Page 6017 – Christianity Today (2024)

Christmas is not the most pleasant time to go to church. Not only unbelievers suffering from the compulsions of a churchgoing childhood but even fervent believers often have to steel themselves when the pastor rises to deliver his Christmas sermon. There is always the grim possibility that the focus will be upon those wretched persons in the congregation who have not been seen since the previous Easter; such sermons agonize the unbeliever without helping him and fail to edify the faithful (since Law is confused with Gospel and good advice is substituted for the central Christian message of Good News). But even if the Christmas churchgoer is fortunate enough to miss a law preachment, he will seldom avoid the twin agonies of sermonic rationalism and homiletic iconoclasm.

At the liberal side of the ecclesiastical spectrum, the person who has the temerity to enter a Christmas service has every chance of hearing an urbane plea to make his religion “relevant to the twentieth century” by chucking the supernatural baggage of the Christmas story. Influenced both by the Bultmannian efforts at “demythologizing” the New Testament message (penetrating beneath the miraculous accretions to its “genuine” existential center—the quest for “self-authentication”) and by the current vogue of “secular Christianity” (redefining the faith in terms of modern humanistic values), the liberal clergyman derides or pities the childish parishioner who must still hitch his religious wagon to the burnt-out Christmas star. Such legends were meaningful to our pre-scientific forebears, one is told, but to hold on to them now is to remain hopelessly wedded to an irrecoverable past. Magi and shepherds, annunciations and virgin births—surely we must locate the kernel of truth that is imbedded in these mythological shucks.

So loudly do such sentiments resound on the clear, crisp air each December that Anglo-Catholic philosophical theologian E. L. Mascall has immortalized them in two poems entitled, “Christmas with the Demythologizers” (Pi in the High [1959], pp. 49–51). Here are sample stanzas:

Hark, the herald angels sing:

“Bultmann is the latest thing!”

(Or they would if he had not

Demythologized the lot.)

Joyful, all ye nations, rise,

Glad to existentialize!

Peace on earth and mercy mild,

God and Science reconciled.

Lo, the ancient myths disperse.

Hence, three-storied universe!

Let three-decker pulpits stay:

Bultmann has a lot to say,

Since Kerygma still survives

When the myths have lost their lives.

Hark, the herald angels sing:

“Bultmann shot us on the wing!”

But the agonies of the Christmas sermon are not entirely avoided even if our hapless seasonal churchgoer stumbles into an evangelical setting. There, though rationalistic shreddings of the New Testament account of the Incarnation are rigorously excluded, often an iconoclasm is promoted that leaves the congregation only slightly less unsettled. The preacher inveighs against all the unbiblical trappings that have accumulated around the Saviour’s cradle (better, swaddling clothes): the carols that do not express precise scriptural teaching; the emphasis on material gift-giving; the pagan Christmas tree; the gluttonous centrality of the Christmas dinner and the anthropocentric family reunions; the stress on our own children instead of on the Christ-child; and the evil genius of the whole occasion: Santa Claus. Depending upon the closeness of his confessional and temperamental alignment with Cromwellian times, the evangelical pastor may even give the impression that Christmas should be radically de-emphasized—or done away with altogether. After all, the holiday is nowhere commanded or even recommended in Scripture; and look at the appalling ways in which non-Christian Western society has secularized it since the eighteenth century!

Versus A Rationalistic Christmas

These two forms of sermonizing, the modernistic and the evangelical, though poles apart theologically, are bedfellows in their antipathy to “myth.” Where specifically has the follower of Bultmann gone off the track?

The Bultmannian demythologizer is convinced that the gospel accounts, particularly the infancy narratives at the beginning of Matthew and Luke, are the end products of an oral tradition that was shaped and freely altered by the early Church in light of its own needs and the mythological view of the world current at that time. By the techniques of “form criticism,” as practiced by the Dibelius-Bultmann school, one can reach behind the New Testament documents as they have come down to us and find the existential heart of the Christmas message.

But what assures the advocate of such “demythologizing” that he is arriving at bedrock reality when he reaches the level of existential experience? Is there any reason to assume that Heideggerian existential categories are less “mythical” than the simple New Testament accounts? As some nasty but profound critics of Bultmann such as Fritz Büri have pointed out, he may well be accomplishing nothing more than substitution of a modern philosophical myth for the original Christian conviction. The same could even be the case when the Bultmannian replaces the ancient “supernatural” conception of the universe by a modern cosmology. Contemporary cosmologies have not exactly excelled in durability; the twentieth century, with its high obselescence in cosmic explanations, has done no little myth-making on its own.

Moreover, if the purportedly historical accounts of gospel events such as the Virgin Birth are not to be taken as factually true—if they require “demythologization”—why is the “core” message to be accepted at all? “History” and “theology” are painfully intertwined in the infancy accounts: “There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (and this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) … And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.” If the early Church could not get its historical facts straight, why do we think it succeeded so well when making high theological judgments? Here again Professor Mascall has the poetical word for the occasion (this time to the tune of “Good King Wenceslas”):

Sir, my thoughts begin to stray

And my faith grows bleaker.

Since I threw my myths away

My kerygma’s weaker.

What is retained in the demythologizing process is, of course, a naïve faith in the methodology of the demythologizer. One is reminded of the encounter between Alice and (William Ellery) Channing-mouse in R. C. Evarts’s clever parody, Alice’s Adventures in Cambridge, published by the Harvard Lampoon in 1913; after the mouse has demythologized General Washington, the American revolutionary army, Paul Revere, and the Queen, he is forced to say to those who appeal to historical facts, “Your memory is simply a legend”—and when Alice finally asks the Black Knight, “Doesn’t he believe in anything?,” the inevitable reply comes: “Nothing but himself.”

The form-critical method of the demythologizer, however, is anything but believable, as its loss of ground in non-theological areas well exemplifies. In Greco-Roman and comparative Near Eastern studies, less and less reliance is being placed on such techniques as every year passes (cf. Composition and Corroboration in Classical and Biblical Studies [1966] by Edwin Yamauchi of Rutgers), for these methods are intensely subjectivistic. In the case of the New Testament material, the unscholarly character of this methodology appears especially in its gratuitous use of rationalistic presuppositions against the miraculous (how do the Bultmannians know that “the nexus of natural causes is never broken”?), and in its failure to recognize that the interval of time between the recording of the events of Jesus’ life and the events themselves was too brief to allow for communal redaction by the Church—especially in a hostile environment in which so many competing faiths were interested in destroying Christianity’s particularistic claims. In the study of English ballads, John Drinkwater (English Poetry) has rejected redaction-theory because of inadequate time for extensive alteration of the original ballads; yet the infancy narratives of our Lord never passed through such a long period of oral tradition as did the ballads, and the gospel narratives were in circulation when Mary and the other principals were still alive and when the opponents of the faith would have blasted accounts of Jesus’ divine origin had they not been factual.

This Christmas, should one have the misfortune to wander into a demythologization service, the recommended Rx is serious contemplation of a typical assertion by one who knew both Mary and Jesus intimately: “We have not followed cunningly devised fables [Greek, mythoi], when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Pet. 1:16).

Versus An Iconoclastic Christmas

“Quite right! Well done!” declares our evangelical iconoclast from his Christmas pulpit: “The very factuality of the Christmas story requires us to strip away from this season all that is mythical—all the extra-biblical accretions, both ancient and modern, that have become associated with the birth of the Christ.” Certainly the iconoclast is right to demand that we maintain a clear distinction between the truly historical facts of the Incarnation and the non-historical, traditionalistic additions (for example, the impossible view evidently held by all crèche-makers that the wise men arrived at the same time as the shepherds). The iconoclasts perform a valuable service by emphasizing the distinction between retaining the old oaken bucket of solidly factual theology and scraping off the traditional moss that clings to it.

Yet the iconoclast misses a profound point as to the nature of the Christmas story—a point that applies with equal force to the entire Christian story. The genuine historicity of the Gospel does not prevent it from being at the same time genuinely mythical—in the special sense of a story that cuts to the heart of man’s subjective need. The greatest contemporary creator of literary myth, J. R. R. Tolkien, author of the three-volume masterpiece The Lord of the Rings, has argued this case in a manner that bears repeating (“On Fairy-Stories,” The Tolkien Reader [Ballantine Books, 1966], pp. 71–73):

The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world.… The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe [decisive event of maximum value] of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits.… To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.

It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be “primarily” true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed.… The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is pre-eminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of Angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

But in God’s kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the “happy ending.”

What Tolkien says here is most assuredly true: the myths and legends and tales of the world that give symbolic expression to man’s fundamental needs (Carl Gustav Jung called them “the archetypes of the collective unconscious”) serve as pointers to the reality of the Christian message in which they are historically fulfilled. A tale as common as Sleeping Beauty is fully comprehended only in this light: the princess, subjected to a deathlike trance by evil power that cannot be thwarted despite all the good intentions and concerted efforts of her family, represents the plight of the human race; the prince, who comes by prophecy, enters the castle of death from the outside, and conquers the evil spell by the kiss of love, is the Redeemer of mankind; and the marriage and happy ending express the eschatological future of the redeemed and the marriage supper of the Lamb. God becomes the Lord of angels, and of men—and of elves.

Seen in this light, as the fulfillment of the deepest longings men have brought to expression in their myths, the Christmas story is not to be set over against the traditional lore of the Christmas season. Indeed, that lore, when properly understood, will reinforce and heighten the truth of the Incarnation itself. The traditional carols will be listened to more closely, and even the most “secular” will yield the eternal message:

God rest you merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,

For Jesus Christ our Saviour was born upon this day,

To save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray,

O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy.

The Christmas tree will inevitably and properly suggest the One who grew to manhood to “bear our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” Family reunions will point to the truth that where two or three are gathered together, there Christ is in the midst, as well as to the family of the Redeemed, the clouds of witnesses, and the Church Triumphant that we shall ourselves join by God’s grace before many more Christmases have passed. The dinners and the parties will speak of the Christ who hallowed feasts when he walked this earth and who constitutes “living Bread come down from heaven.” The centrality of children at this blessed season should remind us that childlike faith before the mysteries of the Incarnation is a requisite for participation in his kingdom. And even (or especially?) the archetypal and ubiquitous Santa Claus, who comes from a numinous land of snow-white purity to give gifts to those who have nothing of their own, proclaims to all who have ears to hear the message of the entrance of God into our sinful world to “give gifts to men.”

The Way Of Affirmation

Christmas thus calls for total appropriation and re-consecration. It calls not for demythologizing but for remythologizing. It calls for what Christian litterateur Charles Williams termed “the Affirmative Way”:

The Negative Way of the mystics is fulfilled and corrected by the Affirmative Way.… To its adherents, the heavens indeed disclose the glory of God, and the firmament shows clearly that it is his handiwork. They witness that he discloses himself in all things. Human love manifests divine love; particular beauties exhibit ultimate beauty [Shideler, The Theology of Romantic Love (1962), p. 25].

All the glories of the Holy Season, and all its tales—from Van Dyke’s The Other Wise Man to Seabury Quinn’s retelling of the Christ-oriented legend of Santa Claus—can in this way be reaffirmed. The Christian, solidly grounded in the eucatastrophe of man’s history, the birth of Christ, finds that the Evangelium has indeed hallowed every genuine manifestation of Christmas joy. Tire believer can affirm them all; to each he can say with thanksgiving: “This also is Thou.”

And as he remythologizes the season, another transformation occurs: in contact with the Christ who hallows all things, he is himself hallowed and becomes a living symbol by which others are pointed to the Incarnate Saviour. Like the Santa Claus of the legend (Quinn, Roads [1948], p. 110, he receives the wondrous commission:

His is the work his Master chose for him that night two thousand years ago; his the long, long road that has no turning so long as men keep festival upon the anniversary of the Saviour’s birth.

Current thought on evangelism is clustering around two poles: “presence” and “proclamation.” “Christian presence” is a current ecumenical “in” term, minted, apparently, in French Roman Catholicism. Charles de Foucauld, founder of the Little Brothers of Jesus order, who was murdered in the Sahara in 1916, described his vocation as “being present amongst people, with a presence willed and intended as a witness of the love of Christ.”

The term has been popularized since World War II, particularly, perhaps, through the mission of the “worker priests” in France. For French Catholics, “presence in the world” has meant a kind of evangelistic reentry to sectors such as the laboring world from which the church has been absent. In Western intellectual circles, the term has been expanded to include involvement in the political and cultural structures of society. Major WCC evangelism and missions studies have concentrated on “structures of missionary presence.”

Eszard Roland candidly says that the slogan “Christian presence” is “so abstract, so vague, that each of us can take it to mean something different.” The World Student Christian Federation statement entitled “The Christian Community in the Academic World” uses “presence” “to express both the center of Christian faith and our response to it.” “ ‘Presence’ for us means ‘engagement,’ involvement in the concrete structures of our society.” Colin Williams suggests that “presence” replaces the common view of mission, seen primarily in verbal terms, with a recognition that “mission is first a ‘being-there’—a servant presence in love on behalf of Christ—and that the opportunity to name the Name is one for which we must long, but which must know the right time.” Max Warren interprets “presence” as “the attempt to be identified with the other person by being in the profoundest sense of the word available.…”

The WSCF document ties presence closely to incarnational theology: “As an expression of our faith, it points to the incarnation: God became man like us and lived among us.… His presence has shown God to us. No reference is made to the death of Christ as opening to man the presence of God. His resurrection is overlooked, and the work of the Holy Spirit is ignored.

Philip Potter grounds the “presence” idea in such biblical material as God’s revelation of himself to Moses as “I am”; the God whom man cannot escape, Psalm 139; the Shekinah dwelling among men in John’s Gospel as Jesus, the supreme “I am”; and the Emmanuel presence and promise of Matthew’s opening and closing chapters.

Gilbert Rist has interpreted “presence” in a “theology of silence”—the “incognito” in which Jesus lived, and the “silence of Golgotha.”

“Presence” theology dwells on the omnipresence of God or, in current terms, on God’s secularity. Revelation tends to be seen in terms either of the “hiddenness” of God or of the universal light of the Logos. In this theology, Christology emphasizes the incarnation, has little definite to say of Christ’s atoning death and resurrection. The dominant note is that of a world already reconciled and redeemed, which needs only to learn that this is so and that Jesus is already its Lord.

Something more is involved in the “presence” approach than simple reaction to a “word-centered” evangelism, or the seeking of a proper balance of word and deed. The WSCF paper says that older terms—“evangelization,” “witness,” “mission”—suggest a posture of confrontation or aggressiveness that is no longer acceptable. These words “suggest a certainty of faith and purpose”; they express faith in terms that create difficulty. “Presence” without “proclamation” seemingly may be witness enough.

