Page 6248 – Christianity Today (2024)

The ability to think, to reason, is one of God’s greatest gifts to man. With this faculty he can apprehend God’s revelation of truth, search out the mysteries of the world in which we live, harness the forces of nature and the laws which govern them; in so doing he can realize more and more of God’s wisdom, power, and glory and at the same time advance the art of living.

Imagination is the ability to form mental images, conceptions, or notions and to devise theories from which practical applications may proceed. New inventions result from a combination of known factors with unproven theories until there is worked out a device with a specific use.

Many of the great discoveries in the field of science are the result of vivid imaginations coupled with already known or suspected principles. Others have been the result of chance combinations of unexpected causative agents. Also, obviously, without the imagination there would be no literary masterpieces.

We all owe much to the imaginative quality of the mind which delivers life from the static into the realm of continuing material progress.

There is an area, however, where the imagination becomes an offense to God, the source of sinful acts of every kind. Our Lord pinpoints the fruits of evil imaginations in these words: “For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these are the things which defile a man” (Matt. 15:19, 20a).

Prior to the Flood evil imaginations had run riot, with devastating effect: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). Has the present world progressed in this area? What is God’s estimate of the imaginations of men’s hearts today?

The Bible makes it plain that the imagination permitted to roam at will is a destroying demon. Fed by the inward fires of lust, avarice, jealousy, pride, and selfishness, it is, even for the true Christian, the last frontier to surrender to the cleansing and redemptive work of the living Christ.

We Christians are prone to rationalize ungoverned imaginations with the excuse that no one knows of these thoughts and they are therefore marginal in their importance and effect, but the God with whom we have to do searches and knows every thought and intent of the heart, every imagination of the mind, every evil desire we harbor and even revel in. “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7a) brings little comfort to those who would rationalize evil imaginations, for we are confronted with an all-knowing God who sees us as we are and not as we would have him, or man, think us to be.

Unquestionably people differ in their imaginative excursions, but this is an area where every Christian needs to do some real heart-searching.

Certainly some allow their imaginations to run unbridled and over-active, to conjure up evil thoughts, desires, and plans. Others let their imaginations lead them into useless and often harmful worry. The psychosomatic diseases have their origin as imagined ills. A characteristic of our world today is the deliberate feeding of the imaginative faculties of the mind through evil or suggestive pictures, books, and other stimuli.

How many of us would be willing to stand before a camera able to produce a picture, not of our outward appearance but of the thoughts of the heart?

How many of us would dare stand in a court of justice to be judged, not by our acts but by our imaginations?

But the fact remains that God does know our thoughts; he knows the imaginations we so readily foster.

The Bible makes it plain that these things are to be conquered, to be overcome, as truly as are the outward sins of the flesh. In 2 Corinthians 10:5 we read, “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”

This is not a matter of self-reformation any more than is our personal salvation. The fourth verse of the passage just quoted tells us, “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”

There must be a conscious act of substitution. Paul spells this out with the utmost clarity: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things (Phil. 4:8).

David permitted a temptation to give birth to an evil imagination. This led to adultery and then to murder. Later under deep conviction and with a penitent heart he prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Ps. 51:10).

David realized that his sins needed forgiveness and also a change of heart, and the same is true for us today.

There is no doubt as to Christ’s willingness to forgive, nor is there any limit to his mercy. He has provided the cleansing power of his blood, shed on Calvary, the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit, and the indwelling presence of that same Spirit, our continuing help in time of temptation.

That we are prone to presume on God’s grace is a matter of unfortunate experience. Secure in the knowledge that we have been redeemed we have the tendency to feel that the victory is won and the battle ended, losing sight of the fact that while redemption is a once-for-all experience, sanctification is an unending process of growth into the likeness of the One who has redeemed.

The channeling of the imagination into right paths is a part of spiritual growth, just as the transformation of ideals and behavior is also a part of the renewing of our minds so that we may prove without question or doubt that which is “good and acceptable and perfect” in the will of God for us.

To practice the presence of Christ and see his beauty involves both our wills and our faith. A lovely story came out of World War II: A mother visiting her son in boot camp was distressed to see the “pin-up” pictures which decorated the walls of his room. She said nothing but on returning home sent him a copy of Hoffman’s picture of Christ in the temple. Because it came from his mother he hung it on his wall to please her. Day by day the picture haunted him because it seemed so out of place.

Finally there came the day when every “pin-up” was removed and there remained only the portrayal of his Lord.

Evil imaginations are an affront to the one we claim as Saviour and Lord. They should be cast down as any other idols, and in their place He should reign alone.

Discussions concerning academic freedom are not unique to the twentieth century. In recent years, however, they have penetrated hitherto untouched areas of learning with unprecedented boldness and touched off practical repercussions often of devastating significance. The culprit at work may well be the modern misdefinition of freedom, namely, the right to do as one pleases.

In endorsing “The Principles of Academic Freedom and Tenure” the American Association of University Professors underscores the fact that academic freedom properly interpreted demands self-restraint and the observance of certain standards. Here are two pertinent excerpts:

The teacher is entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of results, subject to the adequate performance of his other duties.… The teacher is entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing his subject, but he should be careful not to introduce into his teaching controversial matter which has no relation to his subject. (Italics supplied.)

To force subjective opinions upon students unduly, and to inject extraneous, time-consuming controversial matters into the classroom waylays both pursuit of the truth and the primary needs of students. Where such intellectually undisciplined excursions occur, students may as well play tic-tac-toe; their professors have, in effect, given a promissory note and then have forfeited payment on the ruse that freedom exempts them.

Unfortunately the thunder for academic liberty today reverberates in areas where distinctions between right and wrong, between propriety and impropriety have become blurred. It clamors for hearing in discussions of sex morality, where purity is dissolved by promiscuity; of political science, where democratic principles are bent toward Communist premises; of literature and the arts, where wholesome creativity is disparaged in the interest of perversion. It is a remarkable commentary on twentieth-century civilization—or declension—that teachers of American youth clamor loudest for academic freedom in such areas. While Soviet scientists must cope with the totalitarian twist of their studies for political purposes, the American classroom with its free-wheeling passion for license would itself seem to be destroying true freedom.

Recently a commission of the Florida State Legislature assessed certain classes at the University of South Florida; it severely indicted two professors for Communist affiliations and another for classroom assaults upon religious beliefs. One professor was described as “a man … determined by proper federal authority to have a very extensive record of affiliations with Communist front organizations.… Each year for many years he has made trips to the Soviet Union.” The report noted that another professor, author of an extensive work on the current cold war, blamed the United States and its allies for tensions with the Soviet Union, blamed the United States for starting World Wars I and II, and justified Russian aggression and territorial expansion because of the United States’ assertedly war like nature. The third professor (in English), the report added, sympathetically used a textbook whose author—defended by the professor as neither atheistic nor irreligious—disparaged belief in a personal God as outmoded superstition, intellectually inferior and scientifically discredited.

When a professor under the guise of education veers off course content to subvert an objective order of morality and truth, and vindicates his license in so doing by appealing to academic freedom, it is high time to scrutinize the implications. Misused academic freedom can easily enough become the “fifth amendment” whereby radical and irresponsible intellectuals exempt themselves from answerability while they undermine truth and morality. Using a highly serviceable mechanism to gain immunity, such saboteurs in the classroom advance rationalistic positions that destroy the very ends for which the sponsoring institutions were established.

The Christian religion declares that true and enduring freedom is found in Jesus Christ alone. It might be hoped, then, that church-related institutions would set before the secular world an enviable example of truly comprehending and practicing academic freedom. In an age when such words as freedom, life, truth, and love elicit unusual interest and involvement, the evangelical movement has a peculiar responsibility to direct their meaning and content. But the problems of Christian colleges and seminaries are often not unlike those of secular institutions. Not only is the context of debate often much the same, but the proposed solutions may be at variance with the spirit of the Gospel itself. The problems become especially complex when, in institutions founded and supported to perpetuate a specific viewpoint, some professor pleads the right of private interpretation of the Bible—a right both accorded and enjoined by Scripture—to justify his over-riding of academic obligations and to challenge the right of an institution to protest his action. What are the boundaries of academic freedom? To what extent may speculative hypotheses be expounded in institutions dedicated to contrary affirmations?

Because accrediting agencies tend to be theologically inclusive and ecumenical in temper, they may find it easier to associate academic freedom on the church-related campus with the promoting of ecumenism than with the preservation of sectarianism. No religious institution, however, is totally devoid of required faculty beliefs; even the most liberal school would expect a theologian at least to maintain the validity of the God-idea. What constitutes the difference between religious institutions is not the presence or absence of faculty subscription to a complex of minimal beliefs. The difference, rather, lies in the content of such statements and in their restrictive powers. That evangelical institutions expect of a faculty full rather than scant statement and support of doctrinal beliefs is therefore no embarrassing mark of academic deficiency or idiosyncrasy.

Such statements, however, may be troublesome. Of necessity they cannot include the entire Bible. Yet if they assign special emphasis to secondary matters, such as the details of eschatology, they may require more than the Bible itself allows. No less devastating in these safeguards to theological and institutional integrity, however, is the danger of substituting orthodoxy for academic proficiency; unless one challenges, reinforces, and ennobles the other, both may undermine what they claim to support. Those who shroud their acceptance of creeds and statements of faith with mental reservations, or with semantic deviations, are another not infrequent problem in closely regulated schools.

Some evangelical scholars point out that under this approach to “protection” Christian institutions may be inviting a Protestant inquisition. Just as an inclusive faculty may lead to a theology of the least common denominator, so an exclusive faculty may experience reductio ad absurdum. No doctrinal statement, they maintain, but only the integrity of each professor, can guard an institution’s soundness. Some aver, too, that to sign a statement, however scriptural, contravenes apostolic precedent; since no profession is higher than identification with Christ’s church, what is not required there ought not be imposed by Christian institutions. Those who espouse this view insist that the apostles and their followers would have deplored the requirement of a signed statement as a personal affront contravening the basic principle of Christian liberty.

But the fact remains that first-century and twentieth-century Christianity are remarkably different. The latter is sometimes little more than a vague churchianity that assures nothing in the way of apostolic beliefs. And sometimes original meanings are twisted by well-intentioned scholars in order to conform biblical emphases to modern biases. The founders and most supporters of Christian institutions, however, recognize that specific revealed truths are basic and essential to historic Christianity. How to maintain these affirmations and how to free institutions from subverters of these truths is the pressing concern.

Resignation to a lamentable phase of church history and perpetuation of a quasi-reactionary strategy that excludes those who under the guise of freedom promote unsound doctrine is no solution. The real answer to this problem is renewal of the Church. Rectification of the Church is, of course, primarily a work of the Holy Spirit. Not all ecclesiastical trends, unfortunately, abet the renewal of Christ’s church. But God’s refreshing must remain the continuing burden of those who covet a proper comprehension of academic freedom in church-related institutions.

Protests against signing doctrinal statements may be prompted, as we have seen, not only by a desire to reorient schools and seminaries, but also by a longing for the renewal of the Church. Proponents of renewal argue that endless adjustment simply for the sake of survival in no way corrects the basic problem. What would the apostles recommend as the best solution? Would they approve our procedures? Would they call for reorganization and even liquidation of some institutions?

The fact remains that at no time can Christian causes minimize the biblical warnings against deceivers of the elect and “wolves” entering the sheepfold. In our own generation the compromise character of both the Church and Christian institutions creates an urgent call for action. Churches as a whole are often sounder than some of their related educational institutions. By voicing the latest intellectual speculations campuses have frequently detoured the churches from authentic concepts and concerns. Instead of inculcating a sense of Christian vocation, they have at times made young people serviceable to alien ideologies.

Are we simply to forfeit those church-related institutions which fall short of their true function? How shall Christian institutions maintain their theological soundness and protect their original principles? For one thing, the relationship between local churches and Christian education needs reinforcement. Many church young people who enroll in secular schools or even in unstable church-related institutions quickly put their beliefs in hiding. Lacking a coherent grasp of the larger implications of the Christian revelation, they are vulnerable to all the vagaries of doctrine. Local churches therefore have the tremendous challenge both of teaching and of nurturing these young people. Given the proper preparation in their churches, young people may penetrate secular institutions of learning with confidence, instead of simply eking out a pitiful intellectual survival. In the same sense a Christian university worthy of the name must constantly purpose to aggressively confront the world of secular learning. Local churches, too, must pray without ceasing for cleansing from the political mechanisms of ecclesiastical life, and must promote such an atmosphere in denominational life that a man’s verbal statement is the equivalent of his signature. That administrators of church-related schools require signed documents is not a development for which they are one-sidedly to be blamed.

Another approach is to permit prospective faculty members to make their own statements of beliefs. Instead of confronting them with a prefabricated declaration that awaits signature, a faculty committee or the faculty as a whole might engage the candidates in related conversation. The institution’s decision to invite or not to invite would then rest on such a voluntary statement of priorities. Quite obviously, anyone reluctant to profess the Apostles’ Creed has no place on the faculty of a Christian institution. The history of Christian theology also reveals clearly enough that the loss of scriptural authority in time produces a subversion of basic Christian doctrines.

The children of the world are often wiser than the children of light. The vagueness of affirmations that often suffices for faculty appointments in Christian institutions would scarcely admit one to membership in the Communist party.

END

Bishop’S ‘Honest To God’ Drops Out The Gospel

“It is not every day that a Bishop goes on public record as apparently denying almost every fundamental doctrine of the Church in which he holds office,” said the Church Times. “He is coming round to a position a number of us have held for some time,” said an atheist professor at Oxford University. Add the Archbishop of Canterbury’s declination of comment and you have typical reactions to Honest to God, a paperback by Jack Robinson, Bishop of Woolwich. In this most radical episcopal work in many a day “the Bishop makes no mention of man’s need of grace, redemption, salvation,” noted Dr. Edwin Morris, Archbishop of Wales. “I see no gospel.…” Bishop Robinson once made news as an admirer of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

One voice sounded staunchly in the Bishop’s defense. Preaching in Westminster Abbey, the Rev. David Edwards noted that God had thereby gotten headlines. “If the Bishop is a Christian and if this is a valuable theological book, why should there be this demand for his resignation?” Edwards, managing director of SCM Press, hopes to sell 100,000 copies of the book.

Pope John XXIII surprised the whole world when on January 25, 1959, he announced the first Ecumenical Council to be called since 1870. After three years of intense preparation, the Second Vatican Council became a reality on October 11, 1962, and for the next eight weeks the eyes of Protestant and Catholic, believer and unbeliever alike, were focused on St. Peter’s Basilica. Universally acknowledged as the most important religious event of the twentieth century to date, this council owes the success of its first session primarily to the personality and concern of one who was at first expected to be little more than an interim pope. Even now, although the council is officially in recess until September 8, various theological documents are being prepared by theological commissions and studied by prelates all over the world in preparation for the second session.

Protestantism has undoubtedly paid more attention to this council than it did to the two others held since the Reformation, Trent (1545–63) and Vatican I (1869–70), both of which were highly significant for Protestants and Protestant-Catholic relations. The reason is obvious. For the first time since the Reformation, the Catholic Church is showing itself to be officially concerned about those millions of Christians outside its jurisdiction. The very presence of a number of Protestant observers in the council congregations is overt evidence that the Twenty-First Ecumenical Council will be of tremendous significance to Protestant Christians everywhere. Now that we are between sessions, it is perhaps apposite to engage in both a backward and a forward look at Vatican II.

