Page 5859 – Christianity Today (2024)

The charismatic movement, sometimes called neo-Pentecostalism, is now a worldwide phenomenon. It has gained many adherents in the old-line Protestant denominations. It has also made broad inroads into Roman Catholicism; last June nearly 12,000 Roman Catholics, including some interested in the movement but not yet part of it, gathered for a charismatic conference at Notre Dame University in Indiana.

Outside the mainline Protestant groups and the Roman Catholic Church the movement has found devotees among the Jesus people and the youth groups in Europe as well as in America. It has penetrated places and institutions that have been hesitant to endorse it. Tongues-speaking appeared on evangelical college and seminary campuses and in evangelistic groups that work on campuses and in high schools. Reliable reports say that Francis Schaeffer’s L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland has lately experienced its touch. CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s news editor Edward Plowman has reported on its widespread existence in Europe in out of the way places as well as in cities (see the October 13 issue).

Is the charismatic movement genuine? How is it to be understood in the light of biblical revelation? How does it relate to traditional Pentecostalism? What is the significance of its rise in the Roman Catholic Church and how are Protestants to regard it in that church in the light of the Reformation and even Vatican I and II?

In the phrase “baptism in the Holy Spirit” lies the heart of the matter. Traditional Pentecostalism, represented by solid evangelical groups like the Assemblies of God (which is a long-time member of the National Association of Evangelicals), says that subsequent to the experience of salvation, of being born again, there is this second experience of being baptized in the Holy Spirit. The outward evidence of this baptism is speaking in tongues. This baptism is related to sanctification, not to justification, and classic Pentecostalists say every believer should experience it.

Among the implications of this traditional Pentecostal view are these: First, not all saved people are baptized in the Holy Spirit; those who have not are true believers but are missing something they ought to have. Second, those who have not spoken in tongues have not been baptized in the Spirit and so are defective Christians. No doubt this is what causes the great emphasis on Spirit baptism. The emphasis has not sprung from spiritual pride or a feeling of superiority, though some have slipped into these sins. Third, the traditional Pentecostal view rules out the possibility that Christians in the Keswick movement, the holiness movement, and other deeper-life movements that do not practice speaking in tongues have been Spirit-baptized. But members of these groups believe in the infilling of the Holy Spirit, believe that every Christian should be so filled, and believe there are conditions the believer must meet in order to have this experience. Many of them have had an infilling experience and are convinced that they are in no way inferior in their daily walk to those whose baptism has been accompanied by tongues-speaking.

Traditional Pentecostalism has to say that some of the greatest saints through the ages, whatever spiritual experiences they may have had, and however exalted the quality of their lives and the greatness of their ministries, were not Spirit-baptized inasmuch as they did not speak in tongues. This would include Martin Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Knox, Mather, and Edwards, as well as evangelists like Wesley, Whitefield, Moody, Sunday, Chapman, Fuller, and Billy Graham.

The modern charismatic movement should be called neo-Pentecostal in that it functions outside the structures of traditional Pentecostalism, being found in most major and minor Protestant denominations, in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, and outside all ecclesiastical fences as well. It is in agreement with traditional Pentecostalism on the subject of baptism in the Holy Spirit accompanied by tongues and in its emphasis on the gifts of interpretation of tongues and healing. But whether there is convergence on the basic Bible doctrines at the heart of the Christian faith is another matter that requires consideration.

We must first nail down the fact that tongues-speaking, in and out of structured Pentecostalism, can be a genuine spiritual experience, validated by Scripture, and manifested by multitudes of people whose Christian integrity and authentic life-style cannot be gainsaid. At the same time two other observations must be made. First, wherever the real exists, the counterfeit makes its appearance. There are phenomena that go by the name of the Pentecostal experience that are spurious, as the film Marjoe makes clear. Marjoe acknowledges that in his evangelistic campaigns he simulated tongues-speaking, and he gave a convincing demonstration in the film. But it was nothing more than a hypocritical performance. The question must be asked, How can one distinguish between the genuine and the counterfeit?

A second observation is that there are all kinds of evidence that glossolalia has never been limited to the Christian fraternity. It is found as a worldwide phenomenon among pagans, Hindu holy men, Mormons, and countless others, and some converts from the drug culture say tongues was part of their psychedelic experience.

Since it is not a uniquely Christian experience, there has to be some way the genuine can be distinguished from the counterfeit. This can be done by applying the tests of doctrine and of works to those who profess to have a gift of tongues.

William J. Samarin in his book Tongues of Men and Angels (see October 13 issue, page 26) says that while speaking in tongues is real, the tongues spoken are not languages as known among men. Indeed, he says that the sounds the glossolalic utters lack basic elements common to all spoken languages. Tongues are ecstatic utterances, not known languages. The accounts of how people are supposed to have been given the gift of speaking in a known language are extremely hard to validate; if there have been any since Pentecost they have been few in number. And, strangely, there is no known case in which a missionary received the permanent gift of speaking the language of a group he sought to reach. Missionaries have always had to learn to speak the required languages the hard way. (Nor has any seminary student or Bible scholar ever received the gift of being able to speak and read Hebrew and Greek.)

There are all kinds of testimonies about what tongues-speaking has produced in the Christian life, and this evidence should not be treated lightly. General Ralph E. Haines, Jr., an Episcopal layman who holds one of the highest command posts in the United States Army, gave his testimony at a public meeting in Denver, having been baptized in the Holy Spirit with the accompanying sign of tongues:

What has the baptism of the Holy Spirit done for me? I think it has made me a better man, a better husband, and more understanding of my fellow man. I am much more excited by prayer and Bible study—and I believe more perceptive in both. I am a far stronger witness for Jesus Christ. I have gained a greater joy in my Christian life. I think a Spirit-filled Christian radiates joy. Sometimes I’m so happy I think it’s sinful! Then I realize there is no joy in sin. There may be fleeting pleasure, but there is no enduring joy in sin. I’ve learned recently that a Christian even finds joy in sorrow, in trials and tribulations.

On the other hand, the late Donald Gee of the British Assemblies of God in his book Now That You’ve Been Baptized in the Spirit (reprinted by Gospel Publishing House, 1972) candidly faces some of the problems traditional Pentecostalists have had. He acknowledges that “there is something radically wrong with the experience that gives you gifts and doesn’t give you holiness.” “Some Baptisms are disappointing because some people have been urged to speak in what seemed to be tongues, and I doubt if they have really had the Baptism at all” (p. 28, my italics). He agrees that there are Christians who have never spoken in tongues and thus have never, in his opinion, had the baptism in the Spirit, yet whose lives manifest the fruits of righteousness and the fruit of the Spirit.

That is why people say, “Look at all those beautiful Christians with their holy lives. They have never had this Baptism.” Yes, they are beautiful and we thank God for their lives. What is the explanation? They have Christ in their hearts, they are walking and living with him. Thank God the character of Jesus Christ is revealed in our lives [p. 30].

There are, indisputably, Christians who have not spoken in tongues whose lives in every way match up to the lives of those who have spoken in tongues. And there are even non-tongues-speaking Christians whose lives appear far better than the lives of some who have spoken in tongues. Why then should tongues be thought to be the necessary sign of the Holy Spirit baptism, if all that baptism signified by tongues produces has been equaled and in some cases surpassed in the lives of Christians who have never spoken in tongues?

At this point a warning flag should be raised about experience that cannot be tested by objective criteria. In reviewing The Other Dimension: A Search For the Meaning of Religious Attitudes, a book by Roman Catholic Louis Dupré, Clark Pinnock said the author holds that “we must not commit ourselves to biblical teachings as they stand, but must drive toward the deeper existential meaning of its mythical symbols. ‘All communication from God bears the marks of ultimate incommunicability.’ ” One might also say something about the incommunicability of Dupré’s statement. But this is characteristic of the age in which we live. Thus a popular theologian can warn us that “people who demand a higher norm of truth than human experience are asking for an idol.”

Since charismatics agree that not all tongues-speaking is genuine, that there are non-tongues-speaking Christians whose lives are of the highest spiritual order, and that some who speak in tongues do not in fact show in their lives what the baptism in the Spirit is supposed to produce, we cannot let tongues be the test to determine whether one has been converted. We must get behind tongues to the Scripture and when we get to Scripture we get doctrine. And with doctrine we must now concern ourselves.

Writing about the meeting of 12,000 Roman Catholic charismatics at Notre Dame last June, Willmar Thorkelson of the Minneapolis Star quoted Vinson Synan, author of a very competent history entitled The Pentecostal Holiness Movement, as saying that he rejoiced “at the growth of Catholic Pentecostalism” and that “the Spirit of God told me it was real.” But suppose someone else says it is counterfeit. Whose word shall we then take? The Old Testament abounds with evidences both of true and false prophets. Jeremiah was a true prophet, Hananiah a false one.

The test of a true prophet is whether what he prophesied comes to pass. Hananiah failed this test. The test of the tongues-speaker is not that he has spoken in tongues, for even pagans do this, but how he receives and accepts the propositional revelation of God in Holy Scripture. It is a matter of what he believes, not simply of an experience he has had.

Traditional Pentecostals hold that the baptism of the Spirit produces a change of life-style. Their beliefs have always caused them to eschew alcohol and tobacco. They are genuinely puzzled by Catholic charismatics whose Spirit baptism has not kept them from smoking cigarettes and drinking co*cktails. They firmly believe that the body of the Christian is the temple of the Holy Spirit and is not to be defiled. At a time when the surgeon-general of the United States warns that tobacco is hazardous and when cigarette-induced lung cancer is at an all time high, they do not think it amiss to ask: How can a person baptized in the Spirit so defile his body? They feel the same way about alcohol, especially in light of the alcohol addiction of millions of Americans. It is, of course, easier to focus on items like these than it is to deal with such sins as greed, selfishness, racism, gossip, and lack of love; but traditional Pentecostalism teaches that Spirit baptism makes these things inconsistent with the Christian life too.

Surely any true baptism in the Holy Spirit will bring men to Scripture. But Protestants are convinced that parts of Catholic doctrine are unbiblical.

