Page 6118 – Christianity Today (2024)

“It is no myth but sober fact that Christ is coming again in glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead.”

Someone has said that hell is truth seen too late. If this is so, then every reminder of Christ’s promised return adds up truth to come crashing home to us at the eleventh hour. This is the real crisis underlying the ephemeral crises of our fast-moving history. According to Paul, the night of this world is nearly over; the denouement of Christ’s coming to judge is almost here (Rom. 13:12a). This is a message charged with both danger and opportunity. It bears on the world-process as a whole, it speaks to the Church as an institution, and, most importantly, it carries a personal call to us as individuals.

To the world, judgment is indeed impending. It is no myth but sober fact that Christ is coming “again in glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead.” That coming will consummate the values of the historic process and will vindicate the holiness of God in the judgment of evil. There are preliminary manifestations of this truth of the coming End in the tentative and partial judgments within history itself, and not least in our own contemporary history. As the Nazi tyranny was judged at the end of World War II, so will the Marxist tyranny be judged in God’s good time. And it is meet and right for Christians to “contend against evil, and to make peace with oppression, reverently to use their freedom in the maintenance of justice among men and nations” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 44). The rebellion of nations against God contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

But this impending judgment is not merely something that the Church is announcing to the world. It is something that God is saying to the Church itself. Judgment must begin at the House of God. The promise that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” was given to a Church built upon the foundation of faith in Jesus as the Son of the Living God, the Saviour of men whose death and resurrection won the crucial victory over sin, Satan, death, and hell. The Church must ever stand under the judgment of the Word of God. For the Church has a built-in necessity for ever-fresh renewal. There can be “works of darkness” in the Church itself.

Much has been heard lately of the new prophets of atheism or near-atheism found within the ranks of the Church’s ordained teachers. Those who have studied the history of the relation between theology and philosophy can trace the source of this new academic experiment. Every age has a prevailing philosophical fad, and among the fads influencing the fashioners of “the secular gospel” of “the death of God” are existentialism and logical positivism (or analytical philosophy). A few ministerial professors have been trying to stretch their inherited theology on the Procrustean bed of post-Kantian movements, having a common assumption that what cannot be verified according to criteria of their own predilection is either meaningless or unworthy of belief. They give more credence to their own philosophically ratiocinations than to the historically based revelation of the Bible. Theirs is a rationalistic idolatry. As the Pharisees set about to establish their own righteousness instead of submitting themselves to the righteousness of God, so these philosopher-theologians go about trying to establish a system of thought based upon their own assumptions as to what constitutes valid knowledge, and refuse to submit to the Word of the truth of the Gospel. Subjecting their theology to the pseudo-gospel of the Enlightenment, and showing astonishing credulity toward the canons of unbelief adopted by the post-Kantian philosophers, the would-be apostles of intellectually respectable Christianity find themselves aligned with Nietzsche in their twentieth century rehash of “the death of God.” They can, indeed, claim the rights of academic freedom; but it is high time that they be challenged about the validity of their rationalistic substitutions for the Christianity of the Bible.

The theology of the New Testament—both of the Gospels and of the Epistles—is radically revelational; not anti-intellectual, but, like salvation itself, learned “by grace through faith.” The trouble with the “new” theologians is that they put the cart before the horse: for fides quaerens intellectum they have substituted intellectus quaerens fidem. The “particularity” of the Christian Gospel will always be a “scandal”; but even so it continues to make more sense than any of the alternatives offered by the infidel mind.

Pectus facit theologum (it is the heart that makes the theologian). Apart from spiritual conversion, no one can apprehend or be apprehended by the “Mystery of Christ.” Thus the message of Christ’s Second Coming ever leads up to a renewed call that God revive his Church “beginning from me.” It is always in season to say with St. Paul: “Now is the day of salvation.” The crisis arising out of the facts of the Gospel is that of being unable to postpone decision about Jesus Christ without risking perdition.

The lost human being has a fatal tendency to try anything rather than God. He may praise the spiritual therapist rather than do what he says; admire the doctor’s diagnostic skill rather than submit to the treatment he prescribes; say to the preacher or counselor, “You are doing a good job,” instead of getting right with God in line with the Word of God the preacher is communicating. We are all escape artists when we are confronted by the claims of Christ and the urgency of the Gospel. So the Word is ever and repeatedly the same: “Wake up now, surrender to Jesus Christ now, let go your self-directed efforts to run your life now, let Jesus Christ take over now.” The crisis of impending judgment is always with us. It is as much a living, present reality as it is a truth enshrined in the creed. In the providence of God it can bear down upon men “with majestic instancy” at any time, with ineluctable demand for decision. The time may come when we are surrounded with soul-shattering catastrophe, and in the mercy of God someone may be at hand to point to the one way of salvation.

But why wait for circ*mstances to do this? Why not make now the response that the ever-present crisis urges upon you? Now, in the time of this mortal life. Now, when the Good News of the Cross is getting through to you. Now, while the tempest still is high. Now, while the tide of the Holy Spirit’s influence is full. Now, before you have returned to the shallows of workaday mediocrity. Now, while the Crucified Lord is saying to you with all the persuasiveness of his victory over the Enemy, “Come unto me … and I will give you rest.” Now, not tomorrow when you have had time to think it over. Now, not after you have given the Devil a chance to come back at you with his talk about your rights—your right to yourself, your right to go to hell in your own particular way. Now, when you have a chance to win a resounding victory over that Devil by sharing in the crucial victory that Christ has already won. Now, not after you have experimented with other lines of action. In this crisis all alternative lines come from the Enemy, however persuasive they may seem. “Now is the day of salvation,” not when you are closer to the end of your earthly life.

The plain fact is that you are closer to that end right now than you may realize. The Judgment Day is nearer than you think. In a very real sense it is here right now. There are impinging upon you the powers of the world to come. “The night is far spent: the day is at hand,” right here, right now. The crisis is not some future thing that you can judiciously postpone to a more convenient day. The Day is here, pressing upon you with all the immediacy of a personal call from Christ for your surrender to him. The call is to engage now in battle in Christ’s Name in all areas of the Devil’s usurpation of the throne of your heart and life. Face this crisis now. Make the decision Christ calls for now. Confess your sins, accept Christ as your Sin-bearer and Saviour, and yield to him the control of your life. Then start living the victorious life of “Christ in you the hope of glory.”

Luther On Justification By Faith Alone

One of the earliest testimonies of Martin Luther to justification by faith alone (sola fide) is contained in a letter written on April 8, 1516, to George Spenlein, a friar in the Augustinian monastery at Memmingen:

“Therefore, my dear brother, learn Christ and him crucified. Learn to pray to him and, despairing of yourself, say: ‘Thou, Lord Jesus, art my righteousness, but I am thy sin. Thou hast taken upon thyself what is mine and hast given to me what is thine. Thou hast taken upon thyself what thou wast not and hast given to me what I was not.’ Beware of aspiring to such purity that you will not wish to be looked upon as a sinner, or to be one. For Christ dwells only in sinners.

On this account he descended from heaven, where he dwelt among the righteous, to dwell among sinners. Meditate on this love of his and you will find his sweet consolation. For why was it necessary for him to die if we can obtain a good conscience by our works and afflictions? Accordingly you will find peace only in him and only when you despair of yourself and your own works. Besides, you will learn from him that just as he has received you, so he has made your sins his own and has made his righteousness yours” (Weimar Edition Briefe I, 33–36, quoted from the “Library of Christian Classics,” Volume XVIII, Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, by Theodore G. Tappert, p. 110).

The resurrection faith waits eagerly for confirmation and consummation in the Second Coming, which will openly manifest Christ as Lord for all the world to see

The consummation of the resurrection reality is summed up in the revelation of the lordship of Christ. Its accomplishing is marked by a series of events and takes its course in realities of the “new” aeon, which admittedly cannot be ordered in a logical succession but rather partially overlap and intermingle with each other, but which we are nevertheless compelled to distinguish in thought. The accomplishing of the eschatological consummation therefore cannot be represented in the form of a number of points in a straight line, but has to be described by a series of statements standing side by side and by an exposition of various complexes of ideas; and only when we have taken all these into account and coordinated them with each other can we reflect the fullness of the Bible’s eschatological insight.

The understanding of the parousia stands in closest connection with the knowledge of the resurrection of Jesus. The parousia has its presupposition in the reality of the resurrection, and brings the unveiling of it. The resurrection reality in the telos accordingly means from the viewpoint of the parousia the emerging of the Risen Kyrios from his hiddenness.

Two things are expressed in the parousia: the manifesting of the Risen One as a King in his glory, and the manifesting of the victory over the power of Satan.

In the parousia the lordship of the Kyrios is consummated in so far as it reveals itself to be an unbroken one. So long as the veil of the old aeon keeps hidden the majesty of the Kyrios, his lordship can be disputed and his death on the cross can be misunderstood, whether as a judicial murder, or the sacrificial death of an idealist, or the punishment of a blasphemer. Correspondingly, the Church of the Lord, because of the hidden nature of the lordship of Christ, bears the “form of a servant” until the parousia. The parousia of the Risen One is the decisive event in which all the dissonances arising from the hiddenness are removed and the glory of the Kyrios which was inherent already in the resurrection is made fully manifest. The Risen One discloses himself as the King in his glory, whose triumph the entire new world must serve. The parousia of the Risen One is the only possible proof of God. For it is only when the hidden Lord becomes the manifest King in his glory that all resistance to his claim to rule collapses, that indeed every possibility of rebellion has the ground removed from under it. The “return” of the Kyrios not only sets the crown to the recognition given by faith, for which what was hitherto invisible now appears in visible form, so that in the parousia faith itself is transformed into sight, but now it comes also to the recognition of the Kyrios by unbelief, which sees itself convicted of rebellion against Christ and at the same time, in the light of the unveiling, as broken rebellion. Whether belief or unbelief is in the right, is shown unequivocally only by the parousia. Thus the resurrection faith waits eagerly for its confirmation and consummation in the parousia in which it is made manifest for all the world to see, including also the opposition, that Christ is the Kyrios, and in which the confession of his lordship is consummated in a universal confession. Before the parousia there can be no world confession, for the rise of such a confession is an eschatological event.

At the same time, the parousia shows itself as the unveiled triumph of the resurrection victory over the power of Satan. It thus becomes God’s decisive assault upon the dominion of Satan in all aeons. When, in accordance with God’s plan for the world, in God’s eternal wisdom Satan’s time has run its course and the satanic world empire has grown to its fullest maturity, God intervenes. He intervenes through the “Son,” who since the resurrection has been the hidden victor and the Kyrios. Christ’s victory in the parousia takes place through the uncontested overthrow and destruction of the anti-Christian empire and its anti-Christian “church.” This is the theological meaning of Revelation 19 with its witness to the “binding of Satan for a thousand years.” This is not an indication of time in the sense of earthly chronology, but the description of a definite period of aeons. In contrast to the ideas of Zoroastrian dualism, it is clear here that the “binding” of Satan does not take place in the “struggle” between two equally matched parties, but is a sovereign act of the superior power of the Kyrios. Thus for the first time since the original creation, the seductive power of Satan is nullified. The rule of Christ is the “new” aeon liberated from Satan’s dominion.

The course of the old world epoch and of history do not manifest the superiority of Christ; on the contrary, they are proof of an empire that is in opposition to God. When, however, in the parousia the hidden rightful King emerges from his concealment to be unrestricted Lord, then at once the whole demonic fruits of world history are thereby judged and the fall of Satan from his presumptuous world empire determined. The parousia is the revelation of the final victory of the Risen One over all demons of the old aeon, and the final subjugation and disarming of Satan. So long as theology does not venture to utter such statements, it is still under the spell of rationalism, which prevents it from a really profound understanding of the triumph of the resurrection message precisely where the conquest of these forces is concerned.

Inseparably bound up with the parousia of the Risen One is the exaltation of the community of Christian believers to be with their Lord. For in keeping with the parallel with the resurrection of Jesus, we have the resurrection of the community as the revealing consummation of the Church of the Lord. The fate of the “head” of the “body which is the church” is the fate of the community; that is why the resurrection embraces not only the individual but also the collective entity of the Church. An individualistic pursuit of independent eternity, which sees the resurrection only in relation to its own Ego, has no place in Christian eschatology. Rather, the individual is fitted into the whole and has his value only as a “member” of the body. If the Church has a part in the resurrection aeon which has already dawned and in the eschatological tension, while all the time it is engaged as a whole in battle, is despised and endures persecution, then it has also a part in the unveiling of its life in Christ. In analogy to the obedience of Jesus in his life in history, the Church as the community of the “brethren” of Christ is required to practice believing obedience even to the point of martyrdom. To the exaltation of him who was obedient “unto death” there corresponds the resurrection of the now suffering Church. Thus the martyrdom of the Church has the closest relation to eschatology. During the old aeon the Church cannot be justified before the world; that is why all ecclesiastical attempts to make the Church appear as an earthly power must mount to betrayals of the truth of eschatology. Only through the consummation of the resurrection does there come the rehabilitation, not by the Church of itself, but God rehabilitates the Church before the world.

In particular, this statement about the consummation of the Church of Christ involves three affirmations:

The parousia of Jesus leads first of all to the special encounter of the Risen Lord with his chosen Church which awaits him. In this insight lies the element of truth in the idea of a “catching up” of Christ’s Church to its Lord. This event of the exaltation of the Church, however, is identical with the concept of the “first resurrection.”

Of the “first resurrection” there has oddly enough usually been little mention in the eschatological researches of theology so far, although Scripture contains clear references to it. To leave it to the sects to distort these statements is an error on the part of standard church theology, which has disastrous consequences. These biblical statements are anything but marginal comment, for there can be no doubt that the apostles strive passionately to ensure that the faithful shall have a part in this first resurrection. All eschatological interest is centered on this “being there” when the Lord comes, this “having a part” in his appearance. This first resurrection refers to the Church of Christ, both to the members who have already “fallen asleep” and who now in the “intermediate state” are already “at home with the Lord” but still await their consummation in the resurrection, and also to the “living members.” The exaltation of the Church in the first resurrection, however, means “being changed.” There is no question of the continuation of our present physical mode of being, for to have a part in the kingdom of Christ is impossible for the natural man, for “flesh and blood.” Thus the first resurrection brings about the awakening of the Christian believers for their participation in the aeon of Christ’s lordship.

