Page 6026 – Christianity Today (2024)

Clarence W. Jones

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

Television can be a beaming Buddha or a one-eyed ogre. It has become the most dominating and controversial servant of society in modern life, the most gluttonous consumer of attention ever to sit at civilization’s table. It is the popular educator of millions in and out of classrooms, the handy family counselor giving gratuitous guidance on moral values and social standards. It is the energetic and boisterous salesman to the nation’s households, now earning a three-billion-dollar salary from the public. In politics no image-maker shapes public opinion more forcefully than the TV screen.

TV is also the most expensive of the mass media. If time costs were not so absurdly high, perhaps television would be playing a much greater role as evangelist and missionary to the nation and the world. Yet, strangely enough, in overseas church endeavor, where ordinarily there is the least money, TV is doing a splendid job as proclaimer of the Gospel. Some Christian leaders commend television not only as one of the most outstanding achievements of modern science but also as God’s communications gift to his Church of the twentieth century, a gift making it possible to fulfill the goal of world-wide evangelization in this generation.

A notable demonstration of how the Church can use television came during the 1967 All-Britain Crusade of Billy Graham. In a bold and unprecedented move to reach multiplied masses of people outside London and Earl’s Court, the hub of the crusade, twenty-five other cities were linked together in a gigantic TV and landline network. Special projectors and giant screens brought Graham’s face and voice to thousands gathered in such places as theaters, converted tram-sheds, and city-hall auditoriums, all rented and prepared by volunteer local committeemen. Across the nation, viewers felt themselves a part of the crusade.

The entire technical services and facilities of the British Post Office system, which controls TV and radio outlets in that country, plus all the Eidophore cameras available in Europe, were utilized in the nine-day experiment in “evangelism-in-width,” and results far surpassed the most optimistic hopes. Two and one-half times as many people “attended” the crusade through these TV relay services outside London (543,000) as came to Earl’s Court itself (199,000). Of the total crusade attendance of one million for all meetings conducted, over one-half came to the TV relay points. Under the blessing of God, inquirers coming forward at TV meetings numbered 24,163, compared to 9,830 at Earl’s Court.

After a year-long evaluation of the All-Britain Crusade, staff members concluded that the evangelist’s message was as forceful in the relay centers as it was in the auditorium in which he spoke. Reporting on one of the relay centers, a writer said: “One of Plymouth’s most memorable services was the youth night on which Billy Graham spoke about the problems of sex. The standing-room-only audience of toughs, college students, and beatniks spent the first half hour in hissing, laughing, and clapping. Uninhibited and rowdy, they heckled the great screen as fiercely as if the figure before them were alive. But, as the evangelist continued, a new mood seemed to grip them. The turn came when a gang leader shouted, ‘Shut up, mates! I want to hear some of this.’ And silence fell. At the invitation, 248 inquirers went forward. It was the biggest response—about 12 per cent—of any audience at a Graham meeting.”

This use of television for a gospel witness to an entire nation is thrilling. The influence upon individuals and communities was immediate and immense. Young people in particular seemed responsive to this electronic evangelism.

Nothing comparable has yet been attempted in the United States, although single programs or series over TV networks have reached millions of viewers. Of the denominations, the Missouri Synod Lutherans and the Southern Baptists have the most ambitious programs and the largest array of outlets, numbering in the hundreds. Stephen Olford and Jack Wyrtzen are among the preachers who are greatly extending their local ministries using TV programming, the former to a great metropolis (New York) and the latter to youth across the nation. These efforts, which are drawing increasing audiences, are exploring TV frontiers for the Church as a whole. And yet the task has scarcely begun.

In Japan there is an effective, if spasmodic, gospel exposure by television. It is estimated that from 95 to 98 per cent of Japan’s 100 million people can now be reached by TV, a situation unrivaled in all the world. In addition to a vast radio coverage, the Pacific Broadcasting Association airs TV programs as often as it has enough money to do so. If one hundred years of missions saw only one-half of 1 per cent of the Japanese people become Christians, surely an all-out use of the nation’s television facilities is demanded, in addition to continuing missionary work. How else can this staggering number of people be reached? Here is one of today’s stellar opportunities. The equivalent of the annual salaries of ten missionaries would pay for a whole series of gospel TV programs.

In another sector of the world, a pioneer missionary radio station at Quito, Ecuador, began transmitting in 1931. Eight years ago HCJB added to its “Voice of the Andes” the “Window of the Andes” through HCJB-TV. In 1959, television sets were unknown in Ecuador. However, an attractive TV schedule of cultural, public-service, and religious programs has resulted in the development of an audience in Quito. There are now thousands of TV sets, chiefly in the homes of diplomats and the upperclass professional and business people—a provocative and challenging audience. Approximately 50,000 viewers tune in to HCJB-TV nightly, and to these are gradually being added others who cannot afford to buy a set but who can look in on publicly installed receivers and on sets owned by friends. One priest reportedly charges his friends twenty-five cents to look at HCJB programs.

At first Quito’s TV viewers were cautious, even suspicious, about responding. Now they write or phone freely to discuss programs they have seen. During series of televised evangelistic meetings, the evangelist now holds open forum by telephone with the audience after his message. Immediate contact is established with the TV listeners as their questions of concern (sometimes abuse) are answered quickly, openly, and earnestly from God’s Word. Each inquirer is encouraged to come to the station to have a consultation and obtain literature, and possibly to purchase a Bible. Many have accepted Christ. A special church meeting for TV converts is held Sunday afternoons, for worship and instruction.

HCJB urgently needs experts in educational TV to join the Quito staff in producing “University of the Air” programs directed to students. This is a project that HCJB has long envisioned. It could easily have official sanction and status, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education. Educational extension radio programming was begun early in HCJB’s history, and teachers eagerly accepted small fix-tuned radio receivers for their classrooms. Now the door is open for a similar use of TV, which would give the educational system prestige among other countries of Latin America.

Although the mountainous terrain around Quito interferes with good TV reception, antennas installed high above the city, nearly 12,000 feet above sea level, make excellent reception possible for fifty miles up and down the valley. Other cities are wanting to “go modern” like Quito, the capital. They have petitioned HCJB-TV to set up repeater stations that will bring programs to their areas. One city of 30,000, Ambato, is already being served in this way. The Ecuadorean government is anxious to collaborate with HCJB-TV in trying to reach the northernmost part of the country, where people now have access only to programs from Colombia.

How did HCJB-TV get started? One man ventured with God to build a TV station for the mission field. Giff Hartwell, engineer with General Electric in New York State, started with bits and pieces he bought himself, winding up months later (with help from friends) with a full-fledged TV transmitter complete with a three-camera chain, monitors, and all accessories. Although he did not know where the equipment was to go, in time he felt led to give it to the World Radio Missionary Fellowship, the society that operates HCJB. And he and his wife gave themselves with the station to operate it in Quito. As a result, today HCJB not only operates on three 100,000-watt transmitters as one of the world’s largest shortwave stations but is also abreast of many television opportunities.

Both at home and overseas there is a crying need for more men and women like the Hartwells who have professional experience, a knowledge of God’s Word, and a strong desire to win souls. Pioneers in Christian TV will soon find themselves in the center of the action in Christianity today. Needed are artists, musicians, engineers, announcers, technicians, actors, cameramen, photographers, producers, writers, reporters, film librarians and editors, specialists in lighting, costuming, and make-up. In addition there is a great need for capable, far-sighted administrators, as well as for secretaries, accountants, and workers in the personnel, training, public-relations, and promotion fields.

The really great frontiers for Christianity today lie in the air. Leadership and “followship” in the Church must combine to use these golden communication channels to the full. Fortunes now rusting in bank vaults should be taken out and put to work for God in this generation. Pools of manpower now stagnating must be tapped to provide flowing streams of fresh energy at strategic points. And above all, there is need for concentrated prayer on the part of Christians.