What the Council Means

The most important aspect of this council is the fact that the Catholic Church recognizes to some extent that it needs to be brought up to date—an outlook not widely anticipated in some Catholic circles, where talk of a council of reform struck many ears as most surprising and unprecedented. Some American bishops who looked forward to being little more than rubber stamps were also surprised during the council’s first session by the freedom of discussion and the expressed desire for an internal renewal of the church. It was Pope John himself who spoke of an aggiornamento, a need to make the church more relevant to the present age. There are, of course, many areas of belief and practice with which the first session of the council did not deal, but concerning which Protestants are most interested. Such questions as the celibacy of the clergy, the relation of the church to religious freedom, the rules governing mixed marriages, the continuing growth of Mariology, and the future role of the laity in religious affairs are of utmost concern to every Protestant, and, it is hoped, will be items of major importance on the agenda of this fall’s session. One or two definite conclusions can already be made on the basis of discussion during the first session of the council, of course. We may expect to hear English used in the American celebration of the mass. Such a change will mean that the Roman Catholic liturgy will strike many Protestants as much more similar to Anglican and Lutheran rites than it has in the past. Even more important for Protestant theology, if somewhat less spectacular, future formulations of the doctrine of revelation will undoubtedly avoid any rigid division of Scripture and Tradition into two distinct sources. Now that the liberal Cardinal Bea is working with the integralist Cardinal Ottaviani, whose schema attempting to repeat such a strict dichotomy was rejected by a majority of council officials, informed observers expect to see the relationship between Scripture and Tradition spelled out in terms which will be more acceptable to Protestant thought. Some Catholics have even gone so far as to suggest that the rejection of Cardinal Ottaviani’s schema on revelation marks the end of a 400-year Protestant-Catholic cold war. As if to bear out this claim, a few of the council’s schemata have already begun to show an ecumenical preference for biblical rather than controversial scholastic language.

The most significant results of this council, however, are the more intangible ones. Protestants have seen a new openness, flexibility, and charity in the Roman church which they did not anticipate. No longer can the image of a monolithic structure, partly promoted by certain segments within the church itself, be maintained. These conservative segments have pointed with pride to the absolute uniformity of Catholic teaching in the face of the great diversity of Protestant thought; the mentality and even beliefs of the more “progressive” bishops at the council, however, gave a much more varied or “Protestant” picture of Rome to the world, and made it patent that even Rome is not as immune as some would pretend to such changes as the liturgical movement, the biblical revival, and the patristic renaissance which have made deep inroads into the French Catholic Church. It is, in fact, primarily the bishops from northern Europe (France, Germany, Belgium, and Holland) that are changing the stereotype of Catholicism which has existed among Protestants since the Reformation. They are the real agents of that renewal of which Pope John spoke, and they give the promise that a more liberal, more biblical, more “Protestant” element will play a much greater role in future Catholic thought. Among them are the church’s greatest living theologians, Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Jean Daniélou, Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Hans Küng. It seems likely that the “fresh air” the Pope seeks will come from these men, rather than from the archconservative members within the Roman Curia (the Vatican civil service).

It is most significant that this more progressive segment of the church is largely from northern Europe, the region in which Catholics have perhaps had the most contact with Protestantism. The “dialogue” which has been going on in these countries can be expected to increase in America as a direct result of the council, and to have a direct and dramatic influence on those countries where Protestantism is now experiencing the greatest restrictions. The Protestant monastery at Taizé in France, though not an accurate barometer of Protestant-Catholic dialogue, is one significant example of such European interaction. The recent words of Cardinal Bea (director of the Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity) on religious liberty, and his forthcoming book, The Unity of Christians, join with Spanish Foreign Minister Castiella’s attempts to guarantee greater religious liberty for Spain’s Protestants to further underline the fact that there are Catholics who sincerely desire to destroy stumblingblocks to a union of Christians against their common enemies, Communism and materialism.

One of the prickliest problems likely to come up when the second session of the council opens next September is one which the 1870 Vatican Council never handled, namely, the authority of bishops. Many feel that if invading Italian troops had not unceremoniously terminated Vatican I, the doctrine of infallibility would have been extended to include bishops in council as well as the pope. Writers on the 1962 council often speak of the “renewal of the episcopate”; whether such a renewal will involve a broadening or a redefining of the whole concept of infallibility (as in the case of biblical infallibility) to make it somewhat more palatable and acceptable to Eastern Orthodoxy and to Protestantism is the big issue, of course. One often has the impression that growth and development takes place within the unchangeable Rome primarily because theologians do pour new meaning into ancient papal encyclicals. It is hard for a Protestant, for example, to feel that Pius X, who condemned Modernism in 1907, would approve of some of the developments in Catholic biblical studies today. Nor is it likely that Pius XI, who condemned the Protestant ecumenical movement in 1928, would approve of current developments in the doctrine of the Church to include Protestants in the “hidden wealth of the Church’s unity.”

It is also significant that the present Pope desires to do away with some of the church’s traditional pomp and ceremony, with the love of bigness and temporal power, which tend to repel many of those outside the Catholic Church who point to the simplicity and humility of the early Church and its Founder. No one can yet say whether the council as a whole will come to a more spiritual and less material view of the Body of Christ as a result of the Pope’s concern; but if it does, Protestants might be justified in inferring that after many decades a more spiritual emphasis in the doctrines of grace and the sacraments might also result in a more conciliatory view of these beliefs, both so crucial to any material progress toward union. If so, of course, Martin Luther’s great solicitude for a more spiritual definition of these two doctrines will have at last been more amply rewarded; such a conclusion is now only idle speculation, it is true, but Protestants should keep their ears open for the possible emergence of such trends on the council floor next September. Already some Catholics are confessing that the Counter-Reformation promulgated a one-sided emphasis on the visible, juridical, and hierarchical at the expense of the invisible and spiritual which the Reformers stressed. Unbridled optimism is ruled out, however, by the fact that as recently as 1943 Pius XII in the encyclical Mystici Corporis emphasized a doctrine of the Church that is at times inimical to a rapprochement with the classical Protestant view.

Also of significance is the changing composition of the council itself. In 1870 Italians made up more than one-third of the official membership of the general congregation, more than all the rest of Europe. Non-Europeans were represented at this council only by Europeans, rather than by national bishops. Vatican II has cut back the preponderance of Italian influence considerably, for today out of over 2,600 prelates from around the world only 313 are Italian. That Italy is still too heavily represented, however, is apparent when it is realized that the rest of Europe has a total of only 415. But the fact that there were participants of every color and race gave a genuinely intercontinental flavor to the council for the first time in history. One of the most urgent demands is that the Curia be likewise internationalized to eliminate the overwhelming percentage of Italian hegemony. Reform of the press information services is also being demanded, with some American Catholics expressing the faint hope that a small number of official reporters will be admitted to future sessions of the council.

What the Council Does Not Mean

At the same time, it should not be forgotten that official statements have been made pointing out what the council does not intend to do. For example, the Pope himself has emphasized the fact that the purpose of the council is not to define new dogmas, nor to pronounce anathemas against doctrinal errors. Rather it is to relate the church and its teachings more closely to the modern world, and to emphasize the pastoral side of the church’s ministry. Thus Protestants are not to expect anything like an approval of the doctrines of the Reformation—although at least one Protestant, the secretary general of the French Reformed Church, has said that the reasons for reformation are even greater today than they were in the sixteenth century. As one studies the council, however, he is almost forced to conclude that if doctrinal changes will not be officially proclaimed at the end of the council, at least the seeds of such changes will have been planted. Nowhere is this more evident than in conciliar discussions of the relation between Scripture and Tradition.

Nor should Protestants assume that the council has brought or will bring about a union of divided Christendom. One Catholic has wisely said that if the union of Protestants and Catholics is ever to take place, it is still centuries away. Another Catholic has acknowledged that many Catholic theologians, especially in the United States, are still apprehensive of the very idea of ecumenical dialogue and union. But the very fact that such an idea is being widely entertained is ample proof that the council has done more than anything else in four and one-half centuries to thaw the icy silence between these blocks of Christians. The Pope’s aim is apparently that the church will so clean house that union will be attractive to those now separated from it. Evangelical Protestants would universally agree that if Rome could become truly biblical, such a union would become theoretically possible. However, they also feel that such a development is not on the horizon of possibility in the immediate future. The main problem is that for most Catholics unity means something quite different than it does for Protestants, an important point which is sometimes forgotten in discussions on unity. To the majority of Catholics reunion involves an acceptance by Protestants of Roman Catholic teaching, whereas Protestants tend to think of reunion as the result of much debate during which spiritual truth would be slowly and painfully constructed on a biblical foundation. One English Catholic theologian said recently, for example, that before union can ever take place Protestants will have to recover in its entirety the doctrine of the change of the elements of communion into the real presence of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Yet another Catholic theologian admitted that Catholics are now beginning to realize that they too must change. Objectivity forces us to admit, therefore, that the new Rome seems to promise greater latitude to its own theologians than it has allowed in the past. And who can deny that the presence of over 200,000,000 Protestants within a future united Christian Church would inevitably result in some revolutionary changes in the outlook and belief of the whole Church? If Catholic theologians can pour new meaning into such old ideas as infallibility, who is to say that the day will not come when Protestants and Catholics can come to an essential agreement? In a day when numbers of Catholics are admitting that they are to some extent responsible for the present and past division of the Church, such a day might be nearer than we think.

A third caution to unwarranted optimism, however, is the fact that the archconservatives or hyper-fundamentalists, known in Catholic circles as “integralists,” are still a force of major dimensions in the Catholic Church. The basic attitude of this group is the “preservation of the purity of Catholic doctrine,” which many Catholic writers opposed to this movement suggest amounts to little more than excessive enthusiasm for the thought forms of the nineteenth-century manuals in dogmatic theology. While evangelicals appreciate the importance of orthodoxy and theological conservatism in a way not shared by radical Protestantism, they cannot easily sympathize with a mentality which seems to enshrine the thought of the past and refuse to interact with the developments of the twentieth century. This is the impression which integralist thought, with its elevation of “preservation” to the pinnacle of importance, sometimes leaves with the evangelical reader. The integralist projects an image of rigid refusal to consider any kind of dialogue with Protestantism. He looks equally askance at Reformer and Modernist, and wants no intercourse with either. Italy, Spain, Latin America, and the United States are areas in which integralism appears to be strongest.

Evangelicals and the Dialogue

What stance should the evangelical take to the “fresh air” which the Second Vatican Council has ushered into the Catholic Church? By and large we have not played a significant role to date in any dialogue which has taken place between Protestants and Roman Catholics. Yet we do in fact stand in an ideal position to mediate between radical Protestantism and Catholicism. Although we are Protestant, we uphold essentially the same doctrine of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ as does the Catholic. We are closer to Rome than to the World Council of Churches in our attitude toward the Nicene Creed. And like Roman Catholicism we feel there is a fundamental distinction between truth and error. These are just a few of the central beliefs which Rome and the evangelical have in common with the classical Protestantism of the Reformation.

Regardless of what happens during the second session of the Vatican Council, it seems probable that the world of the future will see a Catholicism which is more biblically oriented and a Protestantism which has a greater concern for doctrinal purity. We may admit that neither group yet shows the effect of such tendencies on its laity to any marked degree; we may even feel some justifiable pride that classical orthodoxy has maintained both emphases. Far more important, however, is that we try to understand what both Roman Catholicism and radical Protestantism are saying, because at times our polemic has been shallow and offensive, reflective of a ghetto mentality we should by now have outgrown. The new approach of the Catholic Church is one with which evangelicals can agree ex animo: know what the other side believes, know what it thinks we believe, know what it thinks we lack, speak a language it can understand, avoid language that will give unnecessary offense, and refuse to engage in bitter polemics. In the current ecumenical atmosphere, we as evangelical Protestants need to be aware that Jesus Christ is challenging us to demonstrate that we as the people of God are the real Body of Christ, the Church invisible, to which both radical Protestant and Roman Catholic are invited to return, not in slavish submission but in believing, apostolic faith.

LESLIE R. KEYLOCK

Research Assistant in Religion

State University of Iowa

Iowa City, Iowa

Ever since the Cuban crisis last fall, the Kennedy administration has been under fire for the face it presents to the U. S. public. The attack focuses upon how and what the government says about itself. Critics consider the executive branch guilty of what they term “news management”—which can mean anything from release of information strategically timed for political advantage to employment of falsehood as a cold-war weapon.

The controversy turns on ethical issues, although for months nobody seemed interested in asking clergymen for their judgments. And the clergy seemed equally reluctant to offer advice.

Key figure in the controversy is Arthur Sylvester, 61-year-old Pentagon press chief who brashly or forthrightly (depending on one’s point of view) spells out his convictions.

Last fall Sylvester was quoted as saying that news is a weapon the government can and ought to use in the cold war. On December 6, in a speech to the Deadline Club in New York, Sylvester said he had erred in asserting that news is a part of the government’s arsenal. But in reply to a question posed at the close of his address he uttered another line which has become famous (or infamous, again depending on the observer’s viewpoint). He said it is the government’s “right, if necessary, to lie to save itself when it’s going up into a nuclear war.”

How do the clergy react to Sylvester’s stand?

“I disagree,” said Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. “It is never proper to manage news.”

In the case of full-scale war where espionage is involved the circ*mstances are different, Blake declared. But he ruled out deliberate falsehoods in the present world situation.

“Withholding information should be limited to those cases where its disclosure would be really dangerous,” Blake added.

At a House inquiry last month, Sylvester sought to clarify his statement on the government’s “right to lie.” He said it had been a “shorthand answer” taken out of context. The government does not have a right to lie to the American people, he declared, but it does have a right in a time of extreme crisis to attempt to mislead an enemy. He added that this may provide some “fallout” that misleads the American people in the process.

Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, minister of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, said the nation must trust the judgment of its leaders in times of crisis.

“Later on,” he said, “their judgment may prove wrong. If so, you can turn them out.”

NEWS / A fortnightly report of developments in religion

TRUTH AND THE CHRUCH

Reluctance of the churches to voice judgment on “news management” ethics may stem partly from the fact that they have yet to put their own house in order.

The problem is not new, but its importance remains. In every century the Christian church has been plagued by management of ecclesiastical news no less than distortion of the “good news.”

Major religious stories of our time have been hampered by an affinity for secrecy and seeming fear of truth by principals involved.

The English-speaking world did not learn of the immense significance of the debate at the Second Vatican Council until the information was leaked surreptitiously to The New Yorker magazine.

Until last month, secrecy also prevailed over deliberations of the Consultation on Church Union, which hopes to bring about a merger of six or more major U. S. denominations (see full report on succeeding pages).

Plenary sessions in Oberlin, Ohio, were finally opened to the press following extensive criticism of the closed-door policy. However, members of the consultation reaffirmed that preliminary discussion of reports would continue to take place in secret.

Dr. Daniel A. Poling, editor of Christian Herald, noted that “national safety makes secrecy imperative on certain occasions, but it is just about established that beyond such there have been occasions—and recent occasions—when Washington has not only sought to mislead other capitals and has succeeded in doing so, but has misled and I believe deceived our allies as well as our own people.”

Poling said his disagreement was not in principle but in the application and abuse of principle.

“Secrecy and deception are bipartisan,” he added. “The present controversy reminds us that the U-2 fiasco with its boldface deception belongs to the Republicans.”

Former Congressman Walter H. Judd, who served as a Congregational medical missionary to China, asserted that it is justifiable and necessary for the government to withhold information during an operation or during the planning stage. He added, however, that deliberate deception is wrong.

“I cannot conceive of a situation in which even the practical benefits, discounting the ethical implications, would outweigh the destruction of confidence in government,” said Judd. “Falsehood damages our government more than any foreign adversary.”

Dr. Gordon H. Clark, noted evangelical scholar, observed:

“That it is legitimate in time of war to deceive the enemy about impending military movements is a point of general agreement. But there is no general agreement that it is right for a government to deceive its citizens in time of peace.”

