Page 6043 – Christianity Today (2024)

The National Council of Churches’ policymaking General Board, meeting in San Diego February 20–22, shifted into high gear to drive conciliar churches into deeper participation in political, social, and economic affairs. Occupying the NCC presidential driver’s seat, former HEW secretary Arthur S. Flemming called for “a crash program” of involvement in the racial crisis. “The Church should become more and more involved in political action,” he said. “We’re going to push hard on this one.”

The meetings were highlighted by passage of an unprecedented, sweeping executive order to implement immediate church action in the racial conflict and a host of liberal resolutions on international and economic matters. All this gave further evidence of the NCC’s intention to view the mission of the Church as political in character.

The board gave “highest priority” to an action program devoted to “the crucial struggle for justice in the nation.” It called for churches to work with the council in: development of a communications network to respond to the outbreak of racial conflict, replacement of regular adult Christian education curriculum materials with NCC materials on racial issues for the April–June quarter, increased support of poverty/rights action groups by Church Women United, and financial backing and involvement by churches in the National Urban Coalition.

Local churches were called upon to provide “funds for local black groups to strategize for the summer,” to support “inclusion of black-power and black-nationalist organizations in local task groups seeking action and solution to problems,” and “to develop strategies to counter white racism, backlash, and repressiveness” (including observation of police behavior and reporting of any improper or brutal activity). They were further urged to work for needed civil-rights legislation, to support “churchmen who take risks to remedy crisis situations and who are consequently misunderstood, criticized and ostracized,” and to form action task groups to move on basic issues in cooperation with the ghetto community rather than through “white paternalism” programs.

The board’s special order gave President Flemming and General Secretary R. H. Edwin Espy virtually a blank check for dispersing funds and deploying manpower to implement the policies. It marked the NCC’s first attempt to prescribe curriculum materials to replace those used by the various communions. It placed the NCC squarely behind many who threaten to resort to violence to bring about social change. And it called for greater participation by churches than any previous NCC action program.

In the international realm, the NCC board called for drastic alterations in U. S. foreign policy. It overwhelmingly passed a resolution asking immediate cessation of U. S. bombing of North Viet Nam to facilitate peace negotiations with all major elements of the Vietnamese population, including the National Liberation Front. It also adopted, 100 to 14, a 5,000-word report on “Imperatives of Peace and Responsibilities of Power,” presented by Methodist mission executive Tracey K. Jones, Jr. The report appealed for: (1) avoidance of provocative military action against Red China, along with reduction of U. S. military forces in the Asian area; (2) admission of Red China to the U. N. and development of travel, trade, and cultural exchanges with Peking; (3) recognition of the government of Cuba; (4) acceptance of the existence of the (East) German Democratic Republic; (5) removal of restrictions on imports from all Communist countries and encouragement of American trade and investment in Eastern Europe and the U. S. S. R.; (6) removal of travel restrictions on Soviet visitors and of limitations on cultural exchanges “so that Soviet visitors will not be limited by Soviet willingness to accept United States visitors”; and (7) cooperation with the U. S. S. R. in scientific projects, especially the space program.

On economic matters, representatives of the thirty-four denomination NCC:

• Affirmed support for the principle of guaranteed annual income “as a matter of right.” No particular implementation was recommended.

• Commended church groups that use “their economic power for goals of justice” through selective purchasing, as in Project Equality, which promotes businesses on such criteria as employment practices.

• Urged churches to expand their international program to combat world hunger. The board called for legislation to increase American grant and loan funds for agricultural and economic development (to at least 1 per cent of the gross national product annually). It said the United States should make food aid “available to needy people through governmental, inter-governmental, and voluntary agencies without discrimination because of ideological or cold war considerations.”

• Backed an investment program for ghetto community development. A spokesman reported that a “pump-priming” $180,331 had already been made available from NCC unrestricted general capital funds, and that “tentative commitments totaling several million dollars” had been received.

• Called for the United States to increase its attack on world poverty by encouraging indigenous economic power in less developed countries without imposing “our ideology upon different cultures.” Measures cited as essential included congressional authorization of long-term assistance (up to five years), progressive removal of “buy American” purchase restrictions, and programs for family planning and literacy. The board said development assistance—aid or trade—should, “to the maximum degree possible, be provided through international channels and institutions.”

• Opposed restrictions on American travel abroad instituted by the government to reduce the outflow of U. S. dollars.

• Voted support of Cesar Chavez, union organizer of Delano, California, grape-pickers, “in his non-violent struggle for social justice.”

In other actions, the board received and submitted to Flemming for study and recommendation a report on last October’s explosive Detroit Conference on Church and Society. It also passed a resolution protesting the conviction of thirty South-West Africans on charges of terrorist activities, and called upon the Republic of South Africa “to undo this monstrous travesty on justice.”

Espy asserted the NCC’s desire to “expose the facts” on suppression of religious freedom in the U. S. S. R. and other Communist countries. The board later approved a petition from the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church protesting harassment of dissident Baptists and Jews in the Soviet Union.

Floor debates throughout the conference were marked by the virtual absence of conservative viewpoints in opposition to the raft of liberal pronouncements. A rare exception was provided by United Presbyterian Stated Clerk William P. Thompson in his well-reasoned opposition to church support of civil disobedience by conscientious objectors to the draft. He was responding to a vigorous appeal by guest speaker Richard Neuhaus, a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor who is a leader of Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam.

The San Diego sessions signaled a full-speed-ahead socio-politico-economic drive by the General Board that may lead many churchmen to re-evaluate their support of the National Council of Churches.

PRESSURING SOCIETY

Militant American churchmen now meet secretly in efforts to involve the religious establishment at more radical levels of social action. Their first big conclave was held last month in the Washington, D. C. suburb of Chevy Chase. About two hundred persons were on hand, from all over the Eastern half of the nation. They apparently came on a by-invitation-only basis. Reporters were barred.

“There is nothing subversive about it,” said the Rev. Richard F. McFarland of Dumbarton Avenue Methodist Church in Washington. “These are establishment people.” McFarland, understood to be local arrangements chairman, politely refused to divulge any details.

The three-day meeting was chaired by the Rev. Howard Moody, who carries on an avant-garde type of ministry in New York’s Greenwich Village. A number of social-action staff members of denominations and councils of churches were also said to have been present.

Speakers included the Rev. Albert Cleage, black-power advocate from Detroit, and the Rev. Willis Elliott of New York, an outspoken foe of orthodoxy who is employed by the United Church of Christ.

Several representatives of the National Council of Churches were on hand, too. But the temper of the group is obviously to the left even of the socially preoccupied National Council.

William R. MacKaye of the Washington Post reported that “the effort to develop an interchurch coalition for social action independent of the National Council appeared to supply additional confirmation to hints in recent months of growing council reluctance to give any open support to the kind of militant intervention in the political and economic scene now sought by some churchmen.”

The “intervention” contemplated so far has been mostly in the area of economic boycotts. The National Council has been reliably warned that to engage in such activities would invite prosecution under federal anti-trust laws that forbid combinations in restraint of trade.

MacKaye said the new church group calls itself the “Communications Network of the Inter-Area Committee for Action and Renewal.”

OPENING SHOTS ON 1968

“With the New Hampshire primary almost upon us and the nominating convention only months away, with Reagan in decline and with most commentators agreed that Nixon will swamp Romney, the central issue for the delegates becomes clear: Does the GOP want to lose with Nixon or win with Rockefeller or some other serious peace candidate? Or, to put it another way, is the GOP still plagued by the same death urge that drove the party to destruction with Barry Goldwater in 1964?”

Sounds like a Washington political columnist—except for the erroneous labeling of Rocky as a “peace candidate.” But it came from Commonweal, the lay Catholic weekly.

The early weeks of 1968 gave a foretaste of the coming political rhetoric in the religious press. The Methodist student magazine motive sees Bobby Kennedy as the only hope for “new leadership” in American politics and says it is “imperative” for him to run this year.

Christianity and Crisis, voice of the Niebuhr-Union Seminary group, says this will be the “most significant” presidential election since FDR trampled Hoover, and two members of the Editorial Board offer their advice.

Robert McAfee Brown puts “top priority” on getting rid of Johnson and Humphrey and takes “very seriously” the Democrats’ peace candidate, Senator Eugene McCarthy. But if it’s Johnson vs. Reagan or Nixon, Brown doesn’t know what to do. Stephen C. Rose offers a “devout prayer” that either Bobby or Rocky will be the next president. But he thinks even Nixon would be better than Johnson.

More enthusiasm for Nixon has been engendered by Harry Flemming, son of President Arthur Flemming of the National Council of Churches who last month became Nixon’s Virginia co-chairman.

The Methodist Christian Advocate, a magazine for ministers, devoted a recent issue to church political action, including doorbell-ringing for good candidates. Editor James Wall deplores the TV reruns of the movie A Man Called Peter because the late Peter Marshall’s individualized approach to political ethics is out of date in this “crucial political year of 1968.”

And Church of God Bishop Homer Tomlinson’s Theocratic Party, whose Pentecostal presidential nominee has returned to evangelism, plans to nominate Lyndon Baines Johnson for president because he “has led America halfway into the Kingdom of God, by his help for the poor, the sick and afflicted, the children and the aged in the greatest manifestation of Christian love this world has ever known.”

United Presbyterian Stated Clerk William P. Thompson, something of a lone wolf, said the Church “must not” support particular candidates for office, either directly or by implication. “Neither the pulpit nor classes and forums of the church school should be used as a sounding board for partisan interests. Neither a particular congregation or judicatory should give the impression that it speaks for the whole church. Certainly no church official dare do so.” But he said the Church should help members evaluate such moral issues in the coming election as Viet Nam, poverty, and the urban crisis.

CANADA: IMMORAL TV?

Canada’s three largest church bodies asked in February that educational TV be provided for home reception under the government’s new Broadcast Act, which passed the Senate late last month. A similar appeal from the Parent-Teacher Federation said such programs “will do much to offer an alternative to the banalities, the insults to intelligence, the stress on crime, brutality, vulgarity and sex which permeate much of commercial TV.”

The Anglican, United, and Roman Catholic Churches made their joint presentation as part of the first overhaul in broadcast legislation since 1958. The bill would create a powerful Canadian Radio-Television Commission, with authority to set conditions for licensing and imposing penalties.

In the debate on the bill, Senator Gunnar Thorvaldson of Manitoba violently attacked the government-controlled Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, saying it is in the hands of a few persons who, by filling living rooms “with the stench of demoralizing filth,” aim to mold Canadians in their own “hippy drug-addicted image.”

In the Commons debate, Presbyterian Ralph Cowan, a maverick government member, did his best to scuttle the act as part of his continuing fight with the CBC. He won support from the Social Credit Party’s Robert Thompson, who charged the CBC with deliberately encouraging young people to use drugs. Thompson—a graduate of Bob Jones University and onetime missionary in Ethiopia from a pietistic evangelical Free Lutheran background—claimed a Sunday night program, “The Way It Is,” was in effect “a clever and subtle job of selling drugs as part of the new morality.” He called for an investigation to see whether the program was financed by the Mafia.

Thompson’s proposed amendment to outlaw any CBC broadcast that “could be considered as encouraging to criminal activity” was defeated.

Although other members of Commons showed little interest in Thompson’s complaints and proposals, one churchman, the Rev. W. Gordon Brown, dean of Central Baptist Seminary in Toronto, agreed that the CBC needed more moral control. He cited a western Canada Baptist pastor’s public meeting protesting a “very salacious” drama, “Waiting for Caroline.”

“There isn’t any subject about which you can’t do a broadcast—sex, violence, drugs,” said the Rev. Richard Berryman, supervisor of mass media in the Division of Communications for the Anglican Church of Canada. “You can show anything on TV. It’s how you handle it.”

Speaking in defense of the CBC, Bonnie Brennan, executive director of the National Catholic Communications Centre, said the trouble is not with broadcasting but with audiences. The CBC, Miss Brennan said, is in the unfortunate position of having to cater to the lowest denominator of mentality. It could, presumably, attempt to raise the cultural level. “But how do you do this when most of the country watches hockey or football?”

AUBREY WICE

SEATTLE SHOWDOWN

A Seattle Superior Court trial involving a congregation that withdrew from the United Presbyterian Church over its new confession has been extended to May 21. The idea is to seek an out-of-court settlement.

The hearing—originally slated to end February 20—is one of the most important of several disputes involving United Presbyterian churches that want to withdraw and retain their buildings.

The Laurelhurst Church congregation and its pastor, the Rev. James L. Rohrbaugh, voted 183 to 11 last October to withdraw. The church has about 650 members. In the civil suit, the presbytery seeks to gain possession of the property and church records in trust for the denomination, those members who did not attend the October meeting, and the eleven who voted against withdrawal.

Presbytery attorney Robert A. Yothers told the court that under the denominational constitution an entire congregation cannot withdraw as a body. He said the presbytery had attempted to work out an orderly withdrawal for dissenters but was “completely rebuffed.”

Representing the congregation, Alfred Schweppe argued that the legal title is with the individual church, and spoke of a deep-seated conviction to stay with the Presbyterian doctrines as known over the past 300 years.

Following this line in his testimony, Rohrbaugh said, “After I read the new confession of faith once, I knew I couldn’t go along with it.” He called the doctrinal changes a “catastrophe” and read from a letter he mailed to his members last June, referring to the confession’s position on the Bible, to political action, and to the denomination’s involvement in the National and World Councils of Churches.

The presbytery held a judicial hearing on schism charges the day the civil court recessed. Rohrbaugh, who was not present, was represented for the first time by defense counsel: former Seattle Mayor William Devin and Professor Talmage Wilson of Seattle Pacific College.

CARL JOHNSON

EPISCOPAL BISHOP ON TRIAL

The Episcopal Church announced last month it is going to try one of its bishops, the Right Reverend Joseph S. Minnis of Colorado. Specific charges were not immediately made public.

“The presentment cites alleged breach of his ordination vows,” said the Episcopal Church announcement. Other sources cited “personal conduct in violation of the canons.”

Unlike accusations against Bishop James Pike, the charges leveled at Bishop Minnis reportedly do not touch upon theological matters. Pike, a bestselling author of books that take issue with key Christian doctrines, came close to being the object of a heresy trial before he resigned as head of the Episcopal Diocese of California. That the Minnis case should come to trial is a surprise, since top Episcopal churchmen exerted special effort to avoid a big showdown in the obviously more crucial Pike case.

Minnis, 61, has been Bishop of Colorado since 1955. He lives with his wife in Denver. The couple has two sons in the Episcopal ministry, both of whom serve in the Colorado diocese.

No date has been set for the trial, but according to canon law the court must be convened between April 20 and August 20.

ABILENE: SHIFTING TO NEUTRAL

Country-style preaching by Nashville’s “Fiery” Ira North and songleading by crooner Pat Boone drew a record 13,500 members of the Churches of Christ to the fiftieth anniversary of the Abilene Christian College Lectureship—this despite high winds, muddy snow, and below-freezing temperatures.

Breaking from the recent tradition of exploring church trends and new ideas, the 1968 lectureship focused on less than best-known speakers, for the most part, and concentrated on preaching. Many saw it as a kind of recession from recent years (see March 17, 1967, issue, page 44), resulting from quite a bit of vocal opposition from conservatives, and as a typical lectureship pattern this year at all Churches of Christ colleges.

“Actually, it was intended to emphasize ordinary preaching rather than what you might call high intellectual comment,” explained lectureship director J. D. Thomas, an ACC Bible professor. “We like to scale the lectureship every year to the greatest appeal. This lectureship was probably as popular as any we have ever had.”