Kevin Ranaghan, a Catholic charismatic lay leader, said the charismatic movement is creating “a whole new breed of evangelists and teachers” who are “permeating the church’s structure in a new way.” He called for the movement to remain inside the Catholic Church and wants “a weeding out” of those elements “not truly of God and not helping to build the church as a whole.” He warned against the example of “eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pious Protestant groups which began to believe that the parent church was false and they had to ‘come out’ of it.… We must be one with the Catholic Church so He will be able to renew the Catholic Church, which has been His body since the day of Pentecost.” To identify the Catholic Church as the Lord’s body since Pentecost would draw strong protests from men like Luther, Calvin, Knox, and their descendants.

At the same meeting, Auxiliary Bishop Joseph C. McKinny of Grand Rapids appealed to the charismatics to “remain faithful to the leadership of the papacy.” It was consonant with faithfulness to the papacy that at this meeting non-Catholics were told they would not be able to receive communion when the sacrifice of the Mass was held.

The plight of Catholic charismatics who have been regenerated and who have spoken in tongues is a painful one. Whatever the charismatic movement has to offer Roman Catholics has its origins in historic Pentecostalism, and historic Pentecostalism is at serious odds with the Roman Catholic Church in ways that cannot be glossed over. Catholic Pentecostals at last will have to bow to their church’s teaching, or stay in a church some of whose teaching they cannot accept, or get out.

Hans Küng, not a charismatic but a perceptive thinker and a well-known Catholic theologian, is a case in point. He stays in the church, but he disbelieves some of what the church requires him to believe and says he cannot deny without losing his salvation. Yet Küng maintains he is the real Catholic and wants only to eliminate the false accretions that have attached themselves to church doctrine through the centuries. But there is no evidence that he or the charismatics can “weed out” those elements “not truly of God,” by which we would like to think they mean, not supportable by Scripture.

Foremost among these doctrinal points that Catholic charismatics must face is that which lies at the heart of the salvatory process: justification. Catholicism teaches that men are justified because they are righteous. This has been known as the doctrine of infused righteousness. Reformation theology teaches imputed righteousness: man is not righteous in himself, indeed is unrighteous, but by his faith in Christ the righteousness of Jesus is imputed to him and he is justified. At no point in this life is the believer ever righteous in and of himself. He is declared righteous by reason of Christ’s merits, for he has none of his own. He is kept by Christ’s righteousness, and at last he will be glorified the same way.

The question of justification by imputed righteousness through faith cannot be sidestepped. Any speaking in tongues that is worthy of the name must be based upon a credible salvation, and there can be no salvation that is not based upon justification by faith alone. Without justification by faith alone there can be no valid tongues-speaking, Catholic, Protestant, or any other brand. For Pentecostals to accept Catholic charismatics as bona fide believers because they have spoken in tongues is to put the cart before the horse. Tongues do not prove the speaker has been justified. Acceptance in the Christian community must be based not upon tongues but upon the acceptance of imputed righteousness of Christ through faith alone.

Beyond justification by faith alone, other theological issues that Catholic charismatics must face are the sacrifice of the Mass, the infallibility of the pope, the immaculate conception, the assumption of Mary, images, and the view that tradition has a place in the church on a par with that of Scripture. Catholic charismatics must sooner or later face these teachings and decide what they believe. If they don’t believe in the immaculate conception and the assumption of Mary, they lose their salvation in the eyes of the church; if they don’t believe the church has the power or the right to do this, then again they put themselves outside the pale of the church. They are tied up to a comprehensive system, the denial of any vital part of which leaves them in a graceless state.

If they do accept the teaching of their church on these matters, then there is no possibility of a genuine Catholic-Protestant-Pentecostal fellowship. The reason is simple. If there were such a possibility, it would be based solely upon the baptism in the Spirit, the sign of which is speaking in tongues. This cannot be the basis for such a communion or fellowship unless the baptism in the Spirit accompanied by tongues becomes the first and the primary consideration. Since it cannot and should not be, either for Catholics or Protestants, those doctrines that precede tongues and from which tongues spring must assume their rightful role and be accorded the primacy that is due them.

In some quarters there is a tendency to make the baptism in the Spirit with tongues the sole criterion for fellowship, to make the charismatic movement ecumenical and in the process to brush aside fundamental doctrinal questions. A well-known Pentecostalist who has devoted years of his life to promoting the charismatic movement among Protestants and Roman Catholics wrote that in a recent Lutheran charismatic conference “the public recognized that we were all Christians by our love.” Any Christian can enthusiastically endorse the need for love. But love in the short run can be simulated, just as tongues can be counterfeited. John says we are known to be Christians by what we believe. “Any one who goes ahead and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the doctrine has both the Father and the Son. If any one comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into the house or give him any greeting” (2 John 9, 10).

This same Pentecostalist brother said: “Until now the Classic Pentecostals found it very difficult to accept the Neo-Pentecostals, and even more difficult to accept the Catholic Pentecostals. For ten years I have not had any official cooperation from Pentecostal leaders.” When speaking of the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America, he expressed a glowing hope: “What a glorious day it will be when this Fellowship opens up to all that are baptized in the Holy Spirit from all church and denominations. When that day comes I shall begin to look forward to the day when the Pentecostal World Conference will be open for all that are Baptized in the Holy Spirit. Then we shall learn to know the true unity in the Spirit.…”

These assertions raise serious problems. Perhaps the writer did not say exactly what he meant to say. First, the statement is highly divisive because while it professes to aim toward Christian unity, that unity is limited to those who have been baptized in the Spirit and have spoken in tongues. This leaves out multitudes of true believers who have not spoken in tongues, even those who believe they have been filled with the Spirit but for whom there have been no tongues. It excludes “Classical Pentecostalists” who believe in tongues but have not experienced them. A fellowship that is “open for all that are Baptized in the Holy Spirit” is, obviously, closed to those who have not been. It comes down to this: Tongues are seen as normative and speaking in tongues becomes the test for true fellowship and unity. Is it not instructive that Jesus Christ might be excluded from such a fellowship too? He was filled with the Holy Spirit from conception and the Holy Spirit was present at his baptism, but there is no evidence that he ever spoke in a tongue.

The Assemblies of God, one of the large Pentecostal bodies, has never permitted its views on baptism in the Spirit with tongues to become a test of fellowship in its churches or outside them. This group has long been an honored member of the National Association of Evangelicals and has fruitfully labored with non-tongues-speaking groups. The Assemblies’ general superintendent, Thomas F. Zimmerman, was on the central committee of the U. S. Congress on Evangelism. As late as August of this year the denomination issued a statement on the charismatic movement in which the emphasis was properly placed. The statement said: “It is important that we find our way in a sound scriptural path, avoiding the extremes of an ecumenism that compromises scriptural principles and an exclusivism that excludes true Christians.”

What has been said about the problems that arise for Roman Catholic charismatics must also be applied to theological liberals who have spoken in tongues. This does not mean they have suddenly become theologically orthodox. For them as for anybody else the test of “the doctrine of Christ in the spirit of Christ” must be applied. No matter how many tongues a man speaks or how many times he does it, if his doctrine is defective, his tongues will not sanctify his aberration. The baptism in the Spirit cannot serve as a cover for heterodox belief or sanctify the denial of scriptural truth.

Classic Pentecostalism with few exceptions has always been evangelical in its theological position. Its adherents have taken the Bible to be the trustworthy Word of God. They have always adhered to the truths that are to be found in the historic confessions of evangelical groups through the centuries. The doctrine that has given Pentecostalism its uniqueness has been that of baptism in the Holy Spirit with tongues as the sign. Non-Pentecostal evangelicals, even those who accept the gift of tongues as the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit who bestows that or any other charismatic gift as he pleases and wills, believe that Christians are baptized by the Spirit when they are justified and regenerated, and that tongues are not a necessary sign of that baptism. They believe that Christians should be filled with the Spirit, but while tongues are not ruled out, they are not considered essential to the Spirit-filled life.

It is quite unlikely that there ever will be full agreement one way or the other about tongues and baptism in the Spirit. Those who believe in it can and should be expected not only to practice this view but also to propagate it. No evangelical need feel threatened by this emphasis because he has not spoken in tongues. If he is convinced from Scripture that he has the fullness of the Spirit without tongues, there is no reason for him to doubt it. If he is inclined toward the Pentecostal viewpoint, let him by all means seek both the baptism and tongues. But let those who have experienced tongues remember that there are Christians who have not had this experience who are filled with the joy of the Lord, experience his presence daily, and exhibit his power and love.

After the Great Awakening in New England, Jonathan Edwards wrote his classic work on religious affections. He saw the hand of Satan both in the revival and in those who fought against it; Satan sowed tares both ways to undo a true work of Christ. Edwards believed in religious affections, i.e., “experimental religion” that would surely include the Pentecostal aspect. He believed that testing the spirits is of the essence of experimental religion and so he argued, “The conduct of Christians in the world is to be guided by three demands. First, behavior must be in conformity with Christian rules; secondly, the ‘practice of religion’ must be the chief occupation of life; and thirdly, one must persist in this practice till the end of his earthly days” (Jonathan Edwards: A Profile, edited by David Levin, Hill and Wang, 1969, p. 207). If those three demands are met, both those who speak in tongues and those who do not need have no fear when they stand before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

The opening chapters of Matthew and of Luke explicitly teach the virgin birth of Christ. When the best attested text is accurately translated, these two passages bear clear testimony that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

According to the First Gospel, an angel of the Lord guided Joseph to take unto himself Mary his wife by applying to her problem pregnancy the messianic prophecies of Psalm 130:8 and Isaiah 7:14. The Third Gospel gives Mary’s account of the things she treasured up in her heart concerning God’s miraculous dealings with her. The Spirit uses these two independent witnesses to bring many to receive this as God’s authentic Word.

Some people reason that since Paul and John, the chief New Testament expounders of the faith, never mention the virgin birth, one is free to disregard or to reject it. I invite them to reread Paul and John, for I am convinced that what is explicit in Matthew and Luke is implicit in Paul and John.

We all find the substance of our faith in the Fatherhood of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. And the beginning of God’s revelation of himself as Father to and through Christ is found in this: that through the virgin birth God was Jesus’ sole Abba, Father.

Both explicitly and implicitly, the New Testament community, led by Jesus, testifies to the incarnation of God wrought through the virgin birth of Christ. Thereafter this conviction is expressed by the representative fathers, Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, in the eucharistic service of The Apostolic Tradition, in The Odes of Solomon, in the Te Deum Laudamus, as in the creeds, and in Tatian’s harmony (Diatessaron).