Colin Williams and Max Warren seem to be saying instead that it is a question of priority. The witness of word is important. What matters most, however, is not what is said but the “being present” of the one who says it.

Those concerned for “Christian presence” are by no means unanimous in their theology or practice. For some, “presence” is the outgrowth of a radical secular theology that doubts the efficacy of the evangelical Gospel. For others, “presence” means taking seriously the Incarnation pattern so that we may win the right to be heard. We must not judge too hastily or generally or harshly.

As evangelicals we have much to learn about “Christian presence.” Too often we have evangelized in a mechanical, impersonal way. We have hoisted many “gospel blimps.” “Identification” is a word that speaks to our condition. Our Lord did not broadcast the word from the sky, but he spoke as one found in fashion as a man, in the form of a servant. We are called to identification not only by the example of Christ but by a deep sense of humility that we who bear his Gospel have often brought so much discredit upon it. We are indeed not supersaints but “beggars telling others where to find bread.”

But our “yes” to the truth of witness by presence stands alongside a “no.” We cannot be party to any downgrading of the Word. For our Lord has called us to be heralds of his grace. The Word we preach is not a mere human word. It is the message of God himself, in which he is present revealing himself to man, a powerful Word by which God creates faith and life in those who hear (Rom. 10:8, 14, 15; 1 Pet. 1:23–25). Nor can we accept the notion that “presence” is merely a saved man who knows he is a saved being with a saved man who doesn’t yet know of his salvation. The light that comes into the world brings both response and rejection, salvation and condemnation (John 3:17, 18). Evangelism does imply a separation of the believer from the world as well as an identification with the world.

So we say yes to presence but no to presence without proclamation. We say yes to dialogue but no to dialogue without decision.

The “presence-proclamation” tension still forces many questions before the Church. Is “presence” a more valid and necessary approach in some cultures that in others? Can “Christian presence” be continued as a valid witness permanently in situations where open proclamation is not possible? Must all Christians engage in verbal witness? How much does a lack of “structures of Christian presence” hinder the effectiveness of proclamation?

We must face all such questions as obedient witnesses to our Lord and Saviour, who has said to us, both, “You are the salt of the earth,” and, “Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man shall also be ashamed of him.”

LEIGHTON FORD

I write this immediately after my return from Singapore, where I attended the Asia-South Pacific Congress on Evangelism sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. It was a moving experience to watch the eleven hundred delegates sing together, worship together, and discuss the mission of the Church together.

While passing through some of Asia’s great cities I was struck by the stark contrast between the affluent and the underprivileged. Some live in tin-walled shacks and others in splendid modern homes; some wear fine clothes and ride in chauffeur-driven cars while others perform the hardest menial labor without the help of Western mechanical gadgetry; some eat well and enjoy excellent health while many others live marginally and have a high incidence of tuberculosis; some children are neat and cleanly dressed while others are dirty, scabby, and shabbily garbed. This is Asia.

The white man’s future in the missionary dimension is bleak. The day may not be far away when few of them will be left in Asia. Asian Christians are optimistic, however, and feel that their day has come. Indeed, the decline of the West and its decaying faith may mean that Asians will be bringing the Gospel to Europe and America in reversal of the traditional missionary pattern.

The word has come that Billy Graham will spend Christmas with our servicemen in Viet Nam. He deserves our prayers.

Eleven hundred Asians from twenty-four countries gathered in steamy Singapore November 5–13 under the banner “Christ Seeks Asia.” Their congress, sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, was an outgrowth of the 1966 World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin.

The Asian Congress met to implement Berlin proposals, define biblical evangelism, stress the urgency of proclamation to Asia’s two billion people, assess the obstacles to evangelism in Asia, develop effective techniques, evaluate evangelism programs in the light of changing conditions, and challenge churches and Christian organizations to a bold and cooperative program.

Unlike the World Council of Churches conclave at Uppsala last August, which devoted itself mainly to social, political, and economic issues, the Asia-South Pacific Congress concentrated on winning men to personal faith in Christ. While some attention was paid to the theology of evangelism, the delegates spent most of their time devising strategy.

From the outset, the Asians said plainly that they wanted to stand on their own feet and be independent of the West. While grateful to Graham for making the congress possible, they wanted it known that it was an Asian congress run by Asians. Some delegates said there was too much western involvement. But the Asians had problems of their own: Chinese from Singapore complained they had inadequate representation.

Asians have grave doubts about the theological stability of the West. Dr. Jong Sung Rhee of Korea charged that. Western Christianity has been infiltrated by humanism, liberalism, syncretism, and universalism. Spontaneous and prolonged applause greeted his statement:

“If our guilt-conscious western friends cannot stand firm against the danger of religious syncretism which is infiltrating Christian minds so rapidly in recent years, we Christians from non-Christian countries, that is, non-white Christians, should take over the battle.”

The congress did not break new ground theologically, perhaps because Asia has not yet developed a scholarship comparable to that of the West, which has had centuries of opportunity. The theology that did emerge, however, was evangelical, for delegates whose churches are both in and out of the WCC.

Most position papers stressed the need for good works by Christians as a witness to the Gospel and as an expression of human concern. There were differences in the congress papers on the role of the institutional church in sociopolitical matters. Donald Hoke of the Japan Christian College, Tokyo, said that “it is the individual, and not the Church corporately, who is to go out into society and work to achieve [social reform].” Benjamin Fernando, a Ceylon layman, called for the Church to speak out corporately and said, “Even democracy … must be constantly under the judgment of the Church.”

Professor Alan Cole of Singapore told the delegates that opposition to the Gospel in Asia is little different from that faced by the early Church. M. A. Qayyam Daskawie from Pakistan, in a paper on witnessing in a resistant culture, boldly declared that one “big hindrance is the constant demythologizing that some Western scholars practice with reference to the Christian faith. This has been accompanied by the decay in morals that has come in the wake of a permissive, affluent society. To the people of our part of the world, western nudity and drinking are far worse than what goes on nearer home. The freedom of action, thought and speech which are the hallmark of western culture are completely misunderstood and misrepresented.”

Chua Wee Hian of Hong Kong and David Claydon of Australia told of the need for reaching Asia’s youth, who increasingly make up the bulk of the population. The youth, they said, are confused by the adult world. Better educated and more affluent than their fathers, youth are lonely and isolated in high-density living areas. What they want most is to be delivered from the feudalism of their fathers and to secure a voice in molding their future.

Again and again the idea surfaced that God has given the West its opportunity; now he is giving Asia its chance. And Asians do not want the new wine in old wineskins.

Some of the congress highlights came, not from papers, but from testimonies of participants. Datin Aw Kow, a Chinese housewife whose husband started the Singapore newspaper Evening Sun, told how she was made chairman of the paper with complete charge over its operations. God supplied newsprint for her in an almost miraculous manner and provided personnel in answer to her believing prayers. Daniel Liu, Honolulu police chief since 1948, testified to the grace and goodness of God. Even more thrilling were stories of what God has done in New Guinea among headhunters in primitive cultures.

Dr. Helen Kim, formerly South Korean delegate to the United Nations and now a roving ambassador, urged Asian churches to bring Christ to all men. She pointedly said that “some scholars in theology and some church leaders in Asia say that the Holy Spirit is already working in these non-Christians through their faiths so they need not be considered as people to whom we need to preach. I cannot follow that way of thinking.” Having frankly rejected the viewpoint espoused by some in the conciliar movement, she went on to speak of the uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ, whom men must receive personally.

At the conclusion of the congress, delegates read in unison a declaration in which they acknowledged past failures to evangelize as they should and affirmed their intention of fulfilling their mandate in the days ahead.

The congress seemed to mark the beginning of a new era in Asia as delegates talked together, prayed together, and set up a continuing body to carry on when the congress adjourned. Area groups will hold theological consultations, and evangelistic teams will be exchanged among nations.

Two significant events followed the closing session. In one, the Japanese delegation went to the Singapore war memorial and publicly asked forgiveness for what their nation had done in World War II. The same evening more than four thousand people attended a meeting at the national theater. Akira Hatori, Japan’s foremost radio evangelist, related his conversion experience and called for the commitment of Christians to the task of evangelism. A great hush fell over the audience as he concluded his message.

It was hard to avoid noting differences between Uppsala and Singapore. In Singapore there were no policemen guarding the assembly; no acrid, tobacco-charged atmosphere; no protest marches and student revolts; no anti-U.S. resolutions on Viet Nam. There was a keen awareness of the Communist threat in Asia and an appreciation of what the United States had done to contain that threat.

The announcement of Richard Nixon’s election to the presidency brought a round of applause. The absent Billy Graham would have enjoyed listening to the Asians sing “Happy birthday, dear Billy,” on the occasion of his fiftieth, which came during the congress.

The congress was saddened by the news that Congress Coordinator W. Stanley Mooneyham, a BGEA staff member, suffered a recurrence of a heart condition and was hospitalized before the congress ended. Cliff Barrows led the singing for the congress. Graham’s associate evangelist Grady Wilson will return to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur for mass evangelistic campaigns early next year.

Miscellany

Starvation this month in Biafra will be “the greatest catastrophe of the century,” predicted Father Dermot Doran, Irish missionary who has helped lead relief airlifts. United Church of Christ staffer B. Kenneth Anthony estimates December daily deaths at 20,000. Meanwhile, church spokesmen denied a rift with the separate Red Cross operation over its previous statements that Biafran needs are being met.

In the first six months under a liberalized law, more than 14,000 women in Britain were given legal abortions. Canadian Catholic Bishop Alexander Carter said members of Parliament who ask their bishops how to vote on relaxation of abortion laws are told to vote their conscience.

Marking its fiftieth anniversary last month, the Belgian Gospel Mission is dropping church administration functions and acting as evangelistic arm of the Association of Free Churches, organized in Belgium in 1962.

A group of anti-missionary Jewish students quietly demonstrated against a meeting of Pentecostalists in Jerusalem.

LOGOI Inc. and the David C. Cook Foundation teamed up to distribute 500,000 religious booklets in Spanish during the Mexico City Olympics. Some 300 volunteers aided in distribution.

The District of Columbia is considering raising $18 million in needed revenue by taxing church and other tax-exempt property. Congress killed a similar plan two decades ago.

The Gallup Poll reports that in the United States 72 per cent of those surveyed oppose inter-racial marriage, but only about one-fifth are against marriages between Catholics and Protestants, or between Jews and non-Jews.

Religious Instruction Association found only twenty-six communities where public high schools offer objective courses on the Bible, despite U. S. Supreme Court approval of such instruction.

Some forty students at Wheaton (Illinois) College are spending two hours a week in a volunteer course on Afro-American history. Text is Lerone Bennett’s Before the Mayflower.

Church Panorama

Membership of the newly merged United Methodist Church is 10,990,720. The former Methodist membership decreased 36,256 in the last year; the Evangelical United Brethren lost 8,337.

The Judicial Council, highest court in the United Methodist Church, refused to take jurisdiction in a petition claiming that endorsem*nt of civil disobedience “in extreme cases” is against the church articles. In another issue from this year’s national meeting, the Methodist Publishing House balked at having itself investigated and is not participating in Project Equality despite denominational endorsem*nt of the fair-employment pact.

After a three-hour discussion of church unrest, the Southern Presbyterian home-mission board passed a vote of confidence in its staff. Winston-Salem (North Carolina) Presbytery gave a congregation a “certificate of dismissal” so it could join the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod.

The United Presbyterians’ church-and-society council wired President Johnson and President-elect Nixon urging immediate Senate ratification of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

The board of Hartwick College, Oneonta, New York, voted to dissolve its 170-year ties with the Lutheran Church in America. And the Texas Baptist convention voted to end control over Baylor University’s medical school so it can get federal and state aid.

The Vatican City weekly told Italian Catholic citizens and legislators it is their duty to fight divorce laws.

Some forty Basque priests occupied Derio seminary near Bilbao, Spain, to protest against Bishop Pablo Beope, charged with favoring Franco over the Basques. The protest continued despite Beope’s death.

In Portugal—where Baptists reported a record 265 baptisms last year—Catholic Father Jose Alves was dismissed from his suburban Lisbon parish for criticizing the nation’s church and government.

A Baptist evangelistic crusade in a northern Denmark town of 2,000 drew 1,300 persons on closing night. Significantly, two Lutheran organizations cooperated in the five-day effort.

Rumania’s Pentecostalists now number 80,000 in 900 congregations.

The Greek government set new terms of tenure that will force retirement of three Orthodox metropolitans and twenty bishops.

After a petition from 6,000 laymen upset over dismissal of heresy charges against Principal Lloyd Geering, the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand affirmed the Apostles’ Creed and recent assembly statements on other doctrines.

South Africa’s Baptists issued their own statement on apartheid, criticizing an anti-apartheid decree from the national council of churches for confusing “national survival with personal salvation.” On apartheid itself, the Baptists admitted divided opinion but condemned imposing of personal hardships on the basis of skin color.

The American Bible Society proposed a budget of $8,340,000 for 1969 and discussed plans to get a Bible into every U. S. home to mark the nation’s 200th anniversary in 1976. A recent poll showed that 10 per cent of American homes have no Bible and that the book is used regularly in only 22 per cent.

The Vermont Council of Churches rejected an inter-religious preamble to its constitution and passed 105–50 a statement that member groups must accept Jesus Christ as “divine Lord and savior.” The action, which expels Unitarians, was backed by Lutherans and Baptists. But Episcopal Bishop Harvey Butterfield said he was “ashamed” of the action and would find it hard to justify further council support.

DEATHS

JOSEPH HAROUTUNIAN, 64, Presbyterian and native of Turkey who taught systematic theology at the University of Chicago; in Chicago, of a heart attack.

DERWARD W. DEERE, 54, Old Testament professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary; in San Rafael, California, of a coronary attack.

ALVA J. MCCLAIN, 80, president emeritus of Indiana’s Grace Theological Seminary; in Waterloo, Iowa.

Personalia

President-elect Richard Nixon’s victory speech said a placard he saw during the campaign would be the theme of his administration: “Bring Us Together.” The sign was carried by Vicki Lynne, 13. daughter of United Methodist minister David Cole of Deshler, Ohio, but it wasn’t her own message. She found the sign on the ground and held it aloft without reading it.

J. Robert Nelson of Boston University will be the first Protestant visiting professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, founded to combat the Reformation.