Lectureships are the nearest thing to a convention in the 2,350,000-member Churches of Christ but are designed for teaching and fellowship only. Since the 18,500 congregations are autonomous, no proposals or resolutions are ever passed. But the lectureships are considered a barometer of the state of the movement.

MARQUITA MOSS

FINE POINTS ON MERGER

Voting procedures, seminaries, and elders were major considerations of the Joint Committee of Twenty-four, meeting last month to finish drafting the plan of union of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern) and the Reformed Church in America.

On constitutional amendments or merger with other church bodies, presbyteries of the Presbyterian Reformed Church in America (proposed name of the new church) will have one vote “unit” for each 1,000 members rather than the former one vote for each presbytery regardless of size.

Also affecting voting is the provision for the General Assembly of the new denomination to realign synod and presbytery boundaries once during the church’s first three years.

Another major change in the plan of union concerns the “approved theological seminary.” In earlier drafts an “approved seminary” was one controlled by its supporting synods and by the Assembly. The revision leaves seminary control to “their respective boards” and provides for a permanent committee on seminaries to recommend “a strategy and program of theological education.” (RCA seminaries now are governed by the denomination’s top court; PCUS seminaries are independent.)

Other revisions state elders must be “sound in faith, men of wisdom and discretion,” although they are no longer required to be “blameless in life.” Their election “from the membership” of the local congregation opens the door for women to serve as elders (which they now may not do in the RCA). The office of deacon has been eliminated from the final draft; congregations may reordain deacons to the eldership.

The final version of the plan of union will be submitted to the PCUS General Assembly and the RCA General Synod at their June 6–12 meetings in Montreat, North Carolina, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, respectively.

LAITY CAUTIONS ON UNION

The Anglican-Methodist union proposals in England suffered a setback at February’s meeting of the House of Laity. Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals combined (in a rare unanimity that both somewhat self-consciously acknowledged) to urge that more time and thought be given before the final decision. Under the present timetable, the deadline is the summer of 1970.

It all began with an innocent-looking motion by G. E. Duffield of Oxford, giving general approval to the official timetable, “provided that more time can be made available, should it be widely felt that this timetable does not provide adequate time for discussion.…” In a lucid and convincing speech, Duffield pleaded for rejection of “ecclesiastical joinery,” quoted an eminent Methodist who admitted there is considerable opposition to the union proposals, then added: “It is no good just uniting churches at the top.”

Both evangelical and high-church publications have criticized the Service of Reconciliation, and the Methodist Conference has passed a resolution stating that at “Stage II” Methodists must retain intercommunion with non-episcopal churches.

Professor J. N. D. Anderson was less than happy with the ambiguity in the Service. The attitude of “reverent agnosticism” is not always reverent, he observed, and here it is “objectionable.” He would “infinitely prefer some such scheme as that of South India.” Jack Wallace of London said many in both churches had “vested interests in the denominational machinery” and the danger exists of forgetting that the object of unity is “that the world might believe.” Since we already enjoy the unity of the Spirit, he suggested, the Service might well be pointless.

After Duffield’s motion carried by a large majority, he succeeded with a second one also, saying the laity would “welcome the earliest possible opportunity to debate the final Anglican/Methodist union report.” An informal discussion was then announced for June 24.

J. D. DOUGLAS

METHODISTS MAY EASE ALCOHOL CURBS

The Methodist social-concerns board is asking next month’s General Conference to scratch the requirement that clergy abstain from alcohol and tobacco and that lay officials also be teetotalers. Alcohol problems director Thomas Price said the move does not mean approval of smoking or drinking, but a feeling that “complete dedication of oneself to the ministry is sufficient restraint.” The official Methodist ministers’ magazine contends that the new study Alcohol Problems: A Report to the Nation “conclusively demonstrates” that Methodist abstinence is “out of date.”

The Rev. Dale S. Herendeen was one of thirty-four North American missionaries who survived a major Communist attack on the Vietnamese resort city of Dalat. Herendeen attended several colleges in the Los Angeles area, graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary, and has served with the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Viet Nam for more than ten years. This is his account of the siege:

We were missionaries gradually being caught in a closing trap. Whether or not the trap was meant for us is irrelevant. We got out just two hours before it shut.

Tuesday, January 30, was New Year’s Day in Viet Nam, the day on which the Viet Cong began their attack. You have to understand the Oriental to know how clever and vicious this was. For Tet is a day when the Vietnamese ordinarily go home to their families, a great and wonderful time when they think of anything but war.

On that day I wrote “Truce?” in my diary. We heard on the radio that the VC had begun to attack the cities in force. Outside our city of Dalat, normally a quiet place, they were infiltrating and ambushing. Nevertheless, my wife Pat and I drove about twenty-five miles down the highway that day to keep a preaching engagement. We got back without incident.

On Wednesday Dalat went on yellow (stand-by) alert. About four in the afternoon the VC sent a message downtown that they would hit the marketplace. That night a curfew was called at eight. Our mission property was spread over a pine-dotted hill covering the equivalent of about two city blocks. I went from house to house telling our missionary staff to stay in their houses.

At 3 A.M. Thursday we were awakened by a great deal of firing. A C47 flare plane, of the type dubbed “Puff the Magic Dragon,” circled overhead. There was steady firing the rest of the night.

About 9 A.M. we had a conference call on the military telephone. We were told that the VC were now in the city, that they had taken over the main theater downtown, and that they were holding hostages. Rumors streamed in all day long, but we were still cool, calm, collected.

The same day we heard from the province chief via telephone. He offered us sanctuary but suggested that since we were non-combatants we might be better off to stay where we were. Our American military also thought we ought to stay put but advised us to keep together. So I collected our staff members from the seven houses in which they lived, and we occupied adjoining dormitories. It was a relatively quiet night.

On Friday morning our cook and our cleaning woman came to work as usual. But during the day the VC again began to attack and to infiltrate on a larger scale, especially on the other side of the city, where the airport is located. That was about four or five miles away from us. The VC apparently were holed up in a cemetery there, and jets began to come in two at a time, strafing the cemetery.

Viet Nam Toll

Big Communist attacks on the cities of South Viet Nam have taken a toll not only in American lives, including at least six missionaries, but in extensive church property damage. Wycliffe Bible Translators reported that their language center in Kontum was taken over by Viet Cong and “completely demolished” by U. S. artillery and bombing. The French Protestant Church at Dalat was destroyed by air strikes when Communist troops holed up in it. The base chapel at Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon was leveled by a direct hit from a Communist mortar. Communists also wrecked several missionary residences at Ban Me Thuot. In places where missionaries have had to flee there has been considerable looting by the Communist North Vietnamese and Viet Cong as well as by “friendly” South Vietnamese troops.

Just above our dormitories on top of a hill stood a three-story house with a commanding view of the whole area. Late that afternoon my wife and I and others went up and stood on the balcony watching the strikes across the city. We went back down for dinner, and about 5:30 the phone rang and we heard that Robert Ziemer, missionary veteran at Ban Me Thuot, had been killed (see March 1 issue for an account of the Ban Me Thuot massacre). I had to break the news to Mrs. Rick Drummond, a daughter of Mr. Ziemer.

About 6:30 P.M. we heard that the VC were beginning to move up the valley below us toward our side of the city. We set up watchmen outside our property. Our people, all of them defenseless and unarmed, were getting a little scared.

We had our time of prayer. Then we checked out our “bunker,” actually a choir room off the stage of an auditorium. The room had three good sides and a door opening out into the auditorium. The only trouble was that the auditorium opened out toward the valley where the VC were. Despite this exposure, we decided that our ten-by-fifteen room was the best place to go if things got bad.

To add to the drama, about 10 P.M. a Vietnamese woman who was with us gave birth to a baby girl. Fortunately we had a nurse to look after her. A men’s bathroom was turned into a delivery room, and mother and child apparently came through the experience reasonably well.

At 1 A.M. I was awakened by the noise of heavy automatic-weapons fire. It was coming from a street down the hill and from across a little ridge. That was just about the length of a couple of football fields from us. It was frightening. The firing subsided but in about three or four minutes started up again.

I woke up my wife and said, “Honey we’d better get out of here.” We crawled across the floor in the darkness and got Cheri, our baby daughter. Then we moved into the ironing room of the dormitory, feeling that might be safer. Pat was still in her nightclothes, as was Cheri, but I got dressed. Then there was a tremendous explosion right below us that shook the building and rattled the glass.

I stepped out into the hall and met another missionary, the Rev. Robert Henry of Hamilton, Ontario. I said, “Bob, we’d better get our people out of here and down to our auditorium room.” So we said, “Let’s go, everybody. Keep away from the windows.”

It was a tight squeeze to get everyone into the room. There were nine children and fourteen women, four of whom were pregnant. Just as we got in we heard more blasts. We finally got settled about 2 A.M.

Gunfire continued through the night. Flare ships flew overhead. Some thought they heard a bugle blow and voices. The auditorium acted like an echo chamber. We tried to keep everyone quiet, knowing the VC were moving up and down the road near us and probably across our property. It was not easy. My own daughter would wake up from time to time and start calling, “Daddy, Daddy,” and we all would sort of hold our breath.

That’s the way we sat out the night. Once the American military called to see how we were. Later I called them and learned that the VC had occupied a house just around the corner from us.

At one point a pregnant woman who had had several miscarriages began to get cramps. We quietly bowed our heads, and while some of the men laid hands upon her we all prayed. The cramps stopped immediately, and the expectant mother was comfortable the rest of the night.

Scripture In The Stronghold

Evangelicals are jubilant over the distribution of 10,500 Gideon New Testaments to students at the University of San Carlos at Cebu City, oldest Roman Catholic college in the Philippines. The ultimate goal is 100,000 Testaments, and another shipment has arrived. The new load weighs seven and one-half tons, said to be the biggest ever.

Cebu City is the site of the nation’s first Christian baptism and of its first church, founded during Magellan’s 1521 visit. The diocese, a conservative stronghold, has until recently been closed to ecumenical overtures by Protestant groups, which have had more cordial relations with Catholicism elsewhere. Even in recent years, evangelicals have witnessed frequent stonings of buildings and other harassment by rabid Catholics.

“But all this is beginning to change rapidly,” says Charles Barrows, father of Billy Graham songleader Cliff Barrows and head of the distribution. Now that San Carlos has opened up, “the other schools in the area are lining up for their copies as well,” he said.

Missionaries in the area say an important factor in the success is Barrows’ status as a layman who retired to the Philippines as official agricultural adviser to Philippine President Marcos. Civic leaders held a welcome banquet when Barrows visited two years ago.

He gave his Christian testimony, and afterwards university President Rudolf Rahmann said, “That’s exactly what we need.” Their friendship has resulted in showing at the university of Graham films, attended by 7,000 students.

A leading university professor revealed, “For over thirty years I have prayed that we could get the Scriptures into the hands of our students.”

EUSTAQUIO RAMIENTOS, JR.

We welcomed the dawn. At 7:30 A.M. I decided to get everyone to move into the dining room, and at nine I felt we should evacuate the building. We asked the local American military commander to get us out. He promised to get back to us, so we just waited. About ten I got a call that the VC had taken one of the billets just about a block away and were using it as a stronghold. After several hours we were told to prepare for evacuation to a local military compound. We were to use our own vehicles but would have a military escort. As we were loading, two Huey gunships (American helicopters) made strafing and rocket runs on a ridge next to our compound. Twice I had to flatten out on the ground because I was looking right down the plane’s gun barrels.

At 1:15 P.M. our escort pulled up in jeeps and trucks. We got out quickly and made our way to the military compound. There we were given rooms, and cots were brought in. Then the gunfire started up again. The VC were said to be all over the mission property and setting up roadblocks. Our base, however, proved to be secure enough.

Again it was wonderful to see the dawn. I spoke to the commander again about evacuation, and he said a chopper was coming. About 9:30 A.M. one of those large Chinook helicopters landed on a pad right outside the compound. The aircraft commander agreed to fly all thirty-four of us to Cam Ranh Bay, and that’s how we got out.

It’s hard to describe how it felt. By then we had heard of the slaying of all six of the missionaries at Ban Me Thuot. Some days later we were flown to Saigon, and for a while things didn’t seem to be much better there than at Dalat. One morning the mortars fell only about three blocks away from us.

Missionary women and children were being flown out of Viet Nam, temporarily at least. But our mission officials have been optimistic, and we feel deeply our obligation to the national church and to the Lord’s work. In some ways the work will be hindered, but we hope to continue on, and as the situation improves probably many of the women and children will return.

Prisoner For Christ

Christ in the Communist Prisons, by Richard Wurmbrand and Charles Foley (Coward-McCann, 1968, 225 pp., $5), and The Wurmbrand Letters, by Richard Wurmbrand (Cross Publications, 1967, 169 pp., $2.50), are reviewed by David Foster, director, Eurovangelism, Bournemouth, England.

Richard Wurmbrand is likely to become one of the most controversial religious figures ever to emerge from behind the Iron Curtain. A Lutheran pastor, he was first arrested by Rumania’s Communist regime as he was walking home from his church on Sunday, February 29, 1948. This was the prelude to more than fourteen years of “relentless interrogation, attempted brainwashing and physical torture.”

Christ in the Communist Prisons is a well-written autobiographical account of this experience. The author impresses one not only with his ability to withstand unbelievable pressures with quick-witted arguments and answers for his persecutors but also with his ability to remember in detail conversations that took place under acute mental and physical stress as much as twenty years ago.

“What’s Jesus doing tonight?” jeers a bullying interrogator.

“He’s praying for you,” Wurmbrand replies.

Later, as the climax of a long period of sleeplessness and torture, he was threatened: “If you don’t answer properly, we’ll have you stretched on the rack” (a machine last used three hundred years ago for forcing confessions).

His reply: “In St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians it is written that we must strive to reach the measure of Christ’s stature. If you stretch me on the rack, you’ll be helping me to fulfill my purpose.”

It is interesting to see the number of purged Party members, including high officials, who show up as prisoners throughout the story. Sometimes even the torturers become the tortured as the winds of change blow through the regime. Wurmbrand’s first cellmate was Rumania’s minister of justice, a victim of the “justice” he created. Seeing the irony of this, he reminds himself of the Swiss senator who wanted to be navy minister.

“But we have no navy,” said the prime minister.

“What does that matter?” the senator asked. “If Rumania can have a minister of justice, why shouldn’t Switzerland have a minister of the navy?”

Some questions raised have answers that are hard to take. For instance, can a Secret Police torturer continue his hideous task once he becomes a born-again believer in Jesus Christ? Wurmbrand does not give the obvious answer:

I met other secret believers among the Secret Police, some of whom still go about their duties. Never say that a man cannot torture and pray at the same time. Jesus tells us of a tax-gatherer (whose work in Roman times went hand in hand with extortion and brutality) who prayed for mercy as a sinner and went home ‘justified.’ The Gospel does not say, however, that he immediately abandoned his unpleasant job. God looks into the heart and sees in a good prayer the promise of a new life in the future.

One thing that bothered Wurmbrand was that he had no Bible. But this encouraged him to recall previously memorized Scriptures, such as the words of Jesus: “Blessed are you when men come to hate you, when they exclude you from their company and reproach you and cast out your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy.” He had rejoiced in his adverse circ*mstances but realized this was only partial obedience to Christ’s command. He writes:

When the guard next peered through the spy hole, he saw me springing about my cell. His orders must have been to distract anyone who showed signs of breakdown, for he padded off and returned with some food from the staff room: a hunk of bread, some cheese and sugar. As I took them, I remembered the conclusion to the verse in St. Luke: “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy—for behold your reward is great.” It was a very large piece of bread; more than a week’s ration.

