III. Prayer Liberates within Us New Sources of Power to handle the difficult business of living. In true prayer you connect yourself with the source of creative power. From the unseen world flow into your life boundless energies so that you can confront the hardest task, the most difficult situation, with grateful knowledge of God’s adequacy.

The latter part of the message has to do with God’s mysterious peace, which “stands sentry” over your soul. This peace of God is to be recaptured every day, by a new surrender of self to God.

“Paul closes with the words, ‘in Christ Jesus.’ There is the ultimate secret … the transforming influence of a friendship with the noblest, strongest, most understanding Friend in all the world. If only we would start each day with Jesus, reaching out from the dust and darkness of this low earth to clasp the hand of our Friend, the ever-old, ever-new miracle would happen once again, and our restless hearts would find rest and healing in the invincible peace of God.”—Abridged from The Strong Name, pp. 169–176, by pennission of Chas. Scribner’s Sons.

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:6).

Every believer in Christ wants to become more like his Lord. In writing to a sports-minded city Paul shares his own secret of spiritual growth, “in Christ.” By faith put your trust in Christ. This refers to the Holy Spirit—Christ’s Spirit. Through his Spirit have him ever in your heart. What here follows has to do with time, and with running a long-distance race. In terms of athletics, being a Christian has to do with far more than making a right start.

I. A Christian View of the Past. Get right with God. Then largely forget yesterday’s shortcomings, failures, and sins. Also, at times, the successes. To think much about past mistakes tends to make a person morbid. About past failures, despondent. Let the dead past bury its dead. How otherwise can a person expect to have the sort of joy that the apostle shows in this letter?

Most of all, forget your sins. If God forgives what a person has done his best to make right, why should he keep on asking forgiveness for the same old sins?

As for past successes, much thinking makes a man proud, and pride is the worst of the seven deadly sins. If ever a man had need to learn the Gospel of the forward look, that man was Saul of Tarsus, for much the same reason that a runner ought seldom to look back. If the apostle had not learned to voice his faith in other than past tenses, he could not have written this letter of joy “in Christ.”

II. A Christian View of the Future. Christianity makes much of the future. The goal of the Christian life is perfection. The prize is the favor of God. The pathway is chosen of him: “every man’s life a plan of God.” “I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me.” For a living example of what this means in the noblest of men, see in Paul a practical person who looked ahead. But remember that he never let thoughts of coming glory interfere with what he was doing for God at the moment. Where in history can you find such a noble example of a Christian idealist? Thank God for such an elderly optimist!

III. A Christian View of the Present. “One thing I do”: resolve to be daily more like the Lord. With the apostle keep straining forward, eager to be still more useful. And be sure to have his kind of apostolic optimism. Like Grenfell in Labrador, when someone pitied him because of his hardships, smile and say: “Don’t pity me; I am having the time of my life!” But remember that with Grenfell as with Paul, abounding joy came by engaging in Christian service, all because he was ever “in the Lord.”

The secret of Christian progress is to be “in Christ.” In his service the past is secure; the future, glorious; the present, full of glorious opportunity. But first be sure of a personal experience of Christ and his transforming Cross. If so, rest assured that the One who started the good work in you will bring it to completion by the Day of Christ Jesus. (By permission of Pulpit Digest, December, 1953.)

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5; read 2:1–11).

These words introduce one of the most difficult paragraphs in the New Testament, and one of the most sublime. They represent the Gospel in terms of mystery and wonder. In the Bible a mystery has to do with a truth that we mortals can never discover for ourselves, a truth that we accept by faith, because revealed in God’s Book.

I. The Christ Before Christmas. All through eternity before New Testament times our Lord lived in glory as one with the Father. To the Son the saints and angels bowed down to adore, and stood up to sing his praises. Then as now, the wisest and best of all created beings worshiped no one but “very God of very God.” To this hour believers in Christ render him homage because of his Deity, which is a mystery, a “mystery of light.”

II. The Christ of the Cross. At God’s appointed time the Lord Jesus “emptied” himself of his divine glory, and was born in lowly Bethlehem. As a babe and a boy, a man and a carpenter, he did the will of God, perfectly and gladly; also later as Healer, Teacher and Preacher. But all the while he had come to earth to die as our Redeemer. Thus the mystery and the wonder deepen. Today with saints and angels we can only bow down and adore the Redeemer who once died for us men and our salvation.

III. The Christ of the Crown. The drama of our redemption leads us to look beyond the Cross to the Crown. After our Lord had completed his mission on earth he returned to heaven, and there resumed his place at the right hand of his Father. There he rules, and receives the adoration of all the redeemed, both on earth and in heaven.

In the face of this threefold mystery we redeemed sinners can only give thanks to God, while we gladly accept these saving truths that we can not begin to comprehend. In trying to make clear and luminous these mighty truths of redemption we can not turn to human experience for examples about the Incarnation as a mystery.

How then can we of today “have this mind” that was in the Christ of the Gospel? First of all, let every unsaved hearer accept him as Redeemer and Lord. Then the believer will trust the Lord Jesus to reveal by his Spirit how to make the mystery of the Incarnation the ideal and the pattern of everyday living for the Redeemer of men.

SERMONS ABRIDGED BY DR. ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

ALEXANDER MACLAREN’SCitizens of Heaven

JAMES S. STEWART’SWhen God’s Peace Guards the Door

Outlines of Dr. Blackwood’s Own Sermons:

The Christian Secret of Progress and

The Mystery of the Incarnation

The experiences of life move in varied patterns of joy and sorrow, hope and fear, love and loneliness. The ingredients that combine to make our lives significant or meaningful are often unrecognized or at least unacknowledged.

I have just returned from eight weeks of travel throughout Asia. During my trip I served on the staff of the Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches and therefore had the unique experience of listening in on the heart of the Christian world as it contemplated the next epoch in Christian history.

From the conference rooms in New Delhi to villages for untouchables in South India, a school in Punjab, and redevelopment centers in Hong Kong, a variety of impressions stamped themselves on my heart and mind. One impression particularly emblazoned itself so deeply upon me that I am compelled to do nothing less than invite you to join me in a march of death.

That is right. I invite you to walk with me to death. Everything, even death, we are told, has its appointed time. Perhaps now is the time, then, for the Christian Church to face realistically the challenge of the present world situation. Are we willing to sacrifice all we have to make the Gospel known throughout the world? How much are we willing to sacrifice to bring healing to minds and bodies in India, Hong Kong, or Africa?

The impression which overwhelmed me at the Assembly and during my trip was the urgent need for Christians to purify their witness. The time has come either to stand with the Cross or forever to retreat into the background. The day of playing church has passed. We must put away our little systems and idiosyncrasies and grasp the depth of the reconciliation which Christ brought to the world, and seek to share this reconciliation with all men everywhere.

The urgency of our times is vividly illustrated by the rapid changes occurring in Asia, Africa, and even in North America. Old patterns of life are crumbling under the emergence of new nations, new ideas, and new modes of thought. Everywhere we see society strained to the limit by the dynamic forces that impinge upon mankind. My purpose is neither to comment on these social forces nor even to describe them. One need only read current articles and books on Asia and Africa to grasp the upheavals that are in process.

My purpose, rather, is to focus for you and for me the greatest challenge that the Church is facing today. This challenge is summarized by the word “integrity.” This is what the world is looking for as it seeks to find a sense of direction. Who speaks for the truth? Can we believe what Christians say? Is there an authentic witness to the Christian message? Where can we turn for an illustration and example thereof?

We in America must squarely face a fundamental decision at this point. We are caught up in a building boom in our own country which threatens to throw our sense of values out of balance. We spend $100,000 to $250,000 for educational buildings which are used one or two hours, at best but several days, a week. Our philanthropic giving is perhaps 20 to 30 per cent of our budgets. Yet the Gospel tells us we must be willing to give all we have in order to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord. All is not just 20 to 30 per cent, or some other amount that satisfies our conscience. All would seem to imply an amount sufficiently large to threaten our economic survival! We borrow a great deal of money to build our fine buildings here at home, but I have yet to hear of a church that has borrowed $250,000 to build a school in India, or a hospital in Punjab, or a recreation center in Hong Kong.

In fact, it appears that right now the Church is more concerned about its physical accommodations than about the spiritual situation in the world. Christ has called us to give all we have. The world with its hand outstretched, a world desperately in need of the healing only Christ can bring, is crying and pleading for help. Unfortunately, we do not have 15 or 20 years to meet the needs that are before us today. The world cannot wait for us to finish our building program before we can launch a new missionary outreach. In the next several years the world will make some basic and strategic choices. God help us if we fail to give the people the truth revealed in Jesus Christ.

Undoubtedly many will stand and proudly say, “Here is our fine $750,000 church with all of the latest in Christian education facilities.” But, I ask you, what good will be that fine facility if in the next ten years we are unable to meet the challenge of education, technical help, and medical assistance so desperately needed around the world? Should the Church boast over its buildings of so many new churches, or should it instead repent for its failure to sacrifice for the far-flung cause of Christ?

I know not a single church that has ever given all it could for the work of Christ in Asia or Africa. In fact, most of the time we give as little as we can and yet appear respectable, and give as much as we can without curtailing our current program.

If only the world could wait for us to mature spiritually! But the force of the population explosion will not let us remain static. Either we will catch a new vision of the cross of Christ and with joyous abandon give ourselves and all we have to insure that the world hears the glorious news of Christ, the darkness-dispelling Light, or men will turn to those who deny God and speak for materialism.

I invite you to join me in a march to death. Let us give ourselves without and beyond limit to extol Jesus Christ above the turbulent tensions of our world as the Light and Saviour of all mankind.—JAMES R. HIPKINS, Pastor, Church of the Saviour (Methodist), Cincinnati, Ohio.

MISSION TO THE WORLD—Two months ago an American touring company, sponsored by the State Department and paid for by your tax dollars, presented one of Tennessee Williams’ more depraved offerings to an audience in Rio de Janeiro. The audience hooted in disgust and walked out. And where did it walk to? Right across the street where a Russian ballet company was putting on a beautiful performance for the glory of Russia! How dumb can we get?—JENKIN LLOYD JONES, Editor, The Tulsa Tribune, in an address, “Who Is Tampering With the Soul of America?”

Counseling With A Plus

A Theology of Pastoral Care, by Eduard Thurneysen (John Knox, 1962, 343 pp., $5.50), is reviewed by Carl Kromminga, Associate Professor of Practical Theology, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The appearance of Eduard Thurneysen’s Die Lehre von der Seelsorge in English translation is a welcome event. In our time the Protestant minister is increasingly finding the role of psychological counselor thrust upon him, or he is increasingly assuming this role in a frantic effort to insure his relevance in modern society. A Theology of Pastoral Care is a notable attempt to set forth clearly the unique aim of pastoral care and to delineate sharply its distinction from counseling in general.

Thurneysen reminds us that pastoral care is inseparably related to, but neither replaces nor competes with the Word and Sacraments. It accompanies them as a secondary, nonsacramental sign. Pastoral care is a “specific communication to the individual of the message proclaimed in general … in the sermon to the congregation” (p. 15). Pietism, by shifting the emphasis from the objective Word of God to subjective piety, rendered individual care suspect. But even those pastors and theologians who stressed the centrality of the Word preached and the Sacraments could not be brought to repudiate pastoral care of individuals entirely.

Thurneysen maintains that individual pastoral care must be seen in the perspective of church discipline, but church discipline understood in this way: “The church sees to it that the power proceeding from the Word and sacrament actually becomes effective in the members of the church. It cannot simply look on, when Word and sacrament exist without evidence of the life which should proceed from them” (p. 37). The church cannot effect repentance and sanctification. But the church “cross-questions” its members in the light of its proclamation because it honors the Word which it proclaims and is concerned to see it come to fruition in life. In pursuit of this goal the church engages in individual admonition.

True pastoral conversation is always characterized by a breach. In the development of the conversation it becomes apparent that the pastor is concerned with a message which transcends the human judgment and evaluation, the human problems and presuppositions which come to light in the process of discussion. A struggle emerges in which the pastor strives to make plain that all human evaluation and judgment come under the sentence of God’s gracious judgment in the Word. A pastoral conversation in which this breach does not occur may produce some kind of psychological counseling, but in terms of the pastoral purpose it is a failure.

The core of pastoral conversation is identical with the core of the church’s proclamation. Pastoral conversation seeks to communicate the message of the forgiveness of sins, a forgiveness grounded in the fact that all sin is completely cancelled in Jesus Christ. Psychology and psychotherapy can illuminate the condition of the counselee in the pastoral situation. But the goal of the pastoral conversation is totally different from psychological self-understanding and psychic healing. Psychology and psychotherapy can aid the pastoral conversation, but they can never do its work. And especially with respect to psychotherapy, the pastor must be aware of immanentist presuppositions which are inimical to pastoral care. The removal of psychic conflicts does not guarantee the forgiveness of sins. But the forgiveness of sins has great significance for the achievement of psychic healing.

The view of Scripture in this book is the “neoorthodox” view. Scripture is a record of and a witness to encounter with the Word which never exists except as an act. Yet this theoretical view of Scripture is significantly overcome at points where Thurneysen appeals to biblical propositions to establish his thesis.

God has had mercy on all men unconditionally in Christ. Thurneysen consistently refuses to discuss the possibility of the ultimate failure of the pastoral conversation. But do not such failures occur? And, when they occur, do they signify only the self-condemning refusal of man to appropriate his already real forgiveness? Does not this refusal point beyond itself to a sovereign withholding of the efficacy of Christ’s work by the electing God? Difficult as it may be to come to this conclusion, a refusal to do so raises serious questions concerning the ultimate power of the grace of God.

Thurneysen sees a recurrence of Roman Catholicism in Question 85 of the Heidelberg Catechism which teaches that God honors the judgment of the church in excommunication with an act of exclusion from the Kingdom of God. But the Catechism is only concerned to declare that God stands by his Word and that, when the church acts according to the Word, God himself will not put Word and act in question by some arbitrary circumvention of his own revealed will.

The English translation is remarkably smooth. But on page 249 “Augen” has apparently been read for “Glauben” and the result is confusing.

This book modestly presents a, not the, theology of pastoral care. Pastors and professors with a biblically responsible theology will find this work of great value. It can serve as a guide to the formation of a clear, distinct, and articulate theology of pastoral care, which is so greatly needed at a time when pastoral care is struggling to keep its identity.

CARL KROMMINGA

The New Look

Twelve New Testament Studies, by John A. T. Robinson (SCM, 1962, 180 pp., 13s. 6d.), is reviewed by F. F. Bruce, Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis, University of Manchester, Manchester, England.

