Page 6120 – Christianity Today (2024)

Almost annually one or another member of our editorial staff has managed to garner a coveted Freedoms Foundation award. This year three such awards were announced at the Valley Forge ceremonies. Associate Editor Harold Lindsell received $100 and a George Washington Honor Medal for an address at Eastern Baptist College on “With Liberty and Justice for All.” Executive Editor L. Nelson Bell received an honor medal for an editorial in the Presbyterian Journal. And this writer received one for an editorial in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (“A World Short of Breath”). So we congratulate ourselves!

Readers may be interested also in the Moody Press paperback Frontiers in Modern Theology, which attractively gathers together my recent essays on current theological trends. And the 1965 W. H. Griffith-Thomas Lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, along with some other special-occasion addresses, have just been published by Word Books under the title The God Who Shows Himself.

“I am a Catholic priest. That, to me, is a great joy. I am not permitted to marry. That, to me, is a great mistake.”

So begins an impassioned attack on the celibacy requirement from a priest, writing under the pseudonym Stephen Nash, in the March 12 Saturday Evening Post. The same week that Nash’s gnashing of teeth hit the newsstands, the London Observer came up with an educated guess on the worldwide scope of the celibacy revolt. The newspaper says the Vatican has gotten at least 10,000 requests in the past few years from priests who want to renounce their vows and become laymen. Almost all of them want to get married.

Meanwhile, two other rebels in the American priesthood are coming upon rough days. Right-winger Gommar DePauw of the Catholic Traditionalist Movement was barred from celebrating Mass at the University of Notre Dame and from a meeting in Detroit, because of his jurisdictional dispute with Baltimore’s Lawrence Cardinal Shehan.

And left-winger William DuBay, who has criticized James Francis Cardinal McIntyre and wants to form a labor union for priests, has been given yet another job transfer and barred from some priestly functions.

The celibacy question cuts to the heart of church authority and tradition. It is so touchy Pope Paul specifically declared it out of bounds for Vatican II discussion. Mindful of mounting priestly requests to marry, the Pope recently urged self-control.

Nash contends that “there is no theological necessity, no doctrinal or spiritual insistence on celibacy. Only the discipline of the Church has made celibacy the mark of the priesthood in the West.” It may have been important in “the age of political religion and monastic corruption” such as that which spurred the Reformation, he says, but the practice has also “helped build a wall between clergy and laity” and “created a Church that could at times abandon the people.”

The priest counters traditional arguments. Does the dedication of the priest leave no time for marriage? It leaves time “for golf and poker and smörgasbords.” Does it keep fly-by-nighters from religious careers? “I found Protestant ministers genuine men of faith.”

Birth-Control Omen

The most powerful archconservative in the Roman Catholic Church has been placed in charge of Pope Paul’s reorganized birth-control commission, according to reports from Rome. The naming of Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, 75, to lead the group was taken as a severe blow to liberals who have been lobbying for a change in the Vatican’s traditional ban on the use of contraceptives.

The Pope’s reported choice as Ottaviani’s deputy was Montreal’s outspoken liberal, Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger, which to many observers appeared to be an obvious attempt to balance contrasting viewpoints. But Ottaviani would have a decided edge in influencing the commission’s decisions because of his higher rank and his access to the Pope as a Vatican resident.

This month’s Ladies Home Journal, meanwhile, provides some inside information on the problems of the original advisory birth-control commission. It says “the conservatives, championed by such powerful Vatican insiders as Ottaviani, fear that the authority of the Church would be shamefully eroded if it treats contraception with less than the most ringing condemnation.”

The Journal is sympathetic to the Pope’s plight: “Perhaps never has one man faced a decision that so intimately affects so many lives.”

Nash, who is 39, describes his own agonies of “examining my motives, increasing my penances, in order that I might live in a way that I do not believe Christ intended.” Of striving “to move from a religion of stone tablets and legal decrees to a personal union with Christ.” Of not having another person to share things with, finding it hard to get to sleep, driving around at night and stopping for a beer at “some obscure roadside tavern, drinking alone, thinking alone.…”

The Vatican Curia, mindful of the thousands of requests to break the celibacy vow during the past few years, has set up a behind-the-scenes commission on the problem, the Observer reported.

Celibacy is not one of the platform planks for the proposed “American Federation of Priests,” but this embryo organization represents a similar spirit of revolt. DuBay, the 31-year-old priest who heads the union drive, says the basic idea is that “employers—the bishop and his chancery officials—have interests distinct from those of priests on the firing line. The administrator’s job is mainly public relations and finance, while the professional worker’s service centers directly on the needs of persons.”

He wants freedom of speech and conscience, and collective bargaining with chancery management on wages, grievance procedures, tenure and transfer policies, and other matters.

Asked what organized labor thinks of the idea, AFL-CIO President George Meany, a Roman Catholic, said such an organization would be turned down and suggested DuBay apply to the Teamsters instead.

DuBay carries the rebellion further in his new Doubleday book The Human Church. According to Time, the book “puts forward a program of reform that makes the ideas of Luther seem positively papalist by comparison.” Samples: abandonment of the parochial school system and church tax exemptions; a limited term for bishops; and formation of liturgies and creeds by local congregations.

DuBay is the same priest who cabled Pope Paul in June, 1964, calling for removal of Cardinal McIntyre for “gross malfeasance” and “abuses of authority” in his conservatism on racial discrimination and “repression” of those who were more liberal. DuBay had twice before been transferred, reportedly for his vigorous civil rights stand. After that fuss, he was moved from a mostly Negro parish to a hospital chaplaincy. Once the union proposal hit the headlines, he was moved again (with a cut in pay), on a half-day’s notice.

The Vatican’s apostolic delegate in Washington, Egidio Vagnozzi, recently criticized those priests in a teachers’ union in New York City presently in a dispute with St. John’s University. He said unions are for laymen, not clergymen.

Even liberal Pope John XXIII dissolved France’s “worker-priest” movement because the priests got too heavily involved in union politics, and several renounced their vows and got married. The worker-priest program has been reinstituted on a cautious scale by Pope Paul.

Vagnozzi has also had some bad news for DePauw, the conservative rebel. He backs Cardinal Shehan in his contention that DePauw is under Shehan’s authority. DePauw, who persists in his Traditionalist Movement, says he has unimpeachable documents showing he has been legally transferred.

In a round of speech-making, DePauw seemed at times to be tipping toward the professional anti-Communist role, but lately he has played down politics.

He has called for an alliance between “conservative Protestants” and Catholic traditionalists “to save whatever is left of Christianity.” He contends that “the same forces of atheism that have destroyed some of our best Protestant denominations are now attacking the Roman Catholic Church.” The Roman church is “finished” in Europe, he says, and America is the “last bastion.”

But DePauw’s emphasis on Mary’s “unique position in the economy of our salvation,” the Rosary, statues and crucifixes, the Latin Mass, and other traditions are unlikely to light a fire under the conservative Protestants.

Protestant Panorama

A group of twenty Methodist delegates to the conference scheduled to merge their denomination with the Evangelical United Brethren are raising “grave reservations” over the plan of union. A spokesman said the proposal is “badly out of step” with the ecumenical movement as a whole. The delegates say they will withhold approval until major changes are made.

Southern Baptists reported a record membership of 10,772,712 in 33,797 churches for the end of last year. But 12,784 fewer baptisms were counted in 1965 than in 1964. Total gifts of Southern Baptists through their churches increased by 7.8 per cent to a high of $637,958,846.

The Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa says relocation of Negroes is leaving many of them churchless. A spokesman for the church’s mission board reported that it had only thirteen ministers available to tend to “the spiritual welfare of 400,000 colored people.”

Personalia

Dr. James D. Bales of Harding College, Searcy, Arkansas, sent a yard-long telegram signed by some 1,000 churchgoers in Monroe. Louisiana, challenging Dr. Thomas J. J. Altizer to defend his “death of God” views in a public debate. Altizer, at Emory University, said he would refuse because Harding has “done so much harm to the Christian faith” by identifying it with “the extreme right.”

Duke Ellington, who recently presented a religious jazz concert in New York (see January 21 issue, page 41), did a rerun February 21 at England’s historic Coventry Cathedral. The Daily Mail enthused, “Here was jazz, for all its antecedents in the low life, for all its trafficking with the worldly, making the point that it too has a soul, it too has the right to worship.”

The Rev. Henry Harvey succeeds the late Dr. Everett Swanson as president of Compassion, Inc., of Chicago, which maintains 170 Christian orphanages in Korea.

Miscellany

In Toronto, the Salvation Army reports its suicide prevention bureau counseled more than 1,000 persons during suicide crises in the past year. Each inquirer was visited, and many were aided in getting psychiatric help or hospitalization.

The 23-year-old Boston Evening School of the Bible will be renamed Boston Bible School and inaugurate an expanded program under new full-time dean Joseph C. Macaulay, former president of London (Ontario) College of Bible and Missions. The school, an outgrowth of Park Street Church, has trained 6,000 laymen.

First official tallies showed that Maine voters had approved a 1965 legislative act to permit limited Sunday liquor sales. The margin was slim, however, and a recount was being demanded.

Baker Book House is moving its religious publishing operation to a $100,000 building in an industrial park outside Grand Rapids.

They Say

“A reaction against the endless expansion of official bureaucracies has resulted in the government’s turning to private groups, including the churches, for the performance of welfare and educational services. The churches offer a particularly attractive apparatus for such purposes.”—C. Stanley Lowell, acting director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Deaths

DR. CHARLES CLAYTON MORRISON. 91, who bought the Christian Century at a sheriff’s auction in 1908 and as its editor for 39 years turned it into the most influential journal of liberal Protestant thought; in Chicago.

DR. BERNARD BRASKAMP, 79, a Presbyterian who was chaplain of the U. S. House of Representatives for the past sixteen years; in Washington, D. C., of a stroke after a long illness.

DR. CARADINE R. HOOTON, 70, former general secretary of the Methodist Board of Christian Social Concerns and longtime temperance leader; in Washington, D. C., of a heart attack.

CESAR DACORSO FILHO, 75, first native bishop of the Methodist Church of Brazil; in Rio de Janeiro.

DR. WALTER N. ROBERTS, 67, president emeritus of United Theological Seminary; in Dayton, Ohio, the day after he returned home from a 4½-month survey of African seminaries.

DR. EUGENE R. KELLERSBERGER, 78, former general secretary of American Leprosy Missions and Presbyterian pioneer in the Congo; after a heart attack caused him to fall off a boat into the ocean off Melbourne. Florida.

The film The Gospel According to St. Matthew, which opened in New York City last month, could not have been made in America. Its lack of the spectacular, the sentimental, and the lurid is separated from Hollywood by a gap as wide as the ocean dividing Europe from America.

It is an outsider’s endeavor to follow Matthew’s presentation of Christ. The director, Pier Paolo Pasolini, is a Communist who, while confined to an Assisi hotel by crowds and traffic during a visit by Pope John XXIII, picked up a Gideon Bible and read the first Gospel.

The unusual absence of theatricality is achieved by the use of non-professional actors. A Spanish student (Enrique Irazoque) portrays Christ, an Italian student is the Virgin Mary, Pasolini’s mother is the older Mary, an Italian lawyer is Joseph, and a truck driver portrays Judas. Filmed in southern Italy near the Mediterranean, where the terrain resembles that of Israel, this picture is bluntly but reverently realistic and done with a minimum of crowds and with restraints (as in Salome’s dance).

From the opening scene, where Joseph realizes his betrothed is with child and the angel appears to tell him of the miraculous conception, the picture reminds the viewer of classic art, sometimes the Italian masters, sometimes El Greco. The dialogue is thoroughly biblical, spoken in Italian with English subtitles that, because of the swift and often impassioned speech, linger on the screen only briefly. The English used is apparently from a Roman Catholic version.

The black-and-white film underlines the stark reality of the narrative and helps give a sense of the burning Oriental sun and the harshness of the terrain. The music (Bach, Mozart, Webern, Prokofiev, and others) is appropriate and not over-obtrusive.

Aside from the problem that inevitably arises when an actor portrays the incarnate Lord, Irazoque is remarkable. Not physically robust, he conveys a sense of moral strength and complete control, and at times suggests the majesty of divinity. He smiles rarely, and only in the presence of children, who appear often. Some scenes are outstanding: Christ healing a loathsomely disfigured leper, cleansing the temple, matching wits with the scribes and Pharisees, and instituting the last supper. The crucifixion is brutally realistic, somewhat in the spirit of Grünewald’s great painting.

How faithful is this film to Matthew’s Gospel? The dialogue is grounded in Matthew’s text. There are omissions, notably the transfiguration, and liberties are taken with Matthew’s order of events. In the scene in which disciples and then Jesus are baptized by John, those baptized kneel as John scoops up a handful of water and puts it on their heads—a procedure even non-Baptists might question on historical grounds. The trial emphasizes Jewish leaders; Pilate appears only briefly. Strangely, none of the Jewish leaders appears at the crucifixion. Toward the end one feels that Mary, the mother of the Lord, gains prominence quite beyond what biblical evidence allows.

Nevertheless, the picture carries the power of understatement. It corrects the sentimental concept of Jesus fostered by inferior art and misreading of the Scriptures.

Despite its faults—and any attempt to portray the Lord Jesus Christ inevitably fails to do justice to its subject—there is enough of the plain truth of the gospel record in this picture that it might well turn empty-hearted viewers to the Lord of life. In New York where this reviewer saw the film, the sophisticated audience watched in rapt silence.

The Gospel According to St. Matthew shows what can come about when a serious attempt is made to follow the gospel record, even though the attempt be that of an unbeliever. It is thus a tribute to the inherent power of Scripture and of the Lord whom Scripture sets forth.

Iowa: Amish Truce

Iowa’s Governor Harold Hughes has spent about as much time on the fate of fifty Old Order Amish schoolchildren as on anything else in recent months. Late in February he arranged a truce between Amish leaders in Charity Flats and local school officials.

The Amish had persisted in running two one-room schools whose teachers were not certified, as the law requires, because they had only eighth-grade educations (see editorial, December 17, 1965, issue, page 24). The Danforth Foundation helped break the log jam by offering §15,000 to pay for the accredited teachers the Amish said they could not afford, and to make a start toward bringing building facilities up to state standards.

Officials will seek teachers “satisfactory to the Amish,” continue German instruction, and tone down the teaching of evolution and other touchy scientific topics. Because of Amish beliefs, no teaching aids such as TV or movies will be used.

The Danforth-Hughes plan is a stopgap, and next year the state legislature will be asked to provide state aid in place of the Danforth money. Hughes admits this could open the door to state aid for other religious groups.

Theologians In The White House?

Politician Brooks Hays thinks “one of the great needs of this age is the theological education of politicians,” and lay churchman Brooks Hays thinks “another great need is the political education of theologians.”