The things that “the eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered unto us” (Luke 1:2) they delivered unto Paul as truly as they did unto Luke. The close contacts between Paul and Luke recorded in the New Testament and echoed in the early Church indicate a give and take between these brethren; one would certainly share such an important matter with the other. (See also my article, “A Restudy of the Virgin Birth,” Evangelical Quarterly, October–December, 1965.)

Paul: The Argument From Silence

Let us look more closely at the argument from silence. Reasoning from silence is always precarious. But if it is to be applied by those who reject the virgin birth, it may also be used by those who defend the reality of this event.

Paul speaks of the birth of Jesus four times. Jesus was made or born of the seed of David according to the flesh, Romans 1:3; he was made or born of a woman, Galatians 4:4 (“the son of a human mother,” Today’s English Version); he was made or born under the law, Galatians 4:4; and he was made or born in the likeness of men, Philippians 2:7.

Two different verbs in the Greek are rendered in recent versions “born.” In the cases referring to Jesus’ birth, Paul uses the one and avoids the other. He uses forms of the verb ginomai, which means born in the sense of come into being, become, made. The King James Version renders this world “made” in each case.

The other verb, gennao, is also translated “born.” This other verb has the connotation of begotten and is often rendered “begat.” As Professor Raymond E. Brown has noted (The Gospel According toJohn, 1:12), “although the verb can mean ‘born’ … the idea of agency implied in ‘begotten’ is clearly more appropriate.” It so regularly implies a human father that any exception calls for an explanation. Thus when Matthew 1:16 speaks of Jesus’ being begotten of Mary, verse 20 promptly makes it clear that this was a begetting of the Holy Spirit, not by a human father.

In Galatians 4:23 and 4:29, Paul uses this other verb, gennao, to assert that Ishmael was born, begotten, according to the flesh, and that Isaac was born, begotten, according to the promise. In the same fourth chapter of Galatians Paul twice speaks of the birth of Jesus. In doing so he avoids using the verb gennao, which carries the connotation of begotten and ordinarily implies a human father. This chapter refers to four different kinds of births—Ishmael begotten according to the flesh, Isaac begotten according to the promise, Jesus born, made of a human mother, and our rebirth by the Spirit of adoption.

The description of our sonship as wrought by “the Spirit of his Son” reaches its full implication only on the assumption that the Spirit acted in his most eminent way in God’s sending forth his own Son, as the son of a human mother. That is, as Hans Küng says, “the existence of Jesus Christ Himself is already grounded in the being and action of the Holy Spirit (conceptus de Spiritu Sancto)” (Justification, p. 82). Analogies of this tremendous miracle are seen in God’s mighty works in making us sons of the Father and Isaac’s being born according to God’s promise.

If one is to press the argument from silence: Paul four times asserts the birth of Jesus, including the assertion that God’s own Son was born, made, of a human mother; but four times Paul avoids asserting the birth of Jesus by means of a human begetting.

Scholars place the three passages in which Paul four times mentions the birth of Jesus as texts that the Apostle is quoting from his predecessors. Three years after his conversion Paul went to Jerusalem to inquire of the primitive disciples about Christ. He spent fifteen days with Cephas (Peter) and conferred also with James, the Lord’s brother (Gal. 1:18). Certainly, Cephas and James were among the primary eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word “who delivered unto us”—that is, to Paul as well as to Luke—“the things which have taken place among us.” Now since Paul’s four references to Jesus’ birth with their avoidance of the verb gennao come from the same pre-Pauline sources as do the data of the pre-Lucan birth accounts, it seems proper to interpret the one in accord with the other. This means that Paul’s avoidance of a verb that implies a human father is to be understood in the light of Luke’s account of His virgin birth. And conversely, during Paul’s visit to Peter the data of the birth narratives could well have been “delivered unto us”—that is, to Paul and later by him to Luke.

This only makes the case stronger. Both Paul and his predecessors taught that Jesus was made or born of a human mother, but never suggested a begetting by a human father. As he had no divine mother, so also he had no human father.

John: The Argument From Analogy

The Gospel of John is not as silent on the virgin birth as is sometimes asserted. Two of the oldest Latin fathers, Irenaeus (Against Heresies, III, xvi, 2; xix, 2) and Tertullian (On the Flesh of Christ, xix) quote John 1:13 in the singular. Tertullian charges the Valentinian Gnostics with changing this text into the plural. In the singular, the text reads: “To those who believe on the Name of Him who was begotten not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a husband—but of God.” Since there are no known Greek manuscripts of this verse as old as these Latin fathers, several of the ablest scholars, such as Theodor Zahn, C. C. Torrey, and Oscar Cullmann, regard the singular as the original reading. And, of course, the rendering of the verse in the singular is a direct reference to the virgin birth of Christ.

In any case, the use of the singular shows that the plural of the Greek manuscripts is built upon the analogy of Jesus’ virgin birth. And the analogy implies the fact. As he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, so Christians are born from above not of a human father but of the Spirit, as is set forth in John 3:5 and in the common reading of John 1:13.

Abba: Jesus’ Father

In his first recorded sentence, Jesus affirmed that his Father was not Joseph but God (Luke 2:49). This is the more significant when we realize that Jesus was using for Father the nursery term, Abba, Daddy, Pappa, which the little brothers and sisters used for Joseph. Evidently as the younger children came—James, Joses, Juda, Simon, and the sisters—Mary told Jesus the facts of life concerning these little ones and the special case of his own conception as we have it in Luke. Likewise from Joseph came the Matthean story of how an angel of the Lord assured him that the babe Mary was carrying was of the Holy Spirit, not of any human father. With these accounts the Father who reveals himself to babes (Luke 10:21) gave his Holy Spirit to bear witness with Jesus that God was his only Abba.

Though it brought opprobrium upon him, Jesus continued to call no man on earth his Father, knowing that his Father was in heaven (Matt. 23:9). For this he was derided as “the son of Mary” (Mark 6:3), “a glutton and a wine-bibber, a friend of tax-collectors and outcasts” (Matt. 11:19; Luke 7:34; 5:30; 15:2). To His affirmations, “I am from above,” “I am not of this world” (John 8:23), his critics replied, “You are a Samaritan and have a devil” (8:48) but “we were not born of fornication” (8:41). He endured the mockery that went with confessing no human father so that we might abide in the everlasting arms of the heavenly Father.

In the Nazareth home, to and through this Son whose only Abba was God, the gracious Father revealed himself as One who delights to hear and answer the prayers of his children. The heavenly Father is more ready to give good gifts, even his Holy Spirit, to his children than Mary to give bread—not a stone—to little James, or Joseph to give an egg—not a scorpion—in answer to Juda’s request (Luke 11:9–13). The story of the friend knocking at midnight is told from the inside, as though it were Joseph who first refused to open and later relented and gave the neighbor as many loaves as he needed (Luke 11:5–9). And even the widow and the unjust judge could well be Mary asking justice from one who was defrauding her of the payment due Joseph (Luke 18:1–8). It would seem that the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer took their embryonic form when Jesus was the baby sitter in the Nazareth nursery and, after Joseph passed on, when Jesus became “the Carpenter,” that is, the breadwinner for the family. Twenty out of twenty-one of Jesus’ recorded prayers are addressed to God as his Father.

The revelation of God as our Father shines through every part of Jesus’ ministry. In the Sermon on the Mount, the eye of the Father is upon every facet of life. In the parable, the arms of the Father are ever open to receive the prodigal, and his heart humble enough to go out and invite the elder brother to come in (Luke 15:11–32). Some 171 times the Gospels place the word “Father” upon Jesus’ lips, five times in the two verses of Luke 10:21, 22. In the agonies of Gethsemane he stayed himself on the will of his loving Abba (Mark 14:36). He died praying, Father, forgive; Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit (Luke 23:34, 46). The word of the Risen Lord is: “I ascend to my Father and your Father” (John 20:17).

Out of the glory he had with the Father before the world was (John 17:5), the eternal Son came to reveal the Father of whom every fatherhood in heaven and earth is named (Eph. 3:15). And the virgin birth of Christ is the beginning of this gracious revelation of himself as Father that God made to and through Jesus, and to whom the Holy Spirit bears witness as he enables us (Rom. 8:15, 16) to pray Abba, our Father who art in heaven.

THE LOWLY ETERNAL

Once more the pageant has been seen:

Once more the miracle has come.

We who donned burlap and gauze

Have worn silk:

We who are penniless

Have given gold.

Mere men,

We have been shepherds and angels,

Prophets and kings:

What is more,

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We have mingled as friends.

Is there no end

To what the Child can do?

No end!

CHARLES A. WAUGAMAN

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

Few experiences in life are more tragic than missing something important when there was no real need to miss it. Yet that is the experience of many, many people. It is the experience of those who missed the first Christmas, and also of those who miss Christmas today.

The first of the men who missed Christmas was the innkeeper. The Bible does not mention this man explicitly. Probably by the time the story of the birth of Jesus Christ was put into writing no one remembered who he was; there was no reason to remember him. Still there certainly was an innkeeper, for when the Bible tells us that Mary “brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7), the verse implies the existence of this man. The point of the reference is that in the hustle and bustle of the season the innkeeper missed the most important birth in history.

He should not have missed it, of course. He should not have missed it simply because he was so close to it. The decree of the Emperor Augustus brought the family of Jesus to his town, Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph stood on his doorstep, perhaps even entered his waiting room, stood before his desk. The child was born in his stable, almost under his nose. And yet his preoccupation with his business kept him from it.

This dramatized account of the innkeeper’s reasoning comes from a recent book by the distinguished American writer Frederick Buechner:

“I speak to you as men of the world,” said the Innkeeper. “Not as idealists but as realists. Do you know what it is like to run an inn—to run a business, a family, to run anything in this world for that matter, even your own life? It is like being lost in a forest of a million trees,” said the Innkeeper, “and each tree is a thing to be done. Is there fresh linen on all the beds? Did the children put on their coats before they went out? Has the letter been written, the book read? Is there money enough left in the bank? Today we have food in our bellies and clothes on our backs, but what can we do to make sure that we will have them still tomorrow? A million trees. A million things.… Finally we have eyes for nothing else, and whatever we see turns into a thing” [The Magnificent Defeat, pp. 66, 67].

