Page 6289 – Christianity Today (2024)

Missionary-minded believers everywhere are interested in establishing indigenous churches among people who once knew nothing of the grace of God in Christ. Recent years have witnessed a great impetus toward this end. National Christian leaders in what were formerly called mission lands are increasingly and rapidly taking over responsibilities for the support, nurture, government, and extension of churches that originally were established under the blessing of God by Christians from overseas.

This change is as it should be.

What Are The Criteria?

Is an indigenous church, however, necessarily one which admits only nationals as members and deliberately excludes missionaries from other lands? Is not the racial criterion for membership too superficial and therefore an unworthy one? Surely the Lord’s standard is more than skin deep!

In considering the transition from mission enterprise to indigenous church one must remember there are different systems of church government. Each presumably is based on Scripture, and each in any adjustment of program faces certain problems. Is it desirable or right, for example, that churches relinquish an established governmental structure for a congregational system? Often this latter method has greater appeal to overseas Christians; to govern one church autonomously and independently may be simpler than submitting to the authority and corporate control of some conference, presbytery, or synod. It is true, also, that current indigenous ideas are usually tailored more closely to the independent pattern of church government than any other.

Through many generations of missionary activity around the world, missionaries have not only admitted and deplored, but have also sincerely tried to correct, various evils and shortcomings in their ministry. Improvements have indeed come. But however conscientious and earnest these men and women of God may be, they are nonetheless still human and fallible.

A word of caution is timely at this point. In our eagerness to lay aside some particular evil we must be sure we do not invite or make room for a more dangerous and subtle form of the very condition we decry. In trying to eliminate paternalism on the local level, for example, it is quite possible to continue this attitude from a distance in a far less obvious but much more insidious way.

Furthermore, in the scramble to use appealing shibboleths and to follow popular trends in today’s religious thought, people may unwittingly succumb to statements and policies which sound wise enough but which, unless qualified, may really be quite the opposite.

Some Basic Principles

To avoid mistakes and heartache in developing and nurturing the indigenous church, two basic principles of Scripture must constantly be observed.

1. The New Testament clearly teaches that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek.

How often as a child on the streets in China I remember hearing the words “foreign devil!” In this epithet, as in similar expressions in almost every land, brooded the ugly prejudice of racial nationalism. In the church, however, I heard a quite different and significant designation: “Brother” expressed the beautiful and truly Christian ideal of family relationship.

National distinctions persist in the secular world and continue to divide society. In the body of Christ, the Church, however, they are done away. While these diversities still obtain outwardly and physically, the unity and spiritual fellowship in Christ transcend these differences by including and uniting all mankind. Is this why the Apostle Paul appointed young Timothy, who to some may have seemed an outsider, to pastor the church at Ephesus? This church, after all, for years had had its own indigenous elders and leaders. Similarly, Paul appointed Titus to serve the church in Crete and gave him specific instructions concerning church affairs in that place. Did not the Cretan church very likely have its own local leaders? If we are to follow Paul’s pattern of missions, dare we ignore this phase?

His Corinthian and Thessalonian epistles reveal still another pertinent fact. Apparently he, a Jew from Asia, never relinquished his responsibilities and authority over the Gentile missionary churches he had established in Europe. This was the case not only because Paul believed Jew and Gentile are one in Christ; he was sure of his divine commission as well.

The second basic principle in a missionary’s relationship to the indigenous church often is overlooked or, if it is not believed, may he ignored.

2. A missionary is first and foremost under divine appointment.

Either he is God-sent or he is not a missionary in the Christian sense of the word. Few if any evangelicals today would deny the definite call and divine appointment of missionaries even in regard to specific fields and ministries. Should not missionaries, then, be received and acknowledged as part of the churches they serve, and be just as eligible as any other member to participate in their counsels? It seems almost absurd to affirm (as do some evangelical missionary organizations who unwittingly may be following the earlier lead of liberals) that missionaries do not belong to indigenous churches. They may serve only as outsiders, as roving evangelists, as peripatetic teachers of the Word. They may be doctors with mobile units who treat the sick and move on. Even in congregational-type, independent churches this situation should not prevail. And in churches established by a parent church in another land, the idea of severance is all the more open to question. To consider missionaries outsiders seems to be a tacit concession to the spirit of nationalism. Neither is such an attitude of any help to a church, nor can it be sustained by Scripture.

God appoints missionaries to other important ministries in the indigenous church besides those mentioned above. The church, of course, must cooperate willingly. Obviously a new missionary just graduated from Bible college or seminary, or even one with a Ph.D. degree, who has far more than an unfamiliar language to learn in his appointed field, should no more expect immediately to direct affairs in churches overseas than he would in a church at home. While the Lord of the harvest appoints his laborers where and as he wills, he never does so indiscriminately, nor without requiring the maturing disciplines of extremely practical Christian service. Such training takes time both at home and abroad. God’s servants are thoroughly proved before he entrusts them with sacred responsibilities. Nonetheless, even the best equipped must always manifest humility. But the fact that a missionary is from another country should not of itself be a disqualifying factor for real membership and, in time, even for service of high responsibility in any overseas church to which the Lord may send him.

When God appoints someone to serve his Church in another land, whatever the skin color may be, he sends his servant as an insider, not an outsider, as an essential member of the living church organism. Except where the unscriptural idea of excluding missionaries from the indigenous church has been fostered, a vast majority of national believers gladly welcome and acknowledge the foreign missionary as an integral part of the church brotherhood.

Since all race distinctions are removed in Christ, any true church organism anywhere may include black, white or yellow. God is not limited to matching people of the same race and skin in his appointments of workers to churches either at home or abroad. Because God raises up and appoints local church leaders, it does not necessarily follow that missionaries therefore cannot expect to, nor should not, belong to the indigenous church brotherhood.

That emphasis on nationalism which would exclude missionaries from any essential relationship to the overseas church, an attitude strangely prevalent if not dominant in current missionary thought, is certainly not a spiritual let alone a scriptural emphasis. Definitely non-Christian and divisive, this kind of nationalism in no way nurtures the Spirit of Christ. Actually, it brings into the churches that very disunity which Christ’s death abolished. Whenever some policy develops a spirit other than that of the Lord Jesus, any so-called advantages of such a policy, as spontaneous numerical increase even, mean absolutely nothing.

In those foreign lands where the alchemy of grace does indeed make outsiders truly indigenous members of the church and its fellowship, the Lord entrusts missionaries with responsible ministries even though they serve people of different nationalities.

Even the Scot who yearned to serve God in China but was led to the United States instead illustrates our thesis. No one who heard him either as a prominent Presbyterian minister or as chaplain of the United States Senate would deny that Peter Marshall was a missionary. Every bit of this six-foot-two Anglo-Saxon was sent by God from Europe to America. Born in Scotland, he nonetheless became a vital member of the indigenous church in our country. Peter Marshall both came and was received as a true and respected missionary of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Are the churches going out of the missionary business?

The Future Of The Missionary

The cause of world missions—the basic mission of the Church—is under terrific pressure today.

Atheistic Communism would destroy the Christian witness. Militant nationalism often opposes or subverts Christianity to her own ends. World uncertainties reduce the number of workers willing to venture into the arena of a global witness.

Within the missionary enterprise itself, moreover, tensions, frustrations and doubts arise as national churches emerge. The problem of the relationship of missions and missionaries induces much heart-searching and actuates new policy decisions. How, in these changing times, can the unchanging Gospel be trumpeted world-wide without unnecessary impediment by wrong attitudes and decisions? This is the issue these Christian leaders address.

This question is prompted by the increasing emphasis many boards are giving to interchurch aid as a substitute for direct and pioneer missionary outreach. While the pattern varies, its main features seem fairly well established. In any given field where an indigenous church body exists, the formal organization known as the “Mission” is to be dissolved. Missionaries are to be incorporated into the national church structure and made subject to its ecclesiastical direction; new missionaries are to come only on invitation of the indigenous church. All funds for the work are to be placed in the hands of the national church and administered through its own appropriate boards and committees. The personal support and expenses of the missionaries are to continue to come from abroad; sponsoring boards are to function primarily as subsidizing agencies that provide needed personnel and funds.

The underlying idea seems to be that such a plan eliminates the ambiguities of the present church-mission dichotomy, and demonstrates “partnership in obedience.” Through direct involvement it is expected that the national churches develop a stronger sense of missionary responsibility and of personal dignity. We personally find it difficult to see how the policy in question will serve these ends.

1. Actually, no dichotomy of church and mission exists if the nature and function of these bodies are properly understood. The mission is not a church and it exercises no ecclesiastical powers. These belong exclusively to the national church itself, whose autonomy in this area is absolute and unquestioned. In its relation to the indigenous church, the mission is simply a “task force,” an organized body of friends who stand ready to help wherever requested.

2. The plan does not really offer a true “partnership.” Rather, it calls for the complete dissolution of one of the participating parties. Real partnership implies an arrangement whereby each body respects the entity and autonomy of the other. Both work in a spirit of mutual esteem as coordinates.

3. As far as encouraging a missionary mind within the indigenous churches is concerned, the plan of “integration” seems more likely to produce just the opposite effect. Under such a system churches can hardly be expected to develop any sense of their own missionary responsibility. To accept substantial annual subsidies from outside sources would tend to confirm their status of “receiving churches” instead of challenging them to make their distinctive contribution, however small, to the mission of the church in the world. Any genuine missionary interest of the church must express itself in the outpouring of its own life and means rather than in depending upon resources from abroad.

4. The idea that dignity can be given per se to the national churches by giving them administration and control of all missionary funds seems also to miss the mark. Whatever “indignity” may exist comes from within, from the subjective shadow of the posture of dependence in which the churches find themselves. “The only cure for such a problem lies in a true autonomy. This is not something that can be conferred or withheld. It is a status and quality that must be achieved. No church can attain dignity in its own eyes when its rightful responsibilities are being carried by others, and the more generous the help the deeper the sensitivity is likely to be. The national church needs to develop its own self-respect by hard work, stewardship, and sacrifice, and by an honest acceptance of its own responsibilities and burdens. Only then can it hold up its head without shame, can it accept thankfully the comradeship and help of those who labor to assist it.

To fulfill its highest usefulness the missionary movement must be so organized and construed as to encourage newly emerging churches to develop to the full their own individual capacities. The missionary enterprise must not be allowed to degenerate into a sort of collectivism that undermines local initiative and responsibility. This precaution is critical. There is evidence that the idea of the world Christian community, and of corporate responsibility of the whole for every part, has been used by certain “younger churches” to justify their continued dependence upon subsidies and grants-in-aid. As a result, development in stewardship and self-support has been retarded. In extreme cases such help is all but demanded as a right. Even the capacity to be grateful seems almost to have been lost.

The seriousness of this situation lies not in the fact that it may cost us money. At stake, rather, is the character of the churches themselves. To discourage their growth in maturity and self-reliance brings serious injury to their well-being and integrity.

One of the chief weaknesses of the “integration” idea is that it prolongs the “colonial” pattern. In this day of intense nationalism, how can the national churches escape the stigma of religious “colonialism” as long as fraternal workers from abroad sit prominently in their councils, and budgets are replenished year by year with liberal infusions of aid from foreign sources? What would happen to such churches, geared to a policy of subsidization, if political changes required the sudden and complete withdrawal of all outside help? This is something that the national churches themselves need to consider seriously. If the missions are enjoined to abandon the role of colonials, then by the same token let the national churches abandon the role of the colonized. The full independence and autonomy of the national churches must be safeguarded. Let them stand on their own feet, and allow the missions to continue with their chief business, namely preaching of the Gospel to the unevangelized.

The Primary Objective

One other observation seems necessary to set this whole matter in proper perspective. Let it be said quite frankly that assistance to the indigenous churches is not the missionary’s first concern. While such assistance is important, it is a secondary function for him. His primary concern must be for those “other sheep” whose spiritual lostness and need called him in the first place from his home and his native land. In few countries where missionaries are at work today have as many as five per cent of the people been won to the evangelical faith. Any philosophy of missions which diverts attention from this unfinished task and interprets our continuing role principally in terms of interchurch aid must be classified as a major retreat in missionary strategy. Established work should be turned over as rapidly as possible to the indigenous church while the mission moves on to the “regions beyond.” It is inconceivable and illogical that the existence or formation of a relatively small body of believers in any country should deflect the initiative of those whom God has called to preach the Gospel to every creature. We cannot in good conscience relinquish to any national church organization either the right or the obligation to determine for us where our missionary responsibility begins or ends. Our mandate comes from Christ, not from any indigenous church. We were “sent” before we were “invited.”

It is tragic indeed that some churches seem almost to have abandoned the idea of direct missionary endeavor. The so-called independent or “faith” missions are partially filling the vacuum, but no more urgent need confronts the churches today than that of fresh evangelistic fervor, of pioneering zeal and of outreach. We are in danger of becoming “church-bound,” of substituting a sort of ecclesiastical foreign-aid program for the real thing, and consequently of losing the biblical missionary vision which historically has fired the hearts of our people.

We must guard against any situation which would limit our missionary efforts simply to helping existing national churches. Instead of following a circ*mscribed “church-limited” policy, we should concern ourselves with the unbelieving people of the whole world. We must throw off a kind of bondage to established churches. For it is quite obvious that our work of outreach and extension will soon reach the saturation point if each national church remains permanently dependent on our resources.

Let us start anew. Let us devote ourselves to a pioneering ministry. Let us stop coddling the national churches into dependence.

A previous article (“What Ministers Think of Mergers,” Nov. 24, 1961, issue) discussed the proposed merger between the United Presbyterian Church, the Protestant Episcopal Church, The Methodist Church, and the United Church of Christ. There we analyzed the reaction of some clergymen to the so-called Blake-Pike proposal and drew several tentative conclusions. This second article enlarges on the success or failure of mergers already consummated, and proposes several guidelines on the subject of organic union of churches.

Recent developments furnish ample evidence that union (or reunion) will be a topic for serious conversation for some time to come. In December of 1960 the archbishop of Canterbury visited the pope of Rome. The pope granted an audience also to the presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the American branch of the Anglican fellowship. This latter visit by the Right Reverend Arthur Lichtenberger to the Vatican en route to the New Delhi meetings of the World Council of Churches created considerable press interest in America. The fact that this audience occurred before rather than after the World Council meetings, and that it followed the earlier meeting of the English primate, could be no accident. Such timing lends to the visit the appearance of a movement of Protestantism toward Rome.

To illustrate the urge for such union we need only go back to Bishop Oxnam’s episcopal address of 1948. He pleaded for organic union that allows but two churches—one Protestant and one Roman Catholic—and expressed the further desire that these two might someday constitute one holy, catholic church. The recent merger of the Congregational Christian Churches with the Evangelical and Reformed Church, the union of the United Presbyterian Church with the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., the Blake-Pike proposal, and the integration of the International Missionary Council into the World Council of Churches, attest the fact that powerful merger forces are moving swiftly toward church union. How rapidly this movement will surge ahead, and how soon its objectives will be substantially attained cannot be predicted. These already functioning operations, however, constitute the unmistakably growing ecumenical thrust of our day.

Merger And Missionary Thrust

While it is openly acknowledged, the fact yet needs repeating that the genius of the present ecumenical movement owes its beginnings to the foreign missionary impulse. In essence, the recurring argument in favor of church union is simply that the Church’s mission has been thwarted by the many divisions within the body of Christ. Bishop Lesslie Newbigin propounds this argument constantly:

The health of the ecumenical movement depends upon the vigor and freshness of the missionary passion from which it sprang.… But the missionary passion, the longing that “the world may know” must remain central to the “ecumenical” movement.… Of that true understanding of the word “ecumenical” the forthcoming Assembly of the World Council of Churches and the International Missionary Council at New Delhi will surely be a potent symbol. Its theme, “Jesus Christ the Light of the World,” is a reminder to all who have any part in it that our concern is with a Gospel for all men.… And the fact that it will be the occasion of the uniting of these two world bodies in one, so that from henceforth the World Council of Churches will itself carry the direct responsibility for missionary counsel and cooperation which the IMC has carried for half a century, will surely mean in the end that all the churches will have to take this missionary responsibility much more deeply to heart …, will have to learn that to be a Christian congregation anywhere is to be a part of a mission which reaches out to the ends of the earth.

Dr. Eugene Carson Blake of the United Presbyterian Church, LISA, has expressed the same ideas. Speaking at the North American Ecumenical Youth Assembly in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on August 19, 1961, he said the divided state of Christ’s Church retards accomplishment of its mission. “The Church is not a club but a mission, to make known the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. We are beginning to see that the divided state of the Christian Church is blocking its mission.” Dr. Blake and Bishop Newbigin, among others, have underscored taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth as the church’s primary mission. They have concluded further that the divided condition of the churches is one, if not the, principal hindrance to realizing this objective. This mission of the Church, therefore, is the main reason for establishing a church which Dr. Blake calls “truly catholic, truly reformed, and truly evangelical.”

Consolidation of the International Missionary Council into the framework of the World Council of Churches was justified mainly by this rationale. Indeed, the whole ecumenical movement is indebted to foreign missions for its very existence. It is fairly safe to say that without the nineteenth century forward movement in missions there might well have been no present-day ecumenical movement and no World Council. It is important, therefore, not only to understand the ecumenical thrust of the missionary movement half a century ago, but also to recognize what changes have occurred. Such analysis will supply the necessary historical background for evaluating the present movement.

