Page 6293 – Christianity Today (2024)

Is education in the liberal arts a bane or a blessing, a liability to the faith or an asset? Why should evangelicals invest time, money, and effort in non-theological learning? Traditional answers have ranged all the way from an unqualifiedly humanistic optimism about the educability of man to a fearful and cynical pessimism about the results. The present generation wants neither extreme. Unqualified optimisms may have flourished in the theological and political climate of several decades ago, but we have learned the hard way that education is no panacea for the ideological fevers and the cultural crisis of today. Anti-intellectual pessimisms may have seemed feasible once upon a time, but we learn increasingly that delight in ignorance yields only evil and grief, even within culturally isolationist segments of the church. In an age of unprecedented educational opportunity, in a culture dominated by scientific technology and peopled by organization men, education inevitably assumes a place of strategic priority.

In this context the Christian—student, teacher or administrator, parent or pastor—must surely face his responsibilities. It is not enough to verbalize about dependence on the Spirit of God. We must remember that the Spirit of God uses men of God, that men of God must meet their God-given vision with God-given initiative. Moreover, we do well to remind ourselves both of the meaning of education and of those biblical concepts which provide the guiding image for our educational activity. Such is the purpose of this article.

Nature Of Education

Two things stand out about the nature of education. First, it is a crucial means for propagating a civilization, culture, ideology, or religion. This fact is a truism, to be sure, but a statement of the highest importance nonetheless, one which in recent years has been forced anew upon our consciousness. The Nazis propagated their ideology by controlling schools and universities, suppressing the free interchange of ideas, and indoctrinating the German mind. Russia pursues similar practices, adopting and utilizing curricula for the dissemination of Marxist views in history, politics, science, and the arts. The same strategy is now apparent in Castro’s control of Cuba’s schools. Even American education, though in a different way, exhibits the same underlying awareness. Current debates over federal aid to education, over school integration, and over the bearing of loyalty oaths on academic freedom, all reflect the desire to transmit the American heritage. Personal liberty under law with equal opportunity for all can brook favoritism to no one political, economic, racial, or religious group. The evangelical conscience is often far more defensive over these specifics than it is alert to the far-reaching implications of the underlying principle. There is a stewardship of opportunity to be faced. Effective strategy requires renewed and constructive efforts in education.

Second, to avoid the pitfalls of zeal-without-wisdom, we must distinguish education from both indoctrination and training. Indoctrination, as we use the term, imposes dogma, “the truth,” upon individuals. It has a ready-made set of “answers” for every question. It mass-produces organization men who, given the right stimuli, always recite appropriate sentences and respond with appropriate behavior patterns. But when they meet the unpredictable, or perchance start to think for themselves, they have neither answers to troublesome questions nor the mental keenness to seek them. The result of such indoctrination is either an obscurantist head stuck in the sands of time, or else an emotional upheaval toward skepticism. These outcomes are not infrequent. Responsible and purposeful education must recognize the proper highway from which such indoctrination has strayed, namely, the pursuit of affirmative thinking, thorough discussion and evaluation of every alternative in order to construct a positive Christian view. Among those interested in education the Christian especially must respect the individual, must develop his God-given critical powers, and must press on to the frontiers of learning. Proper education helps liberate the mind from passionate and prejudiced bigotry and equips the free man to choose wisely and well for himself—under some conditions, even to withhold judgment. Honesty is a Christian virtue. As the student comes to grips with ideas and interpretations, with answers to questions and even with unanswered problems, intellectual honesty must figure large.

Training, in contrast to education, develops skills and techniques for handling given materials and facts. Education admittedly includes training, but operates primarily in the earlier stages of learning. The educated man shows independence and creativity of mind to fashion new skills and techniques, new patterns of thought. He will have acquired research ability, the power to gather, to sift, and to manipulate new facts and materials. The educated Christian exercises critical judgment, manifests the ability to interpret and to evaluate, particularly in terms of the Christian revelation. In a word, if he is to speak with ease, cogency, and clarity to the minds of his fellows, the educated Christian must be at home in the world of ideas and of men. Christians, unfortunately, often talk to themselves. We think in ruts, and express ourselves in a familiar kind of family jargon. Unless we understand the thought and value-patterns of our day, as well as those of biblical revelation and the Christian community, and unless we speak fluently the language of our contemporaries, we tragically limit our effectiveness. Again we sense the strategic importance of education properly defined.

A Sense Of Direction

If the Christian is to communicate conscientiously and intelligently, he needs a biblically-rooted sense of direction. What doctrines compose this core of perspective? We suggest five in particular.

First, the biblical concepts of creation and providence impart sanctity to all realms of nature and to the whole history of man. This is my Father’s world. To Him it owes its existence and order, its developing structures and exciting possibilities. Every event in nature and in history plays its part in carrying out his purposes and in manifesting his glory. For the Christian neither nature nor history is self-originating, self-operating, self-sustaining, or self-explanatory. We therefore approach the works of God, probe their mysteries, and harness their potentialities with humility but with boldness as well. Both the natural and the social sciences lay before our inquiring minds old vistas and new horizons. In the humanities we grapple to express our reflections with a precision and beauty becoming the sanctity of the materials. To neglect this educational enterprise betrays either shallow understanding or fearful disbelief, for surely the doctrines of creation and providence inspire, elevate, and sanctify the responsibility.

Second, the doctrine of the imago Dei reminds us that in this vast universe that reflects God’s glory, man is uniquely “crowned with glory and honor.” He is a person equipped by God with rational, moral, and artistic powers to rule nature and its resources for God. He is a sinner also, it is true, whose original image of God and personal powers are corrupted, so that “we see not yet all things put under him.” He is nonetheless the object of a divine providence that limits evil and preserves man’s personality. He is the object of a divine grace that restores God’s image and sanctifies human powers for His glory.

In other words, man has a God-given, God-preserved, God-restorable potential, a potential to be developed, disciplined, and directed. Such development, discipline, and direction are the Christian’s responsibility and stewardship. To educate the whole person, to encourage the zest for learning and the quest for excellence is a sacred trust. The Christian gives himself contagiously to critical thinking and creative expression, to the exploration of nature and to the transmission of cultural heritage, as well as to the impartation of Christian values and beliefs. The educator’s task is not to dictate people’s deeds, thoughts, and decisions; rather to inspire and equip individuals to think and act for themselves in the dignity of men created in God’s image.

Third, the biblical relationship of faith and reason establishes a sound pattern in education for the Christian. The Scriptures nowhere consider faith and reason antithetical; believing does not exclude thinking, nor does becoming an intellectual automatically exclude one from the community of faith. It may still seem, comparatively speaking, that not many wise are called. But some are. And certainly every educated believer is called upon to “give a reason,” to ponder that philosophy which is “after Christ.” Faith, we are reminded, is a conscious commitment of oneself to God in Christ—an unreserved commitment of all we are and have to his redemptive grace for the manifestation of his glory. Faith does not cancel out normal human activities; rather it motivates, purges, and guides them. It devotes “all my being’s ransomed powers,” including reason, to God. Like any gift, the intellect can be misused. It is still God’s gift, however, intended by him to be fully enjoyed and rightly appropriated within the context of a living faith.

For the evangelical in education, therefore, Christian commitment, values, and beliefs do not restrict intellectual opportunity and endeavor, but rather fire and inspire him to purpose and action. Evangelical strategy has always needed not only committed believers, not only educated believers, but also Christian intellectuals to wage zealously for truth and righteousness in the ideological conflicts of the day. God summons such men to stand in the gap. To implement this warfare personally and through others is the constant vision and burden of the evangelical educator.

Fourth, the Christian concept of freedom implies responsibility. Scripture speaks of it in three ways: freedom from condemnation, freedom from sin’s bondage, and freedom from man-made legalisms. Together these interrelated concepts chart a path between the extremes of irresponsible license and Pharisaic legalism. Liberty should be exercised in loving concern for others, not as “an occasion to the flesh.” Men is to worship and serve God freely and for conscience sake, not out of legalistic bondage.

A Christian’s education accordingly should not blindfold his eyes. Rather it should enlarge his horizons, deepen his insight, sharpen his powers of choice, and open new and welcome areas of responsibility in life and service. For both student and teacher academic freedom and its problems require similar understanding. It allows him ample room to move about in his thinking and expression, to confront problems and even unbelief honestly because he knows him in whom are hid all treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Christian freedom releases the believer from the bondage of fear. Frequent, unwarranted cries of “wolf” only harden the ear. Or they may hinder constructive progress by their apprehension over new horizons of thought or honest scouting of assumptions. Personal fears imposed on others produce new legalisms. If the evangelical voice is to be heard it must ring with integrity and confidence, not with fear of the unknown, fear of problems to be met, fear of honest inquiry. Not freedom and commitment but rather freedom and fear are incompatible. Freedom flourishes in the presence of law, but not under the reign of fear.

Finally, we include the Christian doctrine of vocation. Closely allied to the doctrine of freedom it invites us to the educational enterprise. Today the Judaeo-Christian concept of the sanctity of work is seldom enunciated. We overlook the mandate to stewardship in all things for the glory of God. Doing everything with all our might includes the quest for excellence in education, too; it forbids us to bifurcate sacred and secular work to downgrade the arts and sciences. God calls a Christian’s investment in “secular” teaching, studying, research, and scholarship as much a divine service as preaching and missions.

Both Marxists and existentialists agree that modern man has lost the meaning of life; he merely sees himself as an automaton enslaved by mass society. The Christian Gospel, on the other hand, gives perspective to life; it imparts dignity to man, and value to his labors. This conviction the Christian in education is uniquely privileged to exemplify in his own life, and to help others discover for themselves. Christian strategy in education therefore calls for alert, purposeful students, and creative, scholarly teachers and administrators to colabor in fulfilling God’s commission.

John 12:28

THE PREACHER

James S. Stewart is Professor of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology, University of Edinburgh, and a royal chaplain. Born in Dundee in 1896, he graduated in Arts and Divinity at St. Andrews, and studied further at Bonn and Edinburgh. He served various Scottish parishes before his appointment in 1947 to fill a historic chair. Author of many theological and devotional works, he is one of Scotland’s most eminent preachers.

THE TEXT:

Jesus said, Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

THE SERIES:

This is the second sermon in a series in which CHRISTIANITY TODAY presents messages by notable preachers of God’s Word from the United Kingdom and Europe. Plans for future issues include sermons by Professor G. C. Berkouwer of Amsterdam; Professor Jean Cadier of Montpellier; the Rev. J. R. W. Stott of London; Dr. Leon Morris of Cambridge; and Dr. Charles Duthie of Edinburgh.

These words are a dramatic assertion of one great basic fact of our faith—the fact, namely, that a living religion will always have in it an element of surprise and tension and discovery; that what we have seen and learned of God up to the present is not to be the end of our seeing nor the sum total of our learning; that whatever we have found in Christ is only a fraction of what we still can find; that the spiritual force which in the great days of the past vitalized the Church and shaped the course of history has not exhausted its energies and fallen into abeyance, but is liable at any time to burst out anew and take control. “I have both glorified My name—and will glorify it again.” It is the truth enshrined in Whittier’s hymn:

Immortal Love, for ever full,

For ever flowing free,

For ever shared, for ever whole,

A never-ebbing sea!

“I think I see more of Christ than ever I saw,” cried that great saint Samuel Rutherford, “and yet I see but little of what may be seen.” For there is no end to the creative activity of God, and no limit to the redeeming love of Christ.

It is immensely important, in these difficult and often discouraging days, that we should get this clear and realize what is at stake. But first it is necessary, before inquiring what these words may mean in our experience, to see what they meant in the experience of Jesus, to whom they were originally spoken.

Its Meaning For Jesus

Here was our Lord, on the eve of his passion. The Galilean ministry was over. Jerusalem and the Cross were waiting. The dark appointed hour had come. Just for a moment he seemed to shrink. “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Shall I say, Father, save me from this hour? Shall I make that my prayer? But how can I pray thus, when I know that it was for this cause that I came into the world? No, to make that prayer would be to contradict the whole purpose of my being. Not, save me from it. This alone shall be my prayer, Father, glorify thy name!” So Jesus went to meet his destiny. And this was the meaning of his prayer: “Father, at whatever cost, let thy purpose go through to fulfillment! By whatever sacrifice, let the revelation of thy character and of Thy saving will be crowned and made complete. Glorify Thy name! Then came there a voice from heaven saying, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

“I have glorified it.” What did that signify? It meant the Galilean ministry. The total activity of Jesus up to this point was included here: everything he had done, every word he had spoken, had been God glorifying his Name. All the compassion that had healed the sick, the pity that had fed the hungry, the love that had cheered the lonely, the mercy that had sought the sinful, the power that had broken the fetters and shackles of habit and set the prisoners free; all the grace that had availed for Peter, for Zacchaeus, for Matthew, for Mary Magdalene, for a host of others—all this had been God glorifying his Name, showing forth through Jesus the character of the eternal. Possibly we ought to find in these words a special reference to one mighty deed in particular which had outshone the rest—it occurs significantly in the chapter immediately preceding this—the raising of Lazarus. For on that day Jesus had faced man’s last grim enemy, and trampled the pomp of death beneath his feet. “Lazarus, come forth!” And the dead had stood up and lived. And now here at the end God says—“I have glorified my name.” Indeed it was true. More visibly than anywhere else in history, God had been glorifying his name in all those shining works of Jesus.

“Therefore,” went on the voice, “My beloved Son, be of good courage. I have glorified it—and will glorify it again: glorify it by a greater death and resurrection than that of Lazarus, glorify it by a mightier deed than the stilling of the storm or the feeding of the multitude, glorify it by a salvation that will reach out beyond the narrow limits of the land of Jewry and the lost sheep of the house of Israel to embrace all nations of mankind, a Gospel that will outlast the stars and stand towering over the wrecks of time for ever! I have glorified it, these past short years in Galilee; and now, supremely and for ever, I am about to glorify it again.” So Jesus, strengthened by the voice of heaven, went forth to his last conflict like a conqueror.

Its Meaning For Us

If this is what the words of our text may have meant to Jesus, let us now ask what they mean in the experience of the Christian today.

Take it first in the realm of Providence.

“I have glorified my name.” Can you not say, looking back along the way you have travelled, that God has indeed done this very thing in your life’s history? There were dark days which you could never have struggled through, if God had not been at your right hand. There were joys so splendid and magnificent that you knew they came from heaven—to mention only one, the magical surprise of being loved: this, says Charles Morgan the novelist, “is the finger of God on a man’s shoulder.” There were troubles that might well have left you hard and disillusioned and embittered and cynical about life, ready to blow out angrily and recklessly the lights of faith—had not Jesus laid his hand on you, just as he did on so many ailing, fevered folk in Galilee, and saved you by his grace. “I have glorified my name”—you know of a truth God has done this for you.

Then why doubt the future? “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again”—through all your experience on the yet untraveled way.

And if you say, “But life is so uncertain, and all my calculable security so precarious; and time runs so fast, and opportunities vanish never to return; and health snaps, and plans fail, and dear ones die, and never morning wears to evening but some heart must break; and even for me, at any moment, some sudden crashing dispensation of trouble may wreck and ruin the whole pattern and structure of my hopes”—if you feel inclined to argue thus, do stop and think! Is there any point in your past of which you can say—“God failed me there”? And has he not promised to be with you right on to the Judgment seat and beyond? What we need, exclaimed George Macdonald, is “an absolute, enthusiastic confidence in God.” “I have both glorified my name in you—and will glorify it again.” “O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in Thee!”

The Mystery Of Grace

Pass from the realm of Providence to the mystery of Grace. See how our text illuminates the realm of spiritual experience.

Have you ever met the type of Christian I am going to describe? Once—perhaps ten, or twenty, or thirty years ago—this man found the Lord. At some stage of his spiritual pilgrimage he was apprehended by Christ Jesus. Like Saul of Tarsus, this man has had his own Damascus road—less dramatic and cataclysmic it may be than the apostle’s, but nevertheless real and revolutionary and devised by heaven. So far good. But—and this is the sad thing—ever since he has been living, as far as religion is concerned, in the past. Faith for him has meant tending the fires on the altar of memory. It has been a constant harking back to first beginnings, a quest to preserve the initial vision from the touch of time and the menace of decay. And there are churches like that, as well as individuals.

What happens? This inevitably happens: that kind of religion, rooted and grounded though it be in sacred, memorable experience, comes to be characterized by rigidity, inflexibility, loss of vitality and vigor. It is settled, static, petrified. It has no dynamic contagion. “Without enthusiasm, what is the Church?” cried Joseph Parker once. “It is Vesuvius without fire, Niagara without water, the firmament without the sun.”

But turn to your New Testament, and you find a religion totally different. Here all is freshness and wonder, a strange eager expectancy, the continual surprise of discovery. These men, indeed, had behind them a mighty experience, a memorable hour. But they were not living in a past however sacred. Had Jesus not promised—“Greater things than these shall ye see”? Had not God declared—“I have glorified my name, and will glorify it again?” And was not this the thrill, the inexpressible excitement, of belonging to that generation and being alive in the same world with the risen, living Christ—that you just had to keep your eyes open and your soul on tiptoe, for at any moment some new startling discovery might come breaking in, some fresh unheard-of revelation to leave you lost in wonder, love, and praise?