Secondly, the exaltation of Christ’s Church means the receiving of the glory of the resurrection. In biblical language a variety of images and comparisons are used in order to express this fulfillment of the expectation and longing of the Church. The hour of union between the “bridal Church” and the “bridegroom,” of “the marriage of the lamb,” of the “great supper” has come. The struggling, suffering Church which dies with Christ is crowned, receives the crown of victory, the palm of victory, the prize. The “race,” the battle, the struggle of faith reaches its goal. The images also at the same time describe the appointing of the members of the Church by Christ as “kings and priests,” i.e., their being called to an incomparable task of lordship in communion with Christ. With this exaltation there comes, further, the “manifestation of the sons of God” awaited by the whole cosmos. Unquestionably we have here to do with an exceptional distinction and pre-consummation conferred on the Church of Christ in contrast to the rest of mankind, “before” the universal second resurrection of the dead.

It is thus made plain, thirdly, that the aeon of the lordship of Christ is also a lordship of the Christian Church together with Christ. This lordship, contrary to Israel’s nationalistic and messianic idea of lordship, is not an earthly or worldly one, not a regnum mundi, but a spiritual one which becomes effective in a new “world epoch.” This insight gives meaning to what is said of the “millennium.” Once again it would be a mistake if theology failed to do justice to the universal significance of the kingly and priestly lordship of the Church. Certainly we must discuss this with restraint, and refrain, as the biblical references do, from all closer definition and embellishment.…

At the judgment of the world, the great day of the world harvest, the parousia of the Risen One is consummated as the Judge of the world. He can be the Judge because he is the Lord to whose function the divine office of Judge belongs. But he can be Judge in particular of the “living and the dead” because he is the living Lord who has passed through the realm of the dead, the life-giving Spirit who has the power of eternal life. His function as world Judge corresponds to the world-wide power of his lordship. Thus the parousia is also the manifesting of the Risen One as the Judge whose claims were certainly announced to men in the hiddenness of the new aeon, but just as certainly also not heard. It is only at the parousia that the judging word of the Kyrios becomes one the world cannot fail to hear. The coming of Christ as Lord of world judgment contains two specific ideas.

The judgment of the Kyrios always begins at once upon the encounter with Christ. Where belief in Christ arises, there also man is judged in his conscience. He who believes is already judged and has the judgment behind him, for indeed he already has part in the life of the resurrection aeon. The believer has already experienced Christ as his Judge. Nevertheless he still has the judgment continually before him, because he stands in the old aeon and until death participates in its sin, and also because the new Christ-life is a hidden one. The believer is thus always at the same time on his way towards the “judgment.” Accordingly, the “last judgment” in the parousia means two things for the believer: firstly, the unveiling of the life which man already possesses in faith, which means the manifesting of the sinner’s acquittal by Christ, about which the believer already knows; and secondly, the renewed awarding and confirmation of the life of the resurrection, because of the sin which clings continually to the believer in the old aeon and which therefore means even for faith a persistent threat to his acquittal, so that before the parousia the believer, being a sinner, is still always faced by the dual possibility of life or death. The parousia judgment is therefore for faith both an unveiling of present grace and a renewed justifying of the sinner. In this context it must not be forgotten that the exalted Church of Christ, the “children and sons of God” who now bear the image of the Son of God, also have an active part in the world judgment. Once the decisive crisis lies behind them, in which by faith in Christ they have passed through death to life, the disciples as Jesus’ faithful followers unto death have been proved and preserved through suffering and the cross and for this very reason are competent to judge others and to exercise with Christ the office of judge. With that the whole picture radically changed: those who were accused and condemned before the world become the judges of the world. The norm for this judgment is provided by the Gospel, i.e., by the attitude of man towards Jesus Christ, by the reconciling work of the “Son,” and so by the outcome and fruit of each individual’s life.

From this there follows, secondly, the character of the world judgment for the unbelievers. It proves to be not only the unmasking of their life in its remoteness from God, but also the inevitable carrying out of their rejection. In negative analogy to the relation of faith to the judgment this means: unbelief, too, is in fact already judged through its rejection of the Christ-life. It really judges itself, by choosing death in preference to Christ. Its reprobation has therefore already begun before the parousia and in the old aeon. Thus it appears entirely logical to go on with Stange to say that because the godless have no part in Christ, they also have “no part in eternal life.” They pass away with the earthly world. There is “nothing in them which outlasts death.” There is really no annihilation of the godless either, “since there is nothing there which can be annihilated.” And yet we must not follow the argument on these lines to its end. For then the idea of judgment in general, and of the judgeship of the Risen One in the parousia in particular, would be robbed of its gravity. Rather we must say: The public unmasking of unbelief in the last judgment cannot mean that the absence of the godless proves they have “fallen to destruction,” but at the judgment on the “last day” it will be revealed that the existence of the unbelievers was all along a lost one belonging to death, and at the same time Christ, whom they sought to escape, is really their Judge. Then, however, this unmasking leads to the carrying out of their rejection which only now ensues as so to speak a second act of judgment.… The world judgment necessitates the resurrection of all the dead to judgment. This resurrection is the “second resurrection,” as distinct from the exaltation of the Church of Christ. The dualistic outcome of the world judgment has in all its harshness and sharpness a biblical foundation. The result of the last judgment consists in the final division which takes the place of the temporary division in the “intermediate state.” This means, on the one hand, the resurrection of the “blessed,” the “pardoned,” the “saved” to the “eternal life” of unbroken communion with God; and on the other hand, the revelation of the “accursed” who arise “to everlasting damnation.” This damnation is “the second death,” which represents not annihilation but being bound in a state of conscious remoteness from God, and being shut out from the life of God.

The resolution of the eschatological tension comes with the revelation of Christ’s lordship. This brings the emergence of the resurrection world from its hiddenness, and the unveiling of the hitherto hidden resurrection aeon. Thus the consummation in the aeon of Christ’s lordship does not consist in the world’s development reaching its conclusion but in the unveiling of what is already present in principle in the reality of the resurrection.

Modern theology gains its penetration and wide appeal by relying on the technique of ambiguity

A leading Russian Orthodox scholar has often said of one of the most celebrated and most difficult to understand of modern theologians: “Either what he is saying is true, but in that case it is trivial, or else it is false.” Ambiguity is not found only on the modern stage; it is also well represented in much “modern” theology. In such theology, as on the stage, the ambiguity is sometimes deliberate, sometimes unconscious. In theology, it is partially technique, a way of securing attention for theological opinions in an intellectual market where, as in bookstores after Christmas, we find “all theology 50 per cent off.” But it is at the same time also a symptom of a complex of problems in the modern intellectual climate. Both as a technique and as a symptom, it is self-aggravating. Every successful use means that the next time a heavier dose will be required.

In several currently popular schools of theology, such as the “new theology” of J. A. T. Robinson, the “religionless Christianity” of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or the “death-of-God theology” of Altizer et al., this ambiguity is not incidental but central. Modern theology depends on it both for its penetrating impact and for its wide appeal. Yet ambiguity is also deadly, and is in itself enough to ensure that none of these schools or fashions will ever be able to produce a “new Reformation” or renew the modern mind. As Georges Florovsky so aptly pointed out in lectures delivered at Harvard University last year, this ambiguity is itself ambivalent: is it what the new theologies mean that is in doubt, or whether they mean anything?

“Religionless Christianity,” “death of God,” and similar theologies have a fascination that the scholastic monologues of typical academic theology cannot match. Yet one cannot help feeling that it is not the fascination of the mysterium tremendum, of the mystery and majesty of the vision of God, but rather the perilous attraction of the brink of the abyss, or of the glittering eyes of the snake. Men touch, and claim to handle and even to dismantle, the highest things in time and eternity. This is fascinating and frightening, or both at once; but if indeed they succeed in this undertaking, then those things were neither high nor eternal, and the new theologians are not dragon-slayers but canary-fanciers. New theologies depend for their viability on being sufficiently ambiguous to pass for both piety and blasphemy. To cry, “God is dead!,” as Thomas J. J. Altizer does, catches attention precisely because it is fraught with blasphemy and yet somehow claims to be said on behalf of God. Both the blasphemy and Altizer would be insignificant if God were not really there.

Altizer of course recognizes that if he were fully convincing, his outbursts would no longer be marketable; and this is why he makes the fundamentally illogical statement, “God is dead,” instead of the more rational but quite colorless one, “There is no God.” Altizer, however, is somewhat extreme and thus atypical among modern theologians, for there seems to be no satisfactory way to put a good, orthodox, conventional face on what he is saying. He lacks an adequate depth to his ambiguity, and in time his ideas will probably be expelled from the growing corpus of new theology. Others, such as Britain’s Bishop Robinson and America’s Harvey E. Cox, always speak and write with loopholes, so that a well-intentioned or muddleheaded reader can always think of them as eccentric but essentially Christian, and call them “not so far off the track, if they mean what I think they do.”

This oscillation between shrill blasphemy and platitudinous conventionality is extremely frustrating to the orthodox theologian who tries to examine them fairly—witness the painstaking efforts of Professor Eric Mascall of London to be fair to Robinson and Paul van Buren in The Secularization of Christianity (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1965). Like Ingmar Bergman films, the new theologies use and abuse powerful symbols and rouse ancient memories, playing on all the heights and depths of human experience and imagination, and thus are compelling and fascinating. The similarity goes further: Ingmar Bergman uses Christian symbols to say essentially nothing, and thus really says that Christian symbols mean nothing. A movie director is under no obligation to produce sound doctrine, but a theologian is—or used to be.

This ambiguity is evidently deliberate, at least to some extent. It is too protracted, and at times too farfetched, to permit one to accept Bishop Robinson’s disclaimer that it is just “thinking out loud.” Critics like Walter Kaufmann and Alasdair MacIntyre, both atheists, accuse the new theologians of dishonestly cloaking atheist ideas in Christian expressions, and acidly suggest that they do this because there are many professorships of theology but few of atheism. Such criticism may be unfair, but it cannot be refuted in a climate of frustrating imprecisions and apparently premeditated ambiguity. At the very least we are entitled to complain with Samuel Sandmel of “The Evasions of Modern Theology” (The American Scholar, Summer, 1961). In short, modern theology often does not read like real theology at all. The authors often seem to have assumed the kind of pose a Scientific American staff writer might assume if he were to try to-write an account of rocket research today as though it had been written as science-fiction prophecy in 1875. Either he would reveal that he was not really the man he impersonated by obviously knowing too much, or he would have to falsify some things so as not to give himself away. Somehow it would be sure to ring false. So, too, there is something not quite right about these new theologies; it is as if their proponents are keeping something back—or putting something on.

Canon J. B. Phillips’s little book Your God Is Too Small deals with problems that beset the man who has an inadequate idea of who God is and of what he can do. Phillips was writing for laymen, but he could have directed his title judgment at modern theologians. Much of the malady of modern theology is a problem of scale, or of proportion, or of position—like looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Forty-odd years ago, in The Principle of Authority, P. T. Forsyth warned that much nonsense was coming about because men were looking at the God-man relationship from the wrong perspective, e.g., starting with a consideration of man’s rights. (Or, as a Bultmannite or Robinsonian might say, “Modern man simply cannot conceive.…”) His warning has gone unheeded, and so today J. B. Phillips’s expression would serve as a good title for a literary history of mid-twentieth-century Protestant theology.

Phillips has pointed out that often inability to believe in God is the result of a completely false idea of God—one that does not accord at all with the view of the Bible or of historic Christian thought. In an age when the presentation of Christian doctrine has been replaced to a great extent by platitudes from both the pulpit and the political podium, when churchmen can take comfort in such nebulosities as songs about “Someone in the Great Somewhere,” it is not surprising that laymen often lack even an intimation of the majestic conception of God found in traditional Christian teaching and have not the faintest inkling of how well the great Fathers, Doctors, and Reformers stand the test of time and overshadow their contemporary detractors.

Denis de Rougemont remarked, in his piquant book The Devil’s Share, that the penalty for not knowing the history of Christian theology is to have to make the same mistakes all over again. This is indeed happening in theology on the lay level, where we can observe a recrudescence of all the second- and third-century heresies amid wondering shouts of “How new! How brilliant! How relevant!” But why do the professional theologians, who should know better, come in for De Rougemont’s penalty? It is not always easy to conclude, as Georges Florovsky does, that they too are simply ignorant of the grand dimensions of Christian thought—not that they have never been exposed to them, but that they have exhibited toward them that invincible ignorance with which the Church of Rome was wont, in more controversial days, to charge Protestants. With examples at hand of how each of the “new” theologians mentioned above has distorted, sometimes consciously, a facet of Christian teaching as a necessary step to his own restatement of it, ignorance would be the most charitable explanation one could suggest, although ignorance too is culpable in a man’s specialty in which he claims authority to teach.

Paul van Buren is the most courageous of these radicals; he does not seek to veil his questionable and misleading statements of Christian doctrine by quoting them from others, as Harvey Cox does, or by merely saying that Christianity “almost teaches” them (whatever that may mean), as John Robinson does. Even so, the misstatements of all these men, particularly in works intended for popular consumption, are often so crass as to point us back to the question of basic honesty raised by Kaufmann and MacIntyre.

Thus, in ridiculing the creed of the Council of Chalcedon in Honest To God, Robinson distorts it in a way that will not be recognized by the average reader unfamiliar with the text and history of that fifth-century document, but that can only produce embarrassment and suspicion in the reader who knows something about the magnificent vision of God held by the fourth- and fifth-century Fathers.

A great deal of modern theology suffers chronically from such a shriveled view of God (e.g., the volumes of idiotic but perfectly serious discussion on whether modern science permits God to produce a virgin birth) that it hardly deserves to be called theology but would be better suited by some such term as anthroposophistry. Such a designation could even be applied to the monumental work of Paul Tillich (and probably would have received a tolerant and approving smile from that universally educated giant), and it is certainly appropriate for his lesser and more banal imitators. The charge that it implies is warranted and, if proved, would deprive much of what is called “new theology” of the right to be recognized as a voice in any Christian dialogue. Since few Christians have the courage to point this out, the observation has come from atheists, or from a Jew like Samuel Sandmel, who seems to feel somewhat cheated at discovering that the “Christian” theologians are not firm enough for him to challenge them.