Clouding A Great Vision

In 1902 the fourth international conference of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions convened in Toronto, Canada. Orthodox in theological orientation and ecumenical in membership and purpose, this movement had sprung from the evangelistic work of Dwight L. Moody and the famous Northfield Conferences. Eight years later in 1910 the World Missionary Conference convened in Edinburgh. Its transactions were printed in North America by the Fleming Revell Company. Revell was Moody’s brother-in-law, a fact that may explain the close connection between the missionary conferences and the Moody-Revell interests. At this 1910 conference the theological thrust was still well within the orthodox context, and the spirit of the meetings was distinctly ecumenical in the best and broadest sense. The major denominations of the world were represented. So were the leading faith mission boards such as the China Island Mission, Ceylon and India General Mission, Egypt General Mission, New Hebrides Mission, North Africa Mission, Regions Beyond Missionary Union, South Africa General Mission, and Sudan United Mission. The meetings were both interdenominational and nondenominational. They truly represented the whole Church of Jesus Christ at work in its mission.

After 1910 a distinct change took place. Theological considerations bifurcated the ecumenical spirit of the earlier missionary conclaves. Faith missionary agencies increasingly separated from the ecumenical missionary stream as denominations seriously compromised their orthodoxy. After 1910 the Faith and Order group emerged, and also the Life and Work group, and the International Missionary Council. In 1928 the Jerusalem Conference met under IMC auspices. Theological differences were consciously recognized for what they implied. The IMC adopted a resolution on “Missionary Cooperation in View of Doctrinal Differences.” The original ecumenical missionary spirit was dissipated because of the leavening inroads of theological liberalism. What had begun as a genuinely ecumenical and theologically orthodox movement now became fragmented, its witness based on theological inclusivism on the one hand, and on theological exclusivism on the other.

How significant this change has been may be seen from any missionary survey today. The North American picture is perhaps the most obvious index. Once the vast majority of North American missionary personnel came from the old line denominations. This is no longer the case. In 1956, 43.5 per cent of North American foreign missionaries were related to the Division of Foreign Missions of the National Council of Churches; in 1958, the percentage dropped to 41.2 percent; and in 1960 to 38 per cent (10,324). In other words, 62 per cent of the North American foreign missionaries are not affiliated with the Division of Foreign Missions. Contrasted with the situation in 1911, 1928, and 1936, it becomes quite clear that the gap between missionary personnel and the ecumenical complex has widened steadily. More and more missionary work is being done outside rather than within the ecumenical framework. Even today if only one group—like the Seventh-day Adventists with their 1,385 missionaries—were to withdraw from the Division of Foreign Missions, the Division’s total missionary force would drop perceptibly (from 10,324 to 8,939). Furthermore, their withdrawal would leave under the direction of the Division of Foreign Missions less than one third of the total number of North American missionaries. If any observation is to be made from this summary it is that the foreign missionary impulse of the ecumenical movement in North America today is far weaker percentagewise in overseas personnel than it was 50 years ago.

Ecumenism originally flowed from the missionary impetus; it represented churches sharing and thriving under the spiritual urgency to spread the Gospel. We may ask, then, if the recent church mergers have strengthened the Church’s witness and furthered its missionary outreach as men like Visser’t Hooft, Blake, and Newbigin envisioned. If mergers have not accomplished this objective and if church unions have fostered no appreciable gains along the lines announced when such mergers were projected, then any further encouragement to merger must find some other rationale than that of overcoming the obstacle of fragmentation to church mission. What is the effect of church union in North America on missionary vitality?

The Fruits Of Inclusive Merger

On this continent the most famous of all church union movements is the United Church of Canada. Completed in 1925, this merger of Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregational churches united people of unrelated denominational backgrounds. But it was divisive too, in that it separated brother from brother and created wounds as yet unhealed. Particularly affected by the merger movement were the Maritime Provinces of Canada; many observers consider the breaches caused by the movement far too costly for the benefits derived. Today the United Church calls itself a uniting church; it has held conversations with the Canadian Disciples, the Evangelical United Brethren, and the Anglican Church of Canada. Its ecumenical passion remains. But since union has been justified in terms of furthering the witness of the Church the question must be asked: “How well has the United Church of Canada met this standard?” The reply leaves much to be desired.

At its annual session in 1961 the United Church of Canada was addressed by its retiring moderator. As weaknesses of this group he mentioned the need for renewed missionary zeal and for a quickening of spiritual life. Following the 1925 merger there had been a surplus of ministers. Now the moderator says a shortage exists which has reached emergency proportions; moreover, he says that membership growth for the United Church of Canada is lagging far behind the nation’s population increase. The last annual report showed a drop in new members by profession of faith in every conference. In finances, 80 per cent of all monies gathered from the congregations remained in the congregational coffers.

What is more, the very reason usually given for union, namely, the fulfillment of mission, gets little confirmation. Year by year the United Church’s foreign missionary force has decreased. From 452 missionaries in 1936, the number had declined to 245 by 1960. By contrast, the whole North American foreign missionary force of 11,289 in 1936 increased to 27,219 by 1960. While this total force increased almost 250 per cent, that of the United Church of Canada shrank to almost one half. (It is true that following the 1925 merger there was a continuing Presbyterian Church in Canada reporting 60 missionaries in 1936 and 83 in 1960.) If this example fairly reflects what normally happens in merger situations, how can ecumenists contend that church union helps missions?

An analysis of other mergers will test the larger validity of observations about United Church of Canada.

A prime example of sizable merger in the United States is that between the Congregational and the Christian Churches, formalized in 1931 in Seattle. Over against the previously mentioned North American increase of almost 250 per cent in missionary personnel between 1936 and 1960, the figures for the Congregational Christian Churches are instructive. In 1936 there were 495 missionaries operating under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. By 1960 the number had shrunk to 364, a decline of slightly more than 25 per cent as contrasted with the almost 250 per cent increase in the general average.

The merged Congregational Christian Churches have negotiated further merger with the Evangelical and Reformed Church (which represents still another church union). In 1934, Evangelical Synod of North America united with the Reformed Church in the United States in Cleveland. Here, too, subsequent missionary outreach significantly lags behind the forward surge in missions generally. Missionary personnel of the Evangelical and Reformed Church increased from 116 in 1936 to 153 in 1960, a growth of slightly over 30 per cent as against almost 250 per cent increase generally. Inclusive merger did not yield the kind of outreach that ecumenists envision.

In 1946 the Evangelical Church and the United Brethren Church became the Evangelical United Brethren Church. In 1936 these two separate denominations supported a missionary force of 101 people. In 1960 the total was 143, an increase of slightly over 40 per cent as against the 250 per cent increase generally. Missionary strength fell far short of the average.

In 1939 the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and the Methodist Protestant Church united to form The Methodist Church. Since then their combined missionary force has increased less than 20 per cent. Again the missions story is much like that of other merged denominations.

Some Contrasting Gains

We must not, of course, simply cite the above figures without some overview of the missionary scene. Thus, while the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., had fewer missionaries in 1960 than in 1936, the number of the Southern Presbyterian Church rose from 402 to 492 missionaries in the same period. While the Protestant Episcopal Church missionaries declined from 427 to 414, the Reformed Church in America increased its foreign staff from 140 to 173. Many denominations even advanced remarkably well during this period. The Southern Baptist missionary staff soared from 405 to 1377; that of the Free Methodists from 81 to 161; of the Christian and Missionary Alliance from 447 to 824; of the Church of the Nazarene from 88 to 400; and of the Evangelical Mission Covenant Church from 38 to 153. Missionaries under the American Baptist Convention dropped from 587 to 383. This denomination, however, had undergone several divisions. Some churches joined the General Association of Regular Baptists, others organized the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society. Thus while the American Baptist Convention figure for 1960 was 383 missionaries, if we add the 378 of the Conservative Baptists and the 473 of Mid Missions and the 228 of the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (both GARBC agencies), the total missions personnel far exceeds the 587 enjoyed by the ABC in 1936.

The Baptist General Conference of America normally operated its missions program through the American Baptist Convention, but in the 40s the two went their separate ways. This fact accounts partly for the decline of the ABC, inasmuch as the Baptist General Conference alone now has more than 100 missionaries.

Faith mission agencies scored the most substantial increase of all in missionary personnel. Generally they represented small, isolated constituencies in Bible churches and fundamentalist groups. The roll call is impressive: Evangelical Alliance Mission missionaries increased from 95 to 807; Unevangelized Tribes from 48 to 211; Oriental Missionary Society from 36 to 198; Wycliffe Bible Translators from nothing to over 1,000.

Some Significant Conclusions

With respect to missions and the fulfillment of the Great Commission, two generalizations seem to emerge. 1. Church mergers have as yet produced nothing that resembles a significant increase in foreign missionary witness so far as the number of missionaries is concerned. Actually, there seems to have been a general decline among those groups which have merged. 2. The increase of missionary passion and concern seems to have been stirred largely by faith boards and by the smaller and generally more theologically conservative groups. Therefore if church mergers are encouraged on the ground that ‘the divided state of the Christian Church is blocking its mission,” there is little evidence to show that mergers do substantially improve the realization of the mission of the church. So far mergers just have not produced such results.

One significant church union scheme outside the American scene has attracted much attention. This is the Church of South India which united adherents from different Protestant denominations into one fellowship. Here, too, the main motive was to overcome the fragmentation of witness that was proclaimed a scandal to the world of heathenism and a hindrance to more rapid evangelization of the lost. It was supposed that a united fellowship would do what a divided fellowship was unable to accomplish. Donald McGavran, whose book How Churches Grow was highly commended by Hendrik Kraemer, investigated and assessed the growth of the churches. He concluded that the Church of South India has not lived up to expectations; union has made little or no difference in its rate of growth. Indeed, there is no reason to suppose that the individual churches would not have grown just as well apart from the union as they have with the union. While there may be compelling reasons for urging churches to merge, no primary weight can be attached to the motion that merger leads to more compelling witness that fulfills the Great Commission. Nor dare anyone plead for maintaining present divisions in order to speed the missionary task, for neither has a divided Christendom completed the task of world evangelization.

Evidence Not Reassuring

In the final analysis, the main achievement of the ecumenical movement is to coalesce into one family those already within the Christian community. This in itself may be sufficient reason to justify church union; if so, then the cause for merger should be stated in those terms. But the outcome does not confirm an expected missionary upsurge as the justifying reason for organic union. This is particularly true in North America, where the vast majority of missionary work is being accomplished outside the ecumenical stream, and where, indeed, the proportion of the work being done within the ecumenical orbit has been decreasing steadily in the past 50 years.

For churches to merge so that they become a larger force within the context of the Christian community is one thing. For such largeness to produce missionary impetus and virility apparently is quite another. It the mission of the Church is as significant as both proponents and opponents of church union profess, it is imperative to stress the fact. Unity in itself, in terms of organic union, may not be the main consideration. One can argue with some degree of dogmatic assurance that a single world church which forfeits its missionary responsibility is a meaningless anomaly, whereas proliferating churches which fulfill our Lord’s command to take the Gospel to every creature is far preferable. This is not to say that these are the only alternatives, nor would we argue that one church must necessarily be a sterile and impotent force in foreign missions. But the evidence so far gives the earnest seeker no good reason to suppose that church union will increase missionary passion. Indeed, the facts point to an opposite estimate.

Time will tell whether the integration of the International Missionary Council into the World Council of Churches will motivate a new surge of missionary outreach. In the light of what has taken place so far I personally am skeptical about such an eventuality. In the name of a lost and dying world I hope my doubts prove unwarranted. But unless there is a dynamic move forward, the evidence would indicate that God may bypass channels once mightily used and may replace them with other agencies that do not permit the desire for structure and organization to interfere with the risen Christ’s command to evangelize all nations. God bypassed the Roman Church in the Reformation. Today he seems to be bypassing some denominations in North America by allowing the rapid increase of faith missions. May he not also bypass merged denominations that lose the vision of the Church’s task to evangelize the world?

Some Proposals For Action

The fact remains, of course, that there is division in the body of Christ in our day. This ought not to be. If the merged and unmerged groups are not fulfilling the call to world evangelization; if the faith groups as well have not finished the task, what word shall we say, what hope can we offer those still without Christ? However well founded, negative criticism is not enough. Some positive course of action, some guidelines for future strategy, must be stated. What are they?

1. Let sincere effort be made for conversation with those churches and groups still functioning as separate units. Obviously there are always those who refuse any ventures toward fruitful interchange with others. But there are many men and women of good will who are not divisive and dissident.

2. Let ecumenicity begin where it should—on the field. Let it proceed from the bottom up, not from the top down. Let it be spiritual and practical rather than institutional and ecclesiastical. Instead of division such as that which has resulted in various field councils because of the IMC-WCC integration, let councils all over the world fellowship through the mutual burden of reaching men for Christ. If organization divides, it may mean that for a time, at least, further changes should be suspended. The work of Jesus Christ is bigger than organization.

3. Let an honest effort be made to define an adequate theology based only upon the Word of God. While this theology obviously cannot include details, it should at least embrace the great affirmations of the Christian faith. It should be a positive proclamation, not a negative apologetic.

4. Let us not perpetuate local peculiarities overseas. If we have differences based upon subjective conviction let us be sure the nationals recognize these differences as peripheral—as of matters not of the essence of the faith.

5. Let us yield ourselves in penitence and contribution to the person of the Holy Spirit and ask what he would have us be and do.

6. Let us be patient and understanding. Let us withhold judgment until all the facts are ascertained, remembering that God is the judge of conscience, that he alone knows the full number of his sheep, the full range of his kingdom.

New Delhi Doesn’T Excite Me

Ecumenical organization means ecumenical machinery, and churchmen are human, too, human to the extent that keeping an organization going and thus multiplying jobs and perquisites can become as important as proselytizing. Reading between the lines of reports from New Delhi, I was particularly impressed by the control that the professionals had over the procedures, even to the rationale for the control, namely, that fixed orders of business were necessary in order to expedite progress and save time. Give me the power over procedures, i.e., agendas, and the control of information, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred I’ll control the organization.

For those who think about modern developments, there is something frightening in the mere size of the World Council. Now, I know there are those who think size results in efficiency and more witness, but I am not one of them. I don’t even see it as a way to build a counterweight to Catholicism or Communism.…

I know the argument for machinery. How else can the Gospel train he kept on the track? Aren’t order and uniformity proper virtues?… Believe me, there is a great difference in church or military between volunteers and conscripts. A cause is always more relevant if it is one’s own.

So, New Delhi doesn’t excite me. As we blend into the whole we inevitably subject ourselves to liturgy and form. Why? Because the liturgical and formal in worship are predictable and consequently controllable. No hallelujahs are apt to upset the decorum.…

I’m convinced that the problem of our time is the problem of delegation. In the National Council—and, I’m convinced, equally so in the World Council—the Christian witness tends to become the testimony not of life but of resolutions. Problems of our time are considered by experts in the bureaucracy or individuals friendly to it; recommendations are made and then pressures are exerted on state and national legislature. The natural consequence is often that the church becomes a lobby. The state (anti-Christ) becomes the implement of our Christian resolution. This is the paradox of our time. Charity, for example, the care of widows, orphans, the aged, and all those who were once the responsibility of the fraternity (the church), has now become the responsibility of the state; and more often than not men and women become clients, rather than brethren in the church.—Dr. KERMIT EBY, Professor of Social Science, The University of Chicago.

This year will be celebrated in the Anglican world as the 300th anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer. The significance of this famous manual of Christian worship is not to be found by going back just 300 years, however, for the book of 1662 was in all essentials the same as the book of 1552, of which Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the main architect. The English Prayer Book is, in short, a document of the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and it must be understood against this background. There is an abundance of evidence to demonstrate that for a long time prior to the sixteenth century the church had been in desperate need of reform. The Gospel had been virtually lost to sight under a mass of unscriptural traditions and ceremonies. Church services were riddled with superstition. The clergy were in general dissolute and irresponsible. Preaching was at a premium. Moreover, the services were conducted in Latin, which the laity did not understand; and the Bible was not available to them in English, so that they were unable to study God’s Word for themselves.

It must be remembered that the Reformation, though complex in its associations, was in its essence a spiritual movement. It was, therefore, in essence a movement from within, not from without. It was a reformation first of human hearts and lives, and then, through these, of the Church. In every case the Reformers, through their rediscovery of the Bible as the dynamic Word of God, experienced an evangelical conversion. Then, as new creatures in Christ Jesus, they applied themselves to the colossal task of reforming the Church. God raised up William Tyndale to give the English people the Bible in their own tongue, Thomas Cranmer to give them worship which was agreeable to Holy Scripture and also in English, and many others to proclaim the Gospel and lead them back to the old paths from which for so long the Church had strayed.

The principles still valid for us today by which Cranmer and his fellow-Reformer were guided as they constructed the Book of Common Prayer for the worship of the English people may be summed up under seven heads.