McCormick Seminary student Roy Ries, Jr., is suing the city of Chicago for $1,250,000 for being clubbed by police during the Democratic Convention. He was hospitalized twelve days.

Presbyterian pastor Ben Haden of Chattanooga, Tennessee, has quit NBC-radio’s “Bible Study Hour” and started his own program, which he hopes will go nation-wide. NBC has been running replays of his old tapes since October.

California Governor Reagan refused to extradite Edgar Eugene Bradley for the New Orleans probe of an alleged conspiracy to murder President Kennedy. Bradley is West Coast representative for fundamentalist broadcaster Carl McIntire.

A federal jury convicted Vincent McGee, Jr., sophom*ore president at Union Seminary in New York, who refused induction into the armed forces after being reclassified. The prosecution argued that McGee, a Roman Catholic, was not a legitimate candidate for the priesthood because his church did not sponsor his studies.

The “Catonsville Nine,” Roman Catholic pacifists who destroyed draft records, were sentenced to prison terms varying from two to three and one-half years.

Metropolitan Meliton, dean of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox patriarchate, predicted the marriage of Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy to divorce Aristotle Onassis “will be respected on the Roman Catholic side.” Meliton, a key ecumenical negotiator with Rome, said the Orthodox validity of the marriage must be considered.

The Vatican removed excommunication and celibacy vows from John Leahy, former superintendent of Atlanta Catholic schools, who married a widow.

Philippine faith-healer Antonio Agpaoa, 29, has been charged by the U. S. marshal in Detroit of $72,000 fraud for promising cures that did not work in a mass airlift to Asia last year (see December 8, 1967, issue, page 51).

The U. S. Supreme Court refused to review the littering conviction of Baptist pastor Vernon Lyons for passing out Scripture portions in a Chicago park. Justice William O. Douglas favored a review but gave no reasons for his position.

Presbyterian clergyman Donald Kauffman, managing editor of Fleming Revell publishers, will take the same job at Christian Herald.

The U. S. Catholic hierarchy, an exclusive, mostly-Irish club of 271 members, met last month in a most un-club-like atmosphere. There were unprecedented clergy and laity sit-ins out in the lobby, pickets, 100 hungry reporters, and fringe meetings of liberal, traditionalist, and black lobbies.

Much of this democratic ferment was over birth control, and when the bishops released their long-awaited response to Pope Paul’s July encyclical against artificial methods, both sides claimed victory. It was an odd tribute to the stylish ambiguity of the drafting committee headed by Pittsburgh’s John Wright, leading hierarchy theologian.

The probable results: dissatisfaction on the left, frustration on the right, and confusion among the average laymen in the middle who are accustomed to getting moral instruction without having to look through a glass darkly. Rather than closing the case, the U. S. and foreign developments seemed merely a prelude to a crisis in Vatican authority.

The bishops’ 17,000-word pastoral letter, in the mode of Pope Paul, combined conservatism in birth control with liberalism on peace and international affairs. The U. S. bishops, cautious to a fault on internal church controversies, appear ready to escalate their advice to secular society.

Since the bishops’ statement on birth control followed so closely the substance of Paul’s encyclical, the liberal victory claims may seem far-fetched.

All twenty-one national hierarchies that have issued statements generally endorse the Pope’s decree. What matters is where they go from there. On the eve of the American bishops’ meeting, the French hierarchy professed ritual loyalty to the Vatican, then winked and said:

“Contraception can never be a good. It is always a disorder, but this disorder is not always guilty. It occurs in fact that spouses consider themselves to be confronted by a true conflict of duty.”

In varying degrees, the possibility of letting private conscience overrule the Pope on birth control enters into the statements from Canada, Britain, Austria, Belgium, Holland, West Germany, and Scandinavia.

In contrast with that lineup, the Americans said decisions must be governed by a conscience “dutifully conformed” to divine law and “submissive” toward church teaching. But this is balanced by a quotation of Cardinal Newman’s teaching that conscience can drown out the Pope’s voice—after serious thought and prayer—if a man believes “as in the presence of God, that he must not, and dare not, act upon the Papal injunction.…

The U. S. bishops conclude that all artificial contraception is an “objective evil,” though “circ*mstances may reduce moral guilt.” The same paragraph urges birth-control users to “take full advantage of’ penance and the Eucharist, but does not state that use of contraception must be confessed before communion. At a press conference, Wright’s opinion was that confession is necessary.

The pastoral offers a “tribute” to “parents of large families” and advocates income based on number of children rather than on actual work done. It suggests a family allowance system such as is used by underpopulated Canada and Australia.

The four pages on “Negative Reactions to the Encyclical” leave room for doubt by theological experts so long as they are discreet and do not question the church’s teaching authority.

And—in a section clearly aimed at the dissident priests who later claimed victory—the document says those performing a pastoral ministry in the church’s name must faithfully present her “authentic doctrine.”

Whatever comfort the forty-one suspended priests of Washington, D. C., found in this statement issued in their home city, they got little cheer from the rest of the meeting. The forty-one claim they are not against the Pope’s teaching as such but want to respect the consciences of those laymen who disagree. Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle, their bishop, holds laymen who “have made up their minds to go on practicing contraception” should be denied the sacraments.

Some 4,000 persons turned out for a rally to support the dissidents the day before the bishops’ meeting opened. There headliner Senator Eugene McCarthy drily announced, “I am not here to announce the formation of a third party nor of a second church,” then read one of his poems that praised priests “daring as much for man as for God.”

On opening day 300 priests from sixty-one dioceses met to demand “due process” in the O’Boyle suspension cases, and in the drive of sixty-eight San Antonio priests to oust 77-year-old Archbishop Robert Lucey. It sometimes had the flavor of a civil-rights or early CIO rally, as when Boston Father John White said, “When the bishops return to their offices next Monday, I’ll lay 100 to 1 another priest will be brutalized.”

Though some bishops sympathized, the meeting put the immediate demands into the context of the glacial canon-law reform process, and issued a tepid request for suggested improvements.

Spokesmen explained that the national bishops’ conference had no authority to force its way into a local dispute. And embryonic mediation procedures depend on agreement of both parties—a concession O’Boyle is unwilling to make. He named U. S. Catholic Conference General Secretary Joseph Bernardin to iron out the dispute, but when dissidents realized he was not a mediator they asked him to withdraw.

The bishops also discussed ways to speed action on mounting cases of priests seeking lay status or marriage, and a seminary report showed enrollment of 39,500—a drop of nearly 10,000 in nine years.

Official minutes brought out of the secret meetings showed an annual budget of $10.9 million for the U. S. Catholic Conference, the hierarchy’s national administrative office. One morning the bishops refused to reveal anything about their discussions. National Catholic Reporter reports that the touchy topic was a paper from New York’s Archbishop Terence Cooke recommending that dioceses release limited financial statements, on the argument that church members have a “right” to know how their money is used.

The bishops favored organization of farm labor but refused to echo the National Council of Churches’ endorsem*nt of the grape boycott, and ordered a study of the growing “pentecostal movement” within their church.

Nearly overshadowed by the birth-control dispute is the pastoral’s remarkable chapter “The Family of Nations.” It urges outlawing of all wars; condemns unlimited war and wars of aggression; and says peace is development, not a mere balance of power between enemies. The bishops favored Senate ratification of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty as a first step in arms reduction; opposed even the “thin” anti-ballistic missile system planned by the United States; questioned the security value in maintenance of U. S. “nuclear superiority”; favored a U. S. volunteer Army to replace the draft; hoped for the United Nations as a “universal public authority” to keep the peace; called growing nationalism and isolationism a “peril”; urged increased U. S. foreign aid; raised grave doubts about the Viet Nam involvement, which the bishops had previously justified; and favored conscientious objection to particular wars.

AUGUSTIN CARDINAL BEA

At age 79, when most men are ready to rest, Augustin Bea began a remarkable and vigorous new eight-year career that ended at his death last month.

Pope John XXIII made Bea the first Jesuit cardinal since 1946, then named him to set up the unprecedented Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. In the Vatican II years, Bea was credited with a key role not only in the ecumenism decree but on also in the statements on religious liberty and on attitudes toward the Jews.

More than any other personality, Bea symbolized and stimulated the Vatican’s increasingly friendly attitude toward Protestant and Orthodox Christians. He did this not through compromise of Roman doctrine but through a practical search for appropriate points of contact.

And one of the best was the Bible. Last year he told United Bible Societies leaders that “the Holy Spirit is surely at work drawing us together through the Bible; through the effort to translate the sacred Scriptures together and through the work of distributing the Sacred Scriptures together.” He also set up a social-action agency to work with Protestants and Orthodox.

Bea had a scholar’s devotion to the Bible. After lengthy academic study, he taught in Holland and Germany, then moved to the Biblical Institute in Rome, where he was rector from 1920 to 1949. In those years he also acted as personal confessor to Popes Pius XI and XII, and had a key role in the 1943 decree liberalizing Bible study.

Bea, the only child of a German carpenter, had frail health as a boy. Yet late in life, the slight-statured cardinal undertook an ambitious travel schedule in the cause of ecumenism. He visited the United States three times. He met the World Council of Churches staff in Geneva and the Archbishop of Canterbury in Lambeth. He went to Greece to return relics of St. Andrew to the Orthodox, and to Turkey to meet the Ecumenical Patriarch.

Bea caught a cold in August and appeared to recover, but fell ill again in October with influenza complications. His death November 16 was attributed to strain on his heart from respiratory ills.

Along with eulogies from his own and other churches came this assessment from Religious News Service: “The cardinal may come to be regarded as one of the most important churchmen of this century by future historians.” Noting Bea’s opposition to intercommunion and other premature moves, RNS said “he gathered around him a smooth-working, knowledgeable team able to cut through red tape and established routine. Its success was the result of careful timing and a keen sense of what was possible and what was not. It carried off with finesse some extremely delicate programs that could have set back the ecumenical movement for years, for both Catholics and Protestants, had they gone sour.”

What The Bishops Said

Salient excerpts on contraception from the U. S. Catholic bishops’ November 15 pastoral letter, “Human Life in Our Day”:

“[Quoting Vatican II’s Church in the Modern World] ‘Sons of the Church may not undertake methods of regulating procreation which are found blameworthy by the teaching authority.…’

“[Paul’s Humanae Vitae] is an obligatory statement consistent with moral convictions rooted in the traditions of Eastern and Western Christian faith; it is an authoritative statement solemnly interpreting imperatives which are divine rather than ecclesiastical in origin. It presents without ambiguity, doubt, or hesitation the authentic teaching of the Church concerning the objective evil of that contraception which closes the marital act to the transmission of life, deliberately making it unfruitful. United in collegial solidarity with the Successor of Peter, we proclaim this doctrine.…

“We feel bound to remind Catholic married couples, when they are subjected to the pressures which prompt the Holy Father’s concern, that however circ*mstances may reduce moral guilt, no one following the teaching of the Church can deny the objective evil of artificial contraception itself. With pastoral solicitude we urge those who have resorted to artificial contraception never to lose heart, but to continue to take full advantage of the strength which comes from the Sacrament of Penance and the grace, healing, and peace in the Eucharist.…

“There exist in the Church a lawful freedom of inquiry and of thought and also general norms of licit dissent. This is particularly true in the area of legitimate theological speculation and research. When conclusions reached by such professional theological work prompt a scholar to dissent from non-infallible received teaching the norms of licit dissent come into play. They require of him careful respect for the consciences of those who lack his special competence or opportunity for judicious investigation.… The expression of theological dissent from the magisterium is in order only if the reasons are serious and well-founded, if the manner of dissent does not question or impugn the teaching authority of the Church and is such as not to give scandal.…

“Even responsible dissent does not excuse one from faithful presentation of the authentic doctrine of the Church when one is performing a pastoral ministry in Her name. We count on priests, the counsellors of persons and families, to heed the appeal of Pope Paul that they ‘expound the Church’s teaching on marriage without ambiguity’ …”

Strategy At The Front Of The Bus

“Marsh Chapel never rocked like this before” was the consensus regarding a rollicking gospel song fest in the Boston University chapel from ten to midnight November 8. The occasion represented a pause to celebrate a new stage in the mobilization of black churchmen through a consultation organized by black students in Boston and held at the university’s School of Theology.

The consultation attracted over two-thirds of the approximately 300 blacks in accredited seminaries across the country, and welded them into what will prove to be a strong pressure group for seminary reform.

The consultation originated in January with a group of black seminarians at Andover Newton, who, according to steering-committee chairman McKinley Young, “were concerned over the plight of black students enrolled in predominantly white seminaries. The feeling was (and is) that in terms of curriculum studies there has been no significant consideration given to black institutions and practices—historically, theologically, and sociologically. Furthermore, it was noted that in terms of the overall seminary experience, black students find themselves alienated as well as excluded from the mainstream, and white institutions do not provide adequate training for an effective ministry within the black community.”

Speakers spanned the spectrum of black leadership from moderate to militant. Included were Philadelphia pastor Leon Sullivan, founder of Opportunities Industrialization Centers; the Rev. Wyatt Walker, Harlem pastor and former associate of Dr. Martin Luther King; the Rev. Albert Cleage, pastor of Detroit’s Church of the Black Madonna; Muslim minister Louis (X) Farrakhan; Episcopal urban-worker Nathan Wright; and Director Charles S. Rooks of the Fund for Theological Education.

Key results of the conference were:

Realization of an “operational unity” with focus altered from the former concern for equality, which characterized King’s era, to working toward equity and enabling of black communities to secure for themselves their share of the economic and political pie; as Boston pastor Vergil Wood put it: “when we moved from the back of the bus to the front of the bus, we didn’t move very far, because Whitey still owns the bus.”

Beginning of a National Association of Black Students that will organize in Pittsburgh in January.

Acceptance of an invitation for a pilgrimage to Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammed, indicating a strong step toward Muslim-Christian dialogue.

More confrontations with seminary administrators for changes in style and curriculum.

The attitude seemed to be that the students could be true to their black heritage and Christian at the same time, in that the Christian ministry still provides the best channel for ministering to the needs of people today. However, this ministry would be characterized by “dehonkified” theology that emphasizes some black distinctives present in the early centuries of the Christian Church.

The white church was regarded as sick and sterile, laden with the guilt of having long perpetrated a gospel of oppression. The word for the white church was that it should “do its own thing,” that is, leave the ghetto to the black leadership and work within the white community to remove racism and find paths to repentance and wholeness.

On the last day of the conference, Rooks, while confessing skepticism about the willingness and ability of white seminaries to respond, nevertheless urged black students to keep trying.