“The voters,” said Clark, who is a philosophy professor at Butler University, “cannot preserve their freedom and judge the honesty and wisdom of their officials if these officials are evasive or secretive.”

Sylvester, former New Jersey newspaperman, might have more ethical grounds for the government’s “right to lie” than the criticism would indicate. But he seems unconcerned about seeking out those grounds diplomatically.

Few would insist that deception is always evil, regardless of the form it takes and the circ*mstances (a very common deception is to ward off prowlers by allowing the lights to burn when one is away from home). The ethical question probably focuses upon when deception is justifiable. Some maintain that it should be limited to military warfare. Others contend that the present cold war is as real an international conflict as any military operation ever was, and that deception is therefore justifiable.

Blake Merger Plan And The Scriptures

Cardinal Newman once said: “Living movements do not come of committees.” But in Oberlin, Ohio, the Consultation on Church Union (recognized more readily by the term “Blake-Pike proposal”) was moving ahead surely and steadily as if toward a rebuttal of the cardinal, who once moved from one church to another without benefit of merger.

It was only the second meeting of the consultation—the first took place a year ago in Washington, D. C., and the third is due a year hence in Princeton, New Jersey—and delegates voted this time to ask their respective churches for “authority to enter into the development of a plan of union when and if the Consultation decides that it is appropriate.”

Since the first meeting two church bodies—the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ)—have joined in the talks with the original four—the Methodist, Episcopal, and United Presbyterian churches and the United Church of Christ. No further invitations to other churches to become participants are to be issued in the near future so that the consultation might be kept an “operable working group.” (The Polish National Catholic Church is still to act on an invitation.) But other churches had been invited to send “observer-consultants” to Oberlin, and 16 named representatives, including: the American Baptist Convention, Anglican Church of Canada, Standing Conference of the Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas, National Baptist Convention of the U.S.A., Inc., Presbyterian Church in the U.S., Reformed Church in America, Religious Society of Friends—Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and the United Church of Canada.

It was reported that a committee of representatives from the educational boards of the six participating denominations had been appointed to consider the feasibility of a common study course on the issues involved in church union.

In resolutions adopted at the closing session, the 54 delegates noted that the purpose of the consultation is to “explore the establishment of a united church” but stressed that they had “no desire to press for a premature decision” on the drafting of a union plan. “Nevertheless we are reminded that our very reason for being is challenged if we allow ourselves indefinitely to discuss unity in general.” Assurance was given that each delegation in securing from its church authority to develop a union plan would not thereby “be then committing itself to participation in the writing of a plan of union if the basis of the Consultation’s proposed plan were later judged unsatisfactory.”

The consultation is to move beyond the “exploration phase” to a plan of union just as soon as its members agree “that we have sufficient theological consensus to make such an effort promising under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”

The Oberlin sessions revolved around three topics: “Scripture, Tradition, and the Guardians of Tradition”; “Analysis of Participating Communions”; and “The Worship and Witness of the Church.” Reports on each were adopted. Reporters applauded the opening of business and plenary sessions to the press, in contrast to the Washington meeting a year ago, but were not happy at being barred from discussion groups. During the irenic public sessions, the subject of Scripture and tradition engendered more discussion than any other, wherein a slight Presbyterian-Episcopal tension developed over the elevation of tradition relative to Scripture.

In neoorthodox terminology, the Scriptures are defined in the adopted report (see inset) as witness to God’s revelation but not as revelation themselves. They are declared inspired, but neither the nature nor the extent of the inspiration is delineated.

‘Scripture, Tradition and the Guardians of Tradition’

Here is the complete text of the report of the Consultation on Church Union on “Scripture, Tradition, and the Guardians of Tradition”:

1.

The six churches represented in the Consultation on Church Union recognize and acknowledge that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments have a unique authority.

The Holy Scriptures witness to God’s revelation, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and to man’s response to the divine revelation. They testify to God’s mighty acts of creation and recreation, judgment and mercy; they declare God’s saving purpose; they proclaim the gospel which is the power of God for salvation; they point to the glorious consummation of his Kingdom which has no end. They are the inspired writings which bear witness to the divine deeds in our history by which God has called into being and sustained his people and by which God calls all men to unite in his service and to share in his reconciliation of the world to himself.

Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, the living Lord and Head of the Church, is the center of the Holy Scriptures. In him, the promises of God are fulfilled; to him the apostolic writings bear witness. Because we confess Christ alone (solus Christus), in this way we affirm Scripture alone (sola Scriptura).

The churches represented in this Consultation affirm the Holy Scriptures to be canonical, that is, the norm of their total life, including worship and witness and teaching and mission.

2.

The members of the Consultation are agreed that there is a historic Christian Tradition. Each of our churches inevitably appeals to that Tradition in matters of faith and practice. But the clearer delineation and characterization of that Tradition is a task still to be completed.

The members of the Consultation, however, are aware that our perception of the relation between the Scriptures and Tradition is taking on new forms and new dimensions. A new understanding of Tradition is making it increasingly clear that Tradition cannot simply be equated with “the traditions of men”—teachings and practices which obscure or corrupt rather than express the revelation to which the Scriptures witness. By Tradition we understand the whole life of the Church, ever guided and nourished by the Holy Spirit, and expressed in its worship, witness, way of life, and its order. As such, Tradition includes both the act of delivery by which the good news is made known and transmitted from one generation to another as well as the teachings and practice handed on from one generation to another. Thus the Evangelist writes: “inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered (traditioned) to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also … to write an orderly account for you …” (Luke 1:1–3).

In such a sense, the Christian Tradition antedated the formation of the New Testament canon. The New Testament canon appears not as separate from or opposed to the Christian Tradition but rather as an expression of it. Certainly it is the case that in the Church, Scripture and Tradition are found together.

3.

There are at least three relations between Scripture and Tradition (understood as the whole life of the Church) which deserve consideration. (1) Scripture is itself included in the Tradition. The reading of and listening to the Scriptures in worship and the authority of the Scriptures over the teaching of the Church are essential in the life of the Church. (2) The Scriptures are interpreted in the light of the Tradition. The Church does not set itself above the Scriptures; but the Church reads and listens to the Scriptures as a community of faith. (3) The Scriptures are the supreme guardian and expression of the Tradition. This is what the Church intends by its acknowledgment of a canon of Scriptures.

4

The members of the Consultation are aware that we are confronted not only by Scripture and Tradition (understood as the whole life of the Church) but also by Scripture, Tradition and the traditions—those individual expressions of the Tradition which more or less characterize particular Churches and those customs of the Churches which have arisen in various times and places.

We have no doubt that such traditions must ever be brought under the judgment of the Scriptures. To bring its traditions under the judgment of the Scriptures is an inescapable obligation of the Church.

The Church acknowledges its responsibility for its continuing guardianship of the apostolic testimony to God’s act of reconciliation in Jesus Christ. For that guardianship, the whole Church is responsible. The Scriptures illuminated by the Spirit in the Church are the fundamental guardian as they are the source of new life and light.

The Consultation expects to explore further the role of symbols, such as creeds and confessions, and the role of the ministries which have special responsibilities for guarding the Church’s total life from distortion and corruption.

For further study on this subject we recommend The Christian Tradition and the Unity We Seek by Albert C. Outler (Oxford) and The Old and The New in the Church (Augsburg).

Tradition (with a capital T) is understood to mean something other than “the traditions of men,” which may corrupt revelation. Rather, it is described as “the whole life of the Church, ever guided and nourished by the Holy Spirit, and expressed in its worship, witness, way of life, and its order.” The Scriptures are termed “the supreme guardian and expression of the Tradition.” Episcopal objection to the word “judge” in place of “expression” was sustained.

Presbyterian Cary Weisiger ascertained that any tradition contrary to Scripture was thereby excluded from “Tradition” as defined by the report. A theological conservative, he later told CHRISTIANITY TODAY: “To some of us, the living Tradition of the Church as distinct from the traditions of men which may corrupt or obscure the Word of God is not a familiar concept. It is true that there was a Tradition of the Gospel, an apostolic deposit, which predated any of the New Testament Scriptures. From the Reformed viewpoint, this tradition was enshrined by inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament writings. It is also true that since the New Testament Scriptures were completed, the Holy Spirit has been guiding the Church. Insofar as this guidance is regarded as a Tradition in agreement with the Scriptures and under the judgment of the Scriptures, I recognize and rejoice in all that it signifies. The consensus at Oberlin has certain Scriptural safeguards written into it which should be carefully pondered.”

At close of the sessions, the merger plan’s originator, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., had this to say to CHRISTIANITY TODAY: “Most interesting and important was the consensus on the strong statement of the authority of the Holy Scripture under Jesus Christ, the head of the Church. This was something I didn’t know we could get as strongly stated. So a measure of understandable evangelical fear of this movement is thus far allayed.”

Certain evangelical fears would doubtless arise from the ambiguities of some theological language. The problem was described by Episcopalian Massey H. Shepherd, Jr., of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, California, in a background paper prepared for the consultation: “The assertion is constantly made and defended, especially in Protestant circles, that the Scriptures provide a norm for testing the truth and authenticity of worship no less than of doctrine and ethics. This appeal to Biblical authority, however, can be ambiguous. To the fundamentalist, who holds a view of verbal inspiration, it means one thing; to those who accept the modern historical, critical approach to Biblical interpretation, it means another. In some traditions, the interpretation of the ‘truth of the Bible’ is subject to the Church’s magisterium, however that supreme teaching office is institutionalized; in others both Church and Bible are under some prior authority—whether conceived as some indefinable ‘Word of God’ or more precisely spelled out in canons of confessional orthodoxy. And in many of our Churches there are an increasing number who find the norms of Biblical authority by an inductive method of historical inquiry combined with subjective evaluations of inherent rationality and moral integrity. (An essential task for ecumenical discussion is the question of the authority of the Bible, especially among those who reject verbal inspiration, the use of proof texts, and the like, and who accept historical, critical methods, and the concept of ‘progressive revelation.’ The revolution in Biblical studies of the past century makes it impossible to approach the authority of the Scriptures in exactly the same way as did the Protestant Reformers … or the Fathers of the ancient Church.)”

F.F.

The Merger Road

Representatives of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical and Reformed Church formed five new committees last month to develop a plan of union for the two denominations.

The committees were set up by a Joint Commission on Church Union after its members agreed at a meeting in Cleveland that there were no insurmountable obstacles to the proposed merger.

Organized were the Committees of Faith and Ritual, Ministry, Ecclesiastical Program and Organization, Relations Outside the U.S.A., and Institutions and Property.

According to the present schedule for union, the committees are expected to prepare a basis of union for submission to the 1964 Methodist General Conference and the 1966 EUB Church General Conference.

Spring Thaw For Baptists

In Chicago springtime is always welcome. This year its cautious approach provided a setting for a conference on biblical evangelism at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, hopefully standing on the threshold of a springtime of its own.

Founded in 1913 by men concerned over “the tendency of pastors and seminaries to eliminate the Bible as the source of belief and preaching” and over “naïve beliefs in the inevitability of man’s progress,” Northern became a vigorous center of evangelicalism. From its doors the military services claimed more chaplains than from any other Baptist seminary in the country, North or South. Graduates in the pastorate number more than a thousand, those in higher education 200—more than a dozen of whom are college and seminary presidents.

Chicago today boasts more theological students than any other metropolitan center in the world, but Northern’s growth has recently been hindered by aging facilities set in a crime-ridden area. Merger with a sister American Baptist seminary was proposed, which would have meant departure from Chicago. Largely credited with saving the seminary as an independent entity is its popular president, Dr. Benjamin P. Browne, currently president also of the American Baptist Convention. His quiet dynamic was behind a move southwestward within the greater Chicago area. In Oak Brook a two-million-dollar campus is being designed and built by Harry Weese, whose American Embassy in Ghana won international acclaim.

While looking ahead to building completion by next September, the seminary’s conference on evangelism recalled also the biblical imperatives which formed its motivation and dynamism through the years. The conference was widely interpreted as raising the seminary’s standard against the doctrine of universalism, a subject currently agitating the American Baptist Convention. Implicit in addresses and discussions was an evangelical uneasiness over possible universalist severing of the delicate nerve of evangelism. This was coupled with a disapproving frown toward a phenomenon which the seminary’s founding fathers had earlier opposed: “the substitution of social action for evangelical preaching.”

Conference addresses combined heartwarming devotional spirit with militant stress upon the urgency of the evangelistic task. Keynoter was Dr. J. Lester Harnish, pastor of the fast-growing First Baptist Church of Portland, Oregon: “It is when the servant of God is filled with the love of Christ to the point that he is constrained with compassion for the lost that his ministry becomes flaming with an evangel otherwise not known. It is then that the preacher appears not as a captain of a little company of people, not as a petty organizer or denominational leader or executive of an institution or a psychiatric counselor, but as a seeker after souls for Christ’s sake.” Societal and individual problems were referred to the Gospel, “which is adequate for the problems of race, class, family, moral control, lusts of the flesh, self-mastery, and the social, political, ethical headaches of all mankind. These find their answer in Christ.”

Andover-Newton Seminary’s Culbert G. Rutenber, speaking on the doctrine of man in biblical evangelism, pointed to man’s radical sickness, apart from which the Gospel is superfluous. “Man is lost now because of sin, which means that he will be lost in the hereafter. He is thus a fit subject for a power beyond himself to do what he cannot do—this is the will of God in the Gospel.”

Asked by President Browne whether he could harmonize this view with the universalism taught by his Andover-Newton colleague, Nels Ferré, Dr. Rutenber replied, “I do not harmonize my view with his.” He added his conviction that fellowship should not be broken over differences at this point. “If I believed in universalism, it would affect my evangelism. Though some of my friends tell me it does not affect theirs, and I believe them. On the other hand there are some who oppose universalism but who are not doing much about it in the way of evangelism.”

In the background of the conference a controversy shaped around the figure of Jitsuo Morikawa, director of evangelism for the Home Mission Societies of the American Baptist Convention. Many Baptists feel that under his leadership historic Baptist views on evangelism are undergoing change at the official level. They complain of the leaven of Barthian theology and universalism, and of a shift in emphasis from primary concern for individual salvation to preoccupation with economic, political, and social issues.

Pointing to racial segregation and prejudice in the Church, Dr. Morikawa told the convention in 1959: “The Church, as we are, does not merit the right to be heard. And the kind of gospel for which we stand is not worth proclaiming to the world.”

Continuing exchanges are seen in denominational journals. In the American Baptist newsmagazine Crusader, the Rev. A. Scott Hutchison of Philadelphia’s Third Baptist Church declared, “Dr. Morikawa states that man, until his decision for Christ, ‘was like an acquitted prisoner living in prison, unaware of his new freedom.’ The Bible says, ‘He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already’ (John 3:18). Unregenerate man is not a prisoner who has been pardoned, but a prisoner still under sentence!”

Dr. Morikawa replied: “The crux of the theological problem here is whether we understand the good news of the gospel as gloriously unconditional or restrictively conditional.

“One way to frame the Christian message is: ‘If you will respond, God in Jesus Christ will love, accept, forgive and redeem you, but if you do not He will reject and damn you.’

“Another way to proclaim the gospel is: ‘God in Jesus Christ loves you, has redeemed you, has already accepted and forgiven you, therefore respond to Him in joyous gratitude and faith.’

“Both recognize the urgent importance of decision. The one is made out of the threat of being rejected and damned unless you respond. The other is made out of liberty and freedom of joyous gratitude. Both involve repentance. The one is repentance in order to be given the status of a son. The other is repentance of a son who has dishonored his father.”

Editor John C. Slemp of Missions, 159-year-old convention magazine, has challenged the universalist concept that all are saved whether they know it or not: “The new life in Christ is not ours whether we know it or not.… Salvation does not come automatically, with or without our consent. It requires human response—an act of the mind, the heart and the will in joyous surrender, in full commitment, to Christ.”