Dr. John Robinson, formerly Dean of Clare College, Cambridge, is now Bishop of Woolwich. He has a lively and brilliant mind, and one of his studies, “Elijah, John and Jesus,” is aptly subtitled by himself “An Essay in Detection.” But it is no mere jeu d’ esprit; it raises questions which demand some satisfactory solution, whether Dr. Robinson’s solution or someone else’s. The most important studies in this volume, however, deal with John’s Gospel. “The New Look on the Fourth Gospel” challenges five of the most generally agreed presuppositions of the last 50 years, and ventilates the suggestion that this Gospel may preserve “a real continuity, … in the life on an ongoing community, with the earliest days of Christianity” (p. 106). In “The Destination and Purpose of St. John’s Gospel” he argues that it was addressed to Greek-speaking Jews of the dispersion to win them to the faith. The Johannine Epistles, too, he believes to have been written to correct gnosticizing tendencies in that same environment. “The Baptism of John and the Qumran Community” shows, among other things, how the Fourth Evangelist’s portrayal of John the Baptist and his ministry takes on new significance against the background of the Qumran Manual of Discipline. Another essay argues that the “others” who had “labored” in Samaria, according to John 4:38 were not (as Professor Cullmann has said) the Hellenists of Acts 8, but John the Baptist and his followers—an argument rendered the more probable by Professor Albright’s recent studies in the place-names of John 3:23. In “The Parable of the Shepherd” the methods which Professor Jeremias has applied to the Synoptic parables are applied to John 10:1–5, and lead to conclusions about the historical value of this typically Johannine section which compare favorably with any of the Synoptic material.

F. F. BRUCE

Not For The Attic

The Acts of the Apostles (The Evangelical Commentary on the Bible, text based on the American Standard Version), by Charles W. Carter and Ralph Earle (Zondervan, 1959,451 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by E. P. Schulze, Pastor, Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Peekskill, New York.

Some good books I have reviewed went promptly to the attic. This will stay in my study. Lucid, lively, stimulating, scholarly, it should captivate evangelical laymen, ministers and theologians alike.

Errors in Acts 7? Words quoted in Scripture are not always God’s (p. 96). “One is not required to defend the accuracy of Stephen’s statements” (p. 99). Yet, laudably and with considerable success, this commentary attempts just that.

Eschewing the Septuagint and Josephus, however, it is no “difficult problem” to harmonize the 400 Egyptian years with the 430 from Covenant to Exodus (Gal. 3:17), for the promise was renewed to Jacob (Gen. 46:3, 4). Is 45 (v. 14) a “round number”? Genesis 46:26 contains the clue. Samuel Davidson unriddled this in 1843. (See Haley, Alleged Discrepancies, p. 389.)

“Printed in Holland” may explain some typographical blunders. But such things are mere specks on brilliant pages packed with learning. E. P. SCHULZE

Must Reading

Through the Valley of the Kwai, by Ernest Gordon (Harper, 1962, 257 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by L. Nelson Bell, Executive Editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This is a rare book, rare for a number of reasons. Where, for instance, can one find a story combining the raw and harrowing experience of war along with a gradual change—through the transforming work of the Holy Spirit—from agnosticism to glorious faith in Jesus Christ?

Dr. Gordon, now Dean of the Chapel at Princeton University, entered the war as a captain in the 93rd Argyll Highlanders. Subsequent events culminated in a Japanese prison camp deep in the Thailand jungles, the prison of the famous “railroad builders of the Kwai.” Even if read only from the standpoint of adventure, danger and the very nadir of human misery and degradation the book is a classic.

Reading for Perspective

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

* The Minister’s Law Handbook, by G. Stanley Joslin (Channel Press, $4.95). Here is help for the pastor who is frequently requested to give legal advice on many matters, but is often unequipped to give it.

* Frontiers of the Christian World Mission, edited by Wilbur C. Harr (Harper, $5). An up-to-date report on development and changes in the missionary situation since World War II in key areas of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.

* The Treasury of Religious Verse, compiled by Donald T. Kauffman (Revell, $4.95). An unusually fine collection of 600 religious poems from poets ranging from Charles Wesley to T. S. Eliot, Fanny Crosby to Francis Thompson and John Donne.

But here we have much more, for out of human misery and unbelievable stories of man’s inhumanity to man there emerged a group of men with the love of Christ in their hearts, a love which transformed them as persons and which went out to fellow prisoners with amazing results.

Here one will find raw paganism (in captives and captors), humor, selfishness and selflessness, heroism and new men in Christ, emerging the one from the other with a convincing reality which leaves one amazed at the depths to which men may fall and the heights to which they may be raised by the transforming Christ.

This is a book you must read, then pass on for others to read.

L. NELSON BELL

The Devotional Life

Anglican Devotion: Studies in the Spiritual Life of the Church of England between the Reformation and the Oxford Movement, by C. J. Stranks (SCM Press, 1961, 296 pp., 30s.), is reviewed by Donald Robinson, Vice-principal, Moore Theological College, Sydney.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY recently posed the question, “Can we recover the devotional life?” This book describes what “the devotional life” meant for many in the Church of England before the era of conventions and Bible schools. Stranks selects for study a number of books which, in some cases for centuries, helped to nourish the spiritual life of Anglicans.

Bishop Bayle’s The Practice of Piety was one of two books possessed by John Bunyan’s wife at the time of their marriage, though they were “as poor as poor might be, not having so much household stuff as a dish or a spoon betwixt us.” It was a manual of devotion “which exactly fulfilled all the requirements of those who accepted Calvin’s theology without his church order.” (Issued in 1612, 58th edition in 1734, last appeared in 1842.) In 1650 Jeremy Taylor wrote Holy Living “to sustain afflicted members of the Church of England” in days of confusion for church and state. It profoundly influenced John Wesley in the 18th century and John Keble in the 19th. (It is among the 100 Select Devotional Books, now in print, listed with the article referred to at the beginning of this review.) The restoration of the Prayer Book in 1662 produced a crop of devotional books based on an exposition of this book (Nicholl, Wheatley, Sparrow, Comber, Nelson’s Festivals and Fasts, etc.). The Whole Duty of Man (author unknown), of the same period, reached its 28th edition by 1790. Wesley and Charles Simeon were both stirred by it in their student days, though Evangelicals generally found it moralistic and arid, and Henry Venn wrote The Complete Duty of Man “to ground morality upon a sounder theological foundation.” William Law, the non-juror, wrote A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life in 1729, and William Wilberforce, the Evangelical, produced A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians etc. in 1797.

In the past century Evangelicalism and Tractarianism have each tended to produce a devotional literature of its own, but there is still much to be gained from a study of the older, common inheritance. Here, in the main, is a sound biblical piety, in which “no emotion, however exalted, can take the place of belief, prayer and practice” (p. 285).

DONALD ROBINSON

Biblical Breakthrough?

Grace, by R. W. Gleason, S.J. (Sheed & Ward, 1962, 240 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by G. W. Bromiley, Professor of Church History, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

This new book on grace by the chairman of the Theology Department at Fordham University is written primarily not as a major critical or constructive contribution to dogmatics, but for the instruction of theological students and the laity.

It has several admirable qualities. Stylistically, its combination of clarity with a solid content of material fits the author’s purpose admirably. In content, it includes an excellent, though brief, presentation of the biblical basis, a useful review of post-biblical development, and a valuable statement of the developed Roman Catholic position. The spirit of the author is good, especially in his attempt to be fair to the Lutheran position and to recognize what he would allow to be the many elements of truth in it.

Yet the weaknesses of the work are no less evident than the admirable qualities. Even in form it suffers from the lack of an index and bibliography—surely essential in a book of this type. Academically the most striking feature is the failure to follow up the biblical material and to exploit it in the presentation of a doctrine that could with truth claim to be apostolic and catholic. The historical survey betrays a similar weakness. Thus the work of Torrance—here an “English” scholar!—is used in exposition, but no account is taken of his acute criticism of post-apostolic doctrine in terms of the biblical norm.

This leads us to the ultimate dogmatic weakness; the Bible is not allowed to exercise its normative function, Aristotelian philosophy is canonized as well as Scripture, and the true doctrine of grace is sought in the Scholastic synthesis and its Tridentine codification. In this respect the work does not even represent what is best and most dynamic in modern Roman Catholic theology. Alert, informed, lucid and charitable though it is, it never faces up to the basic issue and, therefore, it has little to offer in the contemporary situation beyond teaching Roman Catholics what they are bound to believe, and giving Protestants a clearer picture of what this belief is.

Yet this is not perhaps quite the end of the story. For the biblical data are in fact present. The book contains such vital statements as “Christ is our grace,” and “the gift of God to men in Christ’s sacrifice of the cross … is the very heart of the meaning of the created gift of grace.” Perhaps after all the Bible is beginning to assert itself in a new way even in what finally turns out to be an exercise in standard Roman Catholic dogma.

G. W. BROMILEY

Aid For St. Augustine?

The Ministry and Mental Health, ed. by Hans Hofmann (Association, 1961, 256 pp., $5) is reviewed by Orville S. Walters, Director of Health Services and Lecturer in Psychiatry, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois.

The broad, nondescriptive title of this symposium is necessary to comprehend the diverse and uneven assortment of papers that make it up. The volume begins with essays dealing with the impact of the new sciences of man upon theology, then tapers off through a series of chapters by several leaders of the pastoral training movement into a description of catalog offerings in the field at Union Seminary.

A republished article by Paul Tillich declares that the most important insight of psychotherapy for theology is an undercutting of contemporary Pelagianism, and a reaffirmation both of the hidden grip of sin and the unconditional power of God’s grace. In Tillich’s view, the psychology of the unconscious reinforces the Augustinian-Reformation theology and opposes the Roman-legalistic and the Protestant-moralistic views.

Talcott Parsons views personality as the product of social interaction that emerges from the erotic childhood relationships delineated by Freud. He sees spiritual malaise as growing out of the individual’s involvement in problems of meaning and value. The place of the psychiatrist, the clergyman and the church are examined in this light.

David McClelland, an experimental psychologist, discusses the religious overtones in psychoanalysis. He sees Freud’s system as the product of revolt against a legalistic Judaism which has been popular among American intellectuals as a revolt against Christian orthodoxy while retaining belief in a determinism and an innate depravity reminiscent of Calvinism. Psychoanalysis, he believes, had its roots in Jewish mysticism and has continued to function as a secular religious movement that fulfills religious functions not being met by the church.

In a notable treatment of “Psychology and a Ministry of Faith,” James Dittes of Yale Divinity School deprecates the current popularity of the pastoral counseling movement as a ministry of good works rather than a ministry of faith. The clergyman’s attempts to justify his vocation by efforts to probe, analyze, control and manipulate, communicate his own anxiety and deny the faith he represents. Divine resources for healing may flow more effectively through the minister’s basic confidence in these resources than through his self-conscious efforts.

The remaining chapters deal largely with the training of seminary students in pastoral care, the screening of students for seminary training and the problems growing out of work with emotionally disturbed persons.

ORVILLE S. WALTERS, M.D.

A Narrow Province

Jesus of Nazareth: The Hidden Years, by Robert Aron, tr. by Frances Frenaye (Morrow, 1962, 253 pp., $4); is reviewed by Ralph A. Gwinn, Associate Professor of Religion, Knoxville College, Knoxville, Tennessee.

A distinguished French historian has given us a book, written from within a Jewish framework, which will give the Christian a finer appreciation of the backgrounds of his own faith. One of the tantalizing ideas with which the author works is the impact upon Jesus of the conflict between “a tradition, an invasion … that is, a land historically impregnated by God, and a group of men from another country who temporarily occupied it” (p. 39). The author declares that many interpretive faults with reference to Scripture spring from a lack of knowledge of the basic differences between Hebrew and western languages. His explanation of “an eye for an eye” and “vanity of vanities” illustrates his point. Even more than this, Aron insists that Hebrew syntax and the Hebrew view of man cannot be separated. The author shows that Jesus’ teaching was essentially Jewish, and then near the end of the book suggests two principal innovations which Jesus brought. The approach throughout is naturalistic. “Anything supernatural is outside our province” (p. 225).

This book is, in a real sense, an apologia for Judaism. It also gives the Christian a better understanding of the rock from which he is hewn, and some suggestive insights into the early years of his Lord.

RALPH A. GWINN

Book Versus Title

The Philosophy of Judaism, by Zwi Cahn (Macmillan, 1962, 524 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by Jacob Jocz, Professor of Systematic Theology, Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada.

It is no small venture to write yet another book on Judaism. There is a large literature on the subject both of scholarly and popular works and it is not easy to make a genuine contribution. Unfortunately, the present work belongs to neither category. It is not a scholarly work for it lacks accuracy of fact and precision of language, and reveals anything but an unbiased approach. Nor is it a popular work, with its 500 odd pages, its misleading title, and profusion of names and dates.

The book is well printed, well produced and has a reputable publishing house behind it. The greater is the disappointment when the reader comes to the text:

(1) The author’s contradictions are numerous, specially on the subject of Jewish doctrine. We are told with great emphasis that Judaism has no “dogma.” The author asks whether a Jew need even believe in God. We are told that Judaism is devoid of “basic principles,” but he then proceeds quite happily to elucidate the basic principles underlying the views of Jewish religious writers. He does this by a curious distinction between “fundamentals” and “Articles of Faith.”

(2) The many inaccuracies make it impossible to take the book seriously: The Ten Tribes did not return because “they had not been too fond of their fatherland”; “the Jewish religion as such never feared assimilationist tendencies”; the apostles called the Pharisees hypocrites “but the apostles were not born until about 100 or 150 years after the founder of “Christianity,” so they knew nothing about the Pharisees. (That the Talmud calls some Pharisees hypocrites the author apparently does not know.) “Two Jewish scribes wrote down the Koran” at Mohammed’s dictation.

(3) Though the book is called The Philosophy of Judaism, we are never really told what that philosophy is. It seems that anything written by Jews constitutes “Jewish” philosophy even when this is done in obvious dependence upon non-Jewish thought. Spinoza is thus credited with inaugurating a new era of Jewish philosophy. Henri Bergson is claimed to be a “Jewish” philosopher and is placed side by side with Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig. In fact, the author tells us that he detects in all three of them “an undercurrent of Jewish nationalism.”

(4) The author’s greatest bias is against Hebrew Christians: they are all traitors, renegates and Jew-baiters. But surprisingly enough they are in good company. Spinoza, the most harmless and gentle of men, is described as a hater of Judaism and of Jews. Is it because he quoted “John the Baptist” to the effect that “we are in God and God is in us”? One wonders whether Dr. Zwi Cahn has ever read the New Testament.

Dr. Cahn goes out of his way to assure the reader that Bergson was buried in a Jewish cemetery. Is it possible that he never heard of the fact that the philosopher died a professing Christian and was given Christian burial although he was not baptized?

It is not usual for this reviewer to be so critical, but he is left with a sense of disappointment. The book’s appearance and grandiose title promise much more than is warranted by the content.

JACOB JOCZ

Book Briefs

The Beatitudes of Jesus, by William Fitch (Eerdmans, 1961, 132 pp., $3). A good discussion of those spiritual qualities that mark the Lord’s portrait of the Christian man.

Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, by Edgar Jones (Macmillan, 1962, 349 pp., $4.25). Torch Bible Commentaries’ interpretation of the “canticles of scepticism” and the “pawky Proverbs.”

New Men for New Times, by Beatrice Avalos (Sheed & Ward, 1962, 182 pp., $3.75). Author contends that today’s teachers teach as though they lived in the nineteenth century, and that it is time they realized their students live in a time of fragmentation and isolation and should be taught accordingly.

Martin is Baptized, by Jean and David Head (Macmillan, 1962, 74 pp., $1.50). Parents, some for and some against, discuss the meaning of child baptism. Simple but informative dialogue.

Sign Posts on the Christian Way, by Patrick Hankey (Scribners, 1962, 152 pp., $2.95). Religiously, sensitive guide for him who travels the paths of devotion.