The world is filled with such persons today—materialistic men, women, and children who miss the meaning of Christmas simply because their business, parties, Christmas cards, trees, and tinsel seem too pressing. Were this not so, there would not be so many grim faces in our stores or so many tired people in our churches in December.

Do not think that the Christmas story is merely speaking to non-Christians at this point. It is probably not speaking to them much at all. Who would berate Caesar Augustus for missing Christmas? He was too far away. There was no possibility of his finding it. No one would berate the Greeks or countless others. The story speaks rather to Christians, for they are the ones who should take note of the birth of Christ deeply and yet often do not.

A number of years ago a minister named A. W. Tozer was concerned about the feverish materialism of Christians in our age. He wrote this about it:

Every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all [The Pursuit of God, p. 17].

He added,

If we would find God amid all the religious externals we must first determine to find him, and then proceed in the way of simplicity. Now as always God discovers himself to “babes” and hides himself in thick darkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach to him.

The second man who missed Christmas was Herod, king of Judaea, or, to put it more accurately, an underking of a border province of the far-flung Roman empire. There was nothing likable about Herod. He was a sly old fox, guilty of murdering many, including at least one wife and three sons. He probably had no religion and was a cynic. He knew the traditions of Israel, but he only half believed them if he believed them at all. Yet he should have found Christmas, if only because he had such a large stake in the outcome.

Matthew is the one who tells us Herod’s story. Herod was at home in Jerusalem when news reached him that wise men had come from the east. They were asking where they could find the king of the Jews, the one born recently. Herod was well aware that they were talking about the Messiah, and he knew of no Messiah. Talk like that was dangerous. Herod therefore called the religious leaders to find out where the future king should be born. After he had found out he called the wise men themselves and persuaded them to report to him if their search in Bethlehem proved fruitful.

“Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also” (Matt. 2:8). It was a sly maneuver; murder, not worship, was in the old king’s heart. It was a great pity also, for Herod knew of the birth, knew its significance. He missed it through the encrusted habit of greed and self-interest.

Today many people miss practically everything good in life because of greed and self-interest. They miss friendship, beauty, love, good times, and happiness. And many miss Jesus. Jesus said, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36.) Real self-interest lies in finding the one who loves us and died to be our Saviour.

There was another group of persons who missed Christmas. These were the religious leaders, the chief priests and the scribes. They of all men should not have missed the birth of Christ, for they had the Scriptures. They were the ones who could tell Herod where the Christ was to be born. They knew it was in Bethlehem. Yet they did not leave their own homes or the palace to investigate his arrival.

What kept these men from going along with the wise men? We do not know for certain, of course. But it might have been their pride in the fact that Herod had called them instead of others and that they had been able to give the right answer to his question.

We see this in the religious world. There are sectors of the Church in which almost any Bible question will receive a right answer. Yet in many of these places there is no real hunger after God; the vital, joyous, and rewarding reality of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ is lacking. Knowing the content of the Bible is not enough. To be all that God intends him to be, a person must see beyond the Book to its Author.

Yet though many did not find Christmas, some did. They were not the thousands who were engrossed in the countless details of materialistic lives. They were just poor people who were looking to God and to whom God came.

The shepherds, for instance, were not important in the social structure of the ancient East. Most people thought poorly of them. They were not even able to testify in a court of law, for their testimony was considered unreliable. And yet they saw the angels. The wise men also found Christmas. They were not even Jews—and everybody knew that God’s promised salvation was of the Jews. Yet the wise men saw the star. Finally there were those like Simeon and Anna, poor but saintly people who like many others “looked for redemption in Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38). No one would have given a second thought to these poor people. They were not important. Yet they saw and even held God’s treasure.

Why did these people find Christmas? The first answer is that they were honest enough to admit their need of a Saviour. The self-sufficient would never have made the trip to the manger; they do not do it today. These people knew they needed a Saviour. Second, they were also humble enough to receive the Lord Jesus Christ when he came. No doubt there were levels of comprehension. Perhaps the shepherds, or the wise men, or even Simeon and Anna did not understand very much. But whatever they understood they received, for we are told in each case that they praised God for the birth of the Lord.

The wise men, whether they be shepherds or magi, are the ones who acknowledge their need and humble themselves enough to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour. These, and only these, find Christmas.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

I returned recently from a trip that took me through Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, and Israel. Of these four countries, Egypt left me the most depressed. I visited former King Farouk’s summer palace in Alexandria on the shores of the Mediterranean. It is a magnificent structure that served to highlight by contrast the dirt, disease, and great poverty that abound in this country of 34 million people.

Egypt’s population growth rate is such that by 2000 it will have at least doubled in numbers, even though it cannot adequately support its present populace. While the people suffer, the nation spends its resources to gird its loins militarily against Israel. It would be far better for Egypt to dismantle its army, settle for peace, since no one is going to invade Egypt or would want to, and get down to the important business of solving its internal social and economic problems for the benefit of a people whom the visitor cannot help liking and whose deprivations rend the heart.

While away we received news of the instant accidental death of Floyd Sharp, daughter Nancy’s father-in-law, who lived in Congerville, Illinois. He was taken in the prime of life, a thing that is always difficult to understand. We are thrust back in simple faith to believe that all things work together for good

If you are one of the fortunate people who know the writings of Isak Dinesen you have come to appreciate her wry (or is it pixie?) way of looking at love and life. She has a way of getting inside things that the rest of us miss until she shows us the way.

There is, for example, that wonderful analysis of a bullfight in which she looks at it from the viewpoint of the bull. Having been pampered all his life he is suddenly rushed out into the ring, surrounded by a howling mob, subjected to many indignities and severe pain. Given a chance to take a breather he muses to himself, “What a run of bad luck.” Surely, the bull believes, God can’t let a thing like this go on and so will shortly intervene. God does not. The end of the matter is death in the afternoon, and the program continues with another bull, as if the first bull had never existed. It is, willy-nilly, a bullfight, and that is the way a bullfight is, and that is the way a bullfight ends.

One gets the impression sometimes these days that we are having “a run of bad luck,” that we have been caught in a series of painful circ*mstances for which we have no clue, that the end of the matter could be death—and that the show will go on whether we like it or not.

What a run of bad luck those Olympics were; there was enough irony abroad to give a Greek classicist material for a lifetime. There was an air of strangeness about the way sprint men could miss a heat, a marvelous miler and a marvelous man could just plain fall down, the sweetest little girl in the world could come out of nowhere in Russia and win the hearts of friends or enemies of Russia all over the world (what kind of a society produces a girl like that?), and a basketball game could end in panic and protest.

In a way I could hardly stand the Olympics. Sports mean a lot to me—it’s disturbing to see them treated carelessly, or politically, or, as it developed, tragically. All the strange twists compounded finally in the death of the Israeli athletes, not to forget the deaths as well of the terrorists. And in and around it all, as millions watched, there was the hopeless feeling that the whole thing couldn’t be salvaged: you can’t rerun the film and change the plot. All things ought to work out well in the end, but we know that they don’t have to—and in fact, they often don’t. As Isak Dinesen remarked regarding the bullfight and the poor old bull, “Lo, a bullfight.” That, in short, is the way things are. There is something awry in the basic structure.

“It is given to man once to die,” and lest I be accused of insensitivity or hardness of heart, may I digress to quote a few words from C. S. Lewis in the preface to The Problem of Pain: “No one can say ‘He jests at scars who never felt a wound,’ for I have never for one moment been in a state of mind to which even the imagination of serious pain was less than intolerable.” The idea of death is to me intolerable, primarily, I think, as I try to think about it, because I can’t think of life going on without me (what egotism). By this I really mean, I guess, that I cannot think of life at all without my being alive. And I suspect that however a man makes a deal with the fact of death, he never quite releases himself from the horror of what may be the manner of his death, fast or slow, conscious pain, lingering horror, paralysis, fright, the darkness—write your own script; I know you’ve thought about it in the lonely night watches.

One of our worst ideas is the belief that somehow there is some way to get even, to pay back in kind for what has happened to us. The way to get back at the Black September gang is for the Israelis to run on up into Lebanon and kill sixty people and push some houses around. That hardly evens the score, however you keep score (almost as bad as judging points in an Olympic boxing match), and it leaves unanswered the fact that on the same day gunmen stepped into a club in St. Croix and gunned down eight people for no reason at all. How can one get even for that by shooting down an equal number of the enemy?

The question is, who is the enemy? Are the Israelis of a mind to believe that they can get even by shooting all the Arabs, about two and a half million Israelis evening the score with a hundred and twenty million Arabs? And which Arabs? And just how does one go about such a program? One gathers that it will have to be done by pulling in billions of Americans, Russians, and Chinese. Meanwhile over a million people have been killed in the Sudan (the press has hardly touched that one), and both the Arabs and the Israelis were in that one on one side or the other. If an American gang (call them what you will) should shoot up a lot of people in Persia, for example, just how would the Persians go about getting even—and with which one of us—for that? The whole Arab world is so amorphous, the statistical odds so uneven, that one hardly knows where to start, even assuming his motives are pure, which they are not.

We went through the same kind of nonsense in the settling of our own country. One tribe of Indians was massacred because another tribe engaged in a massacre, and with great sadness it was all buried at Wounded Knee. If we add skyjackings, muggings, exploding letters, and death on the highways, and mix it up a little with oil rights and national pride, just what solutions do we have in mind? Not easy ones, surely.

Lo, a bullfight. This is a lost world, and redemption comes only by a cross, His cross as a starting place and undergirding all other possibilities of the crosses of discipleship we are willing to take up. But there is no such thing as a crossless Christianity, much as we would like some gimmick or utopian program to serve instead. The whole business of the cross has to do with sin, and not some lesser unfortunate matter. And the crux of the matter is that it is a warfare to the death, the death of sin or the death of this life we choose to lead. The marks of Satan are abroad: subtlety, irony, lies, cruelty, a deep irrationalism undermining all our schemes, absurdity, despair. And would you believe it—if you want a crowd to turn out on a sophisticated college campus, announce that you are going to speak on demons!