One observer who has recently traveled among American Baptist churches commented that among pastors the universalist controversy is pressing toward the explosive stage. Only two of the convention’s state executive secretaries are said to favor Dr. Morikawa’s retention as the convention’s evangelism director. Said a Chicago pastor: “Signs indicate the pendulum may be swinging back to a biblical evangelism. But the universalist issue could bring about the biggest split our convention has ever suffered. We cannot afford another exodus like that of the Conservative Baptists.”

As for Northern Seminary, her conference on biblical evangelism had clearly recorded her opposition to universalist tendencies both inside and outside the American Baptist Convention.

F.F

Henrietta C. Mears

Dr. Henrietta C. Mears, 72, whose career was one of the most remarkable of any woman in the field of Christian education, died last month following a heart attack.

During the time she served as Christian education director at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, Sunday school enrollment grew from 400 to more than 6,000, largest in the denomination.

In 1933, Dr. Mears founded Gospel Light Publications, non-denominational publishing firm. In 1938 she founded Forest Home Christian Conference Center in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Dr. Mears died in her home in Bel-Air, suburb of Los Angeles. She never married and leaves no close survivors.

Freedom And Order

Father Hans Küng, boldest young reformer in Roman Catholicism, made his American debut last month with a plea for freedom.

The 35-year-old German theologian proposed that his church abolish its index of forbidden books, its advance censorship of religious publications, and all secret inquisitorial proceedings.

His remarks won an ovation from the crowd of 3,000 persons who had come to hear him at Jesuit-maintained Boston College. Among those on the platform were Richard Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston, and Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Athenagoras of Canada.

He said that in contemporary times the church must avoid “even the appearance of authoritarianism, totalitarianism or absolutism.”

Since the Reformation, Küng declared, Protestants have advocated “freedom in order” while Catholics have stressed “order in freedom.”

“We challenge our Protestant brethren to meet us courageously in working out the defenses of the two concepts,” he added.

Küng was one of the four leading Catholic figures banned from participation in a lecture series at Catholic University this spring. University officials explained they did not want to appear to be taking sides on issues facing the recessed Second Vatican Council.

Role Of The Campus

The Danforth Foundation is launching an exhaustive study of church-related colleges to define their distinctive function in a predominantly secular culture and educational system. The study will run for two or three years.

Mail And The Court

Mail continues to pour into the Supreme Court Building as the U. S. citizenry awaits the court’s decision on the constitutionality of Bible reading and prayer in public schools. The court has been getting as many as 50 letters a day on the topic.

This is an extraordinary amount, according to court spokesmen, who declare that it is quite improper to try to influence the court by ordinary mail. Any citizen may file an argument on any case as amicus curiae—“friend of the court,” but such an argument is considered only when it meets technical specifications (for example, it must be printed, must run at least ten pages, and must be introduced by an attorney who is a member of the Supreme Court bar). The idea is to point out to the court facts and points of law which might be otherwise overlooked. Sheer argumentation is out of order because the judiciary, unlike legislatures, makes decisions on determination of fact and interpretation of law, not on public opinion.

In the two Bible reading-prayer cases argued before the court in February (Murray v. Curlett, Maryland; and Abingdon Township v. Schempp, Pennsylvania), a brief amicus curiae favoring the exercises was filed jointly by the attorneys general of 19 states. Significantly, not a single Christian organization availed itself of the opportunity to file. Six organizations¹American Jewish Committee, whose purpose is “to prevent infraction of civil and religious rights of Jews”; Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, dedicated to protection of freedom of religion; Synagogue Council of America, representing three divisions of Judaism; National Community Relations Advisory Council, a co-ordinating body for national and local Jewish organizations concerned with community relations; American Ethical Union, representing a religion which neither categorically denies nor dogmatically affirms the existence of a Supreme Being; and the American Humanist Association. All but the last group also filed briefs amicus curiae in the 1962 New York Regents’ prayer case. argued against the exercises.

Another religion-in-public-schools case (Chamberlin v. Dade County Board of Public Instruction) has been submitted to the Supreme Court and is awaiting initial action. It appeals a 7–0 decision of the Florida Supreme Court holding Bible reading and Lord’s Prayer recitation constitutional.

In Baltimore, meanwhile, a city judge refused to issue a warrant for assault against a minor charged with heckling one of the principals in the Supreme Court case, 16-year-old William J. Murray III. Murray sought the warrant against another 16-year-old, Brent McCully. Judge Howard L. Aaron ruled that heckling was not a crime.

An Impossible Bridge?

Speaking to biblical scholars at Princeton Theological Seminary last month, Dr. William F. Albright rejected publicly the theory of Dr. Cyrus H. Gordon that the Minoan and Eteocretan dialects of Crete and southern Greece are Semitic (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 15, 1963, p. 575).

“Professor Gordon has performed a real service, pointing out that the Greek world must be considered in Old Testament scholarship,” Albright conceded, but “Gordon’s translation of Linear B … [and] the mixture of biblical Hebrew are impossible.” The remarks came in response to a question following an address by Albright, professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University and a world-renowned Bible scholar and archaeologist.

In the earlier lecture, striking for clarity and breadth of scholarship, Albright pictured present Old Testament biblical scholarship as in a state of suspended animation. The cause, he affirmed, is four dominant fallacies of the last 20 or 30 years of Old Testament research: the theory of late origins, the assumption that the consonantal text of the Pentateuch has not changed since Ezra, the interpretation of the Old Testament from the perspective of philosophical idealism, and the rejection of the possibility of any early Hebrew theology. These errors, Albright believes, are now being refuted by momentous discoveries in the fields of archaeology and linguistics.

In observations of interest to conservative scholars, Albright listed as irrefutable the conclusions that many parts of the Pentateuch are older than 1300 B.C. and that biblical Hebrew was no longer written after the sixth century B.C. These conclusions do much to confirm traditional dating of Old Testament books. Many scholars maintain that some of the Psalms and other parts of the Old Testament were composed centuries after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.

Princeton also played host last month to Heidelberg’s professor of New Testament, Dr. Guenther Bornkamm, currently on world tour. Addressing himself to “The Epistle to the Romans as Paul’s Last Will and Testament” the German scholar rejected efforts to view the epistle as Paul’s anticipatory dealings with the problems of the Roman church. He said that the epistle is correctly understood only as a summary of the Pauline theology, based on the experiences of Paul during his far-reaching missionary activity.

Cuban Tribulation

Some 12,000 Bibles were destroyed by Cuban authorities following a recent seizure, according to an account given Missionary News Service.

The MNS report quotes a Christian correspondent in Havana who said he was writing “to inform you of the actual tribulations that are being suffered in Cuba.” His name was withheld to protect him against reprisal.

“A few days ago a great shipment of Bibles was received from Mexico, England, and Canada,” the correspondent wrote. “The majority of these have already been taken to the national paper factory and there they have been ground up, and taken to be converted into cardboard, to be used in making posters and notices, with which they plan to convert the minds of the Cubans to Communism. So far, 12,000 Bibles have been destroyed.”

Meanwhile, the Cuban government arrested several missionary families, charging they had engaged in anti-government activity. Eleven of the group were subsequently ordered out of the country and flown to Miami.

The Rev. Floyd Woodworth, veteran leader of Assemblies of God missionary work in Cuba, was reported to be confined in a Havana prison as of the end of March. His wife and two children were among those deported.

Several Jehovah’s Witnesses missionaries also were returned to the United States in the same plane.

Among charges leveled at the Assemblies of God personnel was that they had trained counter-revolutionaries at a Bible school in Manacas Las Villas, that they failed to teach Cuban history, and that they refused to fly the Cuban flag (the missionaries said they could not obtain rope).

Biblical Baseball

Venezuela is known for baseball fever. It was hardly surprising that newspapers made a big play over major leaguer Felipe Alou. What astonished fans and reporters alike was that he showed up not only with bat and glove, but with a Bible.

Thus the Spanish-speaking Alou’s visit a few weeks back provoked the same question everywhere:

“Why have you come to Venezuela?”

To which the agile San Francisco Giant outfielder replied that he was there to take part in a Scripture distribution program of the Pocket Testament League. He said he wanted to point out that there is no basic conflict between playing big-league baseball and living a consistent Christian life.

A native of the Dominican Republic, Alou is that country’s first and greatest contribution to the majors.

“When I left my country to come to the States to play baseball,” he said, “a Christian friend gave me a Bible. I carried it with me but did not take seriously the importance and necessity of a definite decision to take the Christ of that Bible as my personal Saviour.”

Alou recalled that during spring training in 1958 he met a pitcher “who knew the Lord, loved him, and wasn’t ashamed to talk about him.”

“I knew he had something that I had heard about but didn’t have for myself. I started to read my Bible and the light began to dawn.

“On my first day in the majors, in a hotel room in San Francisco, I knew a decision had to be made. I opened my Bible and began to read. God did something for me that day. I received Jesus Christ into my heart. My whole life has taken on a new and higher purpose. Christ is first in my life.”

It is a matter of record that Alou had his best season last year. He was one of the top hitters in the National League and led the Giants in batting. During the World Series Alou so impressed Ralph Houk that the New York Yankee manager cited him as one of the best outfielders he had ever seen perform in Yankee Stadium.

At the invitation of PTL, Alou spent eight days in Venezuela. He took part in rallies which drew from 3,000 to 10,000 persons. He held numerous baseball clinics and spoke at several military installations.

The project was part of a five-year effort by PTL to distribute 5,000,000 Scriptures in connection with a continent-wide campaign of preaching missions. Thus far more than a million Scriptures have been handed out in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. A PTL team climaxed the Venezuelan effort last month and is now moving into Bolivia.

Radio Evangelism

Evangelicals in El Salvador are building a new 5,000-watt radio station facility. Transmitters are located on the campus of an Assemblies of God school in the suburbs of San Salvador. Participating in the project are technicians from Latin America Mission, and Central American Mission, as well as personnel from American Baptist and Church of God missions.

The Uniting Church

Merger of Australia’s Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational churches moved an important step toward reality last month with issuance of a 90-page report by the churches’ joint Commission on Church Union. The merged body would be known as The Uniting Church in Australia and would have a membership of more than 2,000,000.

The 21 members of the commission recommended merger, but were sharply divided on proposals to create bishops and to enter into a concordat with the Church of South India, which has bishops.

A majority recommended that the projected Uniting Church appoint presbyters (a term used in preference to the more general word “minister”), who would be ordained by the laying on of hands by a bishop and at least three other presbyters. It was suggested that presbyters, in turn, could be appointed bishops, who would fulfill a function slightly different from that of bishops in Roman Catholic and Anglican churches and be answerable to a church council. Moreover, the Uniting Church also would move or transfer bishops as it wished.

One-third of the commission—three Presbyterians and four Methodists—recorded themselves opposed to the proposals for a concordat and creation of bishops.

The majority opinion said the role of the Uniting Church with the Church of South India should be “more than the cooperation of separate churches in particular activities, and less than a merger of the two churches.”

It added that such a concordat would hasten unity with the 3,700,000-member Church of England in Australia.

A final vote on merger may still be five years away.

The Devil’S Advocates

Evangelist Eric Hutchings, who held a campaign in Brighton last year, called the town a “center of demon worship throughout the whole of Britain” and opined that “worship of this kind is almost invariably accompanied by sexual malpractices.” Authenticated occurrences of organized Satanism in modern England are comparatively rare, probably because devotees are careful in their choice of time and location and afterwards remove all evidence of macabre goings-on.

This makes all the more surprising a discovery made at the lonely ruined church of St. Mary, Clophill, near John Bunyan’s Bedford. The bones of a 22-year-old surgeon’s wife, who died of smallpox in 1770, were taken from her tomb in the churchyard and arranged symbolically around an iron spike crowned with her skull. Five other graves, all of females, had also been opened. On the inside walls of the tenth-century church there was painted in red at two points a cross within a circle—sometimes regarded as the Mark of the Beast. On what was formerly the church altar were found the remains of what could have been a sacrificial co*ckerel (the remains of a fox’s meal, say local sceptics). Police called in to investigate reckon that it must have taken six men to remove even one of the heavy stone slabs in the graveyard.

Some have seen in this evidence of a Black Mass, a blasphemous celebration in honor of the devil, usually enacted by an unfrocked priest. This is a police idea, apologetically explains the local rector, the Rev. Lewis Barker, who spent some years in Africa and remains unexcited by the national interest in his parish. As he brought the bones down from the old to the new church about 11 P.M. one Saturday he said, “It’s the first time in my life that I’ve been out late at night with another man’s wife under my arm.”

STRANDED WITH THE BIBLE—“I am starting my adulthood with full knowledge or what I have to do. I wasn’t rescued until I understood, until I realized my sins and decided to make recompense for them.” So said Helen Klaben, adventuresome 21-year-old Brooklyn girl who with a 42-year-old Mormon lay preacher, Ralph Flores, survived seven weeks of sub-zero cold following the crash of their light plane in the Yukon Territory. Said Miss Klaben, who is Jewish: “It was Ralph’s Bible. I read both the Old and New Testaments. I know what I have to do, what my work is, what faith is, faith in God.”

PROTESTANT PANORAMA—A “Canadian Southern Baptist Conference” was organized at Kamloops, British Columbia, reportedly looking toward eventual formation of a Canadian Baptist Convention on a par with U. S. state conventions.

Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod will send 20 observers to the Lutheran World Federation assembly at Helsinki this summer.

Methodist Television, Radio, and Film Commission opened a Hollywood office. Shooting of two new episodes of a children’s television series is already under way. The new office is located near Hollywood and Vine.

New England Fellowship of Evangelicals is launching a program to combat juvenile delinquency. Executive Secretary Tolbert E. Mcnu*tt cites a threefold approach to counter delinquency—through social workers, a boys’ town, and parent education.

Lutherans are coming out with a contemporary English version of Martin Luther’s 430-year-old Small Catechism.

Newly released Church of Scotland Year-Book reveals a net loss of 8,663 communicants during 1961, the last year for which comprehensive statistics are available. The yearbook gives the total number of communicants as of the end of 1961 as 1,290,617. Population of Scotland is 5,178,490.

FOREIGN MISSIONS—Nine seafaring missionaries en route to Haiti were reported safe after their 100-foot vessel sank in choppy seas off the coast of Mexico. Leader of the rescued group was the Rev. Howard A. Smith, 51, minister of Calvary Church of the Full Gospel in Wilmington, California.

Presbyterian U. S. Board of World Missions will undertake long-range studies on pastoral care of missionaries and support of mission institutions overseas. The board has cited difficulty in meeting increasing costs.

The Evangelical Church of Laos ordained its first minister last month at a simple ceremony in Luang Prabang. He is the Rev. Moun Douangmala, who has been a Christian believer for some 30 years. The only other minister national in Laos is the Rev. Saly Kounthapanya, who was ordained by the Christian and Missionary Alliance mission in 1951.

Native New Guineans snapped up the first 15,000 volumes of the Four Gospels printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society in pidgin English. An immediate reprint was ordered. Pidgin English is a simple language, based mainly on English, which is used in New Guinea and Papua and is the only common language in an area where hundreds of native dialects are used.

MISCELLANY—Excommunication of deposed Argentine dictator Juan Peron reportedly was lifted by the Roman Catholic Church. Aides of Peron, who took refuge in Spain in January, 1960, say he wrote to Pope John XXIII several months ago, stating he was a repentant and faithful member of the church and desirous of “reconciliation.” They report he was officially absolved in a private ceremony.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer declined an invitation to visit the United States this spring. Lisle M. Ramsey of Religious Heritage of America disclosed Schweitzer’s decision following a trip to the famed medical missionary’s station in Lambarene, Gabon.

