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Problem Of Missions: Theological Softness

God’s Mission—and Ours, by Eugene L. Smith (Abingdon, 1961, 169 pp., $3.25). is reviewed by John H. Kromminga, President. Calvin Seminary.

The mission of the Christian Church is an all-embracing task in which the whole Church ought to be involved. It is a subject for profound study, involving the most basic Christian concepts; it is a complex subject, requiring adaptation of all facets of the Christian faith to many and varied cultures. These are among the important messages which author Smith forcefully drives home.

His book will prove helpful to many kinds of people. It will be especially so to the many loyal supporters of the Christian mission who have never been able to visualize conditions of life and culture in a foreign country. Drawing on wide contacts, making excellent use of a goodly store of illustrations, and writing with commendable vigor, the author has succeeded in lifting the reader out of isolation. Throughout the book he communicates the conviction that the Christian mission is carried out in a world of concrete reality and cannot ignore the burning issues of human interrelations.

The vivid style of this book is sometimes marred by abrupt changes of subject. Illustrations at times miss the point.

The author indicates, both directly and indirectly, that he is disillusioned with theological liberalism and its contribution to the Christian mission. He does not believe that neo-orthodox pessimism provides the proper antidote to liberalism. His attitude toward fundamentalism is ambiguous. He criticizes it. perhaps rightly, for rigidity and divisiveness. But it is not clear just what he means when he accuses fundamentalism of the heresy of failing to recognize the freedom with which Christ has made us free.

In the opinion of this reviewer, the author is too optimistic about the progress and growth of the Christian mission according to present indications. He is lacking in patience with theological precision. When he says that the differences between Orthodox, Nestorians, and Monophysites were less serious than the bitterness accompanying the divisions, his judgment is questionable even though this sort of statement is often made. At some places he seems too much at peace with modern Western culture (e.g. p. 116) to be consistent with the criticisms he makes elsewhere. This reviewer is particularly concerned over his doctrine of Scripture. It is not clear whether the author distinguishes in principle between revelation in the canon and revelation after the canon. This weakness is underscored by his failure to do justice to the orthodox interpretation of the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Word (p. 157).

Thus, in this very readable and helpful book, there is a theological softness that deprives this treatment of finality. It is just such a theological weakness which lies at the heart of the modern missionary problem. Therefore, for all the vigor and cogency of the author’s presentation, we are constrained to say: This ought he to have done, and not to have left the other undone.

JOHN H. KROMMINGA

God And The Unknowable

The Knowledge of the Holy, by A. W. Tozer (Harper, 1961, 128 pp., $3), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The gifted editor of The Alliance Witness, long a dedicated minister of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, here turns his ready pen to the exposition of the doctrine of God. Essentially a popular statement of the divine attributes, the book reflects Dr. Tozer’s incisive and clever turn of phrase.

“The loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind,” the author tells us, has replaced the lofty Christian concept of God by another “so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men.… We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence” (p. vii). Though the Church “may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false.”

The work breathes a spirit of devotion. Each chapter is preceded by an appropriate prayer, each relates the respective attributes to man’s daily outlook. Dr. Tozer is concerned, he says, to enrich the “heart” more than to illumine the mind. His real concern is the practical life, in his words “personal heart religion.”

Those who search this book for systematic theology are likely to be disap pointed. Indeed, evangelical theologians will be disturbed—and with good reason—over some of its facets. Dr. Tozer pictures thought and speech as “God’s gifts to creatures made in His image; these are intimately associated with Him …” and he ascribes the yearning to know God to the divine image in man. But he does not elaborate this in terms of a theistic view of reason and language.

The knowledge of God is viewed as a problem for several reasons. 1. Man’s sinfulness poses a barrier overcome by God’s revelation in Scripture. But God’s complete self-disclosure in Christ is said to be made “not to reason but to faith and love.” 2. Man’s finiteness assertedly precludes his bearing God’s “exact image” in any respect, and limits man’s knowledge of God to a shadowland knowledge (“Only to an equal could God communicate the mystery of His Godhead.…”). 3. God’s ineffability places “a great strain on both thought and language in the Holy Scriptures.” Dr. Tozer repeatedly quotes the mystics who assert the inconceivability of God. Indeed, he periodically presses the thesis that we have no knowledge of God-in-himself—a premise hardly serviceable to evangelical theology. We are told: “The name of God is secret and His essential nature incomprehensible.”

Yet Dr. Tozer insists that, by divine revelation, we know certain of God’s attributes (sketched popularly along quite traditional lines). He ventures to define an attribute, curiously, as “whatever God has in any way revealed as being true of Himself.” But an attribute is “a mental concept, an intellectual response to God’s self-revelation.” “An attribute … is how God is, and as far as the reasoning mind can go, we may say that it is what God is, though … exactly what He is He cannot tell us.” “Love and faith are at home in the mystery of the Godhead. Let reason kneel in reverence outside.”

Because of his dependence on Scripture, Dr. Tozer’s exposition is more orthodox than his theory of religious knowledge would permit if applied consistently. Those who seek “a reason for the hope within us” will not be content with a delineation exalting faith at the expense of reason, inasmuch as such a rationale would be serviceable to the Hindu or the Jesuit as much as to the Protestant.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Gautama And Christ

On the Eightfold Path: Christian Presence Amid Buddhism, by George Appleton (Oxford, 1961, 156 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by E. Luther Copeland, Professor of Missions, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

In the “Christian Presence Series,” of which this volume is the second, Christian writers attempt to stand within another religion, see through the eyes of its devout adherent, and find “how God has been speaking to him and what new understandings of the grace and love of God we may ourselves discover in the encounter” (p. 10).

The author of this volume, having known Buddhism at first hand in Burma, gives a very generous and appreciative estimate of this religion, particularly in terms of its original meaning. However, he maintains witness to firm Christian conviction in insisting that the revelation of God in Jesus Christ unveils the deficiency or “blind spot” of Buddhism.

Indeed, to study and discuss non-Christian religions in the spirit of this series, and to recognize, neither grudgingly nor nervously, such goodness and truth as they possess, demands a Christian faith that is large and strong.

E. LUTHER COPELAND

Religion In America

The Shaping of American Religion (514 pp., $8.50), Religious Perspectives in American Culture (427 pp., $7.50), and A Critical Bibliography of Religion in America (in 5 parts, bound separately—parts 1 and 2, 541 pp., parts 3, 4, and 5, 1219 pp., $17.50), edited by James Ward Smith and A. Leland Jameson (Princeton University Press, 1961), are reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, Professor of History, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

These volumes along with another to appear later this year constitute a project known as Religion in American Life. It is a worthy and ambitious program growing out of the special study course in American civilization which has been conducted at the University for some time. Princeton is to be commended for its awareness of the importance of Christianity in the shaping of the American tradition. Volume I attempts to present an analysis of institutionalized religion in America (Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish, and the newer sects) along with some history of their development from the colonial era to our own day. At the same time there is some attempt to discuss the development of American theology.

The initial monograph by H. Richard Niebuhr is concerned with the relationship which exists between Protestantism and democracy in terms of the inner dynamics of its theology and spiritual heritage. Niebuhr freely confesses his difficulty in achieving a satisfactory definition of both Protestantism and democracy and his inability to do so haunts the whole essay. He never equates the two streams of thought, but because he has no clear conception of biblical redemption he sees in both democracy and Protestantism a certain kinship which becomes evident in parallel strands of thought. An equal indecision and confusion in regard to the inner meaning of democracy makes this introductory chapter very disappointing.

Of much greater merit is Henry J. Browne’s excellent historical treatment of the development of Roman Catholicism in this country. It is his conviction that the distinguishing characteristics of Roman Catholics in this country is their determination to prove that they belong to the American scene. Of particular interest and of great value for its insight is his treatment of the development of the parochial school and the reasons for it. Protestants and secularists will both be astounded at his candid admission that Catholicism has not made significant contributions to American culture to any great degree. The general effect of this chapter is to give a rather unusual insight into the pervading psychology of nineteenth century American Catholics.

Professor Oscar Handlin also uses the historical approach to give the finest short treatment of Judaism in this country known by this reviewer. With great insight he portrays the role of the Jew in American history and sets forth the circ*mstances and cultural factors which brought about the emerging of the Conservative and Reform movements within Judaism. He shows the attempt on the part of the American Jews to accommodate their heritage to the democracy of which they are a part. Inevitably this attempt produced serious stresses and strains within Jewish Orthodoxy with the result that its ecclesiastical unity was broken.

Particularly disappointing is Leland Jameson’s presentation of what he calls “Religion on the Perimeter.” He examines the sects and the cults and finds their principal courses in social unrest and psychological instability and he pays little or no attention to the theological factors. He also fails to make a proper distinction between the cults properly so called and those groups which have felt it necessary to secede from the major denominations because of their liberalism. The remaining monographs in Volume I dealing with various aspects of American theology and its psychological aspects are more satisfactory. Evangelical Christianity in general and Calvinism in particular failed to receive the treatment they deserve. Nowhere does Calvinism stand out as the great living force which shapes so much of our theology down to 1860. Neither is the rise of liberalism Hewed as a serious departure from orthodoxy and threatening the very life of the church; rather it is portrayed as a normal response of the religious mind to the impact of Darwinism and industrialism in American life. This casual treatment of orthodoxy is the pervading weakness of Volume I.

Volume II, Religious Perspectives in American Culture, is basically an attempt to interpret our national culture in terms of a religious but not necessarily Christian world and life view. The first monograph on Religious Education in America, by Will Herberg, despite some good observations on the early relationship existing between public education and Christianity in this country, falls far short of presenting in its true light education in the colonial and early national periods. Herberg conveniently omits the evangelical presuppositions and leadership which brought education into existence. Much of the chapter is devoted to attempts to find a principle for determining what the relationship between religion and public education should be in the light of recent decisions of the Supreme Court. The succeeding chapters in Volume II fall far short of its announced intentions. Lacking in both of these volumes is a basic theology which alone can support such a study as was contemplated by the Princeton group. There is no clear recognition of the sovereignty of God, the depravity of man, salvation by faith alone, and the infallibility and supremacy of the Scriptures. The frame of reference for both volumes is a nebulous religion rather than historic orthodoxy, and for this reason these volumes will be deeply disappointing to those evangelicals who look for an evaluation of American culture in terms of a basic Christianity.

The redeeming feature of this project lies in the two volumes containing a critical bibliography of American Christianity. It is by far the best collection that has come to the attention of this reviewer.

C. GREGG SINGER

Preaching Book By Book

Preaching on the Books of the Old Testament, by Dwight E. Stevenson (Harper, 1961, 267 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Clarence S. Roddy, Professor of Homiletics, Fuller Theological Seminary.

Decrying the neglect of true biblical preaching in the modern pulpit, the fragmentation of the books of the Bible by basing a sermon on a verse or a phrase, Dr. Stevenson challenges the minister to regain the true message of the Bible by preaching the total message of a book in a single sermon. This, he maintains, confronts the man in the pew with a whole message. It brings him under the impact of the Bible as a unit. It produces biblical consciousness. Dr. Stevenson has produced a well-written, practical volume of principles, methods, and examples of true, expository preaching. Such preaching is not easy, but it is worth while. This is a fine addition to the preacher’s tools.

CLARENCE S. RODDY

Chronicle Of Revival

The Inextinguishable Blaze, by A. Skevington Wood (Eerdmans, 1960, 256 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by J. Edwin Orr, Missioner, International Council of Christian Leadership.

This is an excellent book by a Methodist scholar whose warmth of heart matches his erudition. It interprets the spiritual advances of the eighteenth century in the light of accumulated knowledge of 15 decades following.

Very properly, the author begins with the sad condition of Protestantism in the English-speaking world at the beginning of that century. His chronology in tracing the rise of the Evangelical Revival is commendable, in that he begins not with the Wesleys or even Jonathan Edwards, but commences with the morning star of the movement—Griffith Jones of Wales. In America, notice is taken of the outbreak of revival in New Jersey under Theodore Freylinghuysen, a link with the pietism of the European Continent which affected the Methodists by way of the Moravians later.

Unlike some recent authors who have tried to make a case for Calvinism or for Arminianism as the deciding element of evangelical revival, Dr. Skevington treats the contributions of both schools of thought and action in proper balance. It is a pity that there is a dearth of material upon the effects of the Awakening among the Ulster Scots, who profoundly influenced the course of affairs in America. There is also a need of fuller consideration of events on the Continent.

As this volume is one of a series edited by Professor F. F. Bruce, it is to be hoped that someone like Skevington Wood will be persuaded to give an adequate coverage to the great awakenings of the nineteenth century, an area in which little comprehensive writing has been done.

J. EDWIN ORR

To Combat Caricature

The Word of God and Fundamentalism (Church Bookroom Press, 1961, 127 pp., 4s.), is reviewed by Martin H. Cressey, Minister, St. Columba’s Presbyterian Church, Coventry, England.

This volume consists of the papers read to the 1960 Oxford Conference of Evangelical Churchmen (Anglicans). The subject was chosen for two reasons. First, 1961 is the 350th anniversary of the King James Version. Second, there is a great deal of misunderstanding of the conservative evangelical position, much of which centers on the word “Fundamentalism” and its varied meanings.

One may question the wisdom in general of publishing conference addresses. They often lack the lucidity and polish required by the careful reader; the lack was doubtless supplied by the emphases and enthusiasm of the original speakers, but these cannot be reproduced in print. One gets this feeling from several of the papers, and unfortunately the book also bears marks of some carelessness in production.

It is greatly to be hoped, however, that this will not hinder what is presumably the main object of publication, namely, the correction of misunderstanding of conservatives by liberals. The papers have no great originality, but they make it plain that theological conservatism is by no means the same thing as obscurantism, a mechanical doctrine of inspiration, or a literal interpretation of biblical passages which are plainly metaphorical or figurative. These papers will not resolve all the liberals’ doubts. That could hardly be expected of a short paperback. But they may encourage fruitful discussion in place of name-calling.

The criticism of “the American type of fundamentalism,” mentioned on the back cover, is a criticism of extremists and emphatically does not embrace all American conservatives, one of whom is quoted at some length to support the criticism of his fellow-countrymen.

M. H. CRESSEY

A Case Of Identity

The Origin and Meaning of the Name “Protestant Episcopal,” by Robert W. Shoemaker (American Church Publications, 1959, 338 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by William B. Williamson, Rector, The Church of the Atonement, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This is an important book which unfortunately was written and published 50 years too late to be a positive and objective influence to the partisan “sides” in the “frequently disputed (an issue in every convention except three triennially since 1877) name ‘Protestant Episcopal.’” It is a scholarly contribution to the knowledge of a particular area in the history of American religious life and especially that of the Episcopal church. Curiosity regarding the dispute (“Nothing I read was satisfactory; it was largely shallow opinion and virtually all polemic”) led this young assistant professor of history at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute into seven years of well-organized research where he utilized documentary materials from 25 libraries and the professional assistance and guidance of more than a dozen church and secular scholars. The final production is a unique and careful, though at times tedious, study in the field of religious semantics and specifically in the usage in America of the words “protestant” and “catholic.” One mechanical weakness is the location of abundant and accurate footnotes in the back of the book. The hardship of relating 177 footnotes to the 30 pages of text in chapter one is an example of the inevitable problem of printing logistics.

The main burden of the book is a thorough examination of the meaning of the word “protestant” from the sixteenth century to the present. While protestant was first used to describe Lutherans in the mid-sixteenth century, it was also applied to Anglicans to the end of the seventeenth century. Finally in the eighteenth century “protestant” was expanded to include all nonpapal Western Christians. The author records thousands of examples to give abundant evidence of this semantic change. The words “papist” (Roman Catholic) and “dissenter” (sectarian Christian) are also discussed along with the changing meaning of antonyms (opposites compared), for example, protestant versus papist (now protestant versus catholic).

The author’s discussion of “catholic” takes up the two most popular definitions—universal, which he identifies as a carry-over from “billy-goat” Greek, and Roman Catholic, which he reveals as a geographical and not a theological definition. He insists the word “catholic” is not a definition but a description of the body maintaining apostolic “Doctrine and Sacraments, and the Discipline of Christ as the Lord hath commanded” (in the Holy Scriptures) (Ordinal of the Book of Common Prayer), without Roman Catholic additions and sectarian deletions.

The how, what, where, and why analysis of the name “Protestant Episcopal” reveals that prior to the American Revolution “protestant” was used to describe the Anglicans in Maryand and in other southern states. Also the word “episcopal” was a rare, pre-revolutionary designation, except in New England where it was used in opposition to “pres-byterial or congregational.” Indeed the author insists that “Protestant Episcopal did not exist in our language … prior to its general adoption in 1780” (p. 29).

The first convention of post-revolutionary American Anglicans met to repair their war-tattered church. It was composed mostly of Maryland and Pennsylvania churchmen which is the reason the author gives for the adoption of the name “Protestant (nonpapist) Episcopal (noncongregational) Church in the United States of America.” To the middle states delegates both terms were well understood and no issue whatever is recorded. The author points out that “a dearth of evidence” surrounding this convention makes historical reconstruction impossible. (Only one document supporting later opinions and accounts of the adoption of the name could be found.)

A comparison of the words “protestant” and “catholic,” as they refer to the Episcopal church and the Anglican communion, causes the author to claim that modern American use of “protestant” describes a position far removed from that of the basic Episcopal-Anglican position. He cites a recent (1954) action of the Diocese of Pennsylvania in approving a report of a special committee appointed to study the National Council of Churches publications, for example, Primer for Protestants and What Protestants Believe. The committee censured these publications because “reviewed in relation to the Anglican formularies [they] evidence the promotion of a body of doctrine that is in opposition to the Episcopal church (Journal, 1954, p. 277).

The author’s final conclusion comes as no surprise at all. He states that the name “Protestant Episcopal” is inaccurate in the view of the semantic change which has taken place. It should, he believes, be amended immediately; “then the church can get on to more important matters.” After discarding several possibilities, such as Reformed Catholic, American Anglican, The Episcopal Church, he recommends the name The American Episcopal Church which he calls “accurate, concise, palatable, and historical” (p. 296). Many would agree that change in the corporate name should be made as a clarifying move toward a sharper witness for Episcopalians among the nonpapal Christians of the Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox communions.