Basic Sources of the Judaeo-Christian Tradition, by Fred Berthold, Jr., Allan Carlsten, Klaus Penzel, and James F. Ross (Prentice-Hall, 1962, 322 pp., $10.60). Selections from the writings of men whose thought and actions created the basis of our Western religious heritage. The historical survey includes a date-line graph, brief introductory sketches and historical essays which provide the setting of each reading selection. Writers range from Moses to Augustine and Anselm, Warfield to Barth, from Popes to Fosdick.

God in My Unbelief, by J. W. Stevenson (Collins, 1962, 159 pp., $2.75). An absorbing self-told story of Scottish minister in an upland parish reflecting his religious and sometimes costly involvement in the life of his people. First American printing.

Massacre at Montségur, by Zoé Oldenbourg, tr. by Peter Green (Pantheon, 1961, 420 pp., $6.95). A distinguished historical novelist shows her marked ability as a straight historian in this tragic account of the twelfth-thirteenth-century Albigensians.

A fortnightly report of developments in religion

The right of local presbyteries to “receive, dismiss, ordain, install, remove, and judge ministers” was upheld last month by the 174th annual General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. meeting in Denver.

The General Assembly’s Permanent Judicial Commission overruled two synodical decisions. A commission statement approved by the assembly declared:

“We are deciding that in our church’s system of constitutional government the presbyteries, now and historically, bear the heavy and primary responsibility of determining the qualifications of our ministers within the framework of our constitutional documents.”

The assembly thus reversed a ruling of the Synod of New Jersey that barred Professor John Harwood Hick of Princeton Theological Seminary from membership in the Presbytery of New Brunswick because he refused to affirm belief in the Virgin Birth.

Commissioners also upheld the Presbytery of Cincinnati, which has suspended the Rev. Maurice McCracken, a pacifist who served a six-month prison term for his refusal to pay income taxes, which, he said, would be used for military purposes.

In the Hick case, the assembly commission criticized the New Jersey Synod’s commission for irregularities in handling. Among other things, the assembly commission called the use of a round-robin letter instead of a formal meeting of the synod commission a grave error.

The main basis for the decision, however, was that of the presbytery’s rights. But the commission also called attention to the “principle of toleration” in the United Presbyterian Church, which permits a variety of theological viewpoints. It said that overturning Hick’s acceptance by the presbytery would only revive the fundamentalist-modernist controversy which shook the church earlier in the twentieth century.

Some observers interpreted the assembly decision as an indication that Dr. Stuart H. Merriam would have little chance of regaining his pulpit at Broadway Presbyterian Church in New York City (see adjoining story, “The Battle for Broadway”).

In other action, the assembly deferred action on a controversial report defining its position on church-state relations. Commissioners voted to distribute the 21,000-word report to the denomination’s local churches, presbyteries, and synods for their study and opinions. The comments are to be transmitted back to the committee which drafted the report, and it will resubmit a possibly revised report to next year’s assembly.

The Battle For Broadway

As the minister stepped to the pulpit to deliver his sermon, most of the congregation promptly rose and filed slowly out of the rear exits. The address was Broadway, New York City, but this was no musical comedy. The songs were hymns, and the people had been singing of the Church: “By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.…” On the way out, their faces reflected awareness that they were passing through a solemn hour in which the life of their church seemed to be hanging in the balances. The silence was broken by a call from the pulpit for the narthex to be cleared. A young blond minister who had watched from the rear told reporters: “It appears to me that Dr. Merriam had led some of his people to worship him instead of Jesus Christ. In the church we think of this as idolatry.”

The observer was the Rev. Edward White, the church was Broadway Presbyterian, and he had been appointed by the New York Presbytery as head of a special commission to administer the affairs of the church, from whose pulpit the presbytery had removed Dr. Stuart H. Merriam (see News Section, May 25 issue.)

The 275 members who walked out re-assembled in the basement for prayer. Of the scattered 125 who remained upstairs to sing, “Where Cross the Crowded Ways,” most were visitors. They listened to a message by Dr. J. Carter Swaim, a National Council of Churches official, and then heard the Rev. Graydon McClellan, chief administrative officer of the presbytery, read a long “Statement to the Congregation.”

The report opposes Bible reading, prayer, and religious holiday observances in public schools. In addition, it said government support of parochial schools and legislation which prohibits the distribution of birth control information are inconsistent with the principle of church-state separation. It also called for the ending of exemption from military service for ministerial candidates and ordained clergymen.

Debate on the report, however, did not deal specifically with these provisions but centered on the use of the word “secular” in the document. Some commissioners argued that this would be interpreted to mean a Godless state. An agreement was finally reached to remove the word “secular” from the report being submitted to the church.

Commissioners urged President Kennedy to end the use of federal funds for the construction of segregated housing. The assembly also called upon Presbyterians to accept the burden of maintaining a balance of power with the Communist world, but to work through nonmilitary means to achieve peace.

Turning to the liquor question, it was obvious that Presbyterians had been stung by harsh criticism which greeted last year’s assembly statement, which while encouraging voluntary abstinence, recognized that many church members in honesty and sincerity drink moderately, and called for mutual respect between those who so drink and those that abstain. The assembly reaffirmed last year’s statement, which it regarded as upholding the “historic position of voluntary abstinence” but it also went on to criticize social drinking as the frequent introduction to, and context of, problem drinking, as well as being the principal influence in attracting new drinkers.

Dr. Marshall L. Scott of Chicago, pioneer leader in church work in urban and industrial areas, was elected moderator. He was elected on the first ballot, receiving 574 out of a total of 979 votes cast, gaining the required simple majority. Two other candidates for the office were Dr. Elmer C. Elsea of Denver, who received 287 votes, and Dr. Floyd E. McGuire of Larchmont, New York, who received 118 votes.

The assembly also voted to provide “responsible” sex education for its members following adoption of a special committee report on marriage and parenthood in a changing world.

The report, which approved the medical practice of artificial insemination with certain safeguards, was endorsed overwhelmingly.

In calling for sex education, the church’s board of education was asked to develop programs for young people and adults that would “best communicate in a Christian context concepts of responsible sexuality and the basic value standards—spiritual, economic, and emotional—upon which a sound marriage can be built.”

Prefaced by the words, “this is a hard moment …,” the statement reviewed the action of the presbytery in ousting Merriam and the church session (board of elders). In a general assessment, the presbytery had noted some positive factors in the current condition of Broadway Church. Sunday morning worship attendance had tripled in the one year Merriam had been there, and so had missionary giving. Young people were being attracted and minority groups welcomed, three or four Negroes joining in one month. Merriam’s leadership talents were acknowledged, evidenced in the warm support of his congregation in the present crisis, as well as in the large amount of volunteer labor which has considerably improved the church property.

All this was reminiscent of Merriam’s Southern Presbyterian pastorate in Portsmouth, Virginia, where he doubled the church’s property within four years, while speaking out against segregation.

But the New York Presbytery had gone on to charge Merriam with impulsiveness and poor judgment, citing the minister’s introduction of his dog from the pulpit, and also his intercession with the State Department for an Iranian scholar who had charged his native government with corruption.

Historic Broadway Church, founded in 1825 and always a stronghold of theological conservatism, lies close to Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary. The New York Presbytery tends toward liberalism, and though denying that “a particular theology” was an issue in its case against Merriam, it asserted he was not “adapted” to a ministry “that would be of interest and value to the university and professional community.” It spoke of his “theological inflexibility” and his criticism of “neoorthodox theologians, such as Brunner, Tillich, and Niebuhr.” His “rigid approach to theological matters is unsuitable for such work with university students and faculty members.… He appears to be absorbed with the psychology of sudden conversion to a degree that makes him impatient with the kind of disciplined thinking that is so necessary in reaching the searching student. This applies also to his preaching.”

The session was charged with being seemingly unaware of the seriousness of the foregoing “deficiencies.” The presbytery would “consider recommending Dr. Merriam for further pastorates only after he has sought the help of a professional counselor acceptable to the Committee on Ministerial Relations.” Merriam’s income would be continued up to a year’s time if he remained without a call or other employment and if he did “not interfere with Presbytery’s right to conduct the affairs” of Broadway. The congregation would be permitted to select a successor to Dr. Merriam “when the Presbytery feels that the congregation is ready to do so.”

The presbytery’s choice of an interim stated supply was not without a touch of whimsy. He was Dr. Paul Franklin Hudson, 47, who had been minister of Second Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis for only a little over a year when he and ten members of the session were ousted by the Indianapolis Presbytery at the end of 1961. Second Church reportedly had been fragmented by gossip and bitterness.

On May 20, the Sunday following the Broadway Church’s walkout, Dr. Hudson interpreted his as a “ministry of reconciliation.” But he preached largely to visitors, for most of the members were again downstairs for a prayer service. The New York Times described Hudson’s sermon as neoorthodox, and quoted a leading elder who told the basement throng that their church had had “137 years of evangelical gospel preaching” and wanted it restored and continued.

Merriam, 38-year-old bachelor, had been asked to remove his personal belongings from and cease attending the church which had called him with the presbytery’s approval after a two-year search for a minister. He had never been installed, however, the delay having resulted from the death of his father and subsequent illness of his mother. His predecessor at Broadway, Dr. John McComb, had been a strong fundamentalist separatist. Merriam told reporters, “I am no fighting fundamentalist, but I am a conservative evangelical, and am still eager to cooperate on all hands. I remain a convinced, loyal Presbyterian.”

His training indeed was “pure Presbyterian,” having taken him to Davidson College in North Carolina, Princeton Seminary, Toronto’s Knox College, and New College, Edinburgh, where he earned a doctorate in church history.

Merriam said that he had opposed the walkout and had intended to absent himself. But he was overrulled by mounting pressures partly brought to bear by an eminent Presbyterian clergyman who thought the situation required a dramatic protest.

The presbytery and conservative Broadway Church had been at odds for 60 years. A former moderator of presbytery has said, “We should have done this long ago.” But John Sutherland Bonnell, minister emeritus of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, called this exercise of the presbytery’s power over a congregation “disturbing to ministers and elders of the Presbyterian Church at large.”

Top legal counsel rallied to Merriam’s cause, including Dr. Edward Burns Shaw, co-author with United Presbyterian Stated Clerk Eugene Carson Blake of Presbyterian Law. The presbytery’s action is being appealed to the New York Synod.

The minister and officers of Manhattan’s Rutgers Presbyterian Church denounced the presbytery and offered Merriam the use of their church on Sunday evenings. The respected minister, the Rev. George Nicholson, had argued strongly on behalf of Merriam before the presbytery, but to no avail:

“Dr. Merriam inherited a feud. If the Archangel Gabriel himself had gone into Broadway Church he would have been in trouble. He would have had to walk a tight rope between what Presbytery thinks and wants and intends to have done in Broadway Church, and what Broadway Church wants—and perhaps rightly wants.…

“Moderator, in all honesty, is it not true that everybody knows that what Dr. Merriam did or did not do is utterly irrelevant to the real issue? He is a mere pawn in this game of power—this machine control. You know, Moderator, much better than I, that this is a plan to make Broadway Church subservient. It has been again and again cynically stated at meetings, although omitted from minutes. What Presbytery wants in Broadway is a willing ‘yes’ man. Everybody knows it but nobody says it, at least, not openly!

“Good men everywhere in this Presbytery are weary of this interminable scheming and plotting—and all of it, God help us—in the name of Christ and always after a perfunctory prayer.… Here is a young man at the beginning of his ministry and he is told of his sudden removal and this after ‘long and prayerful consideration’ (perhaps the most pious and lethal phrase in the ecclesiastical vocabulary).”

Jubilee Juncture

Along the sandy, palm-studded shores of Biscayne Bay last month, two globegirdling paths converged. The Christian and Missionary Alliance, whose task force of 860 missionaries is among the largest in Protestantism, marked its 75 th anniversary General Council in Miami by approving a merger with the smaller Missionary Church Association.

The two-thirds majority necessary for approval came easily in a secret ballot (673 for, 146 against) after delegates by a standing vote had defeated a compromise amendment which would have invited the MCA to join the CMA. Final CMA ratification of the merger plan is expected at next year’s council. A referendum will be conducted, meanwhile, among the 115 local congregations of the MCA if a basis for union is approved by its biennial General Conference. If a merger is consummated, the new organization will be known as The Missionary Alliance. It will embrace some 80,000 members in North America and nearly twice that many overseas.

The paths of the merging groups have crossed before. They had similar nineteenth-century roots characterized by emphasis on (1) missionary outreach and (2) the Spirit-filled life. MCA founders had considered uniting with the CMA back in 1898, but abandoned the plan because the nature of the CMA was considered “undenominational and without intention for organizing local churches.” The two groups have nonetheless cooperated for many years, particularly in missionary effort. Curiously enough, although the CMA now has some 1,200 churches across North America, some constituents still insist that it is not a denomination but an interdenominational missionary society.

Delegates to the six-day jubilee CMA council assembled even as war clouds hung low over two of their key mission regions, Southeast Asia and New Guinea (more than a third of overseas resources are currently committed there). The delegates called for a special day of prayer for the crisis.

Held in conjunction with the council was a week-long evangelistic campaign with Dr. Merv Rosell, who said he was grieved that military expeditions seemed to ba outpacing the evangelical missionary enterprise.

“Helicopters are carrying our guns where men have never met our God,” he declared. “We stand red-faced before people who have seen our trinkets but not our tracts, our generals but not our evangelists, our Red Cross but not the old-rugged Cross.”

Equally provocative observations on the Christian home front were voiced by Dr. A. W. Tozer, who was described by Miami Herald Religion Editor Adon Taft as “the man with perhaps the most vivid pen in the American church.” Tozer told Taft in an interview that the biggest contemporary problem in the American church is the hiatus between creed and worldliness of conduct within orthodox Christianity.

“We have religious schizophrenia today,” said Tozer, editor of the Alliance Witness and author of nearly a dozen books. “We are orthodox in creed and heterodox in conduct.”

He predicted that small groups of Christians may rise to protect the present condition of the church and bring on more divisions in Christianity.

Four days after Tozer’s remarks appeared in print, there was a sobering illustration of the disparity between preachment and practice in the council sessions themselves. A Monday morning prayer session attracted only six of the 1,460 delegates at the appointed hour, despite repeated pleas during the preceding days for intercession and dedication of life in behalf of the missionary enterprise.

CMA President Nathan Bailey said the need for a broader base for society efforts was a must.

“There are numberless opportunities for enlarging our home work,” he observed, cautioning that “the motivation must never be the by-product of the missionary dollar.”

Bailey added, “Our outreach must be for the purpose of bringing lost men to salvation and leading believers into their privileges in Christ. It is true that God-touched and God-filled men will become the source of new missionary prayer and financial support.”

The CMA has always been characterized by a pioneering faith. Latest expression is an unprecedented 15 per cent budgetary increase—to $4,500,000 for the current year—despite a domestic membership gain of less than one person per church during 1961. Last year brought the society its most serious financial crisis in recent years, but a correspondingly amazing recovery as well. The net result was the largest overseas expansion of any one year in society history. Nearly 10,000 baptisms were counted.

Back in 1882, pioneering faith was exercised in the founding of the CMA movement by Canadian-born Dr. A. B. Simpson, minister of the Thirteenth Street Presbyterian Church of New York City. The movement began with a meeting of seven people, and a few weeks later the work was organized with 3 5 members. Simpson’s early text was Zechariah 4:10: “For who hath despised the day of small things?” His theology was “the four-fold Gospel” exalting Christ as Saviour, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King. As a result, CMA churches traditionally stress the baptism of the Holy Spirit as “a second definite work of grace.” Anointing the sick has been widely practiced, and many healings have been recorded. The emphasis on the work of the Spirit stops short of speaking in tongues, and the CMA generally does not consider itself aligned with either the holiness or the Pentecostal movements.