It is understandable that one who has suffered so much at the hands of Communism has dedicated himself to its overthrow. Wurmbrand’s philosophy is summed up in this statement:

Wishful thinking about Communism is our greatest danger. Men trained in the school of Lenin and Stalin see goodwill as weakness to be exploited, and for their own good, we must work for their defeat. Love is not a universal panacea. Communist rulers are criminals on an international scale, and only when the criminal is defeated does he repent; only then can he be brought to Christ. I was convinced that the fate of the West was either to destroy Communism or be destroyed by it.

His final release was brought about by Christians in the West who paid a ransom said to be “approximately $10,000” in the book and $7,000 on the cover flap. Before he left the country a Secret Police officer told him:

Your passport is ready. You can go when and where you like, and preach as much as you wish. But don’t speak against us. Keep to the Gospel. Otherwise you’ll be silenced for good. We can hire a gangster who’ll do it for $1,000—or we can bring you back, as we’ve done with other traitors. We can destroy your reputation by staging a scandal over a girl, or money.

Richard Wurmbrand has let that warning go unheeded. Probably more than any other Christian leader from Eastern Europe, he has loudly denounced the regime before U. S. congressmen, British Members of Parliament, and church leaders, and has even planned to speak out in West Berlin’s island of freedom more than one hundred miles behind the Iron Curtain. His actions have raised questions in the West and open protest from Christians in Eastern Europe, who claim he is “putting a noose around our necks.”

The Wurmbrand Letters is an anticlimax. It appears to be a publisher’s attempt to get more mileage out of the same story. The good pastor devoted thirty-three pages to explaining “Why I Write This Book.” Then comes a section of “Drawings from Prison Life”—a set of dry-brush efforts by an American clergyman, captioned with stomach-turning quotations from Wurmbrand. The letters are long communications to various church leaders (mainly in Europe) whose view of the incompatibility of church and Communist state does not entirely match the author’s. Finally, there are sections endorsing the fact that Communists are masters of deceit.

One learns in this book that dedication to a militant anti-Communism ministry can result in distorted views of the mainstream of Christian life and worship. Speaking of church services in America, Wurmbrand describes his “constant impulse when the pastor gives the benediction at the end to shout to him ‘But pastor, you have not yet had the religious service.’ Every religious service at which the martyrs are not even mentioned, in which prayer is not offered that God will strengthen their faith, is a divine service which is not valid before God.” This sweeping claim invalidates a vast number of divine services.

Perhaps the most questionable claim is made in the author’s answer to those who tell him to confine himself to positive gospel preaching:

A pastor should never preach or write something else than the Gospel. The Greek word translated in English “Gospel” means in the original “Good News.” In this book I have also preached the Gospel because I have given you good news. America is not lost yet. There exists a power behind the Iron Curtain which can save America.… Oh, that the spirit of the martyred church behind the Iron Curtain should pass to American Christianity!

Such “good news” may be a gospel, but is it really the Gospel?

Sermonic Feedback

Partners in Preaching, by Reuel L. Howe (Seabury, 1967, 127 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Haddon W. Robinson, professor of homiletics, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

Some wag has undressed preaching as “the noble art of talking in someone else’s sleep.” Even a casual observer can sense that many church members regard the sermon as little more than a poor substitute for golf on a rainy Sunday morning.

Reuel Howe shares this prevalent skepticism about much modern preaching. Drawing upon interviews conducted by the Institute for Advanced Pastoral Studies, he offers taped comments by disgruntled laymen and discouraged pastors as evidence that communication in the Church is both a disabling frustration and a primary need. From his observations and interviews, he concludes that the weakness of preaching comes from “its wordiness and monological character.”

Howe advances a solution for what he sees as the cold war between pulpit and pew: dialogue. Stripped of its theological overtones, what he is asking is that we recognize that there is a man at both ends of the sermon, and that the hearer is as important as the preacher. What makes this book more than a keen insight into the obvious is that the author suggests practical ways by which a congregation can become active in its pastor’s preaching. These include instruction of laymen on how to listen to a sermon, study groups, and continual provision for feedback on preaching. To tie theory to life, a helpful appendix contains an analysis of a taped discussion of an actual sermon by a group of church members.

One question Howe leaves virtually untouched is that of the starting point. He assumes that all preachers have a message from God and that communication is their major problem. For many men, however, the problem is not simply that they do not interact with their people; it is that they have not interacted with God. When a preacher has nothing much to say, dialogue can become a sharing of pious ignorance. For that reason, too, a dialogue can become a fog in the pew.

A Book Like A Camel

How to Search the Scriptures, by Lloyd M. Perry and Robert D. Culver (Baker, 1967, 276 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Harold W. Fife, minister at large, Far Eastern Gospel Crusade, Detroit, Michigan.

This book has the laudable intention of teaching people how to study the Scriptures and contains some excellent material. But it leaves one perplexed about whether it was written for ministers or for laymen. One finally concludes that it is a collection of lectures to students by three professors. This would explain its camel-like effect—very useful but uneven.

The introduction deals simply with the compilation of the Bible and includes many helpful scriptural quotations about its use, value, and reliability. It then quotes a number of statements about the Bible by great leaders—a list confined, unfortunately, almost wholly to persons in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The next section touches on the history of our English Bible and gives a useful comparison of the popular translations in current use.

The second chapter is an excellent study of the Christian doctrine of Scripture, written on a wholly different level and requiring of the reader greater study ability. It handles with skill and balance such matters as inspiration, revelation, and illumination, and convincingly comes to the conclusion that “God also … by the undefined, but real, work of inspiration gave men a Bible in which human instruments and divine authorship perfectly met.… This record, as originally written and interpreted according to the Author’s intentions, is without error.”

Chapter three uses the unoriginal device of recording the private Bible-study methods of seventeen people—all middle-class Americans. If this section had brought us insights from Christians in, say, Africa and Latin America, it might well have been rewarding. As it is, we are merely conducted along a well-trodden and unexceptional path, meeting a few familiar faces along the way.

A considerable part of the book consists of practical, detailed descriptions of methods of Bible study; this will surely be of help to groups that feel a need for variety in their study. All in all, this is a useful book for those who want to study the Bible but do not know how. Its basic weakness is, as I suggested before, that it seems too simple for the minister and, in parts, too technical for the average layman.

Reading For Perspective

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

• The Social Conscience of the Evangelical, by Sherwood E. Wirt (Harper & Row, $4.95). Contending that true evangelical faith leads to sensitive social concern, Wirt offers sound biblical perspectives on vital social issues of our day.

• Christ in the Communist Prisons, by Richard Wurmbrand (Coward-McCann, $5). A heroic Rumanian minister, fourteen years a prisoner of the Communists, vividly describes the opposition to Christianity behind the Iron Curtain.

• Who Shall Ascend, by Elisabeth Elliot (Harper & Row, $5.95). At the request of the Latin America Mission, a gifted missionary-novelist has written an intimate, probing biography of R. Kenneth Strachan, Costa Rica mission leader who developed “Evangelism-in-Depth.”

Quo Vadis Bonhoeffer?

In Pursuit of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by William Kuhns (Pflaum Press, 1967, 314 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Richard K. Morton, professor of sociology and religion, Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, Florida.

Evangelicals may well join Catholics in this careful appraisal of the ideas and aims of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as seen through the new objectivity and catholicity of William Kuhns. While Kuhns, as a Catholic, shows high regard for the sacramental nature of the Church, the monastic traditions, total commitment to the Church’s teachings, and high sensitivity to community, he emphasizes two major points: the incarnation and the lordship of Jesus. Barthian centrality of Jesus is joined, in Bonhoeffer’s views, with a vital and concrete concept of the Church as community and of revelation as being in our world, incarnate. Bonhoeffer clearly stresses, not religion incorporated, but religion incarnate. He sees no wall between church and state; in his view the church should work with and through the state.

Neither Kuhns nor Bonhoeffer himself answers two basic questions: What are the things of God and what are the things of Caesar—how does one tell them apart? And, since Christ has universal sway, what is the function and fate of revelations through other religions? One might add a third also: Since revelation must be incarnate and the Church must involve itself intensely with the world, how can it avoid creating the excessive organizational and doctrinal trappings apparent today?

Bonhoeffer seems inconsistent in urging the fullest worldly involvement in some situations and detachment in others. He does not outline how this incarnate revelation is to be fulfilled in saved human lives. And he does not really satisfy in answering the question, How to reclaim for Christ a world “come of age,” that is, one in which daily recourse to God is considered unnecessary?

Yet whatever the weaknesses of Bonhoeffer’s theological structure or of Kuhn’s partial description of it, this book will stimulate the reader with fresh views of religion, the Church, community, and what it means to be a Christian. Although many may be unwilling to acknowledge “religionless Christianity” as a new form, one that calls for holy worldliness, Christian atheism, and response and social commitment, most will recognize the importance of Bonhoeffer’s teaching that “to be conformed with the Incarnate is to have the right to be the man one really is.” And many also will agree that “the Church … stands in the midst of the world as the community of men who have been restored to wholeness, and who keenly recognize their responsibility to other men.”

Seeds For Thought

The Church: Design for Survival, by E. Glenn Hinson (Broadman, 1967, 128 pp., $1.95), is reviewed by Walter Russell Bowie, professor emeritus of homiletics, Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, Virginia.

This honest and helpful book grew out of a study of a church in Louisville, Kentucky. But the author reaches out beyond this local reference to deal with difficulties all Christian congregations are now confronting, and gives a constructive outline of the sort of “experimentation and adaptation” the Christian Church must dare in these changing times.

Dr. Hinson begins with what the New Testament makes us realize that the Church ideally is: the body of Christ, the people of God, and the servant of God. Because the Church is the body of Christ and the people of God, there can never be a “religionless Christianity,” if that means getting along without worship and without feeding of our spirits by the living God. But because the Church is also the servant of God, it must find its life not in some pious isolation but in direct involvement in all the needs and risks of our secular world.

The best chapters in the book are “Proclamation and Priesthood” (especially the discussion of the “priesthood” of laymen as the crucial witnesses to a relevant Gospel) and “Pouring Out Life in Service.” Christians must find “the holy in the common,” and Christian churches must sharpen and deepen their response to the problems of these disturbed and challenging times. But Design for Survival does not merely state these things in generalities; it gives specific suggestions for effective things Christian congregations might do.

In his preface Hinson writes: “I pray that the book will offer seeds for thought to many Christian pastors and laymen in all communions.” It does.

Old And New Treatments Of Paul

The Divine Apostle, by Maurice F. Wiles (Cambridge, 1967, 161 pp., $6.50), The Letters of Paul to the Philippians and to the Thessalonians, by Kenneth Grayston (Cambridge, 1967, 116 pp, $1.65), and The Letters of Paul to the Ephesians, to the Colossians, and to Philemon, by G. H. P. Thompson (Cambridge, 1967, 198 pp., $1.65), are reviewed by Richard N. Longenecker, associate professor of New Testament history and theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

Taking Clement of Alexandria’s ascription of the Apostle as his title, Maurice F. Wiles has presented us with a significant little book on ante-Nicene interpretation of Paul. Wiles, formerly dean of Clare College and lecturer in patristics at the University of Cambridge, is now professor of theology at the University of London. His work is mainly a descriptive, rather than evaluative, study of the Greek and Latin commentaries of the period on the Pauline letters (exclusive of the pastoral epistles and Hebrews).

With skill of treatment and respect for the exegesis of the Fathers—though, as a Protestant, he does not bow to their authority—Wiles has allowed them to speak for themselves on topics crucial in Pauline thought. He has refrained from trying to modernize them. Underlying the presentation are three theses: (1) that the variations and progressions in the Fathers’ interpretation do not seriously distort the general substance of Paul’s teaching, though new elements of precision and new emphases are introduced (Wiles at one point says “entirely alien” elements and emphases, but his evidence and the general tone of his argument fail to support so strong an assertion); (2) that in large measure the variations evidence genealogical relationships; and (3) that such differences are to be credited to “the exigencies of contemporary debate” wherein the commentators were “thinking primarily in terms of their own situation.”

On the vexing question, “How far did the ante-Nicene Fathers give a true interpretation of Paul?,” Wiles refuses to commit himself. He notes that the very asking of the question presupposes a true, or truer, understanding of Paul today (which he refuses to assert) and tends to ignore the cultural conditioning involved in every interpretation, modern as well as ancient. On a question of greater significance to evangelicals, “How normative is Paul’s message for today?,” he makes no comment.

Wiles is somewhat overconfident that he can be merely descriptive without also being evaluative, for a prioris cannot be kept out of any discussion—his inevitably show through. Nevertheless, judged on its own declared purpose, The Divine Apostle is a gold mine of information and a reliable guide to the patristic understanding of Paul. Especially for the beginning student, it may profitably be used in connection with R. A. Stewart’s Rabbinic Theology and D. E. H. Whiteley’s The Theology of St. Paul. Although there are differences in the quality of treatment, all three are similarly arranged and through their convergence offer the possibility of running the gamut of Pauline theology in its major aspects.

In 1967, Cambridge University Press also published two more volumes in its “Cambridge Bible Commentary” series: Philippians and Thessalonians, by Kenneth Grayston, and Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon, by G. H. P. Thompson. According to the preface, this series is designed to make available to the general reader “the results of modern scholarship” and, in conformity to British standards of commentary writing, seeks only to explicate the text.

The volume by Grayston is disappointing throughout. He treats introductory matters by listing many possible options, often without evaluation. And where he does express judgments, evangelicals will often find them disquieting and critically unfounded. Thus, for example, he sees Philippians as a compilation of three letters and says that the hymn of 2:6–11 stems in form from a Near Eastern myth about a divine-human redeemer figure and must therefore be understood as symbolic poetry rather than substantive theology. In treating the text, he dwells upon the ambiguous and highlights the uncertain. One reads more of what “some scholars think” and the reaction of “many readers” to the Pauline obscurities than of what the Apostle says. And Grayston repeatedly denies that these epistles are relevant to our modern day, since conditions are very different now than they were then and our lives are not so anxiety-ridden. Although it is evident that in studying a commentary one must read both text and comments, here the reader is well advised to conclude with the text and allow the Apostle to clarify the mass of undigested observations and questions posed by Grayston.

Thompson’s commentary, though in the same format, is of a different kind. Although the critical issues here are more crucial and complex, they are treated more adequately, more forthrightly, and more constructively. The author makes telling criticism of the ease with which pseudonymity is often claimed for these letters, and urges caution in the use of hapax legomena, statistical analysis, and matters of style to determine authorship. He also gives prominence to an amanuensis theory in the writing of Paul’s letters. In explicating the text, he offers conclusions on controversial matters and brings much knowledge to the task of explaining the Pauline message. The discussion of each epistle concludes with an organized and pertinent discussion of the “challenge” or “value” of that letter for today. All in all—without, of course, assenting to every point made—I highly recommend Thompson’s book to that audience for which it is intended: pastors, students, and the general Christian public.

Vital Sidelight On Christology

The Son of Man in Myth and History, by Frederick Houk Borsch (Westminster, 1967, 431 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by Wayne E. Ward, professor of theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

Books on the “Son of Man” theme have poured from the presses in recent years; they now number in the dozens and have appeared in all the major European languages. These works explore all the canonical writings, together with the additional materials now available from the Dead Sea caves and the Gnostic library Nag-Hamadi.