Leaving other allegations aside, it seems abundantly clear that a whole generation of “theologians” not only have no vision of God themselves but also are unaware of the vision others in the history of the New Testament people have had. Their theologies lack substance, and they try to make up for it by providing a constant series of sensations. In this, at least until they have exhausted the range of possible stimuli, they are successful.

A sidelight on the smallness of “new” theology may come from another angle. Why is so much of it so shallow, even though, following Tillich, it is fascinated by the idea of depth. A comparison with Greek drama provides a clue. Aeschylus and Sophocles were concerned with the dread underworld divinities, the powers of the earth, blood, and death; and their Olympian deities by contrast shine in a luminous glory. Euripides, only a few years their junior, trivialized the forces of evil, and his Olympians are feeble wraiths—or, as the Christian classical scholar Nebel puts it, “his heavens are an empty facade, with only blackness behind the empty windows.” Even the severest orthodox critic of the late Paul Tillich must recognize the grandeur, intensity, and depth of his thought. Tillich throughout his life was always sensitive to the personal, mysterious, and superhuman nature of the power of evil, and this gave to his vision at least an Aeschylean, if not a Christian, sweep. Cox, by contrast, considers the very idea of the demonic the opposite of New Testament faith (The Secular City, Macmillan, 1965, p. 154), and Robinson would emasculate all evil to “the benign indifference of the universe,” interpreted by love (Honest to God, S.C.M. Press, 1963, p. 129 et passim). Is it an accident, then, that these men do not share, like Tillich, in the breadth of an Augustine or the intensity of an Aeschylus, but only reproduce, in the modes of the twentieth century and in the mythical conventions of a bloodless, post-Christian, academic Protestantism, the tired trivialities of a Euripides, too pale even to reproach the gods for forsaking man?

Despite the validity of the observation that this whole school of theology is simply too small, it will remain fascinating, for it has the fascination of any attempt by the small to handle—or manhandle—what is great. There is in all of us enough of the desire of Faust—or Jean-Paul Sartre—to be God that we will continue to be intrigued, though perhaps with a trace of horror, by such attempts. And, as long as these attempts are made by man furnished with all the accomplishments of the human intellect, and with at least a fragmentary record of wrestlings with God, they will continue to show flashes of insight and of the sharply valid criticisms of more complacent traditionalists. Perhaps we can indeed hope that the fate of these new theologies will finally be that of Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust, who wanted to be “a part of that power, which always wills evil, and always causes good.”

In trying to decide what to do with the schools of thought and the books produced by the new theologians, one is led to the suggestion made by some wag on resolving urban traffic jams. Wait, he said, until all the highways are fully congested, and no automobile can move, and then plaster over all the cars with a second layer of highway and begin again. Attractive though it is to one who has painstakingly shared the analysis of Mascall or the frustration of Sandmel, such a suggestion is more easily applied to cars than to men. Yet beyond a certain point, it really is necessary to plaster over some of these movements, by recognizing that they are indeed no longer theology at all and simply ignoring them, living, to paraphrase Bonhoeffer, as if there were no theology. Above all we should recognize that this smallness of theology is a hunger phenomenon, and that the hunger results from the scarcity of the Word of God and from the lack of the vision of God. To feed these men themselves may not be possible, because they have largely rejected fact and chosen fancy and fantasy in theology. But we must not be led by them into neglecting the people they are not feeding the truth. The loss of the vision of God, the pitiable smallness of what passes for theology today, must be counteracted by those of us who hold the Word of God, who are the legitimate heirs of the prophets, apostles, and martyrs. We must counteract this inadequacy in the vision of God with a theology not merely accurate in detail but also adequate in scope, soundly based biblically, and recapturing some of the magnificence of historic Christian thought. If these poor men had caught but a glimpse of the splendor of the Christian vision of God, they might never have lost the substance of its faith. To the analysis of J. B. Phillips, so painfully applicable to “new” theology, “Your God is too small,” there is added, inevitably, the solemn sentence, “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Prov. 29:18).

A quartet of young Pentecostal students, articulate spokesmen for anti-religious-establishment forces at Yale University, promise to be the talk of the campus next week as classes resume after spring vacation. The four tongues-speaking bachelors have been waging a verbal war against what they feel are efforts to stifle their freedom to evangelize privately (see story following).

The four also represent an emerging new Pentecostalism that has little in common with the Holy Roller image. Today, gymnastics in the pews and lusty gospel music are confined largely to rural congregations and tent revivals. And a new generation of Pentecostals wants to keep them there, if they have to be kept at all.

A recent article in the official journal of the largest Pentecostal denomination urges that leaders today “remain ever alert to the dangers of such worked-up excitement. The spurious conversions and fevered exhibitionism resulting from cheap psychological methods have no place in a genuinely spiritual movement.” Pentecostal historian Carl Brumback admits there is “a general lessening of fervor” now within the ranks, and some sense spiritual retreat.

In a nutshell, there is evidence of considerable change in Christendom’s “upper room,” that is, the Pentecostal movement, which has traditionally emphasized the infilling of the Holy Spirit as recorded in Acts 2. Many old fixtures are being discarded as new ones take their places. Further restructuring of the Pentecostal chamber is also being contemplated in the wake of the charismatic revival of recent years.

Extremely narrow legalism is on the way out. For years tongues-groups believed the observance of certain prohibitions to be a sign of holiness. “A few years ago you could tell a Pentecostal person anywhere, anytime,” says Wade H. Horton, general superintendent of the Church of God, “and they did not hesitate when they said that movies, carnivals, circuses, sports, entertainment and other things were worldly.”

New “styles and times have changed somewhat the position on dress in the Assemblies of God as well as in other Pentecostal organizations,” states Carl G. Conner, until recently the unofficial chief of public relations for the Assemblies of God.

Times have also changed the proscriptions on sports and entertainments. The Tremont Avenue Church of God in Greenville, South Carolina, for example, has built a church gymnasium valued at $100, 000—a thing unknown before in the movement.

In addition to these discarded fixtures, there are some notable additions in Pentecostal circles. Specifically, the appearance of new physical plants is attracting attention. The Assemblies of God General Council is now well settled in its contemporary $3,000,000 building at Springfield, Missouri. The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada has also dedicated a new $500,000 headquarters structure in metropolitan Toronto. And just recently the Church of God began a $1,500,000 addition to its international center in Cleveland, Tennessee, which will sport multi-color fountains.

Ministerial candidates are now facing tougher educational requirements. In both the Pentecostal Holiness and Assemblies of God churches, ordination now requires a bachelor’s degree or an equivalent study program by correspondence. The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel demands two years’ college training.

Furthermore, an “ecumenical” spirit has introduced itself within Pentecostalism’s ninety groups, all of which maintain separate headquarters in the United States. No Pentecostal has yet expressed a desire to participate in unions with historical churches. But clergy of the movement are becoming more involved in interdenominational efforts.

At this time, older Pentecostals are finding themselves forced into a broader religious context as tongues-speaking spreads through older denominations. Donald Gee, Assemblies of God editor for the World Pentecostal Conference quarterly Pentecost, candidly admits, “The gale that produced the earliest phases of the movement has, in many places, almost blown itself out. Pentecostal churches all over the world are tending to become spiritually static.”

Pentecostals seem to be re-evaluating their doctrine of the Holy Spirit. In the past, many taught that the Spirit did not come to dwell within a person until a post-conversion Pentecost. Tongues-speaking thus tended to become, in the eyes of observers, an overly exalted manifestation. Making the situation acute was the fact that literature has been very meager on the subject, and has lacked authentication.

Today the Pentecostal experience is being stated officially and clearly for the first time. This is resulting in a restructuring of the doctrine of the Spirit, at least as it has been promoted and understood previously. “It is true,” comments one key observer, “that a great deal of emphasis in the past has been placed on the two words, ‘with’ and ‘in.’” More recently, though, “it has not been the testimony of Pentecostal bodies, officials that only those have the Holy Spirit in them who were baptized with the Holy Ghost. It is recognized that all born-again believers have the Spirit.” A new Pentecostal manual, The Holy Spirit, clearly states, “The Holy Spirit dwells within every true believer in Christ.”

Consequently, there is less emphasis on tongues as the touchstone of all blessing and more emphasis on power for evangelism. “The Pentecostal experience, contrary to much of the publicity, does not center around ‘speaking in tongues,’ more formally identified as glossolalia, but in the belief that the infilling of the Holy Ghost should follow conversion,” says Thomas F. Zimmerman, general superintendent of the Assemblies of God.

All of this causes others to wonder whether tongues-speaking is losing out as “the” distinctive of the movement. Donald Gee asks whether there is a chance the new emphasis may “obscure the distinctive testimony for which we believe God raised up the Pentecostal revival.” He warns, “Evangelism must be a result of spiritual gifts properly exercised, but not a substitute for them.”

Being reconsidered also are other doctrinal issues. Denominational officials are not now so sympathetic to massive healing revivals as formerly. “Mass healing campaigns have lost their novelty,” Gee asserts. Two groups have in their most recent conventions passed resolutions outlawing independent evangelistic associations among their ministry. And, to the surprise of most, the Pentecostals opened their first approved hospital June 28, 1965, in Canada.

What are the reasons for this refurbishing of the upper room? There are at least four:

1. The changes are partly the result of a more educated clergy. Trained men want to clarify and adjust those points where confusion and misunderstanding have occurred.

2. Some adjustments are also being made in an effort to continue the popular growth of this “third force.” Pentecostals are concerned because their once rapid growth, in their U. S. churches at least, has slackened. The Assemblies of God General Council in the fall of 1965 reported “a drop in membership in nineteen districts.” Only thirty-nine new licensed ministers were gained in the same two-year period.

3. The tongues revival continuing in historic churches where the gift is not tied to traditional Pentecostalist disciplines has further caused leaders to take a good look at their whole schema. In fact, Lewis J. Willis, editor of the Church of God Evangel, refers to a “slow but relentless deterioration of strict fundamentalism among some of our people.”

4. Refurbishing is also the result of the improved economic status of members and churches. Elmer T. Clark, in his book The Small Sects of America, outlines in detail the changes that take place in the evolution of a sect into an established church—the very transition now present in this movement.

The Addicts

Canadian immigration officials took a long hard look at a group of New York gospel singers before allowing them to cross the border for a series of March engagements in British Columbia. Six out of the eight members of the group, former drug users who call themselves “The Addicts,” were barred temporarily because they had criminal records. The ban was lifted following appeals from Pentecostal churches where the group had scheduled engagements.

Addicts leader John Gimenez, 34, said they present an act aimed at showing the horrors of drug addiction. In addition to church appearances, the Addicts were scheduled to present a four-act singing drama at the University of British Columbia.

God And Man At Yale—1966

When in 1795 the Rev. Timothy Dwight became president of Yale, he undertook a campaign to lead students into a biblical faith. His scholarly rebuttals to naturalistic philosophy eventually paid off in a revival that swept the college during the spring of 1802. This spring, Dwight’s academic crusade in behalf of orthodox Christianity was being recalled in the midst of a controversy over students’ rights to evangelize. The liberally oriented religious establishment at Yale is saying that other groups “must not contravene in their activities on campus the developing discipline and consensus of the unified group ministry.”

Thus far, no evangelistic efforts have been restricted, but four tongues-speaking Pentecostal students suggest that the machinery has been set up for severe curtailments. In the pages of the university newspaper, the four warn fellow Yale men that establishment forces “could seize from every student his right to follow the dictates of conscience as to faith and practice.”

The controversy recalls a furor on the same campus more than fifteen years ago after the now-noted political conservative William F. Buckley came out with God and Man at Yale. The book charged that some Yale professors were undermining the religious faith of students.

The latest dispute apparently was triggered by efforts to evangelize Jewish students. This drew fire from the establishment, the “Yale Religious Ministry,” composed of chaplains and other religious workers officially accredited by the university. As the controversy developed, the four Pentecostals took sharp issue with a 780-word definitive statement drawn up for the YRM by a Roman Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi and signed by twenty YRM members. It warns against emotionalism and says unified group ministry members should share their own religious convictions with a “seriously troubled person” only if “he has no spiritual home in his community—that is, no living contact with its teaching, worship, or members.”

Calvin B. Burrows, a senior in English literature and spokesman for the Pentecostals, asserts the declaration “strikes at the very heart of what Yale stands for.” “Religion,” he contends, “is supremely that most sensitive and intuitive pursuit of man, especially unimpressed by restrictive rules, numbers, accounting procedures, inter-faith trade agreements, and the consensus of religious bureaucrats.” Burrows grew up an Episcopalian. He says he was converted while a student at Groton.

Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin contends that the YRM document is an internal paper for the exclusive guidance of agencies that subscribe. Coffin concedes, however, that he looks with disfavor on evangelistic efforts such as those carried on by the Pentecostals. He has also accused Campus Crusade for Christ, another evangelical group, of using “devious methods” in the past.

Boyd Meets Byrd

Washington’s National Cathedral, as crowded as on Christmas Eve, had a brush with profanity last month as pop prayer writer Malcolm Boyd teamed with eminent jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd.

The listeners, an unchurchly-looking throng of young people, sat solemnly as Boyd read from his new book of modern-language prayers, Are You Running With Me, Jesus? His choppy, flat, nasal readings echoed through the high arches with eerie effect.

Much more promising were the imaginative improvisations of Byrd, acknowledged master in his field. He is a Unitarian.

Boyd, an ad man turned Episcopal priest, is an innovator and gadfly within his denomination. Some of his published chats with Jesus are vigorous, meaningful, and theologically apt. Sample: “It takes away my guilt when I blame your murder on the Jews, Jesus. Why should I feel guilty about it? I wasn’t there.…”

Others, sprinkled with “damns” and “hells,” are strange examples for a clergyman to offer for youth. One social protest prayer begins, “Blacks and whites make me angry, Lord. Why does it make any difference to some of us? For Christ’s sake, why does it, Lord?” The motif was picked up a few minutes later by a listener in the pews: “Jesus! These seats are hard!”

Clubs Succeed Classroom Devotions

A group known as Youth Club Program, Inc., is promoting church support of weekday religious instruction for public school students. The Supreme Court ban on classroom prayer and Bible reading has served as stimulus for the program, now in twenty-one states.