The CMA originally functioned as two distinct organizations, the Christian Alliance and the Evangelical Missionary Alliance, subsequently designated the International Missionary Alliance. In 1897 the two were consolidated into the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

Simpson’s associates in the early days included Henry Wilson, an Episcopalian; Kelso Carter, a Salvationist; Stephen Merritt, a Methodist; and Albert Funk, a Mennonite who subsequently became the first president of the Missionary Church Association.

By the time Simpson died in 1919 the CMA had some 340 missionaries. Today there are 860 who serve in 24 fields and preach in 180 languages. They publish about 91,000,000 pieces of literature a year and conduct 162 radio broadcasts per week in 16 languages. Most are graduates of one of CMA schools: Nyack (New York) Missionary College, St. Paul (Minnesota) Bible College, Simpson Bible College in San Francisco, and Canadian Bible College in Regina, Saskatchewan. Toccoa Falls (Georgia) Institute and Bible College also maintains links with the CMA.

The CMA is currently upgrading its schools and is working toward establishment of a graduate school of theology.

Council delegates, wary of degree mills, turned down a committee recommendation that CMA schools be empowered to grant honorary doctorates.

The MCA has only one school—Fort Wayne (Indiana) Bible College. It has always considered itself a denomination.

If it merges with the CMA it will lose its collective membership in the National Association of Evangelicals. Some CMA pastors and congregations are NAE members but the society as a whole has refused to join, although its leaders are now believed to be reconsidering.

The MCA has had merger negotiations in the past with the United Missionary Church. However, no talks are currently pending.

‘Without Compromise’

The General Association of Regular Baptist Churches at its annual meeting in Springfield, Massachusetts, last month went on record as disassociating itself “from all those who would sacrifice our historic Baptist faith” to participate in church mergers.

A resolution reaffirmed the GARB stand “as orthodox Bible-believing Baptists without compromise at all.” It said the association will maintain its “positive and unyielding loyalty to the Word of God as our absolute and final authority in all matters of faith and practice.”

A resolution on “patriotism” declared that “many people who have been jealous of our country are scorned and ridiculed for their expressed loyalties, being designated as extreme rights and superpatriots.”

The association said it was committed to no organization or movement “in the field of open support of our government,” except the American Council of Christian Churches.

Nuclear Morals

A resolution defending U. S. nuclear testing was adopted by the American Council of Christian Churches at its 20th annual spring conference in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The resolution stated that this country “has a moral obligation to its citizens and to the free world to continue nuclear testing.”

Another resolution declared that the council is “unalterably opposed” to providing U. S. wheat for Communist China.

The Presbyterian Church, U.S., practiced ground-root ecumenicity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, May 10–15. The 102nd General Assembly opened sessions in the First Baptist Church, took meals in the Centenary Methodist and Calvary Moravian churches, held regular sessions in the First Presbyterian Church, and conducted a Sunday morning Communion worship service in the Carolina Theater.

Four fraternal delegates conveyed greetings to the 452 commissioners of the assembly from their respective churches: the Reformed Church of America, the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Each urged expansion of the ecumenical conversation and expressed hope for its ultimate fulfillment.

Recalling that Presbyterians had split at the time of the Civil War into “Northern” and “Southern,” Dr. William A. Morrison of the United Presbyterian Church (Northern) warned each church to “avoid a pathological fascination with the past.” He also expressed hope that none of the current conversations each church is carrying on with others, would hinder the efforts to heal the Civil War breach. Many sources, however, feel that the enthusiasm for merger between the two Presbyterian churches has been chilled by the United Church’s interest in the Episcopalian aspect of the Blake proposal. The assembly defeated a proposal looking to unite with the United Presbyterian Church by a vote of 192 to 154.

The Rev. Marion De Velder, fraternal delegate from the Reformed Church, reminded the assembly that their two churches had already adopted a Plan of Cooperation in 1874. Later the assembly unanimously adopted a new plan formulated by a joint committee of the two denominations. The plan lists 14 areas of “common concern” for study and exploration that the two churches may “seek together a fuller expression of unity in faith and action.”

In the assembly’s opening session, the Rev. Wallace M. Alston, retiring moderator, urged his denomination to thrust vigorously forward into a future whose dimensions are as large as the God who enters it with them. He called on his church to break from provincial and sectional limitations and strike out boldly into the nation and the world. The sin against the future is to measure the future with a small-guage faith. If we would keep up with God, we must run at full speed, he cried. The church, he added, needs “a fresh, first-hand experience of God’s power and presence.”

Evidence of the Southern Presbyterians’ restless energy and determination was the assembly’s adoption of a $12,000,000 capital funds campaign. This is only the fourth, but also the largest such campaign in the denomination’s 101-year history. Some $5,000,000 is earmarked for the Board of World Missions.

The assembly adopted a benevolence budget of $9,650,180. Although this is the highest in the denomination’s history, it represents only a third of one per cent increase ($33,000) over 1962—the smallest increase in the denomination’s history.

A proposal to establish a central treasury for all the assembly’s boards and agencies set off an extended debate. The announced purpose of a central treasury was to insure that each agency receive its proportionate share of the church’s total contributions. After considerable discussion the assembly voted to refer the proposal to an ad interim committee for study and report to the next assembly.

A layman, Dr. Edward Donald Grant, chemical manufacturer from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was chosen as moderator. Grant came to this country as a Scottish orphan-emigrant 53 years ago. He became the church’s twelfth ruling elder to be chosen for the honor of top post in the General Assembly.

The only other nominee was Dr. Warner L. Hall, minister of the Covenant Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, North Carolina.

In other action the assembly instructed the Permanent Committee on Christian Relations to make another study of racial relations and report back to next year’s assembly. This decision was touched off by Lamar Williamson, Jr., a missionary in the Congo who asked what had been done in this area in the past year and learned that the church had not made an official pronouncement on racial matters since 1954.

The perennial battle over withdrawal from the National Council of Churches ended after a four-hour floor debate in a 294–91 vote to continue affiliation.

Another prolonged debate developed over the Layman’s Bible Commentary, published by the John Knox Press, the church’s official publishing house. An overture from the Asheville Presbytery requesting “stronger editorial safeguards” charged that the commentaries disparaged the historical accuracy and the editorial integrity of Scripture by assigning to it legends, fabrications, falsehoods, epic sagas, erroneous teaching about God, and the doctrine that all men shall be saved whether in Christ or out of Christ. The validity of the criticism was not denied, the last mentioned attracted no comment whatever, and the overture of Asheville was defeated by a vote of 323 to 74. Many analysts felt that the vote was not truly indicative of the theological position of the commissioners.

A resolution was adopted which decried the “steady barrage of blatant filth” in pornography and which urged the pastoral responsibility of providing pre-marital counseling.

The assembly also went on record as opposed to federal aid either in the form of grants or loans to private or parochial schools for any purpose.

The commissioners instructed the Permanent Judicial Commission to submit recommendations to the 1963 General Assembly for such changes in the Book of Church Order as would, with the advice and consent of the various presbyteries, allow women to be ordained to office, including that of the ministry. The decision was adopted by a 251–105 vote.

Action on a resolution which opposed the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere was postponed. It was referred to a committee for further study.

J.D.

Grass-Roots Ecumenism?

Plans were announced last month for a merger of Presbyterian and Methodist congregations in Pennsylvania. Religious News Service called it “a sort of grassroots approach” to possible merger.

Congregations of both churches, at the local level, will be encouraged to consolidate wherever they are floundering because of inadequate budgets, small memberships, and needless competition.

Officials of the two groups insist that the merger plan is “not a mandate” but at the same time there were strong indications that it would be pushed when necessary—perhaps even to the extent of denying the assigning of a pastor to a reluctant congregation.

Methodist Bishop W. Vernon Middleton and Dr. Douglas S. Vance of the United Presbyterian Church jointly announced the merger proposal.

Evanston Merger

The Evanston Institute for Ecumenical Studies, founded in 1957 to train clergy and laymen for ecumenical leadership, was merged last month with the Church Federation of Greater Chicago. A spokesman said negotiations were being conducted to have the Rev. Joseph Mathews, of the controversial Faith and Life Associates of Austin, Texas, serve as new director.

Protestant Panorama

• Fifteen Episcopal ministers were cleared last month of breach-of-peace charges in Jackson, Mississippi, where they were arrested last September in an anti-segregation demonstration. A county court judge ruled that the prosecution had not proven charges against the biracial ministers’ group.

• The National Evangelical Film Foundation cited “Dark Valley,” a motion picture produced by Gospel Films, as the best film of 1961.

• The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod has become the largest Lutheran body in America, but not for long. Its 2,544,544 members now outnumber the 2,495,763 of the United Lutheran Church in America, which held the lead for 44 years. The new Lutheran Church in America, representing a merger of four churches, will have over 3,200,000 members. Its constituting convention is scheduled in Detroit June 28-July 1.

• Salaries of professors in accredited seminaries have increased some nine per cent in the last two years, according to a report of the American Association of Theological Schools. The range was given as from $5,770 to $19,318, with a median maximum of $10,350 and a median minimum of $9,120.

• The Disciples of Christ plan to establish a four-year liberal arts college in conjunction with Brevard Engineering College at Melbourne, Florida.

• An official delegation of Japanese Christian leaders visited Korea last month. It was the first group of Japanese churchmen admitted to Korea since World War II.

• The American Bible Society distributed last year 24,000,000 Bibles and Scripture portions, an all-time record, among 100 countries.

Upholding The Minority

The Kansas Supreme Court ruled last month that the First Baptist Church of Wichita may not be withdrawn from the American Baptist Convention even though a majority of the congregation voted for such an action.

Reversing a decision of a state district court, the Supreme Court declared that “not even in an autonomous Baptist church may the denomination of the church be changed by a mere majority vote.”

Two years ago the congregation, then the largest in the denomination, voted 739 to 294 to withdraw from the American Baptist Convention, the Kansas Baptist Convention, and the Wichita Association of Baptist Churches to protest the denomination’s affiliation with the National Council of Churches.

Settling The Issue

Evangelist Billy Graham says he supports a proposal for a national referendum on an amendment to the federal Constitution which would permit Bible reading and prayer recitations in public schools.

The referendum proposal originated with Dr. J. Calvin Rose, pastor of Miami Shores (Florida) Presbyterian Church.

Graham, during a visit to Miami on the eve of a major crusade in Chicago, endorsed Rose’s proposal.

“It’s a good thing,” said the evangelist. “Then we will have a majority opinion and I believe the majority has a right to be heard.”

Graham was reported to be confident that in such a referendum the U. S. citizenry would uphold the practice of Bible reading and prayer in the public schools.

Graham was slated to launch his Chicago campaign on Memorial Day. The impact of the crusade is being extended throughout North America by use of television. Five hour-long telecasts from Chicago are being carried on successive nights by stations from coast to coast.

Furor At The Fair

A controversy is being waged at the Christian Witness Pavilion of the Seattle World’s Fair over a 10-minute “Sound and Light” film dealing with the biblical themes of creation, redemption, and hope in abstract photography and symbolism.

The pavilion’s sponsors have named a three-man committee to make editorial revisions in the film, which was produced by Sacred Design Associates of Minneapolis.

Consensus of those opposing the film is that it is mystifying and confusing, instead of enlightening, according to Religious News Service.

The pavilion was visited by some 105,000 people during the fair’s first three weeks. The sponsoring organization represents 23 denominations and 19 church-related agencies.

The Washington Scene

Church colleges and other private agencies are eligible for financial aid under a newly-enacted federal program to assist educational television.

A bill passed by Congress a few weeks ago and subsequently signed by the President permits grants to tax-supported educational agencies or to nonprofit agencies “organized primarily to engage in or encourage educational television” and meeting the Federal Communications Commission regulations.

The original Senate bill called for $51,000,000 for a five-year program of grants to the states. The House version provided for a four-year program of matching grants totaling some $25,000,000. A compromise was worked out which authorizes $32,000,000 over a five-year period for federal matching grants.

Other developments in Washington:

—The Supreme Court rejected a plea that it consider the constitutionality of tax exemptions granted by the state on church properties. Its refusal allows to stand a decision of the Rhode Island Supreme Court which held that such exemptions are within the exclusive authority of the state legislature.

—President Kennedy led a tribute to Bishop Angus Dun upon his retirement as head of the Protestant Episcopal diocese of Washington. Kennedy entertained Bishop and Mrs. Dun at a White House luncheon.

—Kennedy’s Memorial Day proclamation urged Americans to observe the day “by invoking the blessing of God on those who have died in defense of our country,” a phrase interpreted by many Protestants as tantamount to prayers for the dead.

—A study of the top thousand jobs in the current administration shows no religious favoritism, according to a report made by Protestant and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State. A POAU statement, however, expressed “certain areas of apprehension.” Another study “in much greater depth” was recommended in about 18 months “when the current administration shall have attained greater maturity and its trends can be more clearly ascertained.”

Act Of Reconciliation

The verger of the English village church at Great Barton, Suffolk, hanged himself in the bell tower last month. The church was immediately closed until a curious and unusual service had taken place. From the Middle Ages it has been held that blood shed in a church causes a breach between God and the worshipers, and that this can be healed only by “an act of reconciliation.” The Bishop of Dunwich conducted the necessary service at which the Archdeacon of Sudbury explained that he considered the procedure binding, and the church was reopened for worship.

Toward Interdependency

The Congregational Union of England and Wales is a somewhat loose confederation of 2,000 churches. At its annual assembly last month, the union took an important step toward becoming in fact “The Congregational Church” when it decided that a draft constitution should be considered at next year’s meeting.

The move was seen as an indication that the traditional “independency” had become “interdependency” in that Congregationalists were tending to speak with one voice on most major issues.

Good From The Gallows

His experience with a man condemned to execution for “a particularly beastly murder” was recounted by the Bishop of Durham, Dr. M. H. Harland, when last month’s Convocation of York debated a motion to abolish capital punishment. “I went to the condemned cell,” said the bishop, “and asked to be locked in with the man. He sat back smoking, looking supercilious, his feet on the table. I read to him and said he need not listen. Divine inspiration led me to read about the prodigal son. The man broke down, sobbing. Then he turned to me and said, ‘I’m a murderer.’ Then began, within a week, the most wonderful reclamation and conversion I have ever seen. Never have I been so conscious of the work of the Lord. I confirmed him, and the night before he died I was with him. He said, ‘I want no dope. I want to pay.’ He had his Communion. If ever I have seen a man fit for his maker and for eternity, that was the man.”

Dr. Harland said he wished deeply that he could vote for the motion, but because of such circumstances, where life and death and God and the next world became a reality to a condemned man, he found it very difficult to vote against capital punishment. He concluded that the hardest task he had was breaking the news to two men who had been reprieved, for they then had the task of making good again. Despite Dr. Harland’s appeal, the motion was carried by an overwhelming majority.

The London Sunday Telegraph, commenting that the Bishop of Durham was supplying an excellent theological reason for hanging everybody, said that the whole debate was “a first class illustration of the muddle that ensues when complicated social and political questions to which Christianity affords no conclusive answers are treated as though they could be settled by a straight appeal to the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount.”