In gospel TV, the greatest happenings are yet to come. Continuing scientific discoveries and inventions will quickly carry the communications world far ahead of where it is now. Television stations will be able to send programs via satellite to homes anywhere in the world. Laser light beams, carrying sight as well as sound, promise to revolutionize the whole concept of TV signal transmission. “Liquid crystals,” now in the experimental stage, are expected to give us TV sets as thin as a book. With sophisticated missile circuitry using the ubiquitous transistor, TV sets will be as common and cheap as radio sets. Someday we may wear a TV set like a wrist-watch, and have it energized by body heat.

Expo ’67 technical experts were able to bind the world in a living communications belt for two history-making hours. In June, 1967, they brought together television signals, via satellites, from nineteen countries, transmitting and receiving instantly and in perfectly timed sequence various segments of programs from overseas. These segments were fused into a thrilling mosaic of “Man and His World.” Where are those whom God will use in our day to outperform even this daring feat—to produce a program transmitted from missionary and other TV stations around the world, each sending its segment of testimony and gospel witness to the glory of “God in His World”?

The Church must realize that the world community is on its doorstep. Has it something meaningful to say? If so, how soon? Over every nation await the airlanes, now vacant of gospel witness. Let us airlift the Gospel over and around every obstacle to reach its destination, human hearts.

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

- More fromClarence W. Jones

George Morrel

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

Many in Western countries are surprised to learn that significant theological work has been done by Russians in the twentieth century. We are so accustomed to thinking of the Germans as the most articulate theologians overseas that we may overlook the very considerable contribution of Russian thinkers.

Theological activity is relatively recent in Russia, having taken its rise during the era of Metropolitan Philaret Drozdov of Moscow (1782–1867). Metropolitan Philaret was active in the formation of the Russian Bible Society early in the last century and is also well known as the author of the Long Catechism of the Russian Church. With him, Russian theology began to flower, and the work was continued in the nineteenth century by such theologians and philosophers of religion as Metropolitan Makarii Bulgakov, Bishop Sylvester, Golubinsky, Khomyakov, and, best known in Western countries, Vladimir Solovyov.

Solovyov died in 1900, but his influence has continued until the present time. Among those greatly influenced by him are the eminent twentieth-century theologians Paul Florensky and Sergei Bulgakov.

The Russian Church, like the rest of the Orthodox communion, claims to be a scriptural church. It is conservative in interpreting Scripture and gives very considerable weight to the exegetical work of the old Church Fathers. John Chrysostom is an often quoted and often appealed to commentator, but the biblical scholarship of Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa and Cyril of Alexandria also enjoys high repute.

Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1944), surely one of the major systematic theologians of our time, affirms the full authority and supremacy of the Bible as the Word of God. The Word of God is the primary and unique source of Christian doctrine. The Bible has a certain self-validating quality, and has the capacity to confront the individual man with God’s truth. Tradition, of which Orthodox theology makes so much, is, says Bulgakov, based upon Scripture and receives its authenticity from that fact. Tradition supports itself by Scripture; it is an interpretation of Scripture.

Bulgakov points out that Orthodoxy, unlike Rome, tends to keep dogma or defined doctrines to a minimum. The one fundamental Christian dogma is Peter’s confession: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” All other specifically Christian doctrine, says Bulgakov, can be traced back to this. He points out that faith in Christ is also faith in the Trinity, for Christ is sent by the Father and sends the Holy Spirit. Naturally, trinitarian doctrine is incompatible with rationalism; nevertheless, there is no authentic Christian life apart from faith in the Trinity. As to the filioque clause, disputed between East and West, Bulgakov points out that the Holy Spirit proceeds through the Son.

Man was made in the image of God but has become enslaved to nature and passions through sin. Hence Christ came as our Sin-bearer, to make to the Father a sacrifice of propitiation. But beyond being an act of rescue, the Incarnation was a new creation. Christ deified human nature. Man cannot merit God’s favor, but must receive for himself this immense gift of participation in the new humanity in Christ. Bulgakov teaches a doctrine of free grace.

Although Bulgakov has become known in Western countries mainly for the more speculative elements in his thought, it is important to note the central scriptural themes in so much of his theology. The authority of Scripture as the Word of God, its ability to authenticate itself, the understanding of tradition as an interpretation of Scripture, the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, the assertion of free grace, and the rejection of the doctrine of merit—all these motifs sound familiar to every heir of the Reformation.

The same year in which Bulgakov died (1944) there appeared in Paris the first edition of The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church by the Russian-born lay theologian Vladimir Lossky. An English translation of this important book appeared about ten years later. In Lossky, as in Bulgakov, we find a major systematic theologian.

Lossky stresses the transcendence of God, his mysterious unknowability, “the divine darkness.” The negative or apophatic theology looms large in his system. This he bases on the Greek Fathers, and especially on the work of the Pseudo-Dionysius. Lossky’s theology is profoundly trinitarian, though he sees in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the highest point of revelation, an antinomy. Like Bulgakov, Lossky is anti-rationalist.

According to Lossky, God is unknowable in his essence but can be known in his “uncreated energies.” Thus it is that the Holy Trinity can be incommunicable and yet come to dwell within us. The energies, shining forth from the eternal essence, form the basis for the Orthodox doctrine of grace.

This idea of God’s “uncreated energies” corresponds roughly with the notion of God’s attributes in Western theology. The notion that God is in any sense composite is, however, as vigorously resisted in the East as in the West. A key doctrine in Lossky’s theology is the idea of salvation as participation in the Divine Life or in the Divine Energies. This is what he means by “deification” or “partaking of the Divine Nature.” This doctrine, which at first blush may seem puzzling to those who have been conditioned by the Reformation, is broadly equivalent to the evangelical idea of sanctification.

The eschatological note is strong in Lossky, as in so many other recent Russian theologians. He sees the Holy Spirit as “fulfiller,” and the triumph of the Kingdom as plenary fulfillment. The Easter motif is the eschatological theme that is central to Lossky’s vision of the consummation of the age.

A close friend of Bulgakov was Paul Florensky, certainly one of the most colorful figures on the theological scene in our century or any other. Not only a theologian but also an electrical engineer, a physicist, a historian of art, and a poet, Florensky scandalized Soviet scientific meetings by attending them in cassock and priest’s cap. His eminence in the scientific and engineering fields was very considerable, but his individualistic behavior finally provoked the Soviet authorities into putting him into a concentration camp, where he is thought to have died in 1945 or 1946.

Florensky’s major theological work is The Pillar and Ground of Truth, published in Moscow in 1914, and in Berlin about fifteen years later. The book attracted much attention from the first, and many of its bold ideas were considered to be rather para-Orthodox. Florensky’s system of theology is strongly influenced by the thought of Vladimir Solovyov and his mystical idea of total unity. In epistemology, Florensky defends the view of “reasonable intuition.” Faith, however, is essential to his system, and is that which leads us from despair and to Wisdom (Sophia).

Solovyov’s doctrine of Wisdom had much influence upon both Bulgakov and Florensky. St. Paul affirms that the Logos is the Divine Wisdom, and Russian sophiology takes its departure from this. There is a further idea of a “created sophia,” which is similar to the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. Many of the more conservative Orthodox churchmen have expressed misgivings about this sophiology.

Leo Shestov (1866–1938), a native of Kiev, is another significant Russian theological thinker of this period. Shestov is essentially theocentric; his theology, like that of Barth, is anti-rationalistic. Shestov came under the influence of the novelist Dostoyevsky and hence is regarded by some as an existentialist. He is strongly antisecularist and bases his theology—as did the Reformers—on faith and revelation. His major work is Athens and Jerusalem, published in 1938.