Activities vary from club to club, but most put priority on Bible study and discussion of Christian mission and stewardship. Clubs have sprung up in crime-ridden inner-city areas as well as in affluent suburbs. Training centers for club leaders are being established and special textbooks printed. A twelve-grade Bible-study curriculum has been developed.

The Youth Club Program had its start in the Pittsburgh area under the leadership of Dr. Dale K. Milligan, pastor of Beulah Presbyterian Church in suburban Churchill Borough.

ROBERT SCHWARTZ

One Slant On Peace

Peace is one of those things everybody is for. The trouble comes when you try to decide the who, how, and where of it. A set of answers came last month from a National Inter-Religious Conference on Peace, convened in Washington.

Whether by fate or masterful design, the conference mobilized religious voices opposed to current American foreign policy, while adding just enough ecclesiastical window dressing to make the conference seem authoritative.

After three days of parliamentary niceties, hard work, and some excellent scholarship, the 400 participants agreed that peace could be promoted if America recognized Red China as the government of the mainland, agreed to admit her to the United Nations, urge Nationalist Chinese withdrawal from Quemoy and Matsu, end all trade on non-strategic items with Red China, stop immediately all bombing in North and South Viet Nam, call a Viet Nam ceasefire (beginning on Good Friday), and recognize the National Liberation Front as a party to Viet Nam negotiations.

The list was similar to that in recent statements from the National and World Councils of Churches; but the conference was, in a sense, broader, since it included Roman Catholics, Jews, Ethical Culturists, Mormons, and Unitarians.

But those who came expecting a representative discussion of American foreign policy were disappointed. The persons invited to participate represented a particular peace line, with few voices in tune with the current Lyndon Johnson consensus and none to the right of that. Even so, Vice President Humphrey showed up late one night to say hello, and President Johnson sent over a note that said we must “isolate and control the deadliest of microbes—man’s capacity for hatred, his penchant for violence.”

The conference statements included no such dark note. Thoughtful assessments of international problems seemed blunted by the use of such euphemisms as Red China’s “involvement” with India on their border and her “reordering” of Tibetan society (the latter was changed to “communization”), and avoidance of nettlesome facts on Asia.

The co-chairmen of the event were Bishop John J. Wright (Pittsburgh Roman Catholic), the Rev. Dana McLean Greely (president, Unitarian Universalist Association), Bishop John Wesley Lord (Washington, D. C., Methodist), Archbishop Iakovos (Greek Orthodox primate), and Presiding Bishop John E. Hines (Episcopal). The latter two men issued general statements on peace but did not participate in the conference.

With this first conference as background, the next step is a global conference, with leaders from all the great world religions, to meet next year. The conference also urged the National Council of Churches, National Catholic Welfare Conference, and Synagogue Council of America, plus “other national religious bodies” (National Association of Evangelicals was mentioned by name) to set up a more official conference on “Religion and Peace.”

The Pope On Mixed Marriages

Pope Paul’s long-awaited Matrimoni Sacramentum, which affects the faith of an untold number of children to be born of mixed religious marriages, reopens a major ecumenical controversy. The 1500-word document was released March 18, days before the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury was to discuss marriage and other issues with the pope in Rome.

The key section apparently does not change the requirement that children of mixed marriages be baptized and educated as Catholics, but it removes responsibility from the non-Catholic for such training. If the non-Catholic is unable to promise before marriage he won’t interfere with Catholic upbringing, the case is referred to the Vatican.

Catholics who marry non-Catholics before non-Catholic clergymen will no longer be excommunicated (this is retroactive), and non-Catholic clergymen can now participate in mixed marriage ceremonies after the priest conducts the vows.

Birth Control Panel

It became official March 7: The Pope has himself a new blue-ribbon advisory commission on birth control headed by strongly conservative Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani (see Mar. 18 issue, page 44). The commission, as initially drawn up, was composed of sixteen high-ranking prelates, mostly cardinals.

According to well-informed sources, the commission is said to be fairly well balanced with, as one spokesman put it, “a preponderance of moderates.”

Contrary to earlier reports, however, the commission membership does not yet include the liberal Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger of Montreal. Vatican sources indicated at first that Leger would be Ottaviani’s deputy.

The commission is expected to process the findings of a previous papal commission set up in 1964 to study the Roman Catholic Church’s traditional teaching on artificial birth control.

Ghana: Coincidental Coup

Baptists in Ghana climaxed an evangelistic crusade only a few hours before a coup overthrew Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah on February 24. Two weeks of meetings in Accra, Kumasi, and Tamale resulted in 2,631 decisions for Christ. The evangelists included four Americans: Howard Jones and Ralph Bell of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Dr. Conrad Willard of Miami’s Central Baptist Church, and the Rev. Joseph Underwood of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board.

Breach In Process

The Church of South India, long hailed as the most successful product of Christian ecumenism, is undergoing its first major schism. Some 269 churches embracing more than 80,000 members are reported to have severed their official ties with the church in a protest over theological liberalism, ritual, ecumenism, and caste discrimination. A new denomination is being formed that will seek affiliation with the International Council of Christian Churches.

Dr. Carl McIntire, ICCC president who visited the dissident Indian churchmen in January, said that the CSI’s Travancore and Cochin Diocese, which has Anglican roots, withdrew from all affiliation with the Church of South India on February 6 and voted to affiliate with the ICCC. He said that the new church will be inaugurated at a convocation on May 5, at which time also a bishop will be consecrated and deacons ordained.

Meanwhile, CSI leaders are trying to patch things up, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Arthur Michael Ramsay has sent an emissary from London to hear grievances and to try to negotiate a settlement. Ramsay has also written the leader of the dissidents, the Rev. V. J. Stephen, promising that complaints which Stephen voiced a year ago will be seriously considered by a special CSI synod commission.

McIntire is planning to attend the May 5 convocation along with James Parker Dees, a former priest of the U. S. Episcopal Church who claims apostolic succession. Dees, of Statesville, North Carolina, resigned the Episcopal priesthood more than two years ago in protest of trends in the denomination (he holds theological and social views similar to those of McIntire). He was subsequently consecrated bishop of a newly organized Anglican Orthodox Church by prelates from two small sects—one Ukrainian Orthodox and the other Old Catholic.

The Indian dissidents are in a famine-stricken area, and the ICCC is appealing for funds in their behalf (see story, page 52).

The total Christian population in India is about twelve million. The Church of South India claims a community of more than a million, about a third of whom are full members.

The Church of South India was formed in 1947 of churches founded by the Church Missionary Society (Anglican) as well as those of Congregational, Presbyterian, and Methodist missionary efforts in South India.

The dissidents who charge CSI leaders with theological and ecclesiastical deviations are primarily converts from the outcasts and untouchable classes of Hinduism.

“The death of Christ has not the place assigned to it, either in preaching or in theology, which it has in the New Testament.” That was written by James Denney more than half a century ago in the Preface to The Death of Christ. It may well be that the position has changed, at any rate with regard to theology, since then. The work of Barth and Brunner, the studies of Vincent Taylor and Alan Richardson’s Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament combine to modify Denney’s statement. In addition to this there is the resurgence of conservative evangelicalism as an academic force as well as a religious vitality, with such books as Leon Morris’s Apostolic Preaching of the Cross.

About preaching I am not so sure. With some shining exceptions preachers do not seem to assign to the death of Christ the place which it has in the New Testament. It is not unmentioned, of course; and many refer to it as more than an example of faithfulness or as the final exhibition of the love of God. But it does not fill the horizon.

There are a number of reasons for this. It is partly, I believe, because men have frankly abandoned the characteristic New Testament attitude, a belief in the theological and the evangelistic efficacy of the Cross. We have indeed a not infrequent reference to the life, death and resurrection of our Lord, but this “one event,” as it has been called, has strangely lost its cutting edge. I have been told, for example, by distinguished leaders in the church that it is no good going to Japan and preaching St. John 3:16. “They simply would not understand.” Even if we make allowance for the fact that in the Japanese language there is no word for “sin,” the remark, coming from the source that it did, is serious enough to be disturbing. And similarly, it has been asserted, it is no good going to India to proclaim the evangelical message of the Cross, which is old-fashioned and does not meet the needs of the present day. Such hesitation betrays the melancholy fact that the religious salesmen have little confidence in the goods which they are supposed to offer.

Both views neglect the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. “… there is no ‘problem of communication’ that the Spirit cannot solve” (Alan Richardson, Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament, p. 119). And neither view seems to ask whether the New Testament doctrine of the Cross is true. Did our Lord do something there which we could not do for ourselves? Did He do something which no other could do? Did he do some mighty work without which we should still be in our sins, lost? Did He do that unique work which we have been commissioned to preach? If the answer is an emphatic affirmative, then we have no option: we must faithfully discharge the divine commission, even if no man in the world believe us. If, however, our answer is negative, then we can pick and choose those aspects of the New Testament which appeal to us, but it does not matter very much. Nothing particular hangs on it, and it may be doubted whether our proclamation can be introduced without a burning “Thus saith the Lord.”

There are others whose views are determined by what we might call “the novelist’s puzzle.” How often do the characters of fiction or the mythical “man in the street” or those who take their ideas from the popular untheological atmosphere long to return to the “simple teaching of Jesus,” leaving behind the dogmas of the church and all that is bound up with doctrines of atonement and the unhappy influence of St. Paul!

And it is not only the popular novelist. Sir Harold Nicolson, Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, biographer of His late Majesty Ring George V, who held office during the war, represents a more academic and perhaps a more sophisticated approach. He does not believe in God or in survival after death. He dislikes St. Paul for depriving Christ’s message of its original sweetness and distorting it into a doctrine which was pragmatic, intolerant and hard (My Philosophy of Life: A Symposium, ed. by the Rt. Hon. Lord Inman, London, 1958, pp. 120, 121). This is a strange view of the man who wrote First Corinthians 13; and it may seem stranger still when the teaching of our Lord is closely examined.

There is another factor, which has been called “the reproach of the cross.” To preach the Christ who died for me, and why He died for me, and what He did for me, places the preacher in a position where he may be criticised for giving prominence to himself; for lack of depth in his thought; and for oversimplifying the message.

But this is the price we have to pay if we are really going to preach Christ. Spurgeon, one of the humblest of men, could admire the abstinence of great preachers like Robert Hall and Chalmers who did not mention themselves at all, but he believed that “if some of us were to follow their example, we should be throwing away one of the most powerful weapons of our warfare.” We may therefor ask the preacher: What has Christ really done for you? Tell it out!—DR. RONALD A. WARD, rector of Kirby Cane and Ellingham in the Diocese of Norwich, England, in the introduction to his book Royal Theology: Our Lord’s Teaching About God (London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1964).

The woman who telephoned me long distance was in great distress. She had stumbled for the first time on the “death of God” controversy, didn’t know what to do with it, and thought maybe I did. “Well, what’s wrong,” I said. “This man says that God is dead so I’ll just answer him and tell you that God is alive. Now where are we?”

“But the trouble is,” she said, “the man who said it is a professor.” “Well,” I replied, “I’m a professor too, and I say God is alive. People have been saying that God is dead for a long time, and the only reason everybody is so excited this time is because the matter is getting a lot of space in the newspapers and magazines and on television. If a professor stands up on a street corner and says God is dead, that is news. If another professor says God is alive, that is not news.” And so we went on. But I am sure that nothing was settled in her mind, and that she went away still a little panicky and unsure about a lot of things.

One thing is perfectly evident. The “death of God” controversy is not going to be settled by a shouting match. One person says God is dead and the other one says he is not dead, and the first man says he is so dead, and the conversation has degenerated into the kind of argument children have in a sandbox. Just what can be said?

First of all, we should note that the argument is a very old one. This fact might give us some perspective. The battle of the Israelites was to push into the general thinking of the ancient world the fact of God, and they had plenty of opposition. The psalmist must have been facing some kind of an argument when he wrote, “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.” Paul was on the subject when he said, “Spiritual things are spiritually discerned.” The world of the early Church was full of unbelief. And in the last century Robert Ingersoll practically made a living by going up and down the country lecturing in support of atheism. I had a very rough experience myself when I was a high school student and read Tom Paine before I was “ready” for him. Practically every book on philosophy and theology since Anselm has brought forward arguments or “proofs” for the existence of God. It is likely that we shall not settle the question Q.E.D. in 1966.

There are several turns in the argument right now, however, that I think were not common in times past. The new atheism is being pushed by professors involved in religion or the history of religion, and colleges and universities related to Christian foundations do not seem to be willing or able to dismiss them or hush them up. Meanwhile, all kinds of religious organizations are making the atheistic views more current by inviting the “God is dead” theologians to speak on the subject. Somehow the enemy is within. This, perhaps, is what was most distressing to the woman who called me to inquire about it all.

There is some alleviation of the problem, at least in some minds, when the whole matter is reduced to one of vocabulary or semantics. What some of the proponents of the “God is dead” viewpoint are saying, apparently, is that our old theology has more or less worn out and that what have really died are the words we use or the concepts they seem to convey. We get a touch of this in Kierkegaard’s Attack on Christendom, where he says it is evident to him that “Christendom” as an organized religion did not very well portray the living Christ. We catch it again in a very sensitive spirit such as Bonhoeffer, who, under the pressure of the concentration camp experience, found most of what we call “religion” or “Christianity” insufficient to sustain him in the pressure and suffering of personal despair. We catch it again in Robinson in Honest to God, and among his disciples. And we pick it up surely in Tillich, who changes the vocabulary in order to discuss God philosophically as “ground of being” or “ultimate concern.”

In some ways the “God is dead” controversy, insofar as it is a problem in semantics, can be a very healthy though very radical criticism of Christianity in our day. Just exactly what are we talking about when we talk about God? And, if we talk about God in the usual ways, to what extent is he relevant to the strange and awful and complex days in which we live? It seems evident that this part of the “God is dead” controversy is wide open for conversation.

Professor Altizer of Emory University and some like him, however, consider the semantics controversy superficial. If I understand Altizer rightly, he wants to say very plainly and bluntly that God is really dead, and that he died at a definite moment in history.

In the National Observer (January 31, 1966), we have a clear statement of Altizer’s position: “I really want to insist on the word ‘atheism.’ Any word less than that will miss the fundamental point. I want to insist that the original sovereign transcendent God truly and actually died in Christ, and that His death in Christ has only slowly and progressively become manifest for what it was—the movement of God to man, the movement of Word to flesh.” To continue with the comment of Lee Dirks, who wrote the article in the Observer, “God literally lived in history … but then He literally died on the cross.”