1. Scripturalness. This was the supreme and controlling criterion. The Reformers studied the Scriptures with unflagging diligence. Their conviction is expressed in the twentieth of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, which states that “it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God’s Word written.” It was their intention to return to the practice of the early Church whereby the people by attending daily worship would hear the whole Bible read through in the course of a year. The services of the Prayer Book are impregnated with Holy Scripture—in Morning and Evening Prayer, for example, not only is there the reading of lessons from the Old and New Testaments but also the singing of psalms and canticles taken from Scripture and the hearing of prayers and exhortations based upon Scripture. For the Reformers, indeed, Scripture is the touchstone of all doctrine and worship: to be genuinely Christian, prayer and. praise must be genuinely scriptural.

2. Catholicity. The Reformers, however, were not innovators. They did not act as though the. Church had not existed before their day. On the contrary, they were very conscious of continuity with the past, and sought to retain in their worship all that was best from the centuries that preceded them. They made it a special study to know what was taught in the writings of the early fathers of the Church. Indeed, Cranmer’s learning in patristic and liturgical literature was without parallel. They not only maintained, but also proved from the ancient writings, that it was not the Reformation but the Roman Church which was guilty of innovation, and of importing many rites and teachings which were unknown in the early Church. The Reformers, therefore, saw their work as one of renewal and restoration, not innovation, and the Book of Common Prayer is in the truest sense a treasury of catholic worship.

3. Purity. At the same time, what was erroneous, superstitious, and incompatible with the teaching of Scripture was rejected, and what was originally good in itself but had become corrupted was purged.

4. Simplicity. The excessive number of rites, regulations, and traditions, which had obscured the Gospel and placed an insupportable burden upon the people, was drastically reduced to the minimum that was considered needful for disciplined worship: for true worship is essentially a simple act.

5. Intelligibility. As the Apostle Paul teaches, it is essential to worship God with the understanding as well as with the spirit. To worship uncomprehendingly is not to worship the God who has revealed himself in His Son and in Scripture, but to fall away into superstition. Worship, therefore, must be conducted in the language which the people understand; and this made it imperative to discard Latin and to give the people a Prayer Book in English. Thus Article 24 declares that “it is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God and the custom of the primitive Church to have public prayer in the church, or to minister the sacraments, in a tongue not understanded of the people.”

6. Community. For too long the people had been little better than spectators in church worship, unable and unrequired to take part. But the Reformers saw from the New Testament that worship is the prerogative of clergy and people together, and therefore congregational. Hence their great service in giving England a Book of Common Prayer, setting forth scriptural worship in which all could join with full understanding.

7. Orderliness. Having learnt, also, that God is a God of order, not disorder, and that the proper end of all worship is the glory of God, the Reformers gave the English people a form of worship that has never ceased to be admired for its well-ordered seemliness.

Barth’S Free Man In Christ

Church Dogmatics: Volume Ill: The Doctrine of Creation: Part 4, by Karl Barth (T. & T. Clark, 1961, 704 pp., 55s.) is reviewed by Colin Brown, Tutor at Tyndale Hall, Bristol, England.

Forty years ago critics, looking around for a convenient stick with which to beat Karl Barth, regularly resorted to the charge that Barth had no doctrine of creation. The criticism was not without its grain of truth. For the Barth of The Epistle to the Romans preached little else but a mystical doctrine of revelation. The Word of God was presented as a holt from the blue or rather from the God who is so Wholly Other that his contact with the world is limited to a series of excursions which simply show how lost and godless this world is. No one then (perhaps least of all Barth himself) could have foreseen that one day Barth would write a Church Dogmatics which would devote twice as much space to the doctrine of creation as to the doctrine of God. Still less could they have foreseen the remarkable turnabout in Barth’s thinking which has led up to it. Not that Barth has thrown overboard his insistence that our knowledge of God comes entirely from the Word of God. Rather he has come to the conclusion that there is more to revelation than that. For in the first instance the self-revelation of God is the Incarnation, the union of divine and human nature in Christ. From there Barth proceeds to make the deduction which has become the dominant theme of the Church Dogmatics, that the union of God and man in Christ implies a union of God with all men. Thus all men are in some sense in Christ already. This is what Barth means when he uses the word covenant and when he says that the world was created with the covenant in view.

The volume under review is the fourth and final gigantic volume of the Church Dogmatics dealing with creation. The three previous volumes on the subject have dealt with Barth’s view of the covenant as the basis of creation, the nature of man, time, providence, evil, and the angels. Now Barth turns to the question of ethics, a subject which occupies the whole of his attention throughout the present book. As might be expected, Barth will have nothing to do with any attempt to divorce ethics from the Word of God. We can only know what is right by hearing the Word of God. We can only do what is right in the power of Jesus Christ. In fact, ethics is simply being what we are in him. Within this general theological framework Barth tackles many of the complex problems of modern life—the sabbath, marriage, divorce, birth control and family relationships. But the key to the important topics which come up for discussion are pacifism, capital punishment and euthanasia. But the key to the whole is man’s freedom in Christ to live in fellowship with God and with his fellowmen.

No reader ought to attempt Barth without being warned that he will have to learn a new language—Barth! Despite the skill of the translators, Barth has his own way of putting things which has to be mastered before the book as a whole makes sense. But the effort is well worthwhile. If we reject Barth’s attempt to see all men embraced in the humanity of Christ, it is because we regard it as a piece of unbiblical speculation. Scripture addresses its obligations to all men not because they are in some sense in Christ already, but because they are God’s creatures. Although this criticism undermines the whole Barthian edifice at its foundation, there remain nevertheless Barth’s penetrating insights into innumerable individual passages of Scripture and the brilliant shafts of light which he throws on the great thinkers of the past and present. For these alone Barth has put us immensely in his debt. No serious thinker coming after Barth can afford to neglect what he has to say.

COLIN BROWN

Human And Unadorned

This Was John Calvin, by Thea B. Van Halsema (Zondervan, 1959, 176 pp., $2.95) is reviewed by Lambert J. Ponstein, Assistant Professor of religion, Hope College.

A man’s honor is not served when his life story is tailored to fit an ideal. But when he is described with honesty, a man of God, as was John Calvin, becomes the embodiment for the truth that “we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.” Thea Van Halsema has given us a biography so human and unadorned, that one feels the presence of a real person. Humanist, theologian, a man needing the love and help of his wife, the sadness of a father over a fallen daughter—they are all a part of the story.

The opening of the eyes of Calvin to the need for a reformation in the church is traced back to his early years in such a way that the early French Protestants receive their rightful place in history.

Those who have read the many distortions of Calvin’s life in Geneva will be rewarded by the historical research which allows the reader to make his own judgments. The words of H. R. Niebuhr come to life, “Calvin did not possess the will to power in any marked degree and he was convinced as any Christian has ever been that the Kingdom belongs to God alone, not to any self-appointed vicegerents on earth though they be Protestant preachers.”

LAMBERT J. PONSTEIN

The Image Of Luther

Luther in the 20th Century, by Peter Brunner (Luther College Press, 1961, XII and 159 pp., $3), is reviewed by Victor E. Beck, Secretary of Literature, Augustana Book Concern, Rock Island, Illinois.

The aim of this book is to establish the contemporaneity of Luther. The lectures were delivered by Peter Brunner of Heidelberg University, Germany, and Bernard J. Holm of Wartburg Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa, both well qualified for their assignments. They have brought forth a valuable volume for all who desire a better understanding of Luther.

According to Luther, Brunner says, the meaningfulness of history lies in the fact that it is the field in which God performs the work of salvation and thus brings about the advent of his kingdom. Luther’s understanding of history is eschatological. Brunner claims that in Luther’s thought war is justified on the same basis as is the domestic use of armed force. He finds principles in Luther which are imbedded in the charter of the United Nations. The Golden Rule and all of God’s Word are basic to true civilization.

After enumerating in his spicy lectures several distorted images of Luther In the United States, Dr. Holm declares that Luther’s graveyard care has been left to the Lutherans. The real Luther, however, is beginning to come to America in the 5 5-volume edition of his works, in a new translation now being jointly produced by Concordia and Muhlenberg. Of the Church and the churches, Luther says that “the saints, one in faith, made holy in Christ, and they alone, are the one true Church, but they are spread throughout the Christendom of all times and all ages.” “They are the ‘masks’ and coverings for the great work that the Spirit is carrying on.” Here is real ecumenicity!

This work should inspire scholars to read more of Luther himself. A thorough index would have greatly enhanced the value of this book.

VICTOR E. BECK

Christian Classic

Servant of Slaves, by Grace Irwin (Eerdmans, 1961, 432 pp., $7.95) is reviewed by Henry W. Coray, Minister of First Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Sunnyvale, California.

Grace Irwin, Head of the Classics Department of Humberside Collegiate Institute, Toronto, and producer of three other novels, is Canada’s gift to Christian literature. This, her fourth and best, is a biographical saga of John Newton. With choice, effortless prose, Miss Irwin takes her subject from the double bondage of servitude to an individual in Africa and the even greater serfdom to moral corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God, thence to the pulpit to proclaim Christ with tremendous power. Newton’s courtship of comely Mary Catlett and subsequent marriage to her adds up to one of the great romances of history and does warm the wine of the heart. The work readily takes its place in the top echelon of Christian classics and merits a wide reading. There isn’t a dull sentence in the entire book.

HENRY W. CORAY

Reading for Perspective

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

* I Am Persuaded, by David H. C. Read (Scribner’s, $3). Sermons from the well-known minister of New York’s Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church encouraging the reader to surmount the hard facts of life by faith.

* Pentecost and Missions, by Harry R. Boer (Eerdmans. $5). A theology of missions built on the New Testament teaching that the Church was created at Pentecost to witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ by its very existence and action.

* Word and Spirit, by H. Jackson Forstman (Stanford University Press, $4.75). A Stanford professor investigates Calvin and concludes provocatively that he unconsciously held two conceptions of biblical authority.

The Cross And Main Street

On a Hill Far Away, by J. H. Baumgaertner and Elmer A. Kettner (Concordia, 1962, 120 pp., $1.75), is reviewed by Paul S. Rees, Vice-President-at-large, World Vision, Pasadena, California.

“You cannot,” said J. H. Jowett, “drop the big themes and create great saints.” Whatever else may be said for or against the Protestant observance of Lent, it must be admitted that it calls upon the pulpit to tackle the “big themes” without which neither pulpit nor pew possesses a Gospel.

The collaborating authors of this series of Lenten messages have a pastoral approach that keeps their topics and their material close to the people, which is all to the good. The unique and unrepeatable Calvary-event is made timelessly relevant to Main Street, the market place, and the television-garnished living room.

Part I consists of a series of short, vivid meditations on assorted facets of the Passion Story: Gethsemane, the Arrest, the Trials, the Execution. These are followed by a Palm Sunday sermon and by two sequences of brief messages suitable for Good Friday services, one of them based on the six steps in our Lord’s humiliation as given in the second article of the Apostles’ Creed. The style is direct, conversational, pictorial. If the homiletical organization of the material could be improved, it nevertheless must be said that these messages have the flavor and grip of preaching.

In an Appendix to Part I the author has given a suggested Order of Service for Good Friday, the arrangement being governed by the topics used in the messages mentioned in the preceding paragraph.

Part II, which has no logical or structural relation to Part I, offers a series of eight sermons on the “Hands” of our Lord. Beginning with “Helping Hands” and ending with “Pierced Hands,” we are shown the manifold ministries of the Master, all of them culminating in that saving self-oblation in which His hands were “pierced.”

Though there is little of exegesis, the biblical content of these messages is strong. Inevitably, theological predilections are evident. In this case what emerges—not as apologetic but as assumption—is the Lutheran concept of baptism and a strongly Augustinian approach to “sin and grace.” This reviewer, knowing full well this will commend the book to many, still wishes that a Lenten series such as this might carry to Christians far more of the accent of Bonhoeffer’s “costly grace” and Thomas Kelley’s “holy obedience.”

PAUL S. REES

More Help

A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, by F. Blass and A. Debrunner, tr. and ed. by Robert W. Funk (University of Chicago Press, 1961, 325 pp., $10), is reviewed by Robert C. Stone, Professor of Classical Languages, North Park College, Chicago, Illinois.

This English translation of an outstanding German work is an important addition to the stock of study aids at the command of students unfamiliar with the German language. For too long a time American students in the field of New Testament Greek have had to depend on works emphasizing the eight-case system and other points which, while valuable in themselves, served to overemphasize the classical writers. This book keeps the study of the Koine in proper perspective by its constant reference to and comparison with the classical Greek constructions and usages.

Three sections of the book deserve special mention: (1) “Syntax of the Cases” is a clear exposition of the many nuances of case usage in the New Testament, with a wealth of illustrations taken from the text; (2) the section on “Tense” contains a discussion of the significance of tense in Greek, a valuable exposition on a point to a great extent misunderstood; (3) the plain setting forth of the rationale of conditional sentences in Greek sheds a floodlight upon many passages.

This book is a must for anyone seriously concerned with the study of the Greek Testament, especially for students in college or seminary classes, and for pastors, whose primary task is clear and accurate exegesis of the sacred text. Extensive bibliographical references make it possible to investigate more thoroughly any desired subject.

ROBERT C. STONE

Ancient Criticism

The Earliest Lives of Jesus, by Robert M. Grant (Harper, 1961, 134 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by R. B. Culbreth, Pastor, Metropolitan Baptist Church, Washington, D. C.

Dr. Grant says that the purpose of his book is to “show how the problems, historical in nature, which arise out of the canonical Gospels whenever they are thoughtfully considered, were faced by Christian writers in the first two or three centuries.” In order to do this he seeks to relate modern questions pertaining to the early life of Jesus in the hope that these may provide the answers.

The author assumes for his readers an advanced knowledge of New Testament textual criticism and a familiarity with the first two centuries’ writings on the subject. He carefully reviews the teachings of Marcion, Papias, Justin, Tatian, Irenaeus, Clement and others. He presents an excellent analysis of the writings of Origen. In fact, the main body of the book concerns itself with Origen and his writings on the Gospels and the life of Jesus.

The interested reader will find this book very helpful in understanding the analogy of ancient literary criticism and the modern historical approach.

R. B. CULBRETH

To Meet A Real Need

Personal Devotions For Pastors, ed. by William B. Williamson (Westminster, 1961, 202 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Leslie Hunt, Principal, Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada.

I think this little volume of personal devotions will be widely received by ministers and others because it supplies a real need. No one knows better than the minister under the pressure of work in his parish that so often the spiritual output exceeds the intake and in the course of time may result in spiritual exhaustion. In this setting, aids to a vital prayer life are necessary and welcome.

This volume of personal devotions was born out of a need. The editor, an Episcopal clergyman, found himself hospitalized for serious surgery and tried to obtain a book of devotions which would help him. When he did not find what he sought, he set himself to the task of compiling such a volume, with the concern that there might be many others in his situation needing similar help and spiritual renewal. He gathered together this collection from a wide variety of sources and added some prayers of his own composition. The choice is such that they could be used by ministers of any denominational tradition. Many prayers have been rendered in the first person which has added greatly to making the little volume deeply personal.

The devotional situations of the book include sections for personal need; for special occasions such as sickness, recovery, discouragement, and perplexity; a grouping of devotions on “My Ministry;” and one on the “Seasons of the Church Year.” I commend this book especially to the clergy but it will prove valuable to laymen also.

LESLIE HUNT

The Shape And The Drift

One Great Ground of Hope, Christian Missions and Christian Unity, by Henry P. Van Dusen (Westminster, 1961, 205 pp., $3.95); On the Road to Christian Unity, by Samuel McCrea Cavert (Harper, 1961, 192 pp., $3.75), are reviewed by James Daane, Editorial Associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

For eighteen centuries the Christian Church fragmented its unity. During this time there was scarcely an organization, or a fellowship of any kind, in which churches met to confer about their differences and attempt to regain their unity.

In the nineteenth century, which Kenneth Scott Latourette calls the “Great Century,” things changed. Through missionary effort Christianity expanded as never before and as no other movement in all history had ever expanded.

Out of the painful awareness that the disunity of the Church was a tremendous obstacle to the missionary effort, the ecumenical concern for regaining the oneness of the unbroken Body of Christ was born. “The Christian world mission,” asserts Van Dusen, “has been the principle parent of the effort after Christian unity” (p. 16). It is this missionary concern over disunity which constitutes Van Dusen’s “one great ground of hope,” a hope shared by many ecumenists. This widely held hope accounts for the enthusiasm which greeted the recent merger of the IMC with the WCC. Since missionary zeal is often stifled when channeled through the machinery of ecclesiastical organization, it remains to be seen whether this zeal will endure. It also remains for the future to disclose whether the primary motif for unity is still the deep missionary concern of early ecumenical decades. Since greater missionary effort seems to lie in the younger rather than in those older churches, and lies in America, where missionary concern is chiefly concentrated, outside rather than inside the membership of the World Council, many feel that they can correctly guess the answer.

Samuel McCrea Cavert presents an excellent history of the ecumenical movement and its progress, especially of the last 50 years, with an able and sympathetic treatment of the ecumenical problems and possibilities of Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and of such non-cooperating Protestant bodies as the Southern Baptists.

Both books are excellent sources of information concerning the shape and drift of ecumenism today, for both authors write within a field they know well.

JAMES DAANE

Roman Ecumenics

The Ecumenical Council, the Church and Christendom, by Lorenz Jaeger (Geoffrey Chapman, tr. by A. V. Littledale, 1961, 194 pp., 21s.), and The Church of England and the Ecumenical Movement by James Good (Burns Oates, 1961, 163 pp., 18s.), are reviewed by Colin O. Buchanan, Anglican Minister at Cheadle, Cheshire, England.