A leading figure in the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in this century, as well as a theologian of no mean ability, was Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsy, who died in exile in 1936. Metropolitan Anthony was a strong monarchist and highly conservative in politics; when the revolution of 1917 came on he was Archbishop of Kiev. Leaving the country with the White Armies, he was active in assembling the emigré monarchist bishops into what is now known as the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (the Church Abroad). This group has always been strongly anti-Communist, and does not recognize the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Moscow. Its headquarters were at first in Yugoslavia and then in Munich, and are now in New York. It has numerous parishes in the United States and maintains an important theological seminary at Jordanville, New York.

Metropolitan Anthony, whose published works run into several volumes in excellent literary Russian, formulates a theological system that can perhaps be called theo-anthropologism. He points out that in scientism there is an implicit religious veneration of the “laws” of nature; in defending theism he also defends the doctrine of the immanence of God in the world. He has an idea of the penetration of God into the world. Likewise he is a personalist, holding that human nature is open and unfinished, so to speak. He makes a distinction between human nature and human personality. As man becomes more mature, he says, he progresses from the category of “I” to the category of “we.” He believes that the overcoming of the alienation of man from man is best achieved in the Church. One of Metropolitan Anthony’s principal works in systematic theology is a collection under the title Moral Aspects of the Main Orthodox Christian Dogmas, an edition of which appeared in Montreal in 1963.

In the second half of the century, two significant theologians of Russian ancestry and education have emerged in the United States: John Meyendorff and Alexander Schmemann. Both are connected with St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Academy in New York, of which Schmemann is dean. Schmemann, who was a student of Bulgakov at the famous St. Sergei’s Theological Institute, is active in ecumenical affairs. His specialty is liturgical theology, which has to do with the meaning of worship. In order to understand this emphasis, we must bear in mind the intensely liturgical character of the Orthodox Church and its mystical-realistic grasp of the significance of worship. The principle lex orandi lex credendi applies in Orthodoxy as in no Western Christian community, possibly excepting Anglicanism.

One of the most important of Schmemann’s theses is that the biblical understanding of time reappears in the worship of the Christian Church. Scripture sees time as always under God’s management and always deriving its meaning from God’s saving acts in history. Time is never “natural” time but always takes its significance from the fact that it is God’s time. Time also looks toward future time, that is, toward the end of time.

Christ has restored fallen creation after sin. The Lord’s Day, therefore, is a memorial of the new creation, just as the Old Testament Sabbath was a memorial of the first creation. Likewise, the Lord’s Day looks forward to the consummation of the age, to the Day of the Lord, which is, in a sense, actualized in it. The Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist, is likewise an actualization of the victory of Christ and an actualization of the New Eon. Schmemann affirms that only cult can manifest the transcendent, though he asserts the priority of faith and doctrine over cult. Schmemann’s theology is scriptural, thus bearing further witness to the biblical orientation of so much in Orthodoxy.

Another important Russian theologian working in the United States, having come to this country some years after the Bolshevik revolution, is George Florovsky. His Ways of Russian Theology is a classic in the field, though unfortunately long out of print. One hopes that this important work will be reprinted and made available to a wider circle of students of Russian theology. Florovsky bases his theology meticulously on the Word of God and the interpretations of the Church Fathers. He rejects the doctrine of total unity as being inconsistent with the biblical doctrine of creation, and likewise rejects the sophiology of Bulgakov and Florensky.

Florovsky sees in modern theology a weapon against godlessness and the rebellion against God so characteristic of our age. He thinks the twentieth century, in Russia and elsewhere, has witnessed the possession of men’s minds by demonic forces, which a return to the disciplines of a sound theology can heal.

Perhaps a word should be said about the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, the only remaining Russian Orthodox theological review published in the Soviet Union. It has appeared monthly for the past twenty-five years, but the fact that no price or subscription rate appears on it suggests that it is not for general sale. Indeed, there is some reason to think that its circulation may be wider outside the country than in it.

Each month the Journal publishes, in addition to church news, several theological articles. These are very often historical, dealing with some Church Father or some theologian of the past. Not infrequently there are articles on biblical themes, always from what would be regarded in the West as a conservative point of view. Occasionally theological articles translated from Western languages appear. Among theologians in the Soviet Union who have published scholarly articles in recent issues of the Journal are Uspensky, Shabatin, Pavlov, Pariisky, and Georgiyevsky. Articles by Russian theologians resident in other countries, including Vladimir Lossky, have appeared also.

Russian theology has affinities with the theology of the Reformation in that it appeals to the sources, to Scripture and the Fathers of the ancient church. We must not forget that one of the great contributions of some of the major Reformers was their reawakening of interest in patristic thought. Calvin in particular was thoroughly conversant with the Church Fathers, Eastern as well as Western, and quoted them frequently. It would not be an exaggeration to say that he was the first scientific patrologist of the post-medieval era. The English Reformers, and particularly Archbishop Cranmer, were patristic scholars and had a good knowledge of the Greek Fathers. This undoubtedly accounts for much of the Greek patristic flavor in so many aspects of the English Reformation and in Anglican attitudes.

The principal roots of Russian theology are likewise to be found in the theology of the Greek Fathers. While the Russian Church seriously claims to be scriptural, its tendency is to read Scripture through the eyes of the old Church Fathers and particularly the Greek Fathers. Its feeling seems to be that the Fathers are the most reliable commentators upon Scripture. But, as we have seen, most of the Reformers likewise regarded the Fathers as authoritative interpreters of the Word of God.

- More fromGeorge Morrel

Harold B. Kuhn

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

H. Marshall McLuhan has been variously described as a Canadian Nkrumah who has joined the assault on reason, a very creative man who hits very large nails not quite on the head, and the most important thinker since Newton, Darwin, Freud, and Einstein.

The phenomenal growth of communications tools and techniques has inspired much comment, particularly since the launching of communications satellites. Earlier discussion tended to be quantitative. Some writers, however, foresaw the hidden qualitative implications of new media. McLuhan is the foremost of these.

Born in 1911 of Baptist parents in Manitoba, McLuhan was converted to Catholicism in the late 1930s while studying at Trinity College, Cambridge. Some accounts trace the impetus for the conversion to his reading of G. K. Chesterton’s What’s Wrong with the World.

McLuhan has concerned himself chiefly with three areas: first, the typographic revolution which had its start in the fifteenth century when Gutenberg invented printing with movable type; second, the electronic revolution and its implications; and third, reduction of the world of electronic circuitry to the terms of “the medium is the message.”

McLuhan’s book The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) continues many emphases found in his 1951 work, The Mechanical Bride. He argues that the invention of printing eventually changed not only man’s way of acquiring knowledge but his whole thinking process and way of life. Before then, man is said to have lived in an ear-oriented world. With the advent of Gutenberg, the ear was replaced by the eye as primary receiver of communication. The wide dissemination of printed matter produced “the typographic man,” McLuhan says, and ushered in a “linear-mechanical era” of five centuries’ duration.

McLuhan attaches great importance to the fact that in reading printed matter, man is exposed to ideas or concepts one after another, in sequence rather than simultaneously. In this literate man, the sense of sight predominates. People are less dependent upon one another than they were in the old tribal society, in which information got around primarily by word of mouth. He feels that the differences between the literate (post-Gutenberg) and pre-literate (pre-Gutenberg) societies are enormous. The kind of thinking that proceeds out of a pattern of reading—taking ideas one at a time, sequentially—affects virtually every facet of human existence, he says.

McLuhan sees the dominance of printing as we know it as the culmination of a process that began with the Greco-Roman period and was continued to some degree during the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages. Beginning with the fifteenth century, the struggle between the visual and aural-tactile ended with a victory for the visual. Participation of the other senses was minimized.

But the technological era that grew out of the typographical culture has led to an electronic revolution that, ironically enough, has reversed the drift. The new media like telephone, radio, and television are bringing us back to the old tribal method of getting information primarily by hearing it. These media tend to invite a great deal more involvement and participation by the human senses. Therefore, McLuhan says, people today using these media gain knowledge in more depth. They have a broader outlook on things in general, and are said to reproduce what prevailed in ancient tribal villages, where things were known in depth by all members of the small society, and at virtually the same time.