Theologically the question rests on what happened in the incarnation and what happened on the cross. No one can deny the mystery and wonder of the incarnation, “God in the flesh,” and no one can ignore the puzzling question of what we mean when we say Christ died on the cross. Did Christ on the cross die only “according to the flesh,” or are we trying to say that God qua God really died? The whole question drives us to the mystery of the Trinity. One does not move with great confidence in solving the mystery when one remembers what Christ himself said to the Father, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?,” or “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

Altizer insists that at this point God qua God literally died, and that he is now alive only as Christ is alive or the spirit of Christ is incarnate in humanity. When God “took on humanity” at the time of the incarnation, he began a different kind of being, engaged now in a different kind of task. We do not now find God in the heavens above (transcendent) but only in the incarnation (God immanent).

Altizer puts it this way: “Wherever there is a moment that is alive, real, and compassionate, that’s Christ.”

The theological debate finally settles on the interpretation of the kenosis, and we do well to keep it there.

At the same time, we need to remember that all religions, including the Christian religion, have had to deal with God as being transcendent and immanent at the same time. Altizer is merely dismissing the problem of transcendency in order to underline immanency. It is not a bad emphasis, but it is a half truth, and a frightful conclusion.

India may be facing the greatest famine the world has ever known. Tens of millions are facing possible starvation this year, according to some food distribution experts. Many more millions may suffer permanent mental and physical retardation from malnutrition. Experts warn that the toll could top that of India’s 1943 famine, when more than three million deaths were reported in Bengal alone. Burgeoning population multiplies the problem: there are one million more mouths to feed each month.

For Christians around the world the specter of famine in India, where one-sixth of the world’s population lives, poses a major moral issue. If the prospects are as grim as predicted, do they not place upon churchgoers, especially those in affluent countries, an unparalleled responsibility for compassionate action?

Thus far, churches have largely taken the threat in stride. The annual Protestant “One Great Hour of Sharing” last month was little more than business-as-usual. Some of the indifference can be blamed on the reluctance of those on the scene in India to paint lurid pictures of the seriousness of the food shortage because of the fear of panic and skyrocketing prices.

India is just now beginning to feel the pinch of famine. It is largely the result of last year’s drought, the nation’s worst in seventy years. No new crops will be available until at least October. Prospects of relief in the meantime are fraught with incredible complications ranging from cow worship to enormous waste and the Oriental tradition of face-saving.

Bloody riots that began in mid-March in Calcutta served notice on the world that the crisis was brewing. Billy Graham, who rarely gets involved in social issues during evangelistic rallies, cited the riots during his Greenville, South Carolina, crusade (see story, page 44). He said, “We in America cannot go on driving Cadillacs and getting richer, while the rest of the world drives oxcarts and gets poorer. There is going to be a crash and an explosion some day between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ unless we are willing to share our wealth with the poorer and undeveloped countries of the world.… The hungry and the diseased are on the mind and heart of Christ.… There is a social aspect of the Gospel that many people ignore.”

Religious relief organizations are virtually exhausting resources on behalf of India, but effects are limited by such problems as woefully inadequate budgets and lack of sufficient transportation and distribution facilities.

Church World Service, relief arm of the National Council of Churches, reports it has rushed $100,000 to the Indian churches to help expand a mass feeding program for as many as a million persons. The Lutheran World Federation has approved an emergency grant of $75,000 for milk powder. Australian churches have sent $10,000 from an emergency fund. Danish Inter-Church Aid has shipped three tons of powdered milk and 11 million vitamin pills. German church agencies have promised $125,000 in cash, and the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church intends to send $3,000 worth of dried milk. The Swiss Protestant Federation has allocated $23,000.

Perhaps the most heartening response to the challenge came from the Netherlands, where most churches joined secular organizations and five major radio and television networks in a dramatic one-day appeal for India. The doors of nearly every church in the country were thrown open for two hours on Saturday. February 19, to receive contributions, and $4,998,600 was collected.

The relief arm of the National Association of Evangelicals has no program in India; a spokesman explained that the NAE refuses to accept the Indian government’s stipulation that half of incoming relief be turned over to the government for distribution. The American Council of Christian Churches, which also has a relief arm, cabled $7,000 to India in March and is conducting a drive for more funds, perhaps as much as $50,000. World Vision is planning to start a major relief program in India soon.

Some groups have already resigned themselves to mass starvation this year and are concentrating on long-range relief through agricultural aid, development of irrigation facilities, and birth-control programs. Christian clergymen and missionaries in India, sensing the emergency, are increasingly encouraging family planning, even in unlikely situations. Not long ago a Canadian nurse married to a missionary to India took advantage of a rural evangelists’ retreat to promote inter-uterine contraceptive devices.

An emergency three-day consultation on food production was held in New Delhi in March, sponsored by the National Christian Council of India and the India Social Institute. A number of church relief groups were represented. The aim was to formulate basic strategy and co-ordination. Experts see the problem as worldwide, since there is already a widening global gap between population and food production.

The food crisis also promised to be a prime topic when India’s prime minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, headed for the United States in late March to confer with President Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. The U. S. government is willing to help India in the current crisis but wants future aid projects tied to assurance that India gives high priority to her own agricultural development. Previously, India had pinned hopes of progress to industrialization, but in her fourth five-year plan (1966–71) agriculture is second in priority only to defense.

Indian officials still insist there is no critical food shortage. They say reports of famine are exaggerated, that no starvation deaths are confirmed anywhere, and that the riots are politically motivated. Food experts tend to dismiss the official statements by saying simply that no government likes to admit it cannot feed its people.

Agricultural development faces major obstacles. India’s peasants use ancient farming methods and virtually no fertilizer, and they harvest one of the lowest yields per acre in the world. With little irrigation, farmlands are dependent on monsoon rains. But the monsoon failed in a number of areas last year, and there was crop damage of 75 per cent or more in six states, Andra Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Mysore, and Rajasthan.

The government hopes to close the gap with imports and strict rationing, but few are envious of the task facing officials of the world’s second-largest country. A number of foreign governments are providing aid. But mass shipments of food hit critical snags before they reach hungry stomachs. Indian ports, operating on a crash basis, cannot handle all the imports that will be necessary. Inland distribution problems are even more serious.

The nutrition problem, some say, overshadows the threat of outright starvation. Lack of vitamin A commonly causes infant blindness. Protein deficiencies victimize pregnant women, nursing mothers, and children under six.

Raw stomachs reject unfamiliar food, and rice-hungry Indians find it difficult to like wheat. Some mix bread and rice together or grind wheat to make the pancake-like chapattis. Many Keralans eat rice exclusively, although tapioca (an African staple) is grown there. Waters off the coast swarm with sardines, shrimp, lobster, and mackerel. Mangoes, pineapples, sugar cane, peppers, cashews, coconuts, and other foods grow in the hills. Much of these are exported for needed foreign exchange.

Rats and India’s sacred cows are additional difficulties. From 25 to 50 per cent of India’s grain is destroyed by pests and sloppy storage. About half of the estimated 226 million cattle are useless and malnourished, and are eating food human beings could consume. A team of Swedish experts has recommended sterilization of bulls.

For all the problems, India, now a nation of 490 million, is making some steps forward. The government is pushing its own program of distributing inter-uterine devices, hoping for one million insertions in the next twelve months. It is also encouraging voluntary sterilization in families that have two or three children.

India is also making good use of some brilliant and dedicated technical personnel. Model farm projects have shown yields per acre double the U. S. average. If India can somehow learn to farm as intensively as Japan, she can feed all her people.

Says an Indian embassy official in the United States, “God has different destinies for different men. We have survived, thank God.”

Personalia

Dr. Edward Gardiner Latch, pastor of Metropolitan Methodist Church in Washington, was chosen chaplain of the House of Representatives to succeed the late Dr. Bernard Braskamp.

Dr. Harold C. Howard was appointed executive vice-president and dean of Eastern Baptist College.

Dr. Walter H. Judd, former medical missionary to China who later served ten terms in Congress, will receive the 1966 “Layman of the Year Award” from Religious Heritage of America. Francis Cardinal Spellman was chosen “Churchman of the Year.”

Dr. Alexander C. De Jong was named first president of Trinity Christian College, Palos Heights, Illinois.

Dr. Elwin L. Skiles was named president of Hardin-Simmons University (Baptist). Skiles has been pastor of the 4,500-member First Baptist Church of Abilene, Texas.

Deaths

DR. RALPH COOPER HUTCHISON, 68, noted Presbyterian clergyman and former president of Lafayette College and Washington and Jefferson College: in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

BISHOP ALEXANDER P. SHAW, 86, who led Methodist Central Jurisdiction conferences in Louisiana, Maryland, and Texas; in Los Angeles.

REV. THEODORE C. PETERSON, 83, the nation’s oldest Paulist father, noted Semitic scholar, and son of Lutheran missionary parents to India; of a heart attack, in Washington, D. C.

The Friday before Easter, Britain’s century-old evangelical weekly The Christian will add and Christianity Today to its title. The new, merged periodical will be edited by CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S British Editorial Director, Dr. J. D. Douglas.

The Christian and Christianity Today will be, not a satellite of our American magazine, but an independent newsmagazine edited by and for Britons. Its weekly publication and London locale will make possible a wider range of national news and editorial content than our American-based fortnightly can provide its British subscribers. These will now join The Christian’s readership, although Britons will be able to receive the American edition on request.

Under terms of the merger, the British and the American magazines will have access to each other’s editorial content. Dr. Douglas will continue to be our editorial and news representative in Britain. Our four-year-old Fleet Street office will be closed as operations consolidate at The Christian’s Bush House offices.

The editor of this new weekly of evangelical information, interpretation, and inspiration has not only an excellent academic background but also a facile, whimsical pen and sharp insights into religious trends of our day. We consider this new venture internationally significant in evangelical journalism and congratulate our colleague Dr. Douglas on the exceptional opportunity for journalistic leadership that lies before him.

City’s biggest event dramatizes irony of Billy’s outspoken, Bible-believing opponents

The great irony of Billy Graham’s career is that his most vehement opponents are fellow Bible-believers. The rift was dramatized last month when Graham conducted a ten-day evangelistic crusade in Greenville, South Carolina, home of hard-shell Bob Jones University.

Although the Graham team has grown from BJU origins like honeysuckle along a Carolina fence, school President Bob Jones, Jr., 54, blackballed Graham the night before the crusade opened. He charged on local TV that the evangelist “is doing more harm to the cause of Jesus Christ than any living man.” Jones Jr. then left for a month in the Holy Land but left behind longtime Graham foe G. Archer Weniger as campus chapel speaker. Graham was also boycotted locally by a dozen fundamentalist ministers and statewide by fifty-seven independents in the South Carolina Baptist Fellowship.¹Other non-sponsors: Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Seventh-day Adventists, Unitarians, Christian Scientists, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The evangelist expressed bewilderment at this opposition, but Jones Jr. had made his reasons clear in a famous chapel speech a year earlier. Nothing personal, he said, but Graham sups not only with publicans and sinners but also with Roman Catholics and leaders of the National and World Council of Churches; co-operates with churches that do not believe in biblical inerrancy and other basic doctrines; and refers converts to these “modernist” churches.

Another worry, specified by the clergymen but not by Jones Jr., was that Graham’s crusade was the first important racially integrated meeting in the city’s history. It also proved to be the biggest public event the city had ever seen. Down the road a piece from Bob Jones University, the overflow crowds at vast, warehouse-like Textile Hall forced Graham to expand to two services a night, the first time this has happened in America. The ten-day attendance was 278,700. The 7,311 who made decisions for Christ included five among pre-release prisoners who sat in a special section at several meetings.

Graham stressed repeatedly that in the South, churchgoing is as automatic as eating a meal, and that often people get “inoculated with just enough religion to keep them from getting a good dose of Jesus Christ.”

No BJU partisan could have criticized Graham’s preaching of the old-fashioned Gospel. He waved his Bible aloft repeatedly and called the Book an “instrument panel” necessary to prevent “spiritual vertigo.”

This doctrinal accord was one reason Graham turned the other cheek and avoided answering BJU criticisms. Other factors were the support he gets from the school’s alumni in many cities, and his acknowledged spiritual debt to Bob Jones, Sr., now 82, who founded the college in the midst of a long, illustrious career as an evangelist.

Graham went to Bob Jones College in 1936, when it was in Cleveland, Tennessee, but left after three months because of the restrictive atmosphere. In 1948, Jones Sr. invited Graham down to Greenville to get an honorary doctorate and take up his evangelistic banner. Several years later the Joneses broke with Graham over what they call “ecumenical evangelism,” and the war reached its height during the 1957 crusade in New York City.

Graham’s team includes two BJU alumni, Cliff Barrows and T. W. Wilson. Barrows was so “separated” when he went to BJU he wouldn’t darken the door of a Southern Baptist church, Jones Jr. recalls, but “now he goes anywhere to any kind of church—orthodox or heretic.” Barrows, crusade song-leader and broadcast-film director, lives in Greenville. Wilson was BJU student president and almost got shipped home. Years later his brother Grady was expelled a few months before graduation. Graham’s crusade arrangements are handled by Willis Haymaker, a veteran who did the same for Jones Sr. during his evangelistic career.

Jones Jr. charges that the only reason Graham chose such a small city (66,100) for his sole U. S. crusade this year was to attack and embarrass BJU. Graham says Greenville has the biggest indoor arena in the Deep South, and Barrows was anxious to bring a crusade to his home town. It was Graham’s first Carolina crusade since Charlotte (1958), and things had a homey atmosphere, with his family getting a rare chance to watch the breadwinner at work.

BJU students were told they would be expelled if they attended the crusade, and Jones Jr. also warned in his basic sermon against Graham a year ago, “I say to anybody who attends a church in Greenville that supports this crusade that he ought to get out of that church.”

Although most of the students agreed with the school’s anti-Graham stance, there was some unrest on campus. Fearing reprisal, the minority expressed their feelings in knowing glances, quiet conversations with trusted friends, and letters to the outside world.