Regardless of the name, one factor will undoubtedly remain unchanged however, and that is the admitted paradox and dilemma of the dual nature of Anglicanism. The catholic-evangelical nature of the Episcopal church is a real and vital tension under which God seems to will that we should live in unity. “Hold that fast which thou hast,” is Christ’s command to the Church in the Book of Revelation (3:11). Thus by holding each paradoxical nature as essential and continuing “steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42), and by loving fellowship and Gospel witness the Episcopal church will achieve the reward promised by our Lord and be “a pillar in the temple of … God.”

WILLIAM B. WILLIAMSON

Missionaries’ Handbook

The Bible School on the Mission Field, by Hubert Reynhout, Jr. (privately published by the author in care of Barrington College, Barrington, Rhode Island, no date, 72 pp., $1.25), is reviewed by Harold Lind-sell, Vice President, Fuller Theological Seminary.

Part of a doctoral dissertation written at Harvard, this work touches on missionary Bible schools overseas, and delineates their weaknesses and strengths, and projects an image of what the ideal Bible school should be like. The work is based upon information obtained from missionaries engaged in Bible school endeavors, and it brings into focus the experiences and recommendations of those closest to the problem. It could serve admirably as a handbook to missionaries and missionary leaders engaged in, or expecting to begin, this kind of educational endeavor. Unfortunately its usefulness will be limited both by the nature of the subject and the fact that it is privately reproduced.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Nothingness: An Iron Fist

Nihilism: Its Origin and Nature—With a Christian Answer, by Helmut Thielicke (Harper, 1961, 186 pp., $5), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, Asbury Theological Seminary.

Discussions of post-Christian paganism have not overlooked the last “ism,” nihilism, but many of them have failed to note that the nihilist of the cafe has never really faced the realities which belong to his discussion of Nothingness. The present Rector of the University of Hamburg, Helmut Thielicke, faced a generation of genuine disillusionment in his Germany of 1945, and in his Tubingen lectures he captured the timeless elements which exist in the “existential” situation. The one who would review these lectures is at a loss for a place to begin, for the volume contains a certain vastness of content. In one sense, nihilism is a study in distinctions. The author sees with clarity that which is so frequently camouflaged in discussions of existentialism, namely, the distinction between naive, cultic nihilism on the one hand, and the implicit, serious, and covert form on the other. Dr. Thielicke sees likewise the proximate and exhibitionist character of faddist existentialism, and the far-reaching character and dimensions of the anxiety which has seized the man to whom nihilism is a really serious mood.

This book has at its core the contention that every “autarchy of this-world” leads ultimately in the same direction. Applied to the individual, it brings him to loss of the ego and into the iron grip of Fate; applied to jurisprudence, it leads to unsubstantial positive law, with its foggy relativism; applied to medicine, it fragments therapy so that it cannot cope with a vast sector of contemporary illness; applied to politics, it creates a dialectic out of which the arbitrary authoritarianism of the dictator may easily arise. The author’s discussions in these several fields are frightening precisely because they are so accurate in their description of what exists in Western society.

Some writers in this area attribute the loss of the human ego to the vast impersonalization of today’s world; Dr. Thielicke sees that the loss of “self” by the modern man is causal to the inhumanity of his world. Man’s self-definition is what it is in the twentieth century precisely because of the loss of the controlling relationship by which he is man, namely, his relation to God. The loss of value in terms of “man-under-God” issues easily and simply in “utilizable value” which equals wonvaluc. To compensate for the loss of the awareness of God, so characteristic of modern paganism, modern man seeks to create his synthetic “gods” in terms of the absolutizing of this or that.

The major contribution of Nihilism is not, however, merely the drawing of trenchant distinctions, valuable as this may be. Dr. Thielicke sees beyond what is for the post-Christian pagan, and sketches with bold strokes what may he for the man who will permit the living God to knock out the dungeon-wall which surrounds him. The core of the answer is that the total threat of meaninglessness has been overcome by the God-Man who, in the dark hour of Golgotha, fled to the Father. Our author does not wait to the final lines to point the way out of man’s predicament, but weaves this into his discussion and expresses it in its most powerful form in Chapter 10, “The Anxiety of Life.”

Important for the understanding of existentialism as a whole is Professor Thielicke’s continual distinction between the cultic, naïve nihilism and the reflective form which “continues to stand its ground in the face of the question of meaning.” It would be interesting to overhear him in discussion with a beatnik who explains, with practiced hesitation and with each sentence beginning with the word “like,” precisely and learnedly how he became mixed up in the first place. It is probable that Dr. Thielicke would penetrate this sham with a few well-placed sentences. More instructive still would be a dialogue between him and one who has experienced “Nothingness” through authentic experiences.

Nihilism is a work born out of a genuine, visible shattering of human foundations through the bombings of World War II. For this reason it has the ring of reality, so absent in many current “existential” discussions. After all, there is something hollow about the sound of a pampered product of the uninterrupted enjoyment of the American Lebensstand-ard discussing “existential anguish” and “life at the boundary.”

It is to the good that Professor Thielicke omits the theatricals which so frequently characterize “existential” writings whose authors seem to delight in leaving the reader engulfed in “anxiety’s horrible vacuum.” This volume is unique in that it presents the Inescapable One who stands at the limits of what parades as the Abyss of Nothingness, and who will continue to triumph gloriously after man’s ersatz “gods” of past and present (including communism) pass into the limbo of oblivion.

The reader who desires a piquant freshness and a pungency of style will be delighted with Nihilism. Professor Thielicke utilizes with great effectiveness his wide acquaintance with German literature, and illustrates his major propositions by its permanent insights. His volume is not one to be read once and then put on the shelf. This reviewer has already marked his copy generously and cross-referenced it at a dozen points. The lectures which comprise its contents are as relevant today as when they were delivered fifteen years ago. The course of today’s history seems to indicate that they will still be contemporary for decades. The thoughtful reader will particularly appreciate two merits of Dr. Thielicke’s work: first, his keen distinctions between the genuine and the cultic in extentialism, and his evangelistic patience with the honest heart that seeks a way out of the iron fist of the feeling of Nothingness.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Adapt—Don’T Compromise

The Edge of the Edge, by Theodore E. Matson (Friendship Press, 1961, 165 pp., $2.95) is reviewed by M. Jackson White, Pastor of First Baptist Church of Clarendon, Arlington, Virginia.

The author makes a very clear and penetrating analysis of our times. Special attention is given to population trends. To meet the new challenges presented today, the church is called upon to exercise a greater spirit of co-operation in locating its buildings and in developing its programs to meet the spiritual needs of the people.

Though the author calls for a thorough adaptation of the church to all changing conditions of the world today, he never loses sight of or compromises the true mission of the Church as given by Christ himself.

All our denominational leaders and church planners could profit greatly by carefully studying the principles presented in this book.

M. JACKSON WHITE

Book Briefs

Dear Doctor: I have a problem …, by M. R. De Haan (Radio Bible Class, 1961, 278 pp., $3). The second volume of Bible questions and answers aired on radio by the well-known Bible teacher.

Christians in Racial Crisis, by Thomas F. Pettigrew and Ernest Q. Campbell (Public Affairs Press, 1959, 196 pp., $3.50). A study of the predicament and behavior of Little Rock’s ministers during the 1957–58 school desegregation crisis. Included are statements on race relations by leading U.S. denominations.

Reprints

The Heritage of the Reformation, by Wilhelm Pauck (Free Press, 1961, 399 pp., $6). A three-part study of the Reformation, Protestantism, and liberalism, with a plea for “the further development of the ecumenical theology,” by the Union Seminary church historian (revised and expanded from the first edition of 1950).

New Testament Guide, by John H. Bratt (Eerdmans, 1961, 144 pp., $3). Revised and enlarged New Testament introduction designed especially for young people (first published in 1946).

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Archives

This book is named after its principal character, Esther, the beautiful Jewish maiden whose vicissitudes at the court of Persia were instrumental in saving her people from extermination. In the Hebrew Bible the book is included in the third division, the Writings of Hagiographa, and is one of the “five scrolls” which are read at the Jewish festivals. The famous medieval Jewish philosopher, Maimonides (1135–1204), asserted that when all the rest of the Old Testament canon would have passed away in the days of the coming of the Messiah, Esther and the Law would still remain.

OUTLINE OF CONTENTS

Because Queen Vashti had refused Ahasuerus’ summons to display her beauty before “the peoples and the princes,” she was dethroned (1:1–22) and eventually displaced by Esther (2:1–18). In the meantime Esther’s cousin Mordecai discovered a conspiracy against the king, which event was recorded in the royal chronicles (2:19–23). Mordecai refused to bow down before Haman, and in his rage this pompous vizier decided to have all the Jews in Persia executed (3:1–15). Mordecai then persuaded Esther to intervene on behalf of the Jews and said: “Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (4:14). Esther accepted the challenge: “If I perish, I perish” (4:16), and invited the king and Haman to a banquet (5:1–8). Mordecai still refused to rise or tremble before Haman, which caused Haman to plot Mordecai’s death on the gallows (5:9–14). During a sleepless night the king’s attention was drawn to the unrewarded service which Mordecai had rendered him (6:1–5), and Haman was unexpectedly forced to honor Mordecai (6:6–14). The denouement of the plot is reached when Esther disclosed Haman’s device to the king, with the result that Haman was hanged and Mordecai honored (7:1–8:2). Esther besought the king to avert the evil design of Haman, and by a second degree the Jews were permitted to defend themselves (8:3–17). This they did, and to commemorate their deliverance, the feast of Purim was instituted on the authority of letters sent out by Mordecai and Esther as an annual two-day festival (9:1–10:3).

The position of this book in criticism today concerns two main problems in regard to its historicity and significance, and a few lesser problems in connection with its authorship, date, unity, purpose, and the origin of the festival of Purim.

HISTORICITY

Opinion among critical scholars today can be boiled down to the following statements: The local color and the “historic setting” of the narrative cannot be denied, but this “does not necessarily prove that the incidents related actually occurred” (Pfeiffer). It becomes a question of weighing the balance, and in this connection a few things must be clearly understood: firstly, the historic data are insufficient to warrant dogmatic conclusions either way; secondly, the onus to prove the validity of the conclusion rests with them who questioned the explicit purport of the book; and, thirdly, the attitude towards the Bible as Word of God will inevitably have a bearing upon the conclusions to which we may arrive.

Critical scholars are agreed that the book of Esther purports to be the recital of actual events. They cannot deny the “fairly accurate knowledge which the author possessed about Persian royal palaces, and about Persian manners and customs.” In his book Le Musée du Louvre et la Bible, the well-known André Parrot attests that the excavations at Susa, in spite of the unscientific methods applied by the expedition of Morgan, confirms the description given in this book! In weighing these data conservative scholars are inclined to second the opinion of Wick Broomall that the book of Esther “is history—plain and simple; names, places, dates, and customs are all related on the historical level. Unless we begin with this premise, the story will have little meaning for us” (The Biblical Expositor, p. 396). Critical scholars, on the other hand, refer to these data as “the only support” for the conservative point of view, not because they deem them unconvincing in themselves but on account of the paramount weight they attach to the other scale of the balance, consisting in “chronological inaccuracies, exaggerations, strange coincidences, inconsistencies, and other fanciful details.”

A scrutinized study of the principal objections to the historicity of the book prove them to be inconclusive. For instance, all the characters in the hook, with the exception of Xerxes, are being regarded as “purely imaginary” because profane history does not refer to any one of them. Now it is most interesting to know that the Historiae of Herodotus terminates in 478 B.C., the year of Esther’s coronation, and that most of the historical records of that period were lost. This argumentum e silentio, therefore, does not carry much weight. More convincing is the argument that according to Herodotus, the wife of Xerxes was Amestris. But can it be dogmatically confirmed that Xerxes did not have a queen of the second order, such as was the case with Cambyses and pseudo-Smerdis? The onus to prove this in the face of the scanty historical data rests with the critical scholars.

Many of the objections to the historicity of the book are not more than hypothetical, because we have very little data in connection with the Eastern Diaspora between the fourth and the second century B.C. We must allow the probability of new light being used on some or most of the alleged inconsistencies in the book. When Pfeiffer asserts: “It is idle to speculate on the possibility that some incidents may be based on fact, for such guesses lack all confirmation” (Introduction, p. 740), his supposition is clearly that we do know all or most of the facts. This, however, is not true. We, on our side, assert that the critical scholars are overloading the weight of their objections, and that this is why they can come to the conclusion that our book “is fiction and not history.” We would like to contradict the statement that “all recent defenses of the historicity of the book of Esther remain unconvincing, because they fail to do justice to the real nature of the book” (Pfeiffer); indeed, the book is what it purports to be—a recital of actual facts.

SIGNIFICANCE

In their appraisal of the book, critical scholars distinguish between its aesthetical and religious significance. From a literary point of view most scholars are agreed that the book “deserves to be reckoned among the masterpieces of literature” (B. W. Anderson, The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 3, p. 831). The book’s religious significance, however, is categorically denied. Pfeiffer puts it this way: “Since religion is deliberately excluded from the book of Esther any verdict based on religious values is manifestly out of place, whether it be favorable or unfavorable” (op. cit., p. 747). The inclusion of this book in the canon of the Old Testament can only be explained, according to Eissfeldt, on the assumption of the inextricable connection between the Jewish religion and nation. This, he says, we can understand. But as Christians we will have to subscribe to the word of Luther: “I am so hostile to the book [II Maccabees] and to Esther that I wish they did not exist at all; for they Judaize too much and have much heathen perverseness.”

We cannot, however, approve of this extreme judgment. It is perfectly true that the name of God is never mentioned, that there are no references to any supplications on the part of the people in their time of terrible distress, that the writer seems almost afraid of using even the formal and conventional religious terminology; that the moral conduct of Mordecai and even of Esther was not always unimpeachable, as, for instance, the time when Esther did not correct the erroneous inference of the king in connection with Haman’s intention (7:8). Nevertheless, these considerations are not sufficient reason for doubting the canonicity of the book. We do agree that it is not easy to account for the omission of the name of God, but we want to stress the point that this does not imply that the book is irreligious. Anderson rightly observes that the Jews have always found in the story the expression of real religious sentiment, even though it is couched in nonreligious language and deals with natural rather than supernatural circ*mstances (op. cit., p. 830). The people who were endangered by the plot of Haman, and were saved through the intermediation of Mordecai and Esther, were God’s people, and their history, even in the Eastern Diaspora, was inextricably connected with the history of redemption. Seen from this point of view, the book of Esther serves the purpose of showing how divine Providence overrules all things on behalf of His people. In the context of the Bible’s message, the book of Esther certainly has religious significance in that it describes an episode in the titanic struggle between the Serpent and the Woman’s Seed (Gen. 3:15).

The “immoral” conduct of Mordecai and Esther is nowhere in the book approved and must be assessed in the light of the normative content of the Bible as a whole.

AUTHORSHIP AND DATE

We do not know who the author was. According to Baba Bathra 15a, “the men of the Great Synagogue wrote—the roll of Esther.” Josephus (Antiquities 11:6:1) considered Mordecai to be the author, and in favor of this 9:20 has been adduced where it says that Mordecai “recorded these things.” There is, however, a clear distinction between the book of Esther and the “writings” of Mordecai. Doubtless, in composing our book, the unknown author made use of Mordecai’s records and other written documents (2:23; 10:2).

The events related in this book took place during the reign of the Persian king Ahasuerus who is today normally identified with Xerxes I (485–465 B.C.).

The date of composition, however, cannot be easily and precisely ascertained. According to 10:2, the book was written after the death of Ahasuerus. In fact, when it was composed the official state history of Xerxes had been written. According to 9:19 the festival of Purim had already been instituted. There are, however, strong reasons for assigning the date of composition to a period not very long after the events it records. The layout of the royal palace must have been known to the author; and yet the palace was destroyed by fire within 30 years of the death of Xerxes. This, in connection with other considerations, seems to point to a date within a century of the story. Critical scholars, of course, do not agree with this, for in their opinion, the compilation of Esther must be placed as late as possible in the Greek period, some bringing the date as far forward as the middle of the first century B.C.

UNITY AND PURPOSE

Several scholars regard the closing passage, especially 9:20–32, as a gloss on the ground of linguistic and stylistic differences, which allegedly are peculiar to this section, and some supposed inconsistencies and contradictions. The objections which are raised against the integrity of this pericope are, however, indecisive. Careful literary analysis reveals that the author’s characteristic style is found throughout the book, and we cannot detect, for instance, any change in the prescriptions regarding the celebration of Purim, and the same applies, mutatis mutandis, to the other supposed inconsistencies. We agree with Edward Young that there seem to be no objective grounds for rejecting 9:20–32 or 10:1–3 (Introduction, p. 350).

Concerning the purpose of the book, we shall have to distinguish between the first and the ultimate purpose. I think we may agree with Anderson in asserting that the book’s first purpose is to explain and justify and regulate the celebration of a festival for which there is no basis in the Law by appealing to “history” to furnish the reason for its origin and institution (op. cit., p. 824). The ultimate purpose is to show how divine Providence protected the covenant people, even in a distant country, and thus upheld the validity of God’s promise that the Messiah would be born from the seed of Abraham.

FESTIVAL OF PURIM

The origin of the feast of Purim, as set forth in this book, is thought to be improbable, since the word pur is presumably not used in this sense in Persian. Indeed, the word is manifestly a non-Hebrew word as the Hebrew translation is expressly given (3:7). Scholars are mostly agreed that it is derived from the Accadian word puru (lot). On this presumption the theory is based that the festival of Purim must also be of foreign origin, and that it was appropriated by the Jews of the Eastern Dispersion. Scholars have variously attempted to explain it as a Babylonian New Year feast or a Persian celebration in honor of the dead. Eissfeldt, however, rightly observes that these, and other, theories are presumptious. Although we may admit that in their celebration the Jews did follow some of the Persian customs, there is no reason for denying the accuracy of 9:22 as a historically correct explanation of the origin of this feast.