These two books both have Roman Catholic authors and the word “ecumenical” in their titles. But the Archbishop of Paderborn is examining Roman Councils (especially the next one), while the Professor of Theology at Cork, reviews non-Roman counsels and councils, and the place of the Church of England in them.

Jaeger aims to show that the papacy has always been the same, belittles conciliarism as a passing and heretical fancy and suggests some probable formulations of the forthcoming Council. On the first point the Fathers are not helpful, on the second Jaeger sidesteps the Council of Constance almost completely, and on the third he warns us not rashly to expect anything but a closing of the hierarchical ranks. Thus Rome adheres to her own interpretation of “ecumenical.”

Good’s book is tremendous reading for Anglicans. He is thoroughly at home in all our modern writers from Kirk to Inge and from Headlam to Barnes. Historically he is a little weaker (e.g., he calls all continental influences at the Reformation “Lutheran”!). His logical mind exposes the folly of the “dualism” that Anglicans often count as a virtue. He grasps a slippery ecclesiology and shows that virtually exclusive statements can often be found in the same Anglican documents. Similarly he accurately exposes Anglican attempts (in differing ecumenical contexts) to trace authority for belief to the Scriptures, the early Fathers, the episcopate, or the enlightened conscience. He complains of insincerity bordering on deceit—and he has made out his case.

He is blind in deriding “private judgment” without contemplating that the Bible might be a genuine and clear means by which God reveals himself. He also says Rome is semper eadem—and, though he writes from the fastnesses of Cork, in this, as in all his arguments, Anglicans ought to read him very seriously.

COLIN O. BUCHANAN

Christ Our Exodus

When Israel Came out of Egypt, by Gabriel Hebert (John Knox Press, 1961, 128 pp., $1.75), is reviewed by David A. Hubbard, Chairman, Division of Biblical Studies and Philosophy, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.

Israel’s exodus has captured the interest of both Old Testament historians and biblical theologians. Historians seek to untangle knotty problems like its date, route, and scope, while theologians grow increasingly aware that the Exodus is the grand event in Israel’s experience, the pattern for God’s subsequent redemptive acts. This little book summarizes splendidly the results of both approaches.

Following a survey of passages which rehearse and interpret the Exodus, Hebert tackles such questions as the dates of Joseph’s descent into Egypt (c. 1360 B.C., under Akhnaton) and the Exodus (c. 1280–70 B.C., under Rameses II), the nature of the plagues and the location of Sinai. Linguistic and critical problems are touched upon: the origin and meaning of JHVH; the relationship between Moses and Israel’s law. Though critical in his approach, e.g., the post-Mosaic nature of much of Israel’s legal structure, Hebert is generally cautious in his conclusions.

In the final pages on the “Christian Exodus” he builds a graceful bridge between the Old Testament expectation of a second exodus and the New Testament affirmation that Christ has accomplished it. We who are strangers to the liturgical use of the exodus motif will welcome the moving lines from the Lenten and Easter services. The combination of scholarship and piety will commend this book to a wide range of readers.

DAVID A. HUBBARD

See Sinai

God’s Wilderness. Discoveries in Sinai, by Beno Rothenberg (Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1962, 196 pp., $15), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

For a few short months in the winter of 1956–57, the Sinai peninsula was open to the searching study of Israeli scholars. This volume yields the findings of those expeditions. Enlivened by 16 maps and plans and 90 photogravure illustrations, the work by Beno Rothenberg (in collaboration with Yohanan Aharoni and Avia Hashimshoni) sheds new light on the scene of the Hebrew desert wanderings. The location of the Mountain of God, of Kadesh-Barnea, Mount Hor and Jotbathah are among questions uppermost in the minds of the fieldworkers, who indicate the reasons for their agreements and disagreements. The volume will fascinate students of archaeology, but Bible scholars in general will also enjoy traversing the bleak Sinai mountains, with few hardships and many rewards, by entering into the narrative of these explorations.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Peale Faces His Critics

The Tough-minded Optimist, by Norman Vincent Peale (Prentice-Hall, 1961, 246 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Lars I. Granberg, Professor of Psychology, Hope College, Holland, Michigan.

Dr. Peale’s familiar themes are developed in this book. As in his earlier books he encourages an optimistic approach to life and provides specific suggestions on how to accomplish this. One cannot, however, dismiss the book with “Here’s another,” for it contains Dr. Peale’s attempts to deal with his critics.

To those who speak of his work as a Pollyannish attempt to hear no evil and see no evil, Dr. Peale replies that the tough-minded optimist is one who faces his problems but nevertheless, is hopeful and active in the face of adversity. To the charge that he makes religion a kind of veneer or at best a tool in the service of positive living, he speaks firmly concerning his commitment to historic Christianity (p. 29 f.). His devotion to Jesus Christ is unmistakable.

That his system of thought falls entirely within historic Christian theology is less apparent. In speaking of its components he cites his father’s analysis with apparent approval:

… it is clearly evident that you have gradually evolved a new religious system of thought and teaching. And it’s OK too, very OK, because its center and circumference and essence is Jesus Christ. There is no doubt about its solid biblical orientation. Yes, you have evolved a new Christian emphasis out of a composite of Science of Mind, metaphysics, Christian Science medical and psychological practice, Baptist evangelism, Methodist witnessing, and solid Dutch Reformed Calvinism (p. 33).

Strange bedfellows. The nuclear concept appears to be a courageous affirmation of life through fellowship with God. In our day of foreboding and despair a vigorous call to clear-sightedness, courage and hope in the name of Christ is eminently in order. Such an orientation to life makes a significant Christian witness. However, Dr. Peale relies heavily upon self-suggestion techniques to produce this courage, hope and vigorous action. Can the presuppositions and techniques of ideal suggestion actually be grafted to Christian theology as easily as this? The Scriptures do contain a ringing call to the Christian to face life with courage, hope and joy, and this is what Dr. Peale seeks to underscore. I wonder whether it is not possible to achieve these objectives without leaning so heavily upon suggestion techniques.

The last chapter in the book is bound to get most notice. In it he says blunt things about preachers who fail to present their parishioners with “man-sized honest-to-goodness redemptive religion.” He is especially hard on what he calls the “would-be-erudite, super-scholastic vocabulary-ish ethical-implication social-action type.” He considers persons of this sort responsible for creating a misleading view of the church—especially in the business community—through dubious socio-economic pronouncements representing a point of view not characteristic of most church members.

Dr. Peale is obviously smarting from the personal attacks made upon him by persons of this type in criticizing his earlier books—and not without considerable justification. While his reaction is understandable, I wish he had remained positive.

LARS I. GRANBERG

Religious Novels

Search Your Soul, Eustace (American title: The Victorian Vision), by Margaret Maison (Sheed and Ward, 1961, 360 pp., 12s. 6d., $4.50) is reviewed by Arthur Pollard, Lecturer in English Literature, Manchester University, England.

Dr. Maison has had to read a lot of rubbish in order to write this book, but bad novels, like bad poets, can often be fascinating to read about, if intolerably boring to read. No reader should be put off by the unfortunately flippant title. This is an important book, a serious and perceptive study with a good bibliography, marred a little by the absence of footnote references and index.

It is difficult for us to realize the influence of religious attitudes on the writing of novels in the last century, but not the least of the commendations which, be it said, a rather insensitive publisher’s reading bestowed on Trollope’s The Warden was that it was “pervaded by a vein of quiet humour and [good-natured] satire, which will make the work acceptable to all Low Churchmen and dissenters.” That was the extent to which the religious reading public mattered. As a result there was a ready sale for explicitly religious novels of all kinds, High, Low, Broad, Non-conformist and agnostic. The surprising thing is that the masterpieces were so few.

Yet for literary diagnosis and historical commentary they are most interesting. They make the surprising thing less so, for they are countless horrible reminders of how to be certain not to write a masterpiece. Scattered about English literature are numerous warnings of the dangers of didacticism. The religious novelists of the nineteenth century were, in general, either ignorant of or undeterred by such admonitions. As a result plots are slanted to some predetermined didactic pattern to point a moral or to press the propaganda—sudden conversions after dire calamities for Evangelicals; contentment in the Church of England after perilous escape from the clutches of Rome for Tractarians; a plague on both your houses, preferably satirical, for agnostics. It is the same with character and dialogue. The difference between the good novelist and the bad is one of artistic integrity. The good novelist possesses it and respects it; the bad does not even know what it is. This was exactly the case with the writers Dr. Maison considers.

It is her triumph that she makes no extravagant claims for the unimportant. As she points out, they have a continuing documentary significance providing useful information about the strength and types of religious attitudes in the period. They also provide some (largely unconscious) humor, of which the following will serve as a sample with which to take leave of this interesting book. It is a quotation from a certain Emily Agnew:

“When he (the priest) informed her that the same Divine Being … would, in the three persons of His essential unity, descend on her soul in Baptism, Lilia immediately inquired, ‘By particles or emanation?’”

ARTHUR POLLARD

Handy But Incomplete

The Old Testament: its formation and development, by Artur Weiser (Association Press, 1961, 493 pp., $5.95) is reviewed by R. K. Harrison, Professor of Old Testament, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto.

This work is a revised and expanded form of the author’s Einleitung in das Alte Testament. It deals successively with the formation of the writings in the Old Testament canon, the growth of inter-testamental literature, and the significance of the Qumran sect. While the author purports to strike a balance between the tradition-history and form-critical schools, he is clearly an adherent of the old Wellhausen position.

What is perhaps even more unfortunate is that the student is unlikely to derive more than the barest hint from this work of the tremendous upheaval in the world of Old Testament studies. Weiser presents a picture of his subject as it existed in the late twenties, and although he has enlarged his bibliography by the addition of more recent works he has not modified his basic position to any extent discernable to the reviewer. While he mentions the writings of some conservative scholars, he clearly prefers the views of Noth and von Rad on the Pentateuch and makes only the briefest reference to the important criticisms of Wellhausenism advanced by Engnell and the Scandinavians.

His treatment of the minor prophets is rather scanty. He does not mention the Qumran commentary in the section of Habakkuk, while his introduction to the Book of Daniel shows no advance upon the views expressed by S. R. Driver in 1897. Similarly, some of the critical problems connected with the pseud-epigraphal literature are ignored completely in the writer’s survey.

To the reviewer the book is a handy survey of European critical thought in the late twenties. It is not as up-to-date as the author or publishers would have the reader believe. The book appears to have been translated carefully, and is attractively produced with few misprints.

R. K. HARRISON

Human Side Of The Faith

Treasure in Earthen Vessels, by James M. Gustafson (Harper, 1961, 141 pp., $3.50) and The Precarious Vision, by Peter L. Berger (Doubleday, 1961, 238 pp., $3.95) are reviewed by Ivan J. Fahs, Associate Professor of Sociology, Greenville College, Greenville, Illinois.

The extent to which these books regard things Christian as transcending social structural forms, the more valuable service they will render to the thinking leadership of Christianity. Gustafson, I think, has done this more explicitly than Berger. The net effect of both books is to sensitize the reader to those features of the Christian faith which are plainly human.

Gustafson, who employs the vocabulary of both minister and social scientist, does a competent job of extending his theme that the church is a human community. We have needed a book which would easily mix the language of sociology and theology within the context of a common question; this is especially well done in his chapter, “Social and Theological Interpretation of the Church.” The tone of the book is such that even the layman is ready to accept certain startling things he has to say.

Berger’s major theme is that what is manifestly Christian faith is often social fiction. For the most part, Berger is a debunker, a role he consciously and skillfully takes. This reviewer followed his argument with admiration, but with sustained regret that his keen and flashing sword was not more carefully lubricated with an oil of kindness. Berger inaccurately infers that the debunking technique and the techniques of social analysis are mutually overlapping terms. A rug can be pulled from under somebody’s feet so violently as to fracture a skull, or it may be done (repeat, it may be done) by a slow and gentle tug without serious side effects. I fear that only the hard-headed will survive this book—and, alas, these are often the hardhearted, too.

IVAN J. FAHS

Book Briefs

Effective Prayer by J. Oswald Sanders (China Inland Mission Bookroom, 1961, 28 pp., Is. 6d.). Twenty short meditations on prayer reprinted from the CIM periodical The Millions.

Sermons of Robert Murray M’Cheyne (Banner of Truth, 1961, 187 pp., 3s.). Twenty-five sermons of a great Scottish preacher of the last century, some from his own notes, and others from notes taken down by his hearers.

Emerging Pattern in the Diocese of Singapore and Malaya by R. Alan Cole (China Inland Mission Bookroom, 1961, 48 pp., 2s. 6d.). An account by an Anglican ClM missionary of the work in the last nine years in Malaya amidst attacks from Communist rebels, a decaying Buddhism, and rank materialism.

Christ’s Words from the Cross, by Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Zondervan, 1962, 120 pp., $1.95). Seven sermons by Spurgeon on the seven words of the Cross.

Pilgrimage into Depth, by Antoinette Adam (Antoinette Adam, 5345 Greene St., Philadelphia 44, 1961, 57 pp., $2.50). Fifty-six poems reflecting the faith and service of a Christian nurse.

The 7 Words, by John A. Holt (Baker, 1961, 95 pp., $1.50). Seven sermons which probe the seven words of the Cross.

What is Christian Life?, by P.-A. Liege (Hawthorn, 1961, 144 pp., $3.50). A Roman Catholic interpretation of the Christian life and Christian sanctity. Vol. 56 of “The Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism.”

The Epistles of Paul to the Romans and Thessalonians, tr. by R. Mackenzie, ed. by David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance (Eerdmans, 1961, 433 pp., $6). Romans and Thessalonians (Vol. 8) in a completely new translation of Calvin’s New Testament commentaries.

Trumpet of Salvation, by Norman E. Nygaard (Zondervan, 1961, 180 pp., $2.50). A biographical novel of the lives of William and Catherine Booth, founders of the Salvation Army.

They Called Him Mister Moody, by Richard K. Curtis (Doubleday, 1962, 378 pp., $4.95). A colorful biography of an unconventional man and a great revivalist who did much to change the climate of life in late nineteenth-century America.

The Ten Commandments Yesterday and Today, by James Burton Coffman (Revell, 1961, 128 pp., $2.50). The essays display the timeless validity of the Decalogue.

When the Friendship 7 space capsule landed with a splash and a sizzle and Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr., clambered out, American Christians had special reason to take heart. Not only had their prayers for Glenn been answered, but the nation had a new space hero. And for once at least the hero was not a smart-alecky ham with a long record of marital strife.

Throughout the world the word had gone out that Glenn and his family are devout Presbyterians and faithful churchgoers. They represent an American Christian home in the best tradition. Theirs is clearly not a head-in-the-sand Christianity, but a very practical faith.

“But are they born again Christians?” some evangelicals were asking. “Have they actually experienced regeneration?”

The Glenns come from a community where churchgoing was the rule. When they were youngsters in New Concord, Ohio, “everyone went to church.” As a junior high school student, John once collected his savings from small jobs and save them to an evangelist who was preaching at his church.

After high school, John and Annie both enrolled at Muskingum College, which was affiliated with the former United Presbyterian Church of North America now merged into the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

Glenn’s fellow students remember him as a clean-living, devoted individual, although he did not “wear his religion on his sleeve.” They did not consider him particularly pious. However, as one classmate puts it, “John wasn’t around when there was anything happening that he didn’t agree with.”

Glenn, to be sure, did not abandon his faith upon entry in the Marine Corps. Even in the jet pilot set, which is not especially distinguished for high moral standards, Glenn stood his ground as a clean-living individual. Down through the years he has made it a point to bring servicemen friends to church with him, although avoiding high-pressure evangelistic tactics. He was a trustee in one of his former churches, taught a boys’ Sunday School class in another, and was a choir singer (tenor) in another.

When the Glenn family moved to Arlington, they learned that the Rev. Frank A. Erwin, an old hometown friend, was pastor of the Little Falls United Presbyterian Church. Erwin got to know Mrs. Glenn’s parents during his own days at Muskingum, where he attended before going on to Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary.

Problems Of A Space-Age Parish

The most publicized church in the world in 1962 has been the Little Falls United Presbyterian Church of Arlington, Virginia. Its minister, the Rev. Frank A. Erwin, has played a key supporting role in the Glenn space drama by virtue of the fact that the astronaut and his family have worshipped at Little Falls since 1958.

The spotlight upon Little Falls has brought the flourishing church some problems, although Erwin does not regard them as serious. He says his biggest problem has been in trying to cope with the scores of inquisitive phone calls and letters. Another problem arose one Sunday morning when the Glenn family arrived at the church accompanied by a flock of news photographers. The photographers agreed to confine themselves to a balcony, but even at that Erwin felt their noise disrupted the service.

Demands on Erwin’s time reached their peak during the week of the space flight. The situation was somewhat alleviated for him in that it was the assistant minister’s turn to preach the following Sunday.

Erwin and the associate, the Rev. Arthur L. Stanley, serve a congregation which has grown in a decade from a nucleus of a dozen families to more than 1,000 members. In the church’s early days, substantial impetus came from lay help provided by the Wallace Memorial United Presbyterian Church of Washington, one of the leading evangelical churches in the national capital area.