“But,” he warned, “we should not keep waiting forever for response.… Either these white situations are reformed or we make the hard decision to go our own way.” “Keep the pressure on,” he added, “Don’t let anyone tell you that your ideas are impossible.”

KENNETH CURTIS

Record Seminary Enrollment

Enrollment in accredited seminaries in the United States and Canada reached a record 28,033 this fall, an increase of 946 students over last year. It is a significant upturn from the doldrums of 1964, when enrollment was 21,025.

The American Association of Theological Schools—stressing its figures do not include fourteen Roman Catholic and two other seminaries that joined in the past year—said this represents an increase of 3.75 per cent over 1967. AATS did not speculate on whether the shift to drafting of non-seminary graduate students is aiding enrollments.

The AATS analysis showed little change from last year in the type of curriculum. In both years, 62 per cent of the students were in the standard professional B.D. program or its equivalent. Other student categories were: Christian education, 5.7 per cent; interns, 5.9; and graduate, 17.7.

In line with the upswing, most of the major denominations showed increases at their affiliated seminaries. Among them were the biggest, the Southern Baptist Convention (up 338 students): United Presbyterian (172); Lutheran Church in America (150); United Church of Christ (129); American Baptist Convention (100); Southern Presbyterian (63); and United Methodist (39).

Seminaries of the smaller evangelical denominations also posted gains, including Bethel, Calvin, Conservative Baptist, Nazarene, North Park, Trinity Evangelical, and Western.

Among denominations with shrinking enrollments were the Christian Church—Disciples (down 80); Missouri Synod Lutherans (45); Canadian Anglicans (23); U. S. Episcopalians (22); and American Lutheran Church (2).

The category of twenty interdenominational schools—which includes some of the most conservative and most liberal seminaries—also showed the usual increase. Exceptions to this trend were declines at Harvard and Vanderbilt.

Dissecting ‘Courage’

Surprisingly, no one quoted Pericles’ “the secret of freedom is courage.” But there was no lack of other citations and approaches from wildly conflicting speakers at a symposium on “An Anatomy of Courage” last month at Roman Catholic Barat College in suburban Chicago.

In an electrically charged atmosphere of fundamental disagreement, conservative Russell Kirk asserted that courage was impossible apart from commitment to the transcendent. Staughton Lynd, radical pacifist and spearhead of the Mississippi Freedom Schools, ignored the transcendent and spoke of courage as an “elemental” phenomenon to be realized in social action, not in “academic discourse” or in the kind of “afternoon symposia” Barat organized.

Michael Novak of the State University of New York, Roman Catholic existential death-of-God theologian who is a vocal opponent of American involvement in Viet Nam, denied the existence of the transcendent realm entirely, claimed that all value-systems are competing myths, and set his own version of Tillich’s “courage to be” (“in creative existential despair we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps”) over against the “basic American myth of happiness.”

Chicago assemblage artist Harry Bouras assembled a concept of “initiative” courage (derived from dynamic action, vs. the common artistic variety of passive, “responsive” courage). And Bruno Bettelheim, University of Chicago psychiatrist who survived German concentration camps, castigated the liberals on the program for their naive conviction that they were “on the side of the angels” (“‘We shall overcome’ gives me the creeps,” he said). He argued that courage is seldom more than the projection of the hero’s inadequacy-feelings, and called for a “moving ahead of human evolution by the intellectual activity of the mind.”

The fundamental cleavage was in methodology: conservatives relied on intellectual argumentation, while liberals endeavored to win the audience through existential-emotional appeal. Thus Kirk employed Burke, Joad, Carlyle, Stevenson, Graves, Newman, Waugh, Bernard of Chartres, Shaw, and C. S. Lewis in a high-flying defense of transcendent, communal values. And Bettelheim performed a veritable biopsy on northern civil-rights workers in the South and the demonstrators at the Chicago Democratic Convention:

“They have not been able to put themselves in the place of the poor Southern white or the Chicago policeman. Instead of seeing their opponents as basically like themselves, they compensate for their own shaky identity by a posture of superior righteousness. Therefore they compound the social problem instead of solving it.”

In contrast, Lynd affirmed the non-articulate, personal dimension of liberal social action. His presentation consisted of examples of people “from whom he had received courage”—such as Bob Moses, who “hated to go up on a platform, and when he did, he would ask the audience questions,” and Father Berrigan, just sentenced for destroying draft files.

In the same vein, Novak set forth a remarkable series of Delphic-oracle-like emotive judgments: “It is more important to be a decent human being than a Catholic believer.” “American industrial and militaristic society crushes our emotions (contrast European reactions in a traffic jam) and is preparing now for new Viet Nams.” “Military spending is not even debated in Congress.” “Our give-away programs are geared to help the upper classes, not the underprivileged.” “By using black to symbolize sin in parochial schools, we condition our children to racism.” “We are incurably optimistic: the word ‘up’ occurs more in American than in British English.” “The whole purpose of suburbs is to avoid confrontation with misery.”

Novak and Lynd shrewdly criticized Bettelheim for “intellectual utopianism” and “psychological reductionism,” but their own retreat into the emotional, existential realm hardly satisfied the desire of the audience to discover the meaning of true courage.

Bettelheim penetratingly analyzed the problem as getting the lion and the lamb in human nature to lie down together, since “courage”—not just etymologically—centers on the heart (Latin, cor).

But how? In a reference to Luther at Worms, Bettelheim argued that courage does not depend on anything but the necessity of our own inner being: “I can do no other.” But Luther himself engaged in an even deeper analysis when he said on that occasion: “My conscience has been captured by the word of God.”

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY

Small numerical gains by religious groups least represented in politics, at the expense of the big denominations, highlight findings of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s religious census of the new Congress.

Changes in religious complexion of the membership from the Ninetieth to the Ninety-First Congress were slight, since 1968 was a good year for incumbents. Totals of only two groups changed by more than one member.

The Roman Catholics gained two, increasing their plurality to 111. The Methodists, largest Protestant grouping in Congress took the greatest loss (down three to ninety). The third-, fourth-, and fifth-ranking groups on Capitol Hill each lost one: Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Baptists.

Gains of one went to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Jews, Society of Friends (Quakers), Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), Lutherans, and Greek Orthodox. The latter three groups are among the most under-represented in the Congress, compared to the size of their church membership. In fact, the Greek Orthodox were not represented in Congress until two years ago. By contrast, the affluent, largely white, British-background denominations are well represented. Comparing church size with the congressional figures, leaders are the Unitarian-Universalists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and United Church of Christ. The Congress statistics indicate something of the prestige and social involvement of America’s religious groups, on a personal basis.

The U. S. Senate has its first member from the Schwenkfelder Church, and the House, its first member from the Christian and Missionary Alliance (see story on facing page).

The most controversial religious figure in the new Congress is Baptist preacher Adam Clayton Powell, re-elected from Harlem even though the last House expelled him for misconduct. The Supreme Court last month agreed to review that House action. In Alabama, two black Baptist ministers, Richard Boone and William Branch, failed in National Democratic Party races for Congress, but Boone outpolled the George Wallace party candidate in the Montgomery area.

‘Firsts’ For Two Denominations

Many U. S. senators will get their first introduction to the Schwenkfelder Church when Richard S. Schweiker of Pennsylvania, first Schwenkfelder to serve in the House, takes his new Senate seat. And on the House side, many members will learn about the Christian and Missionary Alliance from its first congressman, North Carolina’s Wilmer (Vinegar Bend) Mizell.

The Schwenkfelders are a pietist sect with only 2,400 members in five congregations—four in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and one in Philadelphia. Though related to the Plain sects, members use conventional customs and dress. The group, begun in the United States the year the Revolutionary War ended, is named for the Silesian nobleman Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig (1489–1561).

Before Schweiker moved to Washington he served as a Sunday-school teacher, usher, and vice-chairman of his church’s ministerial committee. The Schweiker family attends a Lutheran church in Washington.

In the House, Republican Schweiker worked on behalf of religious minorities. He was a leader in the fight to exempt the Amish from Social Security payments, which ended in a 1965 compromise law. He worked successfully to take the sting out of harsh provisions for conscientious objectors in the 1967 draft law. Schweiker is not a conscientious objector and doesn’t oppose Social Security, his administrative assistant David Newhall says, “but he felt in these instances the government was impinging on long-held religious beliefs and therefore its actions were repugnant.”

Mizell, also a Republican, was a pitcher for nine years with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Pirates. He is now “much in demand as a lay preacher—one of the finest there is,” says his minister, the Rev. Don Lyerly of Faith Missionary Alliance Church, Winston-Salem. Mizell is also assistant superintendent of the Sunday school and a deacon.

“This man is not a nominal Sunday-morning Christian,” Lyerly continued. “He is a man of convictions, as wholesome and personable as he can be. This, I am convinced, is what won his election for him—his humility, sincerity—he is real.” The Alliance is an evangelical denomination with 70,000 members.

‘I Was Supposed To Die’

“The gun went off. I was supposed to fall over and die—but nothing happened.” As two youths were arrested for the murder attempt, Ross Owens of Compton, California, said he found the spent bullet in his torn chest pocket, stopped by a sheaf of Bible crusade materials. They saved his life.

The murder attempt was “in the providence of God,” he says. News reports of his brush with death served to publicize efforts he has helped lead to get a much-needed YMCA program in Compton, which is more than half black.

Owens, an American Baptist, is president of the California Laymen’s Crusade, Inc., which has distributed 30,000 Bibles and 60,000 tracts in house-to-house campaigns since 1963.

More On Nixon

Evangelist Billy Graham had more praise for his friend President-elect Richard M. Nixon. Speaking on CBS radio’s “World of Religion,” he said Nixon, a Quaker, has a typically Quaker reticence about religion. Graham praised him for his care in avoiding religion “to gain political strength. Nixon’s “great sense of moral integrity” will make him a “respected president,” Graham said.

Evolution In Arkansas

For the record, the opinion of the U. S. Supreme Court in knocking down Arkansas’s 1928 anti-evolution law was unanimous, but some of the concurring justices let it be known that they thought there might be monkeys in the woodpile the way Justice Abe Fortas handled it.

But for soft-spoken, easy-going Mrs. Jon Epperson, 27-year-old former tenth-grade biology teacher at Little Rock’s Central High, the court’s action removed “an outdated source of embarrassment to the state and to the teaching profession.” However, she will not benefit directly from her feat. In February, she and her Air Force captain husband moved to Oxon Hill, Maryland, a Washington suburb, when he was assigned to the Air Staff at the Pentagon. Her only pupil now is her six-month-old son Mark. She recently joined Washington’s historic New York Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Mrs. Epperson, a winsome, urbane young woman who holds a master’s degree in zoology from the University of Illinois, said she had no overpowering desire to teach Darwinian theory (which for her presents “no strong conflict of understanding of what Genesis is trying to say”). What prompted her to be the stand-in for the Arkansas Education Association in the case was her feeling that “a very important responsibility a teacher has is to set an example for students. It can’t be done if a teacher is going to break the laws. To teach a theory of evolution about the origin of man was breaking the law in Arkansas.”

Before the Supreme Court, the state’s advocate, in presenting an argument described by Justice Hugo Black as a “pallid, unenthusiastic, even apologetic defense” of the Arkansas law, admitted that no one had even been arrested in the forty years of its existence. In compliance with the law, Mrs. Epperson never taught the theory, though many of her colleagues joined state education officials in disregarding the statute.

Mrs. Epperson holds evolutionary theory to be “quite valid” and not in essential conflict with her understanding of the Christian faith. She feels that with the clearing of the air, eventually more high-school students in Arkansas and Mississippi will get to study biology. “In some areas it is not taught at all, and I feel this law, in part at least, is responsible.” Mississippi is the only other state to have an enforceable “monkey law.” Tennessee invalidated the original of the fundamentalist-inspired laws last year.

Justice Black was highly critical of the main opinion written by Fortas for the court, contending, as did others, that in his search for missing links that would justify the court’s even rendering a decision, Fortas might have put some of the wrong bones together. Federal intervention was proper, Fortas held, because religious freedom was being impeded. Fundamentalists had no right to hold back learning merely because it might undermine one of their tenets, he said.

Black could see only one justification for intervening—the law’s vagueness. In deciding the case on the basis of the establishment-of-religion clause, he said, the court may have stretched the “long-arm” of the government farther than it should.

“Unless this court is prepared simply to write off as pure nonsense the views of those who consider evolution an anti-religious doctrine, then this issue presents problems under the establishment clause far more troublesome than are discussed in the court’s opinion,” he wrote.

Possibly so. But in the meantime, Mrs. Epperson has gotten a kink out of Arkansas’s educational conscience. And in Arkansas, that is evolution.

WILLIAM WILLOUGHBY

Kansas City Happening

Twelfth Street and Vine is where it’s happening; at least that’s how the song “Kansas City Here I Come” has it. Two blocks away, however, something else is happening. There the nation’s first ecumenical, Catholic Protestant church opened its doors for services this month.

Costing $400,000, St. Mark’s Church is an imposing concrete structure reached by climbing two dozen steps, and is topped by a lofty spire. Its practically windowless sanctuary will hide 275 worshipers from the sights outside: a high-rise project housing 8,000 of the city’s poor Negroes, an assortment of bars, street missions, and made-over offices of the Methodist Inner-City Parish.

In the fashion of a “happening,” St. Mark’s is decorated with multi-colored hardboard panels suspended from the ceiling and pop-art banners bearing religious themes. And for the sake of ecumenism, it is furnished with both a crucifix and a baptistry for immersions.

Two services are held each Sunday morning: an early Catholic mass celebrated by Benedictine priest Robert Ready, and a later service with United Presbyterian minister David O. Shipley officiating. Director of the building—which houses a sanctuary, pre-school, offices for United Inner City Services, and activity rooms—is the Rev. William A. Hayes, a United Church of Christ clergyman.

Hayes said that although there will be separate worship services, programs and activities will be unified, and members will function as one united congregation. “We know that we must earn the right to the real estate we occupy by the service we render to the community,” he added.

In addition to the present staff, an Episcopal priest and several social workers will soon join the venture. Support and staff appointments for St. Mark’s are the responsibility of local jurisdictions of the participating church bodies: Episcopal, United Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, and Roman Catholic.

JAMES S. TINNE

In the last two years the Post Office sold four billion Christmas stamps with a Memling Madonna and Child. This year’s design (above) is changed to a Van Eyck Annunciation depicting the angel Gabriel. But Americans United, still upset about Memling, claims the stamp was sectarian because Mary was shown as Queen of Heaven. The church-state separationists’ relentless stamp war got a lease on life last month. The U. S. Court of Appeals ordered a new district court hearing because a June Supreme Court ruling established AU’s standing to sue.