Since the 1957 English-Scottish Interchurch Relations Report the Church of England has been giving special consideration to the place of laity in the church. The Bishop of Chichester, Dr. R. P. Wilson, referred to this in the Canterbury Convocation when he pointed to the weight of opinion in favor of the laity’s greater participation in church government. He suggested that there was no intrinsic difficulty about proposals which had been made to achieve this.

Strong dissent came from Canon J. Brierley of Lichfield. It was not right, he asserted, “to take away from the ordained officers of the Church the power of final veto in all matters, including the most detailed questions of theology.” Similar objections were made in the York Convocation where one speaker said that the proposals minimized the essential difference between the function of the clergy and the layman. Recommendations on the subject by the church’s committees will be fully debated at the fall convocations.

J.D.D.

Where Stands Scotland?

At a press conference in Edinburgh, the Moderator of the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly, Dr. Nevile Davidson, cited two “long-term” subjects: his hope for the ultimate reunion of Christendom and the question of revising the Westminster Confession of Faith. Dr. Davidson, minister of Glasgow Cathedral, has been actively connected with the recent Church of Scotland-Roman Catholic meetings (see “Review of Current Religious Thought,” May 25 issue), and is a strong critic of the traditional Scottish Sabbath. Referring to the dissent by the Church and Nation Committee from the Westminster Confession’s view of Sunday observance, he said: “I think this is one of the first occasions on which the General Assembly is to be asked to depart from one of the sections of the Westminster Confession.” On the doctrine of predestination and election, among other issues, Dr. Davidson considered that the Church of Scotland had departed from the position laid down in the Confession. He added: “There have been numerous changes in the last 100 years, and a document which is adequate in the twentieth century should be different from one which was adequate in the seventeenth century.”

Commenting on the point, a former Moderator and Principal of New College, Edinburgh, Dr. Hugh Watt, said: “My personal feeling is that if the thing is to be rewritten it is not for the Church of Scotland—it is for the whole Presbyterian world.” This raises interesting features, for even at home both the Free Church of Scotland and the Free Presbyterian Church (which wield substantial influence in the Highlands and Islands) regard themselves as jealous guardians of the 316-year-old Confession, and would vigorously oppose any suggested emendation.

J.D.D.

The Second Phase

A joint commission to study differences between Anglican and Orthodox churches was agreed upon last month when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Arthur Michael Ramsey, visited the Ecumencial Patriarch Athenagoras I in Istanbul.

The commission will continue discussions opened by a similar commission in the 1930s and ended because of the war.

Seminarian Strike

A special committee set up by the Greek Ministry of Worship is studying problems involved in the prolonged strike of theological students at the Universities of Athens and Salonika.

The students walked out last February to protest a new education program which drastically cuts the number of hours devoted to religious instruction in the schools. They say the strike was called “to protect their professional interest” and “to defend Orthodoxy.” They call it a “religious renaissance” in Greece.

People: Words And Events

Deaths:Dr. John W. Beardslee, 82, retired president of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary; in New Brunswick, New Jersey … Dr. Edward Graham Gammon, 77, president emeritus of Hampden-Sydney College and a prominent Presbyterian clergyman; in Hampden-Sydney, Virginia … Dr. Raymond T. Stamm, 68, retired professor of New Testament at the Lutheran Theological Seminary; in Allenwood, Pennsylvania … the Rev. Charles Stephen Conway Williams, 55, noted biblical commentator and Augustinian scholar; at Oxford, England … the Rev. Andrew W. Gottschall, 70, a well-known Disciples of Christ minister and a regional official of the National Conference of Christians and Jews; in Philadelphia … the Rev. Herbert E. Eberhardt, 70, superintendent of the Central Union Mission, Washington, D. C.

Appointments: As president of Grace Theological Seminary and College, Dr. Herman Hoyt … as president of William Jewell College, Dr. H. Guy Moore … as professor of biblical languages at Central Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Henry R. Moeller … as academic dean at Buffalo Bible Institute, the Rev. Gerald Winkleman … as an associate general secretary of the World Council of Churches, the Rev. T. Paul Verghese, a priest of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Malabar, India … as first primate of an independent Church of England in Australia, Dr. H. R. Gough … as Anglican Bishop of Sheffield, England, the Rev. Frederick John Taylor … as professor of Old Testament languages, literature, and theology at New College, Edinburgh, Dr. G. W. Anderson … as chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, Dr. John Marsh.

Citation: To Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., the first annual Citizenship Award of the Military Chaplains Association.

Elections: As president-designate of the Council of Bishops of The Methodist Church, Bishop Paul Neff Garber of Richmond, Virginia … as Anglican Bishop of Calcutta and Metropolitan of India, Pakistan, and Burma, Dr. Hiyanirindu Lakdasa Jacob de Mel.

Nomination: As moderator of the General Assembly of the United Church of North India, Dr. William Stewart.

First Peter 2:11–25 has peculiar significance for Christians in the mid-twentieth century in the United States—and two phrases in particular. In verse 16, we read (Phillips Translation): “As free men you should never use your freedom as an excuse for doing something that is wrong, for you are at all times the servants of God.” Never using freedom, never exercising our rights to do something that is wrong. In the latter part of that passage, “Indeed this is part of your calling. For Christ suffered for you and left you a personal example, and wants you to follow in his steps.… And he personally bore our sins in his own body on the cross, so that we might be dead to sin and be alive to all that is good.”

A beautiful story has come out of one of the cities of so-called “border states,” when the schools were being integrated, a grade at a time on a gradual basis. The fateful day came when the second grade was to be integrated. The parents of a little seven-year-old girl, the story goes, were greatly concerned over her reaction and endeavored very carefully and thoughtfully to prepare her as best they could for the coming of that traumatic experience of having a person of another race introduced into her classroom. The day came and as the mother drove her to school, avoiding the issue, she tried to keep the conversation cheerful and to bolster up the little girl’s morale. Throughout the day the mother was nervous and anxious. Finally the hour came when she picked up the little girl. The little girl came bouncing out of the school with the same zest with which she had entered. As she piled into the car the mother asked, “Well, how did things go?” “Oh, just fine.” And no more information! The mother deciding it was best to avoid the subject for a while talked about other things. Finally when they sat down for a snack of a cookie and a glass of milk, she could bear it no longer and asked again, “How did things go at school today?” Again the little girl answered, “Oh just fine.” “Well, didn’t anything unusual happen?” “No. Oh yes! There was a little Negro girl in our class and she had the seat right next to me all day.” “Well, what happened—anything happen?” “Oh no, we were both so scared, we held hands all day.”

Beyond the Law of the Land

In this story there is a parable for our day and age. As Christians the thing about which you and I must be concerned in this area is first of all and last of all, reconciliation. It is the bringing of people together. The simple act of holding hands—of joining hands—not simply social justice, for social justice at times can be obtained at the price of real and genuine reconciliation. Sometimes in recent years Christians have been preoccupied with the legal aspects of race relations because it is much easier to pass laws and to enforce laws than it is to change attitudes! Yet the mere passing or the enforcing of laws is never going to accomplish that with which you and I, as Christians, must be basically concerned—the reconciliation of men with men, and of men with God. And the two are inseparably related.

Integration in our country is moving along apace. But there are dangers in this, if we do not at the same time accomplish this far greater task of Christian reconciliation.

There are people today, who are accepting integration with the simple interpretation, “After all, it’s the law.” Last year Bill Hendricks, who had been the Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan’s Southern-Northern Knights, resigned his post. He said as he gave up that exalted post, “I see no way to stop racial integration and it looks to me like the best thing to do is accept it. I cannot agree to go outside of the law to maintain segregation.” This is, indeed, a significant statement. But as Christians we must be concerned on a level far deeper than simply the recognition that this is the law of the land.

There is also a real danger that we put too much emphasis upon the fact that our racial policies and practices jeopardize our national reputation in the world. I dealt with students in Japan who repeatedly wanted to be told about Little Rock and to have some explanation as to how a Christian nation could be responsible for such conduct. You have read, as I have, with a great deal of concern of the United Nation officials, who have been unable to get even a cup of coffee on Route 40 between New York and Washington. Now the word comes that two-thirds of the restaurants on Route 40 have agreed to integrate. This is perhaps an achievement, but isn’t it tragic that you and I are more concerned in one sense about our public image with other people than we are about our own American citizens who for years have gone along that route and have not been able to buy a cup of coffee. Jessy Knoba from the Congo, who made such a large place for himself in our community and in our fellowship, told how he stopped in Kansas City on his way to Ottawa University and was unable to get a cup of coffee. He spoke with a great deal of candor at the Ottawa Rotary Club and did a fine piece of work in presenting his own country. He said nothing about race relations but in the question period that followed someone asked, “What do you think of the racial situation in America? What do you think of Ottawa?” His answer was a classic. He said, “I like America, I like Ottawa, I like you, but I wish I could get a hair cut in your town.”

Lawrence Davila, a student from Nicaragua, spoke in this pulpit a week ago. In a question period afterward he was asked, “What do you think of race relations in America?” His answer: “I plead the fifth amendment”!

It has recently been suggested that the attitude of many Americans in the matter of race relations is the “basest treason.” Treason is an act whereby we give to our enemies the means whereby they can attack and possibly destroy us. The policy and practice of segregation under this definition certainly is treason.

The Need for Reconciliation

But this is not the level where you and I as Christians must basically come to grips with the problem. It is not a matter of observing the law or a matter of bettering our public image abroad. We must go deeper for basic Christian motivation. We have all seen the sign, one of the signs of the times, “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone” (or some variation of that theme). This sign points to the heart of the issue—the refusal to accept a man as a man; the exercise of one’s personal rights over and against the rights of another individual; the emphasis of right as against responsibility, obligation and opportunity.

The businessman, of course, has a right to turn away undesirable customers. He should have the right to turn a drunk out of his place of business. He should have the right to expel from his premises a rowdy customer or to refuse to let someone improperly attired come into his place of business. No one would question these rights but this is not what the sign usually implies, is it? You know it and I know it. The sign is saying in a very arbitrary way, “We will not serve certain people because of the color of their skin, because of their race, because of their social status.” During Brotherhood Week, the Ministerial Association here in Ottawa, with the approval of the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce asked businessmen in town to display in their offices and store windows or on the doors of their places of businesses a very similar sign. Read the sign lest you think it is the sign with which you are familiar. It is a sign which is far more American and certainly more Christian: a sign that will simply say, “We Reserve the Right to Serve and Employ Anyone.” This more correctly testifies to the right that was sought by our Pilgrim fathers and by our forebears down through the years as they founded on this continent, as Abraham Lincoln expressed it, “A nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

“We reserve the right to serve and employ anyone.” Peter said, “As free men you should never use your freedom as an excuse for doing something that is wrong.” Have you and I, in this matter and other matters, ever used our freedom as an excuse for doing that which is wrong? Peter reminds us, “You are at all times servants of God.” He says, “You should have respect for everyone. You should love our brotherhood.”

“By this shall all men know you are my disciples if you love one another.” Not in the preaching of brotherhood. No! We do not signify that we are Christians just because we preach and talk brotherhood. No, we prove that in actions; not in the preaching but in the doing. Peter suggests that Jesus “bore our sins in his own body … so that we might be dead to sin and alive to all that is good.” This is the heart of the Christian Gospel. Jesus Christ has secured for us, has given to us the right to do right, the right to do good!

Paul wrote to the church in Galatia: “Plant your feet firmly therefore within the freedom that Christ has given us and do not let yourselves be caught up again in the shackles of slavery.” You can speak of freedom: “I am a free man.” “I can do what I please.” But think! I can go out and take a drink of liquor and get drunk—I’m free to do this, but when I exercise that freedom, I bind myself to a greater slavery. I am a freeman. I have rights. I can become a Communist (or any other example that you chose) but when I do that, I bind myself to a greater slavery. How often have you and I in this way, or in some simple way, used our freedom to bind ourselves to greater slavery? How often have we used our rights to submit to pressures and surrender responsibility?

William Hamil has written a book, How Free Are You? In this book he cites a Negro leader, who has made the claim that the Negro is the freest man in Atlanta! The reason may surprise you. He says, “The Negro is the freest man in Atlanta because he can tip his hat to anyone he chooses.” Can you understand that? The Negro can tip his hat to anyone he chooses but the white man is bound by social pressure and prejudice. He’s bound by custom, he’s bound by the fear of what others will say, what they might call him.

Do you have a freedom that tips its hat to whomever it chooses? Do you have a freedom from social or economic pressure—freedom that keeps you from asking, “What will so and so think?” A writer in the International Journal of Religious Education speaking of Christian character—the meaning of Christian character and what it is to evidence Christian character recently penned these words: “Most of all, the character of a Christian person is seen in his capacity to see others—all others whatsoever—as persons and to treat them so. To be able to see the human side of every problem; to know intuitively how things look to the person he wants to blame or who wants to blame him; to be free enough from himself and his own purposes to be aware of others and what they want to do; not ever to think of men in the mass as Negroes or Jews or Russians or Puerto Ricans, but to see each as Jesus said God saw us, each with a separate identity and significance”—we all want this! Do we have the freedom that allows us to see and to accept other men in the same way? Are we free enough from ourselves and our own purposes to be aware of others? Free not from others but free from ourselves, free from self and free from sin?

In Christ we are dead to sin, dead to self and alive to all that is good. Do you have this freedom? Do you want this freedom? Do you want the right to stand before God and an individual free unshackled? Jesus Christ offers this freedom to each and all of us. Jesus Christ died for the world, for God so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son and if Jesus Christ did not die for the world, for all men, then he did not die for you and he did not die for me. “For God so loved the “World.” Are you free to accept and love all of God’s creatures? “By this shall all men know that we are Christians, if we love one another.”

RAYMOND P. JENNINGS

Minister

First Baptist Church

Ottawa, Kansas

The visit of Karl Barth to America will stimulate discussion of his theology for years to come. One student will examine his doctrine of election, another his view of the atonement, and a third his theory of the Trinity; and they will decide in what respects these conform to the old creeds and in what respects they are original and valuable insights. Then, too, many will puzzle over the antithesis between Historie and Geschichte and conclude either that Barth really believes in the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection or that these themes are but pointers and metaphorical signs of some different spiritual truths. But while all these special points and others deserve examination, there is a still more fundamental enigma that pervades Barth’s theology.

From the time of World War I, when Barth was first disillusioned with liberalism, he has made it his task to produce a theology of the Word. If any theme runs through all of Barth’s writings from beginning to end, it is the insistence that theology has no presuppositions in philosophy, science, anthropology, sociology, and the like, but starts completely in and from the Word of God. That theology is sui generis permeates the Church Dogmatics as it did also the recent Chicago lectures to be published as the Introduction to Evangelical Theology.

Barth has been eminently successful in his attack on liberalism. The fundamentalist joins the humanist in agreeing that Schleiermacher and modernism lead to Feuerbach and Marx. The God of liberalism is humanity; the modernist worships himself; and the gospel becomes left-wing sociology and politics. Obviously the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God of the one Lord Jesus Christ of the New Testament find no place in this secular religion. The consistent Christian therefore owes Barth a debt of gratitude for forcing this conclusion upon the unwilling theological world.