The reason for this great interest is obvious: According to the Synoptic Gospels, the one title Jesus constantly used to refer to himself and his mission in the world is “Son of Man.” Although many radical critics have attributed this identification almost entirely to the early Church, they are embarrassed by the awkward fact that the term almost disappears in later canonical writings and exerts little influence on early creedal formulation. This indicates that the “Son of Man” sayings were actually in the most primitive Synoptic sources and that the theological developments in the later Church moved away from them.

To this important matter, Professor Borsch has made a tremendous contribution. In a work of such great scope that no one is likely to repeat it, he has traced the heroic-tragic “Son of Man” figure through Greek mythology, the writings of Jewish and Jewish-Christian sects, Iranian literature, the Nag-Hamadi Gnostic library, the whole of the inter-biblical apocryphal and pseudepigraphical works, and the entire Old and New Testaments. The research and documentation are impressive, to say the least. No recent work compares with this one in breadth, and, because some of the sources did not appear until recent years, it is likely to be a standard sourcebook for a long time.

Borsch’s basic conclusion is that the Synoptic “Son of Man” sayings fit quite naturally into the broad background of hope for the coming “Ideal Man,” and that even the tension between the suffering Son of Man and the triumphant figure who comes upon the clouds in apocalyptic glory is understandable against this background of the heroic and tragic “Primal Man.” Borsch may also have discovered why the term fell into disuse in the later Church. The mythological background of the “Ideal Man,” especially the Semitic one, envisioned the elevation of an earthly man to a semi-divine status. This was exactly the reverse of the incarnational concept—the Divine Son becoming a man.

This unexpected sidelight on Christology may prove to be the most significant part of Borsch’s monumental study. Nowhere in the vast wilderness of ancient mythology, religious writings, or philosophy is there anything quite like the central Christian belief: God became a Man in Jesus Christ. Man never thought of this; it was the precious gift of God himself in his revelation to man. The “Son of Man” came down from above in his first appearance in humility, suffering, and death. He will come from his heavenly throne in his second advent in triumph and judgment. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not the story of a man becoming a “god”; it is the thrilling good news that God has come to men in Jesus Christ to make men what he wants them to be.

Book Briefs

Sign from Outer Space, by Lon Woodrum (Carlon, 1967, 111 pp., $1). A writer-evangelist discusses the Olivet Discourse verse by verse. In language for laymen, he claims Jerusalem belongs to the Jews by God’s will and declares the eschatological necessity for a third temple.

A Time to Dance, by Margaret Fisk Taylor (United Church Press, 1967, 180 pp., $2.95). Subtitled “Symbolic Movement in Worship” and drawing on First Corinthians 6:19, 20, this book traces the history of dance in worship and encourages establishment of church choral movement groups.

Rivers among the Rocks, by E. Margaret Clarkson (Moody, 1967, 95 pp., $1.95). Poetic meditations by the author of the well-liked hymn “So Send I You.”

How Can We Still Speak Responsibly of God?, by Fritz Buri (Fortress, 1968, 84 pp., $2.50). A University of Basel professor calls for a theology of responsibility that emerges from the prayer experience of a “being in Christ.” An abandonment of the biblical basis for theology in favor of the existential.

Center of the Storm: Memoirs of John T. Scopes, by John T. Scopes and James Presley (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967, 278 pp., $5.95). The defendant in the 1925 “Monkey Trial” relives his moment of glory and concludes: “Partially because of the trial I think the day will come when we will not be bothered by Fundamentalists.” That’ll be the day!

Hebrews: A Commentary, by Lyle O. Bristol (Judson, 1967, 192 pp., $4.95). A good reference work that correlates Hebrews with Old Testament citations and other ancient writings.

Letters from Mesopotamia, by A. Leo Oppenheim (University of Chicago, 1967, 217 pp., $5.95). A fascinating look into the daily life of Mesopotamia from 2300 to 500 B.C. by means of official and private letters on clay. Ranges from overdue bills, demands for police protection, and farming problems to affairs of state and of international relations. Includes a very helpful survey of the structure and development of Mesopotamian civilization.

The Living Story of Jesus (Gospel Light, 1967, 140 pp., $4.95). Children will love this highly readable life of Christ based on the modern-language paraphrasing of Kenneth Taylor’s Living Gospels. Excellent art work, too.

Cross Words, by W. A. Poovey (Augsburg, 1968, 112 pp., $1.95); and And I Look for the Resurrection, by Kay M. Baxter (Abingdon, 1968, 64 pp., $2.25). New brief volumes on Christ’s seven last words.

The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan (Baker, 1967, 408 pp., $4.95). A new facsimile of the beautiful J. D. Watson edition of 1861.

The Mountain that Moved, by Edward England (Eerdmans, 1967, 126 pp., $3.50). An English religion editor touchingly tells the story of the tragedy at Aberfan, Wales, in October, 1966, when a mountain of slag descended on children at school.

Divorce and Remarriage, by Guy Duty (Bethany Fellowship, 1967, 154 pp., $3.50). An examination of scriptural teaching and scholarly Christian opinion on divorce. Mr. Duty contends that divorce based on adultery frees both parties to remarry.

Report From Viet Nam

This commentary was prepared by Dr. Harold John Ockenga, minister of Park Street Church, Boston, after a February trip to South Viet Nam. He talked with the military and chaplains in areas where he preached, had an hour-long interview with United States Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, and met with evangelical church leaders.

Our departure from Viet Nam [February 19] points up the kind of war we are fighting. The curfew in central Saigon kept the streets empty of traffic from 7 P.M. till 7:30 A.M. Two newsmen had been shot by trigger-happy Vietnamese guards for violating it. Pan Am’s flight 819 to Singapore was to depart at 8 A.M. We left the Caravelle Hotel at 7:30, expecting a flight delay because of the curfew.

At Tan Son Nhut airport the checkpoint was crowded and surveillance was more strict, but we went through. In the airport lobby, confusion reigned. Benches were overturned and wrecked, glass was scattered about, pools of blood lay on the floor, a great gaping hole opened above the Pan Am counter, and signs were askew. At 6:05 A.M. a mortar shell had landed on the roof of the lobby and penetrated the room in which scores of GI’s were waiting to leave Viet Nam on an early flight. Two were killed, forty-nine wounded. Charlie had scored again.

The airport was closed. No one knew when the next shell would fall. We waited with forlorn hope. Then at noon Air Vietnam brought in a plane, Qantas landed a big jet, and Pan Am announced that 819 would come in and go out. All customs red tape was cut, and by 2:10 we were airborne, headed for Singapore.

Death is common in Viet Nam. Every night mortars, hidden by the Viet Cong, open fire on the airport and on military installations. Two men can carry a mortar gun and shells, hide them in a home or cave, and then use them at will. Areas from which these shells come are then raked by our howitzers or by planes. The visitor in Viet Nam learns to sleep to the rumble and thunder of exploding shells.

Only a small portion of Saigon was destroyed. From a helicopter I viewed the areas of heaviest fighting and was surprised that they were so limited. Electricity, water, food, and traffic moved much as usual. There was no danger that the city would fall or be destroyed. The VC merely used harassing tactics.

The Tet offensive almost succeeded. Several floors of the embassy were penetrated, and the VC reached the runways of Tan Son Nhut airport. They intended to capture the radio station and declare that the people had risen up to overthrow the regime (the tape that was to be used has been captured). But a heroic defense was made by South Vietnamese troops, by airport clerks who took to guns, by the American MP’s in the city, and by the general military. Only the citizens who were forced at gunpoint by threat rose in support of the VC.

The attack was turned back with an enormous loss to the VC: the weapons count, along with the count of bodies, supports the figure of 27,000 to 30,000 dead. Moreover, the whole Communist apparatus in the cities came out in the open and was destroyed.

Now for the first time the indigenous church is hopeful. Two years ago church leaders asked to be moved to another country. Today, encouraged, they wish to stay.

The VC did many atrocious things. In Mi Tho they entered an orphanage and gunned down the children and superintendent. In Ban Me Thuot they killed six missionaries of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Vietnamese were compelled to feed the VC and then were shot. Wives and children of Vietnamese officers and leaders were sought out and killed where possible.

The great concern expressed here is that the U.S. government will work out a compromise with the VC, bringing them into a coalition government. Then everything for which this people has fought and suffered will be lost. The more our press and our leaders at home talk of negotiation, the weaker the Vietnamese people’s desire to resist will become. Men like John K. Galbraith who prophesy the collapse of the government and the defeat of the American military do a great disservice to a heroic people and a great cause. The Kennedy brothers weaken our cause by their calls for negotiation.

What is the solution to the vexing problem? Three alternatives seem to offer themselves. First, withdraw. Take the defeat. Swallow our pride. Admit we made a mistake. This would be tragic for Viet Nam and for all Southeast Asia. Communism would take over. Even now the Communists are holding large areas of Laos and are infiltrating Thailand.

Second, negotiate. That is, bring the VC into the government of South Viet Nam. As in China, so here this would ultimately mean a Communist takeover.

Third, go for victory. If we have any right to be here at all, we should fight to win, not merely to hold an area. I am convinced that the present strategy will never win this war. The heart of resistance must be struck, not the periphery. This means blockading Haiphong harbor, from where the war supplies come. It means crossing the DMZ. It means destroying the enemy strongholds in Laos and Cambodia. And it means chancing a bigger war and an encounter with Russia and China. With the facts fully before the great powers, there would be a possibility of negotiation and neutralization.

Why should 200,000,000 Americans continue to live as usual while 15,000 Americans die and 100,000 are wounded in Viet Nam? These men have as much right to live as you and I. If we must hazard their lives, we must hazard our security, too.

Let us ask the ultimate questions and give courageous answers. Then let us act upon our conclusions. The carnage can be stopped only by victory or by withdrawal.

Take two planks of common wood, nail one across the other, and what do you have? A gruesome object, a perpendicular couch of horror, a death-beam for impaling an outlaw.

Crosses have caught on their fierce arms some of the worst men in history. Killers, renegades, robbers, have stained the ugly beams with their blood. Hard-hearted Romans turned away their eyes when they saw those death-sticks growing like a forest on the Appian Way. And the Scripture of Israel cried, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree!”

Imagine a man holding up a hangman’s noose and saying, “This is the sign of my faith!” Think of wearing a scaffold on a golden chain. Incredible! Yet an execution-beam is the sign borne by Christians. This death-piece became a symbol of life, “towering o’er the wrecks of time.” It glitters on a million altars in a million churches. A cynical world traveler once pointed toward the cross and cried half angrily, “The sun never sets on that thing!”

On this side of Calvary the cross is a glorious object. On that wretched hill it underwent a metamorphosis, changing from an emblem of death to an emblem of life. Out of ah execution has come a consciousness of pardon for millions. Out of agony have arisen uncountable songs of joy.

Actually, the cross had nothing to do with this strange thing that happened. At times, perhaps, the Church has spoken as though the cross itself effected something tremendous. The cross is a stick of wood. It is an instrument of destruction. Anybody could die on it, and many did in those tormented times when Caesar ruled the world. The sight of some groaning wretch spiked to the tree was common.

Crosses cannot save men; they kill men. Had there not been a certain Man in the world, the cross would still be only a grim relic of a barbaric age. No one would try to interpret its meaning, for it would have no meaning. It would have the status of a gas chamber.

But the Man who immortalized the cross was unlike any other man ever crucified. He changed everything he touched—including that brutal beam. He stooped a long way to allow that ugly shape to take him on its dreadful arms, for he had had a glory with the Father Almighty before the world began. He was the Word out of eternal mystery, come to walk the earth on scuffed sandals. His was a power that had “sprinkled all the midnight with a powdered drift of suns.” His command could hush a tornado, his look drive a hard-knuckled fisherman to his knees.

He came from beyond circling suns and star-swarms to an innkeeper’s cattle-cave. He invaded the human situation at its most agonizing level. Uneasy angels must have kept watch while he drank his deadly cup.

His cross marks an awesome moment in eternity. It changed the calendar and the clock of time. The cross never could be the same again once his death-cry had risen from it. This was the great Happening—for the first and the last time on earth. The cross was converted. That gallows-tree would haunt history. For the Man who took up that cross staggered with it toward a throne.

Kings and kingdoms come and go; but his cross remains, like a sword thrust at the heart of mankind. It is not strange that an ancient oracle envisioned him and called him Wonderful.

“This doctrine of the cross is sheer folly to those on their way to ruin, but to us who are on the way to salvation it is the power of God.… Jews call for miracles, Greeks look for wisdom; but we proclaim Christ—yes, Christ nailed to the cross; and though this is a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Greeks, yet to those who have heard his call, Jews and Greeks alike, he is the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:18, 22–24, NEB).

“The divine nature was his from the first; yet he did not think to snatch at equality with God, but made himself nothing, assuming the nature of a slave. Bearing the human likeness, revealed in human shape, he humbled himself, and in obedience accepted even death—death on a cross. Therefore God raised him to the heights and bestowed on him the name above all names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow—in heaven, on earth, and in the depths—and every tongue confess, ‘Jesus Christ is Lord,’ to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:6–11, NEB).

Laymen who are hoping that the political clergy will soften direct pressures upon government decision-makers and planners apparently are due for disappointment. Indications are, to the contrary, that the neo-Protestant social-action curia is expanding its behind-the-scenes strategy for even wider and deeper involvement. Several recent developments signify a continuing disregard by ecumenical leaders for the growing lay dissent.

One noteworthy sign of the times is a report by the Washington Post (February 19, 1968) of a secret conclave of ecumenical “insiders” to project more aggressive and extensive social involvement. Another significant sign is the prophecy voiced by Dr. David S. Stewart, of Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, to the National Council of Churches’ Division of Christian Education, to the effect that as secular involvement becomes a priority of modern Christianity, debate over doctrinal matters will subside. Echoing the mood of leaders who readily transmute theology into sociology, Dr. Stewart said: “I expect us to come to functional definition of our profession as the most fruitful basis for ongoing conversation.”

Funds For The Left?

A prediction that the differences of opinion in the role of the church in socio-economic and political affairs will become more and more a factor in financial campaigns was made by Manning M. Pattillo, Jr., President of the Foundation Library Center. Pattillo expressed his opinion while addressing the annual meeting last November of the American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel.

Pattillo pointed out that the churches are playing down traditional theological and doctrinal teaching and are adopting a new social orthodoxy. He viewed this trend as most apparent in the thinking of national church officials and in the seminaries which prepare men for the ministry.

The trend is encouraged by the mass media, observed Pattillo. Local clergy are moving in the same direction, though more slowly. However, stated Pattillo, a substantial fraction of active laity do not approve the new orthodoxy, and this is the attitude of many who have worked hardest for the church and have given most generously to it in the past.

“The cleavage between clergy and laity is serious in many places,” asserted Pattillo. “There is a tendency toward polarization and divisiveness—I am afraid that churchmen are not always skillful in reconciling conflicting ideas and groups—and there is increasing evidence of a dropping off of church membership and support in some denominations. This is accompanied by a decline in the number of candidates for the ministry and for other types of religious service. It appears likely that the trend will continue and perhaps accelerate.”

Turning to the financial side of the situation, Pattillo stated: “My prophecy is that the differences in opinion about the role of the church will become more and more a factor in financial campaigns. It will, I believe, be increasingly difficult to make a strong and distinctive fund-raising case for the church as it abandons its unique ‘spiritual’ character (the area in which it has had a monopoly) and becomes one among many social reform agencies. In its new role it will be in competition for loyalty and money with a wide range of governmental, political, and social service organizations.