Dear Theological Athletes:

Among the pleasant memories that remain from a somewhat misspent boyhood are those of the Saturday nights when we would station ourselves on the hill overlooking the Armory Auditorium in hopes of watching the wrestling matches without parting with a then valuable quarter. After a few minutes of the opening match the auditorium would become uncomfortably hot and some unknown benefactor would open the large window facing the hill, giving us a clear view of the arena.

Even then it seemed somewhat strange to me that the Swedish Angel could withstand the Masked Marvel jumping full weight on his stomach without apparent injury. Or that Indian Joe could batter Kid Curly’s head against the ring post without causing a concussion.

With the advent of television and its close-up of the ring action, my suspicions became confirmed. It’s all a fake. All the mayhem that appears to be happening is just sleight of foot. And only recently has the reason for the fakery become clear to me. Wrestling is not a hostile or destructive sport. In spite of all that wrestlers do to make it look vicious, it just isn’t.

Have you ever seen two small boys trying to establish rapport with each other? They wrestle. First there’s the playful nudge. Then comes the friendly counter push. And in a moment they’re on the ground puffing, giggling, and having a beautiful time. Wrestling is the original I-Thou relationship. (As proof of my point just recall Jacob’s famous match.)

It seems inescapable to me that the sport for today’s theolog is not the popular jogging but wrestling. In fact, I’d like to suggest that planners of theological curricula include wrestling in the seminary program, with credit, of course. Think of the mutual understanding that could result from theologically oriented wrestling matches. Deacons’ meetings could be opened with prayer and closed with wrestling.

As a final contribution I’d like to offer my services in arranging matches designed to further theological camaraderie. For instance: Billy Graham vs. Jitsuo Morikawa. Or perhaps a tag-team match with Pope Paul and Cardinal O’Boyle vs. Fathers Curran and Kavanaugh. As a final nostalgic touch we could have a mystery bill with Eutychus III as the Masked Marvel vs. Penultimate as the Hooded Hurricane.

Perspiringly yours, a guest of EUTYCHUS III

Reproduction Restudied

Thank you for the thorough articles on birth control and the Old and New Testaments, also “The Relation of the Soul to the Fetus,” and the good “A Christian View of Contraception” (Nov. 8 issue). Such a study was long overdue, and was amazingly thoroughly studied and presented. Really, it should be put into reprint form.

Pear City, Ill.

As one of the participants at the Symposium on the Control of Human Reproduction, I feel obligated to inform your readers that the exegetical argument of Professor Waltke (“The Old Testament and Birth Control”) on Exodus 21:22–25 is by no means apodictic. Waltke follows the interpretation of David Mace (Hebrew Marriage), over against virtually all serious exegetes, classical and modern, in claiming that the passage distinguishes between a pregnant mother (whose life has to be compensated for by another life if killed) and her fetus (unworthy of such compensation).…

The equality of mother and unborn child in Exodus 21 is upheld not only by a classic Old Testament scholar such as the nineteenth-century Protestant Delitzsch but also by such contemporary Jewish exegetes as Cassuto, whose Commentary on the Book of Exodus (trans. Abrahams [Jerusalem: Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1967]) is a landmark. Here are the relevant portions of Cassuto’s explanatory rendering:

When men strive together and they hurt unintentionally a woman with child, and her children come forth but no mischief happens—that is, the woman and the children do not die—the one who hurt her shall surely be punished by a fine. But if any mischief happens, that is, if the woman dies or the children die, then you shall give life for life.

To interpret the passage in any other way is to strain the text intolerably.… The original text places a value on fetal life equal to adult life, and in doing so perfectly conjoins with the rest of Holy Writ (such as Ps. 51:5; Luke 1:41, 44).

Chairman

Division of Church History

Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Deerfield, Ill.

I would like to commend you highly for calling attention to the issues of “Contraception and Abortion.” I would hope that Christian young adults might seriously consider limiting their families with the thought of giving what might have been spent for the extra children to some of the starving children of the world.…

I hope that you will very forcefully remind us of the pressing problems of world population and of starvation. You might do us the favor of publishing the names and addresses of missions … who are working in areas of pressing food needs. What is our affluent American society coming to when so much money and attention is spent on luxuries that we can do without, when half the world lacks even its “daily bread”.…

Over against 130 advertisem*nts [in a recent issue of Time Magazine] calling attention to our American wants and needs—and how few are actually needs—there was … one advertisem*nt that called attention to the dire need of the other half of the world.…

“If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?” (Jas. 2:15, 16).

History Department

Rutgers, The State University

New Brunswick, N.J.

Dr. Waltke’s argument that … the fetus cannot be considered on a par with a living person is rather incomplete. I don’t intend to teach the Bible to the good professor, but he should have cross-checked his reference with passages like Psalm 139:13–16; Jeremiah 1:5, and Galations 1:15 before coming out with such a drastic statement.

Artificial birth control and family planning, by all means, yes! However, we Christians should be extremely cautious on the matter of induced abortion, in a day when this evil is so thoroughly widespread and is reaping its harvest not only in the child but also in the mother through death or other repercussions.

Istanbul, Turkey

Are you all trying to compete with all the other bold-faced magazines on the newsstands? I was actually ashamed when this [cover] stared me in the face in our mail box and would appreciate it, if you have any more screamers like this one, please put ours in a jacket! And please don’t expect a renewal when our subscription expires.… Lots of your stuff reeks of double talk.

MRS. G. A. GARREN

Tallahassee, Fla.

Although “Therapeutic Abortion: Blessing or Murder?” (Sept 27) contains some excellent Christian insights, one might take issue with some views expressed. True, no federal law forbids abortion by name, but the Fifth Amendment guarantees due process of law before an American court can deprive one of life. A group with consultants deciding on abortion requests is not the jury that Article 3 of the Constitution requires. If an unborn child can be an heir, the law recognizes civil rights of the unborn.

Neither Catholics nor others regard a pope’s opinion on the animation of embryos as settling the issue. But they would expect the embryo to manifest definitely human acts at some future time. If the still fetus is really regarded as “an impression or figment of the imagination,” then there would be only an imaginary problem! If body, soul, and mind develop, it is reasonable to presume they are there continuously in the process.

It is the practice of many Christians to baptize a non-viable fetus, somewhat parallel to Hippocrates’ ideal that a doubtful or dying life is to be treated with the same care due to a certain and vigorous life.

Philadelphia, Pa.

Dr. Visscher is no doubt well versed in his field. But it would seem that even an average student of Scripture and logic might find inconsistencies in his approach to this subject.

First, he uses the terms “non-viable” and “viable” to distinguish the fetus before and after the quickening point in pregnancy. The dictionary defines “viable” as “capable of living and developing normally.” Now, who is going to say that the fetus in its earlier stage is any less capable of living and developing normally than in its later stage?… He is using a term which, though it may be perfectly correct clinically and medically, is totally misleading in the present ethical view.

Secondly, his treatment of the sixth commandment is somewhat less than logical. Just as it cannot logically be stretched beyond its essential meaning of “murder” or forbid the taking of all life under any condition (as in war), so neither must it be narrowed to the point of permitting “killing in love”—or in his words with “no personal hostility”.… Many highway deaths result from situations involving no personal hostility, but we cannot escape the fact that an injustice is involved nonetheless.…

The question posed in the title still remains.

Fillmore, N. Y.

Saying The Unsaid

The problem with your editorial on the student left (Nov. 8) is not what you said but what you did not say. I fear that Christians will be thereby encouraged to continue to deplore, condemn, and explain away student agitation without themselves doing much either to criticize or improve our society and its educational institutions. The New Left’s way of doing something may not be much better than our way of doing nothing, but I wonder if it is really worse.

I can speak only for certain aspects of contemporary humanistic education (how many times has this been done before?), which is, even here, so unwieldy, impersonal, and hidebound that it is a wonder that more graduates do not develop a deep hatred for “the life of the mind.” We write papers for grades, read books for finals, take courses for credits, credits for degrees, degrees for jobs or more degrees, and these in turn for money. And in this we seem to be fulfilling admirably the expectations of most of our elders, but we are not fulfilled.…

You correctly criticize the New Left’s rationale, but your neglect to mention the real problems confronting sensitive collegians will allow Christians to rationalize away, as one of your letter-writers does, the whole of student dissent. If the spirit … of intolerance and of irrationality is not to triumph in the hands of administration, faculty, and students, then Christians will have to do more than criticize the critics. Your editorial will not help them to do this, insofar as it comforts them with the illusion that the radicals are only fighting straw men.

San Diego, Calif.

From Lutherans With Love

Just a few lines to congratulate you on your perceptive coverage of the American Lutheran Church’s recent biennial convention in Omaha. I enjoyed tremendously your views of both “Luththeran Love-In” and “ALC Man to Watch” (News, Nov 8).

You’ll probably hear from others on a small typo; the ALC’s college in Minneapolis is not Augustana (that’s at Sioux Falls) but Augsburg College. It was taken over from the Lutheran Free Church when the latter joined the ALC.

Division of Public Relations

Lutheran Council

New York, N. Y.

May I, a member of Missouri Synod, comment briefly on “Lutheran Love-In.” My comment: Great!

I have only recently returned from a tour of duty on Wake Island … where I experienced the joy of Christian loving friendship with an ALC pastor and his family.…

For too many reasons to list, I for one urge the Missouri Convention upcoming to approve altar and service fellowship with other Lutherans. Childish defenses of small plots of “reserved territory,” particularly insignificant in terms of salvation in Christ, are inexcusable and severely reprehensible.

McClellan AFB, Calif.

Briefly Speaking

Thanks to the new editor for the various changes occurring in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I was especially pleased with the editorials in the November 8 issue. Their brevity and wide-ranging topics make for a fresh interest.… To be relevant and evangelical simultaneously calls for mental alertness and spiritual depth.

Minneapolis, Minn.

A Reforming Fire

I just finished reading the article by C. George Fry entitled, “The Reformation as an Evangelistic Movement” (Oct. 25) and it was refreshing. I agree with Dr. Fry when he says, “We could observe an Evangelism Festival on Reformation Day, to beseech God to give us a revived church in our century.” America needs an evangelistic church burning with the same kind of fire that inspired the Reformers.

Maple Park Lutheran Church

Lynnwood, Wash.

Gordon’S History

The editorial announcement about the acceptance by Dr. Harold John Ockenga of the presidency of Gordon College and Gordon Divinity School (Oct. 25) was inexact at certain points, and we feel rather strongly that some of these matters should be brought to the attention of your reading public.

It is not accurate to say that Gordon College came into being as a Baptist attempt to counteract the blight of Unitarianism. Our school came into existence as the Boston Missionary Training Institute. It arose out of a movement stimulated by the work of David Livingstone in Africa to send the Gospel to the Congo. Soon after its organization, it began to train interested students for Christian work in churches in the United States as well as for missionary work. The fact that the evangelical stance of Gordon has been a counterbalance to the effects of Unitarianism in New England is one for which we are grateful. It was not, however, the aim of the founders of the school to establish the college for this purpose.

Gordon has not been exclusively Baptist for almost sixty years. Indeed, there are those who maintain that it never was exclusively Baptist. In 1912, when the Clarendon Street Baptist Church where the school was housed burned, the neighboring United Presbyterian Church opened its doors to both the Clarendon Street Church and the Gordon Bible School. There were already at Gordon teachers who were not Baptist and many students who were not Baptist.…

I am afraid that it is not true also that Gordon is to be headed for the first time by a non-Baptist. The immediate past president of Gordon, Dr. James Forrester, is a minister in the United Presbyterian Church and a member of the Presbytery of Boston.

The election of Dr. Harold John Ockenga as the president of Gordon College and Gordon Divinity School has been hailed by its faculty members with warm enthusiasm, and we look forward to a period of eminent usefulness in Christian service.

Dean

Gordon Divinity School

Wenham, Mass.

• According to Who’s Who in America for 1968–69, Dr. Forrester was ordained to the Baptist ministry in 1942.—ED.

Justice For C.E.F.

Permit a protest against one small news item (Politics, Oct. 25). Citizens for Educational Freedom is not “a largely Catholic lobby”.… Are you aware that both the president and the board chairman of Citizens for Educational Freedom are non-Catholic, articulate Protestants who strongly support parentally controlled Christian schools?… To seek justice in an arena in which the Catholic is by and large the greatest collective victim is no more to be identified with a Catholic lobby than to seek justice in the racial arena identifies one as a Negro lobby.

The purpose of Citizens for Educational Freedom is not “seeking aid for private schools.” The goal is to seek justice and freedom for parents. CEF speaks out on educational aid issues since they affect the primary interest of freedom of religious choice. Most of us in CEF work against aid for schools—we work for fair-share aid for parents who cannot in conscience support the secularism of public education.

Trinity Chapel

Broomall, Pa.

Fan Mail For Wallace

This is a fan letter.… “The Clergy and George Wallace” by Wallace Henley (News, Oct. 25) … was an objective view and a very incisive story. As a former newspaper man, I have a great admiration for fellow members of the craft who do an exceptional job.

Opelika, Ala.

Please cancel my subscription immediately.… I have been increasingly disenchanted with CHRISTIANITY TODAY as you seem to be slipping more and more to the liberal side. The [report on George Wallace] was the final straw.

I am not a rabid supporter of George Wallace, but when a publication that is purportedly a Christian publication waits until the last issue before Election Day to take a nasty sideswipe at a presidential candidate so he will have no chance at rebuttal before your readers go to the polls, I wonder with how much “Christian love” the content of the publication is determined.…

I used to place my used copies of this publication in hospital waiting rooms, doctors’ and dentists’ offices, and other public places, but I’m going to destroy every copy I have on hand to prevent them from falling into the hands of some innocent reader who may be misled by the liberal slanted articles.

Glenside, Pa.

The article indicates a bigotry unbecoming to a Christian periodical. First there is the title. Is it correct? It is not written by the clergy; it has taken no poll from the clergy. True, it quotes from the clergy; but the title is inaccurate. Second there is the caricature of Wallace. Is it true? No, here again is a juvenile position of standing off to make fun of something or somebody. George Wallace lacks love, the article says. Is your ridicule indicative of love?

In times past your periodical has said that the evangelicals are hurting the cause of Christ by being picayune. Beware lest you do the same. I am hurt and disappointed in you. There will be no Christmas gifts of CHRISTIANITY TODAY from our house this year.…

Your clay feet are sticking out!