In opposition to humanistic liberalism Barth insists that true theology can arise only in response to the Word that God speaks. God is not an Hegelian Absolute, nor some alleged value-preserving power of the universe, either of which can be discovered with man’s ordinary intellectual resources. Knowledge of God depends totally upon revelation. This rules out Roman Catholic natural theology as radically as it rules out Schleiermacher and Hegel. Man is totally unable by searching to find out God. The initiative is God’s and he must speak first.

Although Barth does not equate the Word of God with the Bible, he nonetheless admits that in some sense or other the Bible is God’s word. The Bible, and no other book, is the source of Christian theology. We must conform our thought to it. In the Chicago lectures Barth was most definite that the apostles are superior to us. We indeed may know more science than they did, but they knew the Word of God better than we. With some force Barth declared that the modern theologian dare not look over the shoulder of the apostles and like a school teacher correct their mistakes. Quite the reverse, the apostles look over our shoulders and correct our mistakes. They are the direct witnesses of the Word and our knowledge is only second-hand.

To anyone who is even moderately familiar with the common opposition to the verbal and plenary inspiration of the Bible and with all the historical blunders and theological crudities that critics attribute to it, Barth’s emphasis on biblical authority and the many fine things he says about the Bible may seem amazing. But precisely here is the enigma.

In the Chicago lectures as in the Church Dogmatics Barth vigorously rejects verbal inspiration and infallibility. Not only are there incidental historical and geographical mistakes in the Bible, but there are theological errors as well. And this produces a situation that Barth seems unaware of. During the panel discussion at Chicago, Dr. Edward John Carnell asked Barth how he harmonized his dependence on Scripture as the sole source of theology with his assertion that the Bible contains theological errors. (For Dr. Carnell’s views, see “Eutychus and His Kin,” page 19.)

Barth simply did not meet this question head-on. He replied that the Bible is a pointer, a fitting instrument to point men to God, who alone is infallible. And then to the applause of the audience, he reiterated that the Bible contains contradictions and errors.

Now this answer does not meet the problem in the least. Remember that Barth’s great attack on modernism is to erect theology without philosophical, sociological, or other presuppositions. Theology is self-contained; the apostles and the prophets had firsthand contact with the Word, and we are their inferiors. We cannot correct them, but they correct us. But can a theology claim to be biblical, self-contained, and sui generis and reject parts of the Bible as theological errors? How does one in this case determine which verse or passage is a theological error and which is a theological truth? If the modern theologian must distinguish between truth and error in the Bible—which of course he does if he says that some verses are mistaken—what criterion of truth will he use in making the selection? He cannot use the Bible, for it is the Bible that is being judged. Must he not, then, use some philosophical or sociological or other principle in order to select one verse and reject another?

Here then is the enigma in Barth. He has made it the aim of his life to defend the independence of theology. He has put forth every effort to remove theology from the jurisdiction of other sciences. He will have none of Gogarten’s attempt to base theology on a prior anthropology. Theology comes entirely from the Word of God.

But then in contradiction to his life’s efforts there remains unacknowledged in his biblical criticism historical, geographical, and theological criteria that are not founded on the Word of God, Jesus Christ, nor on what Barth identifies as the only first-hand witness to the Word, namely, the Bible.

The criticism here directed against Barth is essentially the same as that which Barth leveled against those nineteenth-century theologians who tried to defend the personality of God against theories of an impersonal Absolute. They failed, Barth tells us, because they were operating on the same premises that had led the absolutists to their impersonal conclusion.

So too with Barth. There is a fundamental contradiction lying at the base of his system. Until this is removed, his doctrine of the Trinity, his view of election, or his acknowledgment of the empty tomb cannot be well founded. Unwittingly he operates on liberal presuppositions; there is still some Schleiermacher and Herrmann in his blood; and this leads to Feuerbach and humanism.

Failure Of The Liberals To Reverse The Red Tide

The Politics of Hope, a book by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., noted historian and close adviser to President Kennedy, will soon be issued by Houghton Mifflin Company. A pre-publication segment of the volume appears in The Saturday Evening Post (May 19 issue) under the title “The Failure of World Communism.”

A high-powered propaganda thrust for “the triumph of liberalism,” the essay clearly shows that American liberals do not let historical realities temper their starryeyed optimism. Dr. Schlesinger’s thesis is that liberalism today has “nothing in common with Communism, either as to means or as to ends.” He credits the liberal repudiation of conservatism with shaping a genuine, durable and preferable alternative to Communism. We are told, in effect, that capitalism leads to Communism by way of reaction, but that liberalism transcends both.

We consider this philosophical poppycock. A close look at the history of our generation ought to convince all but speculative theorists that Communism’s power is far from spent, and that liberalism is daily on the defensive. Liberalism’s offensive, in fact, seems to be declining more and more to propaganda status without benefit of historical support. Attacking not only conservative politico-economics but also conservative theology as perilous, left-wingers continually inveigh against right-wingers. The obvious connection between ecclesiastical liberalism and left-wing extremists they ignore.

One observation by Dr. Schlesinger is certainly correct: for all its emphasis on material things, the New Deal left men still starved in spirit. How does Schlesinger hope to improve man’s chances for spiritual fulfillment? Simply by larger doses of liberalism—in medical care, social welfare, and community planning, together with education and pursuit of culture and the arts. In Schlesinger’s words, such fulfillment will come by a transition from quantitative to “qualitative liberalism.”

Mr. Schlesinger concedes that by tradition American liberalism is “experimental and pragmatic; it has no sense of messianic mission and no faith that all problems have final solutions. It assumes that freedom implies conflict.… Its empirical temper means that American liberalism stands in sharp contrast to the millennial nostalgia which still characterizes both the American right and the European left—the notion that the day will come when all conflict will pass, when Satan will be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, and mankind will behold a new heaven and a new earth.”

Let’s hope the liberal planners do not suddenly acquire a sense of messianic mission for shaping the Free World’s spiritual outlook. Man needs something profounder, we think, than the social engineering of theorists who lack fixed principles, transcendent values, and sure goals. American democracy today has no philosophy of direction and no deep faith. Such strength it is not likely to find apart from the Christian understanding of history and man. Under such a perspective, moreover, the omni-competence of social planners—be they Communist, socialist, or quasi-socialist—must be rejected and disallowed.

Uneasy Protestant Conscience Over Surplus Food To Taiwan

The National Council of Churches has run into a three-pronged surge of criticism over its effort to withdraw from the distribution of U.S. surplus food in Taiwan. Although the main reason for retrenchment is unclear, several explanations have been given: 1. Ecclesiastical corruption in connection with surplus distribution; 2. The Church’s involvement as an arm of government policy (in this case, surplus food for Free China but none for Communist China).

The complaint of ecclesiastical misuse of surplus food in Taiwan is of long standing. Roman Catholics have distributed U.S. food on the condition of attendance at Mass, in some cases punching tickets at church services to establish eligibility, and in others, selling food tickets for money to build churches. Under such procedures Catholic church attendance has multiplied remarkably. In some instances a black market in surplus foods involving government personnel has also been reported. While Protestant agencies are not wholly free of some abuses themselves, they have deplored violations and have sought to correct them. Their protest to Washington against the widespread Romanist infractions have met with no success. ICA officials in charge, many of them Roman Catholic, declared the complaints founded. If Protestants are having difficulty, said Catholic churchmen, they should withdraw from the field and leave it to Roman Catholics, who can manage their own affairs efficiently and effectively. Meanwhile the scandal of ecclesiastical misuse of U.S. surplus foods has continued. Roman Catholic spokesmen recently confused the issue by pleading for surplus food to Hong Kong refugees from Red China, thus putting the Roman Church “on the side of the starving refugee.” We are told that the situation in Hong Kong is presently under control, however, and that such special appeals smack of propaganda.

But there is another angle to the NCC withdrawal from Taiwan. Many U.S. ecclesiastical leaders, and among them, NCC leaders who urged Red China’s inclusion in the United Nations, want surplus food sent to Red China. Frequently one hears the defensive sentiment, “Our Lord said, if your enemy hungers, feed him.” Actually, if the withdrawal from Taiwan is really motivated by a Protestant desire to detach the Church from government policy, then ecclesiastical leaders should surely cancel religious distribution of U.S. government food everywhere. What’s more, American Protestantism has ventured into partnership with government in many places much closer to home, and could quite appropriately show some measure of uneasy conscience right there. Meanwhile, some Roman Catholic spokesmen want the U. S. government to supply food for relief purposes abroad irrespective of the availability of surplus supplies.

If the ecclesiastical movements were to disentangle themselves from government involvement, will they then minister to the hungry on the basis of Christian compassion and witness? If so, will they concern themselves first of all, or only, with the famine victims in Red China (and who will pay for this)? Or will they know equal or greater concern for the victims of Communist oppression who in fleeing the heel of the oppressor have left families and property behind?

The picture in Taiwan is confused. To withdraw from Taiwan religious distributions of government surplus can be justified, too, (if churchmen stop speaking of Red China in the same breath) on grounds other than ecclesiastical misuse. That U.S. surplus food is an embarrassment to the politicians is no secret. They are glad to move such supplies from storage, and for distribution on a person-to-person level they consider churches generally efficient and reliable agencies. But have the churches any right to credit themselves with a ministry of compassion to the hungry when they simply act as distribution agents for government supplied and government-transported food? And if it completely withholds its witness to Christ, has the Church any real commission to engage in humanitarianism devoid of all spiritual message? And is even humanitarianism simply distributing what the government pays for?

Billie Sol Estes’ Crimes Symptom Of A Deeper Disease

For three decades America has been infected with a disease. The Billie Sol Estes case is an evil symptom of a political philosophy of fiscal irresponsibility which leads to numerous abuses. In vigorously prosecuting the Estes case the American people should also look at the contributory factors. Whether we are prepared to submit to such examination and to undergo radical surgery in our economic life is the real question.

There is an occasional reference to the continuing outflow of gold from America, but political leaders seem unwilling to take the heroic action needed to deal with the crisis. This draining off of gold reserves is as much a menace to the nation as an uncontrolled hemorrhage to a bleeding patient.

Agriculture policy in the United States is a pyramiding example of political timidity on the one hand and the ineptness of “experts” in reaching a solution compatible with sound economics on the other. Cupidity, avarice and dishonesty, all apparently symbolized by Estes, should warn us as a nation that we too stand to be judged of God. Attempts to buy the votes of any bloc quickly breeds the desire for further government favors.

Estes, the symptom, needs to be dealt with, as well as Estes the man. But let us be sure we also deal with the disease.

A Father’S Day Suggestion About Helping The Fatherless

For many youngsters Father’s Day is just another day—they have no father to honor on this special occasion. As of January 1, 1960, an estimated 2,115,000 fatherless children under 18 dotted the United States and its possessions (Social Security Bulletin, Sept. 1960).

Although without an earthly living father, each of these children may take comfort in knowing the personal concern of the heavenly Father. Their creator, a compassionate God, is a “father of the fatherless” (Ps. 68:5) and a “helper of the fatherless” (Ps. 10:14).

But God does not therefore discount proper earthly care. He is solicitous for children’s well-being. He tells us through the Apostle James that “to visit the fatherless” is “pure religion and undefiled” (1:27).

In this area of service the secular world often puts the Church of Jesus Christ to shame. While the Church is busy with other programs, fraternal and civic groups, and government agencies as well, are assuming ever larger father roles toward youth. In one national nonchurch organization, for example, the men work exclusively at volunteering their help as “fathers” to fatherless boys in their communities. While such work is commendable, nevertheless in many instances the boys receive every kind of assistance—vocational, social, recreational, and financial—except the spiritual. It is highly pertinent to ask therefore: what profit it the fatherless if they gain earthly fatherly benevolences but are never introduced to their Father in heaven?

Around us are some of the more than two million fatherless. Through continuing personal interest, through foster home care and adoption, earthly fathers may actively implement the love and concern of God the heavenly Father. Perhaps this Father’s Day is a good time for those fathers who know the Saviour and know the blessings of a complete family relationship to consider enlarging their circle of love.

The Church of God, “that wonderful and sacred mystery” (Aquinas), is a subject that stands at the very heart of the Bible. For the Church is the object of the redemption which the Bible proclaims. It was to save the Church that the Son of God became man, and died (Eph. 5:25): God purchased his Church at the cost of Christ’s blood (Acts 20:28). It is through the Church that God makes known his redeeming wisdom to the hosts of heaven (Eph. 3:10). It is within the Church that the individual Christian finds the ministries of grace, the means of growth, and his primary sphere for service (Eph. 4:11–16). We cannot properly understand the purpose of God, nor the method of grace, nor the kingdom of Christ, nor the work of the Holy Spirit, nor the meaning of world history, without studying the doctrine of the Church.

But what is the Church? The fact that we all first meet the Church as an organized society must not mislead us into thinking that it is essentially, or even primarily, that. There is a sense in which the outward form of the Church disguises its true nature rather than reveals it. Essentially, the Church is not a human organization, as such, but a divinely created fellowship of sinners who trust a common Saviour, and are one with each other because they are all one with him in a union realized by the Holy Spirit. Thus the Church’s real life, like that of its individual members, is for the present hid in Christ with God” (Col. 3:4), and will not be manifested to the world until He appears. Meanwhile, what we need if we are to understand the Church’s nature is insight into the person and work of Christ and of the Spirit, and into the meaning of the life of faith.

The Covenant People of God. The Church is not simply a New Testament phenomenon. An ecclesiology which started with the New Testament would be out of the way at the first step. The New Testament Church is the historical continuation of Old Testament Israel. The New Testament word for “church,” ekklesia (in secular Greek, a public gathering) is regularly used in the Greek Old Testament for the “congregation” of Israel. Paul pictured the Church in history, from its beginning to his own day, as a single olive tree, from which some natural (Israelite) branches had been broken off through unbelief, to be replaced by some wild (Gentile) branches (Rom. 11:16–24). Elsewhere, he tells Gentile believers that in Christ they have become “Abraham’s seed,” “the Israel of God” (Gal. 3:29; cf. Rom. 4:11–18; Gal. 6:16).

The basis of the Church’s life in both Testaments is the covenant which God made with Abraham. The fundamental idea of biblical ecclesiology is of the Church as the covenant people of God.

What is a covenant? It is a defined relationship of promise and commitment which binds the parties concerned to perform whatever duties towards each other their relationship may involve. The two main biblical analogies for God’s covenant with sinners are the royal covenant between overlord and vassal and the marriage covenant between husband and wife: the former speaking of God’s sovereignty and lordship, the latter of his love and saviourhood. By his covenant, God demands acceptance of his rule and promises enjoyment of his blessing. Both thoughts are contained in the covenant “slogan,” “I will be your God, and ye shall be my people” (cf. Exod. 29:45; Lev. 26:12; Jer. 31:33; 2 Cor. 6:16; Rev. 21:3; etc.); both are implied whenever a believer says “my (our) God.”

God expounded his covenant to Abraham in Genesis 17, a chapter of crucial importance for the doctrine of the Church. Four points should be noticed here. First, the covenant relationship was announced as a corporate one, extending to Abraham’s seed “throughout their generations” (v. 7). Thus the covenant created a permanent community. Second, the relationship was one of pledged beneficence on God’s part: he undertook to give Abraham’s seed the land of Canaan (v. 8: a type of heaven; cf. Heb. 11:8–16). This, as he had already told Abraham, would involve redeeming them from captivity in Egypt (Gen. 15:13–21; cf. Exod. 2:24). Third, the end of the relationship was fellowship between God and his people: that they should “walk before” him, knowing him as they were known by him (v. 1). Fourth, the covenant was confirmed by the institution of a “token” (v. 11), the initiatory rite of circumcision.