That is characteristic Christianity. That, believe me, might be the nature of faith for every one of us—not the dull, stagnant, depressing thing which, having built its altar once, proceeds to stay there all its life, forgetting that the Bible says “In God we live and move and have our being”; not the arrested development of a soul which, having a certain amount of religion, blindly takes for granted that it has reached the goal and that there is nothing more to find—not that: but the glorious, humbling certainty that whatever we have grasped we are as yet only on the edge and outskirts of God’s gifts to us, that always there are new insights to achieve, new wonders to comprehend, new depths of the unsearchable riches to fathom. We are passing, cried St. Paul to the Corinthians, “from glory to glory,” moving on from one glory to another; from today’s apprehension of the revealed nature of God to tomorrow’s undiscovered treasures of his love. “I will go anywhere,” declared David Livingstone, “provided it be forward!”

This is what differentiates a dynamic, infectious faith from the dull tedium of conventional religion; and this is what differentiates a living Church from a dead ecclesiastical machine: this tension, this waiting upon God, this urgency of expectation, this fresh continual splendor of discovery. “I have both glorified my name, and will glorify it again.” And if you will receive it, it is the Word of the Lord to you.

The Triumph Over Death

Finally, there is this. When the voice from heaven spoke to Jesus, he was face to face with death. “I have glorified my name,” God said—and that was the story of Galilee; “I will glorify it again”—that was Calvary with the Resurrection light behind it. Therefore we are entitled to ask: Does this word apply, for us, to the sphere of Death and the hereafter? I believe it does.

This present life has brought us so much of God’s goodness that we cling to it; we do not want to leave it; we are desperately reluctant to part from it.

For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e’er resign’d,

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing ling’ring look behind?

But there is a word of Richard Baxter’s to set against that mood:

Come, Lord, when grace has made me meet

Thy blessed face to see;

For, if Thy work on earth be sweet,

What will Thy glory be?

If this life, with all its troubles and frustrations and defeats, has been so good in the loving kindness of God, how surpassingly good it must be across yonder in the sunshine of eternity! “Eye hath not seen,” cries St. Paul, adapting an older Scripture to his Christian purpose, “nor ear heard, nor heart of man conceived what God hath prepared for them that love him.”

And you who have had to say Goodbye too soon to some you loved the best, will you listen to the trumpet notes of your own most holy faith? “Christ is risen. He hath abolished death. He hath led captivity captive. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” This is no myth. The Greeks had a fable of a man who in old age was given back his youth. But there is nothing mythical here. This is true. “I have glorified my name”—God did that indeed when he first brought your loved one to your side. But listen when your heart is quiet, and you will hear the voice go on: “And I will glorify it again! I will give you the ecstasy of reunion, where there is no parting nor separation any more for ever.”

I am persuaded that you can trust a God like that. I am sure you can trust him even with the dear ones whom death has snatched away.

And when your own hour comes, your spirit will be that of David Cargill, the Covenanting martyr. “Weep not for me,” he cried from the scaffold in Edinburgh where he was to die, “why should you weep for me? I have gotten me Christ, and Christ hath gotten me the victory!”

Progress Please

They’re clearing the land, chopping the mountain, moving it around,

I understand they’re going to set the sun on top

And move the moon to a relocation center,

Stars will blink on and off, spelling out Paradise Mansions.

They’re going to move the Alhambra and a room from the Louvre

Across the street, intact, beside the pony ride and swimming pool,

The super-shopping center opens lit by a torch exactly like the one

Carried by Pheidippides on his dash to Mount Molympo.

The walls will be made of television and you can switch stations by thinking.

Nothing could be easier than taking roast red Pekin duck out of the freezer:

It will be served in seconds by imitation lackeys from Buckingham Palace.

You will be able to slide the State University into your dining room

By pushing the button of any professor with a Ph.D., and saying

“Progress Please.” And on every corner an IBM will provide religious answers

In twenty-five words or less. The whole world will be compatible in color.

PIERRE HENRI DELATTRE

The gifted child is receiving attention everywhere. Everywhere, that is, except in church.

Numerous books and articles are being written for secular educators and parents of gifted children. In creasingly aware of the gifted child and his needs, more and more public schools are trying to provide the proper environment and stimulation to develop his great potential. Extensive research is under way to determine better ways to identify, encourage, and educate the gifted child. Leaders like Dr. James Conant and Admiral Rickover state that our survival as a nation may well depend on how thoroughly we develop our talented youngsters for their future responsibilities.

This frantic activity is spurred on by mounting awareness that the gifted child of today may be the Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, or Albert Einstein of tomorrow. Moreover, we are learning—rather belatedly—that unless the gifted child is challenged by proper environment and stimulated by specially adapted education, he may never realize his capabilities, let alone make a commensurate contribution to society.

The church has traditionally believed that man’s highest development involves awareness not only of physical, emotional, and intellectual needs, but very basically of the social and spiritual as well. The church recognizes its peculiar contribution in the areas of spiritual values, ethics, morality, and human relationships.

Major pressures today include the constant terror of the cold war—and the burst of scientific and related technological advancement. Our continued survival, however, may well depend more upon our spiritual and social skills than upon our scientific dexterity.

Some of our leaders know this. J. Edgar Hoover, writing in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Oct. 24, 1960, issue) stated: “The Christian pulpit is today one of America’s most formidable barriers against communism.… No greater challenge ever faced the Christian church.” Jacob Bronowski, one of the atomic scientists who helped to develop the bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the Saturday Evening Post of November 12, 1960, wrote: “We have associated the more kindly values (justice and affection) with religion and art, and have behaved as if somehow they belong to a different life than the sterner values of science. This is an unbearable division, and our society will perish if we persist in it.”

At the same time many seminaries report decreased enrollment even while church membership increases. Robert H. Reardon, President of Anderson College (Anderson, Indiana), said recently: “In the decade ahead our primary problem will be to find competent people to staff our pulpits and our classrooms.”

The Neglect Of Leaders

Despite the role the church has set for itself, and the role others expect it to play in the destiny of men, the church today is neglecting one of its best sources for strategic leadership, namely the gifted children. One of Christianity’s most potent natural resources is the talented boy and girl. Among such children the church could well find the leaders it must have. Yet the church is blindly wasting this irreplaceable resource through neglect.

In the Department of Special Education of Kent State University we are personally making an extensive study of gifted children in the church. Very little has been written on the subject. Only one article and half of one small book could be found, and these materials for the most part were but brief résumés of secular projects with gifted children. In over two thousand Protestant churches in a large multi-city metropolitan area we found only two that were doing something special for their gifted children. And of these only one has anything like a complete program for its gifted children.

This study further disclosed that the Christian church is actually losing many of its bright youngsters, while those who remain in the church program are often bored, troubled, and confused. Worst of all, however, most churches do not know they have problems with gifted children, in fact, they seem unaware even of such children’s presence in their constituency.

In this study we made telephone queries directly to pastors and/or directors of religious education. We asked if their churches were doing anything extra to help their gifted children. A few said: “No, but I suppose we should.” Most answers, however, were similar to these: “We have no geniuses in our church.” “We have no gifted children in our Sunday school, besides we believe that the retarded child needs more help.” Or, “We lose mostly the uninterested troublemakers, not the really bright children.”

In the two churches mentioned previously, it is significant that the special religious education programs for gifted children were instituted by interested secular educators. In the classes affected by these alert programs interest is high and the dropout rate is but an amazingly low 10 percent. Now this situation cannot be explained wholly on the basis of special interest and regard for gifted children—no church has that many. It would appear that the understanding, instruction, and curriculum suitable for bright children have benefits for all.

Why does Christian education lag so far behind secular education in recognizing gifted children in their needs? The answer is far from simple. Certain attitudes in the church, however, are deterrents to progress in this area of responsibility.

First of all, we find the popular notion that “genius will out”; the gifted child can “light his own lamp.” We tenaciously argue that not the ten-talented but the one-talented person is more likely to bury his ability. Perhaps in Christ’s day it was only the bright and privileged who sat at the feet of a Gamaliel. Today, however, bound by the lockstep of mass education, the church considers it neither “democratic” nor “Christian” to give one child more attention than another. In most church school classes children are grouped simply according to age or grade in school and with no check of their ability or previous religious training. When we add to this approach the popular but horribly false and damaging caricature of the gifted child as afreak of nature, we can see why most churches fail to recognize him and his needs.

It is possible, too, that church teachers and leaders hesitate or fear to stimulate extensive thinking and questions; creeds and dogmas are meant to be memorized and accepted like the names of the states. Too often unfortunately, honest doubt is considered a sin rather than a means of reaching and fixing personal convictions.

A peculiarly tranquilizing and comforting belief is that somehow God accepts and miraculously overrules our sincere but inadequate teaching. Careless preparation, indifference to the best provision and use of materials and facilities are hardly worthy of the Lord and presumptuous of his blessing. Too often we expect God to take our “will” for our deed and to perform wonders.

Not least of our problems is the church’s traditional resistance to change. Actually, a church that works with the gifted has a decided advantage for developing leadership, inasmuch as the gifted usually show greater interest in things religious and at an earlier age than the average child. Helping such children, however, requires proper knowledge and understanding. As yet we have no leadership training materials for parents and teachers that deal specifically with meeting the religious needs of gifted children. A number of helpful “secular” books are on the market, however. Whatever the situation may be in regard to materials or programs for the gifted, alert teachers and adults can certainly encourage their talented children to ask questions, and to understand the why as well as the what of Christian truth. And we must certainly live what we teach. Bright children are especially sensitive to inconsistencies and tend to react to them negatively by rejecting both the teacher and what is taught. It goes without saying that other children merit and benefit from this careful concern, too.

Our goal in teaching must include helping every child—including the gifted—become the best possible person and the best possible steward of God-given abilities, and talents to the glory of the Lord and of His church. In our Christian homes and churches we need to ask: how can I help in recognizing, developing, and challenging the gifted child?

Intercommunion is “a subject packed so full of emotional dynamites that we are afraid lest poking into it should strike a spark that would blow our whole movement to pieces.” So said a WCC official some years ago.

In this connection a notable advance was made at New Delhi, where a call was made for an all-out effort toward fresh understandings of unity, especially as expressed at the Lord’s Table. The Assembly’s Communion service, conducted after the form of the host church (Anglican) drew 1,500 communicants. Nonparticipants were the Orthodox and some branches of the Lutheran church.

Here was a notable ecumenical gesture by the Anglican communion, in marked contrast to its attitude in Amsterdam 13 years earlier. But communions are sometimes more cooperative than their constituent parts. 5,000 miles away from the camaraderie of New Delhi, the equivocal attitude of the Church of England to church union in Ceylon had become the occasion of an almost unprecedented action on the part of 32 influential Anglican theologians, most of them university teachers or college principals.

In an Open Letter to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, which faced squarely the whole burning question of Church and Ministry, the divines argued that our Lord is not tied to any one form of ministry, and that the raising up of non-episcopal ministries was the almost inevitable consequence of the Reformation and post-Reformation divisions of the Church, “following from the necessary duty of maintaining the truth of the Gospel as this was conscientiously understood.”

Then, in a single unambiguous sentence which non-Anglicans will welcome, the Letter continues: “We believe that our Lord conveys through these ministries the same grace of the Word and the Sacraments as He bestows through the historic ministry of bishops, priests and deacons, and that He does this, not as an act of uncovenanted mercy, but because they are real and efficacious ministries within the Body of His Church.”

This document, which has aroused great national interest and has met with bitter opposition from the vocal and well-organized Anglo-Catholic wing in England, urges the acceptance of four points: that baptized communicants of other churches should be welcomed at Church of England Communion services; that a 29-year-old church regulation forbidding Anglicans to communicate in non-episcopal churches be revised; that more opportunities should be created and recognized for corporate acts of communion between members of those churches which are seeking unity; and that such acts be reciprocal, i.e. should not be confined to invitations to non-Anglicans to communicate at Anglican services.

Acceptance of these points would incidentally remove the present anomaly whereby the Church of England is not in communion with the Church of Scotland, but the Church of Sweden is in communion with both.

Commented Dr. E. A. Payne, General Secretary of the Baptist Union: “This is a welcome, highly important and perhaps historic declaration. Many both within and outside the Anglican communion have been perplexed and disturbed by the decisions about the Church of Lanka.… The signatories to the letter have bravely made their position clear at a very significant moment.”

A poll taken by the Church of England Newspaper showed that while slightly more clergy opposed than supported the Letter, it was overwhelmingly approved by the laity.

Anglicans of the higher sort tend to resent suggestions which date some of their views on Church and Ministry from the nineteenth century Oxford Movement, but hindrances strew all the way of the church historian who seeks consistent pre-Tractarian support of present High Church policies. In a recent book (The Scottish Reformation) Dr. Gordon Donaldson, himself a moderate Anglican, shows how prior to 1662 the preface to the Anglican ordinal left open the door to the acceptance into the Church of England of men not in episcopal orders. We learn that Matthew Hutton, later Archbishop of York, decided that orders conferred at Geneva were more sound than those conferred by the Roman ordinal; that Archbishop Grindal spoke of the Scot John Morrison’s ordination as as being according to “the laudable form and rite of the reformed Church of Scotland;” that Francis Bacon thought it a singular novelty that “some of our men, ordained in foreign parts, have been pronounced no fit ministers;” and that against the claims of English Presbyterians the Anglican Church on one occasion replied that the Scripture did not prescribe any particular form of church order as indispensable. Moreover, at Cambuslang near Glasgow in 1742 the great Anglican evangelist George Whitefield assisted at a Communion service and preached to a congregation of more than 20,000.

Indications from Scotland now suggest that even such conciliatory gestures as the Anglicans may direct north of the border will be regarded as offering too little too late. The Kirk has not forgotten that the Church of England declined to be officially represented during the 1960 Scottish Reformation anniversary celebrations (at which the Queen’s presence was “an unhappy blunder,” according to the widely-publicized statement of one Episcopalian rector).

The sort of boomerang effect produced by Anglican attitudes can be seen from the following personal experience, with its overtones of sadness and hope. An English rural dean asked me some time ago if it would be possible for him to learn more about the Church of Scotland by preaching in a parish kirk during his holiday in the Highlands. “Nothing could be simpler,” I assured him. I was wrong. After writing to theological professors and church elders, conveners of committees and parish ministers, I gave it up, having under-estimated the extent of the bitterness roused in Scotland, chiefly by the ill starred Bishops’ Report—as distilled by the popular press. “My congregation will not hear of it,” wrote one minister, in answer to my inquiry. What he meant was, I suspect, “my congregation shall not hear of it.” Moreover, I was warned that the bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church (whose communicant members number just over 1% of the population) would raise a fuss.

The sequel was both humbling and illuminating when I went sorrowfully and told my rural dean. “Come and preach for me at Harvest Thanksgiving,” he said suddenly. “But what about your bishop?” I asked guilefully. “Oh,” replied the unfilial priest, “he need never know.” There’s a lesson in that somewhere if I could only lay my finger on it.

A New Kind Of Exposition

As Seeing the Invisible, by D. T. Niles (Harper, 1961, 192 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Merrill C. Tenney, Dean of the Graduate School, Wheaton College (Illinois).

The relevance of the Book of Revelation to the tensions and crises of our age has been recognized by many commentators and theologians, and novel interpretations are constantly appearing. Frankly abandoning any attempt to treat Revelation literally, the author of As Seeing the Invisible offers a new type of approach which clothes in modern dress the familiar Preterist-Idealist approach, lie has divided his work into four parts: the “Introduction,” which deals with authorship and setting; the “Drama,” which contains a consecutive exposition; the “Plan of Contents,” explaining the structure of Revelation; and a series of “Theological Meditations,” giving a brief application to the successive sections of text which he has selected for homiletical treatment.

The “Introduction” is not technical, hut supplies the setting for Revelation. Dr. Niles does not ascribe the Apocalypse to the author of the Fourth Gospel, but to an otherwise unknown John who wrote during exile on Patmos. The “Drama” is the unique feature of this work, for it explains the content of Revelation by an organized paraphrase adapting the language of Revelation to modern ideas. The interpretation is consistent, although it repudiates any possibility of identifying the seals, trumpets, and vials with specific events in history, whether past, present, or future. Revelation is the figurative description of a conflict which recurs in every generation, to be concluded by the final climactic judgment of the world and the establishment of the city of God.

The “Plan of Contents” contains some useful hints for an expositor. Dr. Niles suggests that Revelation was written to fit a pattern of weekly worship, with a section of each part for each day’s meditation; and with a concurrent analogy between the six annual Jewish feasts and the progress of the purpose of God. A few of the comparisons seem arbitrary, but the resemblances are sufficiently strong to warrant further study.

The “Theological Meditations” contain some excellent “sermon starters,” although a few of them are not directly relevant to the verses of Revelation which the author attaches to them. The Scripture references, however, offer useful collateral passages that can aid in the application of Revelation.