“It remains to be seen whether churchmen who are social or theological liberals are equally liberal in their giving. The history of the churches that have been liberal for some time suggests a negative answer to this question.”

The Presbyterian Layman (Feb., 1968, issue).

The social-action planning session was described by the Washington Post as an effort to go beyond the kind of involvement currently carried out by the NCC. About two hundred clergymen and laymen from major metropolitan areas east of the Mississippi and Missouri River were on hand for the three-day, closed-door conference. The churchmen called their movement the “Communications Network of the Inter-Area Committee for Action and Renewal.” An object of the sessions, held at the National 4-H Center in Chevy Chase, Maryland, was reportedly to create a national organization of churchmen committed to militant social action.

Theological commitment to revolutionary social change was further seen in the conference on “Christians and Social Revolution” at Washington’s St. Paul College. Princeton Seminary Professor Richard Shaull opposed Jesuit Father Rock Caporale’s contention that revolutions are “an irrational mode of human action” that in some respects represent “an escape from freedom.” Shaull held that modern society needs “a new politics of revolution” to replace our dominant economic order and bureaucracy with another power base. He claimed that this power base could be provided by “radical biblical communities” in middle-class America that could infiltrate and subvert present institutions and be the catalyst for the future society.

Actions taken by the NCC General Board in San Diego last month show the determination of social-activist denominational officials to use the institutional church not only to become politically involved, but to advance perilous political policies. Recommendations included renewed efforts to seat Red China in the U. N., recognition of Castro’s Cuba, “acceptance of the existence” of the government of East Germany, and various policies that call for the United States to forsake unilateral decisionmaking in favor of international agreements. The ecumenists’ strategy is doubly damaging. By placing primary emphasis on secular goals, it diverts the Church from a more important spiritual mission. By advocating policies in line with Communist preferences, it weakens the position of America as the stronghold and guardian of freedom. The board purportedly represents the views found in leading American churches. But its heavy domination by liberal and even radical viewpoints indicates that the NCC does not practice the democratic policies to which it gives lip service, and that it is far afield from the spiritual priorities for which the Church exists.

The ecumenical establishment has already become largely an unrepresentative bureaucracy heedless of widespread dissent in the ranks of both laymen and ministers. Dr. Manning M. Pattillo, Jr., recently told the American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel (see accompanying quotation, “Funds for the Left?”) that the substitution of socio-political orthodoxy for theological orthodoxy will discourage financial support by those who view the Church of Christ, not as one among many social reform agencies, but as a body endowed with a uniquely spiritual mission.

The core leadership of the political clergy is supplied by influential, self-asserting churchmen among the two hundred denominational and council secretaries of social action and overseas missions, their executive staff colleagues, professors of ethics, and other church leaders mainly interested in social issues. They are now striving to overcome the image of a self-asserting social-action curia by shifting implementation to socially minded churchmen in all denominations and cities. For years this unrepresentative bureaucracy has promoted its politico-economic declarations as virtually the voice of Protestantism. Not only are these pronouncements often formulated in disregard of truly representative processes, but they repeatedly reflect the personal bias of salaried leaders of the ecumenical establishment who unhesitatingly assert their own opinions as expressions of the conscience of the Church.

The Cross of Jesus Christ was a stumbling block to the Jews. To the Greeks it was foolishness. But to modern man it has become a symbol of despair. The God-forsakenness of Jesus at Calvary seems to signify the God-forsakenness of the twentieth-century world. Atheism and nihilism find symbolic expression of their world view in a secular reading of Good Friday. For such minds, the Cross is a sign of the nothingness that finally engulfs all men and things.

This outlook of the contemporary unbelieving world embodies a strange reversal. For this was the last thing that the Cross meant to the early disciples. The Cross meant death, even a horrible death. But Jesus’ death was never viewed from a quivering precipice this side of nothingness. It was viewed as a staggering, almost un-fathomable event in a great series of God’s acts of self-revelation and redemption and as the determinative act that effected man’s salvation. For the early Christians, the Cross was the defeat without which there would never have been a victory. It was the death without which there would never have been resurrection life.

For the early Christians, and indeed for Christians in all ages, the Cross is the symbol of atonement. It is a symbol of judgment upon all the sins of humanity—the failures, hatred, wickedness, lost hopes, and even the despair. But precisely because it is that, because it is judgment, it is also the symbol of a future free from judgment. If Jesus did not bear God’s wrath, then there is no future for anyone, least of all for the men of our world. But if he did bear God’s judgment, as the Bible says he did and as all Christians believe he did then there is a glorious future for all who align their lives with his. Jürgen Moltmann speaks of this dimension:

If the modern a-theistic world thus comes to stand in the shadow of Good Friday, and Good Friday is conceived by it as the abyss of nothingness that engulfs all being, then there arises on the other hand the possibility of conceiving this foundering world in theological terms as an element in the process of the now all-embracing and universal revelation of God in the cross and resurrection of reality [The Theology of Hope, p. 169].

He adds that for the Christian, “the cross is the mark of an eschatological openness which is not yet closed by the resurrection of Christ and the spirit of the Church, but remains open beyond both of these until the future of God and the annihilation of death.”

Seen in proper perspective, the Cross is exactly the opposite of what modern minds imagine it to be. In the first place, it is the evidence that man is not forsaken. It is evidence that the one by whom man feels abandoned and before whom he stands condemned actually loves him and strives to draw him to himself. John’s Gospel states that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). And Paul says that “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). D. M. Baillie is certainly close to the truth of these statements when he comments: “The most remarkable fact in the whole history of religious thought is this: that when the early Christians looked back and pondered on the dreadful thing that had happened, it made them think on the redeeming love of God” (God Was in Christ).

Second, far from standing for the alienation of man from God, the Cross actually stands for reconciliation. It is the bridge that connects eternity to time, that vaults the gulf between the holy and that which is unholy and lost beyond self-reformation. Colossians relates that the fullness of God was pleased to dwell in Christ, that through him God might “reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (1:20).

The Cross of Christ is also the reversal of all human values. For there weakness becomes strength, foolishness becomes wisdom, loss becomes gain, suffering becomes a gate to glory. “The Cross represents the inversion of all human values. The human is put to death; and out of death comes life” (John Courtney Murray, Social Order). Thus, for Christians the Cross becomes the signpost that marks a new pathway for life, a path of self-sacrifice for others. All the Christian virtues follow from the Cross.

Finally, the Cross is a symbol of power, not the dynamic power of the resurrection—life out of death and victory—but the winsome power of a life poured out for others. It is the power to which Jesus alluded when he said, “I, when I am lifted up from earth, will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32). And so he has, down through the ages. No other standard in history has been so able to rally men to it as the Cross of the crucified Christ.

All this needs to be said again in an age stained with blood, weary of virtue, and bound by individual and collective guilt. If the floodtide of despair now at disaster level is to be successfully checked, then the Cross must be restored to Christianity. For many, it is still a scandal and foolishness. For others it is a symbol of despair. But for those who are being saved, it is the wisdom and power of God. It is the sublime token of God’s gracious, reconciling presence in the midst of a fallen and distressed humanity.

LOSS OF AN OLD TESTAMENT GIANT

“I have not shirked the difficult questions.…” That quotation is inscribed on the portrait of Dr. Robert Dick Wilson that hangs in the faculty room of Westminster Theological Seminary. It was also inscribed in the life of Dr. Edward J. Young, a successor to Dr. Wilson in the Old Testament chair at Westminster, and like Wilson a doughty defender of the inspired Scriptures. When sudden death ended Professor Young’s career, he left an evangelical legacy of a lifetime of biblical scholarship.

Thy Word is Truth, title of one of Young’s many books, asserts his basic conviction. He believed the Bible, simply and devoutly. Yet he correlated his faith and his scholarly labors. Personally modest and retiring, he was driven by conviction to contend for the faith; the power of his preaching somewhat astonished those who enjoyed his quiet conversation. For him, unbelieving biblical scholarship was a contradiction in terms.

Professor Young’s own scholarship gained an international reputation. He mastered nearly thirty languages as tools of research; in his travels abroad he preached in German, read lectures in Spanish, and chatted with bus-drivers in Arabic. He insisted that his graduate students “get the languages.” In addition to Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic, he taught Babylonian, Syriac, Ethiopic, and ancient Egyptian. Frequently he complained about scholars who erected critical castles on secondary sources.

He was ready to stand against the current. His three-volume commentary on Isaiah argues with patient cogency for the integrity of that book (the first volume has appeared in the “New International Commentary on the Old Testament,” an Eerdmans series of which he was editor).

He has left a varied legacy: Introduction to the Old Testament, a landmark in conservative scholarship; devotional writings (Isaiah 53; Psalm 139); language study aids (Arabic for Beginners, Old Testament Hebrew for Beginners). Beyond his books are the men he has trained, now scattered around the world, teaching the Old Testament in Tokyo or preaching it in Arabic in Africa.

His witness points a way for scholars who are willing to pay the price of toiling in the precious things of the Word of God. There is a radical scholarship of faith that humbly bows before the Lord and listens to his Word, and E. J. Young was a living demonstration.

A gowned, draped figure lay on an anesthetic cart awaiting transportation to the operating room. Some gauche zealot had placed on his chest a tract: “Are You Prepared to Die?” The minister who goes to a home or a hospital to see a dying person must be far wiser and more sensitive than that. He goes as an ambassador of the Risen Christ to give comfort, to pray, to empathize, to make known the promises of God.

Conduct. This is no time for the ecclesiastical smile, for Dale Carnegie ebullience or Charles Atlas salubriousness; nor is it the time for a countenance of gloom or for the insincere playing of games. Between the minister and the dying patient there must be authenticity. Masks and roles must be swept away.

A dying person is enervated, fatigued, often in pain and nauseated, without appetite for food or entertainment. He is psychologically and physically incapable of listening to talk about the case histories of others, the pastor’s latest golf score, community tragedies, or the world situation. This is the time to make every moment count, for drugs, disease, and impending death reduce the patient’s span and energy supply.

Communication. The minister should sit or stand near the bed in the place where the patient can most easily see and hear him. Although the patient’s vision may be blurred, the reassurance of seeing the emissary of God, even fuzzily, is very valuable in these last hours of his life.

The senses of touch and sound are important also. In recent years medical publications have stressed to physicians the value of touching the geriatric patient. From the pastor, too, the patient may appreciate the tactile expression of concern, particularly during prayer. This may well prove a means of spiritual communication. Christ used the laying on of hands in healing (Mark 5:23; 7:32) and in benediction (Mark 10:16; Luke 24:50). This practice, made part of life of the Church, was used in both healing and blessing (Acts 9:17). From it sprang the apostolic rite of transmission of the Holy Spirit. What wholesome expressions of loving concern, tenderness, and oneness in faith can be embodied in this simple act.

The clergyman should speak clearly and loudly enough to be easily heard. He can do this without sounding pontifical or disturbing nearby patients. And he should never conclude that his words, his prayers, or his Scripture readings fail to reach through the seemingly impenetrable mist of unconsciousness. That a patient is unable to respond does not necessarily mean that he is not conscious of what is being said and done. And, of course, any dismal comments on the patient’s condition must be reserved for the hospital corridor. The dying patient may fully comprehend any unguarded comment, such as that of a crass and careless intern, “He’s had it! Don’t forget to ask for an autopsy.”

When a relative, a minister, or a physician places a finger in the hand of the semi-comatose person and asks him to squeeze it, there will usually be a response, indicating the patient’s ability to hear and comprehend. Even when his clinical profile indicates that he is definitely unconscious, there is still the possibility of perception. Often hearing is the last of the senses to go. On the assumption that the patient can hear his voice and the promises of God, the pastor must continue his ministry. Who can know how many dying souls have at that point silently cried: “God be merciful to me, a sinner!”

Content. The clergyman should, at first, let the conversation flow where it naturally goes. The patient may only wish to listen to the promises of God. Or he may long to repent, to express his worries or fears. He may ask searching questions about the meaning of it all. Or he may wish to confess. The prudent minister is a superb listener. At some point, however, he may feel he should pose thoughtful questions that will encourage the patient to express any concerns he is feeling.

After this the pastor may read passages of Scripture, not the morbid “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” variety but loving messages from the One who is all love and forgiveness. “The LORD is my light and salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Ps. 27:1) As a final gesture before leaving, he may grasp the patient’s hand or lay his hand upon his head as he prays. This prayer should be simply phrased and rich in the message of hope, of repentance, of reconciliation, and of redemption.

Charismata. Ministering to the fatally ill is probably the most challenging of all pastoral functions. Any man who enters a room of death without prayerful preparation is in dereliction of his spiritual calling. As Christians we are undergirded by the assurance that God “comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction …” (2 Cor. 1:4). We are promised the gift of speaking the word of wisdom (1 Cor. 12:8), to enable us to receive and explain the deep things of God. Much is mysterious in God’s dealings with men, and the unenlightened Christian is often in need of a particular word that will throw light on the human dilemma. How profoundly the pastor needs compassion, concern, sensitivity, empathy, and, yes, special charismatic gifts to help him lovingly transmit to a dying man God’s promise that he can share Christ’s risen life.

Christ. The ambassador of God enters the sick room to proclaim and uphold Christ. His effectiveness rests on spiritual and technical depths. Has he lived Christ, exalted Christ, proclaimed Christ, served Christ, radiated Christ? All the diabolical forces of disease, degeneration, and death cannot overcome the dynamic of such a life, for it communicates the power of the One who said, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.”

—A. D. DENNISON, JR., M.D., Indianapolis, Indiana.

In almost every major denomination today laymen are showing more and more concern over the lessening of emphasis on the spiritual nature and message of the Church.

Church leaders have always solicited the interest and support of laymen. Some are now finding that many laymen have become restive about some programs they are being asked to support. Many feel their leaders are promoting activities outside the province of the Church, placing primary emphasis on secondary things, and seeking to reform society without the redemption of individuals.

Recently members of a Southern Presbyterian lay organization known as Concerned Presbyterians (address: 234 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami, Florida) met with members of another group within the denomination that represents a more liberal approach to the mission of the Church, particularly in the area of social action. The meeting was called by the moderator of the church.

Some ministers present expressed deep apprehension because Concerned Presbyterians is made up entirely of laymen. In reply the president of that group said frankly that this was necessary because ministers who joined might be subject to “ecclesiastical reprisals.” But a number of ministers are quietly helping the organization.

For about two years there has existed in the United Presbyterian Church a group called the Presbyterian Lay Committee, whose board is composed of some of America’s most distinguished Christian laymen and churchmen. In January this group (offices at 200 Fifth Avenue, New York City) began publishing a monthly magazine called The Presbyterian Layman, “edited for the entire membership of the United Presbyterian Church.” It is a “voice of the laity, expected to stimulate greater discussion in Church matters, foster constructive ideas for strengthening the United Presbyterian Church, encourage more dedicated involvement of laymen and women in the activities of their own churches, and also to encourage laymen to take public positions as Christian citizens on secular matters.”

This group, when questioned about its position (“Is it conservative or liberal? Is it fundamental, traditional or modern? Reactionary or progressive? Right or left? Capitalistic or socialistic? Existentialistic or antidisestablishment-arianistic?”), replied that it “rejects all labels” and “intends to conduct its affairs guided by the Scriptures, as clearly defined in the Westminster Confession of Faith.”