Television is said to reproduce this on a global scale. It demands in-depth participation of the whole being, McLuhan says—“it engages you.” Moreover, it makes possible “corporate participation”; a whole nation at once can be involved in the funeral of a national leader, for example. Mankind can return to the supposedly wonderful world of the auditory. McLuhan sees a new form of tribalism emerging.

With the emergence of the new world of juxtaposed modes of perception, there is said to be appearing also a new form of human consciousness in which patterns of such responses as guilt are radically altered. Guilt becomes something that everyone feels; in a world of total involvement, a mass culture in which everyone is profoundly involved with everyone else, private guilt is a thing of the past. McLuhan acknowledges gratefully James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, where he finds new insights into the collective consciousness. He is persuaded that when there is a change in the ratio in which men use their senses, men themselves are altered. Thus he envisions a new type of humanity, fashioned along the lines of pre-literate men, in which the acoustic (and olfactory and tactile) modes predominate over the visual.

The theme “The medium is the message” appears variously in The Gutenberg Galaxy and in Understanding Media (1964), and a pun on that theme became the title of his 1967 volume, The Medium Is the Massage. This formula encases the thesis that all modes of communication are but extensions of our physical organs and physical capacities. For example, clothes are the extension of the skin, the telegraph the externalization of the central nervous system. Electric circuitry is thus seen to be a projection of man’s entire cerebral-neural structure.

McLuhan is persuaded, further, that for all practical purposes, the medium is identical with the message it transmits. As extensions of the human sensory equipment, which is intimately related to the knowing process, media for communication subsume that which they bear. This is especially true, he says, when linear sequence gives way to juxtaposition or to simultaneous presentation. McLuhan’s example here is cubism in art, by which all sides and dimensions are presented, without attempt at perspective. The centralism of the linear era gives way to sensory, “mosaic” forms of apprehension. The “cinema-literate” person seldom sees pure data but finds meaning and pattern in the communication process itself.

Thus television, for example, simply as a result of its mosaic pattern, is held to structure not only new types of perception but also new forms of motivation. The demonic possibilities here center in the ability of such a medium to hypnotize through the isolation of one of the senses. This seems to be the rationale of McLuhan’s assertion that the medium is the message.

McLuhan thus far has not ventured into traditionally religious categories, but one of his well-informed students speculates that he may do so in the third of a trilogy of books he is now preparing.

His system, an ambitious one, seems to be open to several serious criticisms. It seems clearly to overwork the concept of historical discontinuity. At times McLuhan seems to suggest a sharp division of history at about 1460, the date of the popularizing of printing with movable type. At other times he makes allowance for a more gradual type of detribalization of Western man. It seems clear that this attempt at a philosophy of history is open to two major objections: first, it is too simplistic and narrowly based; and second, it uses a questionable category, namely detribalization, for understanding the course of modernization.

Again, this system seems to overwork one aspect of Western culture, typography. Although printing did tend toward uniformity and repeatability, cultural change is far more complex than McLuhan would have us to believe. It is far from clear that typography is a determining factor in the fixing of language, to say nothing of thought-forms.

McLuhan may be challenged also at the point of his deterministic view of human history and culture. We are far from certain that it is technological discovery that invariably shapes man’s physical environment and unerringly guides its modifications. His system is not less deterministic because he makes information and its transmission the initiator of cultural change. If the medium is the message, then man is still determined by technology.

This form of deterministic thinking minimizes or neglects the shaping role of other forces known to the historiographer. Can a writer seeking to trace a philosophy of history afford to neglect the shaping role of strong personalities, or of geographic or economic factors? One gets the impression that McLuhan is so enamored with the role of a particular mode of presentation that he overlooks all other causal factors.

His system is open to further criticism for impoverishing the human psyche. There is a richness in man’s inner life that is far too great to be a prisoner of the media of expression. McLuhan’s psychology seems to this writer to be as simplistic as his understanding of history.

His view of the phonetic alphabet seems exaggerated and doctrinaire. He opens himself to question when he asserts that the alphabet is a simple construct of symbols that are semantically and epistemologically meaningless. Certainly some phonetic symbols have more sensory power than others; such expressions as “Alpha and Omega” were more meaningful in the early Church than, for example “Chi and Tau.” But to regard the alphabet as semantically and sensorially meaningless is to overlook such usages as the onomatopoeic and the metonymic. Here McLuhan is overly entranced with a theory.

Again, does not McLuhan fall into the error of supposing that electronic media have a univocal use—that is, that they have no other function than that which they now serve? In maintaining, for example, that television does at present produce a given type of person, he ought also to recognize that this medium has both beneficial and demonic uses. No harm would be done if he were to regard its present use as in part a misuse.

Finally, McLuhan seems to be doctrinaire in his depreciation of structure and rational discourse. Mental processes are not necessarily faulty because they are linear, analytic, and low-keyed in sensory involvement. It seems to this writer that McLuhan is completely unrealistic in assuming that a message of articulated and logical form (such as that of the Christian Evangel) is no longer meaningful in a world of multi-medium presentation. Nor can one agree that it was only the use of linear type that made the Bible a credible book, so that it is meaningless in a context of other presentation forms. Religious determinism is as difficult to defend as cultural and linguistic determinism.

Let the Christian Church ponder well the meaning of available electronic media for the articulation and projection of its message. It will do well, further, to take the most serious note of the changes in the public climate as a result of electric circuitry. But let the Church not forget the demonic possibilities latent in media that drain presentation of content and produce only formless and unstructured impressions. The age of literacy will without doubt be with us for a long time, and an Almighty Heart seems still desirous of projecting Jesus Christ into the mentality of man as the Eternal Word.

- More fromHarold B. Kuhn

M. Whitcomb Hess

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

Gordon Wheeler, Roman Catholic bishop of Leeds, said in an essay in the London Tablet (7/8/67) that our age seems weak in its sense of history. Interestingly enough, the observation occurs in a discussion of what the bishop calls our “crisis of spirituality.” Our flight from the supernatural and rejection of fundamental Christian priorities, according to Bishop Wheeler, might be lessened by a renewed sense of past heroism:

There are those who say that we should forget the past. It is true that sometimes the past is best forgotten. But the great heroes of the past must always be remembered and honoured. Our Lord Himself loved to speak of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David and the Prophets. These men were an inspiration to all of God’s people.

Our age, which has been called almost officially the “Age of Anxiety,” stands particularly in need of inspiration from persons of the past who loved truth for its own sake and who put spiritual values first—the men and women who are indeed for all seasons. One of many in this category is the poet Crashaw, whose depth of Christian persuasion carries no propagandizing at all but only the joy that came from his own living knowledge of the faith.

Richard Crashaw (1613–1649), one of the “metaphysicals,” as Dryden named the group of seventeenth-century English poets that included George Herbert and John Donne, lived at the beginning of the ill-fated Age of Reason. He had just passed his twenty-fourth birthday and was still at Cambridge in 1637, when Descartes’s epoch-making “Discourse” first appeared. As was true of the other metaphysicals, Crashaw’s intellect remained untouched by the so-called new enlightenment; his reason stayed loyally under the domination of revealed Christian truth. The asceticism and singlehearted devotion to truths of the spirit of this “poet and saint,” as his contemporary Abraham Cowley named Crashaw, are mentioned as outstanding traits by all who wrote of him.

Crashaw’s extraordinary command of poetic imagery and verse technique makes his religious poetry unforgettable. At the end of World War I, Constance Spender spoke of Crashaw’s poetry in these words:

All the young who have fought for freedom, and who have a vision of truth and justice for which they often agonize and despair, should read this poetry full of visions—in which there is no trace of agony or despair—full of an ecstasy and a brightness that nothing can dim nor dash.