Proposed legislation to ease restrictions on Spanish Protestants was treated pessimistically in Ya, the Roman Catholic daily newspaper in Madrid. An article written by Father E. Guerrero, S.J., asked whether an “easy and even cordial getting-along-together spirit [between Catholics and Protestants] may not finally result in the playing down of Catholic requirements and aspirations, ending up in indifferentism.”

Construction of a Christian settlement at Ness Anim in West Galilee was expected to start soon with the rejection by the Israel Parliament’s Interior Committee of demands from Orthodox Jewish groups to halt the project.

The Baha’i International Community submitted an aide-mémoire to the U. N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva asking assistance to obtain release of nine Baha’is sentenced to death and imprisonment in predominantly Moslem Morocco last December. The aide-mémoire called it “a clear case of religious inquisition.”

St. Louis University and Catholic University of Quito, Ecuador, will conduct an exchange of professors and students as well as teaching methods with a $400,000 grant from the U. S. Agency for International Development under the Alliance for Progress.

FBI reports a seven per cent increase in crime during 1962. Crime rates rose to record highs in all areas of the nation. The number of persons under 18 arrested increased by nine per cent.

PERSONALIA—The Rt. Rev. Arthur Lichtenberger, presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, disclosed that he was suffering from symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. He canceled all speaking engagements but said he would try to complete his term of office as presiding bishop—until the denomination’s next general convention in 1964.

The Rev. Charles Webster, Jr., was dismissed as Baptist Student Union director at Clemson (South Carolina) College. His ouster was announced following a congregational meeting of the Baptist Church of Clemson. The church finances Baptist student work at the Clemson campus, aided by a state convention appropriation. Webster said he was removed for befriending Harvey Gantt, first Negro to enroll at the school. Several church spokesmen insisted that other than racial issues were involved.

Dr. Markus Barth, son of theologian Karl Barth, appointed professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (United Presbyterian).

The Rev. Oscar A. Anderson accepted the presidency of Augsburg College, Minneapolis.

Dr. A. R. Keppel resigned as president of Catawba College (United Church of Christ) to become first executive director of the new Piedmont University Center of North Carolina in Winston-Salem. Keppel was succeeded at Catawba by Dr. Donald C. Dearborn.

Dr. Jack S. Wilkes, Methodist minister and president of the University of Oklahoma City, elected mayor of Oklahoma City.

The Rev. George E. Kempsell, Jr., Protestant Episcopal rector whose outspoken stand against racial discrimination in Scarsdale, New York, attracted wide attention, named rector of St. Michael and All Angels Church in Dallas, Texas.

Bruce A. Brough, former editorial assistant at CHRISTIANITY TODAY, joined the staff of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration periodical.

WORTH QUOTING—“Communism is not a religion, because its dogmas are like shifting sands, or more properly the devil quoting the Bible. It can be compared to addiction much more than to religion or faith.”—John Santo, ex-Communist, in testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Deaths

THE RT. REV. A. W. NOEL PORTER, 78, who served as Episcopal bishop of the Sacramento, California, diocese for 24 years; in Palo Alto, California.

DR. LYLE O. BRISTOL, 48, former dean at Eastern Baptist College and Crozier Theological Seminary; in Medford, Massachusetts.

COL. EDWARD P. FELKER, 71, general counsel for Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State; in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

BISHOP KAI JENSEN, 64, who last May became the spiritual head of the Lutheran Diocese of Arhus, Denmark; in Arhus.

Rabbi, Why Torture The Pronoun?

The Torah, The Five Books of Moses, A new translation of The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic text (The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1963, 416 pp., $5), is reviewed by Jakob Jocz, Professor of Systematic Theology, Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada.

With several new translations in recent years and with the New English Bible in the process of completion, it may come as a surprise that the Jewish Publication Society of America should venture upon yet another English translation. There are, however, good reasons for this special Jewish enterprise.

Any Christian translation of the Old Testament, no matter how scholarly, is suspected of Christological overtones. It is also a matter of scholarly pride as stated in the Preface of the 1917 version: “The Jew cannot afford to have his Bible translation prepared for him by others. He cannot have it as a gift, even as he cannot borrow his soul from others.” Furthermore, Jews believe that they have a flair for the Old Testament which is peculiarly their own.

If we may judge from this volume (two more are in preparation: The Prophets and The Hagiographa), the translation is in several respects revolutionary. Whereas the 1917 version was largely modeled upon the idiom of the King James Bible, the present translation is a complete departure from traditional language. Not only is it a new translation but a new rendering in modern terms. In some ways it is also a departure from established theological tradition. A case in point is the Shema which now reads: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (Deut. 6:4). The text is the locus classicus for the Jewish concept of the Unity of God.

The unevenness of style in the 1917 version was due to the fact that about 23 scholars had a hand in it. The present translation is mainly the rendering by one man, Dr. Harry Orlinsky of Hebrew Union College. His work was scrutinized by an editorial board consisting of two other scholars and three rabbis, with Dr. Solomon Grayzel acting as secretary. The presence of the three rabbis, each representing a section “of organized Jewish religious life,” is to ensure acceptance by the whole Jewish community.

We thus have before us a lucid text in modern English almost free of archaisms. Theological implications have been slurred over. At any rate, this was the intention. The result, however, is not devoid of polemical bias. The effort to avoid Christological allusions is evident. Thus Genesis 3:15 reads: “They shall strike at your head and you shall strike at their heel.” Yet the Hebrew text uses the singular pronoun. The same applies to Numbers 24:17, which reads: “What I see for them is not yet, what I behold will not be soon.…” This is a departure from established tradition. Even the 1917 version reads: “I see him but not now; I behold him, but not nigh.”

In cases where the text is controversial there are appended footnotes leaving it to the reader to make his choice. The name of God as disclosed to Moses in Exodus 3:14 is left untranslated: Eheyeh—Asher—Eheyeh. Consequently we are left with the following: “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, Eheyeh sent me.” The story of the Fall loses much of its deeper meaning by the description of the “tree of knowledge of good and bad.” In this context, “bad” is hardly the opposite of “good.” Here, as elsewhere, the lack of theology is only too apparent. It is a question whether the Bible can be adequately translated without a theological position.

This is an attractively produced book on excellent paper in large, easy-to-read type. The Jewish Publication Society of America deserves to be congratulated on an outstanding achievement.

JACOB JOCZ

Never Dull

Psalms of David, by David A. Redding (Revell, 1963, 174 pp., $3), is reviewed by James D. Robertson, Professor of Preaching, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

The minister of First Presbyterian Church, Glendale, Ohio, uses the searchlight of twenty-three psalms to probe the thoughts and intents of the heart of Everyman, and the result is a vast uneasiness. But this honest inventory of human deviations and foibles is preparatory to the release of that spiritual dynamo that is at the heart of the psalms. If the diagnosis is disturbing, the cure provided is ample. These sermons richly interpret the grace of God as expressed in the psalms, showing its relevance to all sorts and conditions of men. The psalms are presented as prayers—“the prayers of every man, every where, every time; earthbound but heaven-bent, blind, stumbling, feeling his lonely way in the darkness up to God” (xv).

The messages are rich in variety of allusion and aptness of illustration. The style is eminently contemporaneous—curt, direct, often colloquial, and never dull. Many sentences are almost epigrammatic: “Heaven comes in the same breath as death.” “Happiness is a thread hanging in a forest of flashing knives.” Some readers, however, will question the pulpit propriety of frequent expressions like these: “Pharaoh was making God furious, but God kept His sense of humor.” “Castro will say phooey to God once too often.” “Only God can wash behind the years.” Nothing stuffy about this language! It does succeed in calling attention to itself! For its wealth of provocative insight, however, this little book of sermons should be studied by the man who contemplates preaching on the psalms.

JAMES D. ROBERTSON

Too Spiritual

The Meaning and Mystery of the Resurrection, by Thomas S. Kepler (Association, 1963, 188 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Fred L. Fisher, Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Mill Valley, California.

If one wants a book that summarizes all the factors which must be considered in a study of the Resurrection, this is such a book. If one wants a book which solves all the problems of the Resurrection stories, he will not find it here. Kepler views the resurrection of Jesus as a real, but bodily, resurrection which has left an indelible impression on religious culture; herein lies its meaning. He finds it impossible to express exactly what happened in the Resurrection; herein lies its mystery.

Many of the New Testament traditions of the Resurrection Kepler views as mythical stories to explain the Christian belief that the same Jesus who walked the shores of the Sea of Galilee has now become the living Lord of the churches. However, Kepler sees in such a view no reason to give up the comfort and assurance that are attached to the reality of the Resurrection. Many Christians will find it difficult to maintain their faith in the meaning and reality of the Resurrection if they must give up the historical reliability of the stories of the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus. Certainly, it would be impossible to fit a theory of the solely spiritual resurrection of Jesus into the theology of Paul, who insisted that both the resurrection of Jesus and that of Christians are bodily resurrections.

A major plus of the book is a good summary of resurrection beliefs in the ancient world and a careful distinction between the Greek theory of the immortality of the soul and the Christian doctrine of resurrection. This book will make you think, but be prepared to cross swords with a skillful antagonist.

FRED L. FISHER

Even Better Than Intended

New Insights Into Scripture: Studying the Revised Standard Version, by J. Carter Swaim (Westminster, 1962, 206 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by C. Ralston Smith, Minister, First Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITIONS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLE

* The Reality of the Resurrection, by Merrill C. Tenney (Harper 8: Row, $4). The resurrection of Christ is vigorously defended as a hard, unshakable historical reality, and full treatment is given its many facets.

* New Testament Introduction: Hebrews to Revelation, by Donald Guthrie (Inter-Varsity, $4.95). A flowering of conservative scholarship of such excellence that others may measure their efforts by its standard.

* Dictionary of the Bible, edited by James Hastings, Revised Edition by F. C. Grant and H. H. Rowley (Scribner’s, $15). Thoroughly revised by scholarship ranging the theological spectrum as widely as did its original authors fty years ago. Excellent new maps.

The achievement of this book is better than its intention. It can be lifted above its immediate objective (to aid in the study of the RSV) to serve as an encouragement in the reading of the Scriptures in any of the many versions. Conveniently divided into 12 chapters, it might be used as a springboard text for a study group meeting over a year’s time. One might argue with some of the defenses of those areas of translation in the RSV which have caused concern. However, this would be to lose sight of the greater value of the book in encouraging an enthusiastic, humble, confident approach to the Bible as the authoritative Word of God. The style is quite simple and chatty, and one moves with ease through the pages. Many interesting illustrations from life in a pastorate season the teachings. It is helpful to have a Bible at hand for ready reference and understanding of some of the reasoning presented.

C. RALSTON SMITH

To Find A Method

Karl Barth: An Introduction to His Early Theology 1910–1931, by T. F. Torrance (Alec R. Allenson [Naperville, Ill.], 1962, 231 pp., $5; SCM Press, 25s.), is reviewed by James Daane, Editorial Associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Torrance’s purpose is not to present a compendium of Barth’s early thought but to trace the course of Barth’s debate with modern theology. This is done in the hope that the superficial interpretations and tendentious criticisms so often leveled at Barth will be waylaid.

Torrance knows Barth’s thought inside out; this is prerequisite to his task of showing how Barth attempted to forge a theological method which would be wholly determined by the nature of its object: God’s revelation of himself in the time and history of Jesus Christ. Barth was convinced that the regnant theological method of the time was determined by man’s own religious ideas and consciousness, by the scientific and philosophical concepts then in vogue; he was equally convinced that this methodology produced a theology of culture and not a theology of the Word of God. Barth, therefore, sought to forge a method which would express a theology untainted by any idealogy. The quest was an agonizing struggle, one that traveled no straight road. Barth had to backtrack and rewrite his Römerbrief and undo his Die Christliche Dogmatik in terms of his Kircheliche Dogmatik. He had to retrace his steps to replace his original dialecticism and subjectivism (in which man was a “participant” in revelation) with an analogical (i.e., Christological) theology in which not man, but Jesus Christ was both the objective and subjective possibility of revelation, and also the Being as well as the Act of God. Further, his earlier analogia entis had to be displaced by an analogia gratiae.

The most decisive turning point in Barth’s struggle stemmed from his study of Anselm, a story told in Barth’s book on Anselm, Fides Quaerens lntellectum. From this point on (1931) Barth moved away from an abstract theology about God and away from a subjectivistic theology of man, toward a theology determined wholly by the consideration that God became man, and thus a theology of the Humanity of God, of Jesus Christ.

How well Barth succeeded in excluding all extraneous influences and in penetrating the reality of revelation to discover all the determinants for a truly Christian theological method will long be debated.

Torrance makes no attempt to evaluate critically Barth’s early thought, except in terms of the inner logic of its own development. Yet his overall estimate is obvious. He places Barth in the ranks of Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Luther. More significantly, he asserts that at the great watershed of modern theology we must choose the basic method either of Barth or of Bultmann, adding that “there is no third alternative.” He writes further, “The way of Barth leads to the establishment of Christianity on its own solid God-given foundations and to the pursuit of theology as a free science in its own right; the way of Bultmann leads to the dissolution of Christianity in secular culture and to the pursuit of theology as an expression of a reactionary, existentialist way of life.” If indeed these are the only two choices, then for the biblical theologian there is but one.

Torrance has brilliantly presented the movements and outcome of Barth’s decades of labor to achieve a theological method befitting the object of its concern. In doing it he has demonstrated his competence to proceed to a critical evaluation of Barth’s method; if he will now do this, he will render another unequaled service.

JAMES DAANE

Crown Of The Orient

Ancient Antioch, by Glanville Downey (Princeton University Press, 1963, 340 pp., $7.50), is reviewed by James L. Kelso, Professor of Old Testament History and Biblical Archaeology, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

This book is a condensation of the author’s earlier History of Antioch in Syria from Seleucus to the Arab Conquest—the most important book on this key city of the Near East. Antioch vied with Alexander for the honor of being second only to Rome. After the death of Alexander the Great, Antioch transplanted Greek culture into the Levant. Rome also complicated the picture when Pompey captured Syria and Palestine. The early Church had missionary headquarters in Antioch, and later this Church created a Hellenic theological pattern which subsequently came into full bloom in Constantinople—the city which replaced Antioch for both church and state.

Temples and festivals to Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, and Tyche emphasized the Greek nature of the city, and paganism fought Christianity here until the city’s decay in the sixth century. Antioch was full of famous churches and of church leaders, such as Paul, Ignatius, Basil, and Chrysostom. Seleucus Antiochus, Epiphanes, Tigranes, Pompey, Anthony, the Roman emperors, the Persian kings, and Queen Zenobia all contributed to the city’s story. Antioch was a major literary center; the books of its famous writers have been preserved and give a vast amount of detailed information about the city.

Antioch was the military center of the Roman Empire’s defenses against the Persians and the emporium for trade from faraway China and all lands between. Its wealth enabled it even to be lighted at night, and here pleasure and athletics vied with war, business, and religion. Riots were common, and even the Church factions used this technique. The city was often laid low by earthquake and fire; ultimately these two, plus the plague and a Persian sacking of the city, brought about the end of Antioch. Constantinople then became the master city of the Near East. The whole restless Levant with its interest in everything good and evil is excellently portrayed in Antioch, the city famed as the “Fair Crown of the Orient.”

JAMES L. KELSO

How Growth Goes

The Dynamics of Church Growth, by J. Waskom Pickett (Abingdon, 1963, 124 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Frank Bateman Stanger, President, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

Whenever Bishop J. Waskom Pickett speaks or writes it is always imperative for the Christian world to give careful heed. Now retired from the active episcopacy, but not from continuing Kingdom-labors, Bishop Pickett speaks out of a background of a ministry which was fulfilled in the context of Christian missions. He is truly a missionary-statesman, possessing keen insights into the relationship of the Christian faith to all other religions and of the Christian church to the new age being ushered into the world’s history.