Groups of laymen in other denominations have formed, or are now forming, organizations that they hope will help to return their churches to their original calling. Because of the mushrooming of these movements and because of their potential effect on the Church as a whole, they call for careful evaluation.

Here are some of the reasons for concern cited by many laymen:

• The preaching they too often hear, stressing some form of social action or activity without a corresponding emphasis on the redemptive work of Christ at the personal level;

• The institutional church’s participation in pronouncements on almost any subject, its taking of positions on controversial matters without either the mandate or the competence to do so;

• A growing tendency to enlist the political and economic power of the federal government on behalf of schemes dear to church leaders that, almost without exception, point straight to the concepts of a socialistic state—despite the ever-increasing evidence of the failure of socialism wherever practiced;

• A shift in emphasis from the individual to society as a whole, though the primary aim of the Gospel is to reach individual persons, and through them the social structure.

• A shift in emphasis from distinctively Christian programs to basically humanistic ones (“there seems more concern that the surroundings of the Prodigal, and his personal comfort, shall be improved rather than that he shall be called back to his Father in penitence and restitution”);

• A new and false interpretation of “evangelism” in terms of social engineering and revolution rather than proclamation of the redeeming love and grace of God in the person and work of his Son;

• A preoccupation with this world and its ills without a corresponding concern for the souls of sinners who desperately need the Saviour;

• A failure of many church leaders to take the Bible seriously, with the result that they are tossed to and fro on the seas of human speculation without the anchor of a clear “Thus saith the Lord”;

• The implicit redefining of the good and proper word “ecumenical” to mean “organizational.” Little of the true spirit of ecumenicity is offered to evangelicals and distinctly evangelical organizations such as Campus Crusade and Inter-Varsity.

These lay movements are not schismatic. By and large members recognize that an effective witness can be borne only within the denominations; splitting only adds to the problems. These laymen are true loyalists—loyal to their churches and to the standards that are part of their heritage.

This is not nostalgia for the past. Those who are concerned know well that neither the Church nor the world can be turned back. They are nostalgic for a renewed realization that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is relevant for the needs of every age and that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, it can bring about a marvelous change in men and nations today, just as it did in the first Christian century. (One detractor said about some of these laymen in the South, “They would like to go back a hundred years and wave the Confederate flag.” One wonders what flag their Northern counterparts would presumably like to wave. The Union Jack?)

These movements are not a call for maintaining the status quo; some of these laymen seem far more aware of the world and its basic needs than the social activists.

Nor are they an attempt to drive a wedge between the pulpit and the pew. While there are undoubtedly laymen who resist all change and who also have their social consciousness blurred by bigotry, prejudice, and pride, the laymen who are furthering these movements are concerned with personal obedience to their Lord and loyalty to their church. Their goal is to see that the Church continues as a spiritual power and does not degenerate into an organization with social action as its primary concern. If this concern is divisive, it is others who must assume the blame.

The world is in a desperate plight. One social activist recently said, “The world is going to hell while we nit-pick.” But these laymen are not “nitpicking.” Tens of thousands of persons believe that the plight of men and nations is not beyond the redeeming and transforming power of the Lord Jesus Christ. They do not want him crowded out by a program of social engineering. They believe the task is a personal one, winning individual men to Christ. Then and only then can “society be redeemed.”

Dear Pot-holders and Pill-pushers:

For most of his sixty-five gleeful years, Malcolm Muggeridge, Britain’s master of wit and satire, has relentlessly wielded a razor-sharp rhetorical rapier against the false and the pompous. His perennial duels with the Establishment so endeared him to students at the University of Edinburgh that they elected the former editor of Punch as rector, to present their views to the administration. But recently Muggeridge, true to his deepening convictions, drew blood from the student body in announcing his resignation as their spokesman. In a rectorial sermon in St. Giles Cathedral, he lit into them for expressing their rebellion against “our run-down, impoverished way of life” by “a demand for pot and pills, for the most tenth-rate sort of escapism and self-indulgence.” Said Mug to his youthful audience: “We await the great works of art, the high-spirited venturing into new fields of perception and understanding, and what do we get?—the resort of any old slobbering debauchee anywhere in the world at any time—dope and bed.”

Students reacted by pooh-poohing the drug charge, claiming “the pill” was a passport not to promiscuity but to responsibility, and saying representation by a rector was anachronistic, anyway. But it was apparent to a nation of spectators that the man described by critic Stanley Kauffman as “an iconoclast with astigmatism, a hater of sham with a touch of sadism,” had shattered a new idol.

The disdain of MM toward pot and the pill should make all evangelicals consider their involvement with these modern-day visas to ennui. I must confess I have a real pot problem. But it’s not the pot you get a belt out of; it’s the pot you try to get a belt around. My wife’s concern is not whether to take the pill but how to put up with a pill (me—a real hophead).

It might be a good idea if we stayed away from all forms of pot and the pill. Let’s begin by abolishing those pot-luck suppers. The way they affect my pot, they may drive me to pot. And maybe we better follow the Catholic method of birth control. When a priest was describing it to a jazz musician, he said, “There are only two alternatives: periodic abstinence and complete abstinence.” The musician replied, “Oh, I get it—rhythm and blues!”

Down with pot and the pill! Up with Muggeridge!

EUTYCHUS III

APPLES OF GOLD

If “a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver,” then Calvin D. Linton’s article on “Higher Education: The Solution—Or Part of the Problem?” (Feb. 16) is twenty-carat stuff.

H. DALTON MYERS

Calvary Memorial Church

Wayzata, Minn.

Linton’s definition of the five “myths” of modern education has helped me to see more clearly what is my responsibility in preaching and in the teaching of young people. The Christian young people of our community have frequent disagreements with the philosophy of their “humanistic, man-oriented” teachers in the public school, some of whom openly ridicule Christianity. With the information provided in Linton’s article I hope to be able better to show my young people the difference between the biblical and natural views of man, and too, I pray, how to defend themselves against such destructive noneducation.

PETER B. GROSSMANN

Eureka Reformed Church

Eureka, S. D.

Dr. Linton’s essay was a clear and articulate statement of what may prove to be the most pressing problem of our generation, getting as it did to the root and “gut” issues rather than dealing exclusively with their manifestations. It was refreshing to hear nonsense properly labeled and the epithet responsibly defended. As one who works with collegians, academically and spiritually, I appreciate this cogent and concise statement.

ERIC G. LEMMON

Adult Education

First Baptist Church

Montebello, Calif.

I just finished reading.… “Higher Education: The Solution—Or Part of the Problem?” … and I cannot refrain from writing a brief word of appreciation.…

For a time after its founding, about a dozen years ago, CHRISTIANITY TODAY did not, in my judgment, seem to attract the necessary educated talent and intellectual caliber to hold its own in a highly competitive field. In recent years, however, it has come of age, and it clearly merits serious attention on the part of policy-makers and other leaders in contemporary American society. The editorials themselves seem to reflect decreasingly an obvious effort to grind the old “fundamentalistic” axe and increasingly a resolve to come to grips with basic issues of our time. Between this journal and the Christian Century one can now hope to achieve some reasonable balance as he tries to keep abreast of developments in the religious world of our time. Anyway, both editor and writers in this particular issue merit hearty thanks and congratulations for putting out an excellent product.

PHILIP J. ALLEN

Chairman, Dept. of Sociology

Mary Washington College

Fredericksburg, Va.

It is most encouraging to read … the essay by Calvin D. Linton.… I am privileged to serve on the Governing Body of Wolverhampton Grammar Technical High School and, in addition, frequently meet educationalists, head teachers, and staff in connection with work of the Gideons International within the British Isles.… Mr. Linton’s essay would be most useful if produced in booklet form.

SAMUEL A. MORRIS

Chairman

Ascalon Holdings Limited

Warley, Worcester, England

The article was not only most inspiring but straightforward and factual. I was highly pleased.

JOHN H. STOLL

Chairman, Bible Dept.

Grace College

Winona Lake, Ind.

I would like to commend you highly on the February 16 issue.… It is the finest thing on higher education I have read yet. It certainly comes at a very important time.

DELBERT W. DANIELS

Central Christian Church

Wenatchee, Wash.

CONCERNS OF THE HEART

It was satisfying that you found “Some Ethical Concerns” worthy to be included as a comment on the editorial, “Are Heart Transplants Moral?” (Feb. 16). The editorial itself is one of the finest I have seen to date.

WALTER O. SPITZER, M.D.

General Director

Christian Medical Society

Oak Park, Ill

Dr. Spitzer states, “The moral, ethical, and theological implications related to the choice of the one who will live and the consequent de facto sentencing of 99 who could have lived but will die, stagger the mind.” To me as a law student the term “de facto sentencing” seems unfortunate, for sentencing is an act against a person or persons which is positive, and also a condemnation. In the case illustrated I cannot see any aspect of sentencing. Where there are 100 patients requiring a heart transplant to live for every available donor, I see this situation not as a de facto sentencing of the 99, but as the saving of one, and the choice of that one is the choice which has the implications which are great. If none of the 100 received the transplant, none would live. Where there is one donor, then one life is saved. Ninety-nine are not sentenced “who could have lived,” for they, in this illustration, could not have lived in any case.

CHARLES TROUTMAN III

Washington, D.C.

Unfortunately, death is not usually sudden and definite. It is preceded by a gray period of impending death, especially in the donor for transplantation, who is usually a patient with severe brain damage following an accident or a stroke. The urgency and enthusiam for finding a donor must not interfere with the usual heroic measures to give these patients every chance of survival. In addition, the judgment to continue the various mechanical devices for supporting life against statistical odds should not be clouded by the need for a donor.

These two points focus on the real problem concerned in transplantation: Who should be the overseer for proper conduct and decisions during the “gray” period preceding death? This question is not restricted to transplantation but pertains to use of prisoners for drug research, to use of humans for cancer research, and to manipulation of the genetic coding. The fundamental question is whether or not one individual should have authority over the life and death of another. Since this is not a scientific question, I would insist that these moral judgments be based on and overseen by a group of Christian laymen. The medical profession should be a part of this group but not the controlling interest.

Will concerned laymen recognize the increasing importance of these moral decisions concerning life and death and then accept their responsibility, or will they give authority of one individual over another to science or a governmental agency?

LOREN J. HUMPHREY

Department of Surgery

University of Kentucky

Lexington, Ky.

JELLYFISH AND COURAGE

I am writing to express my disapproval of your comments on Eartha Kitt (“Eartha Kitt’s White House Spectacle,” Editorial, Feb. 16). Your jellyfish attitude toward the incident is a disgrace. You would have been able to work very well with the third Reich. What we need in this dying nation of ours are people willing to have the integrity and courage to stand up for what they believe is right.

ERIC J. GOTHBERG

Asst. Pastor

Emanuel Lutheran Church

Manchester, Conn.

Why must you clutter your fine magazine with occasional unnecessary and uncalled for disparaging remarks about the John Birch Society? The most recent case in point is your excellent editorial concerning Eartha Kitt’s intemperate public outburst at a White House luncheon, which you compared to “a John Bircher who called a former president a Communist.” This is an oversimplification at best and a deliberate falsehood at worst.

MICHAEL L. ISBELL

First Christian Church

Hampton, S. C.

BEWARE ICE-AGE PETRIFICATION!

More and more I have come to appreciate the quality of your magazine. It is refreshing to see an “evangelical” publication deal with so many pertinent issues as yours does in such a forthright manner.

Don’t let Carl Henry or his approach get away from you. I fear that an ice-age prejudiced narrow-minded approach will petrify your power.

JACK H. ARNOLD

Bethany Methodist Church

Purcellville, Va.

I respect the sound perspective and balanced judgment in your editorials. I also find the various contributions by leading scholars excellent reading. Yours is the only church periodical I find worth reading consistently.

SILAS A. MECKEL

San Antonio, Tex.

A DOVE AND THE HORSES

Since your editorial, “All the King’s Horses” (Feb. 16) expresses the wish that “the doves would stipulate precisely where … they would draw a line against Communist aggression,” this “dove” would like to suggest his answer. The line against anybody’s aggression should be drawn precisely where the aggression takes place. We saw this achieved in the Korean war, where the aggression of North Korea was combated in such a way as to restore the status quo ante bellum.…

Likewise, in Southeast Asia, aggression should be stopped where it occurs. But the truth here is: there was no such aggression committed by Communists. Viet Nam was not divided into two sovereign countries.… The United States fabricated the present division of Viet Nam, propounding the fiction of two separate countries. Whatever armed encounters result from this situation can hardly be justifiably labeled as simple “Communist aggression.” One must take into account the fact that America has unjustly and immorally prodded the Communists into the actions we undertake to counteract. The “Pueblo” incident, also, must be viewed within this context.

PAUL D. STEEVES

Lawrence, Kan.

A TASTE OF GRIEVANCES

Although not a Negro, I am a non-Caucasion (Chinese) who has had a taste of the grievances they experience to a degree we cannot ever comprehend. But it is as a Christian that I am especially appreciative of the fine editorial, “Confronting the Racial Crisis” (Feb. 16). It is, in a sense, an indictment of us who in our spiritual concerns fail to see our earthly responsibilities … or choose to do so.

BRUCE Y. DONG

Seattle, Wash.

I am writing to present a concept of Christian involvement in the urban problems of our times.…

In the majority of the evangelical churches I have had contact with, the method of reaching people with the Gospel is exactly the opposite of the way it is done in the mission fields. In the “home” churches, the pastors encourage their congregations to “go into the highways and hedges and bring them in,” and then these pastors evangelize from the pulpit every Sunday.

In the “mission churches,” as I understand it, the missionary goes where the people are, preaches the Gospel, does personal evangelism, and then forms a church. The church services are devoted first to worship and then to instructing “the saints for the work of the ministry” so that they go out where the people are, repeat the process, and form new churches. Also, mission works are concerned with the whole man, i.e., “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, strength, and mind.” Therefore they include schools to teach the mind and often have dispensaries and “soup kitchens” to meet physical needs.

Now the question is this: Why do we not go and do likewise and send a qualified Negro missionary into, say, northeast Washington, D. C., and begin a “mission field” church there?

If I read my Bible correctly, this approach is scriptural, and if I read my history correctly, it is relevant. It may be the only way of avoiding another “long hot summer,” and possibly would begin a revival.

In addition, there is another plus financially. It seems to be fairly well established that the mission schools, dispensaries, and other services are performed with more effect and less cost than any government program, no matter how efficiently operated. This is no doubt due primarily to a difference in dedication and motivation of the individuals involved.

KENNETH MEYER

Annandale, Va.

CONCERT’S SOLEMN NOTE

“Skeptics in Concept?” (News, Feb. 16) should sound a solemn note of warning to our Christian educators who still believe the verities of the Protestant Christian faith.

The unabashed liberalism of the current curriculum of the United Church of Christ will be merged with the “Confession of 1967” mentality in the United Presbyterian Church. Throw in the Episcopal view of heresy as “anachronistic” and God only knows what monstrosity will be concocted.… What a tragedy to see church officials shattering the foundation of belief and assuming the role of disciples of humanism and political science.

No doubt all three churches will have a significant contribution to make to COCU—“The Corporation of co*cksure Uncertainty.”

RICHARD H. MACKAY

Watertown, Mass.

No other pastoral poem is so well known and so highly prized as Psalm 23, the Shepherd Psalm. This poem has been on the lips and in the hearts of men for three thousand years. First heard on the hills of Judah, it spread with the advance of the Christian faith to the ends of the earth. Composition and style alone cannot account for its influence. Behind this imperishable record of a deep and unshakable faith lies the proven experience of divine providence.