At Little Falls, the Glenn family has been one of the most active in the entire congregation. Lyn, 14-year-old daughter, is currently president of a junior high fellowship. John and Annie were counsellors during a week-end camp retreat. Glenn took the pulpit once in a laymen’s Sunday address.

The Glenns exercise their faith in their home as well. During evenings when the father is home, they have family Bible reading together. One of their favorite traditions at Christmas is to bake a birthday cake for Jesus.

Evangelical Press Service quoted a minister friend of the Glenns as saying, “There’s no doubt about it. John is a born-again Christian.”

The minister’s father was said to have been used of the Lord to lead John Glenn’s father to Christ many years ago, “and the conversion of the entire family soon followed.”

Astronaut Glenn, however, is not known to refer to a specific conversion experience, but Erwin warns that this is not to be construed as reason to question his genuine Christian commitment. The minister says that Glenn is “neither a fundamentalist nor a liberal.”

Some observers have expressed a hope that wide identification of Glenn as a fellow Christian would lessen tendencies toward provincialism in some elements of U. S. evangelicalism.

Soon after the orbital space flight, the Glenns received a congratulatory message signed by United Presbyterian Stated Clerk Eugene Carson Blake and General Assembly Moderator Paul D. McKelvey. Many other U. S. church leaders were silent about the space feat, however. The quasi-pacifist element which inspirits much of organized American Protestantism seemed unable to dissociate space rocket launchings from their nuclear warfare counterparts.

Some evangelicals pointed out that the race to space should not be considered good or evil per se. The question was not whether man ought to explore space, but what for? These observers commented that space exploration could conceivably take on as profoundly religious aspects as has archaeology, and that in the providence of God the findings in space could glorify God and confirm and strengthen Scriptural truth as much as findings beneath the earth’s surface.

In Glenn’s own words, quoted in the February 1 issue of Presbyterian Life, “Space flight will contribute to man’s knowledge of God’s universe. I believe that it is not only within man’s proper province, but is expected of us, to find out all we can about God’s creation.”

Protestant Panorama

• A special day of repentance and prayer was held under auspices of the British Guiana Council of Evangelical Churches following riots and arson-set fires which destroyed a large section of the business district in the capital city of Georgetown. In issuing the call for prayer, the Evangelical Council, representing 13 Protestant denominations in the country, appealed to the nation’s leaders to offer prayers in their homes as well as at services.

• An American Lutheran Church committee plans to study glossalalia and faith healing. Three seminary professors, a physician, and two pastors have been named to the committee which will look into the phenomena described as unusual manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s power.

• A merger between the World Conference on Missionary Radio and the National Religious Broadcasters is being explored by directors of both groups, according to a joint statement which appeared in last month’s issue of the WCMR bulletin. “International Christian Broadcasters” is the name tentatively selected for the proposed new organization, the statement said.

• Leaders of the Philadelphia Synod of the United Church of Christ are supporting the U. S. District Court ruling which declared Bible reading in public schools to be unconstitutional. Their stand runs counter to the position taken by directors of the Greater Philadelphia Council of Churches, which terms the court’s interpretation too broad and warns that it “opens the door to more serious restraints in the public school program.”

• Five San Francisco Bay area theological schools are establishing a joint graduate study program leading to a doctor of theology degree. Participating in the program, known as the Graduate Theological Union, are the Church Divinity School of the Pacific (Episcopal), Berkeley Baptist Divinity School (American Baptist), Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary (United Lutheran), Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary (Southern Baptist), and San Francisco Theological Seminary (United Presbyterian). The program is said to be the first such venture in American theological education.

• A Spanish-language version of “This Is the Life,” telecast produced by the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, is being introduced to South America. The program marks the second experiment in lip synchronization of the Christian drama telecast in a foreign language for viewing overseas. On Christinas Day the program was premiered in Japanese.

• Christian Service Brigade, which is marking the 25th anniversary of its founding, moved into a new headquarters building in Wheaton, Illinois, last month.

• Methodist spokesmen say that Amendment XII to the church constitution has failed to win sufficient votes among annual conferences to be legally adopted. The amendment would have increased the number of General Conference delegates and changed meeting dates of jurisdictional conferences so that they would meet before the General Conference instead of after it.

• The National Church Music Fellowship is sponsoring a hymn composition contest, with a $100 prize being offered by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association for the copyright of the best gospel hymn submitted. Deadline for entries is August 31, 1962, according to competition chairman Rene Frank of Fort Wayne (Indiana) Bible College.

• A total of 102 persons are being selected to complete membership of the Commission on Brotherhood Restructure of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). Selections were initially made by an 18-member central committee and were approved without change by directors of the Disciples International Convention. Names have not yet been made public.

• A color documentary film on Jerusalem narrated by Billy Graham will be premiered in the United States during Holy Week.

Prayer Breakfast

On a bright, brisk first morning of March in Washington, D. C., more than 1,000 men jammed into the grand ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel for what a U. S. Senator termed as one of the largest turnouts of bipartisan political rank that he had ever seen—for any reason. The head table at International Christian Leadership’s tenth annual “Presidential Prayer Breakfast” resembled the first row of guests at a presidential inauguration. In addition to President Kennedy (who arrived a half-hour late) and Vice President Johnson (who left a half-hour early), the head table included Chief Justice Earl Warren, House Speaker John McCormack, and five cabinet members.¹Secretaries Freeman (Agriculture), Dillon (Treasury), Ribicoff (Health, Education and Welfare), Hodges (Commerce), and Postmaster General Day. At other tables were seated some 30 Senators and approximately 150 members of the House of Representatives, in addition to scores of other government and military dignitaries.

The mood of the breakfast did not measure up to last year’s, which approached that of a revival meeting. But the 1962 edition did produce perhaps the most dramatic moment in the history of the prayer breakfasts when host W. C. Jones stepped to the podium and uttered a public confession that he had harbored a prejudice against President Kennedy as a Roman Catholic. Kennedy sat expressionless as Jones admitted:

“On election night I was angry and resentful.”

The audience listened in a stunned silence as Jones explained that he prayed about the prejudice, knowing that he was scheduled to give a Christian testimony in the hearing of the President at last year’s prayer breakfast. Jones said that within two months the prejudice was dissolved. He attributed the transformation to a divine work, adding:

“This to me is the reality that comes in Jesus Christ.”

Other participants in the breakfast program included tenor Norman Nelson, who sang “How Great Thou Art,” Governor Price Daniel of Texas, Johnson, and evangelist Billy Graham, all of whom spoke briefly.

Kennedy also talked briefly, both at the men’s assembly and at the “Congressional Wives Prayer Breakfast” which was held simultaneously in another room of the hotel. He told some 800 women who were on hand that “it is a source of satisfaction to be here with Mrs. Johnson, the Vice President’s wife, and with the Governor of Texas—and Senator Carlson—Senator Stennis—most importantly, I think, of Reverend Billy Graham, who has served this cause about which I speak so well here and around the world. He has, I think, transmitted this most important quality of our common commitments to faith in a way which makes us all particularly proud.”

Here are salient excerpts from Kennedy’s remarks to the men’s breakfast:

I want to, as President, express my appreciation to all those whose efforts make this breakfast possible. This is only one of a world-wide effort, I believe, to build a closer and more intimate association among those of different faiths in different countries and in different continents, who are united by a common belief in God, and therefore united in a common commitment to the moral order—and as Governor Daniel said, the relationship of the individual to the state.

The effort made in New Delhi among the World Council of Churches, the efforts that have been made in Europe to build better understanding among men and women of different faiths, the effort made in this country I believe is most important and most essential.

I do not suggest that religion is an instrument of the cold war. Rather it is the basis of the issue which separates us from those who make themselves our adversary. And at the heart of the matter, of course, is the position of the individual—his importance, his sanctity, his relationship to his fellow men, his relationship to his country and his state. This is in essence the struggle, and it is necessary, therefore, that in these difficult days, when men and women who have strong religious convictions are beleaguered by those who are neither hot nor cold, or by those who are icy cold, it is most important that we make these common efforts—as we do this morning.… I believe yesterday we saw an interesting contrast in the response which Colonel Glenn made, as to whether he had prayed. And he said that he had not, that he had made his peace with his Maker many years before. And the statement made by Titov in which during his flight, as he flew over the Soviet Union he realized, he said, the wonders of the communist system.

I preferred Colonel Glenn’s answer because I thought it was so solidly based, in his own life, in his activities in his church, and I think reflects a quality which we like to believe and I think we can believe is much a part of our American heritage. So I congratulate you …

A Mormon’S Economics

International Christian Leadership’s annual banquet is usually overshadowed by the “Presidential Prayer Breakfast,” although both events are part of ICL’s annual conference. This year, however, the 18th annual conference banquet drew some attention in its own right. The speaker was George Romney, who (1) is a Mormon, (2) successfully pioneered the American compact car market by introducing Ramblers, and (3) now seeks to be governor of Michigan.

The selection of Romney as a key speaker stirred considerable controversy and disappointed many who have regarded ICL as an evangelical Protestant movement. Even persons close to the ICL leadership were distressed.

Romney, whose Mormonism showed through clearly at several points although he made no reference to specific doctrines, cited the American economic system as a Christian development. He said he regards the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as “divinely-inspired documents.”

“The Constitution,” said Romney, “was written by inspired men raised up just for that purpose.”

New Exchange Of U.S.—Soviet Churchmen

Keeping company with a record-breaking thermometer which persisted in plummeting below the zero mark, the 272-member policy-making General Board of the National Council of Churches met in Kansas City, Missouri, February 26-March 2, and promptly took its own temperature in probing the unfavorable image it has acquired in many quarters. At the same time, it assured itself of some further adverse publicity in unanimously approving plans for an exchange visit between churchmen of the United States and the Soviet Union, the original invitation having come from a Russian Orthodox Church official.

Efforts are to be made to avoid “extensive publicity” in either country. United Presbyterian Stated Clerk Eugene Carson Blake, who headed the United States delegation in the previous such exchange in 1956 which attracted considerable criticism, called for an attitude of suspicion toward “right-wing extremist elements,” which are expected to renew charges of leftist tendencies against the council. A leading figure in preparing for the exchange, Blake said that its purpose was theological, not political, and represented an attempt to keep channels of communication open between Christians.

Difficulty of bifurcating the theological and the political was highlighted in topics scheduled for discussion, which include: the bearing of the Gospel on “social-economic concepts and practices,” the “place of the individual in society,” and what the churches can do to advance peace in the world. Blake indicated that effects of Communist and American materialism on religion and churches would also be discussed.

The exchange has been approved by both American and Soviet governments. The U.S. delegation will number 13 churchmen who will visit Russian churchmen in the Soviet Union for three weeks beginning next August 25. The return visit of the Russians is due in February, 1963. Possibilities for additional exchanges will be aired.

The lone voice of caution raised from the floor was that of Methodist layman D. W. Brooks of Atlanta, Georgia, who said it would be unfair to the Russian churchmen to assume they would be free agents as the Americans.

During an earlier extensive session on the significance of the New Delhi assembly of the World Council of Churches, Brooks had reported a conversation of his in the Soviet Union with a Russian minister who broke down and confessed that his fellow ministers were not free to speak their minds though they claim to be—that he himself had been sent to Siberia for preaching the gospel.

Dr. Franklin Clark Fry, chairman of the WCC Central Committee, had previously said that if government control were to be the criterion for WCC membership, the Church of England and the Lutheran church in Denmark would be excluded. He said there were churches more under government control than the Russian Orthodox.

Assuming a cautious stance toward WCC admission of the Russian Orthodox Church was Archbishop Iakovos, primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, himself a WCC president: “I am neither thrilled nor over-pleased with the action which we took.” “Will we [be able to] persuade them to join hands in spreading the unaltered evangelical truth and thus eliminate false social preachings?” He warned against “unjustified mistrust,” but added: “It is childish to say even jokingly, that because we constitute the majority, the Russians will never dare to divert the route of the World Council of Churches. They have tried it already, in a pretentiously timid way, in some instances at both the sectional and the plenary sessions.”

Of kindred interest: the paperback A Christian’s Handbook on Communism, currently being distributed by the NCC at one dollar per copy, did not get to the floor for General Board approval, as the General Policy and Strategy Committee members reportedly had not time to read it.

Among other General Board actions:

•A major public pronouncement calling for reshaping of U.S. immigration policies along lines of four non-ethnic priorities: occupational skills, U.S. economic health, reunion of families, needy persons unable to support themselves. Also urged were equal treatment for naturalized and native-born citizens and permanent legislation for annual admission of approximately 10,000 refugees.

•A hearing of the serious Cuban refugee problem in Miami, Florida, and the attempt of NCC, Roman Catholic, and Jewish religious agencies to meet it by means of the new “Flights in Freedom” project which air lifts refugees from Miami and resettles them in other cities.

The opening hours of the board meeting were marked by an “inwardness” (assuredly not of Kierkegaardrian intensity) stimulated by G. Raymond Campbell, minister of Oklahoma City’s Westminster Presbyterian Church, who pointed to the need of improving the “cloudy,” “distorted” image of the NCC. He called for greater emphasis on its good works, which tend to be overshadowed by its pronouncements, and raised the question: To whom is the NCC responsible for its pronouncements? Campbell suggested it might better serve as the clearing-house for pronouncements of its member denominations. He indicated it would be well also to leave room for difference of opinion on public issues, rather than pronouncing a particular position the Christian one.

These ideas met with some resistance in the discussion period which followed. NCC President J. Irwin Miller had previously named extremist right-wing criticism which serves to publicize the NCC. as therefore “one of the best things that has happened to the Protestant churches.” A San Francisco Methodist underscored his president’s optimism in noting the value of Southern and Midwestern criticism of the NCC: “In my city, no one cares two hoots and a holler about what you say. It would be great if we could get up enough enthusiasm even to get criticism.”

F. F.

The ‘Super Church’ Charge

Dr. Paul S. Rees, a former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, says the World Council of Churches’ record and constitutional provisions should absolve it from charges that it seeks to become a “super church.”

Addressing the midwinter conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America in Minneapolis last month, Rees praised the concern of WCC leaders for the “fantastic dividedness” of Christians in today’s world. He said criticisms of the WCC to be valid and effective must be “far better informed.”

“I get increasingly concerned,” he added, “over the tendency by those outside the WCC to set up the terms ‘evangelical’ and ‘ecumenical’ as though they were simply opposites.”

Rees, a vice-president of World Vision, commented on the WCC New Delhi assembly, saying that it showed “early signs” that the WCC has begun to be strangled by its own ecclesiastics and administration “pros.”

The Covenant church conference also heard Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, past president of the National Council of Churches, describe the organization’s work.

Still another speaker was Dr. Harold J. Ockenga, the NAE’s first president, who credited NAE units with having revived America’s Sunday schools, spurred the foreign missionary movement, and protected the rights of religious broadcasters.

Ockenga said that the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association, an NAE affiliate, now handles more than half of the Protestant missionaries sent out from the United States, although the total constituency of the NAE numbers only about 10 million.

Denial Of A Review

The U. S. Supreme Court announced last month that it would not consider an appeal from the Scripture Press Foundation, which has been denied a tax-exempt status in decisions by the U. S. Tax Court and the U. S. Court of Claims.

The court had the case under advisem*nt for three months, but its denial of a review cited no reasons and made no comment on the issues involved.

Scripture Press, owned and controlled by a private foundation, is one of the world’s leading publishers of evangelical Sunday School materials and related literature.

The question of whether Scripture Press is entitled to tax exemption because of its religious and educational character has been in dispute since 1953 when the Commissioner of Internal Revenue ruled that, although the publication of religious educational materials and supplies may be necessary to carry out the functions of churches purchasing such material, “the manufacture and supply thereof does not constitute a religious activity in itself but is a business of a kind generally carried on for a profit.”

Scripture Press quotes legal authorities who say that the decision could affect other religious and secular foundations.

Albert Rhys Williams

Ex-clergyman Albert Rhys Williams, 78, native-born American who had been a prolific Soviet apologist since 1917, died last month in Tarrytown, New York.

Williams was graduated from Hartford Theological Seminary in 1907 and served as an assistant at the Maverick Congregational Church of East Boston (no longer in existence) from 1907 until 1914. He was ordained as a Congregational minister in 1911 but failed to maintain his standing and was subsequently dropped.

He became a correspondent in World War I and ended up in the employ of a Soviet propaganda bureau in Petrograd. He then returned to the United States but paid visits from time to time to the Soviet Union. He has written a number of books relating to Bolshevism and on his 75th birthday in 1958 the Communist newspaper Pravda praised his efforts “for the great idea of socialism.”

Canadian Appeal

The Lord’s Day Alliance is asking the Canadian government to modernize the 1906 Lord’s Day Act and to regulate radio and television advertising on Sunday.

In a brief to Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, the Alliance pointed to several portions of the act which it said need revision, citing particularly that the act deals with such matters as hiring a boat or a horse and carriage on Sunday, but says nothing about airplanes, trucks, radio, or television.

The alliance asked for regulation of Sunday advertising on radio and television and said this would help to equalize treatment of the media, inasmuch as newspapers are not allowed to publish on Sundays in Canada.

In the United States, the Lord’s Day Alliance recently announced plans to expand operations to combat the attack on Sunday as a day of worship and rest.