LITERATURE

The standard commentaries of Keil and Delitzsch and Lange are still worthwhile. A short but informative (conservative) exposition is found in the New Bible Commentary (IVCF, London, 1954), by A. Macdonald. The discerning reader may consult the elaborate and able introduction and commentary by Bernhard W. Anderson and Arthur C. Lichtenberger in The Interpreter’s Bible (Abingdon, 1954). We can approve of much that is being said by Anderson in his article, “The Place of the Book of Esther in the Christian Bible” (Journal of Religion, Vol. XXX, 1950, pp. 32–43.) Works on introduction and critical questions are covered in Edward J. Young’s An Introduction to the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1949). For devotional purposes we can recommend the chapter on Esther by the late G. Campbell Morgan in Living Messages, and the contribution by Wick Broomall in The Biblical Expositor (Holman, 1960).

P. A. VERHOEF

Professor of Old Testament

Dutch Reformed Theological Seminary

Stellenbosch, South Africa

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Creeping liberalism within the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod constituency was dealt a dramatic rebuke this month by a sister synod with which it has cooperated for nearly 90 years. By a surprisingly decisive 124-to-49 standing vote, delegates to the 36th biennial meeting of the 352,563-member Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod adopted a resolution suspending fellowship with the Missouri Synod.

The resolution, passed after a 10-hour debate on the last day of the 10-day meeting in Milwaukee, cited Romans 16:17–18 as a basis:

“Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.”

The break has the effect of ending joint worship and, eventually, of dissolving joint projects such as cooperative missions stations, charities, and campus ministries.

The Missouri and Wisconsin synods have worked together through the medium of the Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America. They are the two principal members. Relations with the other two members, the 14,000-member Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (Slovak) and the 9,000-member Evangelical Lutheran Synod (Norwegian), were not affected by the latest Wisconsin Synod action.

Another resolution passed by the Wisconsin delegates stressed that in voting the suspension they were not “passing judgment on the personal faith of any individual member of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod,” but that they were addressing themselves to the corporate body.

Still another resolution left the way open for a renewal of fellowship, declaring that “under conditions which do not imply a denial of our previous testimony we stand ready to resume discussions with the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod with the aim of re-establishing unity of doctrine and practice and of restoring fellowship relations, these discussions to be conducted outside the framework of fellowship.”

Earlier in the convention, the Rev. Oscar J. Naumann, who was re-elected Wisconsin Synod president, sharply criticized the Missouri Synod’s liberal tendencies.

He said that a new statement prepared by the Missouri Synod’s theological faculties constituted an attack on the authority of Scripture.

“The time has certainly arrived for our synod to speak clearly and in unmistakable terms concerning this development,” Naumann declared. “When confidence has been destroyed it can be rebuilt only by the action of those who have destroyed it.”

He added that “we have not been shown that our presentation on any doctrine has gone beyond the teaching of Scripture. Therefore, we must say with Luther that unless we are shown from the clear Word of God where we have erred, we cannot recant or alter our position.”

He said that all the church’s preaching depended upon the certainty of the Bible and its unchallenged authority.

The president of the Missouri Synod, Dr. John W. Behnken, subsequently addressed the delegates and issued a fruitless plea:

“If there are errors in our midst, then remain with us and help correct these errors.”

Behnken said that differences between the two synods were not in doctrine but in the application of the Scripture. He said that the statement on the Bible referred to earlier by Naumann was merely a study document submitted to the denomination’s clergy for examination and still subject to correction. He asserted that both synods had subscribed to the same official statement on biblical authority.

Text Of Resolution Suspending Fellowship

Excerpts from a resolution adopted at the 36th biennial meeting of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod suspending fellowship with the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod:

“Whereas the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod has lodged many admonitions and protests with the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod during the past 20 years to win her from the path that leads to liberalism in doctrine and practice … and, whereas, our admonitions have largely gone unheeded and issues have remained unresolved; and … whereas the Commission on Doctrinal Matters has faithfully carried out its directions to continue discussions but now regretfully reports that differences with respect to the Scriptural principles of church fellowship … have brought us to an impasse … therefore, be it resolved that we now suspend fellowship with the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod on the basis of Romans 16:17–18 with the hope and prayer to God that the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod will hear in this resolution an evangelical summons to ‘come to herself’ (Luke 15:17) and to return to the side of the sister from whom she has estranged herself.”

Convention Circuit

At Norfolk, Virginia—The National Association of Free Will Baptists ousted five national officers in a polity dispute which reached a showdown at the association’s annual meeting in July.

A resolution which removed the five from office reaffirmed belief in congregational church government. It came as a result of a controversy over local church autonomy which split the congregation of the Edgemont Free Will Baptist Church at Durham, North Carolina. The dispute culminated with the ouster of its pastor, the Rev. Ronald Creech, and a North Carolina Superior Court order which turned over church administration to a minority group opposing the minister.

The national offices declared vacant had been held by five North Carolina clergymen who became involved in the court fight over the Edgemont church and its property. All had signed court affidavits which stated they believed in a connectional form of church government. They are:

The Rev. D. W. Hansley, pastor of the First Free Will Baptist Church, Kinston, and member of the association’s Superannuation Board; Dr. Michael Pelt, dean of the denomination’s Mount Olive Junior College, a school criticized by Creech; Dr. W. Burkette Raper, president of the college; the Rev. R. H. Jackson, pastor of Pine Level Free Will Baptist Church and member of the Home Mission Board; and the Rev. Ralph Lightsley, pastor of St. Mary’s Free Will Baptist Church, Newbern, and a member of the Free Will Baptist Bible College Board of Trustees.

The executive committee of the North Carolina State Free Will Baptist Convention subsequently passed a resolution “vigorously protesting” the national association’s ousters.

The resolution, prepared by Raper, said “we believe the issue of church government was only a pretense” for impeachment of the officers concerned and that “we believe the basic issue is the educational philosophy of Mount Olive College, the only regionally accredited college in the history of the Free Will Baptist Church.”

The national association’s executive secretary, Billy A. Melvin, then issued a statement denying that the college’s educational philosophy was an issue in the dispute.

Free Will Baptists are an Arminian group with some 2,500 churches in 51 states and an inclusive membership of about 200,000.

At Grand Rapids, Michigan—A majority element of the group which broke away from the Christian Reformed Church in 1926 is accepting reunification terms. The General Synod of the Protestant Reformed Churches in America endorsed a proposal made a month earlier by the synod of the Christian Reformed Church. The group includes some 15 congregations with about 5,000 members. A minority element of the 1926 rift did not agree to reunification.

At Minneapolis, Minnesota—The North American Baptist General Conference voiced strong support of the nation’s public school system and opposition to the use of public funds for religious schools at its triennial sessions.

A resolution adopted by the conference said that “religious liberty is the basis and safeguard of all other liberties.”

“Separation of church and state has proved to be a satisfactory safeguard for religious liberty in the United States,” the resolution added.

It recalled President Kennedy’s opposition to federal aid for parochial schools and noted that “certain authorities … have stated their opposition to any federal legislation for public schools unless parochial schools were also included.”

The Baptists said they would oppose such aid, whether “direct grants, indirect aid disguised as loans, and aids to religious schools under the pretext of ‘national defense.’”

The conference called on its members to increase their participation in public school activities.

It also voted to commend the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs “for its faithful presentation of the Baptist witness to both governmental and nongovernmental groups in instances where principles of religious liberty and separation of church and state are involved.”

The North American Baptist Conference was formerly known as the German Baptist Church of North America. It has a membership of about 52,000.

Summer Crusade

Billy Graham’s four-week crusade in Philadelphia began Sunday, August 20, climaxing months of preparations which were the most extensive ever for an American evangelistic series.

In more than 5,000 homes in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, group prayer meetings have been conducted three times a week since June 5. With the start of the crusade, the frequency will be stepped up to five meetings per week in each home.

Five thousand trained counsellors stood ready to aid those who responded to Graham’s appeal for commitment to Christ, despite a theft of authorization materials on the eve of the crusade opening. Three cardboard cartons of postage-paid envelopes disappeared from a loading platform in back of the crusade offices. Each of the 5,000 envelopes contained a personally-typed badge and a sheet of instructions for those who had been qualified as counsellors. Crusade workers labored around the clock to address and stuff another set of envelopes with a new order of badges (a different color) and instructions.

Thwarted Thrust

Theological liberals tried unsuccessfully last month to organize an ecumenical federation which would ostensibly have been representative of virtually all Latin American Protestantism.

The bid was made at the Second Latin American Evangelical Conference at Lima, Peru, where some 180 delegates (missionaries and nationals) representing all but two of the Latin American republics assembled to compare notes on the effect and future of their Protestant witness.

Delegates from Argentina and Uruguay urged conference action toward creation of an inclusive Latin American church confederation. Other delegates protested that the nature of the conference precluded such action. A session was adjourned so that the proposal could be considered off the record. A debate ensued, but the proposal never came to a vote.

The crusade had wide church support. Methodist Bishop Fred Pierce Corson, who, as the crusade began, was being installed as president of the World Methodist Council in Oslo, went so far as to insert a paid advertisem*nt in Philadelphia papers appealing to Methodists “to support this campaign for righteousness by their prayers, their presence, their services and their contributions.”

The crusade opened in Convention Hall, which has a seating capacity of 13,500. By Friday, August 25, the meetings were to have been moved to Municipal Stadium, where the Army-Navy football game annually attracts some 100,000. Graham spokesmen emphasized that there was no expectation of filling the stadium; the move was designed merely to accommodate more than was possible in the hall.

This fall will see an international exchange of evangelists in Graham’s work. Dr. S. Barton Babbage, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne, Australia, has been appointed as an associate evangelist for the Philadelphia crusade.

In return, two Graham team members, Leighton Ford and Joe Blinco, plan to hold a series of evangelistic rallies across Australia and Tasmania in October, November, and December.

Hoax or Heresy?

The August issue of Redbook magazine confirms the adage that statistics can be found to support most anything. In this case, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary of Louisville, Kentucky, which has had more than its share of embarrassment in recent years, again came out on the short end.

The magazine includes an article based upon interviews with a group of seminary students whose responses actually establish little more than the probability that liberal ministers will preach liberal theology. Fancy editorial spadework, however, implies that today’s heresy will be tomorrow’s norm in the Protestant ministry.

Among the “startling” tabulations were these: Only 44 per cent of the students believe in the virgin birth of Christ. Only 29 per cent believe there is a real heaven and hell. Only 46 per cent believe that Jesus ascended physically whole into heaven after his crucifixion.

Protestant Panorama

• Transfer of three annual conferences of the Methodist Central (all-Negro) Jurisdiction to the denomination’s predominantly white Northeastern Jurisdiction will be delayed at least a year because 14 of the 17 annual conferences in the Central Jurisdiction failed to act upon the proposed transfer during their 1961 sessions. The three conferences in question have voted for transfer, but a two-thirds majority of the 17 conferences is required.

• The Congregational Board of Home Missions plans to participate in the founding of a new liberal arts college at Sarasota, Florida. The interdenominational, interracial institution will be known as New College and will be privately controlled and endowed. It is scheduled to open in September of 1964 with about 1,200 students.

• A newly-acquired headquarters building for Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc., was dedicated last month in Santa Ana, California. The structure was purchased with help from the Irvine Foundation.

• Delegates to the 44th annual convention of the Lutheran Laymen’s Convention in Wichita last month authorized a $100,000-per-year program of “Preaching Through the Press”—nation-wide dissemination of Gospel messages through newspaper advertisem*nts.

• A Christian television station in Norfolk, Virginia, plans to begin operation by October. Rights to the UHF channel to be employed are held by the Christian Broadcasting Network, Inc., which has also applied for a construction permit to operate a new FM station in Norfolk. The Rev. M. G. (Pat) Robertson, son of U. S. Senator A. Willis Robertson, is president of the group.… Formosa’s first Christian radio station is scheduled to go on the air this fall. All Christian missions on the island have been invited to supply programs for the station, according to a Far East News Service report.

• The Sealantic Fund, Inc., is offering some $875,000 “or as much thereof as may be required” for purchase of books by accredited members of the American Association of Theological Schools. Grants to individual seminaries will be conditioned upon their own resourcefulness in seeking funds for books from other sources.

• Abingdon Press announced this month that its editorial offices for Religion in Life, quarterly journal for Christian scholars, are being moved from New York to Nashville.

• Twenty-four U. S. missionaries were captured by Congolese rebel forces last month and placed under house arrest. The missionaries, members of the Unevangelized Fields Mission Society, were released after one week, following a meeting of a missionary representative with the Stanleyville rebel regime.

• Special services in Saigon marked the 50th anniversary of Christian missions in Viet Nam. Keynote speaker was the Rev. L. L. King, foreign secretary of the Christian and Missionary Alliance which, back in 1911, became the first agency to send missionaries to Viet Nam. The autonomous Evangelical Church of Viet Nam now has a baptized church membership of about 25,000 plus a Christian community of many more thousands.

EAST GERMANS DEFY REDS TO ATTEND KIRCHENTAG

The following report was prepared for Christianity Today by one of its Contributing Editors, Dr. Harold B. Kuhn of Asbury Theological Seminary, who was on the scene in Berlin:

With the ringing of bells in a score of church towers in West Berlin, the tenth Evangelical (Lutheran) Congress of Germany opened Wednesday afternoon, July 19. Opening services were held simultaneously in eight churches in Berlin, five in the West and three in the East. In spite of the last-minute withdrawal of permission for East Germans to attend the congress by the rulers of the so-called German Democratic Republic, there were a surprising number from the Communist-controlled zone amid the 33,000 persons who registered officially for the Kirchentag (Church Day), as the congress is known in Germany. In his opening address in the Kirche am Sudstern, Bishop Otto Dibelius told an overflow crowd that the stream of unbelief which rages as a torrent in the Communist East is also working to undermine Christian faith in the Free World.

Cancellation of permission to hold any but strictly “worship” and communion services in East Berlin created a feeling of disappointment which hung over the entire five days of the Kirchentag. Most East German Protestant leaders were specifically barred. Only one East German bishop was on hand. Many program readjustments were necessitated by the East German action. Few of the educated who would normally speak for the East German churches dared to cross the border into free Berlin. There was, however, an unnumbered host of humble Christians who could and did pass over unnoticed. The leadership of the Kirchentag took every possible precaution to safeguard the privacy and well-being of these visitors, as well as to make special provisions for their maintenance, for most of them arrived with little or no money.

The five days’ sessions were mainly concerned with five subjects: the Bible and its message; the church and the ecumenical movement; the church’s obligations to commerce, industry, and labor; the church’s obligations to the cultural life of the nation; and the church in today’s divided world.

Bible-study sessions were uniformly well attended. About 23,000 assembled in the West Berlin Exhibition Grounds to hear an hour’s exposition of the 139th Psalm. Daily “working groups” met in three separate halls to hear gifted leaders discuss such topics as the biblical understanding of man, the nature of Bible prophecy, the question of God’s image in man, and God’s covenant with Israel. Concerted efforts were made to counter the notion that the Bible is merely “a thick, black-bound book for old people.” There was remarkably little discussion about Bultmann or Tillich; the emphasis was chiefly upon what the Bible itself has to say.

Various speakers were concerned, as in past congresses, to discover why the church failed so signally in the life of Germany from 1918 to 1930, and why she capitulated so tragically to Hitler and his pagan “German Christians” after 1933. Particularly acute was the heart-searching over anti-semitism. The spirit of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem hung heavily over these discussions; the outsider received the impression that conscientious Christians felt that they, too, were on trial with Eichmann. Careful attention was given to the “roots of anti-semitism” and to the misuse to which the German leaders after 1933 put the concept of “chosen people.”

The ecumenical movement was represented by guests from Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as by delegates from most of the countries of Western Europe. Discussions differed from those which might be heard in the United States, for Germany has a national church which is basically united and the denominational problem is totally different from that which exists in the Western Hemisphere.

Surprising were the depths taken in some of the discussions of the obligations of the church in commerce, industry, and labor. It was evident that church leaders are determined that the “error of acquiescence” committed during the Hitlerian era should not be repeated. Over and over again, speakers and discussion leaders sought to discover the implications of Christianity for man’s complex of interpersonal relationships and to set forth the prophetic role of the Church vis-à-vis these relationships. Much recognition was given the shrinking of the areas of human freedom within the common life and the increasing degree of obligation for the Christian to utilize constructively the areas of freedom which remain to him. Such contemporary idols as the mania for money making, the overbalanced desire for temporal security, and the reliance upon birth and class instead of proficiency came in for severe criticism.

Similar concern was expressed and explored in the discussions on the church and culture. The U. S. evangelical would often disagree with the permissiveness in attitude of Christians in Germany (even of those giving evidence of personal regeneration) toward many forms of amusem*nt. Such institutions as the dancing school (a seeming necessity for youth from the “better” German families) are taken for granted. At the same time, concern was expressed that the message of the Christian evangel penetrate the ranks of those who shape the cultural forms of the nation.

On the question of today’s divisions, the Kirchentag leadership leaned over backward to avoid giving the impression that the meetings were arenas for intensification of the cold war. West German chaplains, for instance, were not encouraged to come to Berlin. Discussions involving political questions were conducted so as not to entail difficulties for delegates or visitors from the East Zone. Nonetheless, there was a consistent and firm recognition of the demonic quality of Soviet imperialism, whether embodied within the U. S. S. R. itself or whether expressed in the satellite countries. Emphasis was placed upon the duty of the Christian to project the evangel into his environment.

The congress transpired in an atmosphere made tense by Khrushchev’s announced determination for a “peace treaty.”

The closing rally of the congress in West Berlin’s Olympic Stadium drew a crowd estimated by some at more than 100,000. The huge throng, mingling around a giant wooden cross, heard a plea over the 100 scattered loudspeakers to “make Christ the compass of their everyday life” from Dr. Reinhold von Thadden Trieflaff, head of the church day presidium. The proceedings were carried across Western Europe by radio and television. Bishop Dibelius led the gathering in reciting the Lord’s Prayer to close the rally.

Another highlight of the gigantic congress was a children’s rally attended by more than 12,000 youngsters from 6 to 13 years of age.

Participants in the children’s rally included many children of American and British families stationed in West Berlin.