The theological viewpoint of the book is neo-orthodox. The writer is concerned less with literal historical meaning than with ideals; nor does he commit himself to the principle that Revelation is the Word of God. His statement, “… It is essential to meditate on it [Revelation] until God’s Word to oneself is horn thereby” (11), implies that God’s Word is a product of Revelation rather than that Revelation is a direct divine communication. Eschatology is something which has already begun and is in process; leaving little room for predictive prophecy, for he says: “Thus when John speaks of the millennial reign of Christ on the earth, we shall understand him best if we think of it also according to this pattern. It is the continuous experience of the Church in its resurrection life; it is a series of crises which will overtake history, in which the rule of God in the affairs of men will be openly recognized and conscientiously obeyed; it is the guarantee of Christ’s complete victory at the end” (p. 175 f.).

Seldom does the writer betray any rationalistic tendencies; his statements are positive rather than negative. In one footnote he does say that “the story of the goddess who was destined to bear a son who would rule the world, and was pursued by a dragon when she was about to bring forth was an international myth in the ancient world (Gen. 3:15)” (p. 70). If the universal occurrence of this concept be granted, it is more reasonable to assume that it reflects the distorted memory of an original revelation than the erratic creation of human imagination.

Perhaps the clearest indication of the viewpoint of this book is provided by the bibliography, which contains not one work favoring a literal or premillennial view. The given titles are all recent productions, but they represent mainly only one school of thought. A broader background would enrich the thought of this book.

MERRILL C. TENNEY

Reading For Perespective

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

★ Ancient Israel—Its Life and Institutions, by Roland de Vaux (McGraw-Hill, $10.95). A distinguished Dominican field archaeologist, the director of the École Biblique in Jerusalem (Jordan) recaptures life in the society of ancient Israel.

★ Certainties for Uncertain Times, by John Sutherland Bonnell (Harper, $3). After 25 years in New York’s historic Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, a well-known American preacher stresses “things that cannot be shaken.”

★ O Angel of the Garden, by G. Hall Todd (Baker, $1.50). Sermons for the Easter season by Clarence E. Macartney’s successor in famous Arch Street Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia.

A Fourth Type

A Life After Death, by S. Ralph Harlow (Doubleday, 1961, 264 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by J. K. Van Baalen, Author of The Chaos of Cults.

There is much about this book and the author that is attractive. Dr. Harlow, who is a retired professor of Religion and Biblical Literature at Smith College, and who possesses intimate knowledge of psychic phenomena through years of contact with mediums, is a scholar with a mind open for truth and fresh information. Also he has accurate knowledge in various fields, and writes lucidly and dispassionately.

His book does not contain any strikingly novel ideas. The cases which he describes and analyzes are much like scores of others in similar books, but they are well authenticated and above suspicion.

When Dr. Harlow asks (p. 258), “As I write of ‘talking’ horses and proxy sittings and Dr. Rush and flying ash trays, do I subject myself to scorn?” the reviewer replies unequivocally, not at all; it is only the ignorant and prejudiced who dare deny the paranormal phenomena that are here described and attested to in such a manner as to make doubt impossible to a fair mind. However, when Dr. Harlow states that there are three types of men, the reviewer wants to add a fourth type. Harlow says there are those who have had psychic experiences, those who know they are impossible, and those who “just do not know” (p. 11). Here the reviewer would add those who accept all of Dr. Harlow’s cases as having actually occurred and without fraud, but who must reject their interpretation as offered by the author. Among this last group the reviewer is bound to list himself. And his rejection of the author’s main thesis must, unfortunately, constitute the rest of this review.

Although the author states, “I am not a spiritualist; I am a Christian” (p. 38), practically all his information concerning the fact of immortality and the life hereafter comes from spiritistic seances. To him the difference between spiritualism and Christianity is that to the spiritualist “the symbol itself becomes the object of worship and prayer,” which is “idolatry,” while to the author the phenomena revealed by psychic experiences lead to the worship of God. Although he ends by quoting Martineau’s words, “We do not believe in immortality because we have proved it, but we forever try to prove it because we believe in it,” he admits twice (pp. 28 and 264) that he still does not know the answer and has doubts.

This admission the reviewer deems sad indeed. The Bible knows of no such doubt. The New Testament is clear not only on the fact of “a life after death” but also on the future resurrection of the body from the grave. All of this, and much more, has no meaning for Dr. Harlow. His book begins with the statement that the message of Easter is, “There is a life after death.” But this we could learn from Plato. Easter is more than “immortality.”

Dr. Harlow is a Unitarian (p. 152), and Unitarians do not know the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as a Saviour from sin (cf. “Unitarians and the Dialogue” by Ronald M. Mazur, The Christian Century, Feb. 18, 1961). Unitarianism is Rationalism. When joined with a psychic nature, it is apt to take the form of mysticism, as in Dr. Harlow’s case. Both are a substitution of the subject’s findings for those of the word of God contained in Holy Scripture.

Thus the author substitutes an “astral body” (which Spiritists have borrowed from Theosophists) for the resurrection body, and so forth. For the plain teachings of Jesus and his apostles concerning a future woe as well as an eternal weal (based upon unbelief or faith in Christ; John 3:18, 36; Matt. 25:46; Heb. 10:31, etc.), the author substitutes a moral evolution in the hereafter for all men. “God’s love includes us all; and He accepts us all, even the Hiders and the Eichmanns and the Stalins and the Capones” (p. 173).

In a similar vein other cardinal scriptural doctrines are ignored or denied. A German soldier’s death in World War I is fully equated with Jesus’ death: both gave their lives for their friends (p. 168). Scripture states that death is “the wages of sin” (Rom. 6:23), but Dr. Harlow says, “When normal, death is a pleasant experience,” much like awaking from a dream (p. 166).

Harlow’s conclusions, based upon psychic phenomena and revelations, are exactly like those of the trilogy of Stewart Edward White, an avowed spiritist (1936–1940). He, too, found the Bible to be a book full of “psychic experiences.”

All of this leads to the reviewer’s conclusion that if the phenomena described by the author are admittedly both genuine and supernatural, and all the revelations from the other side run contrary to scriptural teachings, whence do they obtain?

No one can give objective proof that the spirits bringing all these revelations are identical with those they claim to be. Scripture, however, teaches that “our [the Christians’] wrestling is … against … spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). These hosts of demons are totally ignored by Theosophists, Spiritists, Unitarians, Christian Scientists, and so forth.

The Bible, however, says they are numerous, influential, and they, with their “doctrines of demons” and “lying wonders,” have wrought havoc among men from the beginning of the human race.

But they have changed their tactics. We no longer have a “spiritualism” that speaks with hatred of scriptural teachings as did Sir Oliver Lodge and A. Conan Doyle. They now lift one teaching out of Scripture, that of God’s love, and they apply it unconditionally in all directions. And with this they lull sinners to sleep.

Are there, or are there not, good and evil (fallen) angels, both with great supernatural powers? And why is it that Bible-believing Christians are not bothered with these paranormal “revelations”?

At the bottom of all problems of supernaturalism and the hereafter lies the question of the authority of Scripture.

The reviewer would call the author back to “the prophetic word made more sure” (2 Pet. 1:19).

J. K. VAN BAALEN

Heretics???

Even Unto Death, by John Christian Wenger, John Knox Press, 1961, 127 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Leonard Verduin, Minister, Campus Chapel, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“How painful for the man who knows what church history is that we have at that time, in the 16th century, treated the Anabaptists as we did. At that time some of the best spiritual powers of the Reformation left our shores.” So writes an evangelical churchman in modern Germany. “The originality of the Anabaptists was simply that they.… refused to let the problem of survival interfere with their submission to Scripture …; the hope may not be vain that God might grant His church to listen fresh to the testimony of those who knew four centuries too soon that Christian Europe was an illusion.” So writes a young historian in America.

For the reader to whom these sentiments touching the Anabaptists seem almost bizarre, the present volume by John C. Wenger is more necessary than tomorrow’s main meal.

“It has taken four centuries to overcome the distorted and biased portrait of the Anabaptists drawn by their opponents, but it has finally been accomplished. We now know how devoutly these Täufer, as they were called in German, sought to follow Christ, how earnestly they loved God’s Word and tried to obey it, how seriously they clung to the principle of freedom of conscience, how profoundly they opposed the principle of a state church, how vigorously they objected to binding salvation to ceremonies, how eagerly they attempted the evangelization of Europe.… Organized Christendom called upon the state to root out these ‘heretics’ who dared to challenge such tenets of Christendom as the established church.” With these brave words Wenger begins his book. Long before him a German historian had already written: “Not often has a movement in history been persecuted with such sullen rage by its contemporaries and not often has contemporary vilification made later generations misjudge and falsely condemn a group for so long a time afterward as has been the case with the people whom the three major religious parties assailed with equal hatred—the Anabaptists.”

The first two chapters in the present book give the history of the rise of Anabaptism, in Switzerland and in The Netherlands. The next three chapters touch upon the theological tenets of the Anabaptists. The last chapter recites the story of some of the Anabaptist martyrdoms.

All along Wenger documents adequately—from the primary sources.

Even Unto Death edifies as it instructs.

LEONARD VERDUIN

Until The Day

The Coming Lord Jesus Christ, by Hamar Benson (The American Press, 1961, 77 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by M. Jackson White, Pastor, First Baptist Church of Clarendon, Arlington, Virginia.

This work is a group of devotional meditations on the Book of Revelation. The author’s exposition was as satisfying to me as anything I have found. The outline of Revelation is really given in Revelation 1:19 where Jesus commanded John to write (1) “What he saw,” that is the vision of Jesus Christ, chapter 1; (2) ‘What is,” the portraits of the church in the age of grace, chapters 2 and 3; (3) “What is to take place hereafter,” what will take place when Jesus returns to usher in the Day of the Lord, chapters 4–22.

The author feels that the key to understanding this most difficult book is found when we recognize the true purpose as stated in Revelation 1:1: it is a “revelation of Jesus Christ.” Thus we see Jesus as he is revealed in the successive steps of the unveiling of His glorious power and majesty until “the Kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.”

Thus we are made to see this last book of the Bible as a message of victory, assurance, and comfort for Christ’s followers until the day of his appearing.

This book will prove a blessing to all that approach it with a desire for a clearer revelation of Jesus Christ as Lord.

M. JACKSON WHITE

Diary Of A Missionary

The Prisoner Leaps, by David Bentley-Taylor (China Inland Mission, 1961, 352 pp., 17s 6d), is reviewed by John B. Job, Wesley College, Leeds, England.

God has made his presence felt in Java. This has happened yesterday, and it is news. It is always encouraging for a Christian to learn what God is doing now, to see evidence that the Spirit of Christ is at work in the world. Reading this book, he does. “The Prisoner Leaps” is an apt title for a story whose main hero is the native pastor who came out of jail with a renewed vision of what his ministry could mean, and yet who would have been the first to recognize that the true theme of it all was not so much this as the release from spiritual bondage.

The fact that it is the author’s diary is the book’s great strength. We owe to this the graphic genuineness. We grapple with the day-to-day moral and financial problems of the missionary; seek, together with him, the answer to such questions as when to give, and when to withhold money from those who are looking for it, and how to work together with men whose way of presenting the Gospel differs from our own.

On the other hand the one obvious weakness of the book is perhaps also due to its being an edited diary. Although it is well written throughout, and never boring, there is not a clear enough overall picture of the author’s strategy. Part of the trouble is that the one map only serves to remind the reader how helpful it would have been to have had a series of sketch-maps running through the text. Furthermore the material has not been sufficiently condensed.

JOHN B. JOB

Religion And Feeling

Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections, Vol. III of Select Works by Jonathan Edwards (Banner of Truth Trust, 1961, 382 pp., 15s), is reviewed by C. Peter Cook, Precentor, Holy Trinity Church, Hull, England.

In a day of an evangelicalism which is dividing into two camps, intellectual orthodoxy on the one hand and on the other an emotionalism in which feelings supersede doctrine, we need a proper assessment of the importance of both doctrine and affections. The Edwards reprint was born of the New England revival and written to check religious turmoil. He both examines feelings by doctrine and assesses their part in Christian experience. “There are false affections and there are true. A man’s having much affection does not prove that he has any true religion, but if he has no affection, it proves he has no true religion. The right way is not to neglect all affections, nor to approve all, but to distinguish between affections” (p. 50). He distinguishes true religious feelings which stem from regeneration, and those which are counterfeit, from Satan, spurious and deceitful.

To accomplish this he reviews the whole field of religious affections, their nature, their effects, their greatness. First he shows those in the Bible who had a variety of religious feelings and yet no true faith. Then he points to the divine principle of grace implanted in the regenerate heart, and the fruit it bears of rightly-balanced affections centered on God. The work is rich in biblical teaching and illustration. Though exacting in thought and sometimes difficult in style, the persevering reader will find enlightenment, reassurance, and satisfaction from this most important book.

C. PETER COOK

Tyndale Commentary

The Gospel According to St. Matthew, by R. V. G. Tasker (Tyndale, 1961, 285 pp., 12s 6d), is reviewed by Ralph P. Martin, Lecturer in Theology, London Bible College, England.

Professor Tasker, now Professor Emeritus in the University of London, is the General Editor of the Tyndale New Testament series. He himself has contributed a number of the volumes, including the one on the Fourth Gospel. In that book and in the one under review, a similarity of approach and treatment is obvious. There is a very brief Introduction, followed by an extended commentary on the Gospel passages, which are introduced by descriptive headings. In turn this is followed by smaller sections, titled ‘Additional Notes,’ where matters of textual, linguistic, and hermeneutical importance are handled. The comments in this last-named part are often incisive and much to the point.

In the Introduction (16 pages only) the author contents himself with answering two questions. What is the claim of Matthew’s Gospel to be the first of the evangelistic records and to being apostolic in authorship? What are the characteristic features of the Gospel? The first question is answered in a somewhat summary fashion. Matthew is not chronologically the first though it embodies the Aramaic logia of the Apostle which are earlier than any of the canonical Gospels; but the final authorship of the whole work is unknown. In other matters of Gospel criticism Professor Tasker is reticent. The ‘Q’ hypothesis is mentioned only en passant, and some of the newer trends (for example, the liturgical origin of Matthew and the work of Stendahl) are largely by-passed.

The strength of the book lies in Tasker’s patient, thorough, and uniformly helpful exegesis of the text. This is his main preoccupation, and he executes it in a workmanlike way. Where he turns to draw upon the comments and suggestions of others, he finds congenial help mostly from Roman Catholic writers. The names of Chapman, Butler, and Wikenhauser are the authorities called upon. Appeals to R. A. Knox are especially frequent.

The commentator’s attitude to the text is always reverent and conservative, although not in any slavish way (see pp. 221, 222, 260). On the cardinal doctrines he never wavers.

RALPH P. MARTIN

Moses Only

The Faith of a Heretic, by Walter Kaufmann (Doubleday, 1961, 431 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by William A. Mueller, Professor of Church History, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

This book written by a young philosopher and expert on Nietzsche is a significant confession. Kaufmann, a victim of the Nazi terror, writes with sharpness of insight on vital issues of faith and life. But it is not the Christian faith he espouses. While the author reveals a deep appreciation for Israel’s ancient prophets, he is less than generous in his appraisal of Jesus or Paul. He takes the higher critics to task in their evolutionary approach to the origin of Moses’ monotheism, while he follows at the same time the most extreme critics with regard to Christian origins. To him the religion of Moses is as original as ever (p. 189).

Kaufmann conceives of himself primarily as an interpreter of the issues of life, as a seeker after truth, and as a stern opponent of every form of dogmatism. He is well-versed in ancient and modern philosophy, knows the great theologians and the creative novelists, without swearing by any of them. Kaufmann speaks with sarcasm of Heidegger’s verbiage, long-winded repetitions, and weird locutions (pp. 370–371); and of the double talk of theologians like Bultmann and Tillich. Like Jefferson, Nietzsche, and Rosenberg, Kaufmann is convinced that Paul, influenced by the mystery religions of his day, “transformed Jesus’ teaching” most thoroughly. He is moreover convinced, following Albert Schweitzer, that to both Paul and Jesus “social justice and political arrangements seemed irrelevant.” This is in sharp disagreement with some liberal theologians and social gospel advocates! Organized religion, whether ancient or modern, in contrast to the Hebrew prophets, has usually been conformist; witness the Inquisition, the Crusades, and holy wars (p. 264).

What Kaufmann has to say about honesty in facing crucial issues of truth, his critique of the Platonic virtues, his strictures of Fromm and Freud, and his meditations on death are full of sobering insights which a Christian believer may profitably ponder. But I consider his critique of the New Testament and its ethic unfair, even though this reviewer is painfully conscious of how far all of us fall short of Christ’s will and purpose. While one wonders that Kaufmann teaches in a university like Princeton, originally the fruit of the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, one should at least be grateful for his wish that modern college students become thoroughly conversant with both Old and New Testaments and with the heritage of the philosophers and theologians, be they Christian or not.

WILLIAM A. MUELLER

Wells To J.F.K.

One Nation Under God, edited by Robert Gordon Smith (Wilfred Funk, Inc., 1961, 322 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by H. Henlee Barnette, Professor of Christian Ethics, Southern Baptist Seminary.