Evangelist Leighton Ford continued his innovative ways in mass evangelism at last month’s ten-day “Reachout” in Lansing, Michigan. Social-action committees worked with the needy and elderly, and set up booths in shopping malls both to communicate the Gospel and to help people with personal needs. Clusters gathered nightly at the Reachout “Help” table to ask about jobs, social services for family problems, help with drug addiction, and other matters. Some were simply lonely.

Seven “worlds” were created to bring together Christians in the vocational worlds of education, press and media, construction, real estate and insurance, finance, government, and manufacturing. The aim is that believers come up with not only a strategy for promotion of the Gospel but also a Christian life-style within their vocation realms.

His every move magnified on a twelve-foot video screen behind him, Ford explained to the crowds at the 5,000-seat Civic Center that man must reach out to God in faith and to others in Christian love. Not minimizing the need to be born again, he proclaimed man’s social need as well. One night black evangelist Tom Skinner joined Ford to amplify that theme.

Prior to the Reachout, Ford spent several days talking to students on the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing, and associates visited high schools in the area. In connection with Ford’s MSU visit, Christian collegians mounted a week-long campus thrust to reach the school’s 40,000 students. Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox believers took the Billy Graham organization’s counselor-training classes, engaged in personal evangelism on campus, and handed out nearly 40,000 copies of the “Big Ten” edition of the Good News for Modern Man New Testament.

“Brother, it’s the Good News,” proclaimed a Catholic as he gave away a copy. At the distribution table his priest, feverishly unpacking more boxes, grinned and said, “This is beautiful; we can’t keep up with the demand.” An Israeli grad student took his free copy, then asked for fifteen more to distribute to friends. Muslim students gladly accepted, too. (The Christian students had raised $5,000 to purchase half the New Testaments; the American Bible Society donated the other eight tons.)

As part of the outreach, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship circulated its multi-media production Twentyonehundred around the dorms. Folk singer John Fisher and black evangelist Ralph Bell, both with the Ford team, also drew campus crowds. Later, at the Civic Center meetings, three-fourths of the 515 counselors were under 25, and the majority of the 600 first-decision-makers were youths, including about seventy MSU students.

Nearly 200 churches and groups backed the campaign, led by chairman Howard Lyman, pastor of Lansing’s Central Methodist Church. Brief television commentaries and testimonies initiated during the Reachout will go on.

Despite the visibility of blacks at leadership level and Ford’s emphasis on social action, comparatively few blacks participated in the Reachout. Black minister Raymond L. Coleman, the crusade’s prayer chairman, was disappointed at the sparse showing. For one thing, blacks are not oriented to the highly polished organizational structures and time schedules, he explained. But he also lashed out at black leaders who were “too busy with social issues to get involved spiritually.”

“The races must come together in Christ,” declared Coleman. “We must lose our identities and petty differences so that we can share together in Christ. We must stop trying to be missionaries to each other and instead show the world that we love each other as we work together.”

Cry 3:

Journey From Plastic City

Sight. Sound. Spirit. That’s CRY 3, a Clear Light production.

The forty-five-minute sound track of rock music (featuring such singers as Cliff Richard, Shawn Phillips, Paul Stookey, and the Byrds) is synchronized with black-and-white and color slides (six slide projectors are used with a special multiple-fade-dissolve unit) as the production explores the anguished cry of despair and loneliness of alienated youth, adults, and elderly. But CRY 3 doesn’t leave us with despair.

TEARFUL RECOLLECTION

An American missionary imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II met his prison-camp commandant for the first time in twenty-eight years during special ceremonies at a Christian retreat near Kyoto, Japan. The two—mission executive Joseph M. Smith of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and Rokuro Tomibe, now a Kyoto businessman—recalled old times.

Tomibe was commander of a camp in the Philippines holding 500 Americans, among them Smith, his wife, and their baby. He had put Smith in charge of the vegetable garden. Tomibe was later fired for being too lenient with his prisoners. (He had permitted considerable freedom, even allowing several couples to be married and offering Japanese rice wine for the celebrations.) Eventually, Tomibe was interned by American forces.

The meeting between the pair was initiated by Smith and was marked by an exchange of gifts—and by tears. During the service, Smith made Tomibe an honorary member of the church, explaining: “You’re a better Christian than I am.”

The multimedia festival starts with Genesis: “And it was good,” chant the people. “But something went wrong,” echoes voice after voice, as we see ravaged and ravishing nature, the predators and their prey. The screen fades into the cry of dehumanized personality. We see no people in this sequence, just mannequins with empty stares and beautiful clothes—our plastic society, our material wasteland.

The journey out of plasticity begins. Real people with twisted faces and agonized features are searching for reality, for freedom. Drugs and hypodermic needles flash on the screen, but only for a few seconds, a symbol of the dead end they lead to.

The isolation we see and the desperation we feel shocks us into painful awareness of our situation as a voice moans, “Where do we go from here?” Muhammad, Buddha, Confucius have no answers. But Jesus, the man who claimed to be God, claims to be man’s answer. As the screen considers Christ’s claims, we hear a song of “reflections.”

“Between reflections I must choose,” intones the singer. The two reflections—himself (“a fool”) or “a man I could not face,” a man with nailprinted hands and wounded side. That man “was in my place,” and the singer succumbs to Jesus.

The production ends as it begins—with nature, but a nature at peace as God intended it before man scarred himself and his world. The eschatological implications, silently yet profoundly stated, lead into the final frame: “What will you do … with Jesus?”

Two-year-old Clear Light Productions, a seven-person, Boston-based company, has found one of the most vital media through which to communicate Jesus’ vital claims. The creative editing and packaging make this multimedia show one to rival the best secular productions. (The largest marketing agency in Boston agrees and has booked CRY 3 into colleges across the country.) The company is also producing Because I Am, a two-hour, feature-length, movie-slide film, with a rock-music sound track (the album will be out soon).

Founders Don Andreson and Dave Bliss, both in their twenties, graduated from Princeton University (Andreson also attended Wheaton College) and served as interns with Africa Evangelism (Andreson returned to South Africa for a short term as a missionary in urban evangelism). They attend Park Street Church in Boston. The organization should have a great future in media work. Just such a company of talented, committed evangelicals has long been needed in the fields of sight and sound to present Jesus to a spirit-hungry culture. CRY 3 is a show to attend more than once.

CHERYL FORBES

A Bow To Science

One of the most serious outbreaks of paralytic polio in the United States in seven years has hit a Christian Science school in Connecticut. Eleven students were given medical treatment, and the other 119 were vaccinated.

Christian Science officials said the medical procedures do not represent a shift in church policy. They said Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the sect, provided that where faced with laws demanding vaccination, church members should bow to the law.

The disease hit Daycroft School, a private institute officials describe as serving children of Christian Scientists but not affiliated with the church. Connecticut law requires polio immunization in state schools but exempts private schools. School officials said that although most students had not been immunized, parents did not object to the current crash program.

Peking’S Protestants

Tucked away in the heart of Peking is the only Protestant church serving mainland China’s capital. Known as the Rice Market Street Church and located on the upper floor of a two-story building, it is operated by the Peking Protestant Society. The society was formed in 1958 by the merger of all Protestant denominations in China.

News of the church came in a report filed to the Toronto Globe and Mail by its Peking correspondent. The church had been closed to foreigners since the outbreak of the cultural revolution in the mid-1960s, reopening to all comers last Easter.

The half-hour long service has no sermon, though Scripture readings, prayers, and a brief exhortation from the altar are allowed. According to the report, services have a “Methodist” tinge in their lack of ceremony. The minister, Yin Chi-chen, said there are about 500 Protestants in Peking. “Not all come to church,” says Chi-chen, but services are held frequently, sometimes four or five a week, depending on the demand. Sole support of the ministry comes from donations placed in a box at the rear of the church.

Finding Christ In Kabul

Curious Afghanis gathered at Kalga Lake outside Kabul, Afghanistan, recently to view the first known public Christian baptisms in their country. Those baptized were mostly long-haired American and European “world travelers.” It may be a long time before any Afghanis take the public step. Their militantly Muslim kingdom prescribes capital punishment for any who convert to another religion.

The sole Christian church in the land exists as a repaid favor to the memory of President Eisenhower (see January 7 issue, page 46). Its pastor is Christy Wilson, an American Presbyterian. His congregation in Kabul consists entirely of members in the international English-speaking community. The church was nearly always filled last summer as 100 or so long-hairs joined the regulars for worship.

An estimated 150,000 per year travel the hippie trail through Afghanistan. Drugs are cheap. A habit that costs $100 a day in New York can be maintained for less than $1 a day in Kabul. Many run out of money while on the road and are left stranded in Kabul during winter months. Scores died last winter from drug overdoses and malnutrition. Others, arrested for possession of drugs, languish for months in jail. They must rely on friends outside; no food is provided.

Uli Köhler, Dieter Bofinger, and Wolfgang Altrauter were among a band of young Germans stranded. They found help at an evangelistic teahouse and drug rehabilitation center run by independent missionary Floyd McClung and a team of youthful associates. The German youths also found Christ there. Köhler and Bofinger have returned to Germany to make restitution (they face draft and drug charges).

A number of converts have stayed on to assist with outreach in Kabul, but several moved east to Katmandu, Nepal, to help worker Harry Schaumburg in a center there. McClung envisions similar outposts in Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and India. In several of these countries, morphine pills manufactured by a German firm can be purchased over the counter at $3 for twenty pills. Sources say the Afghan government, impressed with McClung’s rehabilitation success, is quietly looking the other way as he goes about his evangelistic chores. American embassy personnel often refer stranded youths to the teahouse.

THE LORD HATH PROVIDED

When the professors at the fundamentalist San Francisco Baptist Seminary were hired, they were promised by contract that their salaries would be paid “as the Lord provides.” The school fell behind in payments, and earlier this year a policy clash ripped the ranks from students and constituency to the administration and faculty. Five of the seven full-time professors either quit or were fired—minus their back pay.

The Lord has not provided, explained President Arno Q. Weniger at a state labor department hearing. He pointed to a bank balance of only $3.10. But professors introduced evidence of a $4,000 fund drive to help move in faculty replacements. “It is our responsibility to pay the moving expenses of these [new] teachers,” commented G. Archer Weniger, board chairman and brother of the president.