Reformation On Film

Dr. Ernest G. Schwiebert, who doubles as a U. S. Air Force historian and as executive director of the Foundation for Reformation Research, is concerned lest all of Western culture be swept up in a mushroom cloud.

“This could be an age to which people will look back with pride in 50 or 100 years,” Schwiebert said at a meeting of Protestant Men of the Chapel at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, last month.

But it is also an age, he warned, of great potential danger to mankind. Precautions must be taken to insure that Western heritage does not disappear.

Dr. Schwiebert’s Foundation for Reformation Research was established in 1957 to make historical treasures of the Old World accessible to the scholars of the New by modern means of photo-duplication. Published and unpublished resources, wherever they can be found, are being brought together in St. Louis by the foundation, and made available to competent scholars and research specialists.

During a trip to Europe in 1959, Dr. Schwiebert made a master list of material which should be preserved. Filming began one year later. Some 500,000 pages of manuscript, the collection of Philip of Hesse, have been microfilmed in Marburg alone. Dr. Schwiebert exhibited various historical documents, including the letter from Martin Luther to Philip about the latter’s divorce, and the Speier document which first used the word “Protestant.” Aid has been enlisted from scholars all over Germany (118 of them in Berlin alone). In Switzerland there are, among other materials, 12,000 letters of Bullinger, one-third of them originals.

Roman Catholics, said Dr. Schwiebert, have been “wonderfully cooperative,” and quick to see the situation in the light of possible nuclear attack. Nearly one million pages have been filmed to date. “If we have to have a war,” Dr. Schwiebert said with a smile, “let’s wait till most of this valuable material has been collected!”

He said school of paleography is urgently needed to expedite the work.

Dr. Schwiebert added that this kind of work makes a “notable contribution to the ecumenical movement.” It will, he said, produce a different kind of scholar, make available a wider variety of material, and minimize preoccupation with adiaphora (matters on which the Scripture is silent).

J. D. D.

Important Precedent?

Protestant observers in Madrid say a recent court decision constitutes an important precedent for Protestant civil marriages in Spain. The decision, made by the Spanish Supreme Court of Appeals and dated December 12, 1961, said that there was no objection in law to a Spanish Baptist couple contracting a civil marriage.

Under Article 42 of the Spanish Civil Code, persons who formally affirm that they are not Roman Catholics may contract a civil marriage. However, during the past two decades, this article has in practice been overridden by a ministerial order of March 10, 1941, which has been interpreted to mean that an affirmation of “non-Catholicity” is not enough and that parties must also prove they have never been baptized as Catholics—something which is difficult to do in Spain.

The position was slightly alleviated by a decree of 1956 which provided that couples affirming non-Catholicity, but who were unable to prove they were not baptized in the Catholic church, might be authorized to contract a civil marriage if their case, after having been referred by the registrar to the Catholic bishop of the diocese, did not result in a decision within one month.

This is understood to have been the case of the Baptist couple whose appeal for permission to contract a civil union was taken to the Supreme Court of Appeals.

Spanish Protestants currently are said to number about 20,000.

Malta Election

Because of the “most barefaced moral pressure on an all-Catholic population, proclaiming it a mortal sin to vote labor,” the Archbishop of Malta ensured the Labor Party’s defeat in last month’s election on the island. This was the view of the party’s leader, Dom Mintoff, who further charged the British Colonial Office with working hand-in-hand with the ecclesiastical authorities in the “most unfair” election in Maltese history.

About 90 per cent of the population voted in the election, the first held under a new constitution. Pro-church Nationalists won 25 of the Legislature’s 50 seats, with the Labor Party coming second with 16. Some find it significant and even ominous, nonetheless, that in a backward urban population one islander in three voted Labor in the teeth of the church’s strictest sanctions. Anti-Labor posters on many churches declared: “God will curse you if you vote Socialist.”

(From Rome, meanwhile, came reports that there is a trend in the Vatican toward less direct involvement in Italian politics.)

It is widely felt that the result may be reversed before long because of the serious economic problems confronting the new government when the British pull out of this Mediterranean possession occupied for 150 years. For his part Mr. Mintoff has declared that he would accept help from the Soviet Union or its satellites if Western aid proved inadequate. In the light of this The Observer of London points what might be a pertinent warning: “Here are the seeds of a future Cuba rather than of a Cyprus,” says the editorial. “Will these symptoms be recognized in time both by Britain and by the local Catholic hierarchy?”

J. D. D.

Iamso And The Gospel

Religious alignments are carefully avoided in the newly-formed Inter-African and Malagasy States Organization, which brings together Christian states such as Ethiopia with Muslim states such as Somali. Christian leaders however, feel that the establishment of IAMSO may give greater opportunity for the spread of the Gospel. For instance, they point to the fact that the official languages of the organization will be French and English, explaining that use of more common languages makes literature work easier. Schools in some of the 19 charter member states already are teaching both languages.

IAMSO’s formation marks a further step toward the “United States of Africa” envisioned by many African leaders. The desire to give the continent a truly African voice in world affairs is reflected in the proviso that only “independent states under indigenous African rule” may join.

So far, IAMSO seems aware of Communist intrigue, whereas the Casablanca group (Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Morocco, and U. A. R.) have leaned toward the East bloc. The Casablanca group, which has stayed out of IAMSO, has called for more sensational political unity, but IAMSO countries have felt this is impractical and premature. The charter reflects mature thinking on practical ways to solve Africa’s problems of communication, education, health, economics, and technical development. A secretariat has been established in Lagos, Nigeria, and members states will meet at least every two years.

W. H. F.

A Christian’s Handbook on Communism, which has been approved by the National Council of Churches’ Division of World Mission ($1 per paperback copy from the Interchurch Center) proposes that every local church of the large NCC constituency set up a Committee on Social Education and Action through which each member will be stimulated to fulfill his social responsibilities.

The potential for good or ill of such a development is unlimited. For more than a generation Protestant liberalism has misguided Christian action along “social gospel” frontiers, mainly on the left bank of American politico-economical life. Evangelicals on the other hand have largely neglected the tasks of social justice in order to concentrate on personal evangelism. In time liberalism lost not simply the Gospel, but from its social message lost also the emphasis on fixed principles and truths. Proud of its supposed relevance and carefully spurning “frozen patterns,” neoorthodoxy is now channeling the social energy of the churches into one tentative position after another. And evangelicals have shown increasing eagerness to rectify their neglect of the social order. For lack of constructive guidance, some, unfortunately, simply endorse secular or sentimental proposals. Others intuitively shy away from leftist errors but remain baffled or demoralized by incessant left-wing attacks on the right-wing. Most evangelicals nonetheless identify themselves proudly on the right. They are uneasy, however, over those radicals who breed internal suspicion, who emphasize negations instead of elaborating constructive alternatives, and who enter politics or economics simply in terms of a secular perspective rather than that of the biblical revelation.

It is heartening, then, that A Christian’s Handbook on Communism aims to provide a constructive overview as well as a negative critique. More than once Christian workers have complained that requests for packets of literature on Communism had brought from a large denomination’s headquarters little but diatribes against the right-wingers. With one-third of the world in the grip of Communism, and two-thirds strategically influenced by socialists, church leaders and workers will be eager to learn what the National Council regards as imperative study. Many have heard Khrushchev’s warning to the West: “Your children will live under Communism.” If Communism more than any other of the forces of anti-Christ threatens to sweep the whole world into its orbit, what shall the Christian churches say and do?

The National Council handbook must be assessed both for its evaluation of Communist theory and action and for its exposition of Christian theology and action.

The Presentation of Communism

The Handbook’s picture of Communist dogma and deeds is a realistic one. Controlled elections, totalitarian policy decisions, state ownership of industry, the imbalance between industrial development and military concentration, collectivization of agriculture, the propagandistic use of education are all portrayed. Oppression by secret police, disregard for individual rights, shortages of housing and food, restrictions on workers, striking salary differentials despite claims of equalization of income, scarcity of consumer goods, breakdown of family loyalties, repression of voluntary organizations are depicted as well. A noncritical paragraph appears on socialized medicine (“popular with the people”). The Handbook ascribes Communism’s appeal to the Chinese people in part to “positive programs” such as “health care” which, we are told, “appealed to the ethical sense of all, including Christians” (p. 40). Listed among the positive benefits of Communism is the fact that “hospital care and medical services are more widely available to the mass of the people” (p. 43). The pamphlet seems therefore to give veiled support to the widening of government health services.

The power and appeal of Communism are rightly linked to its philosophy, passion, and program in a world where most people daily face poverty, hunger, unemployment, disease, discrimination, and oppression. Communism is a revolutionary movement that “feeds on discontent and poses as the champion of every oppressed group” (p. 5).

The exposition of Communist theory is factual, instructive and illuminating. Marx’s critique of capitalism was based on limited observation and was therefore fallible; indeed, Marxism “oversimplifies, misunderstands, and distorts the nature of value, profits … society, government, man” and so on (p. 12).

Weaknesses in Evaluation

The Handbook’s overall evaluation of Communism is weak in three respects, however. First, the pamphlet fails to note the widespread tendency and danger even among evangelicals to honor Communism as a religion. Second, its judgment on socialism is ambiguous. Third, the Handbook minimizes Communism’s strong appeal to intellectuals on the basis of its seeming logical consistency.

Communism is now often catalogued as a religion because it demands ultimate loyalty, and offers a comprehensive framework for meeting life’s problems. The NCC Handbook emphasizes that Communism denies God and the supernatural, locates the source of evil in the economic system and not in man (as does the Handbook) and finds salvation in human resources rather than in God (p. 22). The discussion pictures Communism as “a new secular religion” which has fought the old established religions in Russia for half a century (p. 37). It notes also the religious revivalist flavor of much Chinese Communist activity (p. 41). At the same time, it is aware that Communist theory traces the origin of religion to the emergence of the social classes as a device for enslaving the masses, and explains the survival of religious feelings and denominations in “classless” Russia as due to ignorance and to uneradicated remnants of capitalism (p. 37). The 1936 constitution guaranteed freedom of worship and of antireligious propaganda (on the other hand, all religious propaganda is severely restricted). That only convinced atheists can be good Communists is an official tenet of the Young Communists League. While Christians are reportedly “seldom persecuted directly for their faith,” they are bypassed for responsible government posts because the totalitarian state “can brook no competitive allegiance.”

Since Communism believes that religion inevitably will disappear, it prefers to channel religion into the service of the state rather than to increase fanaticism by persecution (p. 51). But churchmen are frequently prosecuted, and always under the ruse of crimes against the state. Whatever its tactics, “Communist policy is to destroy the church, root and branch, using every power the state can exercise” (pp. 47 f.). Spies in churches report and apprehend nonconformist church leaders for eventual elimination (p. 54). Church ties to other lands are prohibited unless such associations serve government policy (p. 55). Communism “has not changed its attitude of opposition to religion” (p. 49) said Khrushchev in 1955. The Church must serve the state (p. 56). All church lands have been seized, all church schools closed; Communist activities are scheduled to coincide with church activities, which, incidentally, must be confined to church buildings. All welfare services are nationalized.

The Handbook adds “no truly committed Communist would favor or accept any kind of religion …” (p. 50). “The Communist has no God and, therefore, no conscience … and no divine law as basic universal code of morality and human decency” (p. 67). In view of these facts, it seems to us a confusing turn—which evangelicals and liberals, Protestants and Catholics alike encourage—to dignify Communism as a religion. It undoubtedly has pseudo-religious features. But to depict Communism as anything but irreligion is folly. Otherwise one creates respect for “the religion of Communism,” through the current emphasis on the universal desirability of “religion in life” of whatever sort. Taken only in the abstract, certain Communist objectives are commendable enough, and a materialist who finds the essence of religion merely in devotion to “moral values” may be easily misled into such a surface appraisal of Communism. But if one considers at all the means by which even such objectives are promoted, and the ultimate sanctions by which they are justified, then one must surely recognize how artificial it is to dignify as religion a “moral values” movement which aims to destroy the Ten Commandments and in fact repudiates their relevance for a just social order. Let us be done with the sentimental misjudgment of Communism as a religion; let us judge it for what it is; sheer irreligion or, at best, pseudo-religion.

Spongy on Socialism

The Handbook, moreover, portrays socialism as a live alternative to Communism rather than a modified or preliminary form of Communism. Liberal churchmen are defended for left-wing associations on the ground that Communists have at times infiltrated their movements (p. 19). Such rationalization does not explain, however, why those Communists were not repudiated; nor could it be expected to acknowledge the fact that some liberal churchmen themselves were actually Marxists. Attached to the observation that the West’s historic policy of government nonintervention in economic policy has been considerably modified is the strange comment that the West’s economy nonetheless is “in no way comparable” to the Soviet economy (p. 29). Communists, we are told, “fear socialism far more than people on ‘the right’ because they believe that middle-of-the-road people have more chance of … defeating the Communist program than conservatives …” (pp. 18 f.). This ludicrous commendation of socialism is really confuted by documents reflected elsewhere in the Handbook: 1. The Soviet Party’s 1961 Draft Program reports that “The dictatorship of the proletariat, born of the Socialist revolution, has played an epoch-making role by insuring the victory of socialism in the U.S.S.R.… The Socialist state has entered a new phase. The state has begun to grow over into a nationwide organization of the working people of Socialist society.… Having brought about a complete and final victory of socialism—first phase of communism”—etc. (p. 21). 2. Khrushchev’s 1961 draft of his second five-year-plan reads: “The Socialist world is expanding; the capitalist world is shrinking. Socialism will inevitably succeed capitalism everywhere …” (p. 26). 3. Lenin had previously regarded socialism as a preparation for Communism (p. 30).

Christians, says the Handbook, “need to understand how the profit motive, free competition, and government regulation work ideally.… They should know both the benefits and the dangers of widespread social planning” (pp. 76 f.). The appraisal favors what is called “present-day democratic enterprise’s modifications of capitalism,” and commends consumer’s cooperatives as “a democratic method of community development” (p. 78).

While the Bible’s social motivation and passion for social justice are acknowledged (p. 7), the pamphlet claims too broadly that “Christ and the church have historically denounced the same evils that communism decries” (p. 8). [Communism is not one of the evils communism deplores, nor does Christianity decry Christianity, private property (and other items that Communism does) as evil.] Communism’s opportunity, it is suggested, has been created by Christian neglect. The reader receives the impression that Communist goals are worthy and to be approved; and that Christianity criticizes only Communism’s method of violence and revolution, its violated promises and failure fully to implement those goals (p. 8). Christians who believe God shows concern for man’s economic affairs are “challenged by the truth in the insights” of Marx (p. 10). Indirect government controls in America, we are told, tend to stabilize the economy and thus provide more leisure for all (p. 13). In industry, the trade union movement has “made the lot of the worker better with ever higher wages and better living conditions as democratic enterprise has advanced”; “government regulations … prevent the full development of monopolies he [Marx] predicted,” and government planning seeks to curb unemployment (p. 14). Through such “democratic enterprise” many of the evils Marx associated with capitalism have been moderated.

In view of their compromised attitude toward socialistic tendencies in modern life, is it not remarkable that the Handbook writers voice concern over the “alarming degree that many people who are not Communists believe and practice the same things that Communists do” (p. 83)? More often than not references to the free enterprise system are critical of injustices (pp. 5 f., 83). Private property is mentioned only in conjunction with some reference to Marx’s view (“Since private property, which is the root of exploitation and all injustice, will have disappeared.… In this new type of society, there will be true communism …,” p. 15), or simply to reject the Communist tenet that the origin of evil is in personal ownership of private property (p. 22). Nowhere does the manual assert the biblical vindication and championing of property rights, let alone the truth that property rights are personal rights.

The impression is sometimes conveyed, therefore, that the sole reason for rejecting Communism is totalitarianism and revolutionary methods; that within limits Christians may cooperate with Communism “as long as it continues to work toward really Christian objectives” (p. 84)! Furthermore, while Communism’s denial of God and of human dignity is deplored, its economic program is not effectively challenged by Christian economic principles (p. 74).

In matters of war and peace, it is noted that Communists often camouflage their dedication to world conquest under the banner of peace (p. 45). Communism preaches world brotherhood even while resorting to imperialism and colonialism. Where it promised a classless society, new classes are in fact emerging (p. 44). Nowhere is Communist class-warfare actually condemned; the one reference made to war in the context of Christian conviction implies that under all circ*mstances it is contrary to Christian conscience (p. 80).

The Role of Reason

A third weakness of the Handbook to some might appear rather unimportant, namely, its tendency to underestimate Communism’s appeal to the intellectuals by offering a comprehensive rational integration of life. One ought to remember that recent liberal and neoorthodox apologetics downgrade the role of reason in Christian commitment; they defer, instead, to existential, nonrational aspects of religious experience. Such theological default creates a spiritual vacuum which the Communist philosophy is then free and waiting to fill. It is true, of course, that unlike the religion of the Logos and of rational revelation, the Communist rationale is not thoroughly comprehensive, consistent, and coherent. But the Handbook touches neither of these points in declaring that “Communists have been held together by overpowering personalities and a passion for their cause rather than by a unified, logical set of principles expressed in a consistent way” (p. 23). In fact, elsewhere the NCC Handbook notes Khrushchev’s 1961 reference to the emergence of a “new intelligentsia,” intellectuals who furnish “a basis for indestructible socio-political and idealogical unity” (p. 33). About the situation in China, we read: “Without doubt ideology is the basic cement which holds together the ruling group and which, to a large degree, explains its unity and dynamism. But the Chinese Communists … also are attempting to indoctrinate the whole population in the new ideology” (p. 41). It is even acknowledged elsewhere in passing that the Communists “have put their ideas together into a coherent plan of thought and action” (p. 83).