An anthology of ideals and values of American life and thought articulated in historic speeches, the Bible, prayers, hymns, sermons, and anecdotes during the existence of our nation, this volume begins with prayer by Amos R. Wells for the United States and ends with the inaugural address of President John F. Kennedy. The author, a veteran of World War II, has selected those materials which express the traditional American values of freedom, the dignity of the individual, justice, and equality. Stressed also in these selections is the moral obligation of all citizens to participate in the selection of political leaders and in the formation of public policies.

In these critical days when America needs to recapture and promulgate the values which have made her great, this volume makes a contribution to that end.

H. HENLEE BARNETTE

On The Care Of Souls

Logotherapy and the Christian Faith, by Donald F. Tweedie, Jr. (Baker Book House, 1961, 183 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Walter Vail Watson, Pastor, Lancaster (N.Y.) Presbyterian Church and Psychologist at Buffalo Bible Institute.

It is good to know that there are some brilliant young Christians devoted to psychology. Donald F. Tweedie, Jr., is one of these. This book, recognizing the practical value of a psychotherapy which has no direct dependence upon Freud, makes refreshing reading. The volume is a sympathetic, capable, and objective evaluation of Frankl’s existential approach to psychotherapy, which should interest and challenge all who deal with troubled souls as pastor, physician, or any kind of counselor. Tweedie writes with the insight of first-hand contact with Dr. Victor Frankl, Vienna psychiatrist, whose technique known as logotherapy is the basis of his psychiatric procedures. From the Christian point of view Tweedie appraises the value of logotherapy favorably, chiefly because Frankl recognizes the existence of the spiritual factor in human personality.

The perusal of this volume will convince the unbiased reader of the need for psychiatry becoming emancipated from the dominance of psychoanalysis. It points the way to a psychological approach which considers the whole man: body, mind, spirit. The work is very readable, simple enough to be appreciated by the nontechnical reader who is looking for a base upon which to build his thinking about a constructive and useful technique of psychotherapy.

WALTER VAIL WATSON

Convert To Orthodoxy

In Search of Myself, by D. R. Davies (Geoffrey Bles, 1961, 223 pp., 16s), is reviewed by David B. Winter, Editor of Crusade, London.

D. R. Davies was all his life a creature of mood, change, and fashion. After a superficial religious experience during the Welsh Revival in 1904, he came under the influence of the Christian Socialists, the Liberal Humanists, and the Unitarians. After ordination in the Congregational Church he found himself drawn more and more to a socialistic version of the Gospel. He admits that his church became little more than a meeting place for the more rabid of the Leftists, and his preaching no more and no less than a straightforward advocacy of Labour party doctrine. He had long before ceased to pray in private and had a strong dislike of praying publicly.

Caught up in various movements of the Left in the ’thirties, he visited Spain during the revolution. His experience there had a shattering effect on his thinking. His political and social idealism was in ruins; his personal and domestic life had disintegrated. In despair God met him on a seashore in August of 1937. In an experience of regeneration as sure and objective as his previous experiences had been illusory and subjective, his life, his theology, and his ministry were transformed. Leaving the Congregational Church (“It is my impression that Congregationalism is slowly dying”) he was received into the Church of England, ordained, and for the remainder of his life he was a splendidly prophetic preacher and writer.

DAVID B. WINTER

New Words For Old

A Translator’s Handbook on the Gospel of Mark, by Robert G. Bratcher and Eugene A. Nida (E. J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands, 1961, 534 pp.), is reviewed by William Hendriksen, Minister, Creston Christian Reformed Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

This is not a commentary, though it does contain many comments on the meaning of the text. It is not a guide to textual criticism, though it abounds in notes of this character. Its main emphasis is, however, of an entirely different nature. It is exactly what its title declares it to be, namely, a Translator’s Handbook of the Gospel of Mark. The major thrust of this Handbook is in the direction of Bible translators working in languages which are outside of the Indo-European family and reflect very different cultural backgrounds. Examples of questions that are discussed and in many cases answered are the following:

Mark 1:4: “sins.” In Huichol the term xuriki includes stealing, murder, and adultery; hence, at first seemed to be quite acceptable … until it was discovered that it also meant getting married and harvesting a cornfield!

Mark 1:6: “camel’s hair.” In many countries camels are not known. What does one do in such a case? Must Eskimos be made to read, “cloth made of polar bear fur?” What is the answer?

Mark 1:13: “angels.” In one Indian language of South America angels are called “flying saints,” and in another, “dead babies,” since according to popular belief children who died in infancy became angels. What must the translators do in that case?

Mark 2:21: “No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment.” The idea that one would even hesitate to sew an unshrunk piece of cloth on an old garment seems almost incredible to many people. How does the translator cope with this difficulty?

For the purpose intended this is, indeed, a very valuable book.

WILLIAM HENDRIKSEN

The Humanity Of God

Studies in Christian Doctrine, by H. Maurice Relton (Macmillan, 1960, 270 pp., 21s), is reviewed by Andrew F. Walls, Lecturer in Theology, Fourah Bay College, The University College of Sierra Leone.

Dr. Relton’s A Study in Christology, which appeared nearly 45 years ago, is a study of permanent value which contended against the stream then, and deserves reappraisal now. Meanwhile, at eventide, Dr. Relton issues a collection of essays. Three of them, namely, The Christian Conception of God, Patripassianism, and Nestorianism, originally appeared in the Church Quarterly Review between 1912 and 1931, and portions of the rest have likewise been in print before.

Much of Dr. Relton’s life has been spent in urging a thoroughly “catholic” but not very fashionable Christology, and most (and almost all the best) of the book reflects this. He treats severely, though not discourteously, the Jesus of History school and theological reformulations which jettison Creeds or Cross. He thinks Nestorius really was a Nestorian, and rightly condemned for it (the essay was written before the discovery of the “Bazaar” of Heracleides, but Dr. Relton sees no reason to change his mind); and he dissents from the now common judgment that the Christologies of Antioch and Alexandria came to much the same thing in the end. They came, he holds, to very different things, and the peace of the Church lies unquestionably with the Alexandrians. He is, however, no shell-backed slogan-grinder, but the proponent of a thoughtful and reverent Christological scheme, inspired by the post-Alexandrian Leontius of Byzantium, which accepts wholeheartedly the implications of the Impersonal (or rather, Inpersonal) humanity and the hypostatic union. “The wonder of His earthly life … is scarcely grasped until we have seen in it the life not only of a particular man but of the Man—of one, that is, so interwoven with our human life that the Omnipresence of His Manhood is to be sought in the direction of that mysterious union of the human and the Divine Natures in His one Person which made it possible for Him, whilst being located at a particular place, to be, nevertheless, representative of all men … and possessing such an all-inclusive Manhood that He could Himself take out infirmities and bear our sicknesses in a sense more awful and more real than perhaps we have grasped. And herein lies the colossal error of Antiochenes ancient and modern: his Humanity and ours differ. Ours is the creaturely humanity of the created and sinful; His is the Humanity of the Creator.” The truly human is the humanity of God; the merely or purely human is the created and imperfect humanity of men, which can never become anything but human, no matter how fully the divine indwells it. “God’s humanity revealed in Christ is the unveiling before our eyes of that of which we are created copies. The original is His … Advance in holiness will make us more truly human, not quasi-divine beings.”

From Christology, Dr. Relton moves—logically, he believes—to Ecclesiology, and offers two chapters on Sacramentalism as “a fresh approach, and, as we hope, a step towards Reunion.” Sancta simplicitas! His proposal, on the non-Roman side, is that Anglicans should recognize the prophetic character of the present ministry of “Nonconformists”(!) and at the same time ask them to recognize the need for a further ordination for a wider ministry in the Anglican church, covering both Word and Sacraments, a prophetic and a priestly ministry. This is urged with evident charity, and a humility which sits ill with the essential arrogance of the position. “What prevents it?” asks Dr. Relton, and he answers, “Human pride.” He seems not to realize that to many his sacramentalism will seem but another expression of the formula “Full Salvation through bishops alone,” and his proposal but another invitation to subscribe to the Galatian heresy.

Throughout, the framework of thought presupposes, without argument or embarrassment, that a philosophy of religion is normal, possible, and desirable—one of the geological timemarks in the surface of the book. There are more disfiguring scars which leave stretches arid and patches unreadable. Parts of it irritatingly linger over ephemeral publications of departed generations; parts look suspiciously like old lecture notes; and parts, after several readings, refuse to yield up their secrets to the reviewer. All due honor to Dr. Relton, but one fancies that A Study in Christology will be a worthier memorial.

A. F. WALLS

No Real Problem

Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, by J. I. Packer (Inter-Varsity Press, 1961, 126 pp., $1.25), is reviewed by Andrew Bandstra, Assistant Professor of Bible, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Can one who holds to the sovereignty of God take the task of evangelism seriously? The author not only answers this question in the affirmative but also develops the position that only a genuine faith in divine sovereignty can sustain the program of evangelism.

In doing so, he delineates the biblical teaching of divine sovereignty and human responsibility in so far as they pertain to the realm of evangelism. He biblically defines evangelism, its message, its motive, and its method, and develops the implications of God’s sovereignty in these areas. To the reviewer he has proved his point.

The book is lucid, worthwhile, and profitable.

ANDREW BANDSTRA

Book Briefs

Michael O’Leary, by P. Catherine Coles (Victory Press, 1961, 122 pp., 7s. 6d.). A novel in which a tough little boy begins by clashing with society and the police and ends in rehabilitation through Christian influence.

If Any Man Serve, by F. John Paul (Victory Press, 1961, 120 pp., 8s. 6d.). Devotional address by an Indian Christian centered on the life of Simon Peter. (Originally published in India).

In Search of Myself, by D. R. Davies (Bles, 1961, 223 pp., 16s.). Autobiography of an unusual Anglican minister who started as a Unitarian and became a Congregationalist, socialist preacher and secular idealist before recovering his faith and being ordained by William Temple.

The Ethics of William James, by Bernard P. Brennan (Bookman Associates, 1961, 183 pp., $4). Develops thesis that James’ philosophy attempted to provide a rational defense of morality.

A Book of Christmas and Epiphany, by V. E. Beck and P. M. Lindberg (Augustana, 1961, 229 pp., $3). Seeks to widen the experience of the church year from one or two day to year-long experience.

Swift and Anglican Rationalism, by Philip Harth (University of Chicago Press, 1961, 171 pp., $5). An analysis of the strain of rationalism which gave rise to Swift’s religious satire.

The Church and the Age of Reason—1648–1789, by Gerald R. Cragg (Atheneum, 1961, 299 pp., $4.50). First in five volume series designed to cover the entire history of the Christian Church.

On the Use of Philosophy, by Jacques Maritain (Princeton University Press, 1961, 71 pp., $2.75). Distinguished Roman Catholic lay philosopher reflects on the role philosophy plays in enabling man to live relevantly in his social context.

The Pyramids, by Ahmed Fakhry (University of Chicago Press, 1961, 260 pp., $5.95). Beautifully-designed and vividly-illustrated study of the Great Pyramids.

“The Will of God … Your Sanctification,” by T. A. Hegre (Bethany Fellowship, 1961, 110 pp., $1.50). Pleads possibility of full sanctification in this life.

Public Speaking and Discussion for Religious Leaders, by Harold A. Brack and Kenneth G. Hance (Prentice-Hall, 1961, 259 pp., $6.35). Valuable guide to help the religious man speak effectively in all speaking situations.

I Have Chosen His Glory, by Alma Bouffard (Greenwich, 1961, 46 pp., $2). Portrait of spiritual growth.

The Rest is Commentary, edited by Nahum N. Glatzer (Beacon, 1961, 271 pp., $6). Source book of Jewish antiquity.

The Parables of Jesus, by Charles M. Good (Christopher, 1961, 142 pp., $3). Brief, clear exposition of the parables of Jesus by congregationalist minister.

Reuben E. Nelson: Free Churchman, by Robert G. Torbet and Henry R. Bowler (Judson, 1961, 64 pp., $1.50). Tribute to an American Baptist who was both free churchman and ecumenical exponent.

Beloved World, by Eugenia Price (Zondervan, 1961, 512 pp., $4.95). Authentic story-teller tells the Bible’s story to young and old, to saints and skeptics. The telling escapes the stereotype.

Programs for Special Days, by Leila T. Ammerman (Wilde, 1961, 76 pp., $1.95). Poems, songs, plays, for celebration of Christian, and such other holidays as New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day.

Churches of the Presidents in Washington, by Olga James (Exposition Press, 1961, 128 pp., $3). Second edition of the story of the Washington churches where U. S. presidents have worshiped; enlarged by inclusion of President Kennedy’s place of worship: Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church.

My Favorite Picture Stories from the Bible, by Dena Korfker (Zondervan, 1961, 151 pp., $1.95). Favorite stories with fine pictures for children.

Facing the Unfinished Task, symposium (Zondervan, 1961, 281 pp., $4.50). Messages delivered at the 1960 Congress of World Missions, sponsored by Interdenominational Foreign Missions Association of North America.

Jeremiah Man and Prophet, by Sheldon H. Blank (University Publishers, 1961, 260 pp., $6.50). Jewish scholar arranges, evaluates what Jeremiah the prophet offers us of his religious experience.

India, by Percival Spear (University of Michigan Press, 1961, 491 pp., $10). The history and thought of an emerging industrial giant of the East which threw off its foreign domination to become a pivotal state between East and West. One of the University of Michigan’s 15-volume history of the modern world.

Marriage, the Family and the Bible, by Henry E. White, Jr. (Christopher, 1961, 84 pp., $2.50). Urges a view of marriage which recognizes that it is both flesh and spirit.

Kings in Shirtsleeves: Men Who Ruled Israel, by William P. Barker (Revell, 1961, 119 pp., $2.50). Stories of 12 Old Testament kings so related as to mirror our own lives.

Paperbacks

God and His People, by A. Leonard Griffith (Abington, 1961, 84 pp., $1). A United Church Lenten production concerned with the renewal of the church (first published 1960).

The Ancient Library of Qumran, by Frank Moore Cross, Jr. (Doubleday, 1961, 260 pp., $1.25). Comprehensive survey of Dead Sea Scrolls with excellent maps and photographs. First published in 1958.

The Word of Life, by Edmund Beaver (The Beavers, Spring Grove, Minn., 1954, 56 pp., $1.25). Bible passages in large print for the sick and those of failing eyesight.

Latin American Lands in Focus, by Marian Derby and James E. Ellis (Board of Missions of the Methodist Church, 1961, 152 pp., $.75). Published to provide information of Methodist labors in Latin American countries.

The Gist of the Bible Book-by–Book, by Alvin E. Bell (Zondervan, 1961, 169 pp., $1.50). New paperback edition of a popular work first printed in 1926.

The Question of South Africa, by Paul B. Smith (Peoples Press, Toronto, 1961, 126 pp., $1). Interesting travelogue with concluding comments on “Apartheid” policy of South Africa.

In These Words, by D. H. Walters (Zondervan, 1961, 48 pp., $1). Presents all three themes of Heidelberg Catechism simultaneously, rather than in usual seriatim sequence.

Devotional Programs for Adult Groups, by Leslie Parrott (Zondervan, 1961, 64 pp., $1); Devotional Programs for Women’s Groups, by Lora Lee Parrott (Zondervan, 1961, 60 pp., $1). Short, practical lesson material for Adult and Women study groups.

The Call for New Churches, by Bonneau R. Murphy (Board of Missions of the Methodist Church, 1961, 128 pp., $.75). A national missions study for church-wide quadrennial emphasis on Methodist church extension work.

Indian Opportunity, by Wilfred Scopes (Edinburgh House Press, London, 1961, 88 pp., 4/6d.). Information about India where every seventh man in the world is located.

Light in Darkness, by E. H. Robertson (Edinburgh House Press, London, 1961, 109 pp., 6s.). Discusses the spiritual battles of our times as enacted on personal and world plane.

The Challenge of the Cults (Zondervan, 1961, 80 pp., $1). Presents CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S recent symposium on cults.

The Gospels—the Prayer Book Commentaries, by Canon Frank Colquhoun (Hodder and Stoughton, 1961, 191 pp., 5s.). Straightforward expositions of the biblical readings for the 56 Sundays for which the Prayer Book makes provision.

Jewish Holy Days, by Coulson Shepherd (Loiseaux Brothers, 1961, 95 pp., $1.50). A discussion of important Jewish holy days and their Christian significance.

God’s Knotty Log: Selected Writings of John Bunyan, edited by Henri A. Talon (World, 1961, 313 pp., $1.65). Contains The Heavenly Footman and The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Has Anti-Semitism Roots in Christianity? by Jules Isaac (National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1961, 95 pp., $.50). Presents point of view and series of proposals to eliminate anti-Semitism, first presented at Sorbonne.

Martin Luther, by John Dillenberger (Doubleday, 1961, 526 pp., $1.45). Selections from Luther’s writings with five introductions by John Dillenberger.

The Theology of Paul Tillich, edited by Charles W. Kegley and Robert W. Bretall (Macmillan, 1961, 370 pp., $1.95). Essays of interpretation and criticism of the work of Paul Tillich, and some autobiographical reflections by Tillich himself. (First published in 1952).