The claimants should have been paid first, ruled the labor unit in ordering the Wenigers to pay the nearly $15,000 they owed. Remarked labor commissioner Marie Monti: “When assets are acquired, whether before or after wages accrue, the Lord has truly provided within the meaning of the contract.”

Next case.

McClung expects fifty young people will be on hand to help in the ministry this winter. Their ranks will be swelled by several hundred volunteers next summer, many of whom will hit the hippie trail themselves and try to get those gospel outposts set up.

DON STEPHENS

Bishops Aye Women

The ordination of women, one of the most controversial issues on the agenda for next September’s biennial convention of the 3.2-million-member Episcopal Church, was endorsed at last month’s meeting of the Episcopal House of Bishops. Although some dioceses have announced opposition to the move, more than two-thirds of the church’s bishops after a two-hour debate voted for ordination of women.

Only five bishops, among them San Francisco’s C. Kilmer Myers, voted against the statement. Myers is considered a possible candidate for presiding bishop to replace John E. Hines, who announced he will retire in 1974. Myers led the heated debate, warning the church against swallowing “the notion of Christ as a unisex being.… We have a questioning of Christ’s uniqueness because he was male.”

Since 1970 women have been allowed to preach, teach, and administer as deacons, but have been barred from serving holy communion and baptism.

Religion In Transit

In a Wall Street Journal interview, an Internal Revenue Service commissioner denied claims that the IRS harasses churches and religious organizations that oppose government policies. “Churches are the least-checked group in America,” he says.

A mock election at Gordon-Conwell Seminary netted McGovern and Nixon 127 votes each. Jesus got one. There were 141 who favored immediate withdrawal from South Viet Nam, and thirty-four supported legalization and sale of marijuana to adults.

The Girl Scout promise has been revised. Instead of “On my honor, I will try to do my duty to God and my country …” it now reads: “On my honor, I will try to serve God, my country and mankind.…”

Jaramogi Adebe Agyeman, better known as Albert B. Cleage, Jr., black United Church of Christ minister in Detroit, has organized the Black Christian Nationalist Church, Incorporated, and installed himself as national chairman of the new denomination.

At its thirty-fifth annual meeting, the Christian Business Men’s Committee International reported that forty-seven new local chapters were added last year to its 650 units around the world.

Millions of copies of One Nation Under God by Norman Vincent Peale have been given to school children by Peale’s Foundation for Christian Living. The booklet explains the role of religion in American history.

Personalia

Glenn C. Taylor, 37, Ontario Bible College dean, was elected president of the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada. In a first, the vice-presidential post went to a French Canadian, pastor Yvon Hurtubise of Drummondville, Quebec.

English Baptist minister Arthur Dixon, formerly youth director of Yonge Street Mission in Toronto, is the new director of Shantymen’s Christian Association, an interfaith ministry to the hundreds of remote mining and lumber camps in Canada and northern United States.

Evangelist-healer Kathryn Kuhlman and Pope Paul VI exchanged gifts in Rome last month, according to a news source.

John Erickson, former University of Wisconsin basketball coach and general manager of the Milwaukee Bucks, is now executive director of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

Founder-president Donald E. Hoke of the Tokyo Christian College has moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, to make ready for the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization, of which he is co-ordinating director.

Stephen Slocum left his post as general director of the American Tract Society to become executive assistant to President John Walvoord at Dallas Seminary. The seminary, enjoying a record enrollment, has embarked on a major campus-expansion program.

Editor J. Martin Bailey of the United Church Herald will take over editorship of A.D., a merger of the Herald and Presbyterian Life. The latter’s editor, Robert Cadigan, will retire next month. A.D. has 620,000 United Presbyterian subscribers and 80,000 United Church subscribers.

World Scene

Biblical Theological Institute, the first Assemblies of God Bible school in Yugoslavia, opened last month in Zagreb with eighteen students. It is the eighth Pentecostal Bible school in Europe. The largest is five-year-old Continental Bible College in Brussels, with fifty students from twenty-seven nations.

Following protests by Christian young people in Denmark and the publication of a British report on p*rnography that reflects unfavorably on the Scandinavian country, Copenhagen police closed most of the city’s live sex shows.

Opposed by their government, thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses have fled from Malawi to Zambia and Mozambique. Before the latest persecution, the Witnesses had about 23,000 members in Malawi and 56,000 in Zambia.

The National Christian Council of Japan and Buddhists, fearing a revival of the former established religion, are opposing legislation that would give state recognition to a Shinto shrine in Tokyo. It is dedicated to the dead of World War II. Churches have tried for years to remove the names of four Protestant pastors from the list of the “deified” dead at the shrine.

Death

MEL LARSON, 56, editor of the Evangelical Free Church of America’s Evangelical Beacon; in Minneapolis, of cancer.

A second unsuccessful arson attempt was made against the home of newly elected Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren in Jerusalem. Goren has been bitterly opposed by religious conservatives who don’t like his allegedly unorthodox approach to Orthodox Judaism.

So far, the Vatican has been unable to quell a rebellion by the Ukrainian hierarchy. It may lead to the first major Roman Catholic split in modern times.

Evangelist John Haggai reports 31,000 decisions in five Korean cities. Missionaries say these include large numbers of rededications.

The Seventh-day Adventist church is growing faster in Mexico and other Latin American countries than anywhere else in the world; more than 7,000 have been baptized so far this year, according to reports at recent SDA world council sessions in Mexico City. In Jamaica, meanwhile, more than 7,000 new Adventists were baptized on one weekend alone.

Rhodesian evangelicals, led by missionary William Warner, have taken first steps toward establishing the first non-denominational Christian college and communications center for all races in southern Africa.

Evangelist Billy Graham will be among the speakers at SPREE ’73 next August at Earls Court and Wembley Station in London. The “Spiritual Re-Emphasis” week is expected to attract thousands of young people from Europe, according to Anglican bishop A. W. Goodwin Hudson.

The 250,000-member, 700-language United Church in Papua, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands this month is celebrating the centennial of the Gospel’s arrival in Papua, brought by the former London (Congregational) Missionary Society. The United Church is a 1968 merger of churches that developed from Congregational, Presbyterian, and Methodist missionary work.

Parting Presbyterians

One of the better known Southern Presbyterian congregations successfully petitioned its presbytery last month for transfer to another denomination. The 843-member West End Presbyterian Church in Hopewell, Virginia, adopted the petition by a unanimous (331–0) vote of the congregation. The Hanover Presbytery approved the petition on a recommendation from a special commission that said the church has been Presbyterian “only in name.” The Reverend Kennedy Smartt, pastor, has applied for membership in the Delmarva Presbytery of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod.

MORE MISSING MISSIONARIES

Of four Plymouth Brethren missionaries who were victims of a Pathet Lao attack in Laos, two are apparently dead. The other two were reportedly being held by their Communist captors.

Bodies of two women were found in a burned-out building when government troops retook the village of Kengkok. They were believed to be Evelyn Anderson, 25, of Quincy, Michigan, and Beatrice Kosin, 35, of Fort Washakie, Wyoming. Swiss sources said Samuel Mattix, 19, of Centralia, Washington, and Lloyd Oppel, 20, of Courtenay, British Columbia, were taken captive. The four were working in Laos with the Brethren’s agency, the New Jersey-based Christian Missions in Many Lands.

Veteran missionary Leslie Chopard, 49, and his family were in the same village when the attack came, but they managed to escape. Chopard said he believes the women, though found tied, were victims of the fighting and not of execution. The young men were captured as they tried to reach his house, he said.

At least ten Protestant missionaries, including several conscientious objectors, were killed in previous fighting in Southeast Asia. Five others have not been heard from since their capture years ago.

The same presbytery has refused to recognize a withdrawal resolution adopted (87–26) by the Tabb Street Presbyterian Church in Petersburg, Virginia. It has threatened to take legal action against the congregation.

A withdrawal case involving the Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Hampton, Virginia, is being appealed to the state supreme court. A lower court judge has turned down a Norfolk Presbytery petition for intervention. A court order allows the church to transfer its assets to its newly incorporated day school.

The pastor of the church, the Reverend J. B. Slicer, was one of six clergymen who with ten elders signed a resolution to create a new association to be known as Vanguard Presbytery. A constituting convention was scheduled for mid-November in Petersburg.

At least four other Southern Presbyterian congregations have voted recently to sever denominational ties. They include churches in Valhermosa Springs, Alabama; Huntsville, Alabama; Louisville, Kentucky; and Cynthiana, Kentucky. All the departing churches have cited liberal theological trends in the denomination as their reason.

Last month the Central Mississippi Presbytery adopted a resolution that calls for “the peaceful and orderly separation” of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. into two denominations. The church’s 1971 General Assembly turned down a proposal to permit such a division, asserting there is no constitutional provision for it.

Meanwhile, the National Presbyterian and Reformed Fellowship is calling a meeting January 4 and 5 in Atlanta to explore the possibility of organizing “a national synod of genuinely Presbyterian and Reformed churches.” A resolution adopted by the fellowship, a group of theologically conservative ministers and elders from nine denominations, specifies that the “synod” would “not constitute organic union of its participating churches,” but provide “a true spiritual bond.”

Old-Time Pentecostal Power

Americans and Canadians from twenty Pentecostal denominations and groups representing 1.5 million members marked a quarter century of cooperation as the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America met in Toronto last month. PFNA chairman Robert W. Taitinger, superintendent of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, noted with satisfaction “the emerging charismatic interest” in all churches today.

Indeed, even as the 300 PFNA delegates met in downtown Evangel Temple, a large charismatic group of mainline church-goers was meeting quietly in nearby Metropolitan United Church. But while content of the two meetings may have been similar, styles were certainly different. The PFNA evening services had a rollicking camp-meeting atmosphere that warmed the hearts of old-timers in the movement as they contemplated the coming of Christ, which they expect to take place soon.

Conspicuous by its absence from PFNA ranks is the Church of God in Christ, whose headquarters is in Memphis. But Assemblies of God superintendent Thomas Zimmerman says the PFNA door is open to the predominantly black denomination—second-largest Pentecostal body in North America.

LESLIE K. TARR

Accc’S Fundamentalism: The ‘Swinging’ Churches

Basking in the Florida sun, members of the American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC) urged evangelicals in non-evangelical churches to come in from the cold and withdraw membership and support in those denominations. Singled out in one resolution was the United Methodist Church. The ACCC, whose twelve affiliates have about 5,000 congregations, criticized the Methodists for promoting a “so-called social gospel … and many ungodly and un-American activities.”