As D. T. Niles states in the Foreword, in this volume the author writes concerning the urgency and possibility of Church expansion in the contemporary world.

The book contains seven chapters. Each chapter reveals a basic Christian conviction in the mind and heart of the author. In the opening chapter, “The Case for Rapid Growth,” the author declares his foundational emphasis upon the principle of community in successful evangelism among people of non-Christian cultures. Bishop Pickett has always been a firm believer in “group movements.”

Chapter II, “The Tragedy of Retarded Growth,” portrays the urgency of the present situation for evangelism.

The voice of experience sounds throughout Chapter III, “Assembled Lessons from Many Lands.” The author presents both mistaken missionary assumptions of the past and lessons learned in missionary experience.

No Christian person can afford to bypass the reading of Chapter IV, in which the author declares that Christianity is the most effective weapon against Communism. Even the chapter’s title allures the reader: “How Protestant Churches Obstruct and Counteract Communism.”

The author is convinced of the importance of the ministry of laymen. Chapter V is based on the thesis that “preaching is imperative but not sufficient.”

Chapter VI, “Yesterday’s Best Not Good Enough Today,” is an impassioned call to a new and deepened Christian dedication, both on the part of Christian individuals and in the life and program of the Church.

The closing chapter abounds with Christian optimism. In addition to the mention of nations now predominantly Christian, Sarawak, Korea, and certain African nations are discussed as “potential Christian nations of tomorrow.”

This is a book with a world perspective. Its major values lie in its insights for the advancing work of the Church in its program of world evangelization. But the spiritual principles and procedures discussed are no less relevant for the Christian worker in the local church and for the lay evangelist in the homeland.

FRANK BATEMAN STANGER

According To Philip

The Gospel of Philip, by R. McL. Wilson (Harper & Row, 1963, 198 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Gerald L. Borchert, Associate Professor of New Testament, North American Baptist Seminary, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Since the discovery of the codices from Chenoboskion (Nag Hammadi) our knowledge has been greatly augmented with respect to the period following the close of the apostolic age when the Gnostic heresy became a threat to the Church.

Among the 49 Coptic documents which came to light at Chenoboskion three so-called gospels have turned up, viz. The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Truth, and The Gospel of Philip. R. McL. Wilson has finally made available to the English-speaking world a very helpful introduction to the third of these so-called gospels. His translation of Philip seems to be slightly more accurate than the earlier work of Catanzaro-Schenke, and his sectioning or paragraphing of the text (e.g. #4) also seems to be more plausible. In addition to a translation, Wilson has included an excellent commentary, a short introduction, and a brief statement of the theology of The Gospel of Philip.

The author, a New Testament lecturer at St. Andrews, has given most of his attention to the commentary. He compares the ideas in Philip with what we know about Gnosticism from the church fathers and the early non-Christian writers, and he draws a number of helpful parallels to biblical, rabbinic, and other Chenoboskion texts. By means of these comparisons and parallels the commentator supports the view that Philip was probably written late in the second century by a Valentinian Gnostic.

This book will be read primarily by those interested in the field of Gnosticism or early Church history. It is nonetheless written in such a way that the clergyman who has first read R. M. Grant’s commentary on The Gospel of Thomas (The Secret Sayings of Jesus) will find that he is quite at home in this work also.

In general, as a commentary on the Chenoboskion discoveries Wilson’s book marks a decided advance over Kendrick Grobel’s fragmentary work on The Gospel of Truth.

GERALD L. BORCHERT

Moses In Mosaic

Old Testament Theology, Volume I, by Gerhard von Rad (Harper, 1962, 483 pp., $8), is reviewed by Merrill F. Unger, Chairman of the Old Testament Department, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

This brilliantly scholarly work is authored by the well-known professor of theology at Heidelberg University, Gerhard von Rad, and made available in English through the translation from the German by D. M. G. Stalker. Hailed as a pioneering figure in biblical studies, Professor von Rad offers the reader the most thoroughgoing application of form criticism to the pages of the Old Testament. Part One deals with a history of Jahwism and of the sacred institutions of Israel, and Part Two treats the theology of Israel’s historical traditions. There is no doubt that the author’s handling of his material on the basis of his critical presuppositions, his vast learning, and his technical skill, is masterful. Those who delight in a new approach, based upon latest critical theories, will hail the fresh and original manner in which Professor von Rad attempts to present Old Testament theology.

But the results of the author’s researches are certainly perplexing and disappointing to the student who sees the Old Testament as a historically reliable document. To Professor von Rad the Hexateuch (the Pentateuch and Joshua) came into being from a confessional arrangement of different complexes of conflicting and contradictory traditions. The figure of Moses, for example, is mixed up and blurred in these various groups of traditions, later forcing his way into narratives where originally he was a stranger. The best that can be done for Israel’s great lawgiver and type of Christ (cf. Deut. 18:15–18) for those who picture him as the founder of a religion, is that they can only reach back to “very ancient individual traditions which are difficult to reconcile with one another” (p. 14). If this is true of Moses, who figures so prominently in Old Testament theology and who can be traced so minutely as a type of Christ, what happens to the pattern of the rest of Old Testament theology, which is so intimately interwoven with New Testament theology and forms the basis? Brilliant but unsound handling of God’s Word in this manner will have its style and popularity, but will be forsaken when some new critical fad comes into vogue to capture scholarly fancy in Old Testament higher criticism.

MERRILL F. UNGER

Book Briefs

Journeys After Saint Paul, by William R. Cannon (Macmillan, 1963, 276 pp., $4.95). An excursion into history; the author travels every place connected with Paul and gives an on-the-spot description. Good reading.

The Great Promise, by Karl Barth, translated by Hans Freund (Philosophical Library, 1963, 70 pp., $2.75). Bible lectures Barth presented to students during Advent in 1934.

Daniel to Paul, edited by Gaalyahu Cornfeld (Macmillan, 1963, 377 pp., $13.95). A historical critical evaluation, tempered neither by fact nor by responsible scholarship. The kind of interpretation that invites psychoanalysis.

In Time … For Eternity, by G. W. Hoyer and J. P. Kretzmann (Concordia, 1963, 353 pp., $5.95). Sixty-eight sermons on the church year; to be read for their biblical thought and inspiration, not for their style.

Space Age Christianity, edited by Stephen F. Bayne, Jr. (Morehouse-Barlow, 1963, 191 pp., $4.50). An edited account of the lectures and discussions on “Space Age Christianity” which took place at the Seattle World’s Fair. A book of high interest for those who fear that the science of the space age is a threat to the Christian faith.

Sermons to Intellectuals, edited by Franklin H. Littell (Macmillan, 1963, 160 pp., $3.95). Sermons by, and representative of the theologies of, W. S. Coffin, Jr., P. Tillich, H. Thielicke, D. T. Niles, W. Herberg, and eight others. High in quality, they traverse the theological spectrum wide and free.

Job: Defense of Honor, by Roger N. Carstensen (Abingdon, 1963, 158 pp., $3.25). Job’s trials interpreted as a defense of man’s inherent worth and honor. Christian author sees similarities between the Book of Job and Greek drama.

Salute to a Sufferer, by Leslie D. Weatherhead (Abingdon, 1963, 95 pp., $2). Author gives some radically Christian insights and suggestions about human suffering. Written—successfully—for laymen.

George Washington and Religion, by Paul F. Boiler, Jr. (Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, 235 pp., $4.50). Was Washington a Christian? An extended examination concludes that if being a Christian means believing in Christ’s deity, atoning work, and resurrection, then Washington was not, for he was more unitarian than anything else.

The School Question, compiled by Brother Edmond G. Drouin (Catholic University of America, 1963, 261 pp., $7.50). A reference book for the literature that has arisen around the religion-in-public-schools controversy, 1940–1960.

Red China Prisoner, by Sara Perkins (Revell, 1963, 127 pp., $2.50). Firsthand account of the experiences of an American missionary in Old and in Red China. A story of faith versus Communism.

Luther, by Franz Lau, translated by Robert H. Fischer (Westminster, 1963, 178 pp., $3.75). A portrayal of Luther that finds the key to his life in his inmost spiritual struggles.

Visible Unity and Tradition, by Max Thurian, Brother of Taizé (Helicon, 1962, 136 pp., $3.50). The author, one of the three original brothers of the Protestant monastic community of Taizé, considers the already considerable visible unity of the Church, and calls for more.

Dogmatik, by Wolfgang Trillhaas (Alfred Töpelmann [Berlin 30], 1962, 581 pp., 36 German Marks [$9]). A substantial dogmatic work; by a German author who uses but refuses to be bound by theological tradition, and seeks to speak both to the Church and to the world.

Paperbacks

An Educator’s Guide for Preparing Articles for Periodicals, by James W. Carty, Jr. (self-published [order from Box 218, Bethany, W. Va.], 1962, 28 pp., $1). Teacher of journalism gives pointers to teachers on how to write an article that will be published and read. Also excellent for ministers with an urge to write. Its value dwarfs its size and price.

Positive Protestantism, by Hugh T. Kerr (Prentice-Hall, 1963, 108 pp., $1.75). Author sees the essence of Protestantism in a positive, constructive rather than critical affirmation of the Gospel that God was in Christ for man’s redemption. First printed in 1950.

How to Teach the Word of God, by Edwin J. Potts (Harvest Publications [5750 N. Ashland, Chicago 26], 1963, 104 pp., $1.50). Uncomplicated but pertinent short essays to aid the teacher of religious education.

Current Books and Pamphlets (Missionary Research Library [3041 Broadway, New York 27], 1963, 32 pp., $.50). All the new titles added to the Missionary Research Library between July 1 and December 31, 1962. Rules for borrowing books by mail may be had on application.

Reprints

The Birth of the Christian Religion and The Origins of the New Testament, by Alfred Firmin Loisy (University Books, 1962, 413 and 332 pp., $10). The last two great works of Loisy, excommunicated Roman Catholic priest and leader of Catholic modernism, in which he employs critical historical methods to the rise of Christianity.

The English Hymn, by Louis F. Benson (John Knox, 1962, 624 pp., $6.50). Survey of the development and usage of hymns in the worship of English-speaking churches. First printed in 1915.

Paul the Missionary, by William M. Taylor (Baker, 1962, 570 pp., $3.95). A biography of Paul. Evangelical. First printed in 1909.

Every true pastor longs to engage in personal counseling. Except in method and in terminology, counseling is far from new. Parts of the Bible report many cases. In midsummer, if only to prevent a slump in attendance, have a brief course of counseling sermons. Why not base them on favorite psalms? As the hymnal of the Hebrew Church this book has about 50 Psalms of Praise—65 of Prayer—five of Teaching—and 30 of Testimony. Some of these from a single person; others, from a throng.

Leading up to a brief series, a sermon, “The Way to Enjoy a Psalm” (1:1). See it as a gift of God to the imagination. Since popular exposition calls for willingness to omit, deal only with the tree and the chaff. First the positive, and then the negative, by contrast. Put in the forefront what the hearer should remember; then, to heighten the effect, the opposite. I. The Tree: The beauty of being right with God—with others—with self. Here stress the singular. Then by contrast, the plural. II. The Chaff: Men with no roots—no fruits—no beauty. During such a sermon a girl nine years young drew a picture of a tree. Some day she will show it to her grandchildren and tell them about God. What if she had not come to church that day, and there learned to enjoy a psalm?

The bulletin should list a number of Testimony Psalms for home reading next week, with the topic (not the text) of the coming sermon. Subject of the brief series: “God’s Remedy for a Broken Heart.” First Sunday in July: “The Bible Remedy for Fear” (27:1). Amid occasions for fear, faith brings Guidance—Deliverance—Victory. Energy once wasted in friction now starts an automobile, keeps it running, lights it after dark, heats it in winter, and may cool it in summer. The God who gives a man such wisdom enables his servant by faith to conquer every fear.

“The Bible Prescription for Anxiety” (37:5–7). Occasions abound; so does God’s grace. By Faith Rely on the Lord—Help the Other Fellow—Enjoy Your Religion—Leave Results with God. That sounds simple! Yes, and it works, if a man trusts God. “The Bible Cure for Despondency” (42:5). For a Case turn to Elijah (1 Kings 19): A man of middle age—Strong—Useful—After a time of strain—So blue that life seems not worth living. The Cause: Trying to get along without God—Thinking about a worn-out body—Nerves all on edge—Apparent failure—Loneliness—Fear. God’s Cure: Rest for the body—Change of scene—Vision of God—Call back to work—Message of hope. Commit to memory this text. Use it when you begin to feel blue. See God!

“The Bible Deliverance from Guilt” (51:1). After this series, people will ask for another. Thank them, and take eleven months to prepare. Subject, much the same, with stress next time on soul security, through trust in God. “The Bible Secret of National Security” (46:1). The psalm seems to have come from 701 B.C., when the siege by Sennacherib was lifted with no loss of life. So trust God to keep our land today.

“The Bible Secret of Personal Security” (91:1). From the two main parts single out a few facts to stress: I. The Meaning (1–8): II. The Secret (9–16). Present only as much as the hearer can take home and remember for life. “The Bible Antidote for Loneliness” (122:1). Here deal with the home church as God’s way of diverting undue attention away from oneself. I. Show Loyalty to the Home Church by Your Presence: Desire—Delight—Devotion. II. Praises: Its Welcome—Worship—Work. III. Prayers: For its Peace—Prosperity—Pastor. By faith live this way; you will find friends both divine and human.

“The Bible Song for Vacation Time” (121:1). “The Traveler’s Psalm,” dear to the heart of David Livingstone. Also, “The Railroader’s Psalm” (v. 8). It all sings about God’s Providence in the life of a believer. Key word: “keep,” or “preserve.” In each main part keep God first: The God of the Waiting Hills—The Sleepless Watch—The Friendly Shade—The Winding Road. It guides at last to the unseen City of God. Thank Him for a faith that leads you to look up and sing about God’s Providence.

Next year the July series may deal with a few other Testimony Psalms, or with ones about Prayer, or else Praise. In a later year, chosen Parables from St. Matthew or St. Luke. No sermons will bring more delight to both pastor and people. They will give thanks for a minister with a heart as well as a head, and with a God-given love of beauty.

Better still, sinners will be saved, one by one, and learn to rejoice in the Gospel that sings. The saints will find more of heaven while still here on earth. When the people of God learn to love the best of the Psalms, they learn to love the God who used the Psalms in preparing for the Advent of Christ.—In the author’s book, Expository Preaching for Today (Abingdon Press, 1953), see in the Index, “Psalms.”

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble (Ps. 46:1; read vv. 1–11).

Who has not been moved by the “battle song of the Reformation”? In “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” Luther caught up the meaning and message of this psalm. The three parts all sing about our God.

I. Confidence in God (1–3). Why fear anyone or anything if we have God? The Refuge in whom we hide from the storm; the Strength to guarantee stability; the Help present every moment to lift, hearten, and save. Everything else man has claimed as a foundation is on the point of trembling.

Who but God can ward out fear? The believer is not dismayed by things that pursue, for God is his refuge; by things that weaken, for God is his strength; by things that frighten, for God casts out fear. Today Christ affords the basis for a personal trust that gives victory.

II. Relief During a Siege (4–7). A new picture with startling suddenness. Instead of dread and disaster, a dynamic vision of quiet and security. God not only is a source of safety; he supplies refreshing streams that bring new life and hope. God himself is the river of gladness. Quietly and gently streams of his grace flow into needy hearts and bring new life. We can come to this unfailing stream confidently, and find richer blessings than the Psalmist was able to picture, all made possible, by the death of our Saviour.