The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (528 pp.) and The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (513 pp·), by Perry Miller (Beacon, 1961, $2.95 ea.). Reprints of works which must not be overlooked by serious students of America’s Puritan foundations.

Message From Space

Ten civilized planets may exist within 1,000 light-years of the earth, according to the calculations of a German astronomer. There is even a chance that scientists on one of them may be sending out “to whom it may concern” broadcasts for the information of the galaxy. Presumably discouraged by what he sees on terrestrial TV, this scholar is doing his bit for peace by watching for signals from outer space. Time reports that he feels our best hope of survival is to get advice from a planet that has had atomic war.

If some scientific reader can advise me on how to rig my TV to a telescope, I am ready to volunteer as a space watcher. I only insist on knowing the mathematical probability of tuning in cigarette commercial from some plutocratic planet in the Milky Way: “Stardust travels the smoke fifty light-years further!”

The German astronomer, however, hopes to contact an old, wise civilization, matured far beyond our callow earth. He may run into trouble if they have already been watching the Flintstones.

My enthusiasm for this project is ebbing. I have made calculations of my own, using the multiplication table on the back of my composition book. If we file an SOS now, and the nearest planet in shape to respond is 500 light-years away, it will be a solid millennium before we can look for an answer. By that time there might be a Republican administration in Moscow.

Pastor Peterson was fascinated by the Time clipping. As usual, he was reminded of a text: “For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not too hard for thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?” (Deut. 30:11,12).

He suggested that I compose a story in the style of C. S. Lewis: the astronomer feverishly decodes a message from space just as the missiles are falling. The message reads: “Watch, O wise men of the Dark Planet, watch for the star of the King of the Jews!”

But I defer to C. S. Lewis.

EUTYCHUS

Unity Sans Unitarians

Yesterday’s mail brought an interesting contrast. First, your December 22 issue arrived, in which is described the WCC acceptance of a Trinitarian faith for membership. The second publication was a Unitarian paper, in which was printed a letter from Dr. Albert Schweitzer. The noted missionary was writing to express appreciation for and acceptance of an invitation for him to affiliate with the Unitarian church.

The contrast is a very striking one. In your publication you cite the WCC affirmation, in which a Unitarian is consigned to eternal ostracism from the Church, if not to perdition itself. In the other, the noted Dr. Schweitzer affirms enthusiastically his Unitarian belief, and appreciation for historical Unitarianism.

What strikes me as even more significant is this: the man whom the Church has called perhaps the most Christlike man of our generation has, with one fell swoop, been cast out of membership in the World Council of Churches. It really sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?

W. G. SHERMAN

Melrose Park Methodist Church

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Do I detect exultation in the report … of the decision of the World Council in which “Its immediate effect was to disqualify Unitarians from WCC membership”?

If so, is there danger that many Trinitarian members of qualifying churches may not be willing to “confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour …”? The italics are mine.

And if so, will the World Council disqualify such people as Georgia Harkness, who calls herself a Trinitarian, but wrote in Understanding Christian Faith that “this (Jesus Christ as the supreme revelation of God and the Saviour of men) does not mean that Jesus was God” (page 74)?…

STANLEY F. MURRAY

Lexington, Mass.

To me, in my 82nd year, this whole movement toward uniting in one body all churches which profess faith in Jesus Christ is in error due to a failure to understand what Christ meant by his prayer.… He very clearly meant that they should be one in desire, purpose and action, as he and his Father are.

WALTER W. STRONG

Long Beach, Calif.

For you to say … that Joseph Sittler did not say that salvation outside Jesus Christ is impossible can be nothing more than adolescent “sour grapes” in view of one of the most forthright and unequivocal Christocentric statements to have been heard in more than 400 years.

JOHN P. PETERSON

Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church

Arlington Heights, Ill.

• Dr. Sittler’s address, a moving major message at Delhi, stressed the grand sweep of Christ’s redemptive work. Some delegates balked at its weighty vocabulary; among those who did not, some detected an implicit universalism (all men ultimately redeemed by Christ). In a press conference following his address, Professor Sittler was asked: “Do you believe a blessed immortality is limited to those who have saving faith in Jesus of Nazareth?” Dr. Sittler chose to attack the question; there is no such thing, he said, as saving faith, but Christ saves, and since it is Christ who saves, it is not proper to speak thus of Jesus of Nazareth. This reply was taken as evasive, and Dr. Sittler was then asked: “Is there any salvation except through personal faith in Jesus Christ?” Professor Sittler’s answer was oblique. Hence CHRISTIANITY TODAY remarked, in passing, that Dr. Sittler “refused to declare unambiguously that salvation is impossible outside Jesus Christ.” If Professor Sittler wishes to assert in the columns of CHRISTIANITY TODAY what he hesitated to tell the Assembly and press in Delhi we shall be glad to carry the item.—ED.

Historicity Of The Exodus

In your issue of November 24, Professor Edward J. Young reviews my book on The Way of Israel While I have great respect for Professor Young as a well-informed and competent scholar, there are two points in his review which prompt me to register a sharp dissent. Nowhere do I suggest or even imply that the Exodus from Egypt did not actually occur, that it was not an actual historical event. I firmly believe that it was, and the denial of it would undercut all that I have attempted to say. How the historian would reconstruct the event is another matter; at this point Professor Young and I might disagree, though I suspect not so much as he might think. The second point disturbs me even more. I have been at pains to stress that Israel was truly chosen by God to be his people; nowhere do I remotely suggest that it was merely something that was conjured out of their own minds.…

JAMES MUILENBURG

Union Seminary

New York, N. Y.

Glasgow Revisited

I am grateful to Dr. Douglas for his letter of 24th November (“Bow toward Glasgow”). However, it suggests that the figures were compiled specifically for his article, and I am sure that he would agree that it should be pointed out that they were quoted by him from my book, The Scottish Churches: a Review of their State 400 Years after the Reformation (Skeffington, 1960).

JOHN HIGHET

University of Glasgow

Glasgow, Scotland

When Love Says No

Here is one reader who appreciates the letter of the Rev. M. K. Hargens (Dec. 22 issue).

By now I would presume that he has been stormed with protests from those who have been using “the ultimate weapon” for years. I am quite familiar with rejoinders which they use to justify trafficking in religion through “Christian burial” for non-Christians and becoming “marrying Sams” for unbelievers and mixed marriages. Typical for their conduct of a funeral for a non-believer: “Oh, but we have to preach to the living, not to the dead.” … They seem to forget … that the relatives are not at the time looking out for their own eternal welfare so much as they are hoping that the deceased … can be sneaked in through the back door to heaven.…

Everyone knows that the practice has been rankly common for years. How else does the Protestant clergy earn the image the world has of it as expressed by an old man to whom I witnessed? After months of conversation, loving concern, … and direct confrontation with the Gospel the man still repulsed my witness. In deep concern, I frankly asked him … “Well, what are you going to do when you die?”

His answer; “Oh, we’ll hire some minister and pay him a few dollars and he’ll say a few nice words over me!”

I said to him: “That could be, but it won’t be me.”

[This] caused him to think in spite of his easy answer for later, as he lay on his death bed as I continued my pastoral care, I heard him confess his faith in Christ the last time I saw him alive. He received my witness on that occasion, confessed his faith in Christ, clasped his hands to his breast and confidently declared, “Oh, yes, I’ve got it here. I believe in God.”

Lest there be those who think I dealt harshly with him before he came to faith, let me assure you that sometimes love says “No.” Frankness and honesty forced him to think of his relationship to God.…

My “not for sale” answer … gave the occasion for his confession of faith. When pastors quit seeing opportunities for easy money for indiscriminate marriages and funerals Pastor Hargens will have answer to his question. When?

MICHAS M. OHNSTAD

St. John’s Lutheran Church

Stacy, Minn.

Program Is Year-Round

I appreciate your editorial on “Christian-Jewish Understanding” (Nov. 10 issue), but you or the Jewish leader do not understand our plan of work with the Jew.

Southern Baptists have a year-round program. I am enclosing our tract, “Winning the Jew,” in this letter.

A packet of material is also available, including the following: “A State Program of Jewish Evangelism,” “Articles for Publication,” “The Outreach in Jewish Work to College and Seminary Students,” “The Dual Responsibility of Juvenile Rehabilitation and Jewish Work,” “Working with Jews in a City where Jewish Population Is Large,” “Home Fellowship Mission,” a film and book list, The Jewish Evangelism Advance, an article by J. C. Lewis, and a Jewish Evangelism Clinic poster.

WILLIAM B. MITCHELL

Supt., Jewish Work

Southern Baptist Home Mission Board

Atlanta, Ga.

The Main Event?

Peoples of the world had better spend less time fighting one another and pay more attention to fighting the forces of nature, such as insects, water shortages, and diminishing resources, things that have the final say about how we live.

WILLIAM R. SULLIVAN

Los Angeles, Calif.

A series of sleepy towns dot the upper reaches of the Congo River, which in northern Katanga province becomes known as the Lualaba. One of these sunbaked towns is Kongolo, a trading center with some 27,000 inhabitants. Here a dusty road leads into the rolling hills and an imposing complex of buildings breaks the alternate monotony of cotton fields and tall elephant grass. The complex represents the focal point of a wide area of Roman Catholic influence, and it includes a small cathedral, a seminary, and a cemetery.* Few non-Africans had ever heard of Kongolo until last month, when it gave rise to an account of one of the worst anti-clerical atrocities of modern times.

The account was provided by an African seminarian who fled from Kongolo. This was the essence of his story:

On New Year’s Eve, a group of soldiers and several hundred youth descended upon the compound, ignoring a white flag which the missionaries had raised. The troops searched the premises and ordered students out. The next morning the troops were back. They checked the identity cards of all the Belgian priests stationed there, then turned on them. The priests were lashed while African students stood back and watched at gunpoint. Following the beatings, the priests were led away and machine-gunned to death. Then their bodies were dismembered and the students were forced to dispose of the mutilated members in the Lualaba.

The town of Kongolo had been abandoned by Katanga troops on December 28. Katanga President Moise Tshombe said he had been forced to pull out of Kongolo in the face of heavy pressure from United Nations and central government forces. Other sources said the Kongolo invaders represented the rebel regime at Stanleyville headed by leftist Antoine Gizenga.

The seminarian was quoted as saying that the attackers were infuriated because the missionaries celebrated when the troops were driven out of the town temporarily. Another motive given was that the priests were “poisoning the minds” of young people by “preaching against procreation.”

The priests were identified as members of a Roman Catholic order known as the Congregation of the Holy Ghost Fathers. The order, founded in 1703, has headquarters in Paris, but is also well known in the United States. It operates Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as well as seminaries in Norwalk and Ridgefield, Connecticut, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Philadelphia. Another seminary and a prep school are operated in Philadelphia, in addition to a military academy in Rock Castle, Virginia, and a high school in Riverside, California.

The Vatican News Service listed 20 names in its list of victims. Earlier reports said 18 priests were killed and that another was missing.

All the dead were identified as Belgian and Dutch-born, with the possible exception of one German. Some sources said, however, that several African nuns were among those killed. One dispatch suggested that there had been some cannibalism.

The troops involved apparently were the same contingent that massacred 13 Italian U. N. airmen in Kindu last November. The nearest U. N. troops were some 150 miles from Kongolo through dense jungle and bush land.

There has been only one other mass missionary slaying in recent years. That was on January 8, 1956, when five young missionary men lost their lives at the hands of spear-bearing Auca Indians in the interior jungle of Ecuador. Several of the Aucas responsible for the deaths have been identified and are now being taught Christian principles by Mrs. Elisabeth Elliot, a widow of one of the slain missionaries, and Miss Rachel Saint, a sister of another. The missionaries are said to be encouraged by the Auca response to the teachings of the gospel.

The seething tumult of the Asian-African countries has many an ironic turn. In Arab lands, pro-Communist leaders often malign missionaries as agents of the Western imperial powers. Forgotten is the fact that it was in fact some missionaries, as at Beirut University (Presbyterian) in Lebanon, who first inculcated democratic and revolutionary notions in the minds of young Near East intellectuals. Cut loose from their Christian context, their practice eventually led in non-Christian directions. In the Congo, scene of some of the most violent anti-missionary activity, the Protestant witness has mainly been evangelical. But revolutionary agents have struck at both Protestant and Catholic missionary effort. The Roman Catholic posture has the added element of the church’s historic commitment to the view that the state is the temporal arm of that church.

A Wave Of Religious Persecution

A new wave of religious persecution seems to be developing around the world.

Even as accounts of the Congo massacre were pieced together, dispatches reaching Hong Kong told of a French Catholic missionary priest who was machine-gunned to death by guerrilas outside a village in South Vietnam.

In Russia, meanwhile, a number of Jewish leaders were imprisoned while authorities suppressed various Jewish cultural and religious activities.

Several weeks ago, a Pentecostal preacher in the Western Ukraine was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of “attempting to recruit peasants” as sect members. Last September, four Pentecostal leaders in the Ural Mountain area were convicted on charges of spreading teachings and engaging in activities “of a character hostile to humanity.”

Soviet acts against the Jews are reported to stem from the fact that Jews resist absorption into prevailing cultural patterns. Some observers note that a similar point is raised against the Christian Jews who are now living in Israel.

In the United States, dynamite explosions damaged three Negro churches in Birmingham, Alabama. No one was in any of the churches at the time. However, two policemen suffered minor injuries as a result of one of the blasts.

Merger Mapping

The first full-scale discussion among representatives of the four churches included in Dr. Eugene Carson Blake’s sweeping Protestant merger proposal will be held April 9–10 in Washington (D. C.) Cathedral.

It was also in an Episcopal cathedral (Grace in San Francisco) that Blake first outlined his plan for union of the United Presbyterian, Protestant Episcopal, and Methodist churches and the United Church of Christ.

That was in December of 1960. Since then, the United Presbyterians and the Episcopalians have agreed to join in such talks and the United Church has said it would “respond affirmatively” if invited to participate.

The Methodist Church has had no opportunity to take official action. The Methodist Commission on Church union, however, is empowered to participate in the discussions, although no official action can be taken without the appoval of the Methodist General Conference.

Representatives of the other church bodies would also have to submit any union plan to their denominational conventions for approval.

Blake, chief executive officer of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., said that approximately 36 representatives—“probably both clergymen and laymen”—will be included in the Washington meeting. Fie said the meeting would actually constitute the formal issuing of an invitation from the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches to the United and Methodist churches to participate in the union talks.

The Sin Of Sermon-Listening

Too many churchgoers tend to regard sermon-listening as an end in itself, says lay evangelist Howard E. Butt, Jr., so much so that sermon-listening may actually be one of America’s greatest sins.

At historic New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D. C., last month, Butt rebuked sermon-listening as an “escape”:

“God wants transformation from listening into living.”

Baptist Butt, head of a Texas retail chain, was principal speaker at a cooperative, interdenominational “Christian Layman’s Workshop.” The two-day workshop drew some 1,000 men and was described as the largest interdenominational, interracial meeting of Christian laymen ever held in the national capital area.

“I don’t believe America can survive communism for another ten years.” This was the reason given recently by an American businessman for rejecting a proposition made to him by Charles Pitts, another of the conference’s speakers. Outlining this as a major challenge to Christianity, Pitts, holder of a pilot’s license since he was 16, asserted that many Christians are ineffective because they take their eyes off the instruments and are as a result flying through life upside down.

A warning against communism was sounded also by Congressman Walter Judd of Minnesota, who pointed out that not since the Crusades has the Church had such a fiercely missionary competitor. Judd, former medical missionary in China, vividly reminded the assembly of the dedication typical of Communism, from whose ranks no one higher in rank than colonel has ever defected.

Mormon Skyscraper

Mormons plan to erect a skyscraper in New York City to serve as an administrative and worship center for the New York Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The structure will rise some 30 or 40 stories. Portions will be rented out as office space or apartments to defray some of the expense (property acquired thus far has cost some $1,250,000).

“Any part of the building that is not specifically church will be taxed,” said Gerald G. Smith, a regional official.

Mormons in the New York metropolitan area are said to number “more than 3,000.”

The new center, scheduled for occupancy by April, 1965, will include offices, a chapel, classrooms, and an information bureau.

The ‘Octapla’

The New Testament Octapla, in which eight English translations¹Tyndale’s final revision, Great Bible, Geneva Bible, Bishop’s Bible, Rheims New Testament, Kings James Version, American Standard Version, and Revised Standard Version. are bound together on facing pages, will make its bookstore debut March 1. Its only predecessor, The English Hexapla, was published in 1841. Thomas Nelson and Sons is publisher of the Octapla.

Subsidy Speculation …

Democratic Representative John W. McCormack of Massachusetts took office last month as Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives amidst pledges that he would continue his credo of ‘fairness and respect for the religious beliefs of others.”

The Roman Catholic Congressman said that his views “were entirely different than they have been portrayed.”

McCormack denied ever having said that he would oppose aid-to-education bills that did not include assistance for private schools.

He said he favors long-term government loans to both private and public schools for construction purposes, but added that if a bill were reported out of committee with no provision for private schools he would still vote for it.