Meeting at its three-day annual convention in Jacksonville, the council also took a swing at the National and World councils of churches. It described both as furthering the cause of doctrinal apostasy and called on “every true believer” to separate from denominations aligned with the councils.

Key 73 also came in for an indirect attack as the ACCC called for a “return to Scriptural evangelism in 1973.” The “new evangelism” ignores Bible standards of “holiness, godliness and separation from apostasy and heresy,” the statement charged, and aids the “Anti-Christ ecumenical movement by directing innocent babes in Christ into false religion.” In other resolutions, the ACCC delegates called on Christians to lead efforts against p*rnography and hom*osexuality; opposed liberalization of abortion laws; described the present welfare system as “playing into the hands of all the enemies of our nation” and urged a welfare reform ministering only to those with genuine needs; reaffirmed the right of parents to educate their children as they see fit and without forced busing; and called on President Nixon to oppose federal aid to religion, including parochaid.

The Clergy Vote In Canada

Five clergymen were among the 264 persons elected to the House of Commons in the Canadian general election last month. Two are members of the New Democratic Party (NDP), a moderately socialist party, and three are Progressive Conservatives.

The New Democrats fielded a number of ministers as candidates, but only former party leader Tommy Douglas (Baptist) in British Columbia and Stanley Knowles (United Church) in Alberta were elected.

The elected Conservatives, who nearly tied Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s liberals, include Anglican professor Reg Stackhouse, of Wycliffe College in Toronto; Alex Patterson, a Nazarene from British Columbia; and David MacDonald, a United Church of Canada minister who was re-elected in Prince Edward Island. No ministers were among those elected from the Liberal party ranks, and the one United Church minister who sat as a Liberal in the last house was defeated.

Also elected was Douglas Roche, editor of the Western Catholic Reporter, a liberal Catholic newspaper published in Alberta. He took an Edmonton riding (district) for the Conservatives.

Robert Thompson, well-known president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and a long-time parliamentarian, was defeated. He served in the last parliament as a Conservative member from Red Deer, Alberta, considered a “safe” riding. After retiring from the Alberta seat, he was drafted for a British Columbia riding where he made a strong challenge to the incumbent NDP member. Thompson may now retire to work with the Evangelical Free Church’s Trinity Western College in British Columbia, though the possibility of another general election in the next few months (neither party has a majority) may result in a further try for a House seat.

Earlier this year, in another Canadian election British Columbia voters chose the New Democratic Party over the ruling Social Credit party, and in so doing elected the first Jewish premier in Canadian history: David Barrett, 41.

Among those ousted in the vote was one of the province’s best-known evangelical politicians, Phil Gaglardi, an ordained Pentecostal minister. Gaglardi, bombastic little convert from alcoholism, was a successful pastor in Kamloops, British Columbia, before entering politics. He was a highway minister in the Social Credit government for sixteen years before being demoted for allegedly allowing a relative to fly to Texas on a highway department jet. Later, apparently because the government needed the evangelical vote that Gaglardi could attract, he was restored to full cabinet membership with a welfare portfolio.

Gaglardi has been the continuous target of journalists and opposition critics who felt his personal and political ethics did not square with his fundamentalist views. Among the charges: he continually hired members of his own Calvary Temple (a Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada church) for government projects, used government aircraft for meeting his personal preaching engagements, and billed the B.C. government for travel and hotels when he spoke at a Transport for Christ convention in the eastern United States last year. He has also been convicted of contempt of court in a case involving payment of funds to a contractor against court orders. He was fined $2,000.

Succeeding Gaglardi as the possible leader of the evangelical vote in the Social Credit party is Harvey Schroeder. 39, music director for evangelist Barry Moore and a former music minister at Calvary Temple in Denver, Colorado, where Charles Blair is minister. Schroeder won in Chilliwack, center of a heavy concentration of Mennonites and other evangelicals.

LESLIE K. TARR and LLOYD MACKEY

Whither The Shakers?

The Shakers are dying out, but are leaving the world plenty to remember them by.

In Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, for example, there are the newly restored remains of a charming Shaker community that flourished during the nineteenth century. This week, visitors are being treated to a special Thanksgiving observance at the site. Plays are being performed, along with programs of folk songs, ballads, and madrigals.

Don’t bother looking for any Shakers in Kentucky, though. The last one died in 1923. In fact, there are only fourteen Shakers left in all—and all are women. The youngest is in her forties, the oldest in her nineties. They live in Maine and New Hampshire.

Within the last year, a group of Christians have undertaken to develop one part of the Pleasant Hill community into a cultural and retreat area. The old West Family Wash House has been turned into an assembly hall, and nearby buildings are used to house guests. All the structures preserve their original flavor, with the addition only of modern conveniences. Yokefellows International recently began a succession of retreats there aimed at personal spiritual renewal.

Shaker theology apparently is doomed to extinction as a practiced faith, though there has been talk of a revival in recruitment in New England. There has reportedly been some controversy among the survivors whether new recruits should be admitted. Some young people have wanted to join, a development that would perpetuate Shakerism at least for a time. Theirs is a communal, celibate life-style.

The Shakers will leave an imprint not upon church history so much as upon, of all things, technology. They invented a number of products now in everyday usage such as clothespins, flat brooms, and circular saws. The highly functional furniture they designed is growing in popularity.

Shakers trace their origin to the latter part of the eighteenth century and the teachings of faith healer Ann Lee, who was regarded as the female counterpart of Jesus Christ, and the one in whom the Second Coming was fulfilled. They stressed hard work and a high degree of discipline. At their peak they had some 6,000 followers in eighteen communities, all in the Eastern United States. They were called Shakers because of their frenetic dances while singing.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Martin Luther has a grim, serious look these days as he stands on his pedestal in the parking lot facing Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. Directly in the path of his gaze is the plush, paneled office of Concordia president John Tietjen, a key figure in the theological debate that is wracking the seminary and its parent, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS).

The vast majority of Concordia’s faculty and students apparently stand behind Tietjen in his opposition to charges of theological liberalism lodged by LCMS president J. A. O. Preus and a fact-finding committee (see September 29 issue, page 38).

Feelings on campus run deep. Several students in interviews spoke bitterly of Preus. They especially objected to the dismissal of Professor Arlis Ehlen (see April 14 issue, page 42). One worried student said the conflict will cause trouble for graduates when they seek jobs as pastors in the synod.

The students angrily deny charges that their teachers are not biblical and do not follow the Missouri Synod confessions. A first-year student said he had doubts before enrolling at Concordia because of the controversy. But, said he, he found to his surprise that “these guys really do teach the Bible.”

The embattled teachers themselves deny charges contained in the Preus report that they hold views contrary to Scripture and the synod’s doctrinal confession. “Really,” said New Testament professor Edgar M. Krentz, “it’s a dispute between those who are conservative and those who are more conservative.” He added that he has not changed his manner of teaching nor changed his conviction that the historical-critical method of Bible interpretation (an object of Preus’s criticism) “is the most responsible method of interpreting the Bible—the way I use it within a Lutheran mold.” He said he is also using the same textbooks as in previous years. (A seminary official confirmed there were no major changes in textbook ordering.)

Tietjen said all faculty members are engaged in writing a collective statement of belief and also writing personal statements in order to counter Preus’s allegations. Additionally, he has engaged in a series of meetings with Preus in an attempt to settle the dispute. “The only way this problem is going to be resolved is through broad and frank discussions,” said Tietjen, who headed public relations for the Lutheran Council in America before taking up the seminary post. He dismissed suggestions that the synod convention (slated for New Orleans next summer) will bring about solution of the issues. Said Tietjen: “No convention can decide the truth, and no convention can enable both sides to live together in peace.” At the same time, he ruled himself out as a candidate in liberal proposals to wrest the LCMS presidency away from Preus at New Orleans. “I just want to be president of this seminary. That’s where I’ve been called,” he said.

The students believe Tietjen. They predict that an “unknown,” perhaps from the synod’s council of district presidents, will defeat Preus for the LCMS post. “This seminary needs Tietjen much more than the synod does,” said second-year student John Freeseman, 25, of California. The seminarians, most of whom backed presidential candidate George McGovern in the recent national election, refer to the turmoil as “Preus’s Viet Nam.”

The faculty of fifty, meanwhile, is split into two camps with little discourse between them. One group—a minority of five—is headed by Preus’s brother Robert, who has taught systematic theology at Concordia for fifteen years. Other Preus-backers are Dr. Richard Klann, Dr. Ralph Bohlmann, Dr. Lorentz Wunderlich, all teaching systematic theology, and Dr. Martin Scharlemann, who teaches exegetical theology. The five have signed a statement of agreement with the Preus report and criticized Tietjen for his “intemperate and unfair” response to the report.

In the current debate, Scharlemann, once considered “liberal,” now finds himself on the “conservative” side. He had been the object of an investigation of alleged liberalism at Concordia between 1959 and 1962. Attacked for teaching that inerrancy of Scripture needed reinterpretation, he was faced at the 1962 convention with a resolution calling for his removal from the faculty. He survived by confessing he had caused “disturbance and confusion” in the church, withdrawing the essays that prompted the attacks, and asking the church to forgive him.

STRIKE ONE

A government injunction, backed by police intervention, temporarily halted a strike against the Far East Broadcasting Company’s missionary broadcast transmitting facility in the Philippines. The strike broke out when the FEBC fired a technician for joining a union. It was compounded when FEBC missionary Hanne Browne drove through a picket line. A striker claimed he had been run over and injured. Not so, insisted FEBC head Eugene Berterman from his California headquarters. The striker had merely stretched his body over the hood of the car, he said. Browne meanwhile filed charges, labeling the striker a “Communist agitator.”

The strikers were not asking for higher pay or increased benefits; they said they wanted only job security.

Fred Magbanua, FEBC’s Filipino director, replied that there was no need for a union on that ground because “FEBC is a Christian organization, and that should be enough to make our employees happy in their jobs.” He said that having a union could be dangerous to FEBC’s ministry: members “might demand that we stop our Gospel broadcasts to Russia, China, and other countries.” He added that he would wait for a government labor hearing instead of immediately dismissing everyone involved in the strike.