The Christian World-Life View

If anything, the Communist rationale should call us to a counterexhibition of Christianity, a world-life view rooted in the realities of supernatural disclosure. A proper question might well be whether the Handbook, which so carefully and comprehensively presents the Communist philosophy of history, of economics, and of life, also exhibits the Christian view with similar thoroughness and competence? Actually, less than one third of the Handbook deals with chapters on “The Christian Way” and “The Christian’s Responsibility.” How adequately is the Christian alternative presented?

The Bible is represented as the Christian’s “basic source book.” Its content, however, is depicted as human insight and inference from man’s encounter with God rather than as revealed truth and inspired teaching (p. 61). While the unique Saviourhood and Lordship of Jesus Christ are asserted, statements about his deity are sometimes ambiguously worded. We are told that “the meaning of the Christian faith is rooted in the incarnation of Christ, the cross, and the resurrection” (p. 62). But nowhere is the Resurrection (in contrast to economic determinism) relevantly depicted as the decisive hinge of history, although one finds the broad emphasis that “when God is replaced by idolatry of things, the impersonal rule of economic and social forces gains control of the whole of life” (p. 72).

The Church is assigned a strategic role, although the nature of the Church is not defined. It simply “bursts out quite unpredictably into new energy” (p. 64). What the Reformation was in Luther’s day the ecumenical movement is in ours; all forms—hierarchical, established, and free—are accorded equal blessing.

The exposition of Christian doctrine is sketched in strokes so broad as to be almost brittle (“Christianity relates man to God,” p. 66; “The Christian teaching is that every human being has infinite worth,” p. 67; “Christianity teaches that all men should love one another and serve one another,” p. 68; “Jesus taught that sin has its roots fixed deep in every human heart,” p. 69; “Jesus Christ demonstrated complete dedication of life to one supreme task,” p. 70). These fragments of Christian theology are expounded far less precisely in the Handbook than is the Communist theory. Even if they were as thoroughly delineated, one could hardly derive the Christian alternative to Communism from so incomplete an overview. Any seminary student who could not write anything more incisive and relevant than the Handbook exposition of the Christian way ought to be declined ministerial ordination.

Christian Social Imperatives

The Handbook’s major interest and climax are a call to “every believer to bear a social witness” (p. 72). In the Bible we have “the main foundation stones for Christian action in society.… God made all men of one blood and … man is his brother’s keeper.…” The Church therefore has “a clear directive for action in community and national life” (p. 73). But the Church is not organized “to exert economic power”; it cannot and should not decree changes in economic and political systems; it “dare not identify the Christian faith with any particular program” (p. 74). What direction then should social responsibility take? The Church 1. holds up Christ’s ideal standard and Christian conscience as the best measure of all social systems; 2. educates its members on social problems and encourages individual and group action along social, economic, and political lines; 3. provides a center of love and strength for such action (p. 75).

So far, in the main, the Handbook is on firm ground, and if the social action committees of most Protestant groups had operated within these limits the “social gospel” would have been shorn of much of its mischief. We are told, however, that “the church must be the conscience of the state” (p. 76). This notion reflects either an objectionable Romanist view of church-state relations or (more probably in this case) the liberal Protestant view that Church and world merge in a unitary culture. As a byproduct of its life and witness, a virile Church will stir and shape the conscience of the world. But when the Church makes the imposition of its mind and will upon the nation a prime objective (which it then readily promotes through political pronouncements and actions), the Church invariably becomes embraced by secular society.

What the Handbook does not stress is that 1. in the Bible the Church is given divinely revealed truths and principles to which it is in conscience bound; 2. Christ’s ideal standard is precisely the fulfillment of the scriptural requirements; 3. Christian conscience is fallible and requires correction by the Scriptures. Indeed, as the NCC pamphlet proceeds, it abandons scriptural precedent for an alternative approach to the Church’s role in social action.

“There is a middle ground,” we are told, “between generalities” [divinely revealed principles?] and “specific political programs”; “love one another” can be translated into the Church’s insistence that the economic system provides “opportunity for all men to work,” without at the same time endorsing “particular legislative bills on unemployment insurance or control of the business cycle as being specifically Christian” (p. 75).

Two important distinctions should be made at this point. It is one thing to delineate a scriptural principle to which the Church is bound as the revealed will of God, and which the individual believer in good conscience is to apply in deciding between the particular options in the social order. It is quite another to doubt whether the Church possesses revealed truths or principles, to treat “middle axioms” rather as if they are the will of God, and to have ecclesiastical leaders project these substitutes into particular programs of social action.

If the pamphlet’s plea for “opportunity for all men to work” were considered implicit in the biblical emphasis on work as a divine requirement, then the Christian Church might be expected to disallow rather than support the whole system of compulsory unionism (which requires membership in a labor union as the condition of a job). The large denominations, however, have given carte blanche approval to unions’ “right to organize.” The influence of the National Council of Churches’ Department of the Church and Economic Life, interestingly enough, stacks up against right-to-work and for compulsory unionism.

The degree to which study groups stay alert, to that degree they will be wary of championing “middle ground” as if it were the will of God. When urged to “express what love means in concrete terms,” church members need to realize that in calling for a Committee on Social Education and Action the NCC Handbook has already decided in advance, for example, that the will of God “embraces support of the United Nations” (p. 82).

It would be wrong to say that this Handbook is “soft on Communism,” or is “flipped against the right-wingers.” It does indeed look favorably toward socialism. Its chief weakness, however, is its meager delineation of Christianity. While the Handbook concludes: “At length a point is reached beyond which there is no way but a renunciation: either faith in communism or faith in Christ must go” (p. 84), the case against Communism is argued with greater power than the case for Christianity. At a time when ecclesiastical leaders so frequently condemn the radical right-wingers for this very failure, it is more than ironic—it is sheer tragedy—that their own propaganda must fall under the same condemnation.

Space, Man And Destiny

PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING—When Col. Glenn was safely back on earth the first words uttered in the astronaut’s home were a prayer of thanksgiving. The Glenn family’s pastor, Rev. Frank Erwin, of the Little Falls Presbyterian Church, thanked God for the “divine guidance” of all those who worked on Project Mercury.—CORDELIA RUFFIN,The Washington Daily News.

FAITH AND FLIGHT—We’re a Christian family and it thrilled us to hear John give testimony of his Christian faith.—JOHN H. GLENN, SR., New Concord. Ohio, father of the astronaut.

A GRATEFUL HEART—I am so very, very thankful to God for the safety and success of his mission.—MRS. JOHN H. GLENN, SR., New Concord, Ohio, mother of the astronaut.

STATE ASSEMBLY PRAYS—The State Assembly took time out to listen to a radio account over its public address system of Colonel Glenn’s descent. Then it stood for a silent prayer of thanksgiving and passed a resolution congratulating the astronaut.—RUSSELL PORTER.The New York Times.

IN A LONDON PUB—News of Glenn’s return suddenly buzzed around the bar, breaking an awed hush, and a chorus of “Thank God for that!” and “he’s made it at last!” split the air.—AP, London.

CAPE CANAVERAL RESPONSE—Fifty thousand spectators stood along the beach watching the climbing Atlas carrying Lieut. Col. John H. Glenn, Jr. into orbit. Some cheered, some clapped. An elderly woman said solemnly: “He’s in the hands of the Lord now.” Most remained silent.—GAY TALESE,The New York Times.

SPANNING THE SKIES—This is the new ocean.… The United States must sail on it and be in a position second to none.—President JOHN F. KENNEDY.

AIRY HOPES—This is yet another significant step in man’s conquest of space and time, and a striking demonstration of technological and scientific progress which, the whole world hopes, will be used for peaceful purposes and for the benefit of all mankind.—U THANT, Acting Secretary General, United Nations.

CERTAINTIES AND DOUBTS—There is no doubt that the way to the galaxies is finally going to be open to the men of earth. What is in doubt is whether we are going to be able to make outer space the common ground of peaceful men—or a battleground for the cold war.—ROSCOE DRUMMOND,New York Herald Tribune.

PROGRESS OR DOOM?—Every one of the handful of men who has taken this astounding voyage through space … has come back from space with the same observation: the world is a beautiful sight.… It is good to be reminded of it by men whose accomplishments are the fruit of a science that has within it the potentials both of overwhelming destruction and universal progress. The choice is not for the brave men who fly their tiny craft into the unknown to make. It is the responsibility of those on earth, who live upon a planet with room and resources enough for all the races and nations of men.—Editorial, New York Herald Tribune.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS—Many persons, however, have been asking: “What is the purpose of these flights and what practical return is there …?” That question will be given many an answer on the scientific side, but it will be a long time before the present generation of Americans gets the full benefit.… One satellite, however, is soon to make it possible for television waves to be relayed around the earth.—DAVID LAWRENCE,New York Herald Tribune.

DAWN OF A NEW AGE—There is something in the very air of this space age that is not unlike the climate of another great age of discovery which took place in the fifteenth century. Then, as now, man was in a period of depression and anxiety. Samuel Eliot Morison has described that doubting decade that closed the fifteenth century: “At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units.…” Then came … the discovery of the new world. That news changed the spirit of Europe. In Morison’s words: “New ideas flared up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed.” So must these ventures into our space environment revive and renew the human spirit.—Washington Post.

WE HAVE SEEN—We do not care what others have done. This for us is the first time anyone has orbited the earth, because this is the first time we have seen him do it!—PEDRO FERRIZ, Mexican TV commentator.

ELIJAH’S ASCENT AND DESCENT—And it came to pass, when Jehovah would take up Elijah by a whirlwind into heaven, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gilgal.… And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, which parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.—2 Kings 2:1, 11, ASV. And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain.… And behold, there appeared unto them … Elijah talking with him.—Matt. 17:1, 3, ASV.

JESUS’ ASCENSION AND RETURN—And when he [Jesus] had said these things, as they were looking, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they were looking stedfastly into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; who also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye looking into heaven? this Jesus, who was received up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye beheld him going into heaven.—Acts 1:9–11, ASV.

Christianity must deliberately apply its warm spirit of compassion to the frustrations and vexing needs of modern man. Deep and selfless concern for unreached multitudes and a passion to right social injustices should mark the Christian witness in the world no less than a determination to preach the Gospel. The Church’s thrust must somewhere intersect and penetrate the driving aspirations of restless, clamoring masses.

Today people’s needs are measured almost entirely in material terms, and in relation to economic status and strength. The Church on the other hand offers eternal security and abundant life. Do these orbits interact at any point? Can the Church maintain relevance when its God, and not Marx or twentieth century social theorists, defines the content of love and justice? How must the Church meet alien philosophies that attach strange expectations to “Christian social action”?

Communism meets the disparities in modern society with a crisis technique that in the seemingly beneficent act of equalizing wealth places men’s lives under total state regimentation. Professing to function in the name of the proletariat an elite cadre (the dictatorial party organization) freely resorts to violence to repress and destroy all opposition. Communists, however, hesitate to actually ameliorate economic inequities, since any improvement of conditions only decreases the discontents which Communism appropriates for revolutionary ends. Among the masses, Communist tactics of propaganda and violence are more effective in advancing: totalitarian goals than are Communist doctrine and theory. People may challenge Communist philosophy as fallacious, may recognize Communist practise as inconsistent (even Khrushchev’s regime compromises at numerous levels). But they dare offer no rejoinder to tyrannical repression.

The Free World has sought to meet the social problems that feed Communism’s aggressive exploits by financial aid, by assailing economic disparity and by promoting the redistricting of wealth. In other words, while it actively resists Communism by cold war at the military level, the Free World makes peace with socialism at the politico-economic level. The Free World today is prepared for a nuclear war it may never need to fight (pray God!). Khrushchev wants to inherit America, yes—but not in ashes; nor does he want Russian industrial development set back a generation. Only some peculiar miscalculation could possibly outweigh the deterring force of these considerations. With each passing day, however, by being forced to voluntarily extend its compromise with socialism and to strain its abundant but not illimitable resources, the Free World is losing out more and more in the politico-economic war. The greater its provision of material benefits to the underprivileged masses abroad, the more the West seems to experience that one set of corrected conditions can swiftly worsen another. The actual facts are sometimes cold and cruel; it is true, for example, that medicine, food and money have meant longer life, population increases, and hence multiplied needs which in turn leave the basic situation relatively unchanged. In seeking to relieve multiplied conditions of dire distress, the Free World is draining its resources to the point where ultimately it may default on its ideals through sheer inability to nourish and sustain those ideals.

Although the masses in poverty (more than the vaulting ambitions of underdeveloped nations) pose problems of conscience to their more wealthy neighbors, anyone who thinks that today’s major problem is one of money and property is uncritically swallowing the Soviet line. Despite Communism’s announced hostility to private property, for example, the Communists since World War II have gained 30 million acres of land by “liberation,” and without putting a single Russian soldier on the battlefield Communists now control 800 million people.

The Free World’s program of “economic amelioration” therefore is far too simple. Its effect is merely to postpone major crises. In fact, by nonviolent rather than revolutionary methods it even promotes certain Soviet goals.

The Church of Jesus Christ should not suffer the illusion that material benefits prompt men’s loyalties to truth, justice and love, any more than dollar diplomacy binds nations to continuing respect for freedom and justice once monetary support is exhausted and removed.

In this era of communications proficiency one of the greatest tragedies is the Church’s conspicuous failure to propagandize her historic values and achievements. Across the years thousands of missionaries tore themselves from their families and the material comforts of the West (which they esteemed inferior to life’s greatest treasure) to carry the hope of the Gospel to fallen creatures, and to promote man’s recovery of his true dignity and destiny in Christ.

An even greater tragedy is the Church’s failure either through indifference or distrust—to apply her distinctive supernatural dynamic to the social order.

What is her mandate?

She is to pray for a lost and doomed world, and certainly no amount of social activism on her part will compensate for neglect of prayer.

She is to preach the Gospel by word and deed, and certainly social activism on her part is no legitimate alternative mission.

She is to get the revealed and inspired Word of God to the restless masses, and certainly no amount of other ecclesiastical literature on contemporary problems (or even on mission) discharges this obligation.

Above all, the Christian is to love God with his whole being and his neighbor as himself. This responsibility is quite different from mastering a dozen handbooks on the social crisis in order to delineate the universal brotherhood of man.

The Church of Jesus Christ is to cement and to maintain the bond between passion for the lost and compassion for the needy.

Prayer and evangelical mission are not alternatives to social responsibility but are means for deepening the sense of justice and kindling the fires of love. The Church misunderstands her own mission if she allows evangelistic effort in the narrow sense to cancel social concern.

Several years ago a Brethren group in a Scottish industrial town refused to vote on the liquor issue (for or against public houses) because it wanted no part of local government affairs, and believed virtually in shutting itself up in its little mission hall against the “Coming Crowning Day.” These people did, however, call a special prayer meeting to beseech God against a victory for king alcohol. Alcohol won out, but by such a narrow margin that if these Christians had exercised their right to vote, the outcome would have gone the other way.

In every generation God calls dedicated men to specialized tasks of social service which ministers and missionaries cannot fulfill. Sometimes these workers lay themselves open not only to the defilement of the market place but also to the sneers of certain evangelicals who consider them suspect. Social passion born of biblical motivations, hallowed by biblical dynamisms, should encourage a wide range of activity that merits respect as Christian vocation. Christians cannot with good conscience deplore social service as secular if they themselves ignore or desert this arena of responsibility. In fact, ought they themselves not be in the very forefront of such social concern?

The Church must minister to the needy according to her ability. When they cannot care for themselves she must feed the hungry and heal the sick. While she must meet such survival needs she has no excuse for confusing human desires and wants with human rights, however. Teaching men how to raise their standards of living and how to develop technologically is neither an imperative nor a primary task of the Church. But caring for the hungry and the cold is no matter of choice or deliberation. And she must help the hungry not only out of concern to preach the Gospel to them, but also out of compassion for the hungry as physically hungry.

On the other hand, whatever she does in compassionate awareness of basic human needs she must do in the name of Christ. The Church’s compassion after all is really the compassion of Christ for the hungry. If she belabors this point, however, her compassion may easily become something less. Yet the principle of “a cup of water in my name” must always characterize her ministrations to the needs of both body and soul, of both the hungry and the lost.

She is not called to encourage totalitarian states to dispense welfare in the name of welfare statism. She ought not even align herself with government welfare on the assumption that while the state pays the bills she can preserve her reputation for benevolence by merely administering the services. Christ never asked Caesar to fulfill the Church’s responsibility in whole or even in part. Those who believe such alignment is the way to reach the masses may know how to strike a short-term bargain with modern social theory. They know little, however, of the Christian meaning of passion and compassion.

Preaching The Prince Of Peace While ‘Peace Talks’ Go On

The sudden and unexpected return of Christ to this earth, Paul wrote the Thessalonians, will come when people are unaware of their impending doom, when they are saying “there is peace and security” (1 Thess. 5:3).