This dictum from the former Arkansas congressman and White House adviser opened a lecture at a centennial conference of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, oldest seminary on the West Coast.

Hays, a Baptist, said that Jefferson and Lincoln were “two of the great theologians of the nineteenth century” and that Pope John was one of the great politicians of the twentieth.

The Church, he said, must send its children into government, both as professionals and as voters. He advocated civil disobedience in circ*mstances such as those of Nazi Germany, but warned that “respect for authority is a vital rule for conduct.… Aggrieved people have more to be obtained by upholding law than by disregarding it.” Asked whether a layman should withdraw support from a church if he disagreed with his minister on politics, Hays replied with an emphatic no. But he urged restraint on ministers in lobbying for specific legislation unless “there is a clear moral foundation for the action and substantial unity on the matter. And seldom, if ever, is there any reason for a clergyman to preach for or against an individual candidate or proposition in the pulpit.”

About 850 clergymen (ranging from Assembly of God to United Church of Christ) attended the PSR’s three-day conference.

Professor D. Gerhard Ebeling of Zurich, who was a fellow student of the late Dietrich Bonhoeffer, said the now famous theologian’s term “religion-less Christianity” referred to the religion of the nineteenth century. As for Bonhoeffer’s teaching about man’s “coming of age,” Ebeling said it is nonsense to say man is autonomous in relation to God. He is, however, autonomous concerning religious tradition.

Dr. William G. Pollard, an Episcopal priest who directs the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies, predicted Christianity “will have a message of hope and truth about the nature of reality which will be peculiarly meaningful” after current social and scientific revolutions are past. “It will grow and flower with great power in a world from which all alternative religions will have died out and no viable alternatives other than a sterile secularism will be contending against it.”

JEROME F. POLITZER

Brief Pact With Black Muslims

As muscular members of the “Fruit of Islam” stood guard, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called for an hour at the Chicago home of Black Muslim chieftain Elijah Muhammad. After their first meeting, a “common front” against Negro slum conditions in the city. King’s current project, was announced. King said “there now appear to be some areas, slums and areas other than slums,” in which he can cooperate with black supremacists.

But if there was a pact it lasted less than a day. At the Muslims’ national convention, Elijah lashed out at King during a four-hour diatribe. To shouting, applauding accompaniment, he called the civil rights leader a “lover of white folks” and a “white man’s black man.” King is “a nice, friendly man” who has “fallen in with unfriendly people,” explained the 69-year-old Elijah. But King is also a “deceiver” who will “have another meeting, and another meeting, and another meeting.”

Among Elijah’s fans was the movement’s best-known convert, heavyweight boxing champion Cassius Clay, who wore a Fruit of Islam uniform. Clay recently caused a furor by making anti-American remarks when informed he had been reclassified and was eligible for the military draft.

Pastor Loses The Klan Vote

John Buchanan, ordained Baptist and Republican congressman from Alabama, earned the wrath of the Ku Klux Klan for his part in the recently completed Klan investigation by Congress.

On the last day of hearings, Georgia lawyer J. B. Stoner took the Fifth Amendment when asked if he was in town the day a Birmingham Negro Baptist church was bombed, killing four girls. But after the hearing, Stoner was suddenly talkative and declared Washington was “full of Communists” and that “loyal white people” would defeat Buchanan and other investigators up for election this fall.

One unbeatable exception was Georgia Representative Charles Weltner, who originated the Klan hearings. Stoner explained he has “the Jew bloc, the black bloc, and the idiot bloc.”

Buchanan contends that a Klan ally “couldn’t be elected dogcatcher” because the Klan has brought “scorn upon the head of the people of the South” and an overwhelming majority of Southerners have only contempt for the organization.

Quebec’S Sectarian Dollars

It is the ultimate in church fund-raising. The Benedictine monastery of St. Benoit du Lac. Quebec, got itself incorporated as a town back in 1939. As a result, it has raked in $369,000 in federal and provincial aid in the past five years.

As construction on a $240,000 auditorium and other projects proceeds at the community seventy miles southeast of Montreal, the government is beginning to groan. Seventy-five monks working on construction get unemployment insurance, and the “town” is eligible for public works subsidies as well.

Quebec Minister of Municipal Affairs Pierre Laporte said that when the federal government approved the payments “I started to believe in miracles.”

Meanwhile, McGill University in Montreal claims discrimination in Quebec Province’s distribution of $17 million in new federal aid for colleges, since it is getting a smaller percentage increase than five French universities. McGill is English-speaking and has 12,000 students. Its staff includes an accredited, ecumenical divinity faculty composed of Anglican, Presbyterian, and United Church of Canada personnel.

The dispute reflects a long-standing rivalry between Quebec’s British and French populations (see December 18, 1964, issue, page 44), and the channeling of college aid through the provincial government is a concession to Quebec’s drive for more autonomy.

Academia In Acadia

Baptist control of Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, is under attack from proponents of academic freedom. They are sponsoring a bill in the provincial legislature to cut the Atlantic Baptist Convention’s representation on the school’s board to 25 per cent.

The ABC, eastern third of the Baptist Federation of Canada, now names all thirty board members, and ABC President Kenneth Spencer says the change “would deprive this convention of its historic rights.”

The battle began last summer when the ABC recommended that non-Christians be barred from the faculty, which made Jewish and agnostic teachers uneasy, and that board members’ terms be cut from nine to six years, which was seen by some as a move to weed out liberals.

The bill’s backers claim the ABC provides only 1 per cent of the revenue at Acadia, which was founded in 1838 and has 1,500 students.

Britain: More School Aid

Britain’s Labor government, which has called for a national election March 31, wants legislation to provide 80 per cent construction aid for new church-related school buildings. Education Minister Anthony Crosland said the proposal falls short of requests from churches which face rapidly growing enrollments. Government aid now goes to 7,300 Anglican and 2,200 Roman Catholic schools, plus 430 others, largely Methodist and Quaker.

Greek Prelate Convicted

A long-standing controversy between the Orthodox Church in Greece and the Greek government was climaxed in Athens last month by the first civil court conviction of an Orthodox prelate in the nation’s history.

Charged with illegally “usurping” administrative powers of the Diocese of Piraeus, Metropolitan Chrysostomos, formerly of Argolis, was given a suspended two-month sentence.

The prelate was one of fifty-one bishops who in November voted the election of new bishops and permitted transfer of others. Transferability of bishops is banned under Greek law.

The government had called on the church to halt action on election of bishops until a long church-state crisis could be settled with legislation satisfactory to both.

Metropolitan Chrysostomos was one of two bishops transferred to other sees. Lay Orthodox critics charged that he had been reassigned to a wealthy diocese, noting that the law barring transfers had been enacted to prevent the move of prelates into wealthy sees.

Eugene Carson Blake flew back to his native St. Louis last month carrying all the prestige that goes with having just been elected potentate of a Protestant-Orthodox global coalition. But for the next three days, at a meeting of the National Council of Churches’ General Board, of which he has been a vocal member, the burly Presbyterian churchman was publicly overshadowed. The board looked instead to a lay member, scholarly, diplomatic Dr. Arthur S. Flemming, to propel it through a plethora of selected social issues.

The 60-year-old Flemming applied all the political savvy learned in thirty months as an Eisenhower Cabinet member to implement findings of last October’s peace-seeking Sixth World Order Study Conference. Peace can best be assured, he persuaded the General Board, by playing up to Red China and disowning South Africa. A pair of major policy statements were adopted to that effect.

At least a few board members sensed a problem. “These approaches appear to be contradictory,” said the Rev. L. Doward McBain, pastor of First Baptist Church in Phoenix. “People will say we promote one tyranny while decrying another.”

Flemming countered that “we don’t live in the kind of world where a method that is effective in one area can be expected to work in another.” McBain, despite his observations, agreed with Flemming and voted for both statements. The Baptist clergyman observed that “the one sin we just can’t forgive anyone for is racial prejudice.”

In a separate context, Dr. Benjamin F. Payton, the NCC’s new expert on racial affairs, issued an attack on allegedly inconsistent foreign policy methods of the U. S. government. Payton asserted that most nations in the so-called third world seem to believe that “America would not be using napalm, toxic chemicals, and noxious gases in an indiscriminate slaughter of peasant women and children if Viet Nam were a white nation. Few of them have forgotten our quick military action in the Congo, the Dominican Republic and Viet Nam, in contrast to our patience in dealing with the Russians during the Berlin blockade and the Hungarian revolution.”

Payton, a Baptist who as executive director of the Commission on Religion and Race is the only Negro to hold a major NCC post, promises to be something of an iconoclast. He suggested abolition of Brotherhood Weeks and Race Relations Sundays “and all of the other little aspirins by which we salve our consciences” in favor of “a drama which celebrates our life together in metropolis.”

Payton’s bent for controversy contrasted with Flemming’s conciliatory spirit. It was no accident that the rarely ruffled former welfare secretary under Eisenhower was given such touchy tasks as heading the NCC’s World Order Study Conference and an ad hoc committee on Viet Nam. He is comfortably confident but unpretentious, and his tall, dignified frame commanded respect from board members. Flemming, a Methodist who is now president of the University of Oregon, has been serving also as an NCC vice-president.

As it turned out, only the Viet Nam question produced any stir in an otherwise dull board meeting. The board followed up a December policy statement on Viet Nam with a special resolution “in light of recent developments.” Stressing a collective rather than unilateral approach, it was couched in considerably milder and more general terms than a statement on Viet Nam adopted by the World Council of Churches’ Central Committee in Geneva the week before. The Associated Press reported that “top sources” in the NCC had said Presidential Press Secretary Bill D. Moyers succeeded in toning down a draft of the statement before it was proposed to the board. Moyers, Flemming, and Blake all denied the report.

One board member was able to add a passage urging prayer and sympathy for victims of the Vietnamese conflict, but two phrases, “with our President” and “in the cause of freedom,” were deleted. Although the amendment was proposed as a response to a Presidential appeal for prayer, specific reference to the President was voted down.

Out of the 250 members of the General Board, hardly more than 100 showed up for the meeting, a typical turnout. Some of these came late and left early.

The NCC’s Division of Overseas Ministries called the board’s attention to the prospect of five to ten million persons’ facing starvation in India this year unless massive remedial measures are undertaken. The board members responded by adopting a brief statement. They urged NCC member communions “to express their identification with the people of India by fasting, prayers of intercession and sacrificial giving for the needs of the famine victims during periods of special devotion such as Good Friday.” Special offerings for India were suggested for such appeals as the “One Great Hour of Sharing” March 20. (Protestants now spend only about half a cent per dollar of benevolence funds to combat world hunger.)

While contemplating famine, board members were advised of the NCC’s next General Assembly, to be held in December at two of Miami Beach’s plushiest hotels. Mrs. Norman Vincent Peale brought the report. She noted without comment that evangelist Billy Graham had accepted an invitation to be a luncheon speaker. This will be the first time the nation’s most widely known and respected churchman has been an NCC program participant.

Mrs. Peale was visibly nettled by a pacifist board member’s qualms that the program did not reflect much of a priority on peace. She said that though not labeled as such, peace was indeed on the agenda. To ease anxiety, she proposed to marshal a corps of volunteers to rubber-stamp “Peace” at appropriate places on the 75,000 programs already printed.

The National Council has had “priority” peace programs off and on for a number of years. The latest such venture calls for an expenditure of §200,000 annually, some §25,000 of which is to be paid in salary to a soon-to-be-named peace czar of ecclesiastical renown. He will succeed NCC international affairs chief Kenneth Maxwell, who resigned rather abruptly last month; the new office, however, will be higher on the NCC chain of command. A foundation grant of §150,000 has been promised for the peace program, but it will be spread over four years. NCC leaders expect to be hard pressed to raise the remainder.

Biggest drain on NCC financial reserves has been the controversial Delta Ministry, described by proponents as an exemplary gesture of compassion and by critics as a pilot project in socialism. A special committee is currently investigating the merits of the Mississippi ministry. The plight of the underprivileged was dramatized for the board by the appearance of a special delegation, mostly Negroes, representing various grass-roots efforts to combat poverty. Their criticism of federal poverty programs as inadequate and badly handled was especially telling in regard to St. Louis. There the National Park Service is investing approximately §30,000,000 on the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, whose nearly completed 630-foot Gateway Arch casts a shadow over the adjacent Mississippi River.

NCC leaders are also involved in combating poverty at the inter-faith level. After more than six months of spadework initiated by the General Board and General Secretary R. H. Edwin Espy, the Inter-Religious Committee Against Poverty was officially inauguarted in January. IRCAP is designed not only to support governmental and private programs for helping the poor, as emphasized in early reports, but to exercise responsible criticism of such programs.

At its St. Louis meeting, the General Board approved five policy statements (see box), plus a “statement of concern” about alleged pressures on the Orthodox Patriarchate at Constantinople. Consideration of a special report on the NCC’s use of government resources was put off until June.

How Did Blake Win?

Election of Dr. Eugene Carson Blake as general secretary of the World Council of Churches (see Mar. 4 issue, p. 45) has probably brought to an end an era of internal turbulence among the ecumenical elite. Blake will doubtless bring with him a generous measure of solidarity when he assumes his new post December 1.

Tension in WCC ranks began building up more than two years ago when Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft initiated plans to retire from the office he has held since its inception. Many of the 100 members of the World Council Central Committee felt that a special committee should be formed to nominate a successor. But a British member, protesting the cost of an extra procedure, persuaded fellow churchmen to turn over the screening process to the fourteen members of the WCC Executive Committee as a matter to be considered in their regular order of business.

The first man approached for the job of general secretary was Dr. Lukas Vischer, who had joined the WCC in 1961 as research secretary of the Department of Faith and Order. But Vischer would not allow his name to stand, insisting that he preferred work of a scholarly nature. Young Vischer is a native of Basel, Switzerland, and an ordained minister of the Swiss Reformed Church. Largely on the basis of his highly touted reports as an observer at the Vatican Council, he was chosen last month to be director of the Department of Faith and Order.

When Vischer turned down the nomination, the Executive Committee decided upon the Rev. Patrick C. Rodger, then head of the department, and made public its choice in a way that provoked heated controversy. Although the nomination had to be put to a vote of the full Central Committee, many felt that pressures had been created to make it appear that Rodger’s nomination was tantamount to election. Many who might otherwise have voted for Rodger balked. Others voiced outright opposition to him because he was an unknown. The upshot was that the Central Committee refused to act on the nomination and chose instead to name a special committee to begin screening all over.

The special committee, composed of eighteen members, tapped Blake as its first choice. Dr. D. T. Niles of Ceylon, general secretary of the East Asia Christian Conference, was understood to have been the committee’s second choice. But in a secret session the Central Committee voted in Blake, apparently without any great measure of disagreement. Because of the secrecy at this highest level of inter-church politics, however, speculation will continue on what really happened and why.