Life in Stuart England was not particularly easy for the young cleric at Cambridge, any more than for anyone else. He was born three years before Shakespeare’s death and died the year Charles I was beheaded, and his life spanned a period of governmental and social chaos. Yet he found quietness and rest because he found, as Miss Spender suggests, truth and justice; and he found them at their very Source. No wonder his verses contain no trace of agony or despair but remain full of ecstasy and brightness.

Crashaw delighted in paradox, but only in the interest of simplicity. Paradox serves as a pathway toward sacred mysteries such as the Incarnation and the Trinity, which will someday be shown to be infinitely simple and harmonious. Indeed, paradox is often the only way the finite can accept divine truth. From the simple charm of such lines as these on the Nativity,

He left His Father’s court, and came

Lightly as a lambent flame

Leaping upon the hills, to be

The humble King of you and me,

to such an “incarnational paradox” as “Illi non locus est, quo sine nec locus est” (“There is no place for Him without Whom there is no place”), his religious message is as clear as it is profound. Not only does Crashaw think with the saints; he also thinks with the philosophers. And he follows the highest teaching of Greek philosophy (e.g., in Aristotle’s “The world and all that happens in it is the longing of matter after God”) by giving its Christian equivalent as he cries to the Babe of Bethlehem:

O little All! in Thy embrace

The world lies warm and likes its place.

His haunting word pictures teach much as did those of St. Francis four centuries before him, and his poetry burns with the fire in which man’s real self lives, the fire of the spirit. It was the late Irish poet A.E. who declared that “we must pass like smoke or live within the spirit’s fire,” and Crashaw did live in the one sphere in which a human being can be true to himself. “In the fire of love we live,” sang A.E. in his poem “Immortality.” Or, he adds, “we pass by many ways, by the unnumbered ways of dream to death,” for there is no other alternative. Thus Crashaw, writing on that shield of faith which is prayer, called prayer not only a shield but a whole armory. He once described a prayerbook:

It is the armory of Light.

Let constant use but keep it bright.

Certainly there is no desire in Crashaw for “tolerance” of all religion, including some odd, low, and pitiable opinions of God outside Christianity. He was too honest a philosopher not to recognize that the desire to give a respectful hearing to all men’s opinions about what God is, is in actuality a diabolical way of denying that God exists. The Love that Crashaw pronounced “absolute sole Lord of life and death” is no more successfully represented in any lesser religion than Christianity than it is in what the world in its caprice falsely aligns it with, namely, sexuality. What Bishop Wheeler in the article mentioned above calls the need for the “conscious priority of God” is what Crashaw liked to call a “supernatural Dawn.” Such a Dawn he envisioned enveloping the Magi on their way to Bethlehem. In his poem on the Magi, Crashaw contrasts the true Light with what the first rationalists were already calling “enlightenment.” The warning in the following lines is to the point as he speaks of the Wise Men who had been lost in their paganism; for they

… strangely went astray

Lost in a bright

Meridian night,

A darkness made of too much day.

“Bright meridian night” (with the explanatory line that it was “a darkness made of too much day”) shows something of the poet’s sure perceptivity in difficult theological matters. The increasingly unhappy results of the blinding of men by their own minds as they put those minds in opposition to revelation were to appear in the centuries after Crashaw throughout Europe and America.

But Crashaw would be little help to an era like ours, one when so many people around us are losing their faith, if he had been merely negative. His stress, first to last, is not so much on the either/or offered man—God or Mammon—as it is on his surety of God and the self. He spoke from his own experience when he said that “the eager Heavens devise ways” proportionate to the immediate needs of men who appeal to those Heavens. His faith speaks in such remarkable metaphors as, “Hope walks and kicks the curled heads of conspiring stars.” The glory of Richard Crashaw—and of how many other Christians, known or unknown, through the ages—is that his truth needed no test of time.

He was a contemporary of the German mystic Angelus Silesius, whose accent was also on the Light, that is, the truth in the Spirit that makes all things new. Who could know this better than the young poet who, exiled from Cambridge by Cromwell, saw with shocked eyes, as he wrote a friend in 1643, that in the great church of St. Peter in Leyden, “in the place of the saints that heretofore it seems had usurped the window,” had been set up “the plain pagan Pallas, cap-a-pie, with spear and helmet and owl and all.” Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom, was not to be mentioned in the same breath with those heroes of the will, the saints, who confessed our Lord as Saviour and as life’s Guide and thus might live, not according to the decrees of a blind fate but by faith and hope and love, a life transformed.

This overt return to paganism Crashaw saw as a mental breakdown no less than a moral one. The ancient seers like Socrates had some inkling of the fact that the two breakdowns go together in the great discovery that the soul and consciousness are inextricable. When Christianity came to the Western world, the ground had indeed been prepared for it by the Greeks, and prepared by that same insistence that man’s consciousness and his soul are inseparable. Among the notable heirs of this heritage are such converts as Augustine, Ambrose, and even St. Paul. By no accident did the early Church Fathers study the ancient classics. But it must be remembered that they took from them only what was good and saved only the good for mankind’s use. We find St. Paul quoting Menander (1 Cor. 15:33), Aratus (Acts 17:28), Epimenides (Titus 1:12) with approval; and he must have thought with gratitude too of Socrates and his successors, who viewed the soul as a sensorium of eternal realities. Nor should it be forgotten that Socrates opposed the worship of the old Greek gods because of their palpable crimes. Surely the Sage of Athens suspected something at least of the truth that was revealed to the Hebrew prophets but came with full force and completeness only in the Christian revelation: that man’s defiant will underlies both his lack of wisdom and his criminality.

In one of Crashaw’s “sacred” poems in the volume Steps to the Temple (1648) we find the hymn, “To the Name Above Every Name, The Name of Jesus.” It begins,

I sing the Name which none can say

But touched with an interior ray.

It is in this long poem that his consistently Christ-centered muse is most at home. If its 249 lines are as meaningful as they are musical—twin criteria for any poem—the reason is in the perfection with which they celebrate Christ’s mastery of the mind, singing of “the hidden sweets / Which man’s heart meets” therein. In the midst of his own rapture and surety he turns back to martyrs of the past, exclaiming:

O, that it were as it was wont to be!

When Thy old friends of fire, all full of Thee,

Fought against frowns with smiles; gave glorious chase

To persecutions; and against the face

Of death and fiercest dangers, durst with brave

And sober pace march on to meet a grave.

Among the young poet-preacher’s so-called divine epigrams on various biblical texts, we find his lines on Acts 21, “I am ready not only to be found but to die”:

Come death, come bands, nor do you shrink, my ears,

At those hard words man’s cowardice calls fears;

Save those of fear, no other bands fear I;

No other death than this: the fear to die.

To return to the hymn above: even as Crashaw invokes “the gracious Guest”

Demytholoyizing The Evangelicals

The time has come, I think, to demythologize the American evangelicals. Somebody needs to strip away the cozy myths on which conservative frontiersmen fall to sleep at night and by which they delude themselves by day.

While most evangelicals primp themselves for tomorrow’s customary stroll through the secular city, signs of the times point to very stormy weather in the morning. And few evangelical forecasters seem to detect the ominous clouds.

In recent months faulty terrain-following radar was blamed for the United States Air Force’s loss of seven new F-111 airplanes; instead of repelling the North Vietnamese, each crashed in its turn and all failed in their mission. Later the cause of failure was said to lie elsewhere. But a faulty reading of the present tide of apostasy and unbelief may be well-nigh fatal to American Christianity in the next decade.

I see a rising tide of anti-clericalism in America, and many evangelicals complacent about it and even gratified by it. I see a falling-away of church attendance, particularly in mainstream churches, and many evangelicals rejoicing in it. I see a weakening of support for many long-established religious enterprises, and some evangelicals counting it all gain.