Later, through Moses, God gave his people a law for their lives and authorized forms of worship (feasts, exhibiting his fellowship with them, and sacrifices, pointing to the bloodshedding for sin which alone could provide a basis for this fellowship). Also, he spoke to them repeatedly through his prophets of their glorious hope which was to be realized when the Messiah came.

Thus emerged the basic biblical notion of the Church as the covenant people of God, the redeemed family, marked out as his by the covenant sign which they had received, worshipping and serving him according to his revealed will, living in fellowship with him and with each other, walking by faith in his promises, and looking for the coming glory of the Messianic kingdom.

New Testament fulfillment. When Christ came, this Old Testament conception was not destroyed, but fulfilled. Christ, the Mediator of the covenant, was himself the link between the Mosaic and Christian dispensations of it (i.e., the “old” and the “new” covenants of Hebrews 8–10, chapters which build upon Jeremiah 31:31 ff.). The New Testament depicts him as the true Israel, the servant of God in whom the nation’s God-guided history is recapitulated and brought to completion (cf. Matt. 2:15; etc.), and also as the seed of Abraham in whom all nations of the earth find blessing (Gal. 3:8 f., 14–29). Through His atoning death, which did away with the typical sacrificial services forever, believing Jews and Gentiles become in him the people of God on earth. Baptism, the New Testament initiatory sign corresponding to circumcision, represents primarily union with Christ in his death and resurrection, which is the sole way of entry into the Church (Rom. 6:3 ff.; Gal. 3:27 ff.; Col. 2:11 ff.).

Thus the New Testament Church has Abraham as its father (Rom. 4:11, 16), Jerusalem as its mother (Gal. 4:26) and place of worship (Heb. 12:22), and the Old Testament as its Bible (Rom. 15:4). Echoing Exodus 19:5 f. and Hosea 2:23, Peter describes the Christian Church in thoroughgoing Old Testament fashion as “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; … Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God” (1 Pet. 2:9 f.).

A New Creation in Christ. The New Testament idea of the Church is reached by superimposing upon the notion of the covenant people of God the further thought that the Church is the company of those who share in the redemptive renewal of a sin-spoiled creation which began when Christ rose from the dead (cf. 1 Cor. 15:20; Col. 1:18). As the individual believer is a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17), raised with him out of death into life (Eph. 2:1 ff.), possessed of and led by the life-giving Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9–14), so also is the Church as a whole. Its life springs from its union with Christ, crucified and risen. Paul in Ephesians pictures the Church successively as Christ’s building, now growing unto “an holy temple in the Lord” (2:21); his body, now growing towards a state of full edification (4:11–16); and his bride, now being sanctified and cleansed in readiness for “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (5:25 ff.; cf. Rev. 19:7 ff.).

Some modern writers in the “catholic” tradition treat Paul’s body-metaphor (found, as well as in Ephesians, in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, and Colossians) as having a special “ontological” significance, and indicating that the Church is “really” (in a sense in which it is not “really” anything else) an extension of the manhood and incarnate life of Christ. But according to Paul the Church’s union with Christ is symbolically exhibited in baptism; and what baptism symbolizes is not incorporation into Christ’s manhood simply, but sharing with him in his death to sin, with all its saving fruits, and in the power and life of his resurrection. When Paul says that the Spirit baptizes men into one body, he means that the Spirit makes us members of the body by bringing us into that union with Christ which baptism signifies (1 Cor. 12:13). Scripture would lead us to call the Church an extension of the Resurrection rather than of the Incarnation! In any case, Paul uses the body-metaphor only to illustrate the authority of the Head, and his ministry to his members, and the various ministries that they must fulfill to each other; and we have no warrant for extrapolating it in other theological directions.

Ministry in the Church. The New Testament conceives of all ministry in the Church as Christ’s ministry to and through the Church. As the Church is a priestly people, all its members having direct access to God through Christ’s mediation, so it is a ministering people, all its members holding in trust from Christ gifts of ministry (i.e., service) for the edifying of the one body (1 Cor. 12:4–28; Rom. 12:6–8; cf. 1 Cor. 16:15; 2 Cor. 9:1). Within the context of this universal ministry, Christ calls some specifically to minister the Gospel (Eph. 4:11; cf. Rom. 1:1, 5, 9; 15:16), giving them strength and skill for their task (1 Cor. 3:10; 15:10) and blessing their labors (1 Cor. 3:6 f.). As spokesmen and representatives of Christ, teaching and applying his Word, Church officers exercise his authority; yet they need to remember that, as individuals, they belong to the Church as its servants, not the Church to them as their empire. The Church is Christ’s kingdom, not theirs (cf. 2 Cor. 4:5). This is a basic point which Luther accused the Papacy of forgetting.

Universal and Local. Paul speaks, not merely of the whole body, but also of local groups in an area, and even of a Christian household, as “the church.” No local group is ever called “a church.” For Paul does not regard the Church universal as an aggregate of local churches (let alone denominations!): his thought is rather that whenever a group of believers, even Christ’s statutory two or three (Matt. 18:20), meet in his name, they are the Church in the place where they meet. Each particular gathering, however small, is the local manifestation of the Church universal, embodying and displaying the spiritual realities of the Church’s supernatural life. So Paul can apply the body-metaphor, with only slight alteration, both to the local church (one body in Christ [Rom. 12; 1 Cor. 12]) and to the universal Church (one body under Christ [Eph. 4]).

Visible and Invisible. The Reformers drew a necessary distinction between the Church visible and invisible: that is, between the one Church of Christ on earth as God sees it and as man sees it—in other words, as it is and as it seems to be. Man sees the Church as an organized society, with a fixed structure and roll of members. But (the Reformers argued) this society can never be simply identified with the one holy catholic Church of which the Bible speaks. The identity between the two is at best partial, indirect, and constantly varying in degree. The point is important. The Church as God sees it, the company of believers in communion with Christ and in him with each other, is necessarily invisible to men, since Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and faith, the realities which make the Church, are themselves invisible. The Church becomes visible as its members meet together in Christ’s name to worship and hear God’s Word. But the Church visible is a mixed body. Some who belong, though orthodox, are not true believers—not, that is, true members of the Church as God knows it—and need to be converted (cf. Matt. 13:24 ff., 47 ff.; 2 Cor. 13:5; 1 Cor. 15:34). The Reformers’ distinction thus safeguards the vital truth that visible church membership saves no man apart from faith in Christ.

Another matter on which this distinction throws light is the question of Church unity. If a visible organization, as such, were or could be the one Church of God, then any organizational separation would be a breach of unity, and the only way to reunite a divided Christendom would be to work for a single international super-church. Also, on this hypothesis it would be open to argue that some institutional feature is of the essence of the Church, and is therefore a sine qua non of reunion. (Rome, for instance, actually defines the Church as the society of the faithful under the Pope’s headship; some Anglicans make episcopacy in the apostolic succession similarly essential.) But in fact the Church invisible, the true Church, is one already. Its unity is given to it in Christ (cf. Eph. 4:3). The proper ecumenical task is not to create Church unity by denominational coalescence, but to recognize the unity that already exists and to give it worthy expression on the local level.

In the purposes of God, the Church, we have seen, is glorious; yet on earth it remains a little flock in a largely hostile environment. Often its state and prospects seem to us precarious. But we need not fear. Christ himself, the King who reigns on Zion’s hill, is its Saviour, its Head, its Builder, its Keeper. He has given his promise: “… the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). And he is not accustomed to break his word.

Bibliography: J. Bannerman, The Church of Christ; C. Hodge, The Church and Its Polity; A. M. Stibbs, God’s Church; R. B. Kuiper, The Glorious Body of Christ; E. Best, One Body in Christ.

Librarian

Latimer House

Oxford, England

We have a vivid recollection of an emergency call to see a man, the victim of a ghastly accident. One minute he was the picture of health; two minutes later he was dead, completely exsanguinated by a laceration of his aorta.

A massive hemorrhage always presents a problem of the first magnitude for a physician, and where such a hemorrhage continues death invariably ensues, showing so clearly the scriptural truth that “the life is in the blood.”

What then is the relationship of the blood of the Son of God, shed on Calvary, to God’s plan of redemption?

To some even the suggestion of our Lord’s shed blood brings the retort that, “This is a slaughterhouse religion, a concept of God which the modern mind cannot countenance.” The writer has heard this remark and it sends a chill down his spine. We are reminded of Hebrews 10:28: “He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy [ordinary] thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?”

It is not for man to question the blood atonement but humbly to accept this mysterious evidence of God’s love.

What does the Bible have to say about blood in general, and about the shed blood of Christ? The statements are so overwhelming that we can but bow and worship.

In Genesis 9:4 and Leviticus 17:11, 14 we are told categorically that life is in the blood. A person may be a perfect specimen but deprived of blood he dies.

The relationship between the blood and life carries over into the spiritual realm. To put it as bluntly as we can: Without the redeeming blood of Christ, blood shed for the remission of sins, there can be no spiritual life. This does not mean that new Christians must understand all of the theological implications involved in the atonement. It does mean that in his teaching and preaching the minister denies or ignores the blood of Christ at deadly peril to all concerned.

We are familiar with the story of the delivery of the children of Israel from Egypt. Commanded to sprinkle blood on the door posts and lintels of their houses they were comforted with these words: “… and when I see the blood, I will pass over you,” for “… the blood shall be to you a token” (Exod. 12:13). The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of Moses: “Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them” (Heb. 11:28).

That there is a symbolic, or prophetic note in this incident is self-evident. Mankind stands in judgment before God and in the midst of judgment God offers mercy and forgiveness: “… and when I see the blood, I will pass over you …” reminds a sinful world that the judgment of God was poured out on his Son on Calvary—because he loves us so much. “But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water” (John 19:34). To what purpose? That by faith the blood of the murdered Son of God might stand between us and the righteous judgment of a holy God.

The Lamb of God fulfilled that which the blood of bulls and goats could not for the Old Covenant was superceded by the New. Jesus “… took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matt. 26:27, 28).

Later the risen Lord revealed to the Apostle Paul the significance of this sacrament: “This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:25b).

Writing to Jewish Christians, men and women deeply aware of sacrificial significance, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews shows the significance of the blood atonement of our Lord:

“But into the second went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people: “The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing: … But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Heb. 9:7, 8, 11, 12).

And then to crown this glorious truth the writer adds: “For if the blood of bulls and goats …: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (vs. 13, 14).

Placing the blood of Christ in its perfect perspective the author concludes: “Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen” (Heb. 13:20, 21).

The Apostle Peter writes: “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: …” (1 Pet. 1:2). Peter goes on: … “redeemed … with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (vs. 18, 19).

John takes up the theme: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

In the Revelation the elders sing: “… Thou art worthy …: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood …” (5:9), and the final victory is foretold in these words: “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto death” (12:11).

Mysterious though it may be, the blood of the Son of God, shed on Calvary, is the agent of man’s redemption—“Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood …” (Rom. 3:25). “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him” (Rom. 5:9). “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph. 1:7). Why, oh why, question that which God has done for us?

Man may reject or discredit the blood of Christ but he does so to his own eternal undoing.

A bloodless religion may appeal to the esthetic sense but it is as dead as an exsanguinated corpse!

Big Questions

How does it feel to be in high school? If you have to give a commencement address you might like to find out. I have been tempted to write my own memoirs—I was a teen-age Philadelphian. But that was before television or teaching machines. In fact, the New Deal was first dealt while I was walking to high school.

To discover how today’s teens feel, I secured a fine new book by David Mallery: High School Students Speak Out. By a determined effort I cleared my study. Sue reluctantly relinquished the phone, and Charles left my desk where he had been studying solid geometry from a sports car magazine. I used to be suspicious of such material, but with the new math curriculum and auto-instruction, you never can tell.

As I say, I cleared my study and concentrated without distraction on what high school students are saying. First, what do they say about values?

“People wouldn’t be caught dead talking about that stuff!” confessed one high school girl. She had just confided in Mr. Mallery regarding her religious views. “I don’t think other people think about these things much. Maybe it’s just me.”

The next student to be interviewed told the questioner practically the same thing. Said another, “You plunge into trivialities and try to avoid the big questions.… Parents are no help. You start talking with them and they ask you if you have all your homework done or they make some big deal about what you’re going to wear.”

Rather disconcerting. Mr. Mallery wonders how a high-school curriculum can be taught without discussing the “big questions.” Yet he found high schools that seemed to manage it. Obvious pressures restrain public school teachers from expressing religious conviction. But do we give our teens a hearing on the big questions? Christian homes, schools, even churches can make “big deals” of the trivial. Teens must learn to help the Martha Circle serve, but they must see that we are ready, like the Master, to talk with Mary.

I called to Charles, but he had gone to bed. Sue was busy with German.

EUTYCHUS

Corson: Complacency’S Foe

Bishop Corson’s experience in both home and world affairs makes his writing (“Facing the Communist Menace,” Apr. 27 issue) even more meaningful. If more Americans could grasp the significance of the facts here presented there should be less complacency regarding this menace.…

HAMMELL P. SHIPPS

Medford, N. J.

Your article is one of the finest writings I have seen anywhere pointing out plainly and realistically “the Communist menace.” In a time when we see the radical right such as the Birchites with their self-styled heresy hunters and the radical left such as some church and state leaders with their hedging in their analysis of atheistic communism, I salute you for this sane article.…

ELMER B. FANT

Aldersgate Methodist Church

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The article … is especially valuable.… I think it would be a great help to freedom-loving ministers and workers if it could be printed separately and distributed widely.

MEL HOOKER

Carthage, Mo.

The articles exposing the nature and objectives of communism are very timely and will, I trust, be given wide circulation by your readers. My copy will be circulated among my church officials.

ROBERT EARLS

St. Andrew’s Church

Cobden, Ont.

The Old Princeton

In your Princeton Seminary story (News, Apr. 27 issue) it is understandable that attention should be focused upon the history of the chair of Apologetics because of the present interest in the Hick case. You are correct, of course, in singling out the failure of the General Assembly of 1926 to confirm the election of J. Gresham Machen to this chair as a significant detail in the struggle which resulted in the reorganization of Princeton in 1929. It is unfortunate, however, that the broader and deeper aspects of the basic issue are largely if not wholly overlooked in your account.

As not only Machen but also a large majority of the Princeton Faculty and of the Board of Directors believed, the issue was whether the historic position of the Seminary with regard to the authority of the Bible and the Westminster Standards was to be maintained without compromise or whether a more inclusivist policy should be adopted. The Presbyterian Church as a whole was a broadening church. And it was perhaps inevitable that an official seminary would sooner or later be compelled to conform to this broader viewpoint. But one of the most illuminating—and for many observers most heartbreaking—phases of modern church history is that in which a herculean effort was made for a period of well over a decade to arrest this current and to preserve the old Princeton. The reorganization, at any rate, soon showed that the broader view had prevailed. And in a current official Princeton publication this assessment is virtually admitted. For it is stated that Barth’s welcome to Princeton is not to be regarded as “actuated by nostalgia for the ‘Princeton theology’ which was taught by its great pre-exilic prophets.…”

NED B. STONEHOUSE

Dean of the Faculty

Westminster Theological Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

Thunder On The Right

The NCC does not now employ, nor has it ever employed at any time, “a full-time staff member for answering right-wingers, but not left-wingers” (Editorial, Apr. 13 issue).… Who was the source for this canard? Somebody like Fulton Lewis, Jr.?