III. Deliverance Before Dawn (8–11). When day breaks the enemy has gone. Charred chariots, broken spears, ruined arrows! Few of us have looked on such unbelievable destruction. How senseless to struggle against God! He alone has the right to be exalted on earth. Today it is God’s desire that rebellious rulers turn to him and save their people from the horrors that await his foes. God’s ideal is a world peopled with men and women submissive to Christ as King.

The psalm is strangely applicable to our day. The night darkens. Fear grips our hearts. Who will save us? The answer comes that God is here. He knows. He cares. He is waiting to work out his plan in our lives. What a difference his presence ought to make! Through his life-giving river God sustains us, and through us waits to bless others. “The Lord God omnipotent reigneth!”—From Preaching from the Psalms, Harper Brothers, 1948.

SERMONS ABRIDGED BY DR. ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD

KYLE M. YATES: God Our Mighty Fortress and

The Gospel from the Psalms

FRANK B. STANGER: The Golden Text of the Deeper Life

COSTEN J. HARRELL: God’s Hand Upon the Helm

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service (Rom. 12:1; read vv. 1–13).

“Boys and girls, if you remember nothing else, remember the Gold Text.” This you often heard in Bible school. Our Golden Text (vv. 1, 2) has to do with the deeper life, the Spirit-filled life. In their setting these verses tell three facts about the deeper life. It has—

I. An Exclusive Relevance to Christians, to “brethren,” who have been born again. They have experienced the mercy of God in forgiveness of sins. Now they also have the mercies of God through intelligent ministering to God. How many sinners are intelligently ministering to God?

II. A Demanding Relationship to your total being. “I beseech you”—here Paul appeals to the will. “By the mercies of God”—here to the emotions. “That ye present your bodies”—put them at the disposal of God, to be used according to his discretion. Here Paul refers to every part of the human person. In response to such total dedication of the self the Holy Spirit enters and becomes our Christian possession.

III. A Personal Rendition in Daily Living. In the Greek “a living sacrifice” is that which gives continuing evidence of being alive. Being filled with the Spirit is an inner experience; it is also a growing, developing life, with evidences of the Spirit’s continuing presence: 1. A dedication that is continuing. It is not enough to make it here and now; dedication has to be made again and again.

2. A transformation that is inward (v. 2). “Be not conformed”—not fashioning one’s self by another’s pattern. That would be worldliness: outward change with no corresponding inward transformation, a metamorphosis. 3. A revelation that is practical. To find the will of God for your life, and to do it. That is “good”—it pleases God; “acceptable”—pleasing to other believers; and “perfect”—achieving one’s appointed destiny. What an eternal significance! 4. An evaluation that is realistic. “Not to exceed the bounds of Scripture” in what we think about ourselves. Apart from the grace of God you and I cannot evaluate ourselves aright. 5. A cooperation that is binding. Clergy and laity alike are members one of another. When we realize that we belong to the body of Christ we cooperate at the deepest spiritual level.

Now I feel led to ask you a question. We have been thinking together about our needs today. Can it be that you personally need what we have called the deeper life? If so, here and now present your members a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your intelligent service.—President of Asbury Theological Seminary, Methodist, Wilmore, Kentucky.

O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good; for his mercy endureth forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so (Ps. 107:1, 2a; read vv. 1–32).

Redemption is the theme. God’s main business has always been redemption. To redeem us men cost him more than anyone can ever know. He did so because he was good, and for this reason we should praise him now. The four pictures that pass before us in the psalm show some of the distresses from which God sets us free.

I. The Lost (4–9). In their distress these lost ones become desperate enough to pray. They need a guide. Unless someone leads them to God, they will never taste the joys of salvation. At once God answers. The very second the SOS sounds from the desert the great arm of the Good Shepherd reaches out to save. With him to lead, their fear fades, hope springs up, the way appears, the city soon is reached. Today the Psalmist whispers that the Father is waiting to hear and to save.

II. The Bound (10–16). Behold a group of persons languishing in prison, with daily suffering and distress. They represent a vast multitude who have fallen into the snares of Satan, and must suffer until rescued by the Redeemer. Some are in bondage because of rebellion against God. That was true of Israel as a nation, and godless living still brings bondage far worse than Babylon could devise. In response to prayer God sets men free from bondage to sin. So we should turn to him now with thanksgiving for salvation.

III. The Afflicted (17–22). Here see persons who by sinful deeds have brought on themselves terrible sickness. They represent an untold host who suffer from sin as earth’s direst disease. Before they die, some use their little remaining strength in crying out to the only Physician who can succor sinsick souls. The Lord heals them. Today Jesus heals all manner of soul-sickness. Our gratitude impels us to thank him, and offer him sacrifices of praise.

IV. The Storm-Tossed (23–32). Behold a group of sailors caught in a storm at sea. They know that they stand face to face with death. Hence they pray to God. Above the shriek of the storm God hears them, and sets them free from their distress. Thus the poet says that God is good to anyone who in distress looks to the Lord for deliverance from peril and death. Thank God for this Gospel from the Psalms!—From Preaching from the Psalms, Harper Brothers, 1948.

The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice (Ps. 97:1a; read vv. 1–12).

The anchor of the soul is a good man’s faith in God, in His unfailing love and righteousness. In a New England church hard by the sea, the fishermen who worship there look up to an anchor. Thus they turn their hearts to God with hope, as “an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast.”

I. God Is in Control. The doctrine of divine sovereignty is of immediate and practical concern to every man. One God over all is the ground of the Christian’s hope. His hand is upon the helm. To speak of him as the One who “holds the whole world in his hands” is to acknowledge his magnificence, majesty, and wisdom. The God of discernment and decision, the “living God,” ever present and active in his world. Therefore we ask: What kind of God is he on whom the faithful depend?

II. God Is a Person. So he revealed himself in the long history of his chosen people. In the fullness of time he sent his Son. The central theme of Jesus’ teaching was God. Apart from the fact of a personal God, revelation would be a fairy tale. The Christian faith will admit of nothing less than this: God is a Person, the Everlasting Thou!

III. God Has a Plan. Where there is control, there must be a plan. His plan is no less evident in the world of men than in the wonders of nature. His plan is as extensive as his love. “Through the ages one increasing purpose runs.” At long last through his Son God has made known his purpose. Through the labyrinth of the centuries he purposes to “bring together in one all things in Christ.” In Christ the magnificence of God’s design is made known to us, and in this light we find direction for the decisions of every hour.

IV. God Will Not Be Defeated. We put our confidence in God the Father Almighty. The Christian faith affirms that the universe operates under a “unified command.” We rest in the assurance that things never get beyond the divine control. A sinful race rebels against the Lord, but cannot defeat him. Amid all the ills that sin has wrought, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

“The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice.” Because with mind and heart and intuition a Christian believes that God cannot be defeated, the child of God is an incurable optimist. The times are out of joint, but the man of faith does not lose heart. “Alleluia: the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”—From Christian Affirmations, Abingdon Press, 1962.

A BRUTAL SPORT—The Davey Moore fight is one more illustration that boxing is a brutal sport even under ideal conditions—if it can be called a sport.—GOVERNOR EDMUND “PAT” BROWN of California.

PROTECTING THE TARGET—Moore’s death is a terrible thing, but in this case the public interest can best be served by scientific inquiry, not by the hasty pronouncement of the governor. For a sport so bound up with physical violence, there has been almost criminal lack of controlled, scientific exploration in the area of protecting the target of a fighter’s fists, the human head. Prefight encephalographic examination—which California administers—and a quick look by even the most competent referee during the heat of a championship fight obviously are only part of the answer. If boxing is to survive, its supervisors need to know a lot more about it. More—and fast.—Sports Illustrated, April 1, 1963.

SUPERVISION OR ABOLITION?—Boxing is a terribly dangerous trade, as well as a savagely degrading one. Since 1945, Ring Magazine reports 216 boxers have died of ring injuries. Of this number, 14 lost their lives last year.… No human agency has ever succeeded in divorcing boxing from gangster domination, and on the evidence it must be assumed that no one ever will.… The committee [of the New York legislature] has already admitted that even the power and majesty of New York State is not equal to the task of policing the fight racket. Pending now in the legislature is their plea that the Federal Government take over the supervision of boxing. Washington bureaucracy is not the answer to the malodorous fight racket, any more than it was to prohibition. Boxing is squalid animal atavism, and the only sane answer to it lies in its abolition.—RICHARD STARNES, United Features columnist.

LIKE A PREMATURE MINE BLAST—I won the ring’s most coveted title by stopping a man much larger and stronger than I was—one who outweighed me 65 pounds. I blasted him into helplessness by exploding my fast-moving body-weight against him.… Exploding body-weight is the most important weapon in fist-fighting or in boxing. Never forget that!… I was exploding that weight terrifically against the giant. Even before the first round was finished, Willard looked like the victim of a premature mine blast.—JACK DEMPSEY, Championship Fighting, Prentice-Hall, 1950, p. 3.

A SIMPLE CONCUSSION—When one prizefighter hits another in the head, his objective is to render the opponent temporarily unconscious by a simple concussion, which usually leaves no permanent damage. But a hard blow can also bruise the brain, breaking some of its blood vessels and destroying nerve cells. This kind of damage can kill.… A long succession of moderate contusions (bruises), which cause slow, leaky hemorrhages, may permanently damage small parts of the brain, causing the “punch-drunk” state in veteran pugilists.—Time, April 13, 1962.

HOPE AND ASSURANCE—The hope of “big money” is not sufficient reason for such a serious risk; even the assurance of large profits does not give a person the right to risk his soundness of mind and body to probable detriment.—GEORGE C. BERNARD, The Morality of Prizefighting, Catholic University of America Press, 1952, p. 126.

IS FIGHT-WATCHING SINFUL?—Thomas Aquinas knew nothing of professional boxing; but with an unerring knowledge of human nature he pointed out that to take pleasure in the unnecessary sufferings of another man is brutish. Anyone who has watched professional fights will know what Aquinas was talking about. The crowd has come for blood and the knockout. The knockout is the touchdown pass, the home run of boxing. The nearer it is, the more frenzied the howling of the crowd. As Nat Fleischer said simply of the first Patterson-Johansson fight: “The crowd, sensing the kill, went wild.”—RICHARD A. MCCORMICK, S.J., “Is Professional Boxing Immoral?,” Sports Illustrated, November 5, 1962.

WHEN THE CROWD COMES ALIVE—It is nonsense to talk about prize fighting as a test of boxing skills. No crowd was ever brought to its feet screaming and cheering at the sight of two men beautifully dodging and weaving out of each other’s jabs. The time the crowd comes alive is when a man is hit hard over the heart or the head, when his mouthpiece flies out, when blood squirts out of his nose or eyes, when he wobbles under the attack and his pursuer continues to smash at him with pole-axe impact.—NORMAN COUSINS, Saturday Review, November 5, 1962.

THE RANGE OF OPINION—DAVEY MOORE (the day before the fatal fight): “I’m a fighter because I like the sport. It pays well … it hasn’t done me any harm”; New York GOVERNOR NELSON ROCKEFELLER: “A manly sport”; MRS. DAVEY MOORE: “an act of God … that could have happened to anyone”; California Governor EDMUND BROWN: “I will strongly support legislation asking the people of California to outlaw professional boxing in the 1964 election”; POPE JOHN XXIII: “Fistfights … are contrary to natural principles. It is barbaric to put brother against brother. Christ engaged in neither sports nor politics.”

THE THIRST FOR BLOODLETTING—What annoys us about the sporadic, high-minded campaigns to outlaw commercialized boxing is the tendency to hand the blame for its low estate on racketeers, crooked managers, sad*stic fighters, callous referees, etc. They are all, in a sense, only the hirelings, the performers of the game. The responsible proprietors are the public. Without their money, their eager collusion in this legalized mayhem, there would be no professional boxing.… It would be a far more encouraging manifestation of developing decency if pro boxing simply died of malnutrition—if it perished because people grew tired of the bloodletting, or ashamed of whatever in their nature draws them to the spectacle for the vicarious thrill.—Chicago Daily News.

WOULD BANNING END IT?—Banning boxing would not end it, any more than prohibition ended drinking. They would fight in barns and cowpastures, on boats in the river and outside the three-mile limit.—Detroit Free Press.

Sydney Smith, canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral, did not like Methodists. A few months before he died in 1845 he said: “I feel so weak both in body and mind that I verily believe, if the knife were put into my hand, I should not have strength or energy enough to slide it into a Dissenter.” Precisely 100 years later, I was present when another Church of England clergyman (the only chaplain in the area) refused Communion to two young RAF men on active service in North Africa—because both were “Dissenters.” The Church of England still discourages its members from taking Communion in a Methodist chapel, allows Methodists to communicate in parish churches only in exceptional circ*mstances, and insists on reordaining Methodist ministers who enter its ranks.

All that will be changed and a 224-year-old division healed if the two churches implement the proposals made in a report published jointly by the Church Information Office and the Epworth Press (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, News, March 15). Acceptance of the proposals in principle will commit both churches ultimately to full organic union. Until 1965 the question stands open: “if any man can shew just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.” The four distinguished Methodists who entered the minority report have already spoken, pointed up the tensions, and supplied a basis for discussion. I mention only three of the points they have raised.

1. Scripture and Tradition. It is ecumenically fashionable at present to talk about a revival of biblical theology in the church of Rome, and about an increasing realization by Protestants that the Bible can be understood only in the context of the Church’s life, i.e., within Tradition. Because these two streams have come together, we have the basis for true ecumenical dialogue. This is plausible if you say it quickly without defining terms, and a similar criticism is made of the current report which, says the Methodist minority, does not sufficiently acknowledge Scripture’s preeminent place over Tradition. We children of the Reformation tend too facilely to reject Tradition and all its works.

The souls of now two thousand years

Have laid up here their thoughts and fears

And all the earnings of their pain—

Ah, yet consider it again!

But the Anglicans and Methodist majority do not stop at showing the value of Tradition—they are at great pains to defend it, and one must ask why this is necessary. As Principal Rainy put it: “The Church of Christ has no liberty to become the slave even of its own history.” This report is a perilous guide in that it tries to subordinate both Scripture and Tradition to “the living Word of God.”

2. Episcopacy. Anglicans are asking Methodists to assent to a version of the “historic episcopate” which has no New Testament warrant and is acceptable only to the Anglican three per cent of Christendom. Some seventy years ago Bishop J. C. Ryle of Liverpool said: “We never will admit that the acts and doings and deliverances of any Bishops, however numerous … are to be received as infallible.”

3. Ordination. In the Service of Reconciliation proposed by the report, there is episcopal laying on of hands, and a form of words employed remarkably similar to that used in the ordination of Anglican clergy. The Methodist minority sees reordination in this rite, a view confirmed by the Church Times: “We shall be surprised if the rite here proposed is not found to contain all the essentials of Catholic order.” Thereafter the declaration of the absolution and remission of sins is to be regarded as “part of the priestly and ministerial office.” The report denies that this is a rejection of a Methodist’s previous ministry, and points out that Methodists later in the service lay hands on Anglicans. Lady Playfair, in the London Daily Telegraph, wrote succinctly: “Anglicans, by laying on of hands, believe themselves to be conferring an indelible sacramental mark by their part of the ceremony, while (presumably) the laying on of hands by the Methodists can do no harm if it can do no good. Only a very devious-minded Christian will be able to find edification in such a scene.”