What The Ncc Is Saying

Here are salient excerpts from the five policy statements of the National Council of Churches’ General Board, along with a tally of the votes by which each was approved last month:

On China (90 yes, 3 no, 1 abstention)—“… Even while recognizing the increasing belligerence of the mainland China government, we … recommend … That the United States, without prejudice to its own policy concerning diplomatic recognition, and under conditions which take into account the welfare, security and political status of Taiwan, including membership in the United Nations, develop a new policy of support to the seating of the People’s Republic of China in the United Nations; That careful study be given by the United States to regularizing diplomatic communication with the People’s Republic of China and to the conditions under which diplomatic recognition may appropriately be extended.…”

On Southern Africa (94 yes, 4 no, 2 abstentions)—“The General Board … urges the Government of the United States to apply a firmness toward South Africa corresponding to that which it has indicated it would apply to Southern Rhodesia, and to that end to explore and exercise such political and economic pressures as may lead to the effective dissociation of the United States … from implicit support of South Africa’s denial of rights to nonwhites.”

On dissent (92 yes)—“The right of dissent is a part of our nation’s legal and cultural heritage.… The presence of persons of questionable character or motivation in gatherings and demonstrations is often unavoidable and … the witness of the group as a whole should not be invalidated solely on that ground.”

On unemployment insurance (65 yes, 5 no, 2 abstentions)—“Payment of unemployment insurance benefits should be adequate in amount to sustain human dignity, while preserving incentives to seek further employment.”

On economic life (64 yes, 4 no, 4 abstentions)—“Exercise of the traditional right of private property must be conditioned by the right of all mankind including future generations to enjoy the resources and fruits of the earth. Legal ownership of resources does not confer unlimited right of use or misuse. Biblical teachings about the hazards of great wealth and the necessity of regarding all private possession as a divine ‘trust’ were never more timely than today.”

Blake Sees Baptist ‘Wisdom’

Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, initiator of the Consultation on Church Union, apparently doesn’t feel too badly that American Baptists are avoiding the proposed superchurch. In fact, Blake complimented their decision last month (see February 18 issue, p. 42).

“I agree with the wisdom of the American Baptist Convention in this decision,” said Blake. “It would put undue strains upon the denomination if it were in the negotiations.”

He declared that because of their ecclesiology, American Baptists will have to decide “church by church” if they want to join the COCU communion.

After Blake Who?

Who will succeed Eugene Carson Blake as stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.?

Among those most often mentioned are Dr. John Coventry Smith, Dr. William Phelps Thompson, Dr. Theophilus M. Taylor, and Dr. Kenneth G. Neigh.

A speculative story in the New York Times said that Ontario-born Smith and Thompson, a 47-year-old lawyer from Wichita currently the denominational moderator, are “leading the field.” Smith, 63, is general secretary of the United Presbyterian Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations. Thompson apparently is the only layman being given serious consideration.

Other potential candidates, in addition to Taylor, who is secretary of the denomination’s General Council, and Neigh, who serves as general secretary of the Board of National Missions, are:

Dr. James McCord, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, professor of religion at Stanford University, and Dr. H. Ganse Little, minister of the Pasadena church where Blake served before becoming stated clerk.

25 Years Of ‘Crisis’

The arguments among the Protestant intelligentsia in those awkward months before Pearl Harbor make weird reading from a distance of twenty-five years. The debate was recalled last month in the wave of nostalgia at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the magazine Christianity and Crisis.

The magazine was born in the split on the Protestant left between the optimistic neo-pacifism of the Christian Century, then the only well-known independent Protestant journal, and the “realism” of Reinhold Niebuhr and his colleagues at Union Theological Seminary.

In pre-war years, the Century fought Franklin D. Roosevelt’s foreign policies, hoped for peace, and saw the silver lining in the Hitler cloud hovering over Europe.

Incredibly, it was unconcerned about the fall of Poland because of its “record of persecuting its minorities.” When France fell to the Nazis, the Century said that “in a united Europe governed from the German center, with a unified planned economy covering the continent, France will be able to find compensations in terms of human values.”

The month that Crisis first appeared, the Century was troubled by the “master race” problem but hoped that a Nazi victory would establish a form of socialism by breaking the power of the capitalist class and the international bankers.

Niebuhr lashed out at such myopia about nationalism, “maniacal fury” toward Jews, and the belief that “the peace of such a tyranny is morally more tolerable than war.” Months after he had helped found Crisis, Pearl Harbor removed the ambiguities of the international struggle.

Twenty-five years later, ambiguity is again part of the international scene, and Crisis and Century have evolved into a unison chorus in opposing the Johnson Administration’s Viet Nam policy.

A day-long anniversary colloquium rumbled with dissent on Viet Nam, but the main speaker was ardent Administration supporter Hubert Humphrey. The Vice President, who the day before had returned from an Asian tour, declared:

A Scholarship In Religious News

The first fellowship program announced by the new Washington Journalism Center is in religious news. The fellowship, which includes an internship with CHRISTIANITY TODAY, is one of several the center will offer in specialized reporting fields when it opens next fall in the nation’s capital.

Under a one-semester, $2,000 grant, the fellow will work twenty hours per week at the magazine and participate in seminars and research as one of the center’s select students.

Applications for the first semester of 1966–67 are due April 15. The student must have a bachelor’s degree, and if the degree is not in journalism he should have some practical experience in the field.

Preference will be given to students enrolled in graduate journalism schools, but the center plans to allow considerable latitude. The student selected could be a working newsman, a minister, a recent college or seminary graduate, a missionary on furlough, or anyone who needs to know religious journalism to do his job.

From its inception, the center has considered religion one of the special areas the fellowships should encompass. Center director Ray E. Hiebert, presently journalism chairman at American University, calls Washington, D. C., a “laboratory” that is “perfect for high-level journalism study.”

“We reaffirm our intention to sustain the struggle against the forces of Communist expansion—against the forces of poverty, illiteracy, famine, and disease—for as long as the cause of freedom and human decency requires it. We reaffirm our intention of using military power of almost limitless quantities in measured, limited degree.”

Besides Viet Nam, the two liberal independent journals have come much closer together on Roman Catholicism, with the Century sharing Crisis’s mild-mannered ecumenical perspective. But Crisis Managing Editor Wayne Cowan, highest ranking of four full-time staff members, still sees a distinct role for each publication. Crisis is read more by laymen and the unchurched, he said, and “I could frankly say that we are closer to Commonweal [a liberal Catholic weekly] on many issues than to any Protestant journal.”

Besides, the Century “just doesn’t have a John Bennett,” he said, referring to Union’s president who has shared the editorial chairmanship with Niebuhr and whose views, according to Newsweek, “permeate the magazine.”

Crisis now circulates 17,500, compared to the Century’s current report of 42,000. It is slim (usually twelve pages), comes out fortnightly, and operates on less than $100,000 a year. The format is spare, although changes are in the works this year.

Until two years ago, Crisis paid paid 500 for articles, but now it offers as much as $50. The for articles, but now it offers as much as $50. The magazine survives by individual gifts, the biggest recent one ($5,000) from Walter Lippmann, dean of America’s political columnists.

Niebuhr, now 73, is in failing health and was unable to attend the magazine’s twenty-fifth anniversary gala because he is still recuperating from an operation in early February. Before entering the hospital, he wrote an essay for the special anniversary issue contending that the magazine’s title isn’t out of date.

“The social life of mankind is in a perpetual crisis of community and conflict on various levels,” he said. One crisis is “in the church’s relation to the political and international order” and the absence of responsibility in meeting such events as “the fantastic nuclear dilemma.” Though America is cured of “irresponsible neutralism,” it is “tempted to self-righteousness.”

In the twenty-five years, the heaviest reprint requests came, not for Niebuhr’s or Bennett’s rarefied commentary, but for an article on obscenity last year by the Rev. Howard Moody of Greenwich Village, in which he declared that “the word ‘nigg*r’ from the sneering lips of a Bull Connor” is the dirtiest word in the English language.

A Theology Of Communion

God with Us: A Theology of Transpersonal Life, by Joseph Haroutunian (Westminster, 1965, 318 pp., $6), is reviewed by Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, associate professor of philosophy, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The true end of man, argues Professor Haroutunian, is fellowship, conceived not as working together in institutions for the achievement of common goals but rather as loving, faithful communion with one another. He puts the point even more strongly: We are human only to the degree that we are in communion with others. In so far as we limit our engagement with others to the use of them as a means for achieving our own goals, we exist simply at the level of organisms. All men, by virtue of being intelligent creatures of God, place on others a claim to love and faithfulness. Only as this claim is answered do we exist as human beings. The absence of such communion is death and sin and yields anxiety; its presence is salvation.

The Church must be conceived as a communion in this sense, as a fellowship among men and with Jesus Christ. Traditionally the Church has been thought to be an institution that through its ministers dispenses grace to all its members. The hope has been that, from faithful attendance on these means of grace, a fellowship would grow. Yet fellowship has been seen as a consequence of the work of the Church, rather than as its very nature.

Perhaps these themes as such are no longer new and startling. What is fresh and promising in Haroutunian’s book, however, is that he uncompromisingly adheres to them in exploring some of the theological consequences of this way of seeing things. He begins the development of a “theology of communion” in which God’s dealings with us, and our knowledge of and response to God, are conceived always in the context of a fellowship among men that exists in covenant with God. The “hub” of this fellowship is our fellow man Jesus Christ, who established fellowship among men by way of forgiveness. His forgiveness evoked forgiveness, so that a company of men was brought into being who exist in fellowship with one another through Jesus Christ, not as perfected saints, but as sinners who can yet exist in communion by being able to forgive. And this new fellowship is now the basic means of God’s grace to men: my fellow is God’s minister to me. Just as God’s Word is manifested in the forgiveness extended by Jesus Christ to other men, so the Holy Spirit is manifested in the forgiveness that the Church—a fellowship among men and with Jesus—extends to other men. But it is not only God’s grace that comes to us through the fellowship of Christ and the Church, for in this fellowship God is known. Just as he does not act toward us apart from his Word and his Spirit, so we do not know him apart from the communion that he establishes in Christ and in the Church.

Though this gives only the slightest indication of the promising possibilities of this theology of communion—I have, for example, said nothing about one of the finest sections of the book, the critique of the agape understanding of Christian love—let me go on to mention two important points at which I find obscurity.

What is the connection between communion as the true end of man and Christ? Would we men not have known that this is the true end, were it not for Christ? Is Christ’s fellowship with men indispensable to all human fellowship? Is our acquaintance with Christ’s fellowship indispensable to all fellowship? Is our acknowledgment of Christ’s fellowship as God’s grace indispensable to all fellowship? Or is Christ’s fellowship with men just the paradigm of all human fellowship? I find the answers to these questions unclear, or inconsistent. In his discussion of how God acts, Haroutunian seems to say that communion is disrupted among men, that it can be restored only by forgiveness, that it is normally impossible to forgive except in response to forgiveness, that the initial forgiveness in human affairs is Christ’s, and that this forgiveness sets up, as it were, a chain reaction of forgiveness. But other parts of the book seem to contradict various of these connected theses. The obscurity cannot be fully cleared away without a clear understanding of what communion or “fellow-manhood” is; and this central concept is one of those least adequately developed.

Secondly, Haroutunian sometimes seems to hold that to say that God, or God’s Word, or the Holy Spirit forgives is just to say that Jesus and/or my fellow man forgives; and more generally, that to say something about God’s mode of acting is just to say something about man’s mode of acting. And to the question, “But why use the ‘godly’ mode of speech?” his answer would seem to be, “Because the action (e.g., forgiveness) surprises us, it is miraculous.” Similarly, he sometimes seems to hold that to say that a man has responded in a certain way to a certain action of God is just to say that he has responded in a certain way to his fellow men. On this view, then, God is not an independent being, a “person,” with whom we can have communion. Rather, to speak of communion between us and God is only another way of speaking of communion with one another. Yet many passages in the book indicate that Haroutunian does not at all hold to such reductionism. At times, for example, he explicitly urges a distinction between God’s action and man’s action, rightly insisting that to fail to make this distinction is to wind up in humanism. And all in all, it seems that the author wishes not to reduce divine action to human action, but rather to insist that God exercises his grace through human action, especially the action of forgiveness establishing fellowship. Still, the force of this word “exercises” is left obscure.

At several important points, then, there is obscurity. But I do not at all wish to suggest that a theology of communion, as begun by this author, is an unpromising line of exploration. I think that it is necessary, and that Haroutunian has captured a great deal of the biblical Christian understanding of how God has to do with man and man with God.

NICHOLAS P. WOLTERSTORFF

Pulpit Polish

The Art of Dynamic Preaching: A Practical Guide to Better Preaching, by Peter-Thomas Rohrbach, O.C.D. (Doubleday, 1965, 190 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by James Daane, assistant editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Few men of the pulpit read books on how to preach; most think either that they already know or that they do not have the time to learn. Yet preaching is an art to be pursued all one’s life, and is not acquired without conscious reflection on Sunday-to-Sunday performance. If baseball players and concert pianists never outlive the need to practice their techniques, neither do men of the pulpit.

This book is an incentive to improve pulpit performance. It gives a rich supply of practical suggestions about the art of public speaking, the psychology of the speaker and his audience, and the art of putting together a well-knit sermon with a consistent pattern and a relevant message. Rohrbach’s advice will be very helpful to the man just beginning his pulpit career. And it will be, I think, even more helpful for the experienced pulpiteer who will more easily recognize these problems of the pulpit to which the author offers means of solution.

Although this book was written by a Roman Catholic and was designed to help the priest preach more effectively, almost everything in it is of value for the Protestant minister. The author calls for biblical preaching that rings with “the Lord God says!,” acknowledging that “there is something unique and entirely special about Scripture.” He confesses that “there has been a disheartening decline in the vigor and quality of Catholic preaching during the past four centuries,” a criticism that is valid for much of contemporary Protestant preaching. Protestant pulpiteers who are not too sensitive may profit from another criticism Rohrbach levels against much of the preaching of his own church. Decrying the lack of sermonic preparation and organization, the author, who is the superior of the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Washington, D. C., says, “Unfortunately, too many priests deliver what has been called ‘the steer’s-head sermon’—a point here and a point there, and a lot of bull in between.” Rohrbach maintains that a preacher should be able to state the message of any sermon in one sentence.

One of the most interesting and profitable parts of the book is the discussion of the psychological factors that play on the man who in a social gathering converses with ease but who in the pulpit speaks uneasily and haltingly about Jesus Christ.

For better preaching—a matter on which we can afford to be bipartisan—this is a valuable book for Protestant and Roman Catholic preacher.