Jones Jr. created quite a stir locally by suggesting that a Graham supporter recite the following mock prayer:

“Dear Lord: Bless the man who leads Christian people into disobeying the Word of God, who prepares the way for Anti-Christ by building the apostate church and turning his so-called ‘converts’ over to infidels and unbelieving preachers.… Bless this man who has the heretic Bishop Kennedy as the Chairman of his crusade in Los Angeles, who shares his platform with men like Martin Luther King and World Council church leaders.

“Anoint him with the Holy Spirit to disobey the Holy Spirit’s clear instructions in the Word of God. Increase his power to deceive good people and deliver them to the Apostasy and the Church of Anti-Christ under the pretext of winning souls.

“Bless the man who flatters the Pope and defers to the purple-and-scarlet-clothed Anti-Christ who heads the church that the Word of God describes as the ‘Old whor* of Babylon’.…”

Jones Jr. won’t forgive Billy for having Bishop Pike on his platform once in San Francisco, even though this was before Pike’s wholesale denial of Christian doctrines. Gerald Kennedy is labeled “a rank, unbelieving, agnostic, Christ-denying Methodist bishop”; but the official dossier against him has only one religious point, a twelve-year-old quote playing down the Second Coming. The other data concern such political issues as Kennedy’s opposition to the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Graham’s camp claims he is like Jones Sr. and other great evangelists of the past in seeking wide support. Although the city-wide scope is similar, Graham has gone much further in cooperating with those who do not share his conservative beliefs, so long as they give him complete freedom to preach the Bible. But critics are wrong in charging that he refers Jewish converts to rabbis and fails to attack Protestant liberalism.

Graham has two other distinctions: his strict financial and auditing system, and an elaborate follow-up and counseling system that Haymaker considers a major improvement over the good old days.

The fundamentalists in Greenville who oppose Billy felt left out because they were not invited to the breakfast meeting a year ago where the crusade was set up, although they would not have supported the crusade anyway. The Rev. Harold B. Sightler, whose robust independent Baptist church is one of Greenville’s biggest, said “the fundamentalists were just as carefully segregated as the colored were integrated.”

Sightler, who has been in town twenty-six years, said many churches backing Graham never cared about revival and would never again support an evangelist. Asked what churches he could not work with in the crusade, Sightler ruled out all Pentecostalists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Churches of Christ. He admits many Methodists preach the Gospel, but they are in the National Council of Churches and “I can’t mess with that crowd.” Sightler also charged that the city’s racial “peace and harmony” were endangered by Graham’s integration, and said “many colored pastors sitting on the platform are civil rights agitators.”

The experiment in interracial Christianity was harmonious as far as it went. Harrison Rearden, Negro life insurance man and crusade secretary, said Negro participation was slight because of apathy, lack of spiritual dedication, and “suspicion, which is understandable due to one hundred years of repression.”

At the final committee meeting, Rearden said that after Graham left town “I would like to see God enacted in practicality. We have a racial problem in this community. If the crusade does not change this community, it can’t be changed.… We must take that bold step before men.…”

In one sermon Graham came close to mentioning the BJU issue by saying, “the consuming passion of a true believer is love. The Bible says the sign of believers is that they love one another, which includes a willingness to believe the best about the other Christian.”

‘Drive Unto Others …’

“Highway safety is a spiritual problem,” says evangelist Billy Graham. “Most people do not associate careful and safe driving with spiritual living, but there is a definite connection.”

In a forceful radio address coinciding with the opening of his Greenville crusade, Graham called attention to the staggering automobile accident toll: nearly a thousand people killed and more than 75,000 injured each week in the United States alone.

“An automobile is one of the most deadly machines of destruction ever invented by man,” he said.

The evangelist told his “Hour of Decision” audience that the underlying cause of highway accidents is the breaking of the Golden Rule. He recalled that a few years ago a new highway slogan was coined, “Drive unto others as you would have them drive unto you.” As specific causes of accidents he cited selfishness, the urge to show off, anger, carelessness, neglect, and drunkenness, which he called “a national disgrace.”

Graham prescribed the new birth as the cure for slaughter on the highways: “Then and only then will the old things become new. Then, because we have the mind of Christ, love will replace selfishness, humility will replace pride, peace will replace anger, and we will live and drive as Christians should.”

The ‘Most Unusual University’

Bob Jones University has long called itself the “world’s most unusual university,” and few would dispute the claim. That’s not “world” in the Pauline sense, though, since BJU stands for strict separation from the secular world and from a large chunk of Christendom.

But fine arts are not included in this separatism. BJU has an exquisite museum of religious art, perhaps the finest in America,²Included are some very unbaptistic church icons and vestments, and paintings by such masters as Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and Titian. puts on lavish operas and Shakespearean plays, runs one of South Carolina’s better radio stations, and offers good instruction in cinema.

Other elements of the Greenville campus chemistry are tight control of students, racial segregation and right-wing politics generally, and an evangelistic, Bible-based Protestantism.

“The Founder” is Bob Jones, Sr., one of the century’s great evangelists, but Bob Jr. became acting president (with an honorary doctorate) in his early twenties and formulated academic policy and artistic awareness (he is an accomplished actor). Now he is away from campus a lot, leaving day-to-day operations to son Bob III, 26, who also holds an honorary doctorate.

In the official school history Fortress of Faith (Eerdmans), loyal alumnus Melton Wright pours praise on BJU like honey over biscuits. He says the school would be accredited but the Joneses fear outside controls. Others reading the catalogue might wonder whether BJU would make it, since intellectual ingrowth runs high (nearly one-third of the faculty members have studied only at BJU) and only 16 of 158 teachers hold earned doctorates. But BJU products have proved successful at many graduate schools.

Like Fortress, the catalogue has a few omissions, such as the fact that Negroes need not apply for admission (some Orientals are accepted), the strict rules, the demerit system, reporting on classmates, and the possibility of dismissal at any time without specific infractions for harming campus “spirit.”

Tales of turnover abound in circles where BJU lore is perpetuated. Recent graduates estimate that 5 to 10 per cent of the student body leaves during each year. Of an entering freshman class of about 1,200, one-third remain four years later, although many students are encouraged to transfer for specialized training.

Physical contact between the sexes is forbidden, and the always-chaperoned dating is mostly restricted to a block-long room that looks like a department-store furniture display. Bob Jones, Jr., believes he has “the most contented group of students on the American continent.”

Faculty pay is low and is based on need rather than ability, a curiously communistic tenet for a school that holds “Americanism” conferences where speakers urge income-tax repeal and impeachment of Earl Warren.

BJU is now on its third campus, a modern, $26 million plant that draws aid from many loyal supporters, reportedly including the late Sophie Tucker. BJU people are quite courageous in criticizing whatever and whomever they please. Over the years, shafts have been aimed at the press; most denominations, including the Southern Baptist Convention; most of the better-known evangelical organizations; and Greenville (during a zoning fight in recent years). The status of BJU board member and U. S. Senator J. Strom Thurmond is in doubt, since he appeared on Billy Graham’s platform and even praised the evangelist.

Arresting The Restless Ones

Promoters of the most recent Billy Graham film, The Restless Ones, say it is attracting much larger audiences than any of the previous evangelistic pictures. The film was first shown last October and by the end of March had been viewed by nearly 1,000,000 persons. More than 70,000 decisions for Christ have been counted.

In a marked departure from previous practice, The Restless Ones is being shown in theaters and public auditoriums rather than in churches, and a one-dollar admission fee is being charged. Spokesmen say it is drawing many from the black-jacket and beatnik crowds and confronting them with the claims of Christ. In San Marcos, Texas, some 2,500 Job Corps trainees saw the film.

Trained counselors follow up all inquirers, who are also given the opportunity to take elementary Bible study courses.

Toronto Fish Net

The church coffeehouse movement seems to have become less evangelism than a means for church people to get together without a high cover charge.

But Toronto’s latest, The Fish Net, is a $500-a-month evangelistic project of a youth group from Avenue Road Church (Christian and Missionary Alliance). Each night, from its basem*nt location, the Net belts out the Gospel, mostly in music, to high schoolers and the college crowd, together with some academic dropouts.

The locale is Yorkville Street, known for other coffeehouses, art galleries, boutiques, beatniks, groups of roving teen-agers, and liquor and sex mingled with reefers and drugs.

Space in The Fish Net is tight. It holds forty comfortably, but people often jam in seventy strong, from 8 P.M. to long after midnight, and a doorman has to turn people away. The main room, in Palestinian decor with a palm tree and (of course) fish nets, holds a dozen tables, a piano, and an organ. Christian films are used occasionally, along with the staple diet of professional-quality, Christian musicians.

The music is the show, but the main attraction is conversation over a (free) cup of coffee. Young people talk to young people, not simply to indulge in some subjective dialogue, but to win souls for Christ. The church young people who run the place consider it a training ground in learning to communicate with the world.

Plans for The Fish Net began twenty months ago with the church’s slightly controversial pastor, Kenn Opperman, successor to the late Dr. A. W. Tozer. “The young people in the area are curiosity seekers—not nearly as rough and tough as we anticipated,” Opperman said. “The outstanding lesson we’ve learned is this: When you get people together who are not religious, and people who are religious, around a common table and a cup of coffee, they find they have more to communicate than they ever realized.”

Opperman explained one of the main problems was selling “some of our own people on the idea that this was an important outreach for our young people.” Another was getting a lease in Yorkville, since landlords feared the Christians might scare away trade.

The skepticism of a few “isolationists” has been matched with high praise, the minister said. “I’d rather be criticized for doing something good than for doing nothing.” When someone charged that the management encourages smoking by providing ash trays, Opperman ridiculed the criticism. “It just keeps them from burning holes in our tablecloths,” he laughed.

KENNETH G. WARES

Sparks From A Genius

Old Testament Theology, Volume II: The Theology of Israel’s Prophetic Traditions, by Gerhard von Rad, translated by D. M. G. Stalker (Harper and Row, 1965, 470 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by William Sanford LaSor, professor of Old Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

On the dust jacket of this book, G. Ernest Wright calls it “the most original and one of the two most important treatises in the field of Old Testament theology to appear since the First World War,” and H. H. Rowley says, “It will stand alone among the spate of books on Old Testament theology.” Personally, I dislike book reviews based on dust jackets, and this review will not be such; but these two statements, made by cautious and well-read scholars, deserve to be quoted. This is indeed a great book. We are still too near to it to make such statements, but it may well be epoch-making in the field of Old Testament studies.

This is not to suggest that I agree with all the author says. But that is beside the point. Only a very few times in my life have I had the privilege of sitting under a true genius. (A genius, I would remind you, is one who strikes the sparks from which other men light their fires.) Professor von Rad’s work is the product of sheer genius. Whether other men will light many fires from it remains to be seen, but it is a pyrotecnic display of sparks.

Professor von Rad starts with the fundamental assumption that the prophets of the Old Testament were preeminently preachers of the “law.” This is a direct break with the critical position that the prophets were originators who were responsible for the creation of ethical monotheism. Professor von Rad also blazes a new trail in his concept of Old Testament theology, rejecting the approach through religious ideas and modifying the approach through “saving history.” In a postscript, which is additional to the German edition, he discusses these points at some length (pp. 410–29). It becomes clear that he is in effect following a living approach, which is basically drawn from the saving acts in Israel’s history, but which seeks at the same time to view them as they might have been viewed at any given moment in Israel’s history. This position is obvious in his outline.

In Part One of this volume the author takes up “General Considerations in Prophecy,” discussing such matters as “prophecy before the classical period (Elijah, Elisha),” “the oral tradition,” “the prophet’s freedom,” “the prophets’ conception of the word of God, and Israel’s ideas about time and history,” and “the prophetic eschatology.” This part is basic and should not be skipped over carelessly.

Professor von Rad has a habit of starting a chapter by stating the current view—unchallenged. The reader becomes aware that the author is attacking that position only as he reads the subsequent pages. For example, von Rad rejects the idea that the classical prophets were cult officials (p. 55), and stresses a call “through God’s direct and very personal address to them” (p. 57).

Part Two (pp. 129–315) deals with “Classical Prophecy” and takes up the prophets and their messages individually and chronologically. After each period there is a summary. For example, after considering Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, Professor von Rad discusses “the new element in eighth-century prophecy”; similarly, after Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Deutero-Isaiah, he takes up the new elements in the Babylonian and early Persian period. Readers who may be disturbed by the author’s assumption of a Second Isaiah should be prepared to meet also Trito-Isaiah, not to mention Trito-Zechariah (p. 297). However, it should be strongly emphasized that in general Professor von Rad has rejected much of the older critical position. For example, he has no sympathy for the “gloom-and-doom” school that removed any glimmer of hope from the pre-exilic prophets.

Part Three deals with “The Old Testament and the New.” It is in many ways the most exciting part of the book and offers the most striking of the author’s many brilliant insights. Professor von Rad pleads with the reader not to read this until he has first read what goes before, since these words “stand or fall according as what preceded them is valid” (p. vii). It is obvious that the author considers Jesus Christ to be the fulfillment of the Old Testament, and believes that this new event in saving history must influence our understanding of the Old Testament. The discussion of the use of the Old Testament by New Testament authors is important (pp. 330 f.).

Within the space limits of this review it is not possible to enter into a critical evaluation of this great book. I have already indicated my frequent dissent, but to attempt to point out what I find objectionable—and why—would run on for pages. Nevertheless, for what they are worth, let me make a few blanket statements. I feel that Professor von Rad has continued to hold some critical positions that have no firm support; for example, anonymous prophets (such as Deutero- and Trito-Isaiah) violate the author’s own statement against anonymity (p. 77). I feel moreover, that Professor von Rad has not sufficiently divorced his thinking from Greek thought (e.g., pp. 101 ff.), even though his basic premise is not to impose other thought-forms on the Old Testament. Then, too, I feel that the author has gotten himself into difficulties through his confusion of “eschatological” and post-exilic (cf. pp. 280–88). If the prophets, when speaking of the saving acts yet to take place, were thinking only of the return from exile—or better, if God’s revelation to them concerned only that return—we are indeed faced with many difficulties. The eschaton, even in the prophetic message, was a very complex idea that, it becomes apparent, had to extend far beyond the events of the return and the Second Temple.

This book deserves wide and careful reading. Scholars and teachers who are committed to positions based on older critical views should work over it and re-evaluate their position. Conservatives should use it for a similar purpose and. in addition, to add vitality and stimulation to a position that is too often lifeless and boring.