Apart from the astonishing omission from the report of any systematic discussion of the nature of the Church, the other major problem highlighted is the “established” nature of the Church of England. Bishops are appointed by the State (twenty-four of them are members of the House of Lords), which has also the oversight of matters of doctrine and worship. Many Anglicans down the centuries have warmly approved this arrangement, and the Victorian Dean Stanley asserted explicitly that “the religious expression of the community should be controlled and guided by the State.” The less traditional Sydney Smith was, indeed, regarded as living up to his reputation when he said: “If experience has taught us anything, it is the absurdity of controlling men’s notions of eternity by acts of Parliament.” Contemporary evangelicals, who might have been expected to agree with this, are apprehensive lest the powerful High Church party use the Methodists as a bargaining point to obtain freedom from parliamentary control in order to raise the ceiling of the Church.

Church merger reports are peculiarly vulnerable things. In one sense they are not constructed to withstand close scrutiny, calling as they do for compromise. Whenever striking and imaginative variations are played around a familiar theme, the strident cry of heresy is heard in the land, and dark allusions are made about building new boats to founder on old rocks. But this present report is the work of twenty-eight men over six years, and it would be mean and dishonest to condemn it unread, as many did with the Anglican-Presbyterian report in 1958. On the other hand, an exciting document like this might prove to be heady wine and a subtle temptation to rash, unthinking activity. Like moving on when the cloud is still.

When writing to the Trallians the martyr Ignatius said, “You are not living as ordinary men but according to Jesus Christ, who died for us that you might escape death through faith in his death.” What do the contemporary theologians say of Christ’s cross?

The Crisis Theologians

The foremost names in modern European theology are those of Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Rudolph Bultmann. The first two insist that the Atonement is an act in history appropriate to the Holy God himself. Barth says that the Father “gave effect to His (Christ’s) death and passion as a satisfaction for us, as our conversion to God, and therefore as our redemption from death to life” (Church Dogmatics, IV/I, p. 157). The obedience and self-humiliation of the Son Barth develops by indicating four respects in which Jesus Christ was and is for us: (1) Jesus Christ took our place as Judge. (2) He took the place of us sinners. (3) He suffered, was crucified, and died. (4) He accomplished this before God and has therefore done right. Further, the Cross and the Resurrection are necessary one to the other. They witness together to the Christian’s death in Christ’s death and to his resurrection life in Christ’s resurrection.

Brunner attacks those who divide the meaning of Christ’s person and teaching from His work; they are one, says Brunner. The “must” element of Christ’s death (which, the theologian claims, is missing in the Abelardian view) is inescapable in the apostolic witness (The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, pp. 278–81).

As the active love-fulfillment of the Law, Christ’s obedience to death involves five considerations: (1) The shed blood of Christ means that his life was forfeited to the judgment death of sin. (2) Christ’s sufferings were penal. (3) Christ canceled our debt. (4) God triumphs over evil powers. And, (5) the true Pascal sacrifice establishes the New Covenant (p. 283–86). Forgiveness without atonement is claimed only by those, says Brunner, who believe this truth is one they can discern for themselves (p. 294).

Our appreciation for Barth and Brunner must be tempered with reserve, however, because of certain philosophical tenets that underlie their opinions. First, both Barth and Brunner seem to exhibit an uneasy tension between the historical and the suprahistorical, between fact and events that command faith. Was the Resurrection a reportable event to Barth? Why the Cross if not the Fall? To say, as does Brunner, that the Cross is the one point where historical revelation is possible, is to concede that revelation is more than encounter. Despite Brunner’s five points one may well ask, “Does Dr. Brunner intend these as images only of the one truth or as statements that describe the nature and conditions of the divine life and the human in the Atonement?” To his faith they appear to be very real, but in his theology, they seem to be myth. Faith, however, can rest only on fact; the events must be not only meaningful but true in the ordinary sense. Once and for all let it be believed that the New Testament writers do not talk in the air but speak of reality.

Second, is God’s wrath a function of love? Is grace the essence of wrath (Barth, pp. 533–35) or does wrath remain wrath still, not only where God himself meets it on the Cross, but also upon the sinful world? Further, in regard to the relationship of the Cross to the inner life of God these men seem to come either to a modalistic trinitarian concept or to an unresolved tension in the divine action. Brunner rejects the doctrine of the Trinity as kerygmatic (The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 217), and Barth makes obscure statements that God exists as an above and a below, an apriori and an aposteriori (pp. 201, 202); such concepts do not allow one to speak of the divine action in the same way as do the essential personal distinctions of the New Testament. We, too, claim that God himself acted in the Cross; the New Testament says, however, not only that God came and acted, but that God also sent and gave his Son.

Finally, even aside from the disappointing development of faith’s vitalities (is faith not more than venturesome leap and genuine but comforted despair?) one senses an incongruity between the theological perspective of these men and our situation (the value of their work on the Continent notwithstanding). The English-speaking tradition has been blessed by theologians whom Barth and Brunner seem not to have known. (Brunner shows touches of Forsyth, however, who apparently influenced the young Swiss during his two-year stay in England.) Forsyth had developed the cosmic relevance of the Atonement more fully prior to the work of either Barth or Brunner. Barth’s concept of Judge and Judged had been strongly urged by R. W. Dale in The Atonement (1875), a book that went through 22 editions and enjoyed an enormous circulation; Dale also had probed the moral implications of the atoning act. Who can read Barth on substitution without recalling the brilliant exposition of Dr. Denney in The Death of Christ (1902) where, too, on 2 Corinthians 5:14 he develops far more richly than Barth the concept that we died in the death of Christ, that the Cross achieves something specific that changes the situation created by evil and sin? Moreover, one senses in the English writers a more realistic handling of the historical data of the New Testament; in short, they display a basic faith born of fact that seems to have escaped German theology generally since the time of Immanuel Kant.

Rudolph Bultmann, the New Testament scholar, has attracted attention by his attempt to separate the essential Gospel from what is allegedly peripheral to it (the pre-scientific world-view) through a process called Entymythologisierung, or demythologizing. We are not concerned, he says, with certain historical saving events such as the Atonement and the Resurrection (only primitive mythology could construct these) but with a message of saving history attested to in the sacraments and in the present concrete spiritual perfecting of life.

How then do we decide what is myth and what is not? In Jesus and the Word (1958) Bultmann says that Jesus did not come to atone; nor did he come to win forgiveness, but rather to proclaim it. Why then the Cross, we ask? The Church is wrong, he claims, to see “the event, the decisive act of deliverance, in the death of Jesus, or in his death and resurrection,” insofar as they are regarded as “given facts of history which may be determined or established by evidence” (pp. 212, 213). But do not the events and their interpretation stand together in the New Testament? Paul’s “Christ died for our sins” and “we thus judge” are that kind of statement (1 Cor. 15:3; 2 Cor. 5:14). Any explanation, R. W. Dale reminds us, that fails to grasp the necessary connection between the death of Christ and the forgiveness of sins is a grotesque distortion of New Testament doctrine. Bultmann’s basic and prior premise is that no historical event or fact can be the ground of faith or of the highest spiritual reality. Is it possible to dispose of troublesome scriptures so easily? Bultmann’s “events” bear little resemblance to the full-blooded factuality of the New Testament.

A contrasting perspective by the Swedish theologian Anders Nygren (Agape and Eros, 1932–1938) is based on a restudy of love in the New Testament. It restates the “moral influence” theory of Abelard and, more recently, of Hastings Rashdall (The Idea of the Atonement in Christian Theology, 1915) and R. S. Franks (The Atonement, 1934) in Britain, and of Nels F. S. Ferré in this country.

Nygren attempted to demonstrate the theological unity of the New Testament in the concept of agape (spontaneous love) as against that of eros (self-seeking love). As the nature of God, agape “hallmarks the new way of fellowship with God that Christianity brings” (p. 108). Many scholars, however, resist Nygren’s claim that all that the Law stood for in Israel and for Paul is of the flesh. Nygren seems to confuse the “law-works” idea with the Law of God. If God is love he is also holy, we maintain. Thus when he says that “fellowship with God is no longer for Paul a legal relationship, the only question is whether it is a relationship of love,” it may be noted that a love relationship must in that right be moral also. Unless the Cross meets the issue of condemnation we miss the “must” element of Calvary, as Brunner puts it.

Nygren says that “the agape of the Cross” is a “love that gives itself away, that sacrifices itself, even to the uttermost … it is God’s way to man.” Did the agape need this kind of passion for its proof? While claiming this much, objective views have always demanded more as well—divine action dealing with sin, condemnation, and judgment. But this emphasis is totally missing in Nygren. Calvary, as we know, does more than clear up a misunderstanding about the divine love; it is God’s act to save the world and men on the cosmic scale (Rom. 8:22; Col. 1:20–22). Nygren’s view is too anthropocentric. Leonard Hodgson has pointed out that while the moral influence theory has value, it is blind to those effects of sin which operate outside the sinner’s soul.

The Cross And Propitiation

C. H. Dodd has encouraged those who resist the idea that propitiation means averting divine wrath (therefore undercutting the judgment-bearing and substitutionary aspects of the Cross). According to Dodd hilaskesthai and its cognates should read expiation (of sin) and not propitiation (of God). His findings (Journalof Theological Studies, July, 1931; see also Dr. T. W. Manson, Jan.-Apr., 1945) have been widely adopted by theologians on both sides of the Atlantic. Curiously, scholars have been slow to grapple with critics of Dodd’s thesis, notably Leon Morris (The Expository Times, May, 1951; The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 1955; The Biblical Doctrine of Judgment, 1960) and Roger Nicole (Westminster Theological Journal, May, 1955), also E. K. Simpson and Professor R. V. G. Tasker.

The theological claim in Dodd’s system is that we cannot think of God as the God of wrath but of love, something which requires close reexamination in the light of what sin must mean to God. The older studies show this clearly; for example, R. W. Dale, The Atonement; James Denney, The Death of Christ; and P. T. Forsyth, The Work of Christ. Denney (as well as Dale, Simpson, and Morris) has said that the idea of propitiation “is not an insulated idea.… It is part of a system of ideas” (pp. 197, 198); therefore such a vital word cannot be applied at will in new ways without jeopardizing the whole of New Testament theology.

The piacular elements of the Atonement together with those that declare the love and grace of God form a unity. What possible attitude can God take to sin but wrath and judgment? There is no meaning to the universe unless its moral structure is reflected in the righteous dealing with sin in the judgment-death of the Cross. The real question is, “If not propitiation then why expiation?”—for if God’s dealing with sin is a reality then this fact is but part and parcel of the prior reality that God’s wrath comes upon both the sinner and his sin. We dare not banish normative morality from the universe. Only if God cares enough to be angry can we say he cares enough to redeem. If someone rejects words like “anger” and “wrath,” let him choose other terms, but maintain the vital realities of the life of God and of the nature of the world.

The Cross As Sacrifice

The foregoing question ought not obscure the “Back to the Bible” movement in recent studies of the Atonement. In broad terms, this movement stresses that Christ made final and indispensable sacrifice for sin. Scholars working with this approach may be grouped for convenience’ sake as follows:

First, those who stress the vicarious element. These include Oliver Quick, Doctrines of the Creed (1938); Vincent Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice (1951) and The Cross of Christ (1956); and F. C. N. Hicks, The Fullness of Sacrifice (1938). The moral quality of Christ’s act of self-offering and the power of this vicarious act to forgive, restore, and heal are in view.

A second more recent perspective comes from those who stress the sacramental character of Christ’s sacrifice. The work of Austin Farrer and of Father Lionel Thornton is deeply sensitive here. In America Robert S. Paul (The Atonement and the Sacraments, 1960), a non-conformist, has probed the relation of the Atonement to the Gospel and the sacraments in a manner reminiscent of P. T. Forsyth.

Third, many have emphasized the Cross as the victory over the powers of darkness; this emphasis is due chiefly to the influence of Gustaf Aulen’s Christus Victor (1931), which tried to resurrect a viewpoint held by certain fourth-century Fathers and later by Martin Luther. It should be noted that McLeod Campbell (The Nature of the Atonement) made creative use of this idea over a century ago.

Finally, some have made a vital attempt to recapture the theological realities of the New Testament as seen in A. M. Hunter (The Unity of The New Testament, 1943) and in D. M. Baillie (God Was In Christ, 1948). Christ’s life and death are a unity in Scripture, they urge, and exhibit God’s purpose to redeem. Hunter sums up this unity as follows: “The Atonement originates in the gracious will of God; it has to do with sin; its means is the crucified Christ whose death is vicarious, representative, and sacrificial; and the spiritual end which it secures is reconciliation or renewed fellowship with God based on a forgiveness of sins” (p. 102).

While the value of these studies is great, one senses, first of all, a tendency to distinguish sharply between representation and substitution. Are not both essential to New Testament theology? we would ask. Why does Hunter discuss huper as the “representative” idea, but ignore anti, the term that conveys the idea of “substitution”? We cannot overlook the fact that Christ did something for us as in our place, something that we could not do for ourselves. Further, to interpret “shed blood” as the offerer’s sharing in the life that is released rather than in the victim’s death tends to disallow the piacular elements of the Atonement. The “sharing-in-the-life-released” idea goes back to William Milligan and Bishop Westcott, though they conceded the penal element of the Cross. Surely the point is that our redeemed life can be only the issue of His saving death.

In the case of the victor idea and of the vicarious element we need to investigate more deeply the theological realities involved. What is the victory according to Dr. Aulen? His explanation might suggest that the principalities and powers are myths; if so, the actual nature of the victory remains unidentified. Similarly, what is a vicarious act? How does the vicarious act of one life bear upon that of another as far as forgiveness, reconciliation, and regeneration are concerned?

It is heartening to note the resurgence of interest in New Testament theology. The work of a generation ago, however, like that of Dale, Denney, and Forsyth, bearing as it did upon both the biblical and theological realities, ought still to command our attention. Much of what is being said today was said by them. The recent book by J. S. Whale (Victor and Victim, 1960) is an excellent, evangelically conceived study, but introduces Paul Tillich’s ontology in such a fashion as to undercut freedom rather disappointingly. Mack B. Stokes’s work (The Epic of Revelation, 1961) shows a balance of Bible exposition and philosophical penetration. The Doctrine of the Atonement (1951) by Leonard Hodgson is a noteworthy volume. Hodgson says that as an objective work, the Atonement deals with evil and sin as radical surd elements of the world. The law is the very condition of personal, moral life; thus the Atonement as God’s act vindicates righteousness and judges the evil. God aims to fashion in creation and to win by redemption a race of free human beings who voluntarily out of love seek and do the will of God expressed in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

No verbal cure for evil and sin can suffice, nor can any solution that does not take seriously the predicament of sinful men under the wrath of God. As the act of God, the Atonement stands in logical relation to the Incarnation (which is how Christ’s work is relevant to us) and to the Trinity (which is the life to which we are called). We must accept and comprehend, therefore, the double reality that God sent his Son and that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. This double reality is what the biblical images declare—each part as an insight generated by the truth contributes to the unity of the whole, namely, that the Cross is the issue of the love of God accomplishing redemption. Certainly it is true that Christ sacrificed himself for us, that he died the death of sin, that he made satisfaction for sin expiating it, that he was the propitiation tor sin, that he died as the substitute for sinners and as the representative of the race, that his blood is the precious ransom price of our salvation that seals the covenant of grace. We need to comprehend these concepts in their bearing on the life of the triune God and upon the race.

Despite the intricacies of the doctrine of the Atonement, that the straightforward preaching of the Cross has the power to save men (1 Cor. 1:18) should be central to faith and theology. Seminarians have the curious habit of studying the Atonement comparatively, like some problem in logic, and sometimes forget to make the Cross the vital spiritual datum that it was to New Testament Christians. Our profession is not that of theological cowboys who rope ideas into theological stalls; rather we are to herald the apostolically interpreted fact that “Christ died for our sins.” Happy is he who believes and has the forgiveness God won for mankind through Jesus Christ the Lord.

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