I also see—though some of my evangelical compatriots do not—a significant decline, in American Christianity, threatening to reach, perhaps within a decade, to the low level of European Protestantism current in this generation. If this occurs, only a small percentage of church members (and an even smaller percentage of the population) will attend preaching services. Evangelistic and missionary agencies will use capital reserves to meet annual budgets that were projected by an earlier generation within its current giving. Moreover, the secular community will hold the clergy in less respect than the newscaster and the stockbroker.

What is worse, I have the uneasy feeling—very uneasy—that evangelicals may be contributing unwittingly to the tide and tempest of this sad situation. And I am not thinking only about the matter of neglected evangelism. Unfortunately, evangelicals are most widely heard and publicized, not for the winsome exposition of a powerful alternative to contemporary religious currents, but for their denunciations of the political clergy, of ecumenical subversion, of the corruption of modern Christianity. In the secular milieu today, anyone who invites men to a Christian commitment must often overcome barriers that evangelicals or fundamentalists have themselves put in the way of an eager response.

I am convinced that evangelical Christianity can afford the luxury of even wholly necessary criticism only when in the act of criticism it shows itself to be the bearer of truth and righteousness and power and love in the world. When its impact centers mainly in flame-throwing defoliation of the ecclesiastical environment, or in the remote bombing of non-evangelical targets, the odds increase with every mission that it too may become a casualty of the conflict.

Some fifteen years ago, in my California days, I was active in Great Books discussion groups and had several television opportunities to press the Christian perspective in open dialogue, as well as to teach these books by the Socratic method. In this effort I assisted the Pacific Coast director for Great Books, a brilliant young lawyer, who had himself become convinced that naturalism invites the dead end of personal meaning and of civilization. I recall a day when, after I had witnessed to him about Christ, we pulled the car to the curb and prayed together. He told me that he was not far from a personal commitment, and that it could not be in the barren dimensions of Protestant modernism but had to be within either historic Roman Catholicism or evangelical Christianity. We talked at some length about the issues at stake in these alternatives. Because of my move to Washington, some years passed before I renewed contact with this gifted intellectual. When we corresponded again, I learned that he had become a convert to Roman Catholicism. I asked him about the deciding factor. “I attended the numerous churches,” my friend told me, “for an advance exposure to what I would be hearing from the pulpit. In evangelical churches where the Gospel was preached, I almost invariably heard ministers going out of their way to criticize fellow ministers and other churches, even evangelical churches. But I never heard a priest criticize his church or a fellow priest from the pulpit. [American Catholicism has changed very noticeably since then!] The more I thought about it, the more I felt the Church of Christ must be bigger than this one congregation and this one minister—whoever he was—who could not find a good thing to say about fellow ministers, even those who shared his faith. My spirit was more at home in the Catholic Church, for the Church must indeed be universal if it is to count for much in the modern world.”

Now I am not going to defend or to assail my friend’s reply. But I cannot help wondering how many thinking moderns have been turned from some of our churches because they simply cannot buy the tune that “I and I only am left.” Too well they know that this means leaving behind too much of what is truly Christ’s.

If and when evangelical Christianity becomes primarily a “search and destroy” operation, it will have forfeited its biblical right to survival. One of my favorite Bible passages has long been the third chapter of John’s Gospel. I am captivated by its great truth that all the world stands condemned except as men respond to God’s great gift of his only Son as the sinner’s sacrifice. And I am equally captivated by its equally great truth that “God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17). Sometimes I wish I could hear some great modern Spurgeon echoing this mighty theme: not to condemn, but to save. There is a lost note here, I think, in some of our evangelical attitudes not only toward the world but toward Christendom as well.

Surely the Apostle Paul wrote the Corinthians to rebuke their factions, to deplore an unspiritual carnality, to lament their moral license and their tolerance of immorality, to expose serious faults in the churches. But above all this, the Great Apostle left no doubt that the Christian’s supreme concern must be to transmit the evangel. He made love so much the final test of Christian integrity that even the truth of revelation is invalidated by lovelessness, just as love is falsified by untruth. I take it that, to be authentically Christian, the effective confrontation of our generation must be in terms of the divine Redeemer’s death for our sins and his bodily resurrection on the third day, grasped in the context of the whole biblical revelation of God’s plan and purpose. I suspect that when the Apostle Paul invaded Athens as a missionary target, he knew quite a lot about the foibles and follies of the Stoics and Epicureans; in fact, he refuted objectionable facets of their theories. But he did not make it his main business to leave the enemies of faith publicly exposed in their philosophical nakedness. He preached “Jesus and the resurrection” and left them no place of effective retreat. On Mars Hill he locked up the Athenians to final judgment by the Risen One; when some of them laughed outright while others believed, the cutting edge of their division was nothing other than the Lord’s claim. While the Mars Hill message brings the future judgment into contemporary focus, the sermon is crowded with compassion. It is not basically anti-this and anti-that; it is pro-Logos—so magnificently pro-Christos, in fact, that the false gods can find no shelter, and even the philosophers are left with no better option than mockery of the alternative. And mockery is no sure path into the future, whether others mock the Evangel or evangelicals mock their adversaries.

I think the time has come for evangelicals to lower the fences that divide them—fences between the American Council of Christian Churches and the National Association of Evangelicals and evangelicals in the National Council of Churches. It is time to give full entry to the renewing power of the Bible and the Holy Spirit. If devout evangelical leaders of an outgoing spirit could confer for a year across their fences, and leap those fences in order to pray together about evangelical unity and obedience in our time, it could prove a great boon to the furthering of the will of God and the truth of revelation and the Lord’s commission. Some friends of mine in the divergent groupings have already warned that any such plea will be stillborn. But I dare to believe that some evangelicals long to see God do a new thing. Our divisions have now become a scandal, and they are a barrier to effective fulfillment of the Great Commission. If you do not think so, produce the evidence of success.

Of course, we lonely evangelicals can boast at one moment that in our local situation we have “a packed house” or console ourselves the next moment that, after all, we are a minority, a godly remnant, a holy few.

The important issue for the future of Christianity is not how many graybeards we hold in the ranks but how well we communicate Christianity to the oncoming generation. The critical concern is the truth and power of evangelical Christianity, in the way we espouse the Way, to captivate and enlist the youth. Evangelicals are not winning the younger generation, any more than deviant and distorted forms of Christianity are. The masses of humanity average younger by the minute, and we are losing the young multitudes to a non-Christian and anti-Christian future. Some are devoted to nothing, to rain-check-itis on the great issues of life. Simon Gerson, press chairman for last month’s national convention of the Communist party, laments that most American college students “aren’t buying anything.” The whole future generation sways uncertainly in the balances, while evangelical Christians virtually share in a conspiracy of silence about the most compelling alternative.

Look at the facts. In the United States the median age is now twenty-five. This fall there will be 6,700,000 college and university students in America, and the present inclination is to provide a college education for every young person who wants it. Only 15 per cent of the students in our nation are now enrolled on church-related campuses, and, since “church-related” is no longer a synonym for “evangelical,” the percentage in evangelical colleges is much smaller. As a matter of fact, many more college students today are being stripped and deprived of evangelical beliefs than are being confirmed in them. Today’s university graduates tend to be least sure of enduring truth and eternal values, and are prone to rationalize their disengagement by direct assaults upon the Christian heritage. What they have learned from their professors through neglect, they more and more impart to their successors by conviction.