FEBC’s non-union policy is reinforced by Philippine law, which states that religious and charity organizations are not obliged to recognize unions among their employees.

The other faculty members, however, have closed ranks behind Tietjen. “Never have we had forty-five faculty stand together on an issue,” said Old Testament professor Ralph Klein. For the teachers, the issue is one of academic freedom to teach the Bible as they see it within the synodical confessions, he stated. (Klein was one of three professors whose contracts were under review last year. Of the three, only Ehlen was dismissed. Yet, said Klein, he and Ehlen taught the same material.)

“In many ways, the whole dispute has been a blessing,” Klein commented. “I’ve had to examine myself and my beliefs very closely, and now I feel my whole approach has new depth.” He too says he has not varied his teaching because of the dispute. He finds Preus’s report full of “misquotes and misrepresentations,” and he objects to “Preus’s sloganeering” on the issue.

The students, caught in the middle of the battle, “are very bewildered,” said Tietjen. “They are sons of the church and now they’re seeing controversy between church leaders they respect. They’re very cautious about getting caught in a church they’re not sure about. They don’t know which way it’s heading and they’re wary.” And, he added, they’re confused about the Preus charges. “It has not been their experience that the faculty is in basic conflict with Christian teaching,” he said. “Quite the contrary. They’ve found a bold affirmation of the faith.”

LCMS leaders, pastors, and church members in the meantime are choosing their sides in what is shaping up as one of the major theological showdowns of the century. The outcome may be a badly split church.

Perhaps that’s why Luther is frowning out there in the seminary parking lot.

While serving in the Air Force I had a commander who taught me a great lesson. I was the squadron adjutant and was responsible for advising the commander on a wide assortment of matters and then carrying out his decisions. On a number of occasions when decisions were not self-evident he would leave them to me, feeling I was more familiar with the facts of the matter. I’ll always remember the counsel he would give in such situations: “But Dave, let’s do something.” I never got bawled out for a wrong decision, but I was always aware that with this commander there would be a price to pay for indecision or procrastination. He believed in the old theory that at least you learn something from a bad move. When you do nothing you just waste time.

This is the way it often is with evangelism in general, and it may be so with Key 73 in particular. The important thing is to do something.

To be sure, there can be a lot of wasted effort in evangelism. But the biggest obstacle to reaching our generation for Christ is not misdirected action but inaction. So few people are actually doing any evangelism at all. When we get around to starting we tend to get bogged down in questions of method and strategy and end up doing nothing.

Along about now, every preacher is preparing his annual series of pre-Christmas sermons. This year offers a special opportunity for a really effective series because the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas period opens the Key 73 calendar. This period initiates Key 73’s Phase One, which is “Calling Our Continent to Repentance and Prayer” (see the Congregational Resource Book).

In other words, the time has arrived to tune up for a year of saturation evangelism. Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary defines a tune-up as “a general adjustment to insure operation at peak efficiency.” That’s just what we need in the spiritual realm if Key 73 is to have an impact throughout the United States and Canada.

Among things that pastors can suggest on this eve of Key 73 is that every Christian prayerfully take upon himself a personal evangelistic project for next year. Last month this column considered the challenge congregations have to work up corporate evangelistic programs for Key 73. But individuals should have personal Key 73 projects as well. (Or perhaps their denomination or local church has not shown much interest and it is a matter of either going it alone or not doing anything.) The personal project should be something specific, not just a resolve to pray more or try harder.

Think of the results if every committed believer in North America did something in evangelism next year. We would have a spiritual revolution on our hands! It really is very possible, for few church people quarrel about the necessity of evangelism. They just never get started. Pastors have the tremendous responsibility right now of trying to motivate every committed parishioner to assume a special new task for 1973, one that will reflect a winsome Christian witness. The prospects are encouraging. With the new interest our culture is showing in religion, it is probably easier to do personal evangelism today than it has ever been in our lifetimes.

Among the principles to keep in mind in selecting some activity for a kind of personal crusade is that it should be modest and realistic. Set some definite goals, but don’t try for the moon. Again, it is better to do something well than to try a lot and then lose out altogether because of discouragement. One ought not to think it too small an undertaking, for example, to set up a literature rack in a laundromat and keep it well stocked.

If you feel that in order to keep your interest up you need to do something unusual, then go ahead and think of something different. Come up with something that you can do a little better than others. But let it be something special, an activity you would not ordinarily be engaging in. If you have talent in painting, paint some pictures to donate to a home for the aged. If you can work with wood, volunteer your time to a rescue mission that might need some renovating.

It’s a good idea to set up deadlines and make sure they are met. There should be follow-through even if it’s costly. There is a human temptation to set aside deadlines. Resist it! If you let yourself off once you will probably do it again and again. If you should decide to write one letter a week sharing Christ with someone, assign yourself a day on which that letter must be in the mail.

Tell one or more persons what your project is. Ask them to check your progress from time to time, and make it a point to have informal “reports” ready. It will keep you on your toes and prevent the project from winding down when the first burst of enthusiasm wanes. You may choose simply to put a gospel tract in each envelope with which you pay a bill, but be sure to keep it up. A nagging husband or wife can be an asset, after all.

Your project may be evangelistic in a somewhat indirect way, and if so you should plan to make it ultimately person-oriented. It’s often desirable to establish confidence and respect before actually sharing Christ verbally, but do be sure not to quit after the first step. Work to zero in on actual persons with whom you can deal and press for decision.

Some types of evangelistic approaches concentrate too much on the ultimate encounter and give little heed to important preliminaries such as establishing rapport. Most Christians are realizing that effective witness in today’s world requires a broader setting.

But we should not go to the other extreme of thinking of evangelism only as a matter of helping others materially or doing good deeds. The Christian must be a persuader. As a witness he should always be working toward the moment when he puts the question to the prospect. In the words of a salesman, will he buy? Will he sign on the dotted line? Witnessing is never really complete until the person responds affirmatively to Christ’s offer of salvation and places trust in the Saviour.

May there be many such times in 1973.—DAVID E. KUCHARSKY, managing editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

When the apostle paul wrote to Timothy, “Never lose your sense of urgency” (Phillips), there must have been a reason that should carry over to the preaching of the Gospel today.

Why have so many lost their sense of urgency? Why do we seem unmoved when the number of Christians continues to dwindle in proportion to the total world population? What lies behind the widespread indifference found within the Church itself?

Are we listening again to the siren song of Satan, “Ye shall not surely die”? Are we engaged in wishful thinking, believing that after all the preaching of the Gospel is not so important, that there are other ways to eternal life?

Can it be that our Lord’s words to the Pharisees—“I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come”—were in error?

There are many classes of unsaved people in the world. There are those who have never heard of God’s redemptive love in Christ, who will be judged in the light of the knowledge they have and the use they have made of that knowledge.

Then these are those who are indifferent to the claims of Christ. Surrounded by evidences of the Christian faith, they ignore them because other interests seem more compelling.

And there are those who deliberately reject the truth, choosing the way of disobedience, sinning against the light.

In these circ*mstances the duty of the Christian is clear. We cannot ourselves convert sinners, but we are to witness to Christ. This witnessing is urgent because of the nature of the message, the need of the world, and the shortness of the time. That the night will come when no man can work is a fact affirmed by our Lord himself.

Somewhere along the line we have permitted the alternatives of the Bible to become blurred. Many no longer believe in absolutes of right and wrong. For them, these things have become relative. They reject the conception of eternal life and eternal separation from God. Heaven and hell are seen as mere figures of speech. Satan is considered not as an evil personality ever active as the enemy of souls, but as an evil influence that is a part of the world order.

Lostness is described as merely a matter of ignorance, not of a soul’s condition outside Christ. Our Lord’s words, “he that believeth not is condemned already,” are rejected because “God is too good to damn anyone.”

Basic to the lost clarity of alternatives is an unwillingness to face up to the implications of the Cross. It seems incredible that the Son of God should have come into the world, because of the alternative—that aside from his death for the sins of the world there is no hope. Yet the Scriptures clearly teach this.

Furthermore, all through the New Testament there is found one condition to salvation—faith.

Luke tells us that after the Apostle Paul’s preaching in Antioch in Pisidia, “as many as were ordained to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48). Can there be any question that there were some present who did not believe and who were therefore not saved?

“Whosoever” is a marvelous word that opens up mercy, grace, and salvation to anyone who will believe. But “whosoever” involves the truth that man may reject the love of God in Christ, and many do just that.

It is impossible to escape from the clearly stated alternatives in the Bible. Coupled with the free salvation offered through faith in Jesus Christ there is the plainly stated alternative of eternal lostness for those who reject God’s way to eternal life.

“Ye shall not surely die” is a lie of Satan, the enemy of souls. It is one of his propaganda weapons against the redemptive work of Christ. It is a siren song that lures the unwary to the rocks of destruction.

But there are other barriers to the preaching of the Gospel, a Gospel that stresses the love of God against the background of his holiness and justice. Indifference is manifested in a lack of concern for those outside Christ. As we rest secure in our own faith in him, there can arise a form of selfishness that does violence to the very faith we profess. When the fullness of what Christ has done for us sweeps over our souls, the first reaction should be one of sharing the good news with others. Once this sense of responsibility is silenced we find ourselves in the dangerous position of unfaithful stewards—failing to warn those less fortunate than ourselves.

For many in the Church it is a matter not of indifference but of unbelief. We reject the clear statement of the Bible in favor of the cleverly projected hypothesis of those who piously say, “They shall not surely die.”

When confronted with this “gospel” which is as old as Eden itself, we need to stand firm in what God has revealed. The alternatives of eternal life and eternal separation from God are made so plain that only the willful can reject them.

Daniel, speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:2). Who are we to deny this?

Our Lord, speaking of the last judgment, says: “These shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal” (Matt. 25:46). Who are we to question our Lord?

The Apostle John, writing in the Spirit, speaks of those who reject the Christ in favor of his evil antagonist: “The smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name” (Rev. 14:11). Who are we to reject this picture of man’s eternal separation from God?

A subject such as this should bring us to our knees—we who have been so blessed. If men out of Christ are eternally lost, what are we doing about it? To denounce those who believe and teach otherwise has no meaning unless we do and give all that we can to turn the tide.