“I also believe in the 50 per cent forgiveness for those who have received Government loans to finish their college education and to enter the career of teaching,” he said in an interview with U.S. News and World Report. “When they teach in public schools, they are given, as you know, 50 per cent forgiveness of the loan over a five-year period. This should be extended to private schools.”

Shortly after Congress reconvened, Democratic Representative Cleveland M. Bailey of West Virginia, chairman of a House subcommittee on education, introduced a bill to extend the 50 per cent forgiveness provision to private schools.

Meanwhile, Democratic Representative Roman C. Pucinski of Illinois called on Congress to take immediate action to give relief to “parents who are saving taxpayers at least two billion dollars a year” by maintaining the nation’s private and parochial schools systems.” Pucinski said he will press for early consideration of his measure, introduced late last session, to amend the Internal Revenue Code so that any amount contributed by a taxpayer for education of his children at a private, non-profit elementary or secondary school may be considered a deductible contribution. At present, contributions to private or parochial schools are not tax deductible if the taxpayer has dependents who are enrolled, since such contributions are deemed to be expenditures for education and these outlays are not tax deductible.

While many observers were commending President Kennedy’s church-state stand during his first year in office, supporters of federal aid to parochial schools took encouragement from one passage in his State of the Union message, according to Religious News Service.

The champions of parochial-school aid felt the President had indicated that he would sign a bill that includes long-term, low-interest loans to private and parochial schools to help them construct additional classroom facilities for the teaching of science, mathematics, foreign languages, and physical education.

The President said:

“I sent to Congress last year a proposal for federal aid to public school construction and teachers’ salaries. I believe that the bill which passed the Senate and received House committee approval offered the minimum amount required by our needs and—in terms of across-the-board aid—the maximum scope permitted by our Constitution. I therefore see no reasons to weaken or withdraw that bill and I urge its passage at this session.”

Pucinski suggested that “the bill” was actually the education subcommittee’s “package of three bills,” one of which contained a provision for long-term loans to help private schools in construction of facilities.

… And More Precedent

Parochial schools and other private, non-profit institutions would be eligible to participate in the proposed $460,000,000 federal fallout shelter construction program.

Roswell L. Gilpatric, deputy secretary of defense, says that under the Kennedy administration’s proposal, schools could receive grants to build shelters that would serve the dual purpose of gymnasiums.

He said grants also would be given to state and private non-profit organizations operating hospitals, clinics, and welfare institutions.

The administration’s budget calls for a total of $695,000,000 for civil defense purposes. About $460,000,000 of this amount would launch the public shelter program, beginning in July.

Although details are not yet worked out, the government would probably pay about $25 of the estimated $40 it costs shelter. The difference, he added, would to provide space for one person in a be made up by local government authorities.

Each shelter eligible for the proposed aid. Gilpatric added, must have room for at least 50 persons, be open for public use in time of emergency, and be under the direction of local civil defense authorities. He stressed that no federal subsidies would be given for shelters where racial segregation would be practiced.

Brazil: Study In Communist Exploitation

Communist activity in Brazil is growing so rapidly that many feel it now poses a distinct threat to Christian missionary activity (see box on following page). The following report, prepared forCHRISTIANITY TODAYby Professor José Maurício Wanderley, editor of Brazil Presbiteriano, official publication of the Presbyterian Church of Brazil, traces some of the factors which have contributed to the Communist gains. The article was translated from the Portuguese by Langdon Henderlite, aCHRISTIANITY TODAYnews correspondent in Brazil.

The numerous and sudden social changes which have afflicted Brazil during the last 30 years have served as a propitious field for leftist propaganda. Especially has this been true in the northeast of Brazil, a region subject to droughts and floods where social restlessness and uneasiness have taken on serious and dangerous aspects. So much so, that after years of disinterest, the last two Brazilian administrations, with U. S. cooperation, began to execute social assistance plans and to set up projects with a view to ameliorate the distress of the region’s 23,000,000 inhabitants.

Brazil has been classified as an underdeveloped and backward country, like other Latin American nations. All have inherited a civilization shaped by Spanish Romanism with its distaste for conditions conducive to democratic regimes in which there could exist opinions contrary to those held by Roman Catholic sociologists. The wavering and uncertain democracy of the Iberian-American nations is an evident and indisputable fact. For centuries, moreover, these nations have suffered from the pressure of more prosperous countries which, for obvious reasons, offered less than sufficient help and left the needy nations with no recourse than to continue being the suppliers of raw materials for foreign industry.

The mass communications media, however, contributed to a popular awakening. The people discovered that a gulf separates their living conditions from those enjoyed in the more prosperous nations, and they began to think of themselves as the victims of a terrible injustice. Whereupon communism came forward with bundles of promises and anti-capitalistic propaganda, and an impatience was born with demands for immediate social change. A mental climate of unstableness ensued, which led to walkouts and strikes in groups heretofore immune, such as those of teachers and professors. The government made some attempts to correct social imbalance by readjustment of pay scales, creation of new schools for children and for illiterate adults, and studies relating to agrarian reform. Unfortunately, these reforms have been slow and the majority of the people have lost faith.

Considering its great reserves of natural wealth, Brazil could have attained a great measure of development through its own efforts had it not been for a failure to pursue and practice an intelligent and virile democracy. The same situation is encountered in nearly all nations of Roman Catholic structure.

It is not surprising that in a country with 51 per cent illiteracy and with a superficial religiosity, a condition of desperation should develop. Communists have capitalized on this desperation by infiltrating labor unions, government agencies, schools, and even the armed forces.

Recent government statistics about northeast Brazil show that the privileged class makes up three per cent of the population and the middle class twelve per cent, the rest being underprivileged. The average annual income per capita for the region is 35 U. S. dollars. The illiteracy rate is 80 per cent. Only six per cent of the children of school age are enrolled in schools and only one and four-tenths per cent of these complete the primary course.

By contrast, southern Brazil has been developing rapidly. New industries have been built and new roads established. Brazilia, the new capital which is the world’s most modern city, has been widely publicized. Three hydro-electric plants have been erected, along with many other projects, all by working the money presses overtime, which has cost the country a dangerous inflationary spiral. The devaluation of the country’s currency has aggravated still further the situation of the less-favored population in the large coastal cities of the northeast, creating new labor problems for the displaced and suffering population.

A word should also be said with regard to the attitude of evangelical forces in Brazil in the face of its self-appraisal and its move toward Marxism. For 100 years the evangelical church in Brazil received from the mother churches and taught as doctrine the thesis that the Christian should not become involved in world society because he is a pilgrim who is journeying to a celestial country. The world was said to belong to the Evil One and the church was described as belonging to neither. This is the main reason why the evangelical witness has been lacking, with rare exceptions, from the political reality of Brazil.

Today Christians are taking exception to that teaching and leaders are arousing the evangelical forces of Brazil to their responsibility in the face of rapid social change. Evangelical university students, aided by Christian leaders, are promoting studies along these lines. A small part of the church is beginning to understand that loyalty to its Lord implies participation in a prophetical attitude with those who suffer unjustly. It implies a battling for justice and represents an effort to show that Christian faith must enter and influence every sphere of national life.

Threat To Missions?

Protestant missionaries in Brazil are becoming concerned over the extent of Communist activity in the country and the threat it represents for Christian witness.

A poll shows that some missionaries are more worried than others, but all seem agreed that infiltration is extensive. They place great hope in an informed national laity as a means of stemming the Red tide.

Says one missionary: “It is the general impression that communism does pose a threat to foreign missionary activity in Brazil and to national missionary activity also. Just how remote is the threat is anyone’s guess.”

Says another: “A definite threat to all Christian work and unfortunately some of the young people in the church agree to the professed goals of Communist activity.”

Still another describes the local newspaper, the only one in the area, as “owned and run by the Communists.” He declares that the paper is “filled with anti-U.S.A. propaganda” and that it “picks up all sorts of small incidents, blows them up, and makes the U.S.A. look like some terrible monster.”

Two of the missionaries polled called special attention to Communist infiltration among youth. One noted that communism has “strongly” influenced young people who have grown up in evangelical families. He reported that Communist influence was “very strong” in the university groups.

Pressure On The Professors

Obviously acting under Communist pressure, the Theological (Protestant) Faculty of East Berlin’s Humbold University issued a statement last month identifying itself with East German government policies and strongly backing its “defense” measures.

The declaration cited the faculty’s “responsibility for the political and social education of students under its care” and said it was necessary today to discuss with them the “vital questions of our people and guide them toward a sober and reasonable and understanding and appreciation of the measures essential for peace.”

Noting that the Soviet Zone Republic, like any other state, has the task to defend itself, the statement emphasized that “Christians who take part in these defense efforts may have a good conscience.”

“Those who have conscientious scruples regarding the use of arms for the protection of peace,” it continued, “should, during friendly and patient talks, [be convinced] … of the necessity for, and the need for, Christians’ contribution toward armed defense of peace and our Republic.”

Details of the theological faculty’s “adoption” of the statement were disclosed in West Berlin church quarters which noted Communists had exerted pressure against the faculty for some time to fulfill “more effectively” its educational task toward students under its care.

These sources said a young “progressive” theologian appointed to the university by the Communists had drafted the statement which was first rejected by the faculty.

Instead, it approved a draft by Professor Heinrich Vogel of West Berlin which recognized the right of the state to defend itself, but upheld the church’s right and the faculty’s determination to protect conscientious objectors.

Communist functionaries, not satisfied with this declaration, finally enforced “adoption” of the issued statement by excluding all West Berlin members of the faculty council from voting. But even several East Berlin professors were reported to have expressed opposition to the final product.

The statement came in the wake of an appeal by the Evangelical Church of Berlin and Brandenburg urging all pastors to “stand up for conscientious objectors in the Soviet Zone and thus demonstrate that the church’s frequently expressed protection of C. O.’s is not a hollow phrase.”

Bigamy Revisited

A showdown between rabbinical and civil authorities in Israel was averted last month when parties to a widely-publicized divorce suit agreed to a settlement out of court.

The question at stake was whether a Jew may take a second wife if his first wife, whom he married in a civil ceremony, will not agree to a divorce.

Zalvi and Leah Mashiah, the Jewish couple involved, were married 14 years ago in Bulgaria and emigrated to Israel. In August, 1960, the husband applied for a divorce to a rabbinical court in Tel Aviv. That court ruled in his favor, but the wife appealed the decision.

When the case reached the Israeli High Court last October, it requested rabbinical authorities to explain their stand in favor of the husband. They declined to reply on the ground that the High Court, as a civil body, had no jurisdiction in the case.

The High Court then asked the government to intervene. At the same time, it supported the wife’s claim that the rabbinical ruling would cause havoc in a state where thousands of civil marriages were contracted—thus permitting husbands to take second wives if they so desired.

Civil marriages are no longer permitted in Israel, nor are such unions contracted outside the state recognized. A 1953 law granted religious authorities sole jurisdiction in matters of marriage and divorce.

The High Court was ready to hear arguments in the Mashiah case when Dr. Yomtov Kovo, the wife’s attorney, announced that she had won a settlement out of court and was prepared to accept a divorce.

The Pope’S Primacy

Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras is reported ready to recognize the primacy of the Roman Catholic Pope on the condition that his status would be “first among equals,” the position the Ecumenical Patriarch now holds in relation to other Eastern Orthodox Patriarchs.

After a four-hour interview with Patriarch Athenagoras, Greek journalist Paul Paleologos wrote last month that the Patriarch said the Eastern Orthodox Church “does not deny that the Pope is first in rank among the Christian bishops.”

The Paleologos story appeared in To Vima, a daily newspaper in Athens.

“The Orthodox Church is ready to recognize this primacy of the Pope but under the condition that he is recognized as first among equals and not first without equality to the heads of the other churches, which would liken him to a dictator monarch of Christianity.”

If this arrangement were accepted, the Patriarch is quoted as saying, the “first step towards the unity of the two churches will have been completed.”

A meeting between the Patriarch and the Pope has been in the oiling for some time, but nothing final has developed.

Challenging The Pope?

“More Catholic than the Pope” was the description the late Canon T. C. Hammond had given himself. The life and works of Hammond, who died recently in Sydney, Australia, were reviewed at a memorial meeting in London last month. One speaker recalled how Hammond, an Irishman with all the impetuousness of his race, took prompt action when a notable convert to Rome came to lecture in Dublin. To notices which urged, “Come and hear Ronald Knox at the Theatre Royal on why he became a Catholic,” Hammond circulated his own notices: “Come and hear the reply to Romanism in T. C. Hammond’s Christian chapel.”

After he went to Australia, Hammond’s many activities included a fortnightly broadcast called “The Voice of Protestantism.” Under Hammond’s ministry some 500 individual Roman Catholics were known to have been converted, among them a number of priests and ordinands.

J. D. D.

The American Pattern?

A newly-published statistical survey, Facts and Figures about the Church of England, shows a gain in the number of Roman Catholics admitted to the church in 1958 (3,771) compared with the average for 1954–1956 (3,480). However, there was a considerable drop in the number of non-Catholics received into the church (6,959 in 1960 compared with an average of 11,295 for the previous three years). An even more alarming decrease is found in the figures for Sunday School attendance—257 per thousand of child population aged 3–14 in 1922, 149 in 1959. In his preface the Bishop of Middleton, Dr. E. R. Wickham, observes that Anglicans are “moving in the direction of the American pattern, where afternoon Sunday School and Sunday evening services really exist no longer.” Ordinations increased from 444 in 1954 to 559 in 1960, hut the average age of the clergy was high (53 years), and the church “could do with another 7,000 clergymen.”

A ‘Very Christian’ Visit

Dr. J. H. Jackson, president of America’s largest Negro church body, says his recent call on Pope John XXIII was one of the many current manifestations of the growing spirit of friendliness between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

The president of the 5,000,000-member National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Inc., reported last month that his private audience with the Pope was “very friendly, very cordial, very Christian.”

During the audience which lasted about 30 minutes they discussed the coming Vatican Council, prospects for Christian unity, and world peace, Jackson said.

The Negro Baptist leader visited Rome in December on his way back from New Delhi, where he attended the World Council of Churches assembly. He gave reporters details of his visit with the Pope upon his return to his Chicago home.

League Of Right-Wingers

Dr. Billy James Hargis, director of the Christian Crusade, says a national league of right-wing anticommunism groups is being established.

Hargis announced that organization of the new political “fraternity” would be reported at the conclusion of a “national anti-Communist leadership school” in Tulsa, Oklahoma, January 29-February 2. The league, he declared, will meet regularly in Washington with conservative Congressmen. There was no immediate comment from Washington.

Hargis said leaders of many ultraconservative anticommunist groups have enrolled in the proposed league, including the controversial John Birch Society of which he is an advisor.

Excluded from the league, he added, will be organizations with racial or religious prejudices and “extremist” groups like the “American Nazi Party.”

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Methodist Bishop Hiram A. Boaz, 95, former president of Southern Methodist University; in Dallas … Greek Orthodox Archbishop Theoklitos, 71; in Athens … Dr. Karl Anton Mueller, 94, a bishop of the Moravian Church in America; in San Francisco … Dr. Kenneth S. Wuest, 68, retired professor of Moody Bible Institute; in Oak Park, Illinois … Lieutenant Colonel Fred Seiler, 85, retired Salvation Army leader; in Ocean City, New Jersey … Dr. William H. Leach, 74, editor of Church Management; in Cleveland Heights, Ohio … the Rev. Campbell Bannerman Smith, 61, Canadian Pentecostal leader; in a highway accident near Napanee, Ontario … Amelia Collins, 87, a leader of the Baha’i World Faith; in Haifa, Israel.

Retirements: As president of Union Theological Seminary, New York, Dr. Henry P. Van Dusen, effective June 30, 1963 … as professor of pastoral leadership at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Dr. C. Morton Hanna.

Appointments: As head of the department of church history at Central Conservative Baptist Seminary, the Rev. Robert Delnay … as professor of practical theology at Gordon Divinity School, Dr. Gwyn Walters.

To The Top

Dr. Willa B. Player, president of Bennett College, Greensboro, North Carolina, and a Negro, became last month the first woman president of the National Association of Schools and Colleges of The Methodist Church.

She was elected to a one-year term during the annual meeting of the 60-year-old association in Cincinnati. The association embraces 135 colleges, universities, theological seminaries, and other schools in the United States related to The Methodist Church. It is the nation’s largest Protestant higher educational system.

Dr. Player was vice-president of the association last year. As president she succeeds Dr. Carl C. Bracy, president of Mount Union College, Alliance, Ohio.

Edgar J. Goodspeed

Dr. Edgar J. Goodspeed, 90, known throughout the English-speaking world for his Bible translations, died in. Los Angeles last month following a stroke.

His “American” translation made Goodspeed famous. In addition, he wrote more than 50 books, the last being Matthew—Apostle and Evangelist, published in 1959.

Goodspeed was the son of Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed, one of a small group of religious leaders who established the University of Chicago in the late 1890s.