The simplicity of the poem conceals the purity of its art. Hebrew poetry is not under the law of mechanical meter; its cadences and rhythm belong to the dimension of the free spirit, where movement is not in measured steps. To reduce Hebrew poetry to numbers is the idle fantasy of unpoetic minds.

The Shepherd is the focal point of the psalm. Although the psalmist himself is the subject of four verbs, he depicts himself as inactive (“I shall not want,” “I do not fear”), as engaged in unavoidable activity (“I walk”), or as appropriating a prepared benefit (“I shall return”—not to his own home but as a guest to the household of Jehovah).

The other eight verbs have for their subject either Jehovah or his benefits. They are all transitive, and in each case the object is beneficially affected. In the first, for example, the shepherd causes the sheep to rest: “he makes me to lie down.” In the divine order, rest precedes activity; receiving precedes giving. What tragedies have followed the neglect of this simple principle. The efficient servants of God are not the underfed, the over-wrought, the work-weary, or the stale. Rest and spiritual restoration are the prerequisites of fruitful service. The second verb (“he leads”) follows naturally on the first: the sheep that God leads abroad are well rested and refreshed.

The psalm has five parts, each affirming a major benefit of the psalmist’s relation to the Shepherd. Together they present a five-fold liberation from the states that threaten man’s well-being:

1. Freedom from want. In a land often subject to the ravages of famine and drought, it must surely have seemed a rash thing to say, “I shall not want.” But with God, even escape from want is possible. He provides both food and water, the two essentials for life: “He makes me to lie down and rest in fresh green grasslands” and “he leads me beside restful, tranquil waters.” This provision resounds to the end of Holy Writ: “He [the Lamb] shall feed them and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters” (Rev. 7:17). It is heard in the words of the Shepherd himself: “He who comes to me shall not hunger and he who believes on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). And it is recalled in the bread and wine used to memorialize the sacrifice the Shepherd made to liberate us from eternal want.

2. Freedom from decline. “He restores my soul,” for he not only leads out but also brings back. He retrieves us from our straying and makes good our depletions. To do this, he both puts us on the right road and gives us the right to travel there: “He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” The word for “paths” means the ways clearly marked by wheeled traffic. Because such a way could be used by the king’s war chariot, it would be part of the king’s highway. The necessary permission to travel this way is given on the highest authority: “for his name’s sake.” Both access and progress are assured.

3. Freedom from the fear of death. “Even when I go in the valley of the shadow of death, I shall not fear evil.” How can this be? The fear of death, present throughout life, can rob a man of sleep and of peace. It is not dying itself that is terrifying: it is the thought of what lies beyond death. How can the psalmist claim freedom from this fear? Because “thy staff and thy supporting rod they comfort me.” The Shepherd provides protection of two sorts: the staff, or club, to keep danger away from the sheep, and the rod, or crook, to keep the sheep away from danger.

The psalmist gives the ultimate answer, by making a significant and dramatic change in his use of pronouns at this point. Previously he has referred to God as “he”; now he switches to the intimate “thou,” in “Thou art with me.” When a man comes to know God personally, the death barrier is shattered. This most precious of all freedoms belongs only to those who through a personal experience with God have come to address him as “thou.”

4. Freedom from insecurity. “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” Even the presence of foes cannot disrupt the lines of communication. The table may be only a simple mat spread on the ground, but it continues to be laid. And it is more than bare provision. An unmistakable mark of prosperity is there: “Thou anointest my head with oil.” The word “anoint” is not the verb used of ritual anointing but one that means “to make fat,” that is, prosperous. Something has gone seriously wrong if a Christian becomes spiritually bankrupt. The supply of spiritual resources, rightly used, can lead only to true prosperity. That the provision is not transient is confirmed by the next phrase: my cup is an “abundant overflow,” that is, my portion is a perennial fountain.

5. Freedom from separation. The association between the psalmist and the Shepherd is indissoluble. “Goodness and grace will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” “They will follow” means, literally, “they will pursue,” and the verb is elsewhere used in a predominantly hostile sense. This reversal of usage could hardly be more striking. It is not “I shall pursue good,” as ethical theory would have it, but “they [the goodness and the grace] will pursue me.” Goodness is benevolence in the fullest sense of the word. Grace is God’s attitude and action toward us arising from divine love. No completely satisfactory translation has yet been found for this Hebrew word. A possible but still inadequate rendering is “kinship love,” that which is based on a blood relationship. If we could recover some of the original meaning of “kindly,” that is, “kin-like,” then “kindly love” might provide a near equivalent. Since the basis of such love is not sentiment but relationship, it is unchangeable and constant. It operates on all days (“all the days of my life”)—not only on the light and the bright days but also on the dark and shadowed days, to the very end of the journey. We are not orphans; we have a Father who will never desert us. His home awaits us, and nothing can separate us from his love.

These five freedoms—from dearth, decline, death, deficiency, and desertion—will meet all man’s spiritual needs and provide peace and security for his soul.

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”

Three well-known American religious spokesmen here discuss implications and overtones of current God-is-dead speculation. They are Dr. Gordon H. Clark, head of the philosophy department at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana; Dr. Russell V. DeLong, Nazarene educator and evangelist, who served as president of colleges in California and Idaho for nineteen years; and Dr. Bernard Ramm, professor of Christian theology at California Baptist Theological Seminary in Covina, California. Moderator of the discussion is Editor Carl F. H. Henry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The panel is one of thirteen produced by Educational Communication Association in the series “God and Man in the Twentieth Century,” offered for public-service television use.

Henry: Gentlemen, I think you will recall a statement by Dietrich Bonhoeffer written shortly after the Nazis had imprisoned him. In his Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer writes that man has now learned to cope with all questions of importance without recourse to God as a working hypothesis. Of course, Bonhoeffer is referring especially to science and to art and to ethics; but he adds that for the last one hundred years this has been increasingly true of religious questions also. It is becoming evident, he says, that everything gets along without God and just as well as before. Now, will anyone dispute this assertion, that much of modern life has experienced what some of the death-of-God theologians call “the eclipse of God”?

Clark: This phrase, “the death of God,” is a little silly if you think of the supreme God ceasing to exist. But it is to the credit of these men, and particularly Professor Gabriel Vahanian of Syracuse University, that they describe very accurately the secularism of our culture. Professor Vahanian unmasks the hypocrisy of modern religion and shows the essentially secular nature of what goes on in most of our churches. His criticism of American religion is devastating and salutary. I appreciate his writing.

DeLong: It seems to me, Dr. Clark, that there really are two kinds of atheists. First there is the theoretical, philosophical atheist, who says there is no God and acts like it, which is really the Communist approach. The second type I would label practical atheists. They would say, yes, there is a God, but they ignore his existence. If you asked the average professional man “Are you an atheist?” he would be insulted.

Henry: The Gallup polls indicate something of this, don’t they?

DeLong: Yes. Millions of people would be insulted if you labeled them atheists. And yet, practically, if God were dead it wouldn’t change their pattern of living. They never pray; they never go to church. Their God is sort of a dead concept buried in the intellectual cemeteries.

Ramm: Well, I think that there is something very critical in the God-is-dead emphasis, and that is, a program in theology. But this program only works if the validity of the New Testament—its theology, its interpretation of Jesus Christ, and its life of Christ—is destroyed. As long as there is any possibility that the New Testament is the authentic document of the life of Christ, that who he was and what he said and did comes through its pages—I say, as long as there is this possibility, then this movement can’t even get off the ground. So the prior question then is not “Is God dead?” but “Is the New Testament reliable?”

Henry: So that as a Christian theologian you are suggesting that this God-is-dead theory rests on the premise of the invalidity, the fallaciousness, of the Apostles’ Creed, the invalidity of the biblical revelation, the collapse of the whole Christian view of God and the world.

Ramm: Well, let’s say—you have to have quite a funeral procession! You have to have “the Old Testament is dead”; “the New Testament is dead”; “the Apostles’ Creed is dead”; “the great issues of the Reformation are dead.” And only as you have successfully taken this trip to the cemetery can you say “God is dead.”

Henry: Is an attack of that kind on the Christian view of God something essentially new and modern?

Clark: Oh, no, no, no! There is nothing new or earth-shaking in this. There have always been attacks not only on the Bible but on religion in general. The phrase “God is dead” was of course used by Nietzsche. Ludwig Feuerbach, about 1840 or so, provided some of the arguments and even some of the words that these people use. With some existentialist trappings, this God-is-dead movement can be viewed as a last gasp of reaction against the Hegelian absolutism of the early nineteenth century. There’s nothing new, nothing earth-shaking.

DeLong: Well, if it isn’t new, why is so much publicity given to it?

Clark: Yes, that’s a question, isn’t it? Why is it so popular? Well, I don’t know. Why is it?

Ramm: I think one difference between this movement and Nietzsche and other men of the nineteenth century is that these men of today are attempting to give a theological justification for it, a theological interpretation of it, so that “God is dead” is not just the raucous protest of an unbeliever but a methodological conclusion of people who are following a certain track in theology. And this, partially, is why it has received such a tremendous hearing—it’s a theological program, not a program of protest.

Henry: Do you mean that there is a development or a trend in modern theology which has made concessions farther back along the way, and that these, when consistently applied, lead to this more radical and extreme denial of religious propositions and beliefs?

Ramm: Yes. I think that in the time of the German enlightenment and French materialism and English deism there was a repudiation of the historic grounds of Christianity. Now sometimes it might take two hundred years for the real disease to develop. So I think the God-is-dead movement is the only kind of theology—if you can call it theology—that’s consistent with a denial that took place a couple hundred years ago whereby we are now neo-pagans; we are no longer Christians bound to the authority of Holy Scripture.

Henry: At least those who are caught up in this rebellion are in this predicament.

Ramm: Yes, that’s right.

Henry: What accounts, however, for the fact that the death-of-God theology has taken hold in our time in this way?

DeLong: It seems to me that this modern movement is being championed by so-called Christian theologians, whereas some of the God-is-dead movement in the past has come from men like Nietzsche, Spinoza, and some others who were not professedly Christians. This makes it more astonishing today, the fact that Christian theologians would come out and say God is dead.

Henry: And then, the press has helped to popularize the position, in a day of mass media. It seems also that the alumni of some Christian institutions have carried the revolt to the attention of their constituency by way of critique of what is going on in their institutions.

Clark: Dr. Ramm spoke about methodology in theology. I think this is one of their poorest points. They accept some modern scientific ideas, some existentialism, some remnants of the Judeo-Christian tradition, plus this or that or something else. They also reject some of these.

Henry: Perhaps you can spell this out just a bit.

Clark: The point is this. They accept some parts of existentialism, some parts of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but they reject other parts. Now the question I want to ask is, On what basis do they select some things and reject others? What criterion, Dr. Henry, do they use in putting together this amalgam of their positive program? What’s the basis of their choice—or in technical language, what is their fundamental epistemological principle? If you read their books you have great difficulty in discovering any answer at all to this question. They seem to accept and reject at random, and this to my mind is a serious philosophical defect.

Henry: There is a certain amount of intellectual irresponsibility here, you feel?

Clark: Well, you can put it that way.

Ramm: Dr. Clark, pressing just as hard from another direction are the great number of people who are deeply afflicted by physical disability, physical sickness, maybe even emotional disturbance. It would be catastrophic to come and tell these people that God is dead, because they have a tremendous spiritual vitality. It keeps them going day after day with these afflictions. So I think that anybody who buys a theology has to buy the practical consequences that go with it. And the consequences of this God-is-dead theology are very drastic when you talk to a cripple, a wheelchair case, a cancer patient.

Clark: You’re talking like a pastor. Of course I’m a professor and I don’t meet those cases.

Henry: I suppose you’re saying that, in contrast with the theology of the Bible, the God-is-dead philosophy is spiritually and morally powerless.

Ramm: Yes, you’ve got to live with the cases. I grant, Dr. Clark, that they’re not academic cases or instances; but I know of such people, and I know that they are kept alive by a very powerful faith in the living God. I for one would not have the moral courage to go and tell these people that this is all just a mistake, a dream, a soliloquy that they’re having among themselves.

Henry: Well, if you were convinced that God is dead, would you feel an obligation to tell them?

Ramm: There are some times when it is more humane to shut up than to try and tell somebody he is mistaken.

Henry: Well, do you think that God is dead?

Ramm: The question I have in my mind is: Whoever got the idea that God is alive? Go back to Exodus where the name of God is given as Yahweh, which comes from the verb “to be” or “to be alive.” And God said to Moses, “I am the living one.” So the whole motif of the Bible is that here out of nowhere comes the God who is the living God. The real question to me is not, “Is God dead?,” but, “How come we happen to have had the idea for centuries that God is alive?”

DeLong: Let me ask you this, Dr. Ramm. I’m not a theologian, but it seems to me that this God-is-dead declaration is the logical, maybe the next, step of those who during the past fifty years have denied the supernatural and those who have championed humanism; that divine revelation has been relegated to the theological dump heap, and now the Deity who makes this revelation possible is cast aside as an unnecessary and nonexistent being.

Ramm: Yes. Historically, Christian theology should be the critic of culture. In the God-is-dead movement we have a sudden reversal in which culture becomes the critic of Christianity. And if this is true, then God is dead and the Bible is dead and all of Christian theology is dead. So it’s back again to Dr. Clark’s question of methodology. If you’ve got your methodology backwards, you’re going to come out to some mighty sick conclusions.

Henry: Isn’t there a whole tidal wave of organized atheism in the world today?

DeLong: Yes, it seems to me that this movement makes a good atmosphere and a good soil for the spread of atheistic Communism. The God-is-dead movement is dangerous, very dangerous. If it becomes widespread it will cut the vital nerve of ethical living. If there is no God, there are no higher values. If there is no God, there is no Christ who is the Son of God. If there is no God, there is no Calvary, no salvation, no immortality. Human beings are merely hunks of protoplasm floating over the briny sea of life. We then live a life with no meaning. We’re sort of bodies without souls living in a universe without a God. It seems to me that it’s impossible to have a vital, dynamic ethics that isn’t rooted and grounded in a meaningful metaphysics.

Henry: Of course, some of these God-is-dead theolologians do postulate an ethics of sorts. But you’re saying that if they were really consistent with their major premise they would scuttle it.

DeLong: Yes. If God is dead, what is the purpose of living?

Ramm: If God is dead, the Great Commission is also dead. And if the Great Commission is dead the Church is dead, because the function of the Church is to execute the Great Commission. So once again I see a fascination with an idea without a real calculation of everything it pledges me to. When you start to articulate what you are forced to deny, in saying that God is dead, it becomes rather frightening. Yet this list ought to be made up.

Henry: These God-is-dead theorists retain a certain passion to leave a mark upon the world that is derived from Christian presuppositions. But the Great Commission, and the relation of a small body of men or believers to the world, really ought to be erased if you scuttle the presuppositions on which the whole rests.

Clark: Now it is obvious that when people today talk about God they have various concepts. For accurate thinking we ought to know just what we mean by God, the living God. Personally I like the definition of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, that “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in his being, wisdom, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.” There you have something definite; you know what you’re talking about.

Henry: I have a feeling that these God-is-dead theorists, or philosophers in general, really obscure the living God whenever they say that one cannot have rational knowledge of God, or when they speak of an abstract God without any reference to his revelation, his self-revelation in Christ and the revelation of truths about himself and about his purposes for man and the world—in other words, whenever they cease to speak of the Bible as God’s revealed word. Do you see a connection between this tendency in modern theology and a loss of awareness of the revelation of the living God?