Some of the principal speakers were dispatched to hold a service of spiritual encouragement at the huge Marienfelde refugee camp. Some went to orphanages and to homes for invalids and widows. Bishop Dibelius himself was one of several important personages who took time to meet with groups of a dozen or so teen-agers, answering their questions.

Thus, in general, the emphases of the Kirchentag were heartening. On the negative side, there was a tendency to regard all church members as being Christians, by virtue of baptism and confirmation. This tendency is a heavy burden on the back of the German Evangelical (Lutheran) Church. The Kirchentag must, however, be judged for what it is, not for what it might be. As an attempt to explore the meaning of the Lord’s words, “I am with you,” for the church in general, and for her laity in particular, it is an encouraging sign in the West German sky.

Exit Missionary

An application for visa renewal by Ralph T. Henley, one of the two U. S. missionaries for Churches of Christ in Jerusalem, was rejected this month.

The action was the latest event in a series of setbacks that a small Church of Christ in Jerusalem has suffered in recent months (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, July 31 issue). Jewish fanatics pelted the church with stones for weeks with little restraining action from local police.

Henley’s visa had expired and he was seeking an extension for two months. The visa of his American colleague in Jerusalem, Ernest O. Stewart, will not expire until November. Henley is sponsored by a Church of Christ in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Stewart by one in Toledo, Ohio.

Henley reaffirmed that neither he nor Stewart have “engaged in any activities which other missionaries are not engaged in … nor have we ever done anything outside or contrary to the laws of Israel.”

Henley charged that the motivation for the visa denial was political. He said that the Ministry of the Interior was “playing a game” with the church in hopes of getting more votes in an election held this month.

“The religious parties,” he declared, “are opposed to all missionary activity in the country—Catholic and Protestant. They should like very much to sweep the country clean of Christian contamination.”

Fatal Trip

Dr. Martin Niemöller and his wife were vacation driving through Denmark this month when their car went out of control and crashed into a tree. Niemöller’s wife and another woman in the car were killed.

Niemöller, who was hospitalized with serious injuries, is one of Germany’s most prominent churchmen and one of the most controversial because of his pacifist views. An outspoken opponent of nuclear weapons for West Germany, he frequently has embarrassed church officials by political remarks used by Communists for propaganda purposes.

The 69-year-old churchman’s most recent exchange revolved on his statements against the Kirchentag which he was reported to have made while touring East Germany. The Communist press quoted him as having charged that the congress added to cold war tensions. Niemӧller labeled the reports “false and distorted.”

Portuguese Prisoner

Dr. Cecil Scott, British representative of the Evangelical League for Missionary and Educational Work in Portugal and Angola, was arrested last month by Portuguese police in Lisbon.

No specific charges were immediately filed against him, but the arrest was linked with recent official charges by the Portuguese government that certain Protestant pastors have been involved in terrorist activities in Angola.

A statement from the Overseas Ministry asserted that “certain persons connected with Protestant activities (in Angola) are more directly employed in campaigning against the Portuguese authorities than in achieving their evangelistic aims.”

In Angola, meanwhile, an American Methodist minister was jailed and held incommunicado for 28 days. The Rev. Raymond E. Noah finally was released by Portuguese police and turned over to officials of the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon.

Newspaper sources in Angola said that Noah had been charged—along with Scott—with assisting Angolan students to flee Portugal.

Suicide Report

Dr. Douglas Eugene Wallace, 37-year-old professor of Bible and religious education at California Baptist College, took his own life July 10, Baptist Press reported.

Wallace was a graduate of Grand Canyon College and Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. He earned a doctor’s degree at the University of Edinburgh and had been teaching at California Baptist College since 1958.

The Cardinal …

The Roman Catholic priest, for whom the Hollywood producer traditionally reserves only favorable characterizations, may be in for a compromised role:

Producer Otto Preminger says he plans to make The Cardinal, best-selling novel by the late Henry Morton Robinson, into a motion picture.

The 1950 novel by Robinson, who was a Roman Catholic, traces a Boston youngster’s rise to the cardinalate. It is not a wholly sympathetic treatment, however, and the novel has been criticized in some Roman Catholic quarters.

… and the Eagle

Soaring through space on his orbiting flight around the world, Russian cosmonaut Gherman S. Titov exclaimed: “I am an eagle!”

What Titov did not know was that the Southern Baptists’ Bible verse for that day (August 7) admonished against such boasting. It was Obadiah 4:

“Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.”

Obadiah’s words were delivered to the Edomites, who, proud and haughty, had believed themselves to be above the reach of God.

The quotation for August 7 was selected last December as the Southern Baptist Training Union’s daily Bible passage.

Lest readers apply the passage solely to the Russian “eagle,” Editor Donald F. Ackland of Open Windows, Southern Baptist devotional quarterly, said that one must “remember the eagle is the symbol of the United States also.”

Frank Buchman

The death this month of Dr. Frank N. D. Buchman cast a question mark over the future of the Moral Re-Armament movement, one of the most successful of modern cults.

“We shall carry on in the future exactly as in the past,” said an MRA spokesman, “but there will be no successor to Buchman. A number of people who have worked at his side will take over direction. There will be no formal leader.”

Actually the movement has never had an official leader, although Buchman—who attributed every decision and act to divine guidance—was founder and undisputed titular head.

A memorial service for Buchman, 83 when he died, was held at MRA world headquarters in Caux, Switzerland. The body was to have been interred in an Allentown, Pennsylvania, cemetery near his native Pennsburg.

The question of MRA’s perpetuation emerges because of the movement’s close identification with Buchman as a person. The cult was referred to as Buchmanism in earlier days, and dictionaries still carry the term.

In its favor is endorsem*nt at one time or another by so many world figures, including President Truman, Chancellor Adenauer, and Japanese Prime Minister Kishi. The movement is well financed, having among its followers a number of wealthy men and women.

Beliefs propounded by Buchmanites defy precise analysis because they are so highly subjective (e.g. his four absolutes: honesty, purity, selflessness, and love). Buchman to his death refused to be drawn into doctrinal specifics, even when controversy touched such issues as the role of Christ’s atonement in Christian experience.

The cult has never had church-wide support even though it is Christian-oriented in a broad sense. Buchman was a Lutheran minister, having graduated from the Mt. Airy Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia. He never married.

Buchman started the movement at Oxford University in England. The term “Moral Re-Armament” was not introduced until some years later.

A statement he made in 1936 plagued him until his death:

“I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defense against the anti-Christ of communism.”

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Domenico Cardinal Tardini, 73, Vatican Secretary of State. His successor in office is Amleto Giovanni Cardinal Cicognani, 78, who for 25 years was Apostolic Delegate to the United States … Dr. Sidney Malcolm Berry, 80, former secretary of the Congregational Union of England and Wales … Dr. Hoyt Chester Woodring, Jr., 46, professor at Emmaus Bible School, Oak Park, Illinois.

Appointments: As president of Waterloo (Ontario) Lutheran University, Dr. William John Villaume … as president of the Buffalo Bible Institute, Dr. Neil Ayres Winegarden … as president of Lancaster (Pennsylvania) School of the Bible, the Rev. Stuart E. Lease … as dean of the San Francisco Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. William Kerr … as dean of the faculty at George Fox College, Dr. George H. Moore … as dean of the Baptist Bible Institute, Graceville, Florida, Dr. Walter D. Draughon, Jr. … as professor of philosophy and religion at Tarkio (Missouri) College, Dr. Addison H. Leitch … as professor of missions at Dallas Theological Seminary, Dr. Gerhard W. Peters … as national chairman of the Religion in American Life campaign, Roger Hull … as “field representative for religion in medicine” for the American Medical Association, the Rev. Paul B. McCleave, a Presbyterian.

Retirement: As professor of Christian education at Asbury Theological Seminary, Dr. Harold C. Mason, subsequently appointed visiting professor of philosophy and religion at Bethel College, Mishawaka, Indiana.

Quotes: “Some depictions on stage and screen could not better fit into the total disparaging picture the Soviets are always painting of America if they had been selected by a ‘Board of Communists’ whose goal is the destruction of our free land.”—Dr. Frederick Brown Harris, chaplain of the U. S. Senate … “Bend your knees—not your elbows—if you would solve the world’s problems.”—Mrs. Fred J. Tooze, president, Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

E. Earle Ellis

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Concern for more adequate communication of the Christian message arises at every level of Church activity—from new translations of the Scripture to increasing emphasis on evangelism. It is not surprising, therefore, to see a volume of the Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching (1953) titled Communicating the Gospel. After all, this is the preacher’s stock in trade. More unusual is it to find a contemporary theological movement motivated by a zeal to translate the Gospel to the modern world. One does not have to agree with Rudolf Bultmann’s radical (and inadequate) solution in order to recognize the validity of his concern and the problem he poses: in large measure the Church today is engaged in a monologue. Christians preach while modern men, passing by, “seeing see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.”

After the Resurrection the disciples did not say “anything to any man for they were afraid”; after Pentecost they “were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God with boldness.” Surely this is the basic key by which Christ’s command to witness shall be fulfilled. Yet the problem of communication remains. To drop Bibles in the jungles, as one Christian lady suggested to a missionary, will not fulfill the task; to say merely “Jesus saves” to the civilized materialist may evoke only the image of a bank deposit.

It is possible that we fail to communicate the Gospel because we do not speak in a language meaningful to non-Christians. In this regard it is always necessary that we avoid clichés and define and clarify the basic theological terms we use. Yet the basic problem of communication is not technique. Although how we communicate certainly is a subordinate to what we communicate, both technique and content may well concern relating to non-Christians as much as telling them the Gospel story. At a party recently I met two Buddhist students from Thailand. Later they were at church with me and were greeted so warmly that one said, “I think I want to become a member.” If in the grace of God he is converted, the first step will have been not hearing the facts (which he little understood) but seeing the love of Christ in Christ’s followers.

Evangelical churches pride themselves on communicating the Gospel. But are we really communicating it? To be sure, we know and believe the Gospel—we devote many church services to the good news of the Saviour. But is this actually the message we convey to the world about us? In my denomination there is a joke about a lady who said, “Pastor, I’d like to be a Baptist, but frankly I am just not physically able!” To her “Baptist” conveyed an image of church programs and great activity rather than a new quality of life in Jesus Christ. In other areas and groups it is not unknown to have theological programs or emphases identify a church or a Christian. For many non-Christians, evangelicals are people who “don’t.” Disciplines are good, but when they become sacraments, have we not fallen from grace? The things that are central in church life also may be good, but are they necessarily the Gospel? Dr. Samuel M. Shoemaker asks in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Oct. 10, 1960) why many young people are drawn away from the organized church into independent and informal Christian groups. His conclusion is that conventional churches often have lost sight of the centrality of the Gospel and of the “in Christ” fellowship of Christians. Perhaps his words do not have direct application to every church, but certainly they remind us of our need to be evangelical in deed as well as in name.

After the Reformation, Glasgow, Scotland, adopted as its motto, “Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word and the praising of His Name.” In the last century this was shortened to “Let Glasgow flourish.” This is the history of our times in a sentence. Secularism is defined as the practice of the absence of God. More popularly, it relegates God to the fringe area of life. Now it is to this secular world that the Church must address its message. And it is here that the problem of communication becomes most acute. To our world (no less than to my Buddhist friends) Christian concepts have little meaning. The notable Dutch layman, Hendrik Kraemer, in his Communication of the Christian Faith, suggests that the disposal of God by the modern mind may have the positive effect of calling the Church back to its original nature and calling. The worldliness of the Church can no longer be hidden under the cloak of a “Christian” culture which structures its thought, if not its heart, in biblical categories. But the Church must rightly understand its essential “over-against-ness” to the world before it can effectively communicate its message.

Two avenues, therefore, lie open to effective communication of the Gospel in a secular world. The more obvious one is direct evangelism. This involves both the mass evangelism by the Billy Grahams anointed for this purpose and also the personal evangelism of Christian laymen. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing Letters and Papers from Prison, speaks of the “worldliness” of the true Christian life. He does not mean, of course, conformity to the world but rather that the religious shell we Christians encase ourselves in ought to be broken. If we are to evangelize, we need to feel at ease with our non-Christian friends as Christians in their world. Jesus prayed that we be not taken out of the world—the pagan world. As “yeast” in society, Christians (and churches) tend to become terribly lumpy. When we do contact non-Christians it is most often on our terms (come to church) rather than on theirs (come to the game). For some Christians the task of evangelism may well lie in a secular framework; one should “not think of himself more highly than be ought to think.”

But the coin has another side. In the last century evangelical students were urged to evangelize the mission fields. From British and American universities they answered the call. No such call was made urging the importance of service in the academic field. As a result, many chairs of religion were filled by men of different persuasion, and the dominant theological current swept evangelical concern into the realm of the indifferent. At this point there is a great need for balancing short-range efforts with long-range vision and strategy. One of the biggest communication gaps between the Church and the world today is in the transformation of the scientific world view; the Church continues to speak in language and categories that the modern mind either does not understand or considers irrelevant. Evangelicals fret at the appeal of Bultmann and his “existentialist” solution: but we do little to encourage the open enquiry and contemplative study needed to achieve a creative evangelical encounter with modern intellectual currents. Too often we come to the (biblical) data with our (traditional) conclusions already assumed. And we are prone to define service in terms of “activity.”

Does God call monks as well as missionaries? Does the teacher or even the dry research scholar serve the cause of evangelism? In the big picture he does; and in today’s world there is increasing need for Christians to think of evangelism as a quest for the mind of modern man. The renaissance of Far-Eastern faiths and the growth of communism and secularism throughout the world place Christians under a dual imperative. (1) Other world views must be apprehended with a clarity born of honest appraisal and genuine concern. (2) The Christian alternative must be structured and presented with a keen awareness of the times in which we live. Only if we succeed in this—and in some measure we are not succeeding—can we present evangelical Christianity as really a live option in the competing ideologies of today’s world.

Visiting Professor

Bethel Seminary

St. Paul, Minnesota

Yesterday is gone—the Day of the Lord.

God’s people are back in the world, not in church.

Inspiring sermons, hymns of praise, meaningful prayers—

All served to make the day glorious and majestic.

Yesterday—God’s people all together, vowing to do His will;

A beautiful sight!

Today—in overalls and house dresses,

Each alone with his thoughts and with God.

Will yesterday affect today?

What meant that great assembly of souls

If it does not?

What good those sermons, those hymns and prayers,

If lives are not changed, uplifted, or helped?

Monday now—six more days

Before the bells re-summon God’s people to His House.

Again there will be sermons and hymns of praise.

Prayers will ascend and God’s Word be read.

Until then—?

Perhaps Jesus Christ will be living in the hearts of those

Who yesterday were in church.

Maybe He will don overalls—or even do the weekly washing.

If not, yesterday should be forgotten.

The church building stands idle today—empty.

But God’s people are busy.

When they remember what happened in the sanctuary yesterday.

Monday, too, will be a glorious day—

Just like yesterday, because of yesterday.

- More fromE. Earle Ellis

Ideas

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With Bible in hand millions of young people and adults gather each Sunday in church school classes. This is good, but not good enough. In America where the church school movement has enjoyed a revival of sorts, 35 million boys and girls under 17 still never attend church school. In Britain, where the movement started in the early eighteenth century, the situation is actually alarming. One spokesman said recently: “When I was a young man, 7 million persons met in the Sunday schools of Great Britain; now there are 1 million.”

In some respects the church school’s opportunity and challenge represent a “last ditch stand” by the Church in the Free World to hold the youth of the oncoming generation for Christian dedication. Despite difficulties and handicaps, the church school now faces the greatest responsibility in its history.

In an age where materialism, secularism, and scientism conspire and collaborate to dilute the Christian faith, what can the church school do?

1. The church school can reinforce its teaching role. It is first and foremost a school. The sincere teacher is always evangelistically sensitive. But he recognizes, too, that inadequate teaching may weaken the Christian cause by failure to prepare, to enrich, and to cultivate hearts for God-honoring spiritual fruit. While present in the entire church program, evangelism should not be relegated primarily to the church school. To turn the school into a continuing series of evangelistic meetings is to destroy its unique purpose. Certainly pupils should be invited and encouraged to spiritual decisions; certainly personal work is appropriate and essential in the church school. But to exalt evangelism at the expense of or in isolation from thorough teaching is to endanger and even to undermine the church school’s special function.

2. The church school can revitalize its teaching staff. Traditionally laymen from many vocations and walks of life have volunteered or been drafted for teaching. Sometimes these secretaries, office workers, farmers, garagemen, storekeepers, bus drivers and others have had insufficient knowledge and preparation for their assignments. Sometimes those with special training imposed personal prejudices upon their pupils as though these tenets were divinely inspired. Whatever the situation, good teaching material and good teaching techniques are no longer considered accidental and incidental to the church school.

Two major ingredients of a good church school are its literature and its teaching. Poor literature requires an unusually capable teacher to counteract its deficiencies. Poor teaching is sometimes offset by good material. Neither poor literature nor poor teaching, however, need be tolerated; many resources and helps are available to those who really care. Sometimes paid professional teachers (like paid professional musicians) bring competence and good teaching as well as commitment and zeal to the church school class, especially to certain adult or specialized groups. Obviously most teachers in most church schools—and rightly so—represent lay persons dedicated to a sense of Christ’s appointment. They recognize, however, the responsibility for continued growth (academic and technical as well as spiritual) to “show themselves approved unto God” and to “rightly divide the Word of truth.” Who would deny that it is better to sit 50 feet from a good teacher than to sit under the nose of a bad one?

In recent years graded materials and reorganized curricula have improved church school literature. Good use of audio-visual aids and of teaching-learning principles in general have also stimulated interest in better church school work. During the last quarter century Christian education has come into prominence as a specialized area of concern. Denominations have organized departments of Christian education and related publishing endeavors. Of equal significance has been the surge of independent religious publishing ventures. Improved literature, used by trained personnel, can revitalize the teaching staff.

3. The church school can relate its Sunday teaching more relevantly to the Monday through Saturday world of its pupils. Another man has been orbited into space. Red Russia claims another victory over the Free World. Is Kennedy’s welfare-state a better option than Goldwater’s conservatism? What of the peace corps program? Entrusted with responsible citizenship, students and adults face a desperate world. How does Christianity, how does individual Christian faith relate to the complex challenges of a complex society? Does the church school offer scriptural guidelines for social as well as personal thought and action?