JAMES DAANE

Recipe For Manna

Bread from Heaven: An Exegetical Study of the Concept of Manna in the Gospel of John and the Writings of Philo, by Peder Borgen (E. J. Brill, 1965, 217 pp., 38 guilders), is reviewed by Larry L. Walker, instructor in Semitic languages, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas.

This book, Volume X in the series “Supplements to Novum Testamentum,” discusses the following central questions in Johannine and Philonic research: (1) sources and traditions, (2) form and style, and (3) origin and interpretation of ideas. The author’s purpose is to investigate the Johannine and Philonic exposition of the pericope on manna, the bread from heaven. His study is technical and requires of the reader more than a general acquaintance with Philo, the Mishna, and the Midrash.

Chapter one shows how Philo and John wove together fragments from Haggadic traditions and words from Old Testament quotations. After examining six relevant Palestinian midrashim about the manna from heaven, the author concludes (pp. 8, 10) that they were merely different versions of the same Haggadic tradition, a tradition probably from Palestine. Chapter two is a thorough study of the homiletic pattern used by Philo and John, and chapter three continues with the survey of how the midrashic method, patterns, and terminology are employed in such homilies.

In the fifth chapter Borgen concludes that Philo developed his ideas of the cosmic and ethical order much in accordance with the higher level of Stoic philosophy and Platonic thought patterns, but also that his ideas are to some degree parallel to the cosmological interpretation of the Torah found in the Palestinian midrash as well as in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. The author also points out that Philo’s non-Jewish (Greek) ideas about philosophy, encyclia, and cosmic order were interpreted within the context of the situation of the Jews in Alexandria and combined with thoughts from the common Jewish heritage. On the other hand, traces of non-Jewish ideas were found in Palestinian traditions as well, an observation which shows that in different degrees Judaism as a whole—Palestinian Judaism included—was part of the Hellenistic world, with its Oriental and Greek components (chapters four and five).

The value of Borgen’s book for research in this field is unquestioned; his source material is fully documented, his bibliography is extensive, and his indices of authors, references, and subjects are complete.

LARRY L. WALKER

Job’S Point

The Book of God and Man: A Study of Job, by Robert Gordis (University of Chicago, 1965, 389 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by Robert B. Laurin, professor of Old Testament, California Baptist Theological Seminary, Covina, California.

Over the centuries men have turned to the Book of Job for understanding and solace in a world that often seems to require denial of faith. Robert Gordis, a rabbi and a professor at Jewish Theological Seminary, has provided a learned and exciting look into Job’s contribution to man’s perplexing faith decision.

The book is not a commentary (the author tells us that such a volume is in preparation), and therefore many exegetical and linguistic evidences are frustratingly absent. Nevertheless, this work is exceedingly useful as (1) a discussion of the variegated problems of introduction and theology and (2) an original translation with a summary of contents before each division of the text. Here the author’s wide knowledge of world literature, particularly Jewish writings, opens up the cultural and literary milieu of Job.

Professor Gordis classifies Job form-critically as “the only book of its kind,” for although it has many of the characteristics of both lyric and didactic poetry, yet its setting within a framework of a prose tale sets it apart as a unique literary genre. In spite of this, the author stresses the unity of the book and scorns anything but a conservative approach to emendations. Gordis sees the book as a whole as having been formed by a Hebrew writer, probably in the fifth century B.C., who took an ancient folk tale dealing with a “patient Job” (chaps. 1:1–2:10; 42:11–17). retold it in his own words, and provided transitional prose material (2:11–13; 42:7–10) as links to his poetic dialogue about a “protesting Job” (3:1–42:6). Written partly as a protest against the prevalent narrow particularism of post-exilic Judaism, the Book of Job shares with Ruth and Jonah a universalism of spirit that is concerned with the problem of all men’s place in the universe. And what is that problem specifically? It is the mystery of the suffering man must endure in God’s world.

To this the author of Job speaks. Although he recognizes that suffering may have an educative function, he finds the real answer in the words of the Lord spoken “out of the whirlwind.” One is to recognize in the complexity, order, and beauty of nature that “nature is not merely a mystery, but a miracle.” Man cannot fully comprehend the order of the natural world; yet at every turn he is aware of its harmony. So, given this analogy in nature, man may have faith in God and believe that there is an essential rightness to the moral order as well.

Professor Gordis has given us an important book that, if used with a good commentary, will do much to help us to see Job’s point that ultimately justification is only by faith.

ROBERT B. LAURIN

Exciting Book

The Psalms: Their Structure and Meaning, by Pius Drijvers, O.C.S.O. (Herder and Herder, 1965, 269 pp., $5.50), is reviewed by Clyde T. Francisco, professor of Old Testament interpretation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

This study, an English translation of the popular Dutch work that first appeared in 1956, is a worthy example of the recent efforts of Catholic scholars. Father Drijvers has clearly sought to work within the bounds of the papal encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943), which encouraged the use of historical research within the limits of biblical inerrancy.

On the one hand, critical views are boldly stated. Father Drijvers observes that “the Vulgate edition of the psalms is so to speak second-hand, and it has, as well as its own translators’ faults, those of its original translation, the Septuagint” (p. 21). He declares that “the literary criticism that is connected with the name of Julius Wellhausen has established the fact that there are several documents in the five books of Moses, namely, the Yahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly Code” (p. 33). He affirms that none of the royal psalms were originally Messianic, each one having been composed with a contemporary Israelite king in mind. In all his work he obviously is dependent upon the form-critical labors of Hermann Gunkel.

On the other hand, the author has been able to achieve a goal few modern scholars have attempted. Since Gunkel, most of the serious psalm studies have been content with determining the original Sitz im Leben, leaving the average reader wondering just where in the strange world of the ancient Israelite there is a word of God for today. With evangelical fervor Father Drijvers attacks this problem. He does not attempt to exegete individual psalms, since his purpose is to give a Christian perspective to the historical study of the Psalter. His procedure is “by methods of exegesis to arrive at the division of the psalms into various groups; to elucidate the themes of these groups; and to transpose these themes onto the Christian and liturgical plane” (p. 15). The result—although repeated allusions to Old Testament ideas fulfilled in the Eucharist seem out of proportion to the number of New Testament references involved—is an exciting and compelling book.

CLYDE T. FRANCISCO

As He Began

Man in Conflict, by Paul F. Barkman (Zondervan, 1965, 189 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Glenn R. Wittig, assistant librarian, Tidwell Bible Library, and graduate student in psychology of religion, Baylor University, Waco, Texas.

This book is a first attempt at a “biblical psychology.” It is also an early product of the new Graduate School of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary. In these two respects the work is both encouraging and disappointing.

It is particularly encouraging since the author, a confirmed biblicist as well as a clinical psychologist and professor at Fuller, openly relates a scientific theory of knowledge to a portion of Scripture. He compares Freud’s theory of neurosis with the theme of double-mindedness in the Epistle of James, thereby attempting to ferret out the psychological meanings in that New Testament book.

The work is also commendable for the stance toward Christianity and mental illness. Barkman strongly states that the Christianity provides no guarantee against or panacea for mental illness (pp. 31, 47). Repeatedly neglected by others, this position is most welcome here.

But although the approach to the subject is praiseworthy, the quality of the work is disappointing. Man’s deterioration (from “choice” to “repression” to “anxiety” to “neurosis”) is discussed simply and clearly. The description of the “true direction” back to health and “integration,” however, is weak and sometimes unconvincing. The chapter summaries are excellent; yet Barkman’s style is disturbingly colloquial.

Those who have watched with anticipation the encouraging developments at Fuller expected something more in this early product than another popular essay on mental health. The work was not meant to be a commentary, but neither is it a true psychoanalytic interpretation of James. Rather, psychological knowledge is highlighted with quotations and references drawn equally from James and the rest of the New Testament.

Nevertheless, this study opens vast new vistas in biblical interpretation. One hopes that Barkman will continue to provide material in this area of constructive integration and analysis.

GLENN R. WITTIG

Book Briefs

How the Communists Use Religion, by Edgar C. Bundy (Devin-Adair, 1966, 162 pp., $3.50). The executive secretary of the Church League of America spent eight years on the “wearisome job” of proving that top Soviet churchmen are Communists. But while pointing them out, with an eye on the World Council of Churches, he indicates little about the problems of the Church in a repressive, atheistic state.

God in Creation and Evolution, by A. Hulbosch, O. S. A. (Sheed and Ward, 1965, 240 pp., $4.95). The author, influenced by Teilhard de Chardin, argues that evolution can enrich theology.

The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays, by Richard Hofstadter (Alfred A. Knopf. 1965, 333 pp., $5.95).

The Amplified Bible (Zondervan, 1965, 1,400 pp., $9.95). A version of the Bible which leaves the reader to decide whether the original Hebrew or Greek means this, that, or something else, or all combined, resulting in a Bible that has lost its serviceability for public or family reading. Even in private devotional use one must stumble through it rather than read it. Its pages are studded with brackets giving numerous, varied readings of the original—sometimes with the aid of Webster’s dictionary (!)—assurances that this is fulfillment of prophecy, and even definitive elaborations of such words as “good” and “bad.” Why “blessed” has different meanings in different beatitudes is not indicated: “Blessed—happy, blithesome, joyous, spiritually prosperous [that is, with life-joy and satisfaction in God’s favor and salvation, regardless of their outward conditions]—are the meek (the mild, patient, long-suffering), for they shall inherit the earth!” (Matt. 5:5); “Blessed—happy, to be envied, and spiritually prosperous [that is, possessing the happiness produced by experience of God’s favor and especially conditioned by the revelation of His grace, regardless of their outward conditions]—are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!” (5:8). Already more than a million copies have been printed.

Blessings out of Buffetings: Studies in Second Corinthians, by Alan Redpath (Revell, 1965, 240 pp., $3.95).

Paperbacks

Gripped by Christ, by S. Estborn (Association, 1965, 80 pp., $1.25). A study of individual conversions in India.

A Treasury of Christian Verse, edited by Hugh Martin (Fortress, 1966, 126 pp., $2). Some of the finest Christian verse gathered from the centuries. First published in 1959.

My God, My God, Why …?: Messages on the Seven Last Words, by Adolph Redsole (Baker, 1965. 67 pp., $1). Evangelical and suggestively practical.

Separated Brethren: A Survey of Non-Catholic Christian Denominations (revised edition), by William J. Whalen (Bruce, 1966, 286 pp., $1.95). Revised in 1961. First published in 1958.

Threat to Freedom: A Picture Story Exposing Communism (Standard, 1965, 32 pp., $.35).

The Forgotten Commandment, by Ed Smithson (self-published, 1965, 71 pp., $1). Derives most of its value from its subject.

Two Worlds—Christianity and Communism, by James D. Bales (Standard, 1965, 128 pp., $1.25). Study course for youth and adults.

Children’s Talks for Sundays and Holidays, by Marion G. Gosselink (Baker, 1965, 80 pp., $1). Evangelical, practical chats of the kind that is for many the most difficult to make.

What Do Presbyterians Believe?, by Gordon H. Clark (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1965, 284 pp., $3.95). An exposition of the Westminster Confession, sometimes quite philosophical.

The Voice from the Cross: Sermons on the Seven Words from the Cross, by Andrew W. Blackwood, Jr. (Baker, 1965, 71 pp., $1). Good short sermons on the Seven Words. First published in 1955.

The Economics of Poverty: An American Paradox, edited by Burton A. Weisbrod (Prentice-Hall, 1965, 180 pp., $1.95). A series of essays on the why of poverty and the how of its elimination.

How to Understand the Bible, by W. Robert Palmer (Standard, 1965, 112 pp., $1.25). More well-intended than well-wrought.

In the Beginning …: Genesis 1–3, by Jean Danielou, S. J. (Helicon, 1965, 106 pp., $1.25). Translated from the French, this exposition considers the creation narrative late recorded, early conceived, and theologically significant only in anticipation of Jesus Christ, Lord of the new creation.

A Reconciliation Primer, by John H. Gerstner (Baker, 1965, 51 pp., $.85). The author contends that Christians eternally existed in Christ and fell from this eternal union with Christ into sin, and that on the basis of this eternal union, reconciliation reunited them with Christ eternally.

A Bible Inerrancy Primer, by John H. Gerstner (Baker, 1965, 63 pp., $.85). A remarkable argument for biblical inerrancy which some will find not inerrant.

Imagine an ocean-going liner without anchor, compass, or rudder. Wrecking and loss would be inevitable. And all around us, inside and outside the Church, there are millions of people in an analogous spiritual condition.

Day after day countless Christians start out without any conscious anchor of the soul, without a compass by which their lives can be properly oriented, and without the rudder of God’s guidance to enable them to steer a straight course through the confusing situations of life.

This happens to all who do not know and use the Bible, the written Word of God; for it is the Bible that is an anchor in the midst of shifting opinions, a compass that orients us to God’s eternal verities, and a rudder that turns man toward God’s way. Above all else the Bible tells us of Christ and how we may obtain salvation through faith in him.

The world is full of changing opinions. The speculations of men are as numerous and as varied as men themselves. On every hand voices clamor to be heard; some are foolish, some wise, but all are subject to change with the passing of time. In the midst of this situation, the Bible stands as an unending source of wisdom. In it are to be found the answers so many seek but few find; for the wisdom of this Book is divine, a revelation of truth man can never discover from any other source.

Since this is so (and it can be put to the test by anyone), what should our attitude to the Bible be?

I speak from a long and soul-satisfying experience. I know the aridness and frustration of days lived without the comfort and guidance of the Scriptures. I also know the joy that comes when things and events fall into a clear pattern because the Captain and his Word hate been consulted at the beginning of the day, and because divine wisdom has been given precedence over human opinions.

The daily reading of the Bible and the appropriation of the things it has to offer is of such great importance, and the end result so soul-satisfying, that it cannot be over-emphasized.

We live in a secularized and materialistic world. Only in the Bible and through the teaching of the Holy Spirit can we come to know and appreciate spiritual values, and compare them with the values of a world alienated from God. The Bible points us in the right direction in the midst of conflicting claims. It shows us the way, even when the sun is obscured by clouds of adversity and the fogs of doubt surround us. Like a brilliant light, the Bible shows the path of God in the midst of other paths that beckon to ultimate disaster.

In our time moral values are considered to be relative, not absolute; right and wrong are said to be determined by the situation, not by a moral code. It is clear that Satan has undermined the morality that is a basic part of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

How can young people—or any of us—live lives of purity when all around there are enticements to violate the moral standards on which our society has been built?

In the Book of Proverbs, young people can find the answers to their problems today. Bookstores stock hundreds of books containing advice to young people, but the clear teachings of this marvelously modern Old Testament book have never been surpassed or superseded.

Who does not have problems? There is hardly a day when we are not confronted with them in one way or another; but the man whose mind is steeped in the Word of God can find basic answers to life’s problems. The answer may be a warning against the personal sins that lie at the root of the problem; or it may be a word giving the solution as a light flashing in the dark.