Ramm: Right at this point, you see, we have a certain treatment of the Bible. This theology is not based on looking at texts in the Scripture and saying, here is the meaning of these texts. Rather, it is, shall I say, philosophical theology in the sense that it’s dealing with ideas, not with the concrete materials of the biblical revelation. And I as a Christian standing in the tradition of nineteen centuries want to say that this is wrong, seriously wrong.

Henry: You know, last night I picked up my Bible—one that happens to be falling apart, actually—and I thought, Well, look at this, the way it’s been marked for devotional study, for preaching. I read the death-of-God theologians once, maybe twice, perhaps three times to get a nuance here and there. I don’t think anybody reads that literature with the sense of permanent possession and treasure that this Book holds for those who have searched it through the ages.

DeLong: The leaders of the God-is-dead movement, as I understand it, call themselves Christian atheists. To me that seems to be a misnomer, for I don’t see how a man can be a Christian atheist any more than he can be an honest thief or a truthful liar.

Clark: Or a Mohammedan Buddhist or a Jewish Hindu. The combination is untenable. The word “God” just doesn’t have any meaning in a sentence that says God is dead, and a Christian can’t possibly be an atheist. I don’t see how they get these combinations.

Henry: Dr. Ramm, let me ask you this question. Do you think that these men have made any contribution besides what Dr. Clark has said, that is, that insofar as they speak of the secularism of modern society, they do give an apt characterization of it? They are not the only ones who have made this characterization, and it doesn’t depend for its effectiveness or its accuracy on their thesis that God is dead. In denominational circles today so often we hear references to the “insights” of these God-is-dead theologians and the “great contribution” they are making to the religious dialogue of our time, how they have stirred up new interest in the Christian faith, and so on. What do you think of all this?

Ramm: I have a sort of glassy look at this because it just shows me one particular thing: If you do not accept the truth of God as embodied in Holy Scripture, then you can go anywhere. This shows one of the simply odd and crazy places where you can go, where you can put together, as Dr. Clark and Dr. DeLong have said, such contradictory notions as God and death. So it has deepened me in my own convictions about how I’m to think about Christian theology and about Christian truth.

Henry: There is one point where these two notions do come together dramatically in the Christian faith, and that is in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, the great center of Christian faith. But these death-of-God theologians destroy that center.

Clark: Well, the crucifixion, the atonement, doesn’t mean of course that God ceased to exist. Jesus was crucified and died and was buried and rose again, but that doesn’t mean that God ceased to exist for three days.

Henry: You’re exactly right.

Ramm: There is another interesting angle to this. The earliest origin of this concept was to scare people into Christianity. A German philosopher, poet, littérateur, Johann Richter, used this notion that God is dead to show how terrible it is to be an atheist. Here we have the odd turn that something that started out to drive people to Christianity is now used for the annihilation of Christianity.

Henry: Which means that evangelists perhaps ought to be especially careful what theological devices they use to get their message across.

DeLong: I’d like to raise this practical question—we’ve been dealing with theory a great deal. Of course, we all deny this God-is-dead movement; we believe in the living God. But how are we going to put God back into the thinking of modern youth especially, and of nonchurch people? We can’t very well do it through divine revelation or through prayer. It seems to me we’ve got to begin at the foundation and through a dialectic process point out that intelligence is the most satisfactory and rational solution of all that exists, with our spaceshots, moonshots, and all the evidence of order and purpose and law. It seems to me that we’ve got to ask, Did this all come from nothing? Is it the result of blind, inner, chaotic matter or of Intelligence—the answer to intelligence that we find in the universe? And this Intelligence, then, we would label God. We would have to define God after that. But it seems to me that we are going to have to reason with our people that God or a Supreme Intelligence is the only rational option. The Bible says, “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.” I think that any man who concludes that all that exists came out of nothing, that there is no Supreme Intelligence, is rationally foolish to reach such a conclusion.

Ramm: Dr. DeLong, if I may retranslate it into my language, what you are saying is that the Christian doctrine of creation is dead and the Christian doctrine of providence is dead. So as soon as you say God is dead you’ve got a funeral procession that is a rather lengthy one.

Henry: And if you start with the living God as the Bible does, as the presupposition without which everything makes nonsense and which alone makes sense of everything, then it’s the God-is-dead theology that is inverted. Now gentlemen, I think we’ve just about come to the end of our time. Perhaps we have just a moment for a concluding statement from each of you.

Clark: I would say that the inability of these men to show how they select what they like and how they reject what they don’t like—this philosophical defect spells the death of the death-of-God movement.

DeLong: I feel that our need today is not to kill the concept of God but rather to put God back into our homes and our schools and our churches and our businesses and more vitally in our minds and hearts. My conviction is summed up best in the words of that renowned British historian Arnold J. Toynbee: “The great need of the modern world is a rebirth of a supernatural belief; without it man, unregenerate man, is hardly to be trusted with the dangerous toys the laboratories have hatched.”

Ramm: If God is alive, which I believe he is, then we reverse the funeral procession and come from the cemetery back into the city of the living.

Clark: A resurrection.

Ramm: Yes.

Henry: It seems to me that the God-is-dead theory proves nothing so much as the depravity or corruption of man, and that the modern theologians are no more exempt than we are from corruption and the need of divine rescue and redemption. Gentlemen, thank you very much for sharing time out of your busy lives on this important subject of debate and controversy today.

We are sometimes told that the modern mind cannot accept the 2,000-year-old Gospel of Jesus Christ. I first heard the Gospel as a practicing physicist, and I find this opinion about the “modern mind” hard to understand. For when I first examined the gospel message I found that it appealed to me in the same way that physics had first appealed to me. In fact, I concluded that my training as a physicist had given me a viewpoint and a manner of thinking that made acceptance of the Gospel particularly easy.

The way I began to study the Bible was through a Bible class in a home. Here, for the first time in my experience, the Bible was examined seriously. I’d been brought up in a church where the Bible was up on the pulpit, but somehow the preacher and the congregation never really got into what it said. The people in the class took it seriously, and I found that they looked at the Bible in the same way that I looked at nature in a laboratory. It was considered to be reliable and important. If something didn’t seem quite right, they didn’t throw the whole thing away. They studied it carefully, compared different parts, crosschecked things, just as the scientist does in the laboratory. The difficulties were taken as a basis on which to learn more. Everyone seemed to believe that problems could lead to new understandings.

Now, this is a very scientific point of view. Professor P. A. M. Dirac, winner of a Nobel Prize for his work in quantum mechanics, makes this clear in commenting on the quantum theory:

I should now like to dwell a bit on the difficulties in physics in the present day. The reader who is not an expert in the subject might get the idea that because of all these difficulties physical theory is in pretty poor shape and that the quantum theory is not much good. I should like to correct this impression by saying that the quantum theory is an extremely good theory. It gives wonderful agreement with observation over a wide range of phenomena. There is no doubt that it is a good theory, and the only reason physicists talk so much about the difficulties is that it is precisely the difficulties that are interesting. The successes of the theory are all taken for granted. One does not get anywhere simply by going over the successes again and again, whereas, by talking over the difficulties people can hope to make some progress.

Scientists have learned to live with difficulties; we expect them. Thus the difficult things in Scripture were not the problem for me that they are for many people.

As a result of this inductive Bible study, I also saw the Bible message as a whole for the first time. Now it is hard for me to see how anybody can miss it, though I did for many years. The message is simply that back in the beginning (and we don’t know the details at all), man turned away from God. He was made to be in fellowship with God, but he rejected this fellowship. We have the story of the Garden of Eden. We see over the centuries how rejection of God got man into trouble over and over again. But God, who created man in his own image and loves him, determined to do something to restore this fellowship. He did this by coming himself. We say by “sending his Son,” but after all God and the Son are the same. He came himself, though in a sense that we don’t really understand. He didn’t pick somebody else to bear this burden but came himself and took on himself the punishment deserved by man. Because of this we can once more have good relations with God; we can have a new birth. We can be new people, no longer out of fellowship with God, no longer estranged from him.

Then we go on, and at the end of the Bible we have the Tree of Life again; we have God and Satan, the same cast we saw at the beginning, and the drama is completed. Those who are in fellowship with God are united with him forever. It’s a tremendous—let me use the word—“theory.” It encompasses history; it encompasses our own lives, our own thoughts. It explains the tragic history of man—terribly clever, yet somehow never able to prevent things from falling into ruin. Most convincing of all, we see a change in the lives of those who have become new creatures in Christ.

It was the attractiveness of this very comprehensive and beautiful theory, plus the fact that everywhere that I could test it in my own experience it rang true, that led me to become a Christian. There are difficulties. But this theory certainly explained a lot of things. A scientist doesn’t throw away a good theory because of a few difficulties.

I think that at this point it is perfectly understandable for people to demur. They can say, “well, you’re not very objective. You accepted this theory just because it seemed like a nice theory. Isn’t that wishful thinking? Are you going to believe in things simply because they are appealing?”

Let me appeal to scientific advances that are based on precisely this principle, that we want the world to be very nice and pleasant and that it’s right to construct theories that are this way. The first example is Einstein’s theory of general relativity, a theory of gravitation. Physics really began with Newton’s theory of gravitation, by which he could explain the orbits of the earth and planets. His theory was so good that we can use it to predict eclipses to a hundredth of a second. In fact, Newton’s theory was essentially perfect. As far as anybody knew, it explained everything.

Then why did Einstein produce another theory? Because he didn’t like the looks of Newton’s theory; it wasn’t quite symmetrical. One had to put in several assumptions, and these could be removed. Hence Einstein developed a new theory called “general relativity.” Of course, it had to predict everything Newton’s theory did, because Newton’s theory was right. But it also predicted three more things, things that were deviations from Newton’s theory. They were so small nobody had ever found them. But physicists scurried to their telescopes to see whether they could find them and apparently have found all three. Einstein was right; his theory was better. And the basis of the theory was just that it was a beautiful theory. It was what scientists call “elegant.”

My second example concerns the quantum theory. Professor Dirac wrote:

I think there is a moral to this story, namely that it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment. It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one’s equations and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress. If there is not complete agreement between one’s work and experiment one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged because the discrepancy may well be due to minor features that are not properly taken into account, and they will get cleared up with further developments of the theory.

Professor Dirac says that if you have to choose between exact agreement with experimental data and the beauty of a theory, you choose the beauty of the theory. This is the way a scientist looks at nature. And this is how I responded to the Gospel. Here is a theory that is really beautiful; it explains so many things.

Yet what about the evidence? I really believed for the first time when I sat down and read through the Gospel of John one night. I was compelled to believe that this man Jesus was what he said he was. But then I got very concerned about being objective and began to look into the evidence for the reliability of the Bible. I was very pleased, actually, just as Einstein was when they tested his theory, to find out that the Bible is indeed reliable. For example, there are literally hundreds of archaeological discoveries that make contact with Old Testament history, and we’re told that not one discovery has conclusively disagreed with the Bible. This is remarkable, almost unbelievable. A lot of things are still unexplained, of course; we don’t know, for example, just how the world was created by God. But a tremendous amount is verified.

We also find that the New Testament stories of Christ were written within the lifetime of the people who knew him, all within the first century. It would be like historians writing about the First World War between 1940 and 1980. Historically, then, the evidence is very good that what we have in the Bible now is accurate. It is as accurate as a historical record can be. In thinking back about my decision to believe, however, I realize that I really believed before I knew these things. And I think that Einstein also believed in his theory before the tests were made.

Another aspect of the Christian message that appeals to the scientist is that both the physical world and the Christian Gospel have certain peculiar characteristics. We find when we study the atom that we get down to a little particle called the “electron.” I said “little particle,” but it turns out that this “little particle” isn’t always a particle. Sometimes it is like a wave. A particle is something that is right here, exactly, and a wave is something that is everywhere. Two things could not be more different from each other; yet both these descriptions fit electrons. The electron is sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave. It depends on how one looks at it. When it zips through a geiger counter and the geiger counter goes blip, there goes a particle through the counter. But sometimes the electron diffracts around things and spreads all over, then it looks like a wave.

There is nothing mysterious about all this; it’s just part of nature. But it is very complicated, and when we try to speak of something as small as the electron in terms of particles and waves that we see all around us, we find out that these limited concepts of ours just aren’t adequate. Actually the electron is different from either a particle or a wave; but we must use human language and haven’t lived inside an atom, and so are limited in our description of what happens.

PREPARING THE CROSS

Long ago when the earth was bare

He fed the soil.

And with His breath

Blew Life into a tree.

Then He hid the crooked wood

Beneath a cloak of leaves

And the thorns

Beneath the rose.

And He made

The carpenter,

The soldier

and the priest.

And gave to them

A nail,

A spear

And a lamb.

And then He waited …

DANIEL J. CALLAGHAN

The physicist isn’t terribly surprised, then, when he runs into paradoxes in the Bible. For example, predestination and free will could not be more different from each other. In predestination everything is determined, while with free will man can choose to do what he wishes. What really brings the problem to a head is that Paul writes about both. In fact, he writes about predestination in the ninth chapter of Romans and free will in the tenth. There they are, and unless Paul is a fool we have to recognize the force of both positions. To me, this is one of the best signs that Scripture is a revelation. A man writing from his own knowledge just would not clearly contradict himself; Paul obviously was writing down things he didn’t completely understand. Certainly, no theologians since then have really understood these things.

This comparison between science and theology can be made even more precise. When we look at things from God’s point of view, we find the sovereignty of God and predestination. What he says is going to be done is done. When we get around on the other side and look from man’s point of view, we see that we have free will. It’s very much like the matter of the electron: what the object looks like depends on the experiment one does. Thus, there is something in the Christian Gospel that is very similar to what we find in nature, and as a scientist I find this reassuring. The Gospel may be very complicated and not readily understandable, but it shows signs of having the same Maker that nature has.

There is one point, however, at which I think the scientist is at a disadvantage in responding to the Christian message. One has to believe the Gospel. He can’t just say, “Yes, that looks very nice. I’ll write a book about it. I’ll discuss some reasons why a scientist is attracted to the Christian Gospel.” That is the natural response of a scientist: to set up his experiment on Christianity, get back, keep hands off, and see what happens. But he does not become a Christian by doing that. He has to take a step forward and say, “Yes, I believe it; I’m going to commit my life to it.”

The Gospel does promise that if we believe, then we will begin to accumulate evidence. Let me quote Peter here. When everybody was turning away from Jesus, he said to his disciples, “Are you all going to leave me now?” Peter answered, “We have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.” The disciples believed first, and then they were convinced. It’s a bit like learning how to swim. One may be pretty sure he can do it, but in order to know he has to jump in. In responding to the Gospel one has to say, “All right, it’s very convincing; I’m going to commit my life to this.” Then, when he opens the Bible, he begins to understand things he didn’t understand before. He can begin to pray in a different way. Events fall into place, and his assurance grows.

It was about ten years ago that I made this decision for myself, and I have never had reason to regret it. Since then I’ve learned more and more about the Gospel and therefore about myself, other people, and the purpose of life. The promises of God have been kept in my own experience; I’ve seen prayers answered, have had warm fellowship with other Christians, have experienced “the peace that passeth understanding.” What more could a scientist want than to have the most beautiful theory he can imagine validated so completely in the laboratory of life?

Milton D. Hunnex is professor and head of the department of philosophy at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon. He received the B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Redlands and the Ph.D. in the Inter-collegiate Program in Graduate Studies, Claremont, California. He is author of “Philosophies and Philosophers.”