Stock answers no longer satisfy inquiring souls. The challenge of the secular mind in the class rooms, the factories, and the offices of America must be answered. The diet of milk will not suffice for those who need meat. New converts particularly often flounder before the onslaughts of unbelievers. Unable to answer their opponents because unequipped with knowledge of Scripture and its relevance, these converts may subvert the very faith they have embraced and defect from Christianity as an inane or indefensible cause.

The church school is the logical place to anticipate questions that pupils will confront in the world. And it is the sacred, awesome business of the church school so to establish its people in the facts and significance of God’s Word that they can both defend the truth and also refute error. In addition the vital Christian must learn to relate Christian faith to current affairs and problems of the secular world. Indifference by the church school to this arena of Christian warfare and witness is to isolate Christian faith from daily life and by default to surrender the claims of Christ to the enemy.

The future value and significance of the church school depends then on its ability 1. to share effectively a coherent, integrated body of biblical truth; 2. to relate dynamically and interpret this truth in daily life; and 3. to nurture souls by the Spirit for growth in grace and in the likeness of the Lord Jesus. Its objectives of conversion to Jesus Christ and maturity in the life of faith can strategically buttress the unique ministry of the Christian Church.

THE LOCAL CHURCH LIBRARY A REPOSITORY OF GOOD READING

Now that television has taken its place by the radio in a living room corner as a vintage feature of our culture, with little prospect of further originality, it may be possible for a segment of our society to settle back to its reading.

But what shall we read? Are we to emulate the one T. S. Eliot describes—

You will see me any morning in the park

Reading the comics and the sporting page …

An English countess goes upon the stage,

A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance …

Another bank defaulter has confessed.…

No, we protest, we are Christians; we wish to read that which is worthy of our Master and King. But the problem of finding literature that builds soul and mind toward maturity is becoming more complex. Who writes these books? Who publishes them? On what library shelves are they to be found?

Henry Zylstra did the Church a real service by pointing out that a book is hardly good just because it is “safe” for a Christian’s shelves. There is in fact a “good deal of tripe,” as he put it, masquerading as religious fiction and literature. The “religious market” is being dangled before the eyes of many a budding writer as a wide-open (albeit low-paying) field.

But does this situation promise an answer to the soul’s cry for food? Drivel that has been immersed and sprinkled ‘fore and aft’ is still drivel. The times call for authentic evangelical writing dealing honestly with personality motivation, keyed to the mood of biblical realism, and showing cleanly and convincingly the power of God’s Spirit working in the human heart.

Let us call a halt to the starchy Sunday school hero types who priggishly walk through the pages of a book without ever being tossed into the flux of life; who, like St. George (but not like the rest of us) are always at least a spear’s length away from the dragon. At the same time let us eschew the new secular or “beat” hero who is nothing but a confused psychopath, unable to transmit any message from his brain save to his fists, and unwilling to make any moral distinctions beyond the need for survival.

Somewhere, surely, a line can be drawn between Pharisaic purism and brass-rail megalomania; between the stuffed-shirt apostle of virtue (whose counterpart is the working-class hero, mode sovietique) and the moral leper.

Good books are wanted; they are needed; and they are needed especially in our churches. Biographies of great Christians should be circulated among our Sunday schools continually. Men such as Hudson Taylor, John G. Paton, David Brainerd, Henry Martyn, David Livingstone, Jim Elliot; women such as Florence Nightingale, Mary Slessor, and Betty Stam—these should be inspiring and re-inspiring each new generation.

The officers of the local church should consider their library as important a facility to their total task as do the trustees of a college. They should think of their library as a ministry.

We believe, too, that great care should be taken in the selection of books. The name of a publisher is no sufficient commendation. The book speaks for the church, and many Christians will cause harm by passing on a book without having read it. We know of a church group that gave a book to a retiring officer and his wife because the title seemed “spiritual.” The name of the book was From Here to Eternity! Nor is a book necessarily good because it is denominationally recommended. The “denomination” is usually a committee, and committees can be swayed by dominant personalities. The task of reviewing must not be dodged if the church library is to bear a clear and strong witness to Jesus Christ.

Thousands of churches in America have no libraries whatever, and yet they are supposed to represent wholesome influences in the community. Young inquiring Christian minds invariably turn to the public library, and invariably they will find that on the public library’s shelves, evangelical books are in short supply, even though every other religion may be present in profusion. To start pastors and churches on their way to a solution, CHRISTIANITY TODAY is publishing in this issue a list of 100 basic books for a church library. In a related essay, we stress the supplemental opportunity existing in and through departmental libraries, and suggest some relevant reading. God grant that these titles may give the spur to a significant part of the Church’s ministry.

I Believe …

Today’s college and university teachers are fashioning tomorrow’s Christian task force. How competently youth will contend for the minds of men turns in large measure on the influences of present academic training. A servant is not above his master, said our Lord; and seldom does a student (for a good many years) rise above his teacher.

Alongside the instructor’s awesome responsibility to communicate mastery of knowledge and the pursuit of wisdom stands the pupil’s duty to put first things first during the college years. Recently, at a school openly disinterested in academic prowess, Billy Graham told the student body: “If I were in your shoes I wouldn’t pray for a passion for souls; I’d pray for a passion for study.” He was right. Personal work may seem especially compelling the night before an examination, a time when academic tenacity should properly exercise spiritual priority. The war of ideas demands full disciplined judgment. The condition of the classroom may well become the condition of the nation and, indeed, of the world. This is no time for playboys on campus nor for dullards at the desk.

WESTERN TENSION MOUNTS AS REDS SEAL EAST BERLIN BORDER

Vacationers returning from assorted holidays to assorted responsibilities found the hard facts of waiting work at home and of mounting pressures abroad blowing chill through memories of sun and fun. Both clergy and laity had indulged careful plans or carefree whims to fulfill some summer fancy. Meanwhile the irresistible force of current events jabbed relentlessly toward some seemingly impending climax. No amount of ignorance, indifference, or studied obliviousness could soften the increasing crescendo of alarm.

A new form of piracy had hijacked American planes into Cuba. America’s highly-touted second space trip of several minutes paled before a Russian astronaut’s claim to many hours spent circling the earth. Premier Khrushchev, never on vacation from his ambition to bring the West to its knees, produced his long-threatened Berlin crisis. In response to the Khrushchev challenge, President Kennedy somberly called the American people to new action and daring against the Red menace. U. S. military buildup underscored his remarks.

Many observers voiced relief that U. S. leaders disown any foreign policy predicated upon a strategy of slow retreat in the face of dictatorial aggression. Yet multitudes waited for evidential confirmation of verbal assurances. President Kennedy’s problems in Laos, Cuba, and now West Berlin lag far behind an assured solution. And in some circles one could still detect the mood that “since a nuclear war is unthinkable” our strategy in quest of peace can only be to “give as little ground as possible at a time.” Realists rightly deplore such a policy as gradual suicide. But the need for prudence and patience, rather than untempered reprisals, was never greater. Time is never securely on the side of the demonic—even less so in the twentieth century than in the first Christian century. Not even a warmonger boasting of a superbomb 5000 times the force of the Hiroshima H-bomb need have the last word.

As summer fades into fall, how can churches share in overturning today’s cruel game of war-bug jitters? The President perhaps spoke more significantly than he or many Americans realized when he said, “I need … above all your prayers.” America needs a national experience of prayer and repentance. Prayer is still mightier than the sword, and mightier, too, than nuclear bombs. If the Church bends its knees before God, it need not bend them before today’s Castros and Khrushchevs any more than before yesterday’s Napoleons, Hitlers, and Mussolinis. A church on its knees, in fact, takes no vacations. Rather, it works undaunted and with unabated zeal in this evil world to determine and to accomplish the will of God. God still acts in international politics to deliver those who put their trust in him.

PROPAGANDA FOR LABOR DAY: SPIRITUAL AIMS OF GIANT UNIONS

A communication has been sent to the press by Charles C. Webber, an ordained clergyman salaried by AFL-CIO, enclosing a letter by AFL-CIO President George Meany, a statement for Labor Sunday from the National Council of Churches, and statements for Labor Day from the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference and the Synagogue Council of America. We presume this communication is intended also for ministers, priests and rabbis.

This is nothing new. It happens each year. But one wonders why the Church fails to clarify her position in this matter of attempts to align her with one particular segment of society without stressing her obligation to society as a whole. There is no warrant for giving labor organizations a special status any more than there is to give business management special favor. Both stand under the judgment of God. The Bible teaches the duty but also the dignity of work. It requires honesty by employer and the employed. The employer is enjoined against withholding rightful wages or in any other way oppressing those who labor. The worker is enjoined against dishonesty, either in the appropriation of things or stealing time which rightfully belongs to the employer. It is therefore the duty of the Church to teach and preach, “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” whether to labor or capital. It is equally her duty to refrain from becoming a pressure group in favor of either.

THE GOSPEL HAS AN ANSWER TO HUMAN DESPAIR AND SUICIDE

The recent wave of suicides calls fresh attention to this twentieth-century passion for self-murder. The roster of suicides includes notorious persons like Hitler and Mussolini’s one-time mistress, Magda de Fontanges, to prominent men like Harvey Firestone III, George Vanderbilt, former Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, and possibly Ernest Hemingway.

A recent article states that in Denmark suicide is now an “almost acceptable expression of unhappiness” on which “the early church teaching that suicide is immoral has little effect.”

The increase in suicides reflects the dwindling hold of biblical Christianity on some modern men. Has the Church today perchance become so earth centered in viewpoint that she often fails in her true mission—to point man to his eternal home through Christ, the Redeemer?

Unhappiness is no good reason for suicide. The man God uses is not always a happy man, but he is a useful one. And who knows by what strange alchemy God transmutes the unhappiness of men into that which brings glory to himself and benefits to men, including rewards to the one who is unhappy? Surely if there is a theology of life there is also a theology of death. The real reason why suicide is wrong is that man is made in the image of God. When a man takes his own life he strikes at God through himself, for he was made in the divine image.

The people of God must somehow publish anew the antidote, that Christ has come “that they may have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” “Christ in you, the hope of glory” was the message of the early Church. Men with that hope counted their lives expendable for the one they served, but only at his will and in his time and way.

J. Oliver Buswell, Jr.

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“When He comes He will convict the world of sin.…” This was Jesus’ promise as he told of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The world of our day is strangely unconvicted, unconvinced, and unconcerned, yet where Spirit-filled men faithfully present the Spirit-inspired Word of God, conviction of sin comes. The great need of the world today is for consecrated channels for the convicting work of the Holy Spirit. Only so can there be a genuine turning to the Lord and acceptance of the Gospel.

The Nature of Sin. There is very wide divergence of opinion among philosophers as to the criterion of what ought, or ought not, to be. Thus when it comes to the question of what is good and what is evil, we come across several major schools of thought.

The Christian answer is that God has given us the sense of oughtness, and that he has revealed the criterion and the substance of what is good and what is evil. The mere fact that we have a sense of what ought, or ought not, to be, a sense quite different from the sense of pleasure or desire, is inexplicable on a merely naturalistic basis. Let us turn then to the Christian view.

“Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.” These words from the Westminster Shorter Catechism are based upon 1 John 3:4, “missing the mark [that is, want of conformity] is breaking the law.” (Bible quotations when not from the King James Version, are the author’s own translation.) The biblical view of sin, however, does not depend wholly upon the concept of law, for the biblical writers appeal to the holy character of God as the basis of the law. “Ye shall be holy for I, Jehovah, your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2) is the constant presupposition. It was the revelation of the holy character of God (Isa. 6:1–6) which caused Isaiah to recognize his own sinful corruption. Thus sin is not only violation of the divine law, which is an expression of God’s will; more profoundly, it is violation of the expression of God’s holy character. It is corruption of the goodness which the Creator originally imparted to his creatures, and especially is it the corruption of the godliness with which God originally endowed man when He created him in His own image.

The divine character is expressed by the divine will in the divine law. Christians generally understand that the Ten Commandments and the law of love (cf. Exod. 20:1–17 and Luke 10:27) constitute a brief summary of God’s holy moral law for man. And this is all based upon God’s holy character.

Sin may then be defined ultimately as anything in the creature which does not express, or which is contrary to, the holy character of the Creator.

The Origin of Sin. The origin of human sin, according to the Bible, is very simply ascribed to the willful self-corruption of the creature under temptation. The record is given in the third chapter of Genesis, and the fact of the original human sin is expounded in Romans 5:12–21 and elsewhere.

According to the account of Genesis 3, man was created with a holy nature, in fellowship with God, and placed in an environment which was “all very good”; but man was tempted to sin by a personal being of another kind or order who had previously sinned against God. This fact indicates that the record of the original sin of man is not intended as an account of the absolute origin of sin in the universe.

The record of the original human sin is of more value to us because this sin was induced by the Tempter. Aside from the doctrine that Adam was our representative, the “federal” head of the human race, and we, representatively, sinned in him, the fact is that in our common experience sin is induced by previous sin. We are in Adam and individually guilty and corrupt sinners; but no human being has brought about the absolute origin of sin in the universe. We must therefore search for the origin of sin in the Tempter.

The Tempter in the Genesis record is an evil personal intelligence. The words “the Serpent,” I suggest, should be read as a proper name. (Compare Isa. 65:25 and Rev. 20:12 where the “Serpent” is a person.) The Genesis account has nothing to say about a biological reptile. “The Serpent” is not said to be one of the “beasts of the field” but to be more subtle than any of them (v. 1) and destined for a greater curse than any (v. 14). Snakes do not literally eat dirt (Gen. 3:14; Isa. 65:25), but to be prostrated and to eat dust constitute an ancient metaphor for the humiliation of an enemy. There is no natural antipathy between human beings and snakes (v. 15), not as much as between humans and insects. Children have to be taught to avoid poisonous reptiles. The whole meaning of the “enmity” of verse 15 is the enmity between “the Serpent” and the promised Redeemer. “The Serpent” is Satan, and figures throughout the Bible as the archenemy of God and man, the instigator of all kinds of evil.

What does the Bible say about the primeval origin of sin, before the fall of man? There is definite indication in the Bible that mankind is not the only order of created personal beings among whom sin has become an actuality. In Jude, verse 6, there is reference to “the angels that did not keep their own realm (arche) but left their proper dwelling.” The parallel verse, 2 Peter 2:4, speaks of “the angels that sinned.” The biblical writers assume that Satan is the chief of the fallen angels. In 1 John 3:8 we read, “… the devil sins from the beginning.” From 1 Timothy 3:6 it is suggested that Satan’s root or basic sin was pride. The words of Jesus are more explicit: “He [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning. He did not take his stand in the truth. [This is evident] because truth is not in him. When he speaks falsehood he speaks out of his own things, for he is a falsifier and the father of falsehood” (John 8:44).

Jesus’ statement that the devil is, from the beginning, a murderer and a falsifier is probably based upon the fact that by falsehood Satan brought about the fall of man, in which man (1) became liable to physical death, (2) became liable to eternal punishment, “the second death,” and (3) became spiritually dead, that is, alienated from fellowship with God.

There are expositors who hold that, aside from the rather clear references given above to the fall of Satan, the prophetic denunciations of Babylon (Isa. 13 and 14, especially 14:12–14) and of the king of Tyre (Ezek. 28:1–19, especially vv. 12–19) contain references to Satan’s original status and his fall. It is not unreasonable to hold that certain sentences in these prophecies may contain analogies which would throw light upon Satan’s probable original status and his fall.

The statements are not very full, yet the biblical account of the primeval origin of sin is clear enough: Sin first became actual in an order of personal beings who are not a race (Matt. 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:35, 36). They do not have racial solidarity or racial representative responsibility. This order of beings, presumably having fully adequate understanding of the holy character of God and of God’s impartation of his holy character to his creatures, was endowed with the power of ethical spiritual choice. Some of these beings, including Satan as the chief, deliberately chose to corrupt their God-given holy character, and chose further to spread their corruption as widely as possible in God’s creation. Their sin was the act of a group of individuals as individuals and does not involve the “federal” or representative principle. Since their sin was, we suppose, a deliberate act with fully adequate understanding, it is analogous to the fully conscious and responsible act subsequent to conviction by the Holy Spirit, in which act Jesus said that the sinner is “guilty of eternal sin” (Mark 3:29). In other words they sinned without remedy. (For a penetrating study in the psychology of a determinative act and a permanent attitude of sin, compare Milton’s soliloquy of Satan in the early part of Paradise Lost. Satan is represented as refusing the very thought of repentance, and settling in the attitude, “Evil, be thou my good!”)

According to the Bible, then, sin originated in an act of free will in which the creature deliberately, responsibly, and with adequate understanding of the issues chose to corrupt the holy character of godliness with which God had endowed his creation.

Questions That Remain. Two philosophical questions remain: (1) How could there be a free responsible act, from the cosmic point of view? (2) How could a holy God permit sin?

The Christian determinist is usually driven to an inscrutable paradox. He may accept all that the Bible says about primeval sin as factually true, but the biblical statements afford no philosophical explanation. Satan sinned necessarily. God is rightly angry with all sin. So be it!

As for this writer’s opinion, the denial of free will seems to be purely arbitrary philosophical dogmatism, contrary to the biblical view. If God is rightly angry with sin, then it follows that the sinner is blameworthy, cosmically, ultimately, absolutely.

We come now to the question, How could a good God permit sin?

Calvin and Calvinists generally (with the exception of certain supralapsarians) agree in denying that God is in any sense the author of sin (see Westminster Confession of Faith, I, i). Nevertheless we find that God “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (Eph. 1:11). We cannot deny that “whatever comes to pass” is within the eternal decrees of God. Sin must be within God’s eternal decrees in some sense in which he is not the author of it.

In the ninth chapter of Romans, Paul gives two answers to the problem:

“You will say to me, then, ‘Why does He still blame anybody? Who ever stood up against His will?’

“Well now then, O man, you, who are you, answering back to God? Will the thing which is moulded say to the one who moulded it, ‘Why did you make me this way?’ Or does not the potter have a right to make from the same mass of clay a valuable dish, and one of no value?” (Rom. 9:19–21).