In our time knowledge has multiplied astonishingly, and it probably will continue to multiply far beyond the capability of man to make use of it. But over and beyond all that may be learned about the world there is the fact of God’s transcendent wisdom offered to man in the Bible, without which he continues to be an earthbound creature. This wisdom can bring peace of heart and serenity of mind because it is fixed on the One who is Truth itself.

No one would deny that our world is full of staggering uncertainties. Many suffer from the constant tensions caused by an unknown future. Wars and rumors of wars are only a part of a world where political, social, and economic ferments point to possible disaster.

Yet he who has his faith firmly rooted in the Word of God sees beyond these uncertainties. He has an anchor that reaches far beyond what is visible, and he knows that no turn of events can separate him from the love of God. He knows that God is sovereign, and that all that occurs is permitted by him. He knows that all things in his own life are working out for his good, because he loves God.

In the Bible, and nowhere else, a man can find an unfailing frame of reference. On every hand the lives of men are being shipwrecked because they have nothing to hold them steady amid the temptations to which they are subjected. This is tragically true within the Church when men accept a low view of the inspiration and authority of the Word.

On the personal level, the Bible is an unending source of comfort and hope. Who has not had his spirit lifted by the affirmations and promises in the Word? Who has not had his soul buoyed up by the sure hope that comes from this source? Whose heart has not found expressed in the Psalms the words of praise and thanksgiving he feels to the God of love who has dealt so wondrously with his erring children? As in no other literature, the heart’s deepest feelings find articulation in the Psalms.

Like a man dying of dehydration when a gushing spring is near at hand, or one starving when a feast is within his reach, so men and women are perishing because they do not make daily use of the Book that is found in almost every household.

With the reading of the Word there comes spiritual enlightenment, growing confidence, and adjusted perspectives. There is no substitute for the Bible. Books about the Bible have an important place; but they are at best the words of men, and too often they are tainted by unbelief.

The Bible is a living book, more relevant than tomorrow morning’s newspaper. It is not, of course, to be worshiped; we worship the Christ it reveals. It is not a fetish but a living revelation from the living God.

I challenge all who read this to test these claims for themselves.

What will be the outcome of spiritual breezes that are blowing through the traditional forms and bringing new life?

The worn, tired, sterile apologetic of many Protestants that nothing can change in the Roman Catholic Church, at least nothing that makes any real difference, is being soundly disproved today and exposed for what it always was, an all too easy defense of Protestantism. Big changes are occurring in the church of Rome, and many of these changes are wholesome, the work of the Holy Spirit and a source of joy to Protestants who are learning that easy slogans long used to characterize the other side are only half true. Protestants are also learning that many of the theological problems engaging Roman Catholic thinkers should also engage Protestant thinkers. The question of Scripture and tradition is surely one of these. Protestants, with their strong belief in the power of the Word of God, are heartened by the current renewal of interest in Scripture reading, teaching, and preaching among Roman Catholics. And, conscious of the power of the Word, they realize that no one can safely predict the possible extent of reform and renewal within the Roman church.

At no time since the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century has the church of Rome faced so many internal and external pressures toward action and reform. Within that church today, forces are at work that are in many ways similar to those at work in the church before the Reformation, though the problems of the two periods are etched against sharply contrasting backgrounds.

Since the time of Luther the papacy has been reformed so that recent popes have lived exemplary lives. There are no modern Tetzels hawking indulgences, promising buyers that the souls of their loved ones will fly out of purgatory even before their gold coins fall to the bottom of wooden chests. Simony and nepotism are not a grave problem, and red hats are not handed out to teen-agers or to those of royal blood. While there still is persecution of non-Catholics in some parts of the world, the days of the Inquisition are over. The church does not hand over heretics to the secular authorities to burn at the stake. The rack, the strappado, and the “iron lady” are no more. Thus the church of Rome in the twentieth century, faced with new pressures and problems, approaches them from within a situation vastly better than that in which the Reformers rose in the fifteenth century.

In the church of Rome before 1500 there emerged men like John Wyclif and the Lollards, John Huss of Bohemia, Jerome of Prague, and Savonarola. Some of them bore witness to their religious convictions as they were burned at the stake. They were succeeded by Luther, Calvin, Beza, and Knox, and the Reformation was born and grew. Surely it served a useful purpose even for the church of Rome. But the Counter-Reformation followed the Reformation, and one of its chief instruments was the Council of Trent, which convened intermittently from 1545 to 1563. There the Roman church was renewed, its witness consolidated, and its forms settled for four hundred years.

Now the Roman Catholic Church is at a major crossroads once again. From scores of sources around the world reports filter in of priests, nuns, and laymen who have experienced the same kind of religious experience as their counterparts of Reformation and pre-Reformation days. Unlike the Reformers, who were forced out of the church, these modern disciples remain within the fold. Yet they have come to know Jesus Christ in an intimacy that sometimes surpasses the devotion of many Protestants. The reality of their experience we cannot question; the depth of their commitment and the open expression of joy in their newfound faith are good to behold. This movement of God within the church of Rome comes at a time when it faces grave problems, some common to all faiths in the Christian tradition and some peculiar to that church. Atheism, higher criticism, the spread of Communism, the population and knowledge explosions, and the need for organizational updating to meet the challenge of the times are common problems. But the Roman church also faces knotty difficulties rising from an internal surge toward democracy, a marked interest in the priesthood of all believers, the question of the relevance of archaic church forms in modern society, the cry for religious liberty for all men, and a desire for academic freedom in educational institutions.

Undoubtedly, dissent and discontent within the Roman church was in some measure responsible for the calling of Vatican Council II. That council is over now. But the church will never be the same. The council opened windows through which refreshing breezes will continue to blow for many decades. There were the statement on religious liberty; the acknowledgment that the Jews are not unilaterally guilty of the death of Christ; the movement toward ecumenism and dialogue with other faiths; the reorganization of the church; a return to the Scriptures and the emphasis on biblical theology; the putting of the mass into the vernacular; and many others.

But amid these many changes one must recognize that the church of Rome has not changed and will not change in its essential theological position. Pope Paul is an intelligent man who knows who he is, what his office signifies, and what he must preserve. He must “reconcile the spirit of change … with the protection of the office he has inherited,” says Sanche De Gramont in Dominion (January, 1966). Paul’s definition of the papacy is unacceptable to Eastern Orthodox and Protestant alike. As late as two years ago he said to an assembly of the faithful: “This, dearest sons, is what an audience with the Pope should leave in your souls: the impression, indeed the stupor and the joy, of a meeting with the Vicar of Christ” (ibid.).

Now that the church of Rome has begun to reform itself once more, and will continue to do so in the future, we must ask what the outcome will be. Can the church contain the new revolutionary forces and tame them? Will those who press for change be satisfied if the church moves slower than events warrant? Will there come another schism in which spiritually vital elements of the church will be drawn off into new channels or into already existing but non-Catholic structures? Surely to meet the challenge of the spirit of change and at the same time maintain the papacy in its historic forms is a formidable task for Paul VI and his successors.

In the midst of change and renewal, evangelicals should reach out with heart and hand to those who, though they are in the church of Rome, are our spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ. Substantive changes have taken place within Protestantism, too. There are conflicting currents and opposing viewpoints. And it is unmistakably clear that Protestant evangelicals are far closer, in theology and commitment, to many within the church of Rome than to many liberals in the Protestant tradition.

History has its own sifting process. Therefore evangelicals must not isolate themselves from those of evangelical conviction within the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed, Protestant evangelicals have nothing to fear and much to gain by frank dialogue with the church itself. Bridges can and must be built and more intimate contacts made. If there is risk in encounter, so is there risk in any of life’s relationships. And conversations with Roman Catholics pose risks for them as well as for evangelicals. Whatever the risks, they are minimized when Protestant evangelicals test all opinions (even their own) and sustain all doctrines by fidelity to the Word of God and insist that all fellowship and all conversation start and end with the Scriptures. In line with this principle, evangelicals can talk to anybody, at any time, and about any subject anywhere.

Adrift On A Red Sea?

The National Council of Churches climbed farther out on the socio-political limb last month (see News, page 36). It is a tribute to the deep-seated convictions of the NCC leaders that they do not waver even at the specter of defection and financial adversity. But it is a condemnation that they are so persistently insensitive to the viewpoints of very many of their fellow Christians.

One wonders at times whom the General Board of the National Council represents. Surely it does not even begin to reflect the many theological and social stances included in the NCC constituency. Despite the wide criticism of the council’s stand on Red China, hardly any of the 250 board members seem willing to stand on the floor and speak against it. Furthermore, none of the members ever seems to question the propriety of the NCC’s speaking out on such subjects.

Perhaps the situation is in no small degree attributable to the notable indifference and isolation of those NCC members that disagree with the council’s policy. If they would exert more initiative in winning seats on the board and challenging the presuppositions on which the NCC operates, the council might more fairly reflect the convictions of its constituency.

The Fall Of A ‘Messiah’

Francis Nwia Kofie Kwame Nkrumah, for fifteen years the chief cook of Ghana’s political stew, was ignominiously deposed from his perpetual presidency while receiving plaudits and flowers from his fellow Communists in China. Nkrumah’s embarrassed hosts were caught royally entertaining a king without a kingdom. Indeed, he was hardly a welcome guest at a time when Communist China was licking its wounds after a series of political reserves around the world.

Nkrumah committed just about every mistake a dictator could make. But from the Christian perspective the worst of them all were his absurd, not to say blasphemous, claims to deity. “The Messiah” proved finite after all, and was deposed. Time magazine captioned its picture accurately; “Redeemed from the Redeemer.” He immediately began engineering a return to power from Guinea, but the rejoicing in Ghana at his ouster suggests that he has little grass-roots support for another revolution. We wish for Ghana, a harassed and troubled land, a brighter day under more mature leadership.

The Strachan Memorial

The Latin America Mission has acted wisely in its choice of a memorial for the late R. Kenneth Strachan, whose contribution to missions, particularly through Evangelism-in-Depth, was so great. Rather than erecting a memorial building on the field, such as a hospital or school, the Mission has established the R. Kenneth Strachan Memorial Fund for World Evangelism. This fund will be administered by a committee composed of Dr. Arthur Glasser of the Overseas Missionary Fellowship; Dr. Paul Rees of World Vision, Inc.; and the three general directors of the Latin America Mission—Dr. Horace L. Fenton, Jr., the Rev. W. Dayton Roberts, and the Rev. David M. Howard.

We see in this Memorial Fund great possibilities, including the provision of instructional materials in Spanish (such as filmstrips and manuals) that can be used to communicate in-depth principles of evangelism to the whole Spanish-speaking world and to other countries as well. Kenneth Strachan’s vision was not provincial; his strategy of Evangelism-in-Depth is applicable to the whole world. The Memorial Fund will open up means for training increasing numbers of men and women for the worldwide task of evangelism. (Already the Latin America Biblical Seminary in Costa Rica is planning to include in its structure a department of evangelism and mission.)

CHRISTIANITY TODAY salutes the Latin America Mission on the establishment of this Memorial Fund.

It Speaks For Itself

The Church and its ministry are increasingly under assault from some unexpected quarters.

Study Encounter, quarterly publication of the Division of Studies of the World Council of Churches, says that the material in its pages reflect “only the personal opinions of its several contributors.” But one of those contributors writes, “Certainly in the Gospels one simply does not find a Jesus who is the first Evangelical Churchman! As a matter of fact, if it is the function of the preacher to ‘pluck brands from the burning’ (whether eschatological or nuclear), one can only say that Jesus is rather irresponsible! When he confronts the crowds, he does not speak of their eternal destiny, nor even try to make them take the issue of slavery seriously. He tells them how damn lucky they are to be alive and that there is no need to overdo it with their prayers.”

There’s good news the like of which the pulpit hasn’t preached before!

A Thrust For Revival

Is it possible that we are taking our age too seriously? Think of the time we Christians spend reacting to “latter-day prophets” who change their minds each time they prepare a new manuscript for the press. We wait for the next radical assault, flinching in anticipation, wondering in our timidity whether the Church can stand the pummeling.

Meanwhile the great body of the faithful seems to absorb the slings and arrows of this present age and to go right on believing in the Word of God. The Billy Graham Greater London Crusade is a case in point. Hundreds of churches in the island capital are marshaling their forces to bring the unsaved and unchurched to Earls Court stadium beginning next June 1. It will not be a spectacular “new departure” in identifying the church with the community. It will not be a crash program in religious novelty or a chrome-plated experiment in relevance. Rather it will be an old, old appeal to men, women, and young people to unshackle their lives and give them to Jesus Christ. It will not be an effort to scuttle the existing church; it will be a revival of the existing church.

We congratulate the congregations of the London area that are mobilizing for this major event of faith in our time. We admire their largeness of spirit in this response to an evangelist from another country. We predict that great blessings will be showered from heaven upon many thousands of Britons in the days ahead, and we invite our readers to pray for such a supernatural result.

Our age needs to be taught a lesson about itself. London, where the faith was nurtured and so many of mankind’s dreams were born in centuries past, is a good place to begin.

The Forgotten Child

Today Franklin D. Roosevelt’s phrase “the forgotten man” might well be changed to “the forgotten child.” We live in a time when adult self-indulgence insists on allowing just about anything to be printed and published, no matter how indecent and vile. In thus protecting their own freedom to wallow in mental filth, many adults have forgotten a whole generation of youth.

There is evidence that dirty books and pictures develop dirty minds and that inflamed imaginations lead to sexual violence. Says New York psychiatrist Max Levin: “I am convinced p*rnography is undermining the mental health of countless youngsters.… Unscrupulous publishers cater to their sex hungers, and their lurid books are hot numbers on newsstands, in candy stores and wherever teenagers gather.”

Dr. Nicholas G. Frignito, director and chief psychiatrist of the County Court of Philadelphia, declares: “The most singular factor inducing the adolescent to sexual activities is … the lewd picture, the smutty book, the obscenely pictured playing card, indecent films, the girlie magazines.… p*rnography fosters impure habits and desires.… It can cause sexually aggressive acts and in some instances lead to the slaying of the victim.”

The late Dr. Benjamin Karpman, chief psychotherapist at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D. C., said: “… there is a direct relationship between juvenile delinquency, sex life and p*rnographic literature.”

According to J. Edgar Hoover, “Sex-mad magazines are creating criminals faster than jails can be built to house them.” And O. W. Wilson, Chicago police superintendent, states: “Obscene literature is a primary problem in the United States today. Sexual arousals from obscene literature have been responsible for criminal behavior from vicious assaults to homicide.”