Some of us may point out with gratitude that Billy Graham’s crusades have not lost attraction for the younger generation, even though the evangelist is now thrice a grandfather. We may be impressed when Moody Monthly publishes its annual list of approved evangelical schools this year—twenty-three Bible colleges, ten Bible institutes, thirty-four liberal-arts colleges, and twelve seminaries, for a total of seventy-nine, with pointed omission of many denominational campuses. We may also hail the steady stream of missionary candidates enlisted by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship on the most prestigious campuses, or the brisk confrontation by Campus Crusade of whole student bodies with an invitation to faith. These are all worthy efforts, and the loss of any would have adverse consequences for evangelical witness in the student world. But all are products of a remedial strategy that perpetuates the primary problem—the lack of exposure for Christian ideas and ideals in the mainstream of serious intellectual dialogue—and all reflect evangelical satisfaction with an oblique role for the truth of revelation simply on the margin of contemporary American thought. Neither Jonathan Edwards nor Timothy Dwight would have given our spirits rest day or night in these circ*mstances. For almost all the leaders of tomorrow’s world—the clergy, the editors, the educators, the political leaders, the jurists, and so on—are in this great body of students whose ideas and ideals are now being forged uninformed by the truth of revelation.

At this juncture one might carry forward these concerns in either of two directions. Beyond demythologizing the present-day evangelicals, one could declare war on neo-evangelicals, or proceed to demolish the non-evangelicals—be they modernist, dialectical, existential, or some other variety. Or one might make a plea that we rekerygmatize the evangelicals, not merely demythologize them; and this is what I want to do.

I hope the younger generation of American evangelicals—who are not bound by our past-generation prejudices in regard to race or denominationalism or anti-denominationalism—will soon emerge as a vanguard of new leadership. It is time they started to march and sing in the open arena, to lift their voices for Christ with a clarity and courage that our generation failed to muster. The evangelical student witness could today be welded into a missionary task force more awesome even than the Student Volunteer Movement at the beginning of this century, were it not for the fact that even our young people reflect the overall divided posture of evangelical Christianity in America. Let them carry placards of proclamation, not billboards of condemnation; let them dare to show the dawn rather than merely to damn the darkness. I intend no rebuke, no disparagement, of the older generation when I say it has failed to achieve a real breakthrough for the Gospel in our time. I belong to that older generation. But now it is time for those of us who felt that a lad could be ordained to the ministry in his twenties to ask ourselves why he cannot serve also as a lay leader and as a church officer as well, and why our past way of doing things has any special claim to infallibility. Jesus chose disciples who could run with faith, not patriarchs who had to be carried.

And they ran with joy, not with mace or tear gas or vituperation. I have to remind myself of this constantly; I do not speak in pharisaical self-righteousness. Every six months or so I have told colleagues at CHRISTIANITY TODAY that it is time to “ring the bells” again, to schedule a major editorial on the joy of being a Christian, the delight and dignity of walking with God. Augustine was one of the greatest of all Christian philosophers, but that brilliant mind was first attracted to faith in Christ by the spontaneous joy of the first believers he met. Men are starved for hope today, and we are to be God’s bell-ringers. And so I would say to one or another of my writers: “Suppose you were trapped with an isolated remnant, and they drafted you to make a statement to the world. You are the last stand for faith, as it were, and you are asked to tell out the joys of Christian commitment. Write it in 1,200 words, and I’ll use it as an editorial.” One theologian came back the next morning and said, “You know, one has to live close to Christ to write on that subject.” How true. The presence of Christ in the midst of his followers might be God’s best gift for confronting the death-of-God deviants and the political clergy. Our power is not in word only but in spirit.

I think that the moment of truth is here for twentieth-century evangelicalism, and that it needs to be demythologized of the traditions of its modern elders and revived in the realities of New Testament Christianity.

In this regard, I’ll not quote Billy Graham. Let me, rather, quote another:

The early Christians did not say in dismay: “Look what the world has come to,” but in delight, “Look what has come to the world.” They saw not merely the ruin, but the resources for the reconstruction of that ruin. They saw not merely that sin did abound, but that grace did much more abound. On that assurance the pivot of history swung from blank despair, loss of moral nerve, and fatalism, to faith and confidence that at last sin had met its match, that something new had come into the world, that not only here and there, but on a wide scale, men could attain to that hitherto impossible thing—goodness.…

That same sense of confidence must possess you if you are to pass from an anemic, noncreative, nay-saying type of person to one who is master of himself and his circ*mstances and his destiny.

But this confidence and faith must not be based on a self-hypnosis, a mental and spiritual fool’s paradise.…

The whole secret of abundant living can be summed up in this sentence: “Not your responsibility, but your response to God’s ability.”

These words are from a book entitled Abundant Living, by E. Stanley Jones (Abingdon, 1942, p. 183).

I am convinced that this offer of abundant life—or, as another contemporary puts it, this power of positive thinking—has a scriptural ability to fascinate the sallow spirit of modern man and to coax him anew to a hearing of the claim of Christ upon his life. If you are not satisfied with the way E. Stanley Jones, or Norman Vincent Peale, or Billy Graham, or this present lesser luminary, holds out hope to this generation, then for heaven’s sake, for God’s sake and the Gospel’s sake, don’t exhaust your energies in indexing their faults—which are many—but light a brighter light and live a life of greater power.

A greater than E. Stanley Jones and theologically sounder, a greater than Norman Vincent Peale and theologically sounder, a greater than Billy Graham and theologically sounder, a greater than Carl McIntire and theologically sounder, a greater by far than Carl Henry and theologically sounder, calls us to demythologize and to rekerygmatize, to abandon harmful attitudes toward other Christians, and to reassert the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit.—CARL F. H. HENRY.

- More fromM. Whitcomb Hess

Robert L. Cleath

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

The theological scholar—to say nothing of the minister and layman—finds the task of keeping up with the tide of new religious books nearly impossible. These book forecasts, published twice a year and based on information supplied by publishers, are intended to alert readers to forthcoming books that may interest them. Although publishers’ brief prepublication announcements and listings are not an adequate basis for judging the quality and importance of new works, they do put us on the lookout for books by certain known authors and point to the subjects destined to be discussed in theological circles during the coming season.

Some of the better-known evangelical writers offering new books are Elton Trueblood (A Place to Stand), Bruce Larson (Living on the Growing Edge), Charles Ryrie (The Bible and Tomorrow’s News), Eugenia Price (Learning to Live from the Gospels), Elisabeth Elliot (Furnace of the Lord), E. F. Harrison (A Short Life of Christ), and Richard C. Halverson (Relevance). Fall titles that appear to have particular interest for conservative scholars and pastors include Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan by W. F. Albright, Introduction to the Old Testament by R. K. Harrison, More New Testament Studies by C. H. Dodd, The History and Spread of Christianity: A Bibliographical Survey by Kenneth Scott Latourette, and The New Testament in Greek and English published by the American Bible Society.

This season will have a fair share of religious books with popular or controversial themes that should stimulate sales. In this category we may expect The Other Side: An Account of My Experiences with Psychic Phenomena by James A. Pike with Diane Kennedy, Parables of Peanuts by Robert Short, To Walk the Earth Like Men by William Sloane Coffin, Jr., The Black Messiah by Albert Cleage, Jr., Black and Free by evangelist Tom Skinner, I Saw Gooley Fly by Joseph Bayly, and Corita by Sister Corita.

Professional theologians will welcome new entries by such scholars as Helmut Thielicke, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Martin Marty, Gerhard Ebeling, Michael Novak, Jacques Maritain, Bo Reicke, Ernst Käsemann, and Hans Küng. Of special interest will be Gordon Kaufman’s Systematic Theology: A Historicist Perspective. Studies on the historical basis of the Gospel and the application of Christian insights to current social problems seem to promise the most theological excitement in the months ahead. In the following list of selected forthcoming books, the asterisks designate volumes publishers consider their most significant religious titles this fall.

AESTHETICS, ARCHITECTURE, MUSIC

ABINGDON: Floral Art in the Church by J. Inman and The Learning Choir by E. J. Lorenz. FAITH AND LIFE: The Children’s Hymnary by A. Hartzler and J. Gaeddert. JOHN KNOX: The Image Maker by R. Henderson. PRINCETON: Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins by A. Grabar. UNITED: *Corita by Sister Corita.