Not since Jeremiah’s day has there been so much ceaseless prattle about peace and so little evidence of it. Politicians claim credit for preserving the peace and churchmen promote the United Nations as the world’s best hope for peace. Jeremiah reproved even the religious leaders of his day for saying “peace, peace” to heal the hurt of God’s people “when there is no peace” (6:14; 8:11). It is remarkable that while the visionaries today are writing of a world without war, so many professed realists fail to see that ours is a world without peace.

“Condemned to Talk” is Time Magazine’s apt caption for the endless cold-war attempts to achieve peace. The test-ban talks begun in Geneva in October, 1958, by the U.S., the U.S.S.R., and Britain, we are reminded, “finally broke up, after 353 sessions, without the slightest sign of substantive agreement.… Yet … discussion … has positive values. It can furnish clues to developing Communist policy … (and) … keep the Kremlin fully informed of basic Western positions.… In a strong sense, then, the great cold-war adversaries are condemned to keep right on talking.

Absent from such summitry is not only the Messiah who carries peaceful government upon his shoulders, but also modern men who personally know the Redeemer’s peace in a troubled world. While it is true that Russia’s unwillingness to allow meaningful inspection jeopardizes every plan for nuclear weapon control, it is far from true that the basic problem of war centers in supervising the atom. Even the atomic age has not lifted us out of the Adamic age, and there’s the rub. To shape a new society we need not merely control of the armaments race but regeneration of the human race. When secular leaders are “condemned to talk” the Church may with benefit search her soul to rediscover what she is under orders to preach.

Student Interests Demonstrate Need For Guiding Principles

What is happening with students today? If the recent descent upon Washington by thousands of college and university students to picket for disarmament may be taken as any indication, the dominant principle of academic detachment is being shaken in our day by a rising interest in moral issues and by a deep concern for social justice. This surge of interest has been characterized by such diversity, however, that it emerges in its essential nature as a search for principles rather than a vision of a cause. Against this recent spectacle in Washington, evangelicals may note with wisdom another student gathering, of similar proportions, in Urbana, Illinois—the Sixth Annual Missionary Convention of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. Here, with a parallel emphasis upon the problems of the world, went the prior demand for a personal experience with Jesus Christ. This is to declare that the regeneration of society must begin with the regeneration of the individual. It is a reminder that the principles being sought by students are only to be found in Jesus Christ.

No End In Sight For Agony In Algeria

Algeria may long continue as one of the world’s most agonized spots, with indiscriminate murder and bombings a way of life—and of death. To the rest of the world it is a blurred picture. Frenchmen and Algerians are arrayed in strange enmities. French troops and installations are attacked by their own nationals even while Moslems and whites engage in senseless killings.

The situation is all the more puzzling when one realizes that many French people have resided in Algeria for generations and now their descendants are caught in the maelstrom of rising Moslem nationalism. For these Frenchmen Algeria is home, while for the Moslem majority it is a native land.

After years of warfare without victory for either side, DeGaulle determined to work out a peaceful solution. Official cessation of hostilities may decrease major conflicts but only time and death will wipe out the hatreds and frustrations of thousands.

It is at this point that Christians may have failed Algeria almost completely. How many pray daily that the balm of love and toleration may be poured out on this troubled spot? The works of nations, no less than of men, do follow after them. Caught in the ambiguities of her earlier colonization, France can neither stay in Algeria nor get out.

In dealing with so vast a subject as faith in so narrow a space, one’s first need is to limit the area of discussion without thereby distorting or falsifying the true nature of the subject. Our analytical age is all too prone to divide to conquer, only to find that the sum of the parts divulges no deep truth about the original reality. We must avoid this danger in speaking of faith, for faith is more than the sum of those of its elements which can most readily be detected and analyzed—knowledge, reason, will, love, emotion, and others. “You may think that it is very easy to explain faith,” wrote C. H. Spurgeon many years ago, “and so it is; but it is easier still to confound people with your explanation (What Is Faith?, Chicago, 1897, p. 13).

Definition. Faith is a channel of living trust and communion between morally conscious free beings. The dimension of moral consciousness must exist if there is to be communion (“and man became a living soul,” Gen. 2:7), and freedom must exist if the unity of the society produced by faith (faulty on earth; perfect in heaven) is to be that of dynamic life, not of soulless machines. Because living faith permits each soul to extend its dimensions of existence into the souls of others, and into the Infinite Dimension of God, there is irretrievable commitment and consequent hazard in faith. True faith, in the words of T. S. Eliot, costs not less than everything. It also gains everything—if the object of faith is faithful.

The life, the power, which flows through the channels of faith is the ultimate energy of the universe: God’s love—the love which God is. Where love is perfect, faith is perfect, as in the ineffable beatitude of the Trinity.

Every dimension of reality, whether material or spiritual, is compatible with faith when that dimension is truly understood. That is, faith is harmonious with reason, with knowledge, with “science,” with “psychology”—with all truth, ancient or modern—though it is dependent on none of them.

When God’s love is permitted, through faith, to permeate existence, life manifests the qualities inherent in divine creation: harmony, beauty, holiness, joy. When man, through a defect of love wilfully wrought, blocked the channel of faith in the Fall, faith ceased in man to reach wholly outward and instead turned in upon itself, where it must sicken and die. The limit of our faith is the limit of our life. It is unimaginable that any man should have faith literally in nothing except himself and continue to “live.”

Self-severed from God by disbelief in God’s veracity, man is doomed, so far as his own power is concerned, to wander forever in darkness and spiritual death. Any solution must be entirely of God and entirely of grace, without merit on man’s part. Even man’s assent to the free offer of redemption and salvation from God is a gift of God (Eph. 6:23; 2:8,9; Phil. 1: 29); the Saviour who (alone—John 14:6; Matt. 11:27) works our redemption is a gift (2 Cor. 9:15); and man’s empowering in the transaction is by the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 4:13; Gal. 5:5). It is all of God.

Of the utter centrality of faith in Christian theology there can be no question. So long as man is, by sin, displeasing to God and at enmity against Him, man is without all hope; and without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6). The rays of divine love come to their sharpest focus in the simple words, “For by grace are ye saved through faith …” (Eph. 2:8).

Faith and Knowledge. The role of knowledge in faith, and the difference between the two, may perhaps best be discussed by noting the difference of meaning between two terms commonly used to define faith: belief and trust. In this context we use belief in its narrow, secondary meaning of “intellectual assent, based on a sufficiency of evidence.” Trust we use in its meaning of reliance upon and commitment to.

Upon sufficient evidence, I am prepared to believe that Jesus existed, and that during certain years he walked the roads of Palestine. This takes no commitment on my part, involves me in no hazard. My conduct need not be altered by it, nor my boundaries of trust (life) extended, nor my sinful condition modified. This belief is not accounted to me for righteousness, as was Abraham’s (Gal. 3:6), for I have not believed God but evidence. Indeed, no matter how much I believe in this way, I shall always be inferior to the fallen angels and to Satan, for they believe, and tremble (James 2:19).

Knowledge, therefore, may compel the assent of the intellect, but it cannot compel that act of the will which constitutes trust. Our stony natural hearts must be softened by a more powerful solvent than knowledge, “for with the heart”—not the head—“man believeth unto righteousness” (Rom. 10:10).

But if knowledge is not of itself sufficient to produce reliant trust, it is, in greater or lesser quantity, an absolutely essential precondition to trust. “Flow then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?” (Rom. 10:14). The basic imperative in this area is, “Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace” (Job 22: 21). Our Lord himself taught the value of objective evidence in developing reliant trust when he commanded doubting Thomas to reach forth his hand and feel the evidence of the wounds in Christ’s body. Saul of Tarsus, smitten to earth on the Damascus road, asked for one key bit of information: “Who art thou, Lord?” The answer, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest” (Acts 9:5), gave him the Object of his trust.

To scorn knowledge is to make faith a purely subjective experience, which is as fatal as to seek salvation in knowledge alone. Modern Christian existentialism may be useful in reminding us that faith must be an inner reality and in Warning us against faith in human reason; but when it denies the reality of the objective source of knowledge which God has provided in his Word, and when it suggests that faith is a self-authenticating inner awareness, it cuts us off from the power of God by cutting us off from the historical Christ, who is the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24).

The knowledge which leads to belief in scientific laws and principles is available to him who seeks, but the knowledge of the Person of God, which must be the basis of our trust, is given as an act of divine grace. We must learn of God by believing what he says of himself. “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Heb. 1:1, 2), and from this Source alone does perfect knowledge flow, the knowledge without which, no matter what our intellectual attainments, we walk in darkness.

There is no quantitative relationship between our knowledge and that act of trust through which we are saved. It was not ignorance which caused Adam to fall (1 Tim. 2:14), but the sin of disbelief committed as an act of will. Thus man born of Adam is in his fallen condition turned away from God and unable by his own powers to find God, for “he that believeth not God hath made him a liar” (1 John 5:10). When we have received sufficient knowledge to know to whom we speak (as did Saul of Tarsus), we then are no longer in a position to demand more knowledge but simply to confront commands which are in effect gracious invitations: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding” (Prov. 3:5).

Faith and Reason. What stacks of books and what quantities of heat have been produced by the debate over the role (if any) of human reason in Christian faith! Positions have ranged from Tertullian’s “Certum est quia impossible est” (De Carne Christi, 5) to the Cambridge Platonists’ “nothing truly religious is irrational and nothing truly rational is irreligious.” Each extreme has produced its own sickness: superstition, dependence on ecclesiastical authority, or pure subjectivism on the one hand; rational skepticism, materialism, or nihilism on the other.

The contemporary Protestant climate is suspicious of rational (or “natural”) theology as a basis for faith. In its place the tendency today is to stress faith as a product of “direct confrontation” of God subjectively and to consider the “quality” of that experience as self-authenticating.

First, if it be granted that any degree of knowledge whatever is a precondition to faith, then some role, however small, must be assigned to reason, for only reason knows how to identify and evaluate information.

Second, human reason, created in Adam and Eve as a trustworthy servant of the will, is in fallen man depraved and incapable of finding God (Rom. 8:7).

But though depraved, reason is not destroyed. Paul was not wasting his time when he spent hours and days arguing and debating in the synagogues. The remnant of right reason, though “aimed” away from God, may, like conscience in fallen man, give some light.

Faith and Love. To quote Spurgeon again: “Although we may not perhaps see it, there lies at the bottom of all love a belief in the object loved, as to its loveliness, its merit, or its capacity to make us happy. If I do not believe in a person, I cannot love him. If I cannot trust God, I cannot love Him.” As a corollary, we are moved to trust those whom we love. Indeed, we may say that faith is embraced in love, and thus the basic exhortation of both Testaments is “Thou shalt love.” True, love is not to be commanded, but it may be overwhelmingly attracted. That which attracts it is love, and “herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.… We love him because be first loved us” (1 John 4:10, 19).

How Faith Operates. Probably the key word is the preposition “through.” “By grace are ye saved through faith.…” On God’s side are the unsearchable riches of his grace; on man’s side, emptiness, drought, death. If man is to receive the water of life, there must be a channel, and that channel is faith. That channel need not be large nor perfect, for it is the reviving drop which is pure and efficacious. There is no merit in the channel, any more than there is reviving life in the dead pipe through which the water flows.

We must immediately distinguish between saving faith (“by grace are ye saved through faith …”) and living faith (“the just shall live by faith …” Heb. 10:38).

Saving faith is never spoken of in relative terms, for the consequence of faith is not relative: it is a passing from death unto life. One is either lost or saved, and the scale between the two conditions is not graduated.

Saving faith is not efficacious by reason either of its strength or the degree of its knowledge, but only by reason of its Object. The woman who touched Christ’s robe did so in almost complete ignorance, but she was healed. And so with Peter, when he began to sink beneath the boisterous waves: “Lord, save me.” And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” (Matt. 14:30, 31).

Saving faith, therefore, is nothing more nor less than reliant trust in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). It need be nothing more than this, for “by him, all that believe are justified from all things …” (Acts 13:39). “I give them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28). It can be nothing less than this, for “this is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4: 11, 12). “No man cometh unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6). “Through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43).

The difference between saving faith and living faith is the difference between a channel first opened, bringing life, and a channel continuingly and increasingly used, bringing power, victory, and honor. Just as Adam’s faith before the Fall manifested itself in deeds of obedience and fulfillment, so the regenerate, now in Christ, saved by His perfect obedience, and made partakers of the divine nature, live in ever-broadening dimensions. The inexhaustible riches of God’s power are available through faith (Matt. 17:20); and on the degree of our appropriation of that power, through the channel of faith, depends our earthly blessedness and our heavenly rewards (1 Cor. 5:10).

All may be summed up in two passages:

Saving faith: “This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:11, 12).

Living faith: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

Bibliography: G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification; J. Bright, The Kingdom of God; E. J. Carnell, Christian Commitment; J. Hick, Faith and Knowledge; J. G. Machen, What is Faith?; C. B. Martin, Religious Belief; A. Richardson, An Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament; C. H. Spurgeon and others, What Is Faith?; S. Thompson, A Modern Philosophy of Religion; B. B. Warfield, Biblical and Theological Studies, ed. by Samuel G. Craig.

Dean

Columbian College

George Washington University

Washington, D.C.

Not only is the word “repentance” a good one, but for the sinner it is an imperative for salvation. There was a time when it carried with it tremendous theological implications as well as personal meaning. We do not hear much about it today.

Apparently there are a number of reasons why so little is said about repentance in the churches. Few indeed are the sermons which stress its necessity. Many are the church members who have never been confronted with the fact of personal sin and the steps whereby it is forgiven.

Central to our failure to stress the necessity of repentance is our failure to sense the total holiness of God and the offense of sin to him. We are inclined to regard the Cross as a token of sentimental love rather than God’s only way of effecting man’s redemption. And because we have downgraded the fact and the effect of sin the need of repentance has faded into the limbo of a supposedly antiquated theology.

Supplanting in the minds of many the biblical concept of redemption there are many bizarre theories which bypass the need for true repentance.

Some would have us believe that there are no such persons as “lost sinners”; that all men are saved, they just do not know it. By this philosophy evangelism consists of telling people they are already redeemed by the love of God, rather than telling them they stand under the judgment of God as sinners and must repent and turn from their sins through faith in Christ.

Why repent if there is no hell, no eternal separation from God? Why repent if sin is no more than a combination of unfortunate circ*mstances which may be adjusted by education, a new environment or other human endeavor?

Why become involved in “an emotional binge” of self-accusation? Why repent if our offenses are primarily against our fellowmen and not against a holy God?

Does not the crux of the matter rest—and we repeat the assertion—in our misunderstanding of man’s sinfulness and the holiness of God?

Job thought himself a good man and spent long hours defending his integrity. Then he found himself confronted by a revelation of God which put things in their proper perspective. Repentant he cried out: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

David, guilty of adultery and murder, was confronted with the denunciation, “Thou art the man.” Then, realizing the enormity of his sins, he prayed in an agony of repentance: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight; that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest” (Ps. 51:4).

Repentance today is ignored because there is so little conviction of sin; so little understanding of its nature and its effect. God, speaking through his prophet Ezekiel, said: “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord God. Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin” (Ezek. 18:30).

How many of us have faced up to our own sinfulness? How many have asked the Holy Spirit to enable us to see sin as God sees it? When this takes place repentance follows, for we see ourselves for what we are and not what we would like to think we are.

The people of Israel, the recipients of God’s love, mercy and revelation, as are we today, turned from God to their own sinful ways, and personal and national judgment stood at the door. In Joel we read: “Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil” (Joel 2:12,13).

Repeantance, stressed in the Old Testament, comes into even clearer focus in the New. John the Baptist came preaching: “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). Later our Lord came preaching, and saying: “… repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). His disciples also “went out, and preached that men should repent” (Mark 6:12).

The vital role of repentance was stressed in our Lord’s observation about those Galileans whose blood Pilate had in derision mingled with their sacrifices: “Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:2,3).

As the apostles witnessed to the Resurrection of Christ they warned men everywhere to repent.

Paul tells us that the goodness of God should lead us to repentance, and distinguishes between worldly sorrow and godly repentance (2 Cor. 7:10).

The risen Lord says to the church in Ephesus: “Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent …; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent” (Rev. 2:5).

God is not mocked; his holiness, love and judgment continue today. To us he says, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent” (Rev. 3:19).

What are we doing about it in our own lives? Do we think we can hide our sins from the One of whom it is said: … “all things are naked and opened unto the eves of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:13).

Repentance is a very personal matter. No one can repent for the other for all stand individually under the condemnation of sin. One may rationalize it but it remains; deny it but it continues; ignore it but it is there.

Repentance involves the recognition of a condition, the admission of guilt, the confession of sin.

Repentance and confession have within them an element of spiritual catharsis, but of infinitely greater importance; they place us in the way of divine cleansing and forgiveness.

Why then is a matter of such grave concern so lightly treated today? Why are we so concerned about collective social sins while we ignore the personal sins from which the collective proceed?

Somewhere along the line we find ourselves standing guilty in silence before the sovereign God of all history. To us the Apostle Paul says: “Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?” (Rom. 2:4).

Our pulpits again need the voice of truth calling sin by its name and which at the same time calls for repentance, confession and faith in God’s Son—His provision for sinning and lost mankind.

No longer popular? Perhaps so, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be popular only to those saved by its power.