Many persons never go beyond Paul’s first, or preliminary, answer. God has a right to do what he chooses with his creation. Some devout minds still cling to the paradox. On the one hand it is assumed that what ought not to be ought not to be permitted. On the other hand God “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (Eph. 1:11).

Some have even taken refuge in Pope’s couplet:

“Wrong is not wrong if rightly understood

“And partial evil, universal good.”

But the Christian answer cannot question “the exceeding sinfulness of sin.” To do so would be to question the necessity of the atonement of Christ for the salvation of sinners.

Paul’s answer clearly breaks one horn of the dilemma and does not leave us in a paradox; but Paul does not accomplish this by questioning the fact that sin absolutely ought not to be. The fallacy which leaves some minds in a state of contradiction is the false assumption that what ought not to be, ought not to be permitted. Those who have studied modern educational methods should be the last to criticize God’s permission of sin. As parents we must, within the limits of our finite understanding, permit our children to experience the trying but inevitable assortment of bumps and bruises if they are ever to learn to walk.

Paul does not merely leave the question with his reference to the potter and the clay. In previous verses (vv. 17 and 18) he had pointed out that by allowing Pharaoh to be born, to come to the throne of Egypt, and to resist the salvation of Israel, and by forcing the issue with Pharaoh, God had demonstrated His power and caused His name to be reported in all the earth. “For this purpose I stirred you up” (exegeira se, Alford’s suggestion).

After presenting God’s rights, Paul continues: “What if God endured [Pharaoh] with much longsuffering,” in order to demonstrate His wrath and make known His ability and the wealth of His glory in saving His people?

In the word “endured” we certainly have the suggestion of God’s permission. We must conclude then that within the decrees of God, there are decrees of the permission of those things of which God himself is not the author.

This is not mere permission of the unavoidable, a view against which Calvin often protests. It is God’s permissive decrees for his own purposes of revelation. What would the history of God’s redemptive program be without the revelation of God’s “power,” “name,” “wrath,” “ability,” and “glory” as these were revealed by the events included in the decree in which he permitted Pharaoh’s sin?

In the light of the ninth chapter of Romans, we may assume that God’s decree permitting the primeval sin may be justified, even to our finite minds, on the analogy of Paul’s justification of the permission of Pharaoh’s sin. In terms of Joseph’s words to his brethren (Gen. 50:20), we may say to every sinner in cosmic history, “As for you, ye thought evil … but God meant it [that is, permitted it] for good.”

The purpose of this study in the nature and origin of sin is to magnify the “amazing grace” of God in his redemptive program, as that program includes “even me,” “the chief of sinners.”

Bibliography: J. O. Buswell, Jr., Sin and Atonement; liberal Arminian view: F. R. Tennant, Origin and Propagation of Sin and The Concept of Sin; K. Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, III/1, 3, Secs. 50, 51 of Part 3; E. M. Adams, Ethical Naturalism and the Modern World View (naturalistic view).

Dean of the Graduate Faculty

Covenant College and Seminary

St. Louis, Missouri

- More fromJ. Oliver Buswell, Jr.

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CLEAN VESSELS

“Be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord” (Isa. 52:11).

The role of Christian worker, be he minister, church officer, Sunday school teacher or engaged in some other specific work for the Lord is one of extreme sensitivity and grave importance.

Eternity alone will show how many have been impelled away from the Church by Christian leaders whose personal lives have belied the faith they would proclaim.

None of us fully realizes how many weak Christians are harmed by the inconsistent lives of men and women who stand in places of leadership.

One does not speak to the glory of God if his life is lived according to the world’s standards, for “friendship with the world” continues to be friendship with the camp of the enemy.

The prophet Isaiah was speaking to a matter of gravest importance. In this chapter he is speaking to God’s witnesses and to the “watchmen” who tell of His greatness. Then the prophet exclaims: “The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.”

Then, speaking to the Lords servants, Isaiah says: “Depart ye, depart ye, go not out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord.”

Does not God speak these words to us today? We live in a time when compromise is too often the accepted way of life—compromise with the ideals, the philosophies, and the ways of the world. And in conformity to the world’s standards we lose all hope of bearing an effective witness to the saving and keeping power of the Christ whose name we bear.

A Christian worker bears an awesome responsibility. In a very real sense he stands between the dead and the living. In his heart and on his lips there is the message on which man’s eternal destiny depends. How tragic then if this witness be compromised by an inconsistent life!

In Ezra 7:10 we find the secret of the life of that servant of God and an example which every Christian worker should follow today. We read: “And Ezra prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.”

Here we find a preparation of the heart: Ezra made a decision which made it possible for God to use him. While we all know that the dynamic of that decision was a work of the Holy Spirit, nevertheless Ezra could have rejected God’s call. This he did not do.

We note too that Ezra turned to the source of wisdom, authority, and power—the Law of God. Today we have God’s revelation in the Old and New Testaments. Woe to the Christian worker who turns to secular and human sources for his inspiration and guidance and neglects the Sword of the Spirit!

We know that Ezra’s approach was not a theoretical one. With his turning to the Law there was an obedient heart, determined to follow the teachings which he found therein. Today we have even a greater and clearer witness, for in the Bible we have outlined for us with wonderful clarity the way in which the Christian should walk. We too need obedient minds and hearts.

Finally we note that Ezra accepted his responsibility as a teacher and prepared to teach in Israel God’s holy statutes and judgments.

Little wonder that we are told of this man “… he was a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given”; and later we are told of his success, “according to the good hand of his God upon him.”

It is not necessary to remind ourselves that we live in a crucial time in history. Secular writers are reminding us of this every day and many of them are warning our nation in terms reminiscent of the prophets of old.

Recognizing that the days are evil and that the Christian witness is God’s answer to man’s dilemma, how important it is that those who bear the testimony of the Lord shall be “clean”!

We are not talking of any form of “boot strap religion” whereby, through good resolutions, we live to the glory of God. It just does not happen that way.

A Christian worker will be and remain “clean” only as he lives in close contact with his Lord through daily Bible study and prayer. Neglect these means of grace and the rust and erosions of this world inevitably creep in to destroy our witness.

One has but to look about him to discover the world’s standards emblazoned on every hand. And let us be honest about them—they destroy spiritual perception and power.

No minister can go from a Saturday night dance into his pulpit on Sunday morning and preach with power to save.

No Sunday school teacher can leave a degrading movie with spiritual witness undimmed and his ability to lead his pupils to know the Lord unmarred.

In the social order of which we are a part, “social drinking” has become a menace to all who indulge and nearly 6,000,000 alcoholics attest to that fact. How then can we exercise our “Christian freedom” with reference to liquor and hope to maintain an effective Christian witness as Church leaders? That this is apparently true abroad does not prove the case for America for we seem to go to extremes in so many things.

The issue centers on the peculiar position of the Christian leader. His example is watched, his words weighed, and his daily life is evaluated in the light of the Scriptures.

The apostle James makes this very clear: “Remember that we who are teachers will be judged by a much higher standard,” he writes. For the church worker there is a “higher standard” by which the world judges us whether we like it or not. For the Christian leader, be he ordained or not, there is a grave responsibility to be “clean.”

This is no plea for asceticism. Rather it is an appeal that we who stand in a special relationship to the church through the responsibilities we hold, whether we be minister, church officer, Sunday school teacher or what have you, need to live by God’s grace lives that will commend the Gospel which we profess.

That such is not the case in many places today accounts, in part, for the weak testimony of the Church and her lack of appeal to thoughtful young people.

By some strange quirk of reasoning some seem to think that they must compromise with the world in order that they may exert an influence for good on the young they are trying to reach. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unless Christianity is presented by those who show in their own lives the transforming and keeping power of the living Christ, the “witness” so borne will be hollow and the effort fruitless. “Be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord” is as necessary today as in the days of Isaiah.

L. NELSON BELL

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LITTER

Bert the custodian is having problems again. Not the bottle; the bottles. It all came at once. There was the Saturday picnic on the church grounds. Thunder showers disrupted the clean-up operation, and Bert returned from vacation to face an acre of no-return root beer bottles, cans, soggy paper plates, plastic spoons, and aluminum foil wrappings. A disagreeable chore—but that was not Bert’s problem. He didn’t mind picking it up, the difficulty was in storing it all. Bert was raised in the heather. He never wore a disposable diaper, doesn’t use Kleenex, and has not surrendered to the planned obsolescence of an economy of abundance.

He drives his pick-up truck with a sharp eye for valuable objects in rubbish cans. In the truck there will be a wagon with a missing wheel, a rusty wrench, and perhaps a refrigerator door.

Of course he saves paper, string, aluminum foil, plastic dinnerware, and bottles. It happens that his cubicle in the church basem*nt couldn’t hold another bottle.

Now Bert had spent his vacation moving. Naturally his life-long collection of usable material is immense. He only moved four blocks, but he moved everything. He moved everything over the hill and over the determined opposition of his married daughter. There had been a crisis, though, about the bottles, and when Bert came to work, his truck was loaded with bottles.

Under the circ*mstances he didn’t appreciate the signs the young people had posted in the basem*nt. “Every litter bit hurts” was over the door of his shop. “Rubble trouble?” “Stash that trash!”

The pastor finally calmed him down. Pastor Peterson remembers the twelve baskets of fragments saved after the feeding of the five thousand—a miracle of abundance but not of waste. But he reminded Bert that even in the Gospels old bottles are expendable.

EUTYCHUS

AS LUTHER NAILED …

About ten minutes ago, the mailman brought the July 3 issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY … I started with … “Evangelicals and Roman Catholics” by James W. L. Hills. Before I continue to read the other articles, I must sit down and write you that the author of the article should be commended publicly. As Luther nailed his 95 theses on the church door at Wittenberg, so should this article be nailed on the door of every Protestant church and the study of every Protestant minister to remind them and their lay members of their God-given task as heirs of the Reformation caused by the will of God. Especially the retired Church of England Archbishop Dr. Fisher and people sharing his infatuation for Rome should heed the article’s admonitions written and filled with a spirit of true Reformation faith, based upon the pure word of the Bible.

RUDOLPH FLACHBARTH

Nativity Lutheran Church

Windsor, Ont.

Having returned from a busman’s holiday in Europe, I found on my desk the July 3rd issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.… I must say that I am not an evangelical and that, therefore, I do not agree with much that is written in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. At the same time I admit that I find it … stimulating … simply because it ably presents doctrines I cannot accept.… Some of your articles make my Anglican hair curl—whatever there is left of it!…

I do not think that anyone would argue the fact that a reform was necessary. Even Roman theologians would assent to this. But in an effort to heal the Body of Christ, which is the Church, was it necessary to break that Body? Calvin or Luther could have gone to Antioch or to Constantinople as the second-generation Hussites did, thus preserving unbroken the continuity within the Body.… Mr. Hill states: “Roman Catholicism is cleverly portrayed as the true Church having an unbroken line from Jesus Christ to the present day.” It isn’t “clever” but it is true. It is also true of Anglicanism, of Eastern Orthodoxy, of the Swedish Lutheran church, of the Old Catholic church, to name but a few branches of the unbroken River, the streams whereof make glad the City of God.

… Protestantism in France and in Germany is, by and large, pompously irrelevant. The one great ray of light I found at Taizé, near Cluny. There, a French Protestant Monastery of some 40 monks, consisting of both Evangelical pastors and laymen of many denominations and nationalities, is working toward a real ecumenical unity through a liturgical renewal movement which endeavors to return to the bosom of Protestantism some of those common elements of Christian heritage which the Reformers in their righteous zeal often removed with legitimate abuses.…

ENRICO C. S. MOLNAR

Canon Registrar

The Diocese of Los Angeles

Los Angeles, Calif.

This article only confirms my belief that Protestantism is negative and that if “Roman Catholics” lack what you call a “radiant assurance of salvation,” this could be better attributed to their true devotion to the Holy Cross and what this really means. All of the Mysteries are not joyful; neither is the fact of sin, being my fault, my own fault, my own most grievous fault. WILLIAM H. PAUL St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church Waretown, N. J.

It strikes me as the best thing I’ve ever read on the Protestant-Catholic problem.

D. E. ERICKSON

Dunsmuir, Calif.

THEME OF THE 4TH: FREEDOM

Most timely at the 4th of July, when we are giving thanks to God for our freedom, is your article on “The Communist Peace Front” (July 3 issue). The account you give is an excellent brief summary and sets the names of the outstanding “stooges” and “dupes” in very clear focus.… I wish every minister … in the U. S. could and would read this summary.

JOHN M. RHAME

Clinton, Iowa

A LOADED GUN

Addison Leitch has a point (July 3 issue). The statement on alcohol from the General Assembly of our United Presbyterian Church meeting in Buffalo differs in an important basic point from the statement of the 1950 General Assembly … which met in Cincinnati. At that time we said, “Adults in our churches should recognize their responsibility to provide a good example in sobriety and godly living by practicing and advocating complete abstinence from the use of alcoholic beverages.” Today, according to the Buffalo assembly, while church members are encouraged in the practice of voluntary abstinence, the Presbyterian who abstains and the Presbyterian who drinks are to respect each other and “constructively work together in dealing with the problems of alcohol.” The change made from the Cincinnati document is disturbing. Then we placed a responsibility on our members for complete abstinence. Now we only encourage them toward that goal. Let’s face it. In the 11 years that have elapsed between the two statements issued respectively by the Cincinnati and Buffalo assemblies, either the peril of alcohol has diminished (hardly!) or more Presbyterians are drinking (rather obvious!). The only question that I had in reading Leitch’s potent article was this: does our church really know that alcohol is a loaded gun?

C. K. STORY

Plainsboro, N. J.

It requires a million new drinkers each year for the whiskey interests to maintain their level of drinkers. For that million they turn to our young people and our would-be church members. The decision of the Assembly will certainly furnish excellent publicity for whiskey-beer-wine industry.

C. T. RYAN

Kearney, Neb.

TRAINING OF PASTORS

Thank you so much for Roy Burkhart’s stimulating and perceptive article (July 3 issue).… I now serve on my seminary’s board of trustees and intend to see that the 10 suggestions are seriously considered.

WILLIAM C. COLE

University Baptist Church

Long Beach, Calif.

An old man, at 85, perhaps I should not be so troubled about it; but I have read Dr. Burkhart’s article with a deep sense of shock, and of tragedy.…

My own experience of the ministry is very much at variance with the tragic incidents and cases which the article suggests. When I came to Boston in 1922 to edit The Congregationalist, it was after years in four pastorates, and two years as a probationer under two different superintendents.… I discovered that there were “career” men, whose worship of an honorary degree seemed more real than their worship of God; and men of frustrated ambition who were discontented in their lowly parishes. But I think such ministers were very much the exception.…

I thoroughly agree with … [Dr. Burkhart’s] suggestions for the seminaries, with considerable emphasis on “therapy sessions.”

W. E. GILROY

Newton Center, Mass.

TAKE NOTHING FOR GRANTED

The sermon of Dr. Robert H. Reardon in the July 3 issue was interesting reading. So was the comment by Dr. John A. Morrison. But both Dr. Reardon in his writing and Dr. Morrison in his criticism missed the real content of every evangelical sermon: the Gospel. For all the inadequate and unworthy sampling answers to the question, “What do you think?” the sermon neither stated nor answered life’s greatest question, “What must I do to be saved?” People may have been fascinated, but if they did not know Christ when they came they did not know him when they left.

We can take nothing for granted, not even with our most consecrated laity—or preachers. Always there is the temptation to depend for eternal life on the fact that we “have been willing to put on the altar our lives and our resources.”

A good rule for the evangelical preacher: Never shall a man who comes to hear me preach be able to say when he leaves that he has not heard that (1) he is a sinner, and that (2) Jesus Christ paid the price of his sins, and that (3) “whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

ERNEST R. DREWS

Jehovah Evangelical Lutheran Church

St. Paul, Minn.

VOTING ON THE UNSEEN

I rejoice in the report of the two-day Chicago meeting of the General Board of the NCC (News, July 3 issue). It is precisely at the point of Dr. Van Dusen’s disagreement with Dr. Blake that many earnest Christian ministers and laymen fear the “Blake-Pike” plan for organic church union. Too many actions are taken and pronouncements made by the device of “blind” voting on matters that merit careful and prayerful study. The phenomenon of “voting on what has not been seen” is all too prevalent in the United Presbyterian Church now and would only increase in a new “super-church.” Let us make haste to pray for the leadership of the Holy Spirit in all these matters and be slow in sanctions for “organization men.”

JOSEPH MACCARROLL

Central Presbyterian Church

Norristown, Pa.

ON THE OLD TESTAMENT

How can such a book as Curt Kuhl’s—if I read the review correctly (July 3 issue)—be recommended as “an excellent tool for both pastor and layman”? Why should it “receive wide reading” when Scripture tells us to avoid profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called?

E. P. SCHULZE

The Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer

Peekskill, N. Y.

BENEVOLENT SEALS

I was struck by … the “SV Plan” on which Eutychus and Associates are presently working (Eutychus, June 19). There is already a stamp plan for churches and charities, operating today. It is called the “Community Benevolent Seal” Plan. It is a copyrighted plan developed by a group of men of which I am a member.… The Plan has now been developed to such an extent that we are in the process of moving it on a national level.… We can use all the moral help available.

ROBERT G. SALTER

Vice-President

Community Benevolent Seal Co.

Seattle, Wash.

• Thank you, Mr. Salter. To offer you a modicum of moral help, Eutychus Associates are withdrawing all plans for Spiritual Value stamps. Since we’re strictly a fictional group, our planning is quite flexible. Best wishes to CBS. Let us know when the first church is built with Benevolent Seals.—EUTYCHUS

No one gets trading stamps as a “gift.” The consumer pays for every one of them. If the retailer gave a discount in cash for those who do not collect TV stamps the non-user would not be paying extra prices for the things he buys. The trading stamp is a delusion and a snare.

H. HAWKINS

The Order of The Holy Cross

West Park, N.Y.