APOLOGETICS, PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE

ABINGDON: The Choice Called Atheism by O. Strunk, Jr., Dialogue in Medicine and Theology edited by D. White, and Cybernetics and the Image of Man by H. E. Hatt. BETHANY FELLOWSHIP: The Deluge Story in Stone by B. C. Nelson. CHRISTIAN LITERATURE CRUSADE: Distinctive Features of Christianity by A. J. Metcalfe. CORPUS: Responsibility in Modern Religious Ethics by A. R. Jonsen. COWARD-MCCANN: *Here and Hereafter by R. Montgomery. EERDMANS: Holy Book and Holy Tradition edited by F. F. Bruce and E. G. Rupp. HARPER & Row: The Faith of the Atheist by A. Gibson, A Place to Stand by E. Trueblood, Science and Christ by P. Teilhard de Chardin, Come, Let Us Play God by L. G. Augenstein, and The Spirit and Forms of Love by D. D. Williams. HARVARD: *St. Augustine’s Early Theory of Man, A.D.386–391 by P. J. O’Connell. HOLT, RINEHART & WINSTON: Jewish Philosophy in Modern Times by N. Rotenstreich. LIPPINCOTT: Meditation: The Inward Art by B. Smith, The Couch and the Altar by D. A. Redding, and Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language by J. A. Sanford. MACMILLAN: Facing the Next Day by J. A. Pike, Faith and Theology by M. D. Chenu, Revelation as History by W. Pannenberg, Process Thought and the Christian Faith by N. Pittenger, and Philosophy Today No. 1 by J. H. Gill. PRINCETON: Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist by W. Kaufmann and The Mystic Vision edited by J. Campbell. SCRIBNERS: American Philosophy and the Future: Essays for a New Generation edited by Michael Novak and Integral Humanism by J. Maritain. TRIDENT: The Struggle of the Unbeliever by J. J. Kavanaugh. ZONDERVAN: Living on the Growing Edge by B. Larson, God’s Will by A. Gesswein, and Black and Free by T. Skinner.

ARCHAEOLOGY

AUGSBURG: Uncovering Bible Times by M. T. Gilbertson. DOUBLEDAY: Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan by W. F. Albright. FORTRESS: *Land of Christ by A. Parrot and Egypt and the Bible by P. Montet. HARVARD: The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Origin of the Samaritan Sect by J. D. Purvis. MORROW: *From the Beginning: Archaeology and Art in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem by K. Katz, P. Kahane, and M. Broshi.

BIBLICAL STUDIES, GENERALABINGDON: Biblical Truth and Modern Man by B. D. Rahtjen. BAKER: Topical Dictionary of Bible Texts by J. Inglish. BEACON: *Beacon Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, by W. Greathouse, D. Metz, and F. Carver. CAMBRIDGE: The Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol. 2, edited by G. W. H. Lampe and Words and Meanings edited by P. R. Ackroyd and B. Lindars. EERDMANS: Scripture Union Bible Study Books.HARPER & Row: * Illustrated Family Encyclopedia of the Living Bible.HARVARD: Catalogue of Hebrew Books (6 volumes). HELICON: Abba, Father and The Christian, A New Creature (Vols. 7 and 8 of “The Living Word” series) edited by G. S. Sloyan. KREGAL: The Bible Digest by C. W. Slemming. MOODY: A General Introduction to the Bible by N. L. Geisler and W. E. Nix, Can I Trust the Bible? edited by H. F. Vos, and Christ: The Theme of the Bible by N. L. Geisler. PRENTICE-HALL: *The Jerome Biblical Commentary, Vols. 1 and 2, edited by Brown, Fitzmyer, and Murphy. SCRIBNERS: The Growth of the Biblical Tradition: The Form-Critical Method by K. Koch. SCRIPTURE PRESS: *The Bible and Tomorrow’s News by C. C. Ryrie. SEABURY: *The Kingdom of God and Primitive Christianity by A. Schweitzer. STANDARD: The Very Best Book of All by F. Flournoy. WESTMINSTER: Jesus and the Historian by F.T. Trotter and The Book of Books by K. Koch. ZONDERVAN: *The Zondervan Expanded Concordance, Cruden’s Compact Concordance by A. Cruden, Fausset’s Bible Dictionary by A. R. Fausset, and The Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary by M. C. Tenney.

BIBLICAL STUDIES, OLD TESTAMENT

ALLYN & BACON: God’s Word to Israel by J. Jensen. BAKER: Christian Living from Isaiah by F. M. Bennett, Israel and the Bible by W. Hendriksen, Among the Prophets: Amos by J. K. Howard, Exposition of Isaiah 1–39 by H. C. Leupold, The Book of Nehemiah by R.G. Turnbull, and The Book of Isaiah by C. T. Francisco. BROADMAN: God Reigns: Expository Studies in the Prophecy of Isaiah by J. L. Green, Renewals Before Pentecost by C. E. Autrey, and Judgment and Redemption in Isaiah by P. H. Kelley. EERDMANS: *Introduction to the Old Testament by R.K. Harrison and Isaiah, Vol. 3, by E. Young. FORTRESS: Abraham and His Times by A. Parrot, and Men of the Old Testament by R. Rendtorff. HARPER & Row: The Prophets Speak by S. J. Schultz. JOHN KNOX: Tradition for Crisis: A Study in Hosea by W. Brueggemann. LOIZEAUX: *Daniel by L. Strauss. MOODY: An Introduction to the Old Testament Prophets by H. E. Freeman. OXFORD: The Hebrew Kingdom by E. W. Heaton: WESTMINSTER: Exile and Restoration by P. R. Ackroyd. WORLD: Prophetic Voices of the Bible by H. Staack.

BIBLICAL STUDIES, NEW TESTAMENT

ABINGDON: The Lord’s Prayer in Its Biblical Setting by C. M. Laymon. AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY: *The New Testament in Greek and English.BAKER: An Exposition of the Gospel of John by H. H. Hobbs, Tests of Life (I John) by R. Law, The Apostle Paul: His Life and Work by O. E. Moe, and Self-Interpreting New Testament by A. S. Johnson. BROADMAN: Saved Forever! by M.L. Bates. CAMBRIDGE: John the Baptist in the Gospel Tradition by W. Wink. DOUBLEDAY: More Light on the Gospel by G. M. Lamsa and Life of Jesus by W. String fellow and A. Towne. EERDMANS: A Short Life of Christ by E. F. Harrison, More New Testament Studies by C. H. Dodd, and The Second Epistle of Peter and the General Epistle of Jude by M. Green. FORTRESS: The New Testament Era by B. Reicke, The Testament of Jesus by E. Käsemann, and The School of St. Matthew and Its Use of the Old Testament by K. Stendahl. HARPER & Row: The New Testament Speaks by G. W. Barker, W. L. Lane, and J. R. Michaels and The Gospel According to St. John by J. N. Sanders. JOHN KNOX: Soli Deo Gloria edited by J. M. Richards. JUDSON: The Layman’s Introduction to the New Testament by C.H. Morgan and Rediscovering the Book of Revelation by B. M. Newman. KREGAL: Hebrews, The Epistle of Warning by J. Owen. LIPPINCOTT: Learning to Live from the Gospels by E. Price. MCGILL: Ephesians, Baptism and Pentecost by J. C. Kirby. MOODY: Second Corinthians by G. C. Luck. REVELL: The Birth of the Church by G. C. Morgan. SWEET: The Living Word Commentary: Thessalonians by R. C. Kelcy, Romans by R. Batey, James by J. Zink, and Philippians by P. E. Harrell. TYNDALE: Tune In (paraphrased Gospel of John for teens) and Parallel New Testament (King James Version and Living New Testament). WESTMINSTER: The Gospel-Perspective On Jesus Christ by D. T. Rowlingson. WORD: The Secret Sayings of the Living Jesus by R. Summers.

BIOGRAPHY

AUGSBURG: Messengers of the King by D.C. Hill. DOUBLEDAY: *The