Las Cruces, N. M.

This was a narrow biased group to base such a headline on.… You quote from men, who many feel are natural and not spiritual—professional religionists.… If you are spiritual or have been born again, only God knows this, then you should quote from men who are spiritual.

I was not a Wallace man—but this article … impressed my mind to vote for Wallace for I feel Henley is a sorry religious news editor as most are.

Atlanta, Ga.

Your main objection to Mr. Wallace seems to be that he is a poor example as a Christian. I agree with this, but frankly I had never thought of either of the three main contenders as being a very good example of true Christianity. If they were, I think their platforms would contain some plans and promises to do something about alcohol, Sabbath desecration etc. These are all lost causes.

Centralia, Ill.

Thanks for the “fan” mail. My humility has been affected, though I’m not sure which way.

Religion Editor

The Birmingham News

Birmingham, Ala.

The earth has been called “the visited planet” because it is one place (and who can tell if there are others?) in which the God of the Universe chose to appear. We for whose sake he showed himself can still visit the geographical spot on our planet that was the divine “bull’s-eye.” Bethlehem—elected, we are told by the prophet Micah, for the birth of Jesus Christ centuries before the event—is still a little town, a cluster of stone houses on a hillside surrounded by olive groves and vineyards; but one no longer has to ride a donkey or walk, as Mary and Joseph did, to get there. I took a taxi from the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem.

My guidebook told me that Bethlehem was the birthplace of King David, but did not mention Jesus Christ. As we approached the town I noticed a long line of Israeli school children wearing blue-and-white hats and singing “Jerusalem of Gold.” They were waiting to get into Rachel’s Tomb, one of the Jewish holy places opened to them by the victory of the Six-Day War.

In Manger Square there were tour buses, taxis, Israeli police cars, small boys selling postcards, and small girls selling olivewood beads. Teen-age boys clamored to show me the Church of the Nativity, an enormous, fortress-like structure that dominated the square. I didn’t want to be shown, nor to be told what I was supposed to think about what I saw—not this time. I wanted to go down into the cave alone. I had done some reading and learned that the church was built during the reign of Constantine over “a certain cave near the village,” according to Justin Martyr. Origen said it was “well known even by those who were not Christians,” as the scene of any event in the life of a small town is known by all. Surely a cave that had been used as a stable by the local inn would have been long remembered if there a baby had been born whom shepherds, bearing an astounding piece of information, had come in from the fields to see.

St. Jerome did not question that this was the very place, but he expressed regret that the mud cradle had been replaced by a silver one and that the whole thing—by the fourth century!—was much too commercialized. “There is nothing to see in Bethlehem,” he wrote.

Since his day there has been plenty to see at times. The church gleamed with silver, gold, silks, jewels, and candelabra before it was destroyed by the Samaritans. It now has a “new” (as of 1764) altar screen and many elaborate lamps. On the day I was there, the funeral of an Arab soldier, killed during the June War but found months later, was in progress. Black-veiled women followed the coffin, weeping softly. The fragrance of flowers mingled with the dusty odors of ancient stone and votive lamps.

When the tour groups had gone, I went down the staircase into the dim grotto. There the place of the birth of Jesus was marked by a silver star inscribed, HIC DE VIRGINE MARIA JESUS CHRISTUS NATUS EST.

This star is said to have been one of the causes of the Crimean War. The Roman Catholics had placed it, the Greeks removed it, and the Turks made the Greeks restore it. Today there are clear lines drawn in the church showing which area belongs to the Romans, which to the Greeks and Armenians. Bitter opposition meets any encroachment by one group into the territory of another.

Perhaps the unbelieving tourist can shuffle through the grotto with the crowd and come up again into the sunshine unchanged, hurriedly checking off another place “done.” But the visitor who believes the Latin words Christus natus est (even if he cannot accept the word hic, “here”) cannot be the same. In spite of destruction and bittnerness and commercialization and religious disputing and modern war, the overwhelming truth remains: The thing happened. It happened here, in Bethlehem. “The Expression of God became a human being and lived among us. We saw His splendor.… There is a grace in our lives because of His love.”

This is why the star is there.—ELISABETH ELLIOT, Franconia, New Hampshire.

If there were no God, man would have to invent one. For without God man and life become meaningless. If there is no God, man is a biological animal one step removed from the beast. He is caught in the whirlpool of existence, cast about by blind chance. He knows not where he came from or where he is going. He peers out into a world that has no purpose; he lifts his eyes to a sun that blinds him and he huddles in a darkness that offers him no protection from a multitude of enemies.

Without God, man must look to himself. Looking to himself he accumulates possessions. But possessions bring him no final comfort, and as death’s cold hand reaches for his mortal soul he discovers that he must leave the world as he entered it—with nothing.

Without God man crawls from hovel or mansion at the break of day to search after power, by which he hopes to improve his lot and dominate nature and other men. As he gains it, he feels strong, and he glories in what power can do for him. He rejoices that the powerless are subject to his whims and pitilessly exploits others for his own benefit. He plays the role of a god made in his own image. But the time always comes when his power corrupts him, when infirmity overtakes him, when younger and more vigorous aspirants challenge what he can no longer protect. Even if he manages to hold on until the grave closes over his wasted frame, he finds to his chagrin that power does not solve the riddle of life. There is a void that power cannot fill. Something, he knows not what, continues to elude him; the fulfillment he yearns for escapes him. And in the sleepless moments of some long night he sees himself in a naked aloneness that his blankets cannot cover. Power does not bring peace.

Without God man works feverishly for fame. He wants to establish an identity by which all men will know him. He wants his name and his image paraded before the world in newspapers and books, over TV and radio, and he collects the clippings in scrap books to pore over and delight in. He wants the annals of history to note his presence and pay tribute to his genius. He establishes repositories for his papers so that scholars of another age can earn degrees by thumbing through his archives to praise (or damn) his name. But fame, like power and wealth, is transitory. It brings attention and adulation. But the price is high. Fashions change, heroes come and go. The hurrahs a man receives today become hisses tomorrow, while the younger generation stare at his name blankly and incuriously ask their elders, “Who was he?”

Without God love cannot exist. Man follows the instincts of the beast. He hates and hurts, he crushes and tears. Survival of the fittest becomes his principle of action. If he is left to his own devices, selfishness, pride, and avarice take over. The only law he knows, the only commandment he follows, is this: Do whatever you wish so long as you don’t get caught. Laying down laws for others, he becomes a law to himself. Love is self-giving, but the man who knows no god cannot give himself. Love puts the interests of others before those of self, but the godless man gives priority to his own interests. Love flows from a fountain outside man, not within him. For him to drink of that fountain is to acknowledge something above and beyond himself, something greater than himself. To accept the idea of love is to accept the idea of God, for man is not love and never can be. Since love brings man full circle to God, he cannot embrace it without embracing God. To reject God is to reject love. And to reject love is to endorse hate.

Amid it all man constantly reveals that deep within him are ineradicable evidences of the existence of the divine being. Even atheists weep as they bury husbands, wives, and children in marked graves that testify to man’s never-ending quest for immortality. Day after day thousands troop by the coffin that contains the mortal remains of Lenin in Moscow. To them this lump of clay once was only material protoplasm, and whatever soul might have been housed in that body exists no more. Yet the Communists try to bridge the gap between their atheism and their desire to immortalize a man who, if there is no God, has no intrinsic worth (it could be said that for them a living dog is better than a dead Lenin). Even atheists, for want of a better way, still call on God to be witness to their veracity, for they well know that apart from an appeal to something greater than themselves their every assertion is suspect and their integrity (if material animal beings can have integrity save as a convenient but untrue invention) has no enduring foundation.

Man’s greatest discovery of all is the truth that without God, he himself cannot be. He destroys himself when he destroys God, for he is rooted in God. Homicide, fratricide, and suicide are bad enough. But deicide is man’s supreme offense. It carries with the act the irony that having, as he thinks, destroyed God, man discovers at last that he has destroyed himself while God continues to live and to laugh.

But God is, and so is man. And because God is, man is more than beast, more than protoplasm, more than a transient visitor to this planet. He is not caught in the web of blind chance. He has dignity and worth. Because God is, man knows where he came from and where he can go. Because God is, man can know him, for God has manifested himself in nature, in providence, and supremely in Jesus Christ. Man can entrust himself to God in Jesus Christ. Then life takes on meaning. Purpose becomes apparent. Man with God becomes significant, even as man without God becomes meaningless. But the glory and the stumbling block is God’s demand that man choose him freely. By his own choice man determines his destiny; either he chooses life or he chooses death.

Mr. Nixon’S Opportunities

It augurs well for the nation that several well-known Negro leaders have voiced encouraging words for Richard Nixon since the vote was cast that elevated him to the Presidency. This commendable initiative should help Mr. Nixon get off to a good start. President Johnson’s spirit is also aiding in the transition. Churchmen too might pledge their cooperation publicly, whether or not they favored Mr. Nixon in the campaign.

The President-elect need not be troubled because he did not win a majority of the popular vote. It is some consolation that he carried such a decisive number of states. But even if he had not, he could still look to the fact that some of our great presidents have been ushered into office under similar circ*mstances; at least fourteen of his predecessors had less than half the popular vote.

As he prepares to take office, Mr. Nixon will need to focus upon some very pressing day-to-day problems, such as the need for national unity and for law and order with justice, and will need God’s guidance to do so effectively. But the new President should not let these important matters consume his interests and energies to the point that he neglects even larger and more far-reaching concerns.

One distressing drift in our nation has to do with the role of colleges and universities. As the noted scholar Jacques Barzun said recently, campuses have been turning into “a public utility” with faculty members “on the run” to do the bidding of government, industry, private donors, the foundations, and others who press for “service.” “I have nothing against the university studying social problems or commenting on what is going on out of its fund of knowledge,” he said. “But the university is getting to resemble the Red Cross more than a university, with direct help to whomever is suffering now.” He added pointedly if rudely, “Though I see signs everywhere asking people to ‘give a damn,’ I am convinced that nobody among the vocal and idealistic gives a damn about education.”

Higher education in the United States had its start largely in a Christian motivation. Under the influence of alien philosophies it has lost much of its dynamic, and it now stands to lose even more. Mr. Nixon could do the country a great turn by publicly championing a higher cause for higher education.

Berlin Revisited

Two years ago this fall the World Congress on Evangelism took place in Berlin. Little did the conveners know what would grow out of this. A city where Adolf Hitler breathed his last, a city partitioned by conquest between the free and Communist worlds, a city marked by a dividing wall that keeps some in and others out—who would think that a new evangelistic thrust would emerge here? But it did.

Since Berlin, new life has come to evangelism. A regional congress is scheduled for Africa in January, one for Latin America a year from now, a U. S. Congress on Evangelism in Minneapolis next September. The Asia-South Pacific Congress on Evangelism just closed. If what happened there happens elsewhere, we can anticipate new vitality for gospel outreach all over the world. Only those who sat through the sessions, ate with the delegates, and caught the heart throb of the congress can sense the tremendous potential of such gatherings.

It all started at Berlin two years ago. The “one race, one Gospel, one task” theme is a leaven that can leaven the whole lump. Christians around the world should pray earnestly for these congresses, asking God to visit us with another great spiritual awakening.

Compassion In Winter Wonderland

A truism in Washington, D. C., allows that winter’s first snowflake boggles the minds that cope with wars, urban problems, and foreign aid. Those lacy bits of frozen precipitation highlight what one wag called “Southern efficiency” while they confound rich and poor, Senator and clerk, limousine and jalopy.

But a snowstorm is not a completely impartial leveler. In the Capital—as in countless other cities—far too many people will suffer this winter because they lack heat, warm clothes, and balanced diets. Christian compassion calls for tangible evidence of concern—additions to our Christmas gift lists, perhaps.

The Superlative Word

Words are powerful. They can carry their reader on a trip that begins lightheartedly at dawn with cheerful chatter and lilting step. By nightfall the journey grows heavy and dark; only grim determination can place numb foot before numb foot when legs drag as with irons. At the end of the road, life-weary depression only deepens with the discovery that every hotel is filled and no one seems to care that tired travelers have no place to rest.

Words are beautiful when they paint a mother and newborn child in tender, tranquil strokes—the strong, gentle love she bestows with a whisper kiss on his tiny hands, her adoring laugh at his feeble attempts at sounds and his frustrated but hearty cry, her soft caress of the wrinkled-red body with its round head, wisps of fine hair, and button nose.

Words are exciting when they describe the eerie uncertainty of an atmosphere charged between storm and calm although the sky is clear. The night is not exactly placid, but not exactly agitated. Its strange, electrifying awfulness crests in an angel choir speaking the most powerful, beautiful, and exciting Word of all—the “priceless gift” who “became a human being and lived among us … full of grace and truth.”

The Interdisciplinary Challenge

Young people preparing for a future on the frontiers of Christian witness must resist the temptation to overspecialize. The effective apologist of tomorrow will probably know and understand two or more academic disciplines. The Christian literary artist will need a grounding in philosophy, for example. Evangelical historians may need expertise in journalism. And to carry forward the battle for men’s minds, many more Christians should have a solid foundation in theology.

Christian College Defection

Agnes Scott College, a Presbyterian U. S.-affiliated liberal-arts school for women in Decatur, Georgia, recently announced an end to its twenty-year-old ban on non-Christian faculty members. The ban received public attention last year when a Jewish graduate student at Emory University applied for a teaching post at the college. At the recommendation of college President Wallace M. Alston, a past moderator of the Presbyterian U. S. General Assembly, the board of trustees in a new hiring policy stated that it “shall elect those who can best carry out the objectives as set forth in the charter, giving consideration to any competent person who is in accord with these purposes.”

Dr. Alston said the new policy means applicants will be dealt with “as individuals.” Although this sounds commendable on the surface, closer examination raises serious questions. There seems to be a glaring contradiction between the new statement and the charter, which says the function of the school is to provide education “distinctly favorable to the maintenance of the faith and practice of Christian religion.” Can a non-Christian sincerely commit himself to this objective?

It is not our purpose to single out one institution for criticism, however. The action taken by the board of Agnes Scott is representative of an attitude of permissiveness that pervades the Church today. Certainly Christian teachers can best carry out the objectives of a Christian college. We are in a sad state of affairs if Christian teachers cannot be found; we are in an even worse state if we are bypassing Christians to hire non-Christians in the name of academic freedom. Many colleges and universities have been lost to the cause of Christ through the gradual erosion of a firm commitment to the Christian faith. Although there are many areas in which the thought of discrimination by Christians is deplorable, surely this is one in which discrimination is called for.