HEAVEN AND EARTH

I most emphatically agree with the statements in … “Current Religious Thought” (June 19 issue) in that the New Testament does teach of a new heaven and a new earth, and that true Christianity is therefore very much interested in the earth. It will be so new that there will be real geographic changes, for Revelation 21:1 states that there will be no more sea.… However, I must agree with Martin Buber that at least the majority of Christianity today teaches a kind of Platonism. This is found primarily in their teaching of the intermediate state of the dead, that either the soul or the spirit live and have a conscious existence in death.… I believe that immortal life is given at the second coming of Jesus … and that until then man is, as it were, asleep or nonexistent.…

MELVIN E. MATHERS

Defiance, Ohio

The dimensions of the present grace are not restricted to earth alone. The riches of His grace are intended to affect the heavens as well. The sovereignty of the earth belongs to Israel according to the prophets and our Lord. The sovereignty of the heavens is the realm of His body, the theater of display of the untraceable riches of the Christ. Between the two, the entire universe will be headed up in the Christ.

CHARLES LAMB

Ft. Pierce, Fla.

FOOTNOTE TO A LAMENT

You have unjustly attacked me. Your attack has hurt my work. Your attack was untrue and false.

BILLY JAMES HARGIS

Tulsa, Okla.

• Mr. Hargis refers to an editorial (May 22 issue) in which CHRISTIANITY TODAY lamented the fact that churchmen today sometimes spend more energy attacking anti-Communists than attacking communism. In passing, the editorial added: “We have no sympathy with wild generalizations, whether made by the McIntires, the Hargises or others. The best way to handle those who spend half-time denouncing churchmen and half-time denouncing communism is hardly to major in denouncing anti-Communists.” Mr. Hargis seems to feel we failed to practice what we preach. If so we regret it.—ED.

A PENTECOSTAL EXPLAINS

Thank you for your article on the Pentecostal World Conference (News, May 22 issue). You will be interested in our explanation of some of the points raised in this article.…

Paragraph Six: “It has grown to represent a virile segment of Christianity which ecumenical leaders have described as ‘the third force.’”

Ecumenical leaders listed the Pentecostal denominations as a part of the “Third Force” only in terms of growth, world-wide scope, etc. It also listed other groups not Pentecostal, even in some cases, bordering on being cults. It should be noted that while we perhaps “operate outside classic Protestantism,” we are much closer to traditional Protestantism, theologically, than we are to many of the so-called “Third Force” denominations. While the socio-cultural appeals of the Pentecostal denominations “reach” below the middle class, it is by no means limited to this level of society.

Relative to the size of the Pentecostal churches, the 12-member denominations in the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America alone have 938,871 members with a Sunday school enrollment of 1,576,867. However, this is in no way an indication of the size of the worldwide Pentecostal movement. As an example, the Assemblies of God alone has a U. S. membership of 508,602 with a foreign membership of 985,241.…

Paragraph Seven: “… many Pentecostal leaders are restudying the movement’s distinctive doctrine of ‘the gifts’ of the Spirit, and the tendency to view ‘speaking in tongues’ as the criterion of legitimate Christian experience.”

… There have always been Pentecostals who have not understood spiritual gifts. The Assemblies of God teaches that all gifts are available to each individual believer.… The Assemblies of God and other major Pentecostal churches have never taught the necessity of having one or the other (or all) of the gifts as a criterion of Pentecostal experience.

Main stream Pentecostals have never viewed “speaking in tongues” as the criterion for a “legitimate” Christian experience. We view “speaking in tongues” as the initial, physical evidence of the infilling of the Holy Ghost as recorded in Acts 2:4; Acts 10:44–46, and Acts 19:6. Pentecostals view the Baptism with the Holy Ghost and the initial, physical evidence of speaking in tongues, as an experience following and subsequent to salvation. To our knowledge, no Pentecostals are restudying this position with the thought of any revision of the belief.

Paragraph Eight: “Whoever has this initial experience (speaking in tongues) is described as ‘having received the Holy Spirit.’ Doubt is widening among Pentecostal ministers, however, that this description is to be denied others, and that it is to be rigidly attached to the ‘experience of tongues.’”

We know of no trend in the direction of accepting the position that “speaking in tongues” is not the initial, physical evidence of the infilling of the Holy Ghost. In fact, the Assemblies of God has re-emphasized this stand, asking its ministers each year on the credential renewal questionnaire to reaffirm their belief on this position. This would, without doubt, be the position of the leadership of all Pentecostal Fellowship of North America members and also virtually all ministers affiliated with the different denominations.

Pentecostal churches view the gift of the Holy Ghost as a crowning experience. However, this is the beginning, not the ultimate. It is our feeling that the Baptism gives power for further advancement and growth in spiritual depths.

Paragraph Nine: “Pentecostals do not insist that an interpreter be present, since they do not believe that new revelation is communicated by the Spirit.…”

Most Pentecostals view speaking in tongues in two lights, so far as interpretation is concerned. First, we believe the Holy Ghost uses the unknown language in private and devotional supplication to God (1 Cor. 14:2). We do not feel this is for interpretation or could be since He speaks not to men but to God. However (and secondly), we believe that “tongues” are given to edify the church, 1 Corinthians 14:26, and as a sign to those who have not accepted Christ, 1 Corinthians 14:22. We do hold that public “speaking in tongues” in the church and tongues as a sign to the unbeliever should be interpreted, as indicated in 1 Corinthians 14:27–28. We do not feel that any new revelation is conveyed, but that “messages” will be in accord and agreement with God’s Word, the infallible Truth.

Relative to your quote, “Some regard them (tongues) as a mystical reassurance of salvation,” my research has not disclosed any Pentecostals who take such a position. Rather, we believe this experience follows salvation. The evidences of salvation are as given in Romans 8:5, 10, and so forth.

Closing Paragraph: The Assemblies of God has been too concerned with revivalistic evangelism to spend a great deal of time elaborating its basic theology. The 16 points of our “Statement of Fundamental Truths” have served well, without modification, for a bond of faith and practice for more than 45 years. A proposed expansion of the Statement, to be presented this August at the General Council in Portland, Oregon, will enlarge upon the 16 points without effecting any basic change in them.

T. F. ZIMMERMAN

General Council of The Assemblies of God

Springfield, Mo.

POINTS OF VIEW

I wonder if those of you who call yourselves “Evangelicals,” and who are constantly depreciating the work of Barth, Brunner, etc., and who cling so tenaciously to the unbiblical dogma of the absolute infallible verbal authority of Scripture, as such, are not yourselves in danger of worshiping the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever—Amen!

GERALD A. VAN DOREN

Edmonds-Lynnwood Christian Church

Edmonds, Wash.

Many of us feel that CHRISTIANITY TODAY is more concerned about being courteous and scholarly than they are in being biblical and positive.

B. MYRON CEDARHOLM

General Director

Conservative Baptist

Association of America

Chicago, Ill.

I greatly appreciate CHRISTIANITY TODAY. The magazine is making a real contribution to the cause of Christian truth and activity today. It shows that firm conviction for biblical truth is consistent with genuine scholarship. Time will show that your active concern for evangelistic effort will result in social progress, as well as spiritual advance.

BUFORD L. NICHOLS

President

Seminari Theologia Baptis Di Indonesia

Semarang, Djawa, Indonesia

The most strategic journalistic venture in the kingdom of God in our time.

HAROLD N. ENGLUND

President

Western Theological Seminary

Holland, Mich.

I believe you are doing an excellent job. This is a magazine with a voice of certainty and the voice of the word of God. I thoroughly enjoy reading the articles and will look forward to more of the same.

EDWARD HEPPENSTALL

Dept. of Systematic Theology

Andrews University

Berrien Springs, Mich.

It is the most useful and relished of the five Christian publications to which I subscribe in that it does more to stimulate creative and constructive thought in the area of practical Christianity.

DON SCHOMBERG

Anaheim, Calif.

I wish to express my appreciation for the stabilizing factor that CHRISTIANITY TODAY and Revelation and the Bible have been to me in my crucial first year in Seminary, when the approach to the Bible and Christian morality has seemed so relative.

HENRY W. STEVENS

Richmond, Va.

The Editor

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First in a Series (Part II)

The question whether modern Israel practices mere religious tolerance, coupled with periodic intolerances, rather than implenting the program of religious freedom announced in the Proclamation of Independence, is a live one. Most Israel authorities interpret religious freedom as liberty to worship God as one pleases, but not as including the right to evangelize. While this interpretation lacks legal status, and is not formally announced for reasons of good public relations, it is candidly expressed at government policy meetings. “We don’t believe in missionaries,” said one government spokesman. “Missionary activity is harmful to the peaceful co-existence of the community; it introduces religious tension. Let us Jews alone! Take your missionaries out! They threaten the stability of the nation and breed resentment!”

For the Christian this sentiment represents an evasive and unworthy definition of religious liberty, one far different from that assured to minority groups in lands such as the United States where the freedom and right to evangelize across religious lines is defended and sought by Jewish as well as other religious leaders. For the Christian the worship of God includes obedience to the commandments, including Christ’s command to “go … into all the world and make disciples.…” To strip the Christian of this freedom spells religious intolerance.

Israel expresses high esteem for religious influence and religious culture but implicity disdains any emphasis on conversion. Liberal Protestantism has little trouble with such compromises. In Jerusalem, for example, 90 per cent of the YMCA membership is Jewish (non-Christian). When it was suggested that missionaries meet for informal discussion of religious liberty, the YMCA refused them a conference room because their meeting might be viewed as political. One of the Y personnel suggested that Israeli visa restrictions be understood in the same way sovereign nations like India interpret their sovereign rights regarding missionary visas. Described as an evangelical missionary venture, the Israel-American Institute of Biblical Studies aroused serious misgivings among Israeli religious leaders. The venture gained co-operation only as a training school for American preachers with some non-Christian Hebrew professors as faculty participants to promote academic discussion aimed at mutual understanding. The Institute distributes free upon request from its American office (1046 Ridge Ave., Evanston, Illinois) the Israeli government publication Christian News, specially oriented to the evangelical Protestant constituency, which manifests a live interest in Israel.

The Jewish religion, historically, has had little interest in converting others. The same is true of Orthodox Judaism today in Israel, if not in America. In fact, there is little confrontation of the Jewish population with the necessity for personal spiritual decision. This is one reason—fully as much as the secular revolt against sabbatarian and other legalistic restrictions—why Jewish masses in Israel are not as a whole reached evangelistically by the claims of Old Testament religion, despite an interest in Scripture. The Orthodox Jew is a self-sufficient person; he thinks every Jew should meditate on the Book for himself. And he therefore lacks incentive for “breaking through” to his people. Even the children of the Orthodox drift easily into nonorthodoxy, especially after military service. Under these circ*mstances one might think he would welcome evangelical Protestantism at least for its devout grasp of the Old Testament as living Scripture that has abiding personal and social relevance, in contrast to liberal theology’s critical views of Old Testament literature and theology. But because Hebrew orthodoxy has lost its hold (the Orthodox represent only 15 to 20 per cent of the population) and because evangelical Protestantism appeals to both the Old and New Testaments and calls for personal conversion to Jesus as Messiah, Protestant missionaries apparently loom as a special peril to the Orthodox Jew. The conspicuous contrast between evangelical Christianity and modern Judaism (with its concentration on historical rather than personal theological faith) became obvious in Israel during Evangelist Billy Graham’s 1960 ministry.

Many Israeli spokesmen deny the possibility of sincere conversion, and view a Hebrew’s acceptance of Christianity as “motivated” (by material advantage). Hospitals, education, and welfare with the hidden hope of conversion is contrasted negatively with the Jewish view of charity “without strings attached.” But Christian compassion from the outset has been motivated by concern for “the whole man,” and the special connection between Christianity and sacrificial interest in the outsider, motivated by the Gospel, is a standing fact of history. Nonetheless, Christian missions in Israel need to ask to what extent education and welfare programs are justified solely on the basis of conversion prospects, to the exclusion of a response to human need. On the other side of the ledger, Israelis who marry Gentile women who “convert to Judaism” (apart from which such marriages cannot be solemnized in Israel) tend to emphasize the genuineness of such conversions. The open exclusion of a sincere transition from Judaism to Christianity, moreover, settles “in advance” the judgment which is then passed upon the early disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.

Orthodox groups usually control the Ministry of Interior, Israel’s immigration regulating agency; the present minister of interior is reportedly so learned in Judaism that he could qualify as a rabbi. Certain officials insist nonetheless that only fanatically religious Jews really oppose missionary effort, that Israel actually implements religious freedom “to the maximal extent that orthodox pressures allow.” Many Jews themselves resent certain pressures such as the requirement of rabbinate marriage, which exacts an affirmation of orthodoxy. One tour guide who ridiculed the claim that the Israeli population is “wholly Orthodox, but with various degrees of observance and nonobservance,” said that “70 per cent of the Israeli Jews are non-Orthodox and most would prefer a civil marriage.” Such desires for church-state separation do not, however, necessarily reflect a full demand for religious freedom. The Jew has come to Palestine to escape persecution, much of it religious. Whether Orthodox or non-Orthodox, he therefore tends to attribute his sufferings to Christian vindictiveness. He wants to build a national bulwark against another such situation and fears any revival of Christianity in Israel. Hence, in some official circles open disdain for evangelism may really conceal a disquieting fear of evangelism. Obviously then, reluctance over visas for Protestant missionaries should not be explained only by Orthodox pressures; liberal Jews and free-thinkers also share this same aversion. They justify antipathy for missionaries by reference to the religious intolerances and persecutions of the past. They have not forgotten the Romanist Inquisition nor other crusades to “get ‘the Christ-Killers’,” and they shrink from a religious commitment which implies endorsem*nt of such persecutions and intolerances. “For the first time in 2000 years we Jews can escape forced religious conversion,” said one government spokesman. “Let us build our Jewish state and Jewish culture. If you need missionaries to minister to non-Jewish communities, that is one thing. But to ask a Jew to ‘convert’ produces an abnormal Jew; he is no longer fully at home with Jewish traditions and culture; his children are taught that what his forefathers and other Jew’s believe is not ‘the whole truth.’ That is destructive of the sense of Jewish community.” Moreover, many leaders expect of all their citizens a full “conversion” to the ideals of the State of Israel; for the Orthodox these ideals include revival of the Jewish religion. This thinking prompts government agencies to diminish as much as possible the granting of visas to Protestant workers.

On occasion, however, and for strategic reasons, the Foreign Ministry moderates the pressures of the Ministry of Interior against missionaries. If the denomination involved is large, and lodges protests through the American Embassy, Israeli decisions may be weighted by the factor of good will. A small interdenominational group however is quite unlikely to gain such an expedient advantage.

NOT A STATE POLICY

Dr. Chaim Wardi of the Ministry for Religious Affairs presents a different perspective. He sees in Israel, where Jew’s are immune from repetition of past Christian persecutions, good conditions for fresh Jewish-Christian relationships and for reversal of former misunderstanding and mistrust. He thinks a modus vivendi is being evolved, that further progress of gains made during the first 13 years of statehood for the cause of religious freedom is a likely prospect.

Dr. Wardi concedes that “Jews are not in favor of Christian missionaries.” The Jewish people believe that Christian missionaries have produced anti-Semites, some of them virile and dangerous. Dr. Wardi notes that Jews converted to Christianity have sometimes been persuaded to leave Israel for Gentile lands. After the war of liberation, economic hardships encouraged some Israelis temporarily to join Christian church communities in order to lessen the difficulties of the first years. Such “converts” brought little credit upon the missionary cause, even if for a season they provided encouragement to the “statistics seekers.” Missionaries involved in such nose-counting (Roman Catholics considerably more than Protestants) are considered unsympathetic to the State. They threaten the new State’s unity, which demands not diffusion but synthesis of interests and loyalties. Officials resent too the fact that some Catholic and Protestant missionaries offered food parcels in the early period of national poverty as a means of gaining converts from Judaism.

Few of these missionaries become permanent residents of Israel; most of them remain foreigners who cherish their passports. Many show little concern for the projection of Israeli culture; in fact, some missionaries seem devoid of understanding and appreciation for Jewish culture. In other cases, a missionary’s unfamiliarity with the Hebrew langauge, or even his personality, encourages misgivings. Missionaries who seek permanent visas after entering the country as “visitors” gain little respect from Israeli authorities, even if they feel driven to this evasion by present pressures. Now and then some individual missionary transgresses a minor law and thereby brings discredit upon the whole assembly of workers. More than ever Protestants must consider the matter of missionary qualification. As never before since the apostolic age Christianity needs competent people to pursue competent dialogue with Judaism in Israel, now the seat of a great university of Hebrew learning and the coming world center of Jewish culture.

Personal prejudice, claims Dr. Wardi, does not govern state policy or practice in respect to visas and religious privilege however. At the same time that the Ministry for Religious Affairs and other government agencies were organized in 1948, the Department for Christian Communities was established. This group interprets Christian rights and needs to the government to see that the religious requirements of the Christian communities are satisfied. After centuries of dispersion as minorities, the Hebrews had become a sovereign majority with the moral problem of protecting other minorities. Shrines in Israel such as the birthplace of John the Baptist in Ain Karem, site of the Annunciation in Nazareth and that of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, and the upper room of the Last Supper on Mount Zion were kept open and accessible.

Despite these facts, says Dr. Wardi, “the government hasn’t done the slightest thing to hamper missionary activities. I haven’t any antipathy toward missionaries, and I am ready to say that both the missionaries and Jewish reaction have contributed to existing tensions.”

INTER-FAITH OPPOSITION

But the Committee for Inter-Faith Understanding in Israel and the World, of which R. J. Zwi Werblowsky is honorary secretary, views “the existence of Christian missions, viz. the activity of Christian missionaries among the Jewish population” as “a veritable stumbling block in the way of healthy and brotherly Jewish-Christian relations.” At its founding session this committee declared that “the absence of missionary activity of any kind is a condition of any effort to foster good relations between religious groups,” and it called upon the Protestant Council in Israel last year “to make a clear and unequivocal statement concerning the suspension of missionary activities of all kinds” in order to promote “religious tolerance” and “cordial Jewish-Christian relations.” In a letter this year to the United Christian Council in Israel, Werblowsky declared that the missionary bodies “must know whether they want brotherly relations, based on mutual respect, sympathy and genuine understanding, between the Jewish people and Christianity, or whether they want converts. But they must also know that they cannot have both.… I feel it my duty to repeat with the utmost emphasis that any kind of missionary activity—perhaps even the very existence of missions—is bound to cause ill-will.”