Forecasting is usually a risky business, but book publishers remove most of the hazards. Before me lies a host of book tides, each with but gently tempered claims of its “uncommon values,” “unique approach,” and “significant treatment.” Although some books may offer less than their titles promise, and others fail to measure up to their dust jacket reputation, I “bravely” prophesy concerning the books to come. I rest on the promises of the publishers. What else can I do?

Since books come from the presses in a tumbling profusion of variety, I must create some order by placing them in categories. But let readers beware and authors be kind, for some books fit no category at all, and some fit five equally well. Charity is therefore in order, for the forecaster is to inform the reader concerning books he has not read, or even seen—these being the rules of the game.

Looking then to the future we have in the area of THEOLOGY Scribners promise of the late John Baillie’s The Sense of the Presence of God which takes into account existentialist movements in theology; Moody’s promise of The Future Life by René Pache; A. R. Allenson’s Biblical Words for Time by J. Barr; and Abingdon’s symposium on the theology of R. Bultmann by such men as W. Künneth, H. Diem, E. Kinder, edited by C. E. Braaten and R. A. Harrisville, titled Kerygma and History.

Although the nature of history is currently in question, there are ample offerings in HISTORICAL THEOLOGY with Oxford offering Grace and Reason, Brian Gerrish’s study of the theology of Luther; Sheed & Ward, Grace by R. W. Gleason, S.J.; Abingdon’s Man’s Faith and Freedom, G. O. McCulloh’s study of the theological influence of Jacob Arminius, and The Work of the Holy Spirit, L. M. Starkey, Jr.’s study of Wesleyan theology. The Augsburg Publishing House offers a translation of the doctrinal writing of Martin Chemnitz and Johann Gerhard, edited by H. A. Preus and E. Smits under the title The Doctrine of Man in Classical Lutheran Theology, and C. L. Hill and L. Satre’s translation, Melanchthon: Selected Writings. John Knox offers God Loves Like That, J. R. Taylor’s presentation of the story and theology of James Denney.

The category of ECUMENICS is occupied almost exclusively by Roman Catholics seeking to expand the “dialogue” on the theological differences which separate Protestants and Roman Catholics. Insisting on doctrinal agreement as a necessary basis for any possible union, Roman Catholics may thrust liberal ecumenists, who often prefer union on other bases, into a wholesome doctrinal confrontation and theological concern. Sheed & Ward promises the publication of The Council Reform and Reunion by Hans Kung—a book for which both Gustave Weigel and Bishop James A. Pike have a good word. Hawthorn Books promise The Second Vatican Council by Henri Daniel-Rops which tells the story behind Pope John XXIII’s calling of his ecumenical council, Scribners promise Paul Tillich and the Christian Message by Roman Catholic George H. Tavard, and Seaburg The Voice of the Church: The Ecumenical Council, by Eugene R. Fair-weather and Edward R. Hardy, an Episcopalian reaction to the call of the Vatican. Another bright promise is the John Knox production Beyond Fundamentalism in which B. Stevick calls conservatives and liberals to theological conversation. May this summons be heeded.

In the field of the OLD TESTAMENT spring will bring a translation of G. von Rad’s provocative Theology of the Old Testament (Harper, also Oliver & Boyd) in which von Rad does to the old Testament what R. Bultmann does to the New Testament. Harper will proffer Israel’s Prophetic Heritage, a discussion of crucial problems by eminent American and European scholars and edited by B. W. Anderson and W. J. Harrelson; Zondervan, J. B. Payne’s Theology of the Older New Testament, and Muhlenberg Press, Claus Westerman’s A Thousand Years and a Day. Also to come are The Old Testament Roots of Our Faith (Abingdon), by Paul and Elizabeth Achtemeier; Exile and Return (Baker), C. F. Pfeiffer’s history of Old Testament Israel 600 to 400 B.C.; and Distinctive Translation of Genesis (Eerdmans), by J. W. Watts. Sovereign Grace Publishers proffer The Moral Law by the principal of London Bible College, Ernest Kevan.

In Old Testament ARCHAEOLOGY Eerdmans will print J. A. Thompson’s The Bible and Archaeology and Nelson B. Rothenberg’s God’s Wilderness containing the findings of the first archaeological survey of the Sinai peninsula tracing the routes of the Exodus.

In NEW TESTAMENT studies the never-ending debate on infant baptism is continued by G. R. Beasley—Murray in Baptism in the New Testament (Macmillan); Nelson & Sons present an eight-version New Testament Octopla, edited by L· Weigle; Harper, Current Issues in New Testament Interpretation edited by W. Klassen and G. F. Snyder; and Zondervan presents M. F. Unger’s Archaeology and the New Testament. John Knox will produce C. F. D. Moule’s Worship in the New Testament, and the Herald Press, H. S. Bender’s The Body of Christ, and, what should prove an exceptionally interesting book, H. Berkhof’s Christ and the Powers. To this should be added D. Guthrie’s The Gospel and Acts (Tyndale), said to be an evangelical achievement which elicits the plaudits of liberals.

In the area of what I call CHURCH HISTORY AND ENVIRONS, spring and early summer will present to the lovers of history and historical theological writings The Growing Storm (Paternoster and Eerdmans) by G. S. M. Walker who traces the history of the Church from Augustine through the medieval papacy; Early and Medieval Christianity (Beacon Press) by R. H. Bainton; a Festschrift in honor of Bainton, Reformation Studies edited by F. H. Littell (Knox Press); The Gentle Puritan (Yale University Press) in which D. S. Morgan presents the life of Ezra Stiles as a key to the mind of latter-day Puritans. Also from Yale Press comes Revivalism and Separatism in New England; from the Nazarene Publishing House will come Called Unto Holiness, a history of the Nazarene Church and of some Wesleyan groups, by Timothy Smith. Cambridge University Press will publish St. Anselm and His Biographer by F. W. Southern and The Church in Anglo-Saxon England by C. J. Godfrey, while the Friendship Press will publish F. P. Jones’ The Church in Communist China. Sheed & Ward promise F. van der Meer’s Augustine the Bishop, a work hailed on the continent as a definitive study of the mature Augustine, which perhaps means it is more Roman Catholic than Protestant.

Under the category of PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION the following will soon be available: Nash’s Dooyeweerd and the Amsterdam Philosophy, a Christian critique of secular philosophical thought; On the Love of God (Harper), a philosophically oriented treatment by J. McIntyre; J. H. Vruwink’s treatment of Holy Communion in the context of Kierkegaard’s existential idea of the divine-human encounter: The Lively Tradition (Bobbs-Merrill); In Search of the Self (Muhlenberg), another application of Kierkegaardian thought, by L. L. Miller. Muhlenberg Press also promises the appearance of The Universe: Plan or Accident by R. E. D. Clark, and The World: Its Creation and Consummation by K. Heim.

Macmillan will issue the following three: Evidence of Satan in the Modern World by L. Christiani, Chad Walsh’s revised and enlarged Campus Gods on Trial, and a promising treatment by Hans Urs von Balthasar of Martin Buber and Christianity in which a competent Roman Catholic scholar looks at a competent and theologically significant Jew.

In They Asked for a Paper (Bles) C. S. Lewis looks with his usual perceptiveness at the matter of faith and morality; Eerdmans promises The King of the Earth by E. Sauer, and Baker, Another Look at Seventh-Day Adventism by N. B. Douty.

ETHICS AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Living in a time of social convulsions and universal threat, the Christian reading public should welcome Christ and Crisis by Charles Malik who always sees more clearly than most, and Communism and the Christian Faith by L. DeKoster. Both are from Eerdmans. Christians disturbed by the difficulty of living by a sacrificial ethic in a world dominated by power should welcome Common Sense About Christian Ethics (Macmillan), by E. Carpenter, and Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience (Scribners), written by such men as R. L. Shinn, P. Ramsey, E. Fromm, and edited by J. C. Bennett. In the same area of ethical interest falls The Ethical Mysticism of Albert Schweitzer (Beacon Press) by H. Clark. The perennial problem of the conflict of Church and State is faced anew in W. G. Tillmann’s translation of P. Meinhold’s Caesar’s or God’s (Augsburg), and the question of racial discrimination is challenged in Some of My Best Friends (Farrar, Strauss and Cudahy) by R. B. Epstein and A. Forster.

On quite another level of conflict, trouble is met by Louis H. Evans in Your Marriage—Duel or Duet? (Revell).

The nature of modern troubles, and the peculiarly modern way in which their solution is sought is reflected in many of the titles that emerge in the area of PASTORAL THEOLOGY. E. P. Dutton promises Psychoanalysis and Social Change, edited by H. M. Ruitenbeek, which claims to show how and why existentialism aids psychotherapy; Augsburg promises Temperament and the Christian Faith by O. Hallesby; and Farrar, Strauss and Cudahy, Psychoanalysis and Religion by G. Zilboorg. Harper will publish Guilt and Grace by P. Tournier, and what should be of special interest is Knox’s production of Eduard Thumeysen’s A Theology of Pastoral Care. Abingdon will issue The Wisdom That Does Not Change by C. P. Robshaw and The Language of Faith by S. Laeuchli.

Every minister at times knows the need of being a lawyer; to meet this need Channel Press will issue the Minister’s Law Handbook by G. S. Joslin.

To meet the problems stemming from the blessing of longevity, R. M. Gray and D. O. Moberg have written The Church and the Older Person (Eerdmans).

SERMONS. There will be plenty for both layman and minister. Revell will issue The Parables He Told, a popular presentation of 40 parables, by D. E. Redding, and The Making of a Man of God by Alan Redpath; also Sermon Outlines on Favourite Bible Characters and Sermon Outlines on Women of the Bible, both by F. D. Whitesell. From Seabury will come Proclaiming Christ Today by W. Norman Pittenger; from Boardman, Biblical Preaching, by C. E. Faw; from Augustana, Old Testament Sermons by E. Munson; from Harper, The Audacity of Preaching (The Lyman Beecher Lectures of 1961), by G. E. Bartlett; from Eerdmans The Silence of God by Helmut Thielicke, and God Is Where You Are by Alan Walker; from Baker, Sermon Outlines on a Spiritual Pilgrimage (Israel en route to Egypt), by Jerome Dejong; Proclaiming the New Testament (Galatians and Ephesians by A. Blackwood, Jr., and Timothy and Titus by P. F. Barackman); and from Abingdon will come C. G. Chappell’s Living With Royalty. Baker will also publish My Sermon Notes on Special Days by W. P. Van Wyk, an excellent exegete; and Zondervan, C. H. Spurgeon’s eight-volume Treasury of the Bible.

LITURGY AND WORSHIP. Although interest in richer liturgical worship continues to grow, there are relatively few new contributions. Those who most need liturgical enrichment are perhaps least able to supply it. The Christian Education Press will offer Worship Services for Church Groups by F. Rest; Knox will present Pulpit and Table by H. Hageman, who points up the Dutch and Zwinglian contributions to worship patterns; Seabury will issue Fear, Love, and Worship, a Lenten book for 1962 by C. FitzSimons; from Oxford will come Mindful of the Love (instruction principally for laymen in eucharistic theology), by S. F. Bayne, Jr.; and Holt, Rinehart and Winston send forth Protestant Worship Music: Its History and Practice from the pen of C. L. Etherington.

COMMENTARIES, BIBLE DICTIONARIES AND STUDIES. Nelson will issue Peake’s Commentary on the Bible. This is a new commentary on the RSV text by 64 contributors from Protestant churches, and edited by M. Black. Macmillan will issue The Torch Bible Commentaries: Obadiah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, by J. H. Eaton; and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, by D. Jones. Eerdmans and Tyndale will publish an all new one-volume New Bible Dictionary and Eerdmans will also publish a biblical study: The Beatitudes of Jesus, by W. Fitch. Zondervan will publish Olaf M. Norlie’s The Children’s Simplified New Testament and Harold J. Ockenga’s Women Who Made Bible History. Knox will make available in English for the first time Barth’s commentary on Philippians.

In the category of MISSIONS, McGraw-Hill will issue The Missionary Nature of the Church, by Johannes Blauw, who offers the public a biblical theology of mission, and Hudson Taylor and Maria, a story by J. C. Pollock of the first Protestant missionary to penetrate the interior of China. Muhlenberg will publish Hope in Action by J. Margull, Eerdmans, Enter into Life by W. Fitch, and Harper will send into the world Frontiers of the Christian World Mission (1938–1962), W. C. Harr, editor.

Inter-Varsity Press will publish Commission, Conflict, Commitment, a compendium of messages and panel discussions of the Urbana Missionary Convention held recently at the University of Illinois. The report relates the missionary thought of, among others, Billy Graham, Clyde Taylor, Subodh Sahu.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. Though much is needed in this area, little is being provided. Sheed & Ward offer New Men for New Times, a rather dubious title carrying the more promising subtitle: A Christian Philosophy of Education; Eerdmans offers a popular treatment of church education, Teach or Perish by James DeForest Murch, and from Channel Press will come a history of Bible institutes and colleges in North America titled Education with Dimension from the pen of S. A. Witmer.

The above forecast is a selection from books scheduled to make their appearance between February and August of this year. It may be that some of the best were inadvertently bypassed and some of inferior quality selected. Even so it is legitimate to make some tentative observations on the basis of the titles, authors, and prepublication claims.

Now

The time is now—sealing

in the moment infinitely small

the riddle of time itself,

the mystery of life at all.

The time is fateful now—

unique, irreversible sum

of what has been that is

and what will be that’s come.

The sparrow’s fall is now;

now is the Father’s care;

now is the mountain moved

by grain of faith and prayer.

Work is waiting now;

now love lays claim on me

for whom some tiny instant

will spell eternity.

ELLIOTT KNIGHT

In many respects the time is now ripe for a great resurgence of evangelical scholarship. The irrelevance of the older liberalism is plain to see. The pressure of neoorthodoxy back to an underlying liberalism is increasingly apparent. Against materialism on the one side and false dogmatisms on the other, the only response is a strong evangelicalism. Church life, as shown by the wide conservatism of ministers and people, is waiting for it. The ground has been largely prepared by new developments in biblical, historical and dogmatic theology. The only remaining question is whether evangelical theology itself can rise to the occasion.

There are promising signs that it may do so. Evangelical schools are taking their places among leading seminaries. Books of a high quality are coming from the presses. The evangelical voice is being raised again in denominational and ecumenical debates. Thoughtful lay supporters are emerging for theological ventures as well as for the established pastoral, evangelistic and missionary work.

We deceive ourselves, however, if we imagine that the tide is necessarily with us or that all is being done that might be. In a recent article in this journal it was pointed out that the evangelical cause still goes by default at many levels. Two questions in particular demand attention, first, whether much of our effort does not stand under the famous military slogan “Too little, too late,” and secondly, whether there are not? certain inherent defects of posture or direction in much of the theological work.

The practical question is addressed primarily to evangelical congregations. While we recognize that scholarship is not the only concern, that tragic defections have occurred in this sphere, and that God can use the Davids to overthrow theological Goliaths, there are certain facts for which we still have a serious responsibility before God. The number of first-class seminaries is still too small. Many are not able to develop as they should for lack of adequate support. There are few scholars who can claim the academic competence or authority of their non-evangelical counterparts. The production of such scholars in the future depends on fuller concern for our seminaries. It also depends on the evangelical public providing the initial sales for worthwhile evangelical literature to be published and to attain to national stature. Theological work needs time to make its full impact, but it must have solid and energetic support if any real impact is to be made at all.

The second question is addressed more specifically to theologians, though it has a general relevance, inasmuch as they do their work in a common evangelical climate. Are there not inherent weaknesses of attitude and direction in much of the work done? We do not refer to content. If the material is biblical, it is good and sound. We refer to the way in which this good material is used. We refer to approach, to aim, to orientation, to the possibility of trying to do the wrong things with the right material.

For one thing, there often seems to be a preponderance of negative and critical work. Incorrect views obviously have to be studied and rejected or amended. But this is the easier part. It makes less demands, but it also lacks ultimate power even in criticism. The truth demands positive presentation, and only in this form does it have its sharpest cutting edge.

Again, much evangelical work seems to be overly dominated by apologetic concerns. There is naturally a place for apologetics, but a theology which is always concerned to meet some attack, to justify itself in relation to some trend, or to establish its own validity, is vitiated from the start and is unlikely to reach its goal. Real theology should stand unashamedly on its own feet with its own theme and method, not giving account to other disciplines but finally calling them to account. Our current failure to produce strong dogmatics is surely evidence of our weakness in this regard.

The result is a generally defensive attitude in relation both to other theological trends and to wider disciplines. We cling apprehensively to the promise that hell will not swallow us when we should be sounding the trumpet before Jericho walls. Our great themes are set in the context of other concerns when other concerns should be treated only within our own great context. It is suggested that our cause must be made intellectually respectable, as though God’s truth either could or should be made respectable by its advocates, or as though it did not have its own intellectual compulsion.

The final consequence is an intellectual abstraction which is partly responsible for the practical evils in this sphere, as also for the unwitting intrusion of alien principles in wide areas. True theology serves the ministry and informs the practice of the Church. It is not an intellectual game for initiates but of vital relevance to piety, evangelism and edification. To be this, however, it must shake off its apprehensions and defensive concerns, and become again a virile and a confidently positive declaration, exposition and application of the revealed Word of God which is the Word of life and truth.