WILLIAM SANFORD LASOR*****************************

Moral Atheists

The Meaning of Modern Atheism, by Jean Lacroix (Macmillan, 1965, 115 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The French philosopher Lacroix of Lyons aims to understand rather than to disprove atheism, of which there is no scarcity in French life and literature. “For millions today atheism is a way of life” (p. 18).

The newest schools do not reject theism in order to pursue immorality but supposedly in the interest of ethics and responsibility. Just as belief in God is viewed as destructive of responsibility, so too is original sin.

When faith and prayer do not spur the Christian to action but survive as a mystique, this atheistic misunderstanding may be encouraged.

Yet the “moral atheist” has utopian expectations of the elimination of poverty, war, injustice. And Marxists champion the dogma that “all social action is ineffective in so far as it is spiritual” (p. 37). Besides political atheism, however, there are scientific humanism and ethical humanism. “The atheists of today are no longer libertines … and their ethical behaviour is hardly to be distinguished from that of Christians—a fact which poses some delicate questions for the latter!” (p. 41).

A partial reply is, of course, that modern atheists borrow more from the Christian outlook than their views consistently permit—including the vision of social justice and the sense of personal responsibility.

In the closing half of his book Lacroix seems to accept the naturalistic notion that all knowledge of God is permeated by inadequate representations (p. 55), and he praises negative theology. But he does not conclude his book without upholding the ontological capacity of reason and saluting the Vatican Council’s declaration that human intelligence can reach God by natural means.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Ecumenical Buildings?

Christ and Architecture: Building Presbyterian/Reformed Churches, by Donald J. Bruggink and Carl H. Droppers (Eerdmans, 965, 708 pp., $20), is reviewed by Scott Turner Ritenour, director, Division of Christian Life and Mission, National Council of Churches, New York, New York.

This compendium of data for “Building Presbyterian/Reformed Churches” seeks to interrelate theology and architecture through a scholarly text enhanced by photographs and charts. The illustrations, coming largely from the Continent—Holland, Switzerland, and Germany primarily—are well selected and help to unify a cumbersome (and physically heavy) volume.

The authors are well qualified. Dr. Bruggink, professor of historical theology at Western Theological Seminary, probes deeply into questions of history and theology in the first seven chapters of the book. Mr. Droppers, a practicing architect and assistant professor of architecture at Western Reserve University, puts those ideas into pictures and diagrams, and also expresses his views in words in the last six chapters. The resulting volume is one of the handsomest books on church design published in this nation.

In evaluating so rich a source book I have very mixed feelings. It is comprehensive within the limited circle of church groups rooted in the Reformed tradition. The essential basis for the whole is in Part I, where the theological and historical point of view is presented. On this are built the practical and technical issues. Although church leaders and architects may be greatly helped by knowing the background, I suspect that even very interested members of building committees would be receiving information that is beyond their ken, thus making a little knowledge more confusing than helpful. To put it another way, the first part is basic to all readers—clergy, students, builders, and architects—because theology determines liturgy, which in turn defines function and space needs for architecture. The second part deals primarily with technical matters, which are essentially the concern of the architect and builder. Such quickly gotten knowledge may cause committees to be more troublesome than helpful in the building process.

Although theology is of great importance in church architecture, I am not convinced that an approved formula—a series of well-stated criteria—ensures a successful building program. Theology can become sterile when it is not related to life, and I did not find any relevance of the theological position presented to the dynamic forces that are molding the life of churchmen today. (Incidentally, I was a little surprised that despite exhaustive research, the authors failed to cite such sources as “Towards a Theology for Church Architecture,” by Paul Chapman, which appeared in the May, 1959, issue of motive magazine, and an important essay by James Whyte, professor at the University of Edinburgh, entitled “The Theological Basis of Church Architecture,” in Towards a Church Achitecture, edited by Peter Hammond and published in 1962.)

Part I by Dr. Bruggink is based on the conviction that since the preached word conveys a message, the architecture of the church should proclaim in a sympathetic way the same living Word. Dr. Bruggink develops criteria in relation to space so that there will be a visual experience of both Word and sacraments. In describing the people of God, he differentiates the functions of the ministry, the elders, and the deacons, and sees the whole congregation as participants in the liturgy. In speaking about the choir, he defines its true function as communicating the people’s gratitude rather than showing God’s grace.

In “Heresy in the Sanctuary” Dr. Bruggink sharply criticizes the fact that often too many materials are used, too many things are assembled, too many flags are shown, too many decorations are employed beyond their symbolical significance, too many windows are used, too many memorial gifts are accepted, too many lecterns clutter up the worship area, and too many interruptions are permitted that have no relevance to Reformed worship according to the Word of God.

Part II is developed from the theological basis that has been laid, and Mr. Droppers seeks to encourage a fruitful relation between the client church and the architect. Therefore there are chapters on “Teamwork in the Church Building,” on “Economy …,” on “Expression …,” on “Structure …,” on “Shape of the Church Building,” and finally on “Programming.…” In these six chapters, twenty-one charts deal with such aspects as various “principles” for site selection, water supply, window operation, heating, lighting, and space and volume selection.

In general, I feel that Christ and Architecture does present the Reformed position, but that if it were more apologetic and showed an irenic spirit, then the true purpose of the Church would be better fulfilled. To be polemical at a time when the liturgical movement is expanding and deepening is most unfortunate. The churches that are built now and in the future should reflect their tradition, to be sure, but they not be so tightly authenticated that those of other backgrounds would be ill at ease in them. If the basis of the Presbyterian/Reformed position is to be encouraged and the truest in the liturgical movement is to be provided, then we should also seek an ecumenical emphasis rather than allowing our zeal to protect our rationale.

SCOTT TURNER RITENOUR

Ezekiel For Today

Ezekiel: Prophecy of Hope, by Andrew W. Blackwood, Jr. (Baker, 1965, 274 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by David W. Kerr, professor of Old Testament interpretation and dean, Gordon Divinity School, Wenham, Massachusetts.

Many epithets have been applied to Ezekiel: apocalyptist, which he surely was: genius, which he may very well have been; cataleptic or pervert, which he surely was not. Dr. Blackwood sees him as an existentialist—not, of course, the agnostic who sees in life neither purpose nor hope, but the theist who knows God and lives his truth in the heartaches of existence.

Every interpreter of Ezekiel, because he is dealing with apocalyptic literature, has to decide over and over again how particular symbols are to be understood, where the line is to be drawn between the parabolic and the narrative, as in Ezekiel 4 and 5, between the figurative and the literal, as in chapters 37–39. The lines of distinction are well drawn in this book, and most of the author’s decisions are reasonably supported.

In adopting a “spiritual” interpretation of the difficult Gog and Magog passage in Ezekiel 38 and 39, and more particularly of the temple vision in chapters 40–48, Dr. Blackwood parts company with many conservative expositors. By so doing, however, he not only avoids the problems raised by literalism, such as the renewal of Levitical offerings in the millennial era, but also focuses attention upon the abiding lessons of the Spirit that the literalists so often miss. As the author says in connection with Ezekiel 3:22, Christians sometimes display a curious inconsistency when they act as if the spiritual were less “real” than the material. The “cords” were “real” enough, but Ezekiel could not have tied a package with them.

In the exposition of chapters 16 and 34 there is a fine recognition of the covenant idea, which appears as a thread of thought in several chapters. It would seem, however, that the same thread could have been detected more readily than it has been in chapters 36 and 37, where the covenant formula, “I will be your God, and you shall be my people,” is an emphatic promise.

I cannot help having some regret over two features of the introductory chapter of the book. One is that the reader is promised a message of hope in the prophecy if he is willing to endure the repetition, to face what is ugly, obscure, and disgusting. From one point of view, perhaps all these adjectives apply to Ezekiel. Nevertheless, one gets the feeling that he should hope for the best but expect the worst, even if this is God’s Word. The other disappointing feature is that the analytical school of such critics as Hölscher and Irwin is treated more kindly than scientific criticism demands. (Admittedly, this last comment reveals as much about the reviewer as it does about the author.)

Ezekiel’s essential message of hope in its Babylonian setting of the sixth century B.C. does sound forth clearly in this book, which is characterized by sound interpretation throughout. The language and style are attractive. Anyone who reads the prophecy of Ezekiel with this volume as a companion will have a better grasp of the entire biblical message and will see how the Spirit of God works through all kinds of people in all kinds of situations. I highly recommend the book.

DAVID W. KERR

Two Good Ones

Dialogue at Calvary, by John A. Holt (Baker, 1965, 79 pp., $1.95) and Listening to God on Calvary, by George Gritter (Baker, 1965, 143 pp., $2.50), are reviewed by Robert G. Rayburn, president and professor of practical theology and homiletics, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

Here are two small books that will certainly be a blessing to any who read them, no matter how many volumes they have read on the seven words of Christ from the cross. The work of John A. Holt is especially interesting, for it is a treatment of seven words addressed to the cross by those who stood on Calvary. In spite of a few unfortunate grammatical errors (e.g., “how could anyone put their faith in a man who was unable to preserve his own life”), the author has very definite literary gifts, and his work is also thoroughly biblical and intensely practical. The capable and conscientious minister will not copy the general plan of the discourses in this volume, but the work should be a good seed-plot for those who want suggestions they can develop in their own way. Holt has a stimulating and original approach to thinking about the cross.

One wishes that in considering the first word of defiance, “Ah, thou that destroyest the temple …,” the author had pointed out that it shows the complete lack of spiritual discernment typical of the man who refuses to believe God’s Word. Although Holt makes it clear that the answer to the defiance was the resurrection, the non-believer would be no more persuaded by the resurrection than by the other miracles.

Listening to God on Calvary concerns the seven words that Jesus spoke from the cross. Because these have received very extensive treatment by many preachers and scholars, I was tempted to give this book only a casual reading. I soon discovered, however, that this was no ordinary book of sermons. George Gritter’s deep spiritual insights are unquestionable. He writes with beautiful style. He is a master of unaffected alliteration that gives force to his treatment.

The flyleaf indicates that these were sermons. The one thing I find lacking in them is a direct, personal application of the striking truths so clearly presented. The preacher can never assume that those in his congregation will apply God’s truth to their own needs.

Both these books are heartily recommended, especially for the Lenten season.

ROBERT G. RAYBURN

The Ministry’S Many Faces

Ministry, by Robert S. Paul (Eerdmans, 1965, 252 pp., $5), is reviewed by Herbert Giesbrecht, librarian, Mennonite Brethren Bible College, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

“The Protestant Ministry is perplexed, and it does not quite know why.” These are the opening words of Robert S. Paul’s new book, and they express succinctly what many Christians (ministers and laymen alike) feel.

This rather pessimistic mood has been expressed in recent studies of the shortcomings of seminary training, as well as in recent pleas for greater participation of the laity in the essential “ministry” of the Church. The disquietude of sensitive Christians and their earnest questioning of the very nature and purpose of the Christian ministry compels us to examine the matter once again.

This author’s full and forthright work is probably the only contemporary study in America that seriously grapples with the basic issues from the standpoint of biblical theology and exegesis. Paul is acquainted with the views of M. Luther and J. Calvin, Richard Baxter and Cardinal Newman, T. S. Manson and A. M. Ramsay, W. D. Davies and John Baillie, P. S. Minear and D. T. Jenkins, D. Bonhoeffer and Hans-Ruedi Weber, and he draws effectively upon their thought. Yet he is fundamentally concerned with the scriptural evidence.

The author’s theological discernment impresses one immediately and repeatedly. It is revealed in his observation that all questions “concerning the Church are at root theological” (p. 181). It is also revealed in his reiteration of the truth that all questions about the Christian ministry must ultimately be referred back to “the source of the Church’s own ministry and of all ministry in the Church, and to the place where the only valid theology of ministry can begin, to the redemptive ministry of Jesus Christ himself” (p. 100).

But his discernment is most evident in his discussion of what seems to be his central thesis, that the ministry of the Church finds its continuing justification and its continuing pattern in the ministry of Christ himself, and not anywhere else. Paul’s clear and convincing exposition of this thesis and of its connections with specific aspects of the doctrine of the Church and its ministry makes his work intriguing and a genuine “theology of Christian Ministry.”

Among the many aspects and issues discussed are: the call to the ministry; the ordination of ministers; popular conceptions of the ministry; church structure and government; church worship and church sacraments; church work and its problems and perils; church unity (ecumenicity); the minister’s responsibilities and relations to family, church, and the secular world.

Besides theological discernment, the second main quality of Paul’s work is its spirit of Christian charity and tolerance. While he often expresses deeply held convictions in emphatic language, his discussions of divergent views are never marred by ill-humored argument or sarcastic wit. This irenic quality is especially apparent in his comparison of high-Anglican and free-church conceptions of the ministry (pp. 114 f.), in his discussion of the various forms of church government and church worship (pp. 216 f.) and of the various attitudes of divergent views about the final source of spiritual authority in the Church (pp. 166 f.), and in his sane comments on whether the minister ought to be a “scholar-preacher,” an administrator and counselor, or something of both.

I might speak of other merits of this author, such as his shrewd and practical understanding of human nature, and his sense of balance. But I must conclude my comments with a reference to the book’s literary style, which is refreshingly plain and colloquial and often suggests the simple and fluctuating movements of excited speech among “student-friends.” Often the discussion is imaginatively colored by anecdotes and images culled from history, literature, and legend.

HERBERT GIESBRECHT

It’S In The Title

Jesus and the Son of Man, by A. J. B. Higgins (Fortress, 1965, 224 pp., $4.25), is reviewed by Andrew J. Bandstra, dean of students and assistant professor of New Testament, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The conjunction is important in the title of this book. The author, professor of New Testament at the University of Leeds, attempts to show that although Jesus did use the phrase “Son of Man,” he did not think of himself as the Son of Man nor as one destined to become the Son of Man. Thus it is not correct to say that Jesus is the Son of Man or that he thought he was the Son of Man: rather, one should speak of the correlativity of Jesus and the Son of Man.

A crucial passage is Luke 12:8, 9: “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God; but he who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.” This passage is crucial, according to Higgins, because, first, it reveals that Jesus made a clear distinction between himself as he spoke and the future Son of Man, and secondly, it illustrates the only way in which Jesus himself ever spoke of the Son of Man, namely, in terms of his future glory.