A Noble Aim Unrealized

It is a small step toward a goal that demands leaps and bounds, but this TV season’s prime time boasts a number of black faces. The dialogue—frequently apologetic—that surrounded the breakthrough is revealing: although slavery died institutionally a century ago, it lives on in fact. Many Caucasians still consider themselves innately superior to Negroes.

Shortly after one of the world’s most violent Anglo-Saxon supremists was quashed, the United Nations proclaimed its Universal Declaration of Human Rights—a commendable document that maintains relevance twenty years later.

Though this document appeared at a particularly crucial moment in the history of human rights, it is not the first such declaration. Human rights are as old as the human race; his dignity was created with him when God breathed into man the breath of life. Man’s dignity was confirmed when God assigned him to subdue the earth. And it was confirmed finally and forcefully when God himself took on humanity in the person of Jesus Christ.

God’s declaration of human rights is also universal; dignity is an integral part of every man—no matter his race, nationality, or religion. And that dignity binds men together as tightly as their common biology does.

Apparently this inherent declaration of human rights is inadequate. Throughout his history man has felt compelled to write down his pleas for dignity, though their writing has not assured their practice. Even Christians—who ought to know better—contribute to the disunity declared at the fall and confirmed by Cain: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Unfortunately, their reply is too often a tentative affirmative, if indeed it is the affirmative that true human unity demands.

If intelligent men of good will acknowledge the rightness of human rights, as the United Nations delegates did on December 10, 1948, why in 1968 are Negroes still rare on American TV screens? Why are East Berliners walled in? Why do Biafrans starve? Why are Czech borders closed to Czech emigrants? Why are Muslim women uneducated? Why? The questions ring interminably.

Declarations are not easily executed. Our own Declaration of Independence required a revolution to effectuate. Preachers know their proclamations rarely guarantee practice. And the U. N. Declaration, after twenty years, has seen only a few steps toward concrete action.

Laws can enforce open housing, indiscriminate education, and equal-opportunity employment, but only on a superficial level. They cannot change deep-seated attitudes. While human beings will never practice human rights perfectly, they can continue legislating and declaring. Universal human rights is a noble aim.

Hollow Victory In Arkansas

In a recent decision the U. S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected as unconstitutional a forty-year-old Arkansas law banning the teaching of evolution in the public schools (see News, p. 38). The central figure in the modern-day “monkey trial” was Mrs. Jon O. Epperson, a former biology teacher at Little Rock’s Central High School, now living in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. Mrs. Epperson, a member of Washington’s New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, said her aim was not to promote Darwinism (which she does not believe conflicts with the Bible) but to eliminate the necessity of breaking an unfair law.

Mrs. Epperson is to be commended for the exemplary manner in which she approached the problem. Motivated by a desire to be an example to young people by demonstrating her respect for the law, she sought to have what she believed to be an unjust law changed through the proper channels. She did not resort to the more dramatic course of calling attention to a law by breaking it (as in the case of John T. Scopes).

However, Mrs. Epperson’s victory is a somewhat hollow one. Her efforts have removed from the books a law that really should not have been there and was never enforced. On the other hand, in recent years it hasn’t been the theory of evolution that has been shortchanged in biology classrooms. While we would maintain that the state should not be allowed to force the teaching of the doctrine of creation in public schools, Christians should insist on “equal time” for a fair presentation of the biblical position as a valid explanation for the origin of man.

For ‘Laugh-In’ Viewers Only

From Beautiful Downtown Burbank (Elevation; Population: Yes) comes “Laugh-In,” a ver-ry interesting, very popular TV program that may be the censors’ major headache. In terms often risqué, the furiously fast-paced variety socks it to foibles that appear anywhere. On a recent Monday evening the target was the Church, and some shots were bull’s-eyes. An ancient clergyman, concerned about the drift of young people away from church, called for more exciting sermons—in a sluggish monotone that put him to sleep. A Public Notice warned, “Covet not thy neighbor’s wife—that’s his bag.” On the joke wall, a cast regular told of meeting a Southern intellectual—who said he was a Zen Baptist. At the end of the show, “Laugh-In’s” resident minister glanced nervously upward and said, “I’m going to have a hard time smoothing this one over.”

Many people are convinced that no amount of smoothing over can redeem such shows as “Laugh-In”; NBC’s censor leaves in more questionable material than Johnny Carson’s “Miss Priscilla Goodbody” gets credit for. One “Laugh-Iner” admitted it on a cameo spot: “‘Laugh-In’ reminds me of my wedding—something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.”

Many of “Laugh-In’s” lines are indeed unworthy of even one applau or chuckle, but at least their blueness shows up, even in black and white, against the apparently innocuous unrealism of many other shows—and commercials. Viewers deeply engrossed in the plots and characters of those programs may not realize the subtle influence of their basically anti-Christian presuppositions. Children are especially susceptible.

Repentance

One of the signs of our out-of-joint times is the liturgically oriented religious service with a well-developed technique for producing neurotic guilt. Worshipers are called upon to confess their guilt for racism, starvation in India, the war in Viet Nam, riots in the streets, revolts on the campuses, underdevelopment in the poorer nations, and whatever else is wrong anywhere in the world. Some of this is nonsense.

To inculate in Christians a sense of guilt for “sins” they haven’t committed, and to hold them responsible for conditions they neither created nor presently approve, is not only ridiculous but also dangerous. It can lead to neurotic guilt, which is not real guilt, and this creates a genuine sickness. It tends to overwhelm the victim, who then loses sight of any real guilt he has; this confusion leads to frustration. Furthermore, it keeps him repeating admissions of an unreal guilt without opening the way to adequate forgiveness and restoration to wholeness. Instead of being a genuine exercise of biblical repentence, this sort of mass confession appears to be a contrived routine that only debilitates the participants. But the misuse of congregational confession of sin should not persuade us to omit what is a necessary part of the worship service.

True repentance has five aspects: (1) Change of mind. In the parable of the two sons (Matt. 21:28, 29), one son said he would not work in his father’s vineyard. He later repented (changed his mind) and went to work. (2) Contrition or godly sorrow for sin. The psalmist says, “I am sorry for my sin” (Ps. 38:18). (3) Confession of sin. The prodigal son of Luke 15 went to his father and said, “I have sinned against heaven and before you.” (4) Forsaking of sin. It is not enough to admit wrongdoing; the sinner must cease doing the wrong. Isaiah says, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts” (55:7). (5) A turning to God. Paul records that the Lord told him men are to “‘turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me’” (Acts 26:18).

Biblical repentance brings forgiveness, cleansing, and wholeness. The guilt is gone, and no further confession for that sin is needed. Through God’s grace the forgiven one is enabled to go and sin no more. Forgiveness brings deliverance and freedom. This is the true function of repentance.

New Look At New Theology

What’s New in Religion?, by Kenneth Hamilton (Eerdmans, 1968, 176 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Warren C. Young, professor of Christian theology and philosophy, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Oak Brook, Ill.

The subtitle of this book is a good statement of the scope of the volume: “A Critical Study of New Theology, New Morality and Secular Christianity.” One might well call it an evangelical look at recent trends in theology.

Professor Hamilton begins with a discussion of the use and misuse of “new.” Technological advance makes possible improvements, changes, and refinements that keep up with our constant demand for something “new.” Yet it does not follow that new political and social movements, new theological systems, new ethical theories, are necessarily improvements. To illustrate his point, the author cites Heidegger’s pro-Nazi address in 1933. As we all know, the “new order” of Hitler proved to be something other than Utopia.

Today we are being offered a “new” theology. The old or traditional theology is dead, we are told, and we need a theology geared to late twentieth-century man and culture. As Hamilton puts it, what man seems to be seeking is a religion that will “give him meaning, direction, and purpose in his attempt to cope with his total environment, and to achieve satisfaction from the struggle.”

But what man is seeking today is not necessarily a Christian faith. For many, apparently, the Christian outlook and promise have failed. Why? What is it in the Christianity of our century that has caused modern man to lose faith in the ability of the Christian faith to meet the needs of the hour? What has caused him to turn his interest into other channels? Has the Christian faith proved itself irrelevant after twenty centuries of trial and effort? If contemporary theology serves no other purpose, it ought at least to spur us to examine the past to see where we may have fallen short. To this end we need a careful reading of Bonhoeffer, Bultmann, Tillich, Robinson, and others.

From theology the author moves to ethics. He quite correctly concludes that if theology changes, then morality is bound to change. If God is dead, then his “thou shalt nots” have lost all meaning. This explains the rise of “situation” ethics to replace the ethic of eternal laws. Now we are told that love is supreme—as if love could have meaning without some rules. Hamilton does well in showing the inconsistency of situation ethics.

Anyone who wants a good survey of trends in religion today should by all means get this volume. I do not know of another that does the job so well in so short a space.

Surprisingly Conservative

Who Is This Jesus?, by D. T. Niles (Abingdon, 1968, 160 pp., $3), and The Pre-Existence of Christ, by Fred B. Craddock (Abingdon, 1968, 192 pp., $4.50) are reviewed by Ralph Earle, professor of New Testament, Nazarene Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri.

Two new books shed important light on Jesus’ life. They come from D. T. Niles, well known as an outstanding Asiatic spokesman in the ecumenical movement, and Fred B. Craddock, professor of New Testament and preaching at the Graduate Seminary of Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma.

Although Niles is sometimes quoted for statements that seem a bit over in left field, he is surprisingly conservative in this book. He comes out flatly for the deity of Jesus and u reality of his bodily resurrection, and also for atonement only through Christ.

Unlike many scholars of today, Niles finds it possible to harmonize the gospel accounts into a continuous story of Jesus’ life. Yet as he rightly says, the intention of the gospel writers is neither to write a chronicle nor to compose a biography. What they do is to present a drama.

Niles follows the Johannine chronology (four passover feasts) in outlining the life of Christ. He highlights the conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders, and shows it is similar to the opposition of entrenched ecclesiasticism of our day to the way of Christ. He devotes one of his six chapters to the Christian approach to Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Communism. In discussing the last he says, “Pilate had power to crucify Jesus, but he had no power to stop the resurrection”; so the Church though crushed, will rise again.

Niles’s ecumenical interest comes out prominently in the last chapter, on “The Mysteries of the Kingdom.”

Dr. Craddock’s book shows evidence of wide reading in the New Testament field. Here he investigates in depth one phase of Christology. His incisiveness and originality are welcome.

The introduction offers a keen analysis and critique of the work done in Christology by such scholars as Oscar Cullmann, W. D. Davies, and W. L. Knox. The author points out the limitations in the methods of each of these. His own approach he describes as “definition by function,” that is, “what each writer in each situation is intending to say by using the category of pre-existence.”

In the first chapter, “Affirmations of Pre-existence in New Testament Background Materials,” Craddock describes the Sophia of Wisdom Literature, the Logos of Philo, the Son of Man of First Enoch, the Torah of the rabbis, the Logos of the Stoics, and the myths of the Gnostics. Each of these had its own theory of pre-existence. He shows that this doctrine was emphasized most by those who felt alienated from the world.

In the chapter on “New Testament Affirmations of the Pre-existence of Christ,” Craddock devotes the largest space to the Epistles of Paul (the area in which he wrote his dissertation). Here one discovers many helpful analyses of important passages. Pastors will find much material for a sermon on “The Pre-existent Christ.”

This investigation of the New Testament closes with an emphasis on the historical basis of Christianity. “The language of pre-existence is not left to sail in ethereal realms as metaphysical poetry; the New Testament inserts the prose of crib and cross.”

A Closer Look At Suicide

The Social Meanings of Suicide, by Jack D. Douglas (Princeton, 1967, 398 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by David O. Moberg, professor of sociology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

How many suicides are “pseudocides” of persons who meant to do no more than evoke attention or sympathy? Where do the rights of the individual (as in taking his own life) properly give way to the rights of society or of God? Is suicide an act of free will or the result of some inexorable determinism? These are among the many significant questions discussed in this work on the social psychology of suicide.

In presenting a most helpful summary and evaluation of the sociological theories of suicide, Douglas concentrates on the classical theory of Durkheim. He does not uncritically accept Durkheim’s deterministic conclusions but points out hidden assumptions, methodological inconsistencies, and other flaws in the great sociologist’s work on suicide. He shows how Durkheim’s theory “has the great fault of being adjustable in such a way as to be irrefutable”; yet he acknowledges that his Suicide, first published in France in 1897, remains the best sociological work on the subject because of its high standard of scientific investigation and its break with the positivistic tradition of research on the subject.

Douglas moves from his thorough critique of the various theories into an excellent analysis of suicidal actions as socially meaningful acts. His theoretical approach emphasizes the subjective meaning of activities to the actor (the person who is performing them) and draws a contrast between situated meanings, those that concretely involve the communicator and are related to other meanings in a specific context of time and place, and abstract meanings, those that are imputed by an interpreter who is independent of the concrete situations he analyzes. Behavioral scientists have too often taken only the abstract perspective, failing to consider suicide from the viewpoint of its victims.

Through case studies and other evidence, Douglas shows that suicidal actions are “meaningful.” They show that something is fundamentally wrong with the situation of the actor, and convey basic information about the actor himself. Common patterns of meaning that Douglas identifies include the belief that death will transport the soul from this world to the other world, that the “substantial self” may be transformed through suicide in this world or the next, that some form of “fellow-feeling,” pity, or sympathy will be aroused through the suicidal actions, and that suicide is a means of getting revenge. Religious factors in suicide, though not well covered in the index, receive considerable attention in this work, and Douglas’s concept of “soul” is not alien to that of Christian theology.

This is not a book for the connoisseur of suicide notes, lurid cases, or popular tales. Neither is it for the counselor who wants direct and easy answers to suicide-related problems. However, those who would like to know how suicide is interpreted in one of the most important current schools of social psychology, or who seek underlying causes in the mentalities of persons who threaten or commit the act, will find The Social Meanings of Suicide a gold mine. And, the thoughtful reader will gain insights and perspectives that will help him understand himself.

Polemical Blitzkrieg

Der Ruf der Freiheit, by Ernst Käsemann (J.C.B. Mohr, 1968, 170 pp., DM 6.80), is reviewed by Harold O. J. Brown, theological secretary, International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, Lausanne, Switzerland.

This little work, “The Call of Freedom,” is the answer of the well-known Tübingen professor of New Testament studies to the rallying of conservatives in German Protestantism, the “No Other Gospel!” movement. Käsemann, whose tenacious and bellicose character stood him in good stead in his courageous resistance to the Nazi infiltration of German Protestantism in the Hitler years, now brings all his rhetoric to bear on the mixed multitude of conservatively inclined German Protestants who are trying in different ways to save something of historic Christianity out of the doctrinal chaos currently reigning in Germany’s theological faculties.