Forecast Of Religious Books And Reading For Perspective

Elsewhere in this issue CHRISTIANITY TODAY presents its readers with a Spring Book Forecast. Such forecasts are offered twice a year, spring and fall, presenting a selection of the most significant of the legion of books that come from the religious press. “Significant” here means only that the selected books are thought to be important because they will, for better or worse, affect the cause of Christ. These forecasts are made to alert the reader of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and to aid him in his purchase of religious books.

A survey of the Forecast seems to indicate that the weight of significant scholarship still lies with the more liberal Protestant and with the Roman Catholic. There are signs that the scales are shifting and tilting increasingly in favor of evangelicals. This brightening of the situation seems to parallel the growing number of accredited evangelical colleges and seminaries.

Evangelical, conservative religious thinkers are turning an increasingly large amount of scholarly effort into the production of commentaries, Bible translations, Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias. This is all to the good. These are all necessary tools requisite for theological advance. With the tools at hand, evangelicals should now increasingly turn to the task of dealing with the burning theological problems of our times. For too long it has been left to others to forge the theological concepts and positions which shape the religious life and thought of the Church. Too often in recent decades, conservative theological leaders have entered the theological debate at the point of the rebuttal. Let them now take the initiative and themselves set the form of the question and thus determine the direction of the theological debate.

A theological evangelical renaissance which employs its tools of scholarship to wrestle with the tremendous theological challenge of our day requires time and opportunity. Scholarship of any kind requires leisure. And it may be added that theological scholarship is no luxury. We know too well the damage wrought in the life of the Church when it comes under dominance of the wrong kind. May the evangelical community of churches and schools provide such opportunity and leisure as is necessary to produce theological writing which speaks not merely as protest or corrective but to our troubled time itself.

The reader will also observe the new feature, Reading For Perspective. The books spotlighted in this feature are again not necessarily evangelical but always, in the opinion of our editors, significant books which show the drift and indicate the shape of the current theological and religious situation. No one can read all the religious books. Nor is this necessary. The problem is to read the significant ones, the books which show in what direction the Church is moving, and what various influential sectors or scholars of the Church are thinking and doing. Titles of such new books will regularly make their appearance in Reading For Perspective.

An Unrealistic Analysis Of The Human Predicament

“How Natural Is Human Nature?” asks Eric Hoffer in a recent essay in The Saturday Evening Post (January 13 issue). He answers in effect that man is a half-animal who can become a half-God through myths which release his creative energies. Mr. Hoffer’s analysis is so replete with the black magic of private assumptions, and so lacking in authentic spiritual insight, as to require comment. His reliance on “incantations, myths and … illusions” to regenerate the weak and to make them the chosen instruments of history simply varies a well-worn theme: man can lift himself by (imaginary) bootstraps. To write of the “unique glory of the human species” and to ignore, as Mr. Hoffer does, man’s predicament and sin and Jesus Christ’s shaping influence in Western history is modern madness.

Religion Fifth In Book Titles; Fiction And The Sciences Lead

A total of 18,060 different titles were published in 1961—an all-time high in American book publication. New titles accounted for 14,238, with 3,822 new editions of previously published works. Books grouped under the general heading “religion” were a strong fifth, with a total of 1,290, according to 1961 statistics given by Publisher’s Weekly, a trade publication.

As might be expected, fiction led the parade, with nearly twice the total of the second-place classification, juvenile books. Fiction accounted for 2,630, with 1,626 in the juvenile field. “Sociology and economics” was the third-ranking classification with 1,613 titles. Leading “religion” by nearly 200 titles were the works on “science,” totalling 1,494. Books on “religion” outnumbered “art” two to one. “Language,” “law,” and “literature” combined had a total number of books published approximately the same as “religion.”

There was a day when the religious orientation stood first in the world of books, but on the modern scene even a strong fifth is significant. The next question is how many of these books serve the cause of pure religion, and how many are in the service of pseudo-deities? A further question is where scientific devotion leads in the absence of spiritual dedication.

In Glen Cove, New York, a nineteen-year-old genius, nationally acclaimed nine months ago for conceiving a working model of an atom smasher, was arrested and charged with stealing small sums of money from the desk of his high school principal. The youth claimed he needed the money to buy scientific books and magazines, but his father revealed that the boy had “about $400 in the bank” earned by caddying the previous summer season.

Has not the crisis of our time arisen largely through man’s devotion to scientific pursuits while neglecting the God of the atom?

Anglicans Have Second Thoughts On Banishing The Devil

Last year a Church of England committee, charged with preparation of a new version of the catechism, decided to discontinue the practice of referring to the devil by name. Strong protest arose promptly from Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals, united for once.

News has now come of the Anglican reinstatement of the devil—who rates 104 references in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, and who was once acclaimed by Bishop Latimer as “the most diligent bishop and prelate in all England”!

Modern theology tends to demote, or at least to neglect, the devil—unlike a former generation brought up on Mrs. C. F. Alexander which learned at church school to sing of “a wicked spirit hovering round you still.” Spurning such adolescent fancies, our own age fits rather the description of the old Scots poet who, in discussing the decline of preaching, lamented:

A saft an’ couthie tale they tell;

An’ tell it quick;

They’ve sell’t the guid auld brunstane Hell

An’ pensioned Nick.

This resuscitation which gives the devil his due may seem a paradoxical subject for rejoicing, but it would have evoked a fervent Amen from Charles Kingsley who once observed: “The devil is shamming dead, but he is never busier than now.”

Theological Journalism And The Contemporary Social Crisis

One sign of theological vitality is the multiplication of religious journals in our time. Long established magazines frequently harden into predictable champions of debatable causes or into denominational organs suppressive of constructive dissent.

The new quarterly journal Dialog has announced its staff, editorial council and contributing editors—committed Lutheran scholars, mainly neoorthodox or liberal, who span the Atlantic. Its summary of the Church’s proclamation is vigorous, except for ambiguity on the character of divine revelation. We wish Dialog well, and hope evangelical principles appear in its pages even more than among its editors.

While writing of religious journals we shall add a word about CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S series on the instability of liberal ethics. Nobody need construe this as an attack upon another distinguished journal (which we are indisposed to publicize to a reading audience five times its own). But The Christian Century in earlier decades was so widely honored as America’s authoritative Protestant voice that it became the show window on the liberal social frontier. Every decade or so a charismatic ecclesiast representing some new secular trend has knocked at the door of the doctrinally backslidden Church to get such ideals baptized as “Christ’s program for this age.” Only when it falters in crisis does liberalism recognize that such pious concern was really a secular masquerade. But scarcely is this confession voiced than it is muffled once again by another program calling once more for church support.

We are not desirous, however, of concealing the lamentable social inactivity of many Protestant conservatives. The writer protested this in The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. There may be more comfort, but no greater virtue, in acting on the maxim: “It is better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt.” God’s messenger has no exemption from such slander; he has a mandate and a message, and he had better be true to both.

God calls every normal human being. He does this through the vocatio realis—realis because this general call comes not through words but through res (things), namely nature, history (of individuals and nations) and conscience (cf. Rom. 1:20; 2:14, 15; Job 37:14; 38:1–42:6; Ps. 8:2, 4; 19:1–4; 46:11; 104).

However great and important the influence of this vocatio realis is, no one can ever come to a saving knowledge of the triune God through this general, external call. Through the vocatio realis man is rendered without excuse (Rom. 1:20) if he does not worship and obey Him whose majesty, eternal power, and divinity speak to all through his mighty works in nature, in history, and in human life and conscience. But the vocatio realis does not proclaim the good tidings of great joy (Luke 2:10) for all who believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and as the divine Saviour.

For the salvation of sinners there is an urgent need for much more than the vocatio realis can offer. And now it is the glory of the Christian faith that it unequivocally proclaims that almighty God, who through the vocatio realis has called and is continually calling all to a realization of his divine majesty and omnipotence, through his Word calls sinners to repentance and to salvation. This calling to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, the Lord, through the authoritative Word of God is designated the vocatio verbalis. This external calling through the Gospel is to be proclaimed to all nations (Matt. 28:19; 24:14; Mark 16:15) as an earnest invitation and urgent summons that everyone should repent and believe in Him who is the all-sufficient Saviour.

But to have practical effect in the life of man, the vocatio verbalis must, as it were, break through into the mind, will and heart—the innermost being—of man. For this is needed the “effectual calling” (vocatio efficax).

Definition. The effectual calling must be clearly differentiated not only from the vocatio realis but also from the vocatio verbalis. God as the Lord of nature, of man, and of history most decidedly can and does use the vocatio realis and in a very special sense the vocatio verbalis in the life of men. The proclamation of the Gospel is used by him as a glorious means to bring us to a true faith in and knowledge of the triune God. The vocatio verbalis is, however, in itself not sufficient to achieve this. It cannot bring the spiritually dead to true life in communion with God.

For the lost sinner to become the reborn child of God, the effectual calling is needed—that calling of the living, sovereign, and almighty God which makes us partakers of the life eternal which Jesus Christ has earned for us.

By effectual calling we thus understand that mysterious divine and humanly inexplicable act of God through the Holy Spirit which brings us into living fellowship with Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Exposition. Scripture and practical experience leave no doubt about the fact that of the many to whom the Gospel is proclaimed only a small minority accept Jesus Christ as personal Saviour.

Our Lord himself said, “Many are called but few are chosen” (Matt 22:14).

Scripture teaches that all mankind is guilty before the holy, righteous God and that we are totally incapable of saving ourselves. Unredeemed man is spiritually blind and dead and unable to regenerate or truly to convert himself.

In this sense the teaching of the Bible is the most pessimistic and realistic teaching in the world. Fallen, sinning man is spiritually lost and completely incompetent to save himself.

How, then, can we, who are in ourselves helplessly lost sinners, ever be united to Christ in saving communion?

The New Testament leaves no doubt regarding the reply to this question. It clearly and consistently teaches us that through the sovereign and omnipotent power and grace of God we are effectually called to become the inheritors of the salvation wrought by God through Jesus Christ. Thus, for instance, Paul writes the following: “… the power of God; who saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace” (2 Tim. 1:9). Compare also 1 Peter 1:3. And in 1 Corinthians 1:26–30 Paul emphatically dismisses any idea that Christians themselves deserved to become the children of God. He writes: “For behold your calling, brethren, how that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called … that no flesh should glory before God.”

From these and other New Testament declarations it is clear that by “calling” in these cases is meant not merely an invitation but that mysterious, glorious, and efficacious act of God through the Holy Spirit which brings man into true, dynamic fellowship with Jesus Christ. Therefore it is rightly called “a heavenly calling” (Heb. 3:1)—God is the all-sufficient cause, origin, and executor of the calling. How God accomplishes this is beyond human comprehension and why he acts thus only in the case of some to whom the vocatio verbalis comes, is not within the limited sphere of human understanding. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth, so is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

In the gospels, “call” is often used merely in the sense of “invite.” But in the epistles the word is mostly used in the sense of “summoning, commanding” and at the same time “effecting, causing to be, prevailing.” To call (καλειν), in the epistles means in substance “to appoint one to salvation.”

When considering the teaching of the Word of God regarding the effectual calling of sinners by the power and grace of God, we are in a field where we stand with awe before the mystery of the eternal love, holiness, grace, and wisdom of God. We cannot precisely define or describe the work of the Creator which makes possible the existence of life even in the mere physical sphere. How much less can we explain or express in human words the wonder of that effectual calling of God through which he in his omnipotent grace and love makes us partakers of his eternal salvation in Jesus Christ! It is futile and even misplaced to try to analyze or describe this divine act. We must confess our total inability to understand this great, divine mystery. But as a tree is known by its fruit, we can also learn much regarding the divine act of God through which he calls lost and helpless sinners effectually to true life, by looking at the fruits of this divine calling.

Sin broke the bond of fellowship between the sinner and God. But through the divine act of God we are “called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor. 1:9; cf. 1 Cor. 1:23, 24). The effectual calling is thus that divine act by which the spiritual blindness of the unredeemed is removed so that Jesus Christ is seen and embraced as the true Savior and Son of God. The intellect of man is freed from the bondage of sin and spiritual ignorance which formed an impenetrable barrier between him and Jesus Christ, and with renewed heart and will the called Christian is united with the Savior in intimate fellowship. Before God called us we wandered on our own way and revolted against Christ, but through his effectual calling we are enabled to obey willfully and gladly Him who as of old still calls every Christian: “Follow Me!” Through the divine calling which is not a mere invitation but an act of God that makes us listen to and obey Christ we thus become true disciples of the Son of God. And so the broken fellowship between us and the triune God is gloriously restored. Through His calling we are effectually drawn truly and freely by faith to accept, to love, and to serve Christ as our personal Savior and Lord.

So intimate is the fellowship between those thus effectually called and God that they are designated as people “beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ” (Jude 1), as “holy” (Heb. 3:1), “beloved of the Lord” (2 Thess. 2:13), “a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession” (1 Pet. 2:9).

This wonderful privilege of being so intimately united to God in his Son is in no sense our own doing or a right that we deserve. We do not achieve it ourselves. God bestows it. It is given to us unmerited through his grace and solely because “God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor. 1:9).

Through the effectual calling, God enlightens our minds to see and accept the truth of the Gospel (Eph. 1:18), changes our defiled hearts so that we come to him with sincere repentance and conviction of sin, and gives to our erring, sinful wills a new and Godward direction. Through the effectual calling man is not dehumanized, but his whole personality is freed and energized to enable him to live a new, sanctified life. Old inabilities are abolished and new abilities to love and serve God are given. The blinding effects of sin on our minds are removed so that our intellect no longer leads us astray but is recreated to be a trustworthy instrument for apprehending truth (cf. 1 Cor. 1:23, 24) and believing the Gospel (2 Thess. 2:14). Thus through the effectual calling our mind, heart, and will is regenerated to true holiness. And for this cause is Jesus Christ “the mediator of a new covenant, that … they that have been called, may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance” (Heb. 9:15).

The purpose of God with this effectual calling is, however, not merely to enlighten, renovate, enrich, and eternally save the lives of believers, but is in highest instance meant to proclaim the glory of God in Christ. Or to say it in the words of Peter: “that ye may shew forth the excellencies of him who called you out of the darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9, 10).

We cannot know how or when God calls us in such an effectual way, nor can we exactly define the connection between the vocatio verbalis and this vocatio efficax, or the relationship between effectual calling and regeneration, but the New Testament leaves no doubt as to the fact that God is in no way, regarding the effectual calling, dependent on the merits, preparedness, or worthiness of man or of any human instrument. God “called us by his own glory and virtue” (1 Pet. 1:3). The triune God himself is the sole cause of and instrument in this calling.

For this reason the effectual calling has such a rich and wonderful meaning for time and eternity and gives believers the necessary assurance for the future, for “faithful is he that calleth you, who will also do it” (1 Thess. 5:24).

The effectual calling of God is not an afterthought of the Almighty but is grounded in his eternal purpose. Paul gives classic expression to this truth in his well-known words: “… all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to his purpose. For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, … and whom he foreordained, them he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified …” (Rom. 8:28–30, cf. John 10:27–30).

The salvation of believers is “not of works, but of him that calleth.… that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory, even us, whom he also calleth …” (Rom. 9:11, 23, 24).

That the effectual, irresistible calling of God, however, does not annul or abrogate the personal responsibility of believers is clearly and consistently taught by the Word of God. Thus Paul writes to Timothy: “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called …” (1 Tim. 6:12). And Jesus said: “Enter ye in by the narrow gate” (Matt. 7:13).

Belief that the effectual calling is grounded in the eternal purpose of God is not a pagan fatalism nor does it cause moral laxity, spiritual pride, or religious apathy. On the contrary, as Paul says of himself: “Not that I have already obtained or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may apprehend that for which also I was apprehended by Christ Jesus. “… I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high [or upward] calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:12–14).

Because the calling of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit imparts such glorious gifts to the elect (cf. Rev. 17:14), Christians are earnestly called upon “to walk worthy of the calling wherewith ye were called” (Eph. 4:1; cf. 2 Peter 1:10, 11).

Conclusion. Thus Scripture teaches that the effectual calling is the sovereign, free, and irresistible act of God in Christ, through his Spirit, by which guilty, lost sinners without merit of their own are brought into living and saving fellowship with Jesus Christ, our Lord. It proclaims equally clearly our grave, inescapable personal responsibility to cling in faith to and to obey Him who alone is the author of our salvation.

We cannot explain the mystery of divine calling and human responsibility, but with Peter we rejoice that “the God of all grace, who called you … shall himself perfect, stablish, strengthen you” (1 Pet. 5:10, 11). And with Paul we “give thanks … for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, that God chose you from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: whereunto he called you through our Gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 2:13, 14; cf. John 10:27–29).

And they that are, through the effectual calling, united to Him, the Lord of lords and the King of kings, shall finally triumph because they are “with him, called and chosen and faithful” (Rev. 17:14).

Bibliography: K. Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik; J. Calvin, Institutes; C. Hodge, Systematic Theology.

Director of Publications

Dutch Reformed Church

Capetown, South Africa