In a resolution, the National Council of Juvenile Court Judges declared: “The character of juvenile delinquency has changed as a consequence of the stimulation of salacious publications, being no longer the mischievous acts of children, but acts of violence, armed robbery, rape, torture and even homicide, for which the vicious publications condition the minds of our children.”

A good many cynical adults insist that no limit whatever can be placed upon purveyors of dirt. As a consequence, panderers of smut hide under the cloak of a liberty that destroys the right of decent-minded people to enjoy freedom from the sex-obsession that mass media, hidden persuaders, and wide-open show business, to say nothing of the out-and-out p*rnographers, make capital of.

Is there no freedom for parents who want to bring up their children in purity of mind and heart? Must the moral atmosphere be polluted? Must we continue to live in a smog of indecency and perversion?

Americans who put profit and pleasure before human life come under the condemnation of him who said, “Temptations to sin are sure to come; but woe to him by whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung round his neck and he were cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin” (Luke 17:1, 2, RSV).

Censorship entails great and well-nigh insuperable problems. There must be some effective way to call for restraint in the exercise of freedom of press, stage, and screen. One hesitates to add an additional burden to a President who already bears crushing responsibilities. But because the welfare of American youth is threatened, we need desperately to hear from the highest authority in the land a call to self-restraint and a return to at least minimum standards of good taste. And we need also to hear such a call from other leaders and from the pulpit.

We are a free people, but now that every kind of immorality and perversion is paraded ad nauseam before our eyes and ears, we must return to decency—not just for our own sake but also for the sake of our children.

A Time To Speak

Ours is an age of pessimism and negation, a period in which man is threatened with deluge by forces over which he has no control. On every hand modern anxieties support the pessimistic mood. We are told that there will be standing room only on this planet in a short time; that man cannot supply enough food for multiplied billions of people; that nuclear holocaust will ruin the race, or genetic catastrophe overtake man because of the effects of radiation.

As if this were not enough, the age of negation has struck the Christian Church so that what some men do not believe is paraded more openly than what others do believe. Newspapers, radio, and television echo the denials of the trustworthiness of the Bible, of a living God, of a virgin birth, of a resurrection from the dead, of a relevant Church, of an atoning death, and of a second advent.

Surely the time has come for “simple” Christians to focus on the “uplook” rather than the “downlook” and to speak with affirmation, not negation. And we can do no better than to say with fervor and certainty in our hearts: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth: And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord.… Amen”; and “Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.… Even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.”

GETHSEMANE

windless valley

between sunlight

and starlight

breathless but

for whispers of

blood in the

olive leaves—if

thou hadst known

even thou only-begotten of stony ground the agony among thy sweat-hung thorns … because thou knewest not, thy visitation falls shadowlike upon the rocky ground

nevertheless

suffer it to be so.

smitten Rock and

sleeping rock—

the stones cry

out, could ye

not watch and pray

but pray now

for the rocks

and mountains

behold the hands

are at hand

torchlight red and

tilting lanterns

interrupt twilight

stumbling feet in

clanging armor

ascend the hill

swinging swords

staves of reed

shaking in the wind

silver eyes

dusty ears

circ*mscribed

with blood conspiring

perspiring

trample the garden

kiss of cords

mocking co*ck

whom seek ye?

sunset scarlet

nailed against

the night—

behold hypocrites

discern the morrow!

KENT CALKINS

Miffed at the Rift

So Sammy Runs

The Late Liz is the title of a book written by Gert Behanna, and it’s a good one. Now it has been put on a record in her own remarkable voice and with just the right lilt. She tells, of course, about the wonderful change that took place in her life. In telling it in her own characteristic way, she mentions the occasion when she was coming out of a slough of despond, needed some help, and thought she should see a minister. When she had inquired around about where to get a minister, someone asked her, “Do you want a go-getter or a man of God?” She thought that maybe in her condition she needed a man of God.

We all do, and they are hard to come by. The go-getters have taken over.

My idea of a first-rate nightmare is to dream that someone has suddenly given me a church of about 5,000 members complete with staff, intercom, a stainless steel kitchen, and a mimeograph machine. Oh yes, the mimeograph machine. How did the early Church ever get started without a mimeograph machine? And please let’s have everything in triplicate, and make sure we keep open the channels of communication, and don’t do anything until you have at least three signatures.

This is a false picture, if I give you the impression that large churches are necessarily manned by go-getters instead of men of God. That’s a generalization that won’t hold up at all. But the threat is always with us. Person-to-person and the “I-thou” can get lost in the machinery. In a game where you can’t serve God and mammon, the organization man and mammon get together all too frequently.

And this calls for a quiet word to our seminary faculties. What makes a man “succeed” in the ministry? Well, certainly something more than the ability to endure committees, and get things done, and slap backs, and laugh heartily.

EUTYCHUS II

A Look Across The Rift

Referring to your statement (“Will the Gap Narrow or Widen?,” Feb. 4 issue) that “of all the tragedies of the modern world, none would be sadder than an ecclesiastical rift that would further divide the community of Christian faith”: Such a statement … is either totally naïve due to a theological blindness or it shows a lack of willingness to admit the reality of the twentieth-century situation.

There is a rift.… Naturally the evangelicals are outweighed in the ecumenical movement and in most of the large Protestant denominations due to this rift.… Why not recognize the facts and realize that this movement would be denying itself to let evangelicals have important positions and voices in its various programs. Would we want to let them, that is the “liberals,” have a voice in our programs?…

HURVEY WOODSON

Milano, Italy

I have read with more than ordinary interest the editorial.… It concerns itself with a matter which has been one of great concern to me for a good many years, even long before I became in 1953 president of the former Evangelical and Reformed Church.…

I am no longer active in the National Council, although I believe in it and continue to support it in every way I can. I believe in its leadership.…

It seems to me that you and your colleagues are in a particularly strong strategic position to exercise a ministry of reconciliation in behalf of the more conservative orthodox viewpoint which you generally represent, just as I am sure there are leaders in the National Council constituency who favor among themselves that kind of a ministry of reconciliation.

JAMES E. WAGNER

Vice-President

Ursinus College

Collegeville, Pa.

It is very heartening to know that there are still seven thousand who have not bent the knee.…

PETER ALPHENAAR

Bradenton Beach, Fla.

I hope it will wake up the evangelicals who yield to the popular and bewitching voice of ecumenicity.

C. P. DAME

Second Reformed Church

Kalamazoo, Mich.

Southern Baptists believe there is a difference between “union” and “unity.” Tie two cats together by their tails and you will have union but not unity. Different church bodies formally joining up together is likewise union but not unity. Unity can only exist among born-again believers who know what it is to have a common experience of salvation through faith in [Christ’s] blood.…

WILBER M. SCHLICHTING

Prichard, Ala.

I fail to understand why persons agitating for church unity should necessarily be opposed to evangelism and vice versa.…

HERBERT KAISER

Monticello, Ill.

I feel that the vast majority of us who are serving in the local parish are simply trying to be obedient to both the ecumenical and the evangelical imperatives of our Christian faith as best we can. We believe in the authority of Scripture, in justification by faith alone, and in most of the other tenets you credit to “the evangelical,” but we also recognize that the ecumenical movement is both scriptural and Spirit-led as a whole, and respond to it with joy, for such is our understanding of Christ’s Church.…

I would drop my support of the ecumenical movement this moment if I thought it failed to be evangelical at its heart.

WILLIAM B. SIMONS

Riverside Methodist Church

Harrisburg, Pa.

No Grounds For Praise

Sorry, I do not share Vernon Grounds’s praise of Carnell’s book, The Burden of Sören Kierkegaard (Feb. 18 issue). I believe Carnell has neglected altogether too much the philosophical framework of Kierkegaard’s interpretation of Christianity. He thus fails to see the radical nature of this (re)interpretation and consequently grants him far more credit than he is due. In this respect I believe Zuidema has done a far better job in his monograph on Kierkegaard in the “Modern Thinkers” series. And I believe his judgment to be more accurate when he states: “Kierkegaard secularized Christianity and Christian categories long before the development of Heidegger’s and Jasper’s existentialism.”

J. TUININGA

Philadelphia, Pa.

Peale Or The Picayune

I marveled at Peter Van Tuinen’s review (a meticulous search for possible omissions and inconsistencies) of Norman Vincent Peale’s Sin, Sex, and Self-Control (Feb. 4 issue) and especially his summing-up: “… it is not Christianity.” In my judgment, there is much more Christianity in the book than in the review. The book deals creatively with Christian living; the review has the aura of the picayune.

HARRY H. WIGGINS

Fairview Park, Ohio

Doctoring The Ministry

I was interested in … “Theological Doctorates” (Current Religious Thought, Feb. 18 issue).

Though I don’t agree with the author’s conclusions about the matter of giving a doctorate for seminary work, at least he did present some of the considerations. However, I was interested in noting what seemed to me a significant omission in the discussion. This omission was in reference to the competition of the glut of D.D.’s, which is certainly a factor in forcing this reappraisal.… I couldn’t help wondering if the author was afraid of offending some of the journal’s regular readers by mentioning a sacred cow. Possibly if the glut of questionable D.D.’s is frowned upon, some of the tension will be released. However, I would imagine that there are too many what you term in another place “popularly educated ministers” who hold their positions with the help of a D.D. from someplace (the someplace is seldom mentioned) for this to be a solution.

Thus, I say full speed ahead to the progressive schools, for at least it would be a better basis for a doctorate than raising some money for a Bible school someplace.

WM. ROSS JOHNSTON

Trinity Presbyterian

Perryton, Tex.

Montgomery should be glad that someone has courage enough to attack the sacred cow of theological education. If the attack was only by the fly of a cheap degree, it could be flicked off casually. Some educators feel that a religion major and some language prerequisites make sense for the undergraduate. Is it possible that a seminary that dares set Bible, Greek, and philosophy prerequisites just may be able to offer a superior education instead of a cheap degree? Could there possibly be a place for a seminary that aims to educate and professionally train preachers and missionaries instead of teachers?

WARREN H. FABER

Director of Academic Affairs

Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Wrong Corpse

“God is dead!” some teachers claim;

They say they’re “on the level.”

Would God that someone, in his name,

Could also kill the Devil.

ERNEST K. EMURIAN

Cherrydale Methodist

Arlington. Va.

Convenient And Continual

I could not keep silent after reading Frank Gaebelein’s recent article, “Rethinking the Church’s Role” (Feb. 18 issue).…

Regarding adult Christian education, I have advocated scheduled Bible classes to be taught by church members who are Bible institute, college, or seminary graduates, located wherever convenient, … on week nights, or, for shift workers, on weekdays or weekends, if possible. I feel in this way Bible classes could be carried on continually. Details of such a program … would have to be worked out by the local church. This point of view is all I can add to this line article.…

JOHN BRISTOL

Flint, Mich.

Striking The Bell

Re Dr. L. Nelson Bell’s column, “Caught Off Base” (Jan. 21 issue): One thing that I will never understand about some “conservative” Christians is their inability to appreciate the fact that they have very strong opinions on politics, society, and economics. They are very free to criticize the so-called liberals who also have strong opinions in these matters, and they condemn them for being so involved in politics, social issues, and economics.… After stating that “the Church fails in her primary mission when she becomes involved, as a corporate institution, in social, economic, and political matters,” Dr. Bell goes on to quote approvingly from a sermon by “the pastor of one of America’s great churches,” who is not identified. (I am now wondering what a “great church” is; could my small parish be so classified?)

This sermon, if the quoted portions accurately summarize it, is one of the most political statements I have ever read.…

Although I don’t seem to have the “correct views”—according to some conservatives—in many controversial political, social, and economic issues, I make it a practice not to bring my views into my sermons.…

I notice that Dr. Bell is above criticism (animadversion) in your “Letters to the Editors” column. Therefore I know you won’t give my letter serious consideration, for this is how you treated me when I submitted a letter a year and a half ago.

I am glad that the “arts” is one area which is open for genuine discussion in your journal. Your articles in this area I have usually found stimulating.…

CHARLES H. KAMP

Suydam Street Reformed Church

New Brunswick, N. J.

A special round of applause for Dr. Nelson Bell’s column—so edifying. “Caught Off Base” is an apt title for the article that decries the misapplication of “Christian” effort in the contemporary social arena.

DON AND ARLENE DE JONG

Pleasant Hill, Calif.

A $5,000 Offer

To prove to you that Jesus is a dream—or a myth—I agree to donate $5,000 to your organization if you will furnish me with a single irrefutable and realistic proof that there ever existed a supernatural person named Jesus Christ (no books).

LOUIS BERGER

Santa Monica, Calif.

Where The Scholars Are

The moderator of the United Church of Canada, Dr. Marshall Howse, said on television of us evangelicals, “They have no scholars.” The head of the United Church Divinity School in Montreal, Dr. Johnson, said, “You’ll have to take that back, Ernie,” but he didn’t.

Perhaps if he had been at the convention of the Evangelical Theological Society in Nashville, he would have!

W. GORDON BROWN

Dean

Central Baptist Seminary

Toronto, Ont.

“The firm conviction of the permanent efficacy of the crucifixion leads Paul to say that he will glory in the cross.”

For Paul the death of Christ is the great fact on which salvation for all believers depends. For him it is absolutely central. He is always speaking about it, and he ransacks his vocabulary to bring out something of the richness of its meaning. So much of what he says has passed into the common stock of Christian knowledge that it is difficult to estimate at all fully our debt to him.

It comes as something of a surprise, for example, to find that, apart from the crucifixion narrative and one verse in Hebrews, Paul is the only New Testament writer to speak about “the cross.” We find it difficult to talk for long about Jesus without mentioning “the cross,” and this is the measure of the way Paul has influenced all subsequent Christian vocabulary. We would imagine that there are many New Testament references to the death of Christ. But, outside of Paul, there are not. That is to say, there are not many which use the noun “death” (references to “the blood” of Christ, which mean much the same thing, are more frequent). Paul has a good deal to say about “the death of his Son” (Rom. 5:10), but this is not a common New Testament form of expression.

And it is not only a question of terminology. There are great ideas in connection with Christ’s work for men which are found only or mainly in the apostle’s writings. Thus it is to Paul that we owe great concepts like justification, imputation, reconciliation, adoption, the state of being “in Christ,” and a good deal more. Even the bare recital of a list like this is enough to indicate something of the richness of Paul’s thought about the cross, and of the very great debt we owe him.