FLETCHER COATES

Office of Information

National Council of Churches

New York, N. Y.

If this statement is founded on fact, all these circumstances (including the employee’s name) should be reported.…

JOHN R. CAMPBELL

Christ Episcopal Church

Pulaski, Va.

• NCC Office of Information has nobody permanently assigned to answering the right wing. The office collates attacks on NCC for efficiency and assigns these to a given staff member. One key worker has given “somewhat less than half-time” on an overall basis to rebuttal of the right wing, but at their peak, answering right-wing criticisms has required virtually full time. Asked to what extent left wingers assail NCC, the organization’s spokesman said “every now and then” some left-wing group finds the NCC “too conservative,” but the main source of attack (and hence the main direction of rebuttal) is the right wing.—ED.

Challenge And Response

I am not sure I understand all that Mr. Shafer is trying to say (“Come Back, O Church, Come Back,” Apr. 13 issue).… I take it [he] longs for the good old days when preachers preached and lots of laymen listened.

Although I resist the style of this article—the turned phrase, the nimble adjective and the sweeping imperative—I am more antagonized by the emotional tone.… This piece is reeking with hostility. Notice the sadistic trend of the words: “abandon … pull from under … drive them … rock them … blow them … force them.…”

Mr. Shafer is right in calling for unity in the church, but this will not come by imperial pastoral decree, no matter how “voluble, vociferous and violent,” to use his words. I think I’ll stick with William P. Merrill’s “Rise Up, O Men of God.” At least Merrill leaves me with a feeling that we are called to look forward in love, and not as Mr. Shafer, to look backward in anger.

ALBERT L. MEIBURG

North Carolina Baptist Hospitals, Inc.

Winston-Salem, N. C.

It is one of the most intelligent and challenging articles to God’s people I have had the privilege to read in a long time. It is refreshing in these days of the “soft sell” to read something fraught with deep and vital conviction.…

CLINTON H. GOODWIN

Superintendent

Union Rescue Mission

Los Angeles, Calif.

Private Interpretation!

Baptists believe in the right of the individual to interpret Scripture as God gives him to see and understand. What a blessing it was for me to walk up front in a Baptist church, to be baptized as Jesus was, and to know that Christianity can never be contained in a creed.

I feel no need or desire to believe in the historic actuality of the Virgin Birth.… I am positive the story was not intended to be taken literally. It is symbolic.… The obvious symbolism is that Jew and Gentile have at last been united to create something new—Christendom.

HELEN H. COLBERT

Alexandria, Va.

Damascus And Moscow

The little article concerning Nikita Khrushchev (“Still Munching Candy,” p. 55, Apr. 13 issue) has been read and reread with great interest. I read it to the members of my ladies’ Sunday School class—they could hardly believe it.…

We as a class are breathing instantaneous prayers for him each morning at 9 A.M. Someone has said that if all Christians would pray for Mr. Khrushchev, his conversion could be as dramatic as that of Paul. We are praying to that end. MRS. N. WILBUR SCHROCK Orrville, Ohio

Plaudits For Workshop

I am glad to see the improvement in the magazine that has come with the institution of “The Minister’s Workshop.”

ROBERT A. HELSTROM

Irons Memorial United Presbyterian

McDonald, Pa.

I am indeed delighted to know what you are doing to stir our preachers to do exegetical and expository preaching. More power to you.…

KYLE M. YATES

Dept. of Religion

Baylor University

Waco, Texas

Carnell On Scripture

In your May 11 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY you had a special report entitled “Encountering Barth in Chicago,” … written by Dr. Gordon Haddon Clark, Professor of Philosophy at Butler University. In his report Dr. Clark made two observations which require clarification.

Basically the questions raised are two in number: (1) whether Professor Edward Carnell failed to pursue adequately with Dr. Barth the question of an infallible Scripture; and (2) Dr. Clark apparently was left with the impression that Dr. Carnell does not himself believe in an inerrant Scripture.

On Tuesday, May 15, Dr. Carnell made a report to the Fuller Seminary faculty and student body and questions were asked from the floor. In response to the question raised by Dr. Clark, Dr. Carnell said that he did not pursue the question of an inerrant Scripture with Dr. Barth any further simply because the time factor, in terms of his arrangements with the University, would have meant taking the time of the person on the panel who had but 30 minutes to listen to Dr. Barth’s answers to his questions.

In connection with Dr. Carnell’s own convictions concerning the Scripture, the following is the statement he made at Fuller Seminary Chapel:

“First, I grant that I have problems. If any of you have looked at the Case book, the chapter under “Perils” is devoted to problems and I envy any of you who is so fortunate as to transcend problems. I draw a very sharp distinction, however, between the admission of difficulties and what I believe as a doctrine and I want to make it as clear as the English language can put it, that I now believe and always have believed plenary inspiration of Scripture and the inerrancy of Scripture. I sign the Seminary creed with full commitment each year and if anybody in any part of the country is interested in what I believe, I hope he will be man enough to write and ask me.”

HAROLD LINDSELL

Vice-President

Fuller Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

For Open Windows

G. C. Berkouwer’s “Review of Current Religious Thought” (Apr. 13 issue) breathes the air of an open window on God and on the best in current Roman Catholic piety.

The spiritual unity of God’s church depends upon our common amazement before him and a common humility about our apprehensions of him.

An open window on God in devotion and an open window on the world in witness and service will mean an open window on each other in the Body of Christ and a reduction of our internecine warfare with its intellectualistic and non-theological armaments. May you contribute to this desired end and not to that smug, box-like biblicist intellectualisin of which your critics accuse you.

WILLIS E. ELLIOTT

Literature Secy.

Office of Evangelism

The United Church of Christ

Cleveland, Ohio

I along with many of my liberal friends read your magazine with great appreciation. In my judgment it is the most constructive theological voice to appear on the American scene in a generation.

CHARLES M. PRESTWOOD, JR.

The Methodist Church

Eutaw, Ala.

Your theology is atrocious. It was acceptable in an earlier day but belongs to relics of the days of witchcraft and the like.…

The dogmas and creeds to which so many have been taught to cling are the forms in which men expressed spiritual values some centuries ago. The values remain, but many spiritual-minded men of a later day have found other expressions of those same values, and have turned from the old forms. These later expressions are more in harmony with present-day understanding in life and insight into its meaning.…

EUGENE POCOCK

Cleveland, Ohio

One year ago I first subscribed to CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I am so happy with it that I am enclosing $8 for a two-year renewal. I will send my copies on to my son who is starting his ministry.

I come out of a liberal tradition, but I have been steadily moving to the right through the years. I like the intellectually sound approach to the study of Christianity. I like the fair but fearless manner in which Christian movements are evaluated. I like the way it stimulates my thinking and brings me back to the basic and fundamental facts of the Gospel. May God continue to bless and use CHRISTIANITY TODAY as it helps us to see the need of putting on the whole armor of God.

GILBERT H. ROGERS

Community Methodist Church

Springfield, Minn.

With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation (Isa. 12:3).

In middle age Alexander Maclaren discovered that he was wasting hours in deciding what to preach every Sunday. At his wife’s suggestion he began doing expository work from a Bible book. This basic idea underlies the present discussion. A minister should plan all his work, according to the times, the local conditions, and his personality. Here we consider only the morning sermons.

Time for a Survey

Start now to make a survey of last year’s preaching. During the yearly vacation, as in August, spend a morning hour every weekday on a general plan for next year, with a more detailed program for the first “quarter.” Some men plan by the month, but a longer period allows for a larger number of consecutive sermons from a major book. In a month one could not do much with Genesis or Matthew.

This plan follows the Christian year, but not closely. Many nonliturgical pastors find the Christian year helpful as a general guide in what to preach. So we shall begin with December and go on through Easter. If that period seems far away, remember that meanwhile the minister has to do homework in the Bible. Who can find an easy way to do work for God?

After a prayerful study of Isaiah 1–12, two sermons showing how God prepared for the coming of Christ. The bulletin every week to tell the subject of the sermon next Sunday (not the text), and suggest passages for home reading. On the third Sunday a sermon telling the layman what to look for in Matthew as a whole, and then by paragraphs, all about our Lord as Teacher, with lessons about the Kingdom and the Cross. A minister enters the pulpit, not merely to explain a passage, but to use it now in meeting needs.

In such cooperative work a pastor ought to live with a major Bible book three months before he starts to preach. Here the idea calls for devotional reading of Isaiah 1–12 and Matthew. After each study hour put into a folder—either Isaiah, or Matthew—the gist of what the hour has taught about the passage.

Why stress devotional study? A minister should use a teaching commentary or two, with other scholarly helps, such as Unger’s Bible Dictionary (1957). Yes, but only as aids in feeding his own soul. How else can he guide laymen in reading a Bible book devotionally? Then he will preach from any part pontifically, profoundly, and impersonally.

In devotional study do not keep looking for preaching materials and texts. At this stage, “No Hunting Allowed”! Later set apart a time to single out here and there passages inspired to meet vital needs today, each time with a brief text to serve as the entrance to a Bible garden plot. In this homiletical garden the Master should have all sorts of seed-thoughts growing for use in later sermons. Each one will profit from time to grow. Often a layman remembers a sermon about as long after he hears it as the minister had had it in mind before entering the pulpit.

In church history almost every effective pastor-preacher has had some kind of homiletical garden, unknown to laymen. Spurgeon and Beecher differed about doctrine, but not about working hard before every sermon. And yet the resulting message seemed to be impromptu! Each man endured “the discipline of the pen.”

Spurgeon’s Autobiography (four large volumes) shows that he toiled over his sermons, and that he spent a full day or more every week perfecting the form of the message that went into print. T. L. Cuyler, Beecher’s pastoral neighbor and friend, in a book reported that Beecher toiled hard over his sermons. Often he held one back for weeks, or months, until it was ready. On the average he wrote out in full one sermon each working week.

While preaching from the first Gospel begin to study “The Acts of the Holy Spirit.” While preaching from Acts get ready for a July series with four to five “Testimony Psalms.” This calls for “Pastoral Counseling from the Pulpit.” As a pastor, when I began to preach this way in midsummer, I saw no slump in attendance, and I enjoyed preaching as much in July as in January. But be ready!

A New Beginning

In September, a new beginning, with Genesis, “The God of the Chosen Family.” As with Matthew, a “course” here consists of consecutive sermons from selected portions of a Bible book, with a weekly bulletin notice about only one sermon in advance. Before September the pastor enjoys three months with Genesis, reading in the light of the Gospel and the Acts. With clergy and laity alike, Bible reading begins with the Gospel. Read Old Testament history in the light of the New.

Next summer the plan for the ensuing year will call for less work. The trail may lead to Micah (December) and Mark, one of Paul’s major epistles, four to five Prayer Psalms (c. 65 in all), and Exodus, “The God of the Chosen Nation.” Chosen here means Covenant. And so on for perhaps ten years, enough for a typical pastorate, with books of increased difficulty after the minister learns how to guide the layman while swimming in deep waters. But only if the minister can make sermons from Job or the Hebrews interesting and clear to a boy or girl of ten or twelve. In two university centers I found that I could do this, my sermon was clear to every professor or student.

So much for method, which should vary with the man. What of the advantages? As a rule they come mainly to be people (Isa. 55:10, 11). Here we may think about the pastor. Obviously, the benefits do not come singly, or in the following order, but in the way the winter sunshine falls on waiting snow, to protect sleeping wheat.

1. In time the pastor gets to know his Bible, as written, book by book; within each book, by the paragraph, or poetic strophe. He learns to deal with each Bible book according to its inspired purpose and character. In recent times, even among seminary graduates, only a minister here or there knows his Bible this way. When ordained, I did not.

2. Gradually a pastor assembles a working library, centered round the Bible. Better still, he knows and uses a standard exegetical commentary or two on every major Bible book, with other scholarly works of reference that will not grow out of date. He ought to keep up with the times, as about the Dead Sea Scrolls, but the Bible books themselves have not changed since B. F. Westcott and J. B. Lightfoot wrote strong commentaries. Often today, the old is better!

3. The pastor enjoys morning hours of devotion, and later hours of study for coming sermons. Never does he have to live from hand to mouth, or preach without prior weeks of prayer and study. Also, he enjoys the time of worship as the best hour of all the week. Hence he wonders why many a noble Christian lad does not covet the joy of living daily with God’s Book, and then on the Lord’s Day using it to meet the heart needs of men and women, with their blessed boys and girls. What a privilege!

4. The minister learns to enjoy dealing with a definite passage every week, and with a specific subject, instead of conducting a Cook’s Tour through the Bible, surveying heaven and earth, but never landing anywhere, so that the lay hearer feels at home at some fertile spot. In short, the pastor learns to enjoy what he does well for God and his people, and to do well what he enjoys doing as their guide in loving the Book.

5. Except during the yearly vacation such a minister remains at home and in the study, as well as in the homes of the people, five days between Sundays. Then he does his own preaching on the Lord’s Day. Never does he need to confess: “I have been busy here and there, but my own vineyard have I not kept.” To preach this way a man needs to know the people. Still more does he need to know God, through devotional reading and prayer for the people whom he leads Godward.

6. As a by-product of a Bible-loving and people-serving ministry, a man of God learns how to delegate work (Ex. 18:13–26), so that he can give himself to what the Lord expects from the pastor (Acts 6:4). Then he has time and serenity for all of his God-appointed privileges, including first-class care of the minister himself, both soul and body. What an ideal! Also, a reality today, here and there, in churches of assorted sizes, where each minister plans his work in God’s way and to His glory.

7. Gradually the pastor should begin to sense the presence of a congregational revival, such as Spurgeon and his people enjoyed year after year in the London Tabernacle. A revival does not depend on special efforts and imported leadership—which prove needful under abnormal conditions—but on “the diligent use of the outward and ordinary means of grace, where lay folk come to church regularly; bring their boys and girls of school age, to sit in the family pew; give gladly for the Lord’s work, at home and abroad; and bring to church unsaved neighbors and friends, in the spirit of prayer. All of this, I can testify, follows the right sort of planning the year’s pulpit work.

Divine Empowerment

What of the objections to such a Bible-centered plan? They all have to do with human limitations, not with lack of divine power. When God sets a man apart for this holy work, He makes it possible for this honored servant to do all the work needful in study and pulpit, in the homes of the people, and elsewhere in the community. But only if by faith a minister plans as though everything depended on him, and then trusts because he knows that everything depends on his God.

Such a God-appointed pastor expects large things from Him, and then attempts large things for Him, through the laymen whom God loves. “‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ saith the Lord of hosts. ‘Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain’” (Zech. 4:6, 7).

For a fuller treatment, informative, not inspirational, see my book, Planning a Year’s Pulpit Work, Abingdon Press, 1942.

ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD¹Christianity Today’s first issue each month contains The Minister’s Workshop (see pages 44-46) with alternating introductory essays by Dr. Blackwood and Dr. Paul S. Rees. A monthly Workwood and Dr. Paul S. Rees. A monthly Workshop feature is Dr. Blackwood’s abridgment of exemplary expository sermons.—Ed.