PRESSURES AGAINST MISSIONARIES

In one case of refused missionary visas, appeal for reconsideration was immediately made to a higher office in the Ministry of Interior. Meanwhile, a plain-clothes-man (who described himself as from the police) came with a verbal order from the Ministry of Interior and demanded the missionaries’ immediate departure. Threatening police action and warning against delay, he ignored the explanation that an appeal to the office of the Ministry of Interior in Jerusalem was being processed. Only when informed that the United States Embassy would be notified of this turn of events did he retract his order and suggest that the applicants wait for word from the Jerusalem office. When the U. S. Embassy made inquiry through the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Interior replied that refusal was based not on religious discrimination but on legalities, the applicant supposedly having disregarded visa expiration dates. But such applications had been made in advance of visa expiration. Since the Embassy had no access to the applicant’s file, it was stalled from further inquiry.

In another case of visa refusal, inquiry was made by the applicants to the Ministry of Interior and to the Department for Christian Communities in the Ministry of Religious Affairs. The Ministry of Interior gave this verbal explanation: 1. Refusal was not prompted by the applicants’ records, but because they represented a new church group seeking a foothold in the country. 2. Refusal therefore was based on the sponsoring board’s lack of long activity (prior to statehood). 3. New groups were not being allowed to establish a work.

The verbal reasons reportedly given by the Department for Christian Communities in the Ministry of Religious Affairs were: 1. Property not formerly owned by a Christian group had been purchased in the name of a church in hopes of using this as a home base for Christian activities. 2. This would then become the base for establishing a new Christian church, and “we are determined to stop this.” 3. No already existing congregation of this denomination anywhere in the State of Israel needed or requested a pastor from the United States. 4. The objective was to create such a congregation out of Jewish converts, and this will not be tolerated. 5. The people of Israel do not want missionaries and new mission groups. After inquiry a spokesman for the American Embassy reported that the government’s policy toward missions seems to operate on a quota system under which the personnel of one mission after another is periodically reduced by one missionary family. Christian workers in Israel know the formula well: “you want to convert Jews; no present congregation demands you; we oppose expansionism.”

In short, the Israeli government welcomes Christian tourists to Israel, to “fill in the gaps” of pilgrimages to the sacred sites, and it is enlarging hotel accommodations for more and larger tour parties. It welcomes Christian conventions in Israel, the recent World Pentecostal Assembly in Jerusalem having been hailed as the largest such gathering in Palestine since biblical times. It welcomes Christian funds for the exploration of archaeological sites and investments for the development of natural resources. But it has scant welcome for the Christian missionary, that is, to the Jew. This chilly atmosphere recalls the apostolic age only in its outward repression; it does not rise from a conscious alternate messianic conviction, with reference to Jesus Christ, as much as from a post-Christian resentment of Christian persecution. But the situation nonetheless dramatizes the question how the Jews, long a persecuted minority, will respond to minority rights now that they exist as a majority.

UNDERSTANDING THE TIMES

Winning the modern Jew to faith in Jesus Christ is everywhere difficult, but in Israel the task is even more arduous because of ethnic and religious pressures and materialistic visions of life. Orthodox Jewry, as indicated, is merely a minority commitment. The Jewish immigrants from Arab lands are mainly Orthodox; those from Europe both Orthodox and non-Orthodox; while American Jews (who have come in scant numbers) are sometimes deplored for “losing Judaism in Unitarianism and Ethical Culture” and of evading the force of Ben Gurion’s insistence that “every true Jew really means it when he prays ‘next year in Jerusalem.’”

Christian Hebrews are admitted to Israel with a permanent visa simply as Jews. None has been disturbed when his or her Christian views have become known. The Christian witness to Israel in the long run may therefore turn more upon the missionary dedication of Hebrew Christians than of Gentile Christians. The Gentile missionary lacks familiarity with Hebrew language and literature, culture and customs. The first Christian Hebrew family from America arrived in Israel only within the past year, although some missionary work has been done by individuals who are not “officially” missionaries.

To the modern Jew, Christianity often seems a religion shaped by Greek, Byzantine, and Latin developments of the West, and very remote from Judaism. Protestant Christianity represents an extensive revolt against these medieval developments, yet there is not at the present time, on the usual Protestant basis, a single Hebrew-Christian church in all Israel. The conviction is growing that the Protestant mission to the Jews will succeed only if it creates a Hebrew form of Christian worship with roots in the Book of Acts and the ancient Judaeo-Christian community, a pattern eliminated by the medieval church more than 15 centuries ago. One of the strongest Christian works is the Messianic Assembly of Israel (Pentecostal). Its founder 13 years ago was W. Z. Kofsmann. A Hebrew who worked for the French government in French West Africa, he was led to the Messiah by a missionary personally sharing his love for the Jews. At first government authorities in Jerusalem refused to recognize Kofsmann’s assembly. But he sought no “favor,” only “rights,” explained Kofsmann, and stressed a spiritual tie to the early Church in the assembly’s Pentecostal emphasis. Today the effort is recognized as autonomous, with 55 active Christian Hebrew members. The assembly publishes a newspaper for Hebrew readers, although Kofsmann at one time was threatened with imprisonment for starting it without permission.

Missionaries who seek merely to transplant branches of “Western” churches to Israel are easily viewed as “outsiders.” Assuredly Jewish culture has mainly tended to express itself in a Western democratic-capitalistic framework, left somewhat insecure in Israel by the large influx of Jewish immigrants from Moslem lands. But in religion, most forms of Judaism—however modified—reflect Hebrew rather than post New Testament Greek-Latin-Germanic-Anglo-Saxon roots. The feeling that the Christian and Hebrew religions are divergent alternatives militates against the Christian witness. Missionary representatives of established denominations labor under still another disadvantage, namely, the multiplicity of competitive Christian denominations which confuses the Hebrews. Since arrangements are not feasible in a land of only 8,000 square miles, oneness is more imperative than on other fields. But in Israel efforts at unity have been resisted. A three-year attempt by a European Hebrew Christian to promote it among the missionaries ended in failure, despite the fact that unification seemed imperative simply as a protective device. Evangelical fragmentation (let alone Christian disunity) actually perpetuates the weakness of the Gospel witness and exposes missionary leadership to easy opposition.

In one area some 20 Christian Jews meet periodically in private homes for Bible study and worship, and invite other Jews. To avoid ill will, this group shuts the windows when hymns are sung. Their profession of Christianity has made some workers undesirable to their employers, Christian Hebrews being resented for “depriving” non-Christian Jews of work. Although such pressures are private and indirect, rather than official, they help to explain the fact that, in addition to the 250–300 open believers, there are estimated to be again as many “secret” believers in Israel—known as such to relatives and to Christian missionaries but not to their employers and fellow workers. There are other obstacles to the full expression of Hebrew-Christian conviction, such as the lack of Christian schools for Hebrew children, and of young people’s societies. As a consequence, children of Hebrew-Christian parents seldom follow in their steps. In these discouragements some Hebrew-Christian families every year emigrate out of frustration, while government officials view this as evidence that Christian commitment detaches Hebrews from national loyalties.

There is need for bold restudy of the Christian approach to the Jew. Christianity is not an interloper; it accepts the Old Testament, and is ready to discuss the Christian claim on this basis (“If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me,” John 5:46). The Jew is not being invited to receive a new God, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of promise and fulfillment. The Jew is not being urged to receive a Gentile Messiah, but the promised Jewish Messiah. The Jew is not being pressured to become a Gentile; when a Jew comes to the Messiah, he does not cease to be a Jew, but a Jewish believer—and there is surely no need, on this basis—for him to separate himself from his people. The Jew is not being asked primarily to become a Baptist, or a Scottish Presbyterian, or whatever else, but simply a Messianic Jew. Devout Jews and devout Christians are both waiting for Messiah to come—the latter for his return in glory. Such emphases reflect an understanding of the times in the outreach to the Israeli Jew. They dispel the misimpression that in order to become a Christian the Jew must cease to be a Jew, and remind him that, in the discovery of his Messiah, the Jew becomes in the profoundest sense a son of Abraham.

The timidity of the Christian missionary in Israel, be he Gentile or Jew, is one of the strange ironies of the age. The early apostles experienced and endured Jewish hostility beyond that known by the Christian task force today. Nobody languishes in prison, nobody’s life is in danger, nobody has been beaten and stoned for his faith. That may be one reason the modern Israeli does not take the Christian missionary too seriously.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

- More fromThe Editor

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Your church library can become big business. More of your people can read more of your books for more help in their interests and problems. How? Bring books to the people instead of people to the books. Getting the two together is the special job of departmental church libraries.

These libraries are really samples of the main church library. Carefully selected for a particular group of persons, these miniature libraries of a dozen or so books supply Christian and church-related materials often unavailable in public libraries and often unknown to church members. Departmental libraries are traveling salesmen of the church’s ministry through reading.

While the mechanics of this books-to-people program are simple, they presuppose good planning. In the first place, determine what groups could benefit from having their own branch libraries. Juniors? Youth? Young adults? Senior adults? There may be two, three, or at present only one. Your church school workers are perhaps best qualified to know. Second, designate what organizations, such as young people’s societies, missionary circles, men’s brotherhoods, and so on, logically incorporate these selected groups. The Junior-High library, as an illustration, would issue books particularly for this group in the church school classes, Sunday evening groups, and week-day clubs. Such coordination for a departmental library has side benefits, too. An alert leader soon discovers, for example, who attends club activities but not Sunday school, and vice versa. Third, establish the branch libraries in easily accessible quarters. The main assembly rooms of the Sunday school departments or adults’ regular meeting places usually offer sufficient space in attractive, familiar surroundings.

Obviously, the personnel in this program is very important. The main librarian, of course, alone or with a committee keeps an efficient, well-stocked central library and determines what books shall remain there for general circulation. She recommends which present book holdings and what new purchases are suitable for the departmental libraries. She recognizes that as additional books are requested by and supplied to the branch libraries, the total library service will increase both in quality and in volume.

Departmental librarians, well-briefed by the main librarian on circulation techniques and library policy, are preferably teachers or assistants in the various church school departments. Better than anyone they know “what’s going on” in their groups. More than anyone they’ve probably said, “I wish I had a good book for Johnny on the social code,” or “Isn’t there something for Mrs. Jones on how to tell her children about death?” Through judicious direction of materials these workers reinforce their Sunday school teaching and that of the church as a whole. Too, they often gain a personal, strategic relationship with individuals and families that even the minister may lack.

Departmental librarians help choose and vary book selections for their groups. They may recommend the purchase of new materials. Periodically they report and analyze circulation. They play a part, too, in encouraging persons in their groups to share in shelving books, filing cards, making displays, or even giving book reports. The greater the division of responsibility in the program, the more enthusiastic and contagious will be the use of the branch libraries and of the central library as well.

With sites determined and bookshelves provided, materials for the branch libraries, after some preliminary processing, are transferred from the main church library. The librarian or some competent committee has already decided which books shall remain in the central library. In all other books paste a card pocket in the front to match that in the back. For this front pocket make a file card with book title, author’s name, accession and call numbers to duplicate the card in the back pocket. In other words, all books circulating into the branch libraries have two card pockets and two file cards. Whenever a book goes to a branch library, the head librarian removes one of the file cards, records the name of the branch library to which it is issued, and the date of transfer. When a book is checked out in the branch library, the borrower’s name and the book’s due date are recorded on the second file card which is then kept by the branch librarian. The main librarian therefore knows which branch library has a given book; the branch librarian knows who is using the book and when it is due. To recall a book for loan to another person or even to another branch library becomes an easy matter.

Essential to the program’s success is good publicity. Regular announcements in departmental groups, perhaps with reference to specific book titles, are assumed. Bulletin boards, posters, and library displays in various church locations give many others a visual impact of the nature and the value of the expanded library service. At regular intervals church bulletin inserts reach even more people and accomplish several things: circulation statistics indicate growing activity; lists of recent book acquisitions or an occasional well-written book review may bring new library inquirers; opportunity to contribute specific titles enlarges the circle of supporters. Here and there brief oral reports of visits by church leaders to the libraries and timely comments by the minister give a stamp of official approval and encouragement.

The primary purpose of this program, of course, is not to promote a specific activity for activity’s sake, but rather to demonstrate through that activity the Gospel’s relevance for all areas of life. Without the church’s original historic sponsorship of the Book and books we might still be grossly illiterate. Today’s problem, at least in most of America, is not lack of hooks or of learning. Rather it is one of selective and pertinent reading. Departmental church libraries specialize in selective, pertinent books for special people with special interests and needs. Try them to step up your circulation!

CHRISTIANITY TODAYoffers the following list of departmental titles recommended by Miss Lois E. LeBar, Professor of Christian Education at Wheaton College.

JUNIORS

DEJONG, MEINDERT, The Mighty Ones: Great Men and Women of Early Bible Days. Harper, 1959, 282 pages, $3.50.

EISENBERG, AZRIEL, The Great Discovery. Abelard-Schuman, 1956, 112 pages, $2.50.

HASKIN, DOROTHY C., Brave Boys and Girls of Long Ago. Baker, 1958, 61 pages, $1.50.

JOHNSTON, DOROTHY GRUNBOCIC, Cathy and Carl of the Covered Wagon (series). Scripture Press, 1954, 104 pages, $1.50.

LUDWIG, CHARLES, Chuma (series). Scripture Press, 1954, 72 pages, $1.25.

MASSEY, CRAIG, Twig, the Collie. Zondervan, 1958, 121 pages, $2.

The Old Testament, illustrated by Marguerite de Angeli. Doubleday, 1959, pages unnumbered, $6.95.

PEARCE, WINIFRED M., John Paton (missionary series). Zondervan, 1954, 96 pages, $1.

SOMMERLAD, PATRICIA J., My King and I: Devotions for Junior Youth. Moody, 1959, 128 pages, $2.25.

ST. JOHN, PATRICIA M., The Tanglewood’s Secret. Moody, 1951, 250 pages, $1.50.

Vos, CATHERINE F., The Child’s Story Bible. Eerdmans, 1935, 732 pages, $4.50.

WHITE, PAUL, Jungle Doctor (series). Eerdmans, 1959, 118 pages, $1.50.

COLLEGE AGE

ADOLPH, PAUL E., Triumphant Living. Moody, 1959, 127 pages, $2.50.

AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC AFFILIATION, Modern Science and Christian Faith. Scripture Press, 1948, 316 pages, $4.50.

CODER, S. MAXWELL, God’s Will for Your Life. Moody, 1946, 123 pages, $.39.

ELLIOT, ELISABETH, Through Gates of Splendor. Harper, 1957, 256 pages. $3.75.

HENRY, CARL F. H., ed., Revelation and the Bible. Baker, 1958, 413 pages, $6.

LEWIS, C. S., Mere Christianity. Macmillan, 1943, 175 pages, $2.75.

PIKE, JAMES A., If You Marry Outside Your Faith. Harper, 1954, 191 pages, $2.50.

RAMM, BERNARD, The Christian View of Science and Scripture. Eerdmans, 1954, 367 pages, $4.

RINKER, ROSALIND, Prayer: Conversing with God. Zondervan, 1959, 117 pages, $2.

SMALL, DWIGHT, Design for Christian Marriage. Revell, 1959, 221 pages, $3.50.

TAYLOR, DR. and MRS. HOWARD H., Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret. China Inland Mission, 1932, 178 pages, $1.

TOURNIER, PAUL, The Meaning of Persons. Harper, 1957, 238 pages, $3.75.

YOUNG ADULTS

CARNELL, EDWARD JOHN, The Kingdom of Love and the Pride of Life. Eerdmans, 1960, 164 pages, $3.50.

DUFF, ANNIS, Bequest of Wings. Viking, 1944, 214 pages, $2.50.

EAVEY, C. B., Principles of Mental Health for Christian Living. Moody, 1956, 326 pages, $4.

HUTCHINSON, ELIOT D., How to Think Creatively. Abingdon, 1949, 233 pages, $2.75.

LITTLE, SARA, Learning Together in the Christian Fellowship. John Knox, 1956, 104 pages, $1.25.

MAVES, PAUL B., Understanding Ourselves as Adults. Abingdon, 1959, 217 pages, $2.

NEE, WATCHMAN, The Normal Christian Life. Christian Literature Crusade, 1958, 275 pages, $2.

OVERTON, GRACE S., Living with Teeners. Broadman, 1950, 85 pages, $1.25.

SHAW, DOREEN and JOHNSON, MARTHA, Your Children. Moody Pocket Book, 1957, 192 pages, $.50.

SWEAZEY, GEORGE E., Effective Evangelism. Harper, 1953, 284 pages, $3.50.

WHYTE, WILLIAM H., JR., The Organization Man. Doubleday Anchor, 1956, 471 pages, $1.45.

SENIOR ADULTS

BOUCHERON, PIERRE, How to Enjoy Life after Sixty. Denis Archer, 1959, 224 pages, $3.95.

CARMICHAEL, AMY, Gold by Moonlight. S.P.C.K., 1935, 182 pages, $3.

COWMAN, MRS. CHARLES E., Traveling Toward Sunrise. Cowman Publications, 1952, 254 pages, $2.50.

DOBBINS, GAINES S., The Years Ahead. Broadman, 1959, 144 pages, $.75.

GLEASON, GEORGE, Horizons for Older People. Macmillan, 1956, 137 pages, $2.95.

HULME, WILLIAM E., Counseling and Theology. Muhlenberg, 1956, 250 pages, $3.75.

LEWIS, C. S., The Problem of Pain. Macmillan, 1959, 148 pages, $3.50.

NILSEN, MARIA, Malla Moe. Moody, 1956, 253 pages, $3.

REDPATH, ALAN, Victorious Praying. Revell, 1957, 151 pages, $2.

TOZER, A. W., Born After Midnight. Christian Publications, 1959, 142 pages, $2.75.

WHEELER, W. REGINALD, A Man Sent from God: Robert E. Speer. Revell, 1956, 333 pages, $3.95.

WHITE, ERNEST, The Way of Release: For Souls in Conflict. Christian Literature Crusade, 1947, 95 pages, $1.95.