Repeatedly Paul says that Christ died for sin and that he died for men. For the first point let us notice that he was “delivered up for our trespasses” (Rom. 4:25), that he “died for our sins” (1 Cor. 15:3), that he “gave himself for our sins” (Gal. 1:4), and “the death that he died, he died unto sin once for all” (Rom. 6:10, margin), that God sent him “in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin” (Rom. 8:4). For the second point, “Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6), or for “sinners” (Rom. 5:8). He “died for all” (2 Cor. 5:14). He “died for us” (1 Thess. 5:10). It is clear that both thoughts mean a good deal for Paul, and that they are connected, as when he speaks of Christ’s death for “sinners.” It is probable that he gives us the connection as he sees it when he tells us that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). He repeatedly links death with sin in a causal fashion (Rom. 5:12 ff.; 1 Cor. 15:21). This is not a simple thought, because physical death and a state of soul seem both to be involved. It is impossible to understand either Romans 5 or First Corinthians 15 without the thought of physical death. But it is impossible to think of physical death as exhausting the thought of either passage. Death is both mortality, a liability to physical death, and also separation from God, an alienation from that life which alone is worth calling life (“the mind of the flesh is death” whereas “the mind of the spirit is life,” Rom. 8:6).

This close connection between sin and death for Paul demanded that Christ’s saving act should deal with death. As James Denney puts it, “It was sin which made death, and not something else, necessary as a demonstration of God’s love and Christ’s. Why was this so? The answer of the apostle is that it was so because sin had involved us in death, and there was no possibility of Christ’s dealing with sin effectually except by taking our responsibility in it on himself—that is, except by dying for it.” In dying then Christ died that death which is the wages of sin. His death is effective to deal with the consequences of our sin. We had involved ourselves in death. Christ took over our involvement and freed us from it.

Paul can sum up his message by saying “we preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23). When he came to Corinth he had reached a determination not only not to preach, but also “not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Likewise among the Galatians “Jesus Christ was openly set forth [or ‘placarded’] crucified” (Gal. 3:1). Each of these passages shows that the crucified Christ was primary in Paul’s preaching. In each case “crucified” is the perfect participle, which means that Paul preached not only that Christ was once crucified (which would be the aorist), but that he continues in his character as the crucified One. The crucifixion is a fact of permanent significance and not simply a historical curiosity. It is this firm conviction of the permanent efficacy of the crucifixion that leads Paul to say that he will glory in the cross (Gal. 6:14).

Sometimes he prefers to speak of “the blood” of Christ, as when he tells us that God set him forth “to be a propitiation, through faith, by his blood” (Rom. 3:25), or when he refers to “being now justified by his blood” (Rom. 5:9). It is “through his blood” that we have redemption (Eph. 1:7). Yet another of Paul’s great concepts, reconciliation, is related to “the blood,” for it was the Father’s good pleasure “through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20; cf. Eph. 2:13). He speaks of the use of the chalice in the holy communion as “a communion of [or “participation in,” as margin] the blood of Christ” (1 Cor. 10:16), and he reports the words of Christ at the institution, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11:25). Thus Paul relates “the blood” to each of his most important ways of interpreting what Christ did for us and to the great sacrament in which Christians habitually joined.

Attempts have been made in modern times to show that “blood” points us essentially to life. Exponents of such views rely heavily on a particular interpretation of Leviticus 17:11, “the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life.” Now this verse is patient of more than one interpretation. It could mean that the ritual presentation of blood signifies the ritual presentation to God of life, the life of the victim. Or, it could mean that what is ritually presented to God is the evidence that a death has taken place in accordance with his judgment on sin. For blood in separation from the flesh is not life but death. Upholders of the view we are considering never seem to consider the possibility that the verse may be understood in this second way. Nor do any of them, as far as my reading goes, make a real attempt to survey the whole of the Old Testament evidence on the subject. Such a survey shows clearly that the Hebrews understood “blood” habitually in the sense “violent death” (much as we do when we speak of “shedding of blood”), and in the sacrifices the most probable meaning is not “life” but “life yielded up in death.” And this is surely Paul’s meaning. It makes nonsense of the passages we have listed to understand them as pointing to anything other than the death of Christ, and that death not a normal, peaceful death, but a violent death inflicted unnaturally. It is such a death that brings the benefits Paul has been speaking of to those who are Christ’s.

The idea that Christ in his death closely identified himself with sinful men, the teaching which we have seen in the Gospels and in Acts, meant a good deal to Paul, and he has some very far-reaching statements about it. He tells us that Christ came “in the likeness of sinful flesh and … for sin” (Rom. 8:3), and he applies to Christ’s sufferings the words of the Psalmist, “The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell upon me” (Rom. 15:3). I do not see how this can well be interpreted without the thought that Christ has borne that which men should have borne, that his death is in some sense the sinner’s death.

And that is stated in express terms when Paul writes, “one died for all, therefore all died” (2 Cor. 5:14). On this verse A. B. Macaulay writes, “the death of Christ had a substitutionary and inclusive character.” I do not see how this estimate can fairly be disputed. One died, not many. But the death of that one means that the many died. If language has meaning, this surely signifies that the death of the One took the place of the death of the many.

Later in the same chapter Paul has one of his most important statements about the death of Christ. After beseeching his readers “be ye reconciled to God,” Paul goes on, “Him who knew no sin he [i.e., God] made to be sin on our behalf …” (2 Cor. 5:20 f.). The first point to notice here is that the verb is active and that the subject is God. This passage is often, perhaps even usually, misquoted in such a way as to obscure this. Men say Christ “was made sin” or “became sin,” making the statement curiously impersonal, and seriously distorting Paul’s meaning. Whenever this is done an important truth is obscured. The atonement is not basically an impersonal affair nor a sole concern of the Son. It is rather something in which the persons of both the Father and the Son are exceedingly active. It is not an affair in which Christ takes a firm initiative while the Father adopts a passive role. In every part of the New Testament that we have so far examined the fact that the atonement proceeds from the loving heart of God has been emphasized. And Paul is emphasizing it here. He is not saying that somehow Christ happened to be mixed up with sin. He is saying that God made him sin. God, none less and none else, made him sin. Christ went to the cross, not because men turned against him, but because the hand of God was in it. We have seen how this follows on a statement which means that Christ died the death that sinners should have died. The Father’s condemnation of sin brought about the atoning death of Christ, that and his burning will to save men.

“Made sin” is not a very usual expression, but I should have thought that it is fairly plain that it means “treated as a sinner,” “made to bear the penalty of sin,” or the like. But in recent times some have denied this. D. E. H. Whiteley, for example, admits that the words could mean “made to bear the guilt of sin, treated in a penal substitutionary transaction as if he were a sinner.” But he goes on to reject this in favor of the meaning, “that in the providence of God Christ took upon himself human nature, which though not essentially sinful, is de facto sinful in all other cases.” This seems to me to be evading the sense of the passage, and I do not see how this extraordinary meaning can be extracted from the text at all. All the verbal juggling in the world cannot make “made sin” mean “took upon himself human nature.” Moreover, although Paul can write movingly about the incarnation when he wishes to (it is sufficient to refer to Phil. 2:5 ff.), he does not see Christ as redeeming men from the curse of sin by becoming man, but by hanging on a cross. And when he speaks of God as making Christ sin for us he is using a strong way of affirming that God has caused Christ to bear what we sinners should have borne.

It is not unlike another saying of Paul’s, this time in Galatians, where he tells us that “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Gal. 3:13). Just as the previous passage we were examining spoke of God as making Christ “sin,” so this speaks of Christ as becoming a “curse.” As we saw the former to mean that he bore our sin and its consequences, so the latter will mean that he bore our curse. This curse is related to the manner of the death he died, and the quotation from the law of the Old Testament shows that it is the curse of the law that is meant. Indeed Paul has just said “as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse” (v. 10). His meaning then is that men have not kept the law of God. Therefore they stand under a curse. But Christ became a curse for them. He bore the curse that they should have borne. He died their death. As Vincent Taylor puts it, “A spiritual experience of reprobation is meant, and since this cannot be personal, it must be participation in the reprobation which rests upon sin.” This is a vigorous way of putting it. Paul’s vivid language conveys the thought that our sin is completely dealt with, our curse is removed from us forever. And Christ did this by standing in our place.

Thus there are various passages which stress the thought that Christ in his death was very much one with sinners, that he took their place. As J. S. Stewart puts it, “Not only had Christ by dying disclosed the sinner’s guilt, not only had He revealed the Father’s love: He had actually taken the sinner’s place. And this meant, since ‘God was in Christ,’ that God had taken that place. When destruction and death were rushing up to claim the sinner as their prey, Christ had stepped in and had accepted the full weight of the inevitable doom in His own body and soul.” Nothing less than this seems adequate to the language used. And at the risk of being accused of being unduly repetitious we conclude this section by drawing attention once more to the fact that the divine initiative is stressed throughout these passages. It was God who was in Christ, God who made him sin, God who sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. We have been insisting that substitution is the only unforced way of interpreting the passages in this section. But with this we must take the thought that God is active in the process. Substitution is not some external process which takes place with God no more than a spectator. He is involved. He involves himself in this business of saving mankind.

And if we must not overlook the connection of the Father with what happened on Calvary, neither should we minimize the way men are to link themselves with it. Paul stresses the closeness of the identification of believers with Christ in his death. They are dead with him (2 Tim. 2:11). They are crucified with him (Rom. 6:6; Gal. 2:20). They are baptized into his death (Rom. 6:3). They are buried with him (Rom. 6:4; Col. 2:12). They suffer with him (Rom. 8:17). Those who are Christ’s “have crucified the flesh” (Gal. 5:24). The world is crucified to them and they to the world (Gal. 6:14). Such strong expressions emphasize the fact that Paul does not take the crucifixion of Christ as something to be understood quite apart from the believer. The believer and the Christ are in the closest possible connection. If it is true that their death is made his death, it is also true that his death is made their death.

Some modern scholars think of reconciliation as the most important way of viewing the atonement to be found in the Pauline writings, and, indeed, in the whole New Testament. This is difficult to substantiate at least on the ground of frequency of mention. Paul does not linger on this idea as he does on some of the others that we have dealt with (it is used in only four passages, admittedly all important), and the idea is scarcely found at all outside his letters. It is an important idea but let us not exaggerate as we treat it.

D. S. Cairns puts what he calls “The Problem of Reconciliation” thus:

We all alike believe that the only God worth believing in is the God of absolute moral perfection, and we all believe that man is made for full communion with God. Our moral nature demands the first and our religious nature requires the second. But how is that communion to be attained, kept, and developed? How is the unholy to commune with the holy, the sinner with his Judge? If I am not wholly at ease with my own conscience (and what morally sane man is?), how can I possibly be at ease with the omniscient conscience, who is also the Sovereign Reality and Power? [The Expository Times, lvii, p. 66].

That is the problem faced by all who take seriously the two facts of the holiness of God and the sin of man. Let us see how Paul faces it.

In Romans 5 he speaks of Christ’s death for sinners as proof of the Father’s love, and goes on, “If, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life,” and he goes on to speak of “our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation” (Rom. 5:10 f.). Here he makes the points that men were “enemies.” Their sin had put them at loggerheads with God. But the death of Christ effected reconciliation. As this is said to have been “received,” it was in some sense accomplished independently of men.

In Second Corinthians 5 Paul has been speaking of Christ’s death as the death of those for whom he died, and he goes on to refer to “God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ,” and he explains “the ministry of reconciliation” that is given to preachers in these terms: “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses” (2 Cor. 5:18 f.). The initiative here is entirely with God, as, indeed, is the whole process. But what is not always recognized in modern discussions is that Paul sees the reconciliation as meaning that God does not reckon to men their trespasses. Most recent exegetes are so much taken up with the great thought that “God was in Christ” (there has even been a very important book with just this title) that they overlook the fact that the passage is not dealing with the incarnation at all. The words that follow are not supporting evidence designed to show that Christ really was God. They are concerned with salvation, and with salvation in a particular way, namely salvation defined in terms of the non-imputation of sin. This was such a great work that it demanded a divine Person for its execution. There are certainly implications for Christology here. But we should not overlook the main thrust of the passage. Reconciliation in Paul’s thought is closely identified with sinners in his death. In other words reconciliation is not some respectable idea that modern men may safely employ while holding aloof from concepts like imputation and the death of Christ in the sinner’s stead. It is closely linked with both.

“Christ’s obedience comprises not simply a part of his life, but the totality of his Messianic work.”

We are not dealing with an aspect of the work of Christ that can be considered apart from the others, but with a further insight into the one perfect work of Christ which Scripture also presents as his obedience.

This obedience of Christ has often been regarded as the essence of his life, to the neglect of other important aspects of his work. Inevitably, this influences greatly the concept of his obedience. In this view Christ’s obedience becomes an impoverished moralism, a kind of office-faithfulness devoid of all scriptural depth.

But we may not react to this misrepresentation by ignoring the teaching of Scripture regarding Christ’s obedience. Indeed, we may say that both Church and theology have continuously emphasized Christ’s obedience. Disregarding the question whether the distinction between active and passive obedience is the most effective way to explain Christ’s obedience, we nevertheless can see that by the expression “passive obedience” the Church meant to indicate that she would not reduce Christ’s obedience to the level of moralism, nor would she allow it to be contrasted with his reconciliation or substitution.

It must be clear to anyone who reads Scripture that we may designate the work of Christ as obedience. In fact, the word “obedience” is actually used. in the noteworthy passage where Paul speaks of Christ’s emptying and humbling himself, we read that he “became obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8); and concerning his suffering we read that “though he was a Son, yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). He was born “under the law” (Gal. 4:4), and his entire life was a continuously obedient living under the law. From day to day he had to “listen,” in the sense of the words “hear” (audire) and “obey” (obedire). In Christ there was a profound relationship between “hear” and “obey.” He “seeth” what the Father does and “heareth” his Word (John 19:30). Christ was constantly conscious of this dependence and subjection, and spoke frequently of it. In Gethsemane he subjected himself to the will of God and ever sought it (5:30). Nowhere is this more evident than when he said that it was his meat to do the will of him who sent him (4:34). This sharply brings out the continuity of his accomplishing the will of God; Christ did not obey spasmodically or incidentally. In his high-priestly prayer he spoke of the work which the Father gave him to perform, the work which he finished in order to glorify the name of God on earth (John 17:4; cf. 19:30—“It is finished”).

We are dealing with a total life’s direction which manifests itself in every day and hour, in ever-changing circ*mstances and encounters, as the action of the Sinless One, the Holy One of God. His whole life is the ultimate opposite of autonomy. In whatever he said he was dependent upon the Father; he did and said what the Father had said (John 12:49; cf. 8:28—“… as the Father taught me, I speak these things”). When Christ spoke of the commandment or the commandments of the Father (John 15:10), however, he did mean a legalistic relationship. Indeed, he is the Servant of the Lord, but his obedience was peculiarly filled to the brim with joyful abandonment to his Messianic life’s task. Christ said that the world should know that he loved the Father, and that as the Father gave him commandment even so he did (John 14:31).