One of the most striking things about “The Call of Freedom” is its tone of offended innocence, a posture that would be more convincing if Herr Käsemann did not himself indulge in rhetoric and innuendo to discredit his opponents. He points with justifiable pride to his anti-Nazi record and disparages the timidity toward the Nazis of some of those who now take the field against him. It is effective rhetoric but does not contribute much to our understanding of the doctrinal and theological issues at stake in the present controversy.

For Käsemann, “The ruling element of Christian life today is anxiety about the freedom of the Christian man.” He thinks Christendom has turned from proclaiming the Gospel to proclaiming the institutional church as a guardian of order and inhibitor of change.

In chapter 1, “Was Jesus Liberal?” Käsemann opposes “pious” to “liberal.” His criterion for Jesus’ liberality is that he interpreted everything from the perspective of love.

But Käsemann does not appear to consider his own conflict with the “No Other Gospel!” movement from the perspective of love; in fact, his sarcasm has lost him some of the sympathy he gained as the victim of its attacks.

Käsemann attacks the “Theology of the Resurrection” of his opponents, particularly of Professor Walter Künneth of Erlangen. For Käsemann, emphasis on the glorious, risen, and ruling Lord produces an unstable and self-righteous enthusiasm; the Risen Lord must remain the Crucified Sufferer. The polemical note rings out again and again, especially in a supercilious attacks on “Professor Künneth’s unknown assistant Wolfram Klopfermann.”

He refers to Jesus’ “royal freedom” to redefine the Law in the Sermon on the Mount, preferring in the subsequent discussion to see this as an evidence of Jesus’ freedom rather than of his kingship. For Käsemann, Jesus, by interpreting everything from the perspective of love, really understood the will of God, while the scribes obscured its meaning with their convoluted interpretations. The “scribes” of today are the orthodox, the pietists. Surely a closer parallel would be to the modern theologians who warn us that the Word of God cannot be understood without the very special training and point of view that they alone can effectively impart.

Herr Käsemann’s little book reveals much more of the passion and power of Käsemann than of Jesus’ message of freedom, which shines only dimly through the smoke of the polemical artillery. The unprejudiced reader will readily concede that Käsemann has some reason to be dissatisfied both with the record of Germany’s conservative Protestants under Hitler and with their courtesy and respect in theological discussion today. He cannot but observe that in attacking Käsemann, “No Other Gospel!” has tackled a tiger, emotionally as well as theologically. But if the conservatives’ most odious allegation, in his eyes, is that “Ernst Käsemann can no longer be held to be a teacher of the church,” this book, ample in invective and meager in coherent teaching, is not a good refutation. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Explorations By A Secularist

Theological Explorations, by Paul M. van Buren (Macmillan, 1968, 181 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by L. D. MCoy, chairman, Department of Biblical Literature, Texas Technological College, Lubbock, Texas.

Paul van Buren has assembled eight of his essays that question the old base camp and equipment of theology and seek to find a role for theology in the plurality and relativism of our culture. “Not one of these essays represents my ‘position,’ past or present,” he says, “except in the way that one frame of a moving picture film represents the ‘position’ of the dancer it portrays.” The concern that is central to him is “what religion has done for men and what it might do for men today.” He cannot accept a theology based on the “faith of our fathers” but seeks one influenced by today’s culture.

Van Buren assumes that speaking in terms of the absolute is now dead because it has been neglected. Theologians are no longer understood by the common people, he says, because they are using outdated terminology. A great point is made of theologians’ use of the term “reality,” but van Buren himself later uses the same frame of reference when he talks about what is “real” to us. He shows great disdain toward dogmatism and extremism and extols a live-and-let-live attitude. One wonders how this can be reconciled with the dogmatism and imperatives of the New Testament, such as, “Except you repent, you will all perish.”

His definition of faith as a way of seeing and understanding the world disregards the God who is beyond metaphysics. Van Buren admits he has formulated an “atheistic interpretation of the language of faith.” In myths, stories, and parables Christians must find analogies for the object of faith; with the death of the Absolute, faith must live by faith alone.

The chapter “On Doing Theology” is mainly involved in taking apart the language of Heinrich Ott. In criticizing Ott, van Buren says that “a faith which claims to be grounded in historical events is actually not interested in historical investigation” and uses for example the Corinthian letters. What Paul meant or what the Corinthians took Paul to mean, van Buren concludes, is unimportant. The importance of the epistles lies solely in the meanings that believers today might want to discuss.

In a chapter dealing with Bonhoeffer, van Buren points out that at times the believer is forced to say, “But this is how things are.” When that happens, van Buren says, he has spoken of God. On the basis of one statement written by Bonhoeffer in 1944, van Buren concludes that Bonhoeffer was using language that had lost its meaning. Another chapter is devoted to the philosophy of William James, which our author likes.

In the last chapter, which contains his comments on a discussion of God by Gordon Kaufman, van Buren struggles with the problem of translating God into secular terms. Men who have “trembled in the presence of the gods” are not typical of any age or society, he says, and Jesus added very little except a sense of urgency. However, he states very well the message of Jesus that “to be ready for the kingdom means to start living now.” He concludes that theologians need not try to formulate another doctrine of God until they have had an experience of trembling before God when language cannot adequately communicate their feeling.

These sometimes difficult explorations are thought-provoking. Yet there seem to be no answers to the questions raised. One is left to wonder what part contemporary culture plays in shaping contemporary theology.

Book Briefs

Hang Tough, by John Bonner (Bethany, 1968, 122 pp., $2.95). A brief examination of the criminal mind and the problem of penology by a man who has spent eight years as a teacher inside San Quentin.

Beyond Combat, by James M. Hutchens (Moody, 1968, 128 pp., $3.95). A stirring account of the experiences of an outstanding combat chaplain in Viet Nam. Filled with heart-warming stories that show the power of the Gospel even in the hell of war.

To God with Love, by Jean Reynolds Davis (Harper & Row, 1968, 147 pp., $3.95), This collection of “letters to God from a busy housewife and mother” vividly reminds us that our God cares about even the most insignificant areas of our lives.

The Mirages of Marriage, by William J. Lederer and Don D. Jackson (Norton, 1968, 473 pp., $7.95). A provocative examination of marriage in America exposes marriage as many people experience it. Offers many helpful insights, though it virtually overlooks the spiritual aspect of marriage.

The Inside Story of Jehovah’s Witnesses, by W. C. Stevenson (Hart, 1968, 211 pp., $5.95). A penetrating analysis of the fastest-growing religion in the world by a man who was a member of this dedicated sect for fourteen years.

Sex and the New Morality, by Frederic C. Wood, Jr. (Association, 1968, 157 pp., $4.95). A college chaplain presents guidelines for applying “situation ethics” in the area of sexual morality.

Psychotherapy and Religion, by Josef Rudin (University of Notre Dame, 1968, 244 pp., $5.95). A Roman Catholic scholar offers a helpful analysis of the purpose and methods of depth psychology and seeks to bridge the gap between theology and clinical psychology.

My Family: How Shall I Live with It?, by George and Nikki Koehler (Rand McNally, 1968, 126 pp., $3.95). Father and daughter team up to offer helpful suggestions for a full and happy family life.

This Is My Story, This Is My Song, by Jerome Hines (Revell, 1968, 160 pp., $3.95). Testimony and autobiography of the famous Metropolitan Opera basso. On a popular level, and likely to be most convincing to the already committed.

On the Inspiration of Scripture, by John Henry Newman (Corpus, 1968, 153 pp., $4.95). Newman’s 1894 apologetic essays present the human and the divine elements in the Catholic doctrine of inspiration.

In Heavenly Places, by Charles H. Welch (Berean, 1968, 432 pp., $4.50). This competent analysis of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians—“the high water mark of God’s Scriptural revelation”—deals with the will of the Father, the work of the Son, and the witness of the Spirit as they relate to man.

The Liberty of Obedience, by Elisabeth Elliot (Word, 1968, 63 pp., $2.95). Warns against over-simplifying the Christian life in terms of rigid adherence to man-made custom and points the way to the achievement of maturity in the freedom of the Christian man to commit himself totally to God.

Paperbacks

Almost Twelve, by Kenneth N. Taylor (Tyndale House, 1968, 59 pp., $1). The facts of life from a Christian perspective presented tastefully, forthrightly, and in language that a twelve-year-old can understand. A great help to parents and children alike.

A Book of Protestant Saints, by Ernest Gordon (Prairie Press, 1968, 376 pp., $1.25). Reprint of a 1946 volume presenting sketches of the lives of some little-known Protestant saints.

Oswald Chambers: An Unbribed Soul, by D. W. Lambert (Oliphants, 1968, 95 pp., $.95). Sketchy biography of a man whose life and writings have spoken profoundly to the hearts of many Christians.

Discovery in Song, edited by Robert Heyer, S. J. (Paulist and Association, 1968, 138 pp., $1.95). One of a series, which also includes Discovery in Word, in which the editors seek to provide a tool through which young people can study the Christian faith in the light of current writers and popular music.

The Gospel of Baptism, by Richard Jungkuntz (Concordia, 1968, 137 pp., $2.50). A fresh treatment of the doctrine of baptism from the pen of a Missouri Synod Lutheran.

Death and Contemporary Man: The Crisis of Terminal Illness, by Carl G. Carlozzi (Eerdmans, 1968, 79 pp., $1.45). A former chaplain at a metropolitan hospital offers a helpful examination of the attitudes and behavior of patient, family, doctor, and pastor in the crisis of terminal illness.

The Christian and Politics, by Daniel R. Grant (Broadman, 1968, 127 pp., $1.95). This provocative study of the Christian’s role in the realm of practical politics calls him to use political power to show compassion for human needs.

She Shall Be Called Woman, by Frances Vander Velde (Kregel, 1968, 258 pp., $2.45). Revised edition of a series of character studies of Bible women, written by a mother of eight children.

Climbing Up the Mountain, Children, by H. S. Vigeveno (Regal, 1968, 184 pp., $.95). A lively, fresh interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. Don’t let that title throw you.

This is being written in a Western city, but it could be written anywhere, for the background is two large daily papers and three weekly news magazines that I have read in the last few hours.

What about the news and what it tells us of the world in which we live? On every hand unrest, disorder, crime, violence, poverty; everywhere tensions between man and man, race and race, nation and nation.

As I reflected upon this panorama of one day’s events and one week’s news, there came to mind the words of Jehovah to the Prophet Isaiah: “But the wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot rest, and its waters toss up mire and dirt. There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked” (Isa. 57:20, 21).

That the unregenerate world is acutely aware of the dangers of the existing turmoil is clearly shown by the fact that its leaders work so feverishly to reform and regulate society. There are those in the Church who see in this turmoil only evidence that “God is working out his purposes, often by revolutionary processes,” while other Christians attribute it all to Satan’s destructive hand at work across the world and feel they should redouble their own efforts to witness to the saving and transforming power of Christ as man’s only hope.

Can men reform the world? The answer is no!

Should God be blamed for the world’s wickedness? The answer again is no! True, he does work out his holy purposes despite the sinfulness of men; he even causes the wrath of man to praise him; but that does not alter the fact that the evil about us is the work of Satan in the hearts and lives of men. The Apostle John makes plain the vast distinction between Christians and the rest of the world: “We know that we are the children of God and that all the rest of the world around us is under Satan’s power and control” (1 John 5:19, The Living New Testament).

That the plight of the world is not hopeless is the reason for calling the Gospel the “Good News.” God has given man the solution to his fearful predicament and has committed to the Church the task of telling this Good News.

Strange that we find ourselves living in a time when the Church itself is stressing reform above redemption and is often found teaming up with the world in an effort to work out “solutions” for the world’s ills—without reference to Christ and his Cross.

Among the present-day theologians and teachers there are some, I feel, to whom God would say as he did through the Prophet Jeremiah, “Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets … who steal my words from one another. Behold, I am against the prophets … who use their tongues and say, ‘Says the Lord.’ Behold I am against those who prophesy lying dreams … and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or charge them; so they do not profit this people at all …” (Jer. 23:30, 31.)

Unquestionably one of the most serious of all problems is man’s insensitivity to sin, his unwillingness to admit that the virus of evil is working all through his actions and reactions, his thoughts and desires, and that its ultimate end is death. This resisting and rejecting of God is common to the human race. Nothing less than the miracle of God’s grace can enable us to see ourselves as we really are.

Not infrequently, perhaps, we Christians play a part in maintaining the general state of unrest by substituting activity for a quiet waiting on God. We forget the admonition: “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.’ And you would not …” (Isa. 30:15). We forget that God is not dependent on human activity or organization. Useful as these may be, they are worth little unless subordinated to the leading and power of the Holy Spirit.

Living as we do in days of tremendous change, we as individual Christians and the Church as a whole must remember that God has laid a Foundation that never changes, established a Cross that is ageless and a hope that never fades. Let us think upon God’s warning through Jeremiah: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Stand by the roads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.’ But they said, ‘We will not walk in it’” (Jer. 6:16).

In our frantic efforts to reach young people through new “forms” or “methods,” let us be sure that we do not try to change the message—that we are all sinners and that we need, and have, a Saviour!

Jerusalem was a city of turmoil in our Lord’s day. It was under the domination of Rome, and the prevailing political cliques and religious hypocrisy, together with the ever present sickness and poverty, contributed to fear and unrest. Over that city our Lord wept, for he knew that they were rejecting their Redeemer: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Matt. 23:37).

We can well imagine our Lord’s weeping in our own day over the world he created and came back to redeem, as he sees the conditions brought about by man’s refusal to accede to God’s way of redemption!

And how we Christians need to be reminded again and again of the peril of an empty profession. “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21).

Profession, yes, but more is needed—there must be obedience in action!

In substituting philosophical presuppositions for revealed truth and rejecting the supernatural and the miraculous as did the Sadducees of old, the theological world and many within the Church are limiting the power of God and need to be reminded of our Lord’s words: “You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God” (Matt. 22:29).

The turmoil of the world today is the result of spiritual darkness. Man continues to choose darkness rather than light in preferring man—his thoughts, opinions and works—to God.

But out of the turmoil there can come rest; out of chaos, peace; out of darkness, light; and out of sickness of soul and spirit the marvelous health of redeeming love. That is the message of the Gospel, which is man’s only hope now and for eternity.

L. NELSON BELL