Through his form-critical study of the Son of Man passages, Higgins is constrained to hold that all references to the Son of Man that speak either of his earthly activity or of his sufferings are, in that form, not authentic sayings of Jesus but are rather expressions of the faith of the early Church. The author’s position on Mark 10:45 is instructive. Jesus said: “I shall give my life as a ransom for many.” The earliest stage of the church tradition put it: “The Son of man came to give his life a ransom for many.” The present form with the insertion on serving is the third and final stage of this tradition. Thus, for Higgins, Jesus knew himself to be the Son of God in a unique way; he also considered himself to be fulfilling the role of the Suffering Servant on earth (of which he spoke in the first person); but he never designated himself the Son of Man.

How does Higgins give meaning to the conjunction in the expression, Jesus and the Son of Man? Basic to his understanding is the position that “the Son of Man” was never an objective reality but an idea in the mind of certain Jews. Jesus took this idea and adapted it to denote himself as the Son of God he already believed himself to be, reinstalled in his heavenly seat. The concept Son of Man is used to describe the Son of God exercising his intercessory or judicial functions. This is the connection—and the only connection—that Jesus himself made between himself and the Son of Man. It is from this authentic base that, according to Higgins, the Son of Man Christology of the early Church was developed in the post-resurrection period, as reflected in the Son of Man passages in John, in most of those in the Synoptic Gospels, and in those in the rest of the New Testament.

To someone, such as this reviewer, who holds that Jesus himself made the synthesis of the Suffering Servant and the Son of Man concepts, Higgins’s argument will not be persuasive. What seem to the author to be assured results of critical studies are often simply the collective judgments of subjective opinion. On the other hand, the “obvious” fact—to Higgins—that Jesus knew himself to be the Son of God is really an expression of faith on the part of the author that will not be shared by all. Jesus, as portrayed in this book, is made a bit more “understandable,” but somehow in the process something of the mystery of the Incarnation is obscured and the reality of the serving, suffering, and glorified Son of Man is replaced, in part, by the early Church’s proclamation of and justification for her faith.

This does not mean that the book has no value for the scholar not holding the author’s view of the New Testament and its Christology. On the contrary, the book can serve many purposes. In the first place, it is a good exhibit of a competent scholar “doing form criticism” on one specific subject. Again, it is a good exhibit of one line of the “new quest of the historical Jesus.” Higgins is convinced that the Jesus who proclaimed the good news of the Kingdom and the Jesus who became the subject of the post-resurrection Church’s own proclamation are identical. Finally, this book will serve to illumine certain problems and facets of the Son of Man passages with which the New Testament scholar, irrespective of his position, must deal responsibly.

ANDREW J. BANDSTRA

How To Help

Help Your Minister to Do His Best, by Owen M. Weatherly (Judson, 1965, 156 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Paul R. Gilchrist, pastor, Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Levittown, Pennsylvania.

This is a fascinating and thought-provoking book written in an easy-going style, by a man who “as pastor and educator … has experienced both sides of the relationship he sensitively describes in this book.” He puts the point of his title across. From the first chapter, where he introduces the pastor as the one who is often responsible for finding extra ping-pong balls, to the last chapter, which closes on a very serious note of advice to the congregation that is about to call a new pastor, Weatherly’s book is exceedingly well written. Those who sincerely want to help their pastor do his best will find a treasury of helpful information.

The author shows his practical wisdom in such passages as these:

But, if he devotes all of his time to pastoral care and church administration and gives no thought to sermon preparation, he will necessarily come to the pulpit on Sunday morning with nothing to offer you but a full heart and an empty head. And I don’t have to tell you that a combination like that is poor fare for a hungry soul [p. 30].

People aren’t defeated because their problems are too big or too complicated to be solved; they are defeated because they won’t seek and accept the help that is available to them until their lives have already been ruined. Take your problems to your minister no matter how far advanced they are; but, if you want to get the maximum in help, take them to him as early as possible [p. 111].

You can keep your minister busy swatting flies all week if you want to. But it would make more sense to let him help you clean up the garbage pile of ethical ignorance and moral ineptness where the flies are breeding. Systematic group instruction in the principles and practice of Christian ethics is the “preventive medicine” of the pastoral ministry [p. 115].

Weatherly offers much helpful advice on marriage, evangelism, pastoral counseling, church administration, and community leadership, and his book has tremendous value.

There are, however, elements to which I take exception. The liberal theology underlying the book is seen in such a statement as: “Worship is man accepting all men as his brothers because God is the Father of all men” (p. 40). To say this is to fail to recognize the clear teaching in John 8:42 and 44, where Jesus says: “If God were your Father, ye would love me,” and adds, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.”

Furthermore, there is an evident lack of biblical orientation. The de-emphasis on Scripture is expressed, for example, when, speaking of the pastor’s visiting the sick, Weatherly says, “He will certainly want to pray with you and possibly read some Scripture …” (p. 53, italics mine). The Scriptures ought to be the primary source of comfort and blessing to the sick. Again, this lack of a biblical foundation is shown when the author tells of a girl who sought the advice of her minister because the young man whom she wished to marry “happened to have a religious and cultural background completely different from her own”: this fact, says Weatherly, “posed no problem which could not be overcome if the parties to the potential marriage had the love and determination and strength and temperament and personal resourcefulness to seek a solution” (pp. 74 f.). This runs counter to the Apostle Paul’s warning about the unequal yoke with unbelievers (2 Cor. 6:14), which is especially important in such a bond as that of marriage.

The book is weak in that it lacks a solid biblical foundation. Yet, with this caution clearly stated, I would nevertheless recommend it to the Christian public, and to seminary students as parallel reading in pastoral theology courses.

PAUL R. GILCHRIST

Book Briefs

Teaching the Troubled Child, by George T. Donahue and Sol Nichtern (Macmillan, 1965, 202 pp., $5.95). A radically new approach—tested in experience—to the education of hundreds of thousands of emotionally troubled children through existing community facilities.

Helping Youth Avoid Four Great Dangers: Smoking, Drinking, VD, Narcotics Addiction, by Hal and Jean Vermes (Association, 1965, 157 pp., $3.95).

Song of Songs, by Watchman Nee, translated by Elizabeth K. Mei and Daniel Smith (Christian Literature Crusade, 1965, 155 pp., $3). An interpretation that sees Song of Songs as a portrayal of the union between Christ and (not the church but) the believer.

The Feminine Crisis in Christian Faith: The Bible’s Challenge to Today’s Woman, by Elizabeth Achtemeier (Abingdon, 1965, 160 pp., $2.75).

Protestantism in Transition, by Charles W. Kegley (Harper and Row, 1965, 282 pp., $5.75). This well-written book makes the author appear a dilettante rather than a scholar. Book and author are theologically liberal, naïve, unscholarly, glib. The book touches many things but really grasps nothing. Kegley’s disregard of books, magazines, and men commonly called evangelical these days does little to commend his understanding of Protestantism. Until he recognizes it, there is little chance he will see it move.

Ten Fingers for God, by Dorothy Clarke Wilson (McGraw-Hill, 1965, 247 pp., $5.50). The true story of a surgeon’s quest for an end to the ravages of leprosy.

Farrar’s Life of Christ, by Frederic William Farrar (World, 1965, 427 pp., $6.50). A new edition of Canon Farrar’s classic work on the life of Jesus, illustrated with full-color reproductions of famous paintings.

Record of Revelation: The Bible, by Wilfrid Harrington, O. P., (Priory Press, 1965, 143 pp., $3.95). A very lucid discussion by a Roman Catholic of the text, canonicity, and inspiration of the Bible, and of textual, literary, and historical criticism. The validity of the latter is not excluded, and the inerrancy of Scripture is affirmed but in such a way as not to exclude biblical scientific and historical inaccuracies.

The Study of the Synoptic Gospels: New Approaches and Outlooks, by Augustin Cardinal Bea (Harper and Row, 1965, 95 pp., $3.50).

Guidance from Men of God: Fifteen Inspiring Messages about People You Know in the Bible, by John A. Redhead (Abingdon, 1965, 144 pp., $2.50).

An Introduction to the History of the Christian Church, by Wilfred W. Biggs (St. Martin’s Press, 1965, 238 pp., $4.95). A lucid and compact history of the Church.

Join Your Right Hands: Addresses and Worship Aids for Weddings, edited by Arthur M. Vincent (Concordia, 1965, 143 pp. $3). A general discussion of what makes a biblical wedding address, followed by twenty-four such addresses.

Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Fourth Edition), by Frank S. Mead (Abingdon, 1965, 272 pp., $2.95).

Dictionary of the Bible, by John L. McKenzie, S.J. (Bruce, 1965, 976 pp., $17.95). The kind of book that gives a cross section of Roman Catholic views.

Horace Bushnell, edited by H. Shelton Smith (Oxford, 1965, 407 pp., $7). The writings of Bushnell that show his theological method and his theological reconstruction. With extensive introductions by the editor.

Concilium, Volume 8: Pastoral Reform in Church Government, edited by Teodoro Jimenez-Urresti and Neophytos Edelby (Paulist Press, 1965, 184 pp., $4.50). A presentation of Roman Catholic “church polity.”

The Mystery of Death, by Ladislaus Boros, S. J. (Herder and Herder, 1965, 201 pp., $4.50). A searching analysis of what death is and what it means. For the serious reader with a very lively mind.

Telling a Child about Death, by Edgar N. Jackson (Channel, 1965, 91 pp., $2.95). A good book on a difficult, rarely written-about subject.

The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians, by Alan Cole (Eerdmans, 1965, 188 pp., $3.25). Volume 9 in the New Testament series of the “Tyndale Bible Commentaries.” A sturdy little commentary, both reliable and brief.

The Anchor Bible, Volume 14: Ezra and Nehemiah, translated with introduction and notes by Jacob M. Myers (Doubleday, 1965, 267 pp., $6). The author says that Nehemiah, “the master international politician,” “tended to the body of Judaism,” and Ezra “ministered to its soul.”

The Continuing Search for the Historical Jesus, by Jacob Jervell, translated by Harris E. Kaasa (Augsburg, 1965, 106 pp., $3). A good popular introduction to the old and “continuing” quest for the Jesus of history.

Twentieth Century Catholicism, No. 2, edited by Lancelot Sheppard (Hawthorn, 1965, 251 pp., $6). All about the liturgical changes which are occurring in Roman Catholic worship because of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy.

The Faith of JFK, edited by T. S. Settel (Dutton, 1965, 127 pp., $3.50). Reflections, mostly oblique, of the faith of John F. Kennedy.

This We Believe: The Background and Exposition of the Doctrinal Statement of The Evangelical Free Church of America (revised and enlarged), by Arnold Theodore Olson (Free Church Publications, 1965, 376 pp., $4.95). A churchman in a church that allows no official creed writes a book about the credo of his church.

Paperbacks

Miracles: Yesterday and Today, True and False, by Benjamin B. Warfield (Eerdmans, 1965, 327 pp., $2.25). Originally published under the title Counterfeit Miracles in 1918.

Church Library Manual, prepared by Charlotte Newton (self-published [892 Prince Avenue, Athens, Georgia], 1965, 22 pp., $1).

Questioning Christian Faith, by F. R. Barry (Seabury, 1965, 192 pp., $1.65). Stimulating writing that informs the mind and makes it think about the deep problems of the heart.

Life in Christ Jesus: Reflections on Romans 5–8, by John Knox (Seabury, 1966, 128 pp., $1.25). A very thoughtful and provocative discussion.

Christians and Jews: Encounter and Mission, by Jakob Jocz (S.P.C.K., 1966, 55 pp., 6s. 6d.). Short essays by a competent theologian.

Speaking with Tongues, by Stuart Bergsma (Baker, 1965, 26 pp., $.85). Some physiological and psychological implications of modern glossalalia.

The Mark of Cain: Studies in Literature and Theology, by Stuart Barton Babbage (Eerdmans, 1966, 157 pp., $1.95). Delightful reading.

Sermon Suggestions in Outline, Series I, by R. E. O. White (Eerdmans, 1965, 78 pp., $1.45). Sermonic material rather than sermon outlines, and sometimes more moralistic than theological.

The Epistles of John and Jude, by Ronald A. Ward (Baker, 1965, 102 pp., $1.50). A study manual.

Toynbee, by C. Gregg Singer (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1965, 76 pp., $1.25). An evangelical evaluates Toynbee.

His Only Son Our Lord, by Kent S. Knutson (Augsburg, 1966, 113 pp., $1.50). A luminous discussion in down-to-earth language. Many a lay reader will be surprised at how much theology he can understand.

The Life of John Birch, by Robert H. W. Welch, Jr. (Western Islands, 1965, 128 pp., $1). Only about half the book is about Birch, and the few pages on Birch as a preacher reflects a total misunderstanding of Christianity.

O Sing Unto the Lord: Music in the Lutheran Church, by Henry E. Horn (Fortress, 1966, 156 pp., $2).

Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, Volume III: John Duns Scotus, 1265–1965, edited by John K. Ryan and Bernardine M. Bonansea (Catholic University of America, 1965, 384 pp., $6.95). A major tome on the life, works, and influence of a too much neglected medieval thinker whose emphases on voluntarism contrasts with Aristotelean-Thomistic intellectualism.

Christ Encountered: A Short Life of Jesus, by Roger Tennant (Seabury, 1966, 135 pp., $1.45). The author writes as one who has taken a deep draught of the new wine of the Gospel.

The Christian Case Against Poverty, by Henry Clark (Association, 1965, 128 pp., $.50).

Marriage Customs Through the Ages, by E. O. James (Macmillan, 1965, 254 pp., $1.50). By an author who believes that the family unit has always been the basic unit of human society. First published as Marriage and Society.

The German Church Conflict, by Karl Barth (John Knox, 1965, 77 pp., $1.75). Republished for the light it throws on the ecumenical situation today in Britain and the United States. First published in German in 1956.

The Future of John Wesley’s Methodism, by Henry D. Rack (John Knox, 1965, 80 pp., $1.75). An attempt to show the original nature of Methodism and why and how it should merge with Anglicanism.

Youth Considers Parents as People, by Randolph C. Miller (Nelson, 1965, 93 pp., $1.50). A view from the other end.

The Light of the World: A Reconstruction and Interpretation of the Life of Christ, by Greville Cooke (Icon Books, 1965, 352 pp., 5s.). A well-written but often highly imaginative account. First published in 1949.