The commandment to which Christ was subjected was oriented to the unique task which he had to accomplish as God’s Messiah. For that reason he could describe the commandment which he had received thus: “I have the power to lay it [his life] down, and I have the power to take it again. This commandment received I from my Father” (John 10:18). And thus, oriented to this pinnacle of his total obedience—obedience unto death—he was oriented to the will of his Father. “He is the One who wholly receives and carries out, who does nothing but obey.” He always did those things that pleased the Father (John 8:29), and in so doing he is the Son, the Servant of the Lord. Moreover, this doing the will of the Father bore rich results: “And this is the will of him that sent me, that of all that which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day” (John 6:39).

For that reason Christ’s obedience comprises not simply a part of his life, but the totality of his Messianic work. And this obedience can also be said to express the purpose of his coming, being summarized thus: “Lo, I am come (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, O God” (Heb. 10:7; cf. vs. 9). Christ came to do the will of God. That was the sole purpose, we may say here, because it concerned the will of God which was oriented to the sacrifice. That is why Hebrews 10 speaks of Christ’s perfect obedience in inseparable connection with his perfect sacrifice. Again it is his beneficial obedience, because by virtue of this will—accomplished by Christ—“By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10:10). We clearly see, as everywhere in Scripture, how inseparably Christ’s obedience is correlated with his suffering and death—his obedience, during his whole Messianic life, unto death, even the death of the cross.

When we mentioned the Scripture references to Christ’s obedience we did not yet discuss the one passage which speaks with special emphasis of the significance of this obedience. We are referring to Paul’s words in Romans 5:12 ff.

This is the passage in which Paul contrasts Adam and Christ, summarizing thus: “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous” (vs. 19). We cannot discuss this entire section exegetically, yet it is necessary that we clearly see what a tremendous importance Paul ascribes here to the obedience of Christ. This importance is the greater since this is not an isolated section in Paul’s letter, as many claim, but is directly and closely connected with what precedes it, namely verses 1–11, in which Paul discusses the significance of the death of Christ and our reconciliation and peace with God.

No matter how we interpret the word “therefore” in verse 12, to Paul there is in any case a real connection between his earlier discussion of reconciliation and his subsequent discourse on Christ’s obedience. The thing to note is that in the comparison between Adam and Christ he calls attention to both similarity and difference. The similarity is expressed in the words, “by one man.” Adam’s act of disobedience was not an isolated act of one man, for it brought with it tremendous and far-reaching consequences for all of humanity. Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin (Rom. 5:12); and so death passed unto all men. An irresistible power—the power of death—holds mankind in its grip. The grave significance of the act of Adam’s disobedience is not weakened by the fact that Paul adds: “For that all sinned.” For he does not reason that all men incurred death in the same manner as did Adam, because they, too, sinned; rather, he wishes to stress the correlation between Adam’s disobedience and the power of death over all. And even if we may not translate this phrase—as did Augustine—“for that all men have sinned in Adam,” nevertheless Paul’s words emphasize the correlation between all men’s sin and Adam’s disobedience. That, to Paul, was the decisive significance of Adam’s disobedience, which, as the act of “one man,” is compared with the other act, also by one man—Jesus Christ. Hence we have a remarkable comparison: Christ’s act, like Adam’s, was not merely of individual significance for himself in relation to God; but unlike Adam’s, it was an act of obedience not unto death but unto life (Rom. 5:18).

A tremendous history is connected with both Adam’s act and Christ’s. Adam is “a figure of him that was to come,” namely Christ (vs. 14). But in the indication of similarity we also see the difference, for the consequences are not the same: “But not as the trespass, so also is the free gift. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound unto the many” (vs. 15; cf. vs. 17). Paul’s one great concern, here and in his entire letter, is this abundance. And this abundance, expressed by the words “much more,” suddenly ends the comparison. It is wise to listen attentively to this “much more,” which shows that Paul in his analysis of the power of death is not overwhelmed by “the problem” of theodicy. On the contrary, he has a full view of the riches of grace, of which he also speaks elsewhere. Paul does not merely make a comparison between two men who had an equally powerful influence on the human race, for the gift of grace is not comparable to the violation. The power which resulted in life is more abundant than the power which resulted in death.

The reign of grace is greater and more abundant than the reign of sin unto death (vs. 21);justification is more than condemnation (vs. 16); life is more than death (vs. 17). In spite of the similarity, the contrast is decisive. These two turning points in history can be compared with no others. The effects of what Christ did in history reach into the farthest future, not merely to quiet trembling individual consciences through a quiet peace, but to bring the reign of God, and life, and the resurrection from the dead. Adam’s act leads into the quicksand of dark death; but the fruitfulness of the work of Christ can be neither measured nor estimated.

It must not be overlooked that Paul in this section (which as a matter of fact may be numbered among his doxologies) correlates the great abundance of Christ with his obedience. He recognizes no tension between the abundance of reconciliation and this obedience. They are one in the reality of Christ’s life. And it is understandable that the Church also, in preaching and contemplating this work of Christ, has always been concerned with this pure, saving abundant act of his life, concerning which he himself spoke so earnestly while in the midst of his suffering: his obedience.

In our attempts to do full justice to the unity of Christ’s obedience, we may ask whether the usual dogmatic distinction between Christ’s active and passive obedience is not subtle, scholastic, unfounded, and irreverent. Is it not sufficient simply to speak of “the obedience of Christ crucified,” as it is expressed in Article 23 of the Belgic Confession? It is obvious that this question can be answered correctly only when we know what is meant by this differentiation.

It strikes us at once that there was no intention to eliminate the unity of Christ’s obedience by dividing his life into active and passive moments. The word “passive” may give us this impression momentarily, but at closer examination it becomes evident that in spite of this differentiation it was emphasized that Christ always remained the active, fully conscious Mediator. It is clearly evident from the entire record of his suffering that a state of mere passivity could not be the basis of this differentiation. And when we understand “passive” in the correct sense as delineated above, we can without any objection call Christ’s total obedience an active obedience unto death. His entire suffering is full of this activity, as all his words on the cross show, and already before that Christ had spoken of his holy activity toward the end of his life when he said: “Therefore doth the Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No one taketh it away from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:17, 18). It is by no means the case that after an actively helping, healing, curing, preaching, and praying life, a period of “passivity” finally overwhelmed Christ’s afflicted life. True, at a certain moment he was robbed of his freedom and bound, but even then the wondrous mediatorial activity was not terminated but rather was uninterruptedly preserved.

We realize that this unified, uninterrupted obedience involves a mystery, but this mystery nevertheless designates a moment-to-moment reality, for his activity remained manifest in everything that he underwent. “As a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth” (Isa. 53:7), but who will conclude from the materialization of this prophecy that this “lamb” was passive? It is exactly this being brought and being dumb that constitute manifestations of his complete, uninterrupted activity, just as he remained the Active One when he was made sin.

All this, however, was by no means denied when a distinction was made between the active and passive obedience or even the active and passive aspects of Christ’s obedience. Schilder even speaks of “the greatest activity in the utmost passivity at the same time.” Moreover, the facts relevant to this distinction were appreciated long before it was made explicitly. Polman correctly points out that Calvin did not make the distinction between active and passive obedience, but spoke only of “the one obedience which embraced His entire life.” This does not mean, however, that Calvin rejected what was later meant by this distinction. Calvin indeed strongly emphasized—as did subsequent Reformed theology—the unity of Christ’s obedience as wholly oriented to the reconciliation, but even with him the twofold aspect is clearly evident when he views Christ’s whole life as obedience. Calvin points out that Scripture constantly correlates grace with Christ’s death, but that does not mean that the entire course of his life was not one of obedience. The accepted distinction did not separate an active part from an inactive part; Christ’s “passive” obedience was precisely his fulfillment of the law, his accepting and bearing the punishment for sin, and his undergoing God’s wrath. Hence we are not dealing with two separable parts of Christ’s obedience.

“The active obedience is not an outward addition to the passive, nor vice versa. Not one single act and not one single incident in the life or suffering of Christ can be said to belong exclusively to the one or the other” (H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatick, III, 384).

From this we may not conclude, however, that the distinction between active and passive obedience is either meaningless or inaccurate. Rather, it is closely linked with the unique position of Christ as Mediator and his Messianic commission. This was quite evident when in various discussions either the active or passive obedience was in danger of being neglected. For instance, there has often been a tendency to accept only an active obedience, in a sense which denies what the passive obedience implies, namely, the bearing of the punishment for sin in the wrath of God. Christ’s obedience, in this view, obtained a humanistic or at least moralistic quality. This view emphasized the faithfulness which he had manifested in his “calling,” but rejected his substitution. In protest the Church emphasized his passive obedience, and in this struggle it became sufficiently clear what she meant thereby.

On the other hand, the active obedience of Christ has also been denied. According to this camp there was only a passive obedience, which was understood to be Christ’s suffering as the undergoing of our punishment. Its adherents rejected the concept of an active obedience at least in Christ’s work for us, since as man he was obliged to obey the law even for himself. They did not deny Christ’s actively fulfilling the law, but Piscator (e.g.) denied that this activity was one of the meritorious causes of reconciliation. He remarked that there was agreement that man is justified by the merits of Christ, but that according to some the actual meritorious obedience is the obedientia passionis et mortis Christi, while others say that this is the tota obedientia Christi. Piscator agrees with the former position, particularly on the basis of First John 1:7, “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin,” and Hebrews 9:22, “apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.”

Some theologians did not consider the difference to be serious, but others felt that the unity of Christ’s work was at stake. Piscator saw a direct and immediate connection between the death of Christ and our justification, while the Reformed theologians who contested his position emphasized with Calvin one obedience during Christ’s entire life.…

Scripture emphatically speaks of Christ “under the law,” and that not in an isolated “legal” context as a minor part of Christ’s life alongside his reconciling work, but in this context: “But when the fulness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. 4:4, 5).

Here Christ’s being under the law is not presented as the legal aspect of his life alongside the reconciling aspect, but in connection with his incarnation and humiliation. That is why not a single part of Christ’s life can be separated or even isolated from his reconciling work. Instead, there is a close connection between Christ’s holiness and the salvation of man by his blood in the reconciliation by the innocent lamb.

Bavinck hits the core of the problem when he points out the special relationship between Christ and the law, for his obedience is obedience to the will of God according to Psalm 40 and Hebrews 10, namely, that will of God that came to expression in the command he received from the Father to lay down his life. His fulfilling the law is never isolated from this reconciling task. Rather, his entire life manifests this kind of obedience, and is a life according to and a fulfillment of this meaning of the law, namely, “loving God and his neighbor.” His life is one doxology to the glory of the Lord and the holiness of his command. Thus he obeys his parents and lets himself be baptized; thus he honors the Sabbath as the Lord of the Sabbath and manifests his healing work on the Sabbath in the signs of the Kingdom; in short, thus he fulfills the law in his entire Messianic work. Thus fulfilling God’s law, Christ went his way in our stead and went God’s way in the absolute and unique obedience of the Servant of the Lord.

It is particularly in the scriptural messages concerning the Servant of the Lord that tremendous problems emerge in the background of the controversy regarding the obedience of Christ. The mistake of those who exclude the active obedience from the work of reconciliation, in the final analysis, is that they separate two aspects that never can or may be separated, namely, that part of his obedience which is for himself and that part which is for us. At the same time they separate his being subject to the law as man from his suffering as Mediator, whereas it is precisely the man Jesus Christ who is our Mediator. Hence the result of such a differentiation is that Christ’s relationship to the law takes on a legalistic aspect, no matter how emphatically his obedience during his entire life is magnified. This legalistic aspect is the result of accepting a relative, isolated law-relationship as such, outside of and independent of Christ’s mediatorial obedience. When such an isolation is accepted, then no full justice can be done to the undeniable fact that Christ’s holiness (negatively, his sinlessness) is constantly presented in Scripture in his irrevocable refusal of every attempt to keep him from going the way of his suffering—among other things, the temptation in the wilderness.

Hence we should be grateful that by maintaining both the passive and active obedience of Christ, at the same time the correct view is retained of the unity of Christ’s work in obedience. This line of thought is also expressed in the Belgic Confession (Article 22), which says, “Jesus Christ, imputing to us all His merits, and so many holy works which He has done for us and in our stead”—a statement of which the words “and so many holy works which He has done for us” were omitted apparently, not wholly unintentionally from the Harmonia Confessionum. The Synod of Dort, however, maintained and retained this statement, and by adding “and in our stead” once again emphasized the unity of the active and passive obedience, because the objective was not to divide the one obedience into two mutually rather independent and separated parts, but to bring out that the obedience of his entire life was in our behalf and for our benefit.

As we thus describe Christ’s entire work also as obedience, the image of Christ presents itself so precisely as the apostolic witness presents him. In him there was no tension between the fulfillment of the law and the accomplishment of his mediatorial work. His holiness was not simply a presupposition of his mediatorial work, but it manifested itself in that work, which throughout his historical life is the fulfillment of the law. Thus we see Christ in the fullness of his love, and in him we see the meaning of love toward God and toward our neighbor become historical reality. His was a life lived in solitude and in activity; it was a dependent life, of which both solitude and prayer were the prelude to the activity of his mediatorial work. His entire life reflected the holiness of God, and in this clear consciousness of his perfect heart he resisted the hypocrisy of men, of which he spoke with holy indignation. He does not resemble the one son in the parable, who said Yes but did not go and work in the vineyard because he did not want to; but neither does Christ resemble the other son, who did not want to go at first but afterwards went after all (Matt. 21:28–32). The tensions in Christ’s life are not those of his sins but of ours. It can be said that with his coming “philanthropy” appeared (Titus 3:4). God’s grace is manifested in his entire life, during which he explained the law to us: the second commandment is like unto the first (Matt. 22:39), and he himself gave a commandment: “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12). He is a love—the fulfillment of the law—that passes knowledge (Eph. 3:19), and no man has greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). The contrast between “inward” and “outward” that so often characterizes a person’s life is entirely absent in him. All the issues of his life were from his heart, and when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd (Matt. 9:36; cf. 15:32, “I have compassion on the multitude …”; 20:34, compassion materialized in a deed for the blind). Indeed, even those who consider the veneration of “the heart of Jesus” liturgy to be indefensible in the light of Scripture, must agree with the expression of a Roman Catholic author who speaks of “the treasures of affection contained in the heart of Jesus.”

Those who listen attentively to the scriptural message concerning Christ will continue to maintain the relatedness of his entire obedience to the work of reconciliation, precisely in order to preserve this message. To exclude his active obedience from this relatedness, however well intended in order to maintain the simplex nature of Christ’s obedience, inevitably has led to a violation of this mystery. That is why the distinction between active and passive obedience is a preservation of this mystery. Even so, it still remains possible that with this distinction we nevertheless divide Christ’s life’s work of obedience into “parts.” But in the light of the scriptural testimony it is possible to maintain the unity of his reconciling obedience unto the death of the cross with the richness of his fulfillment of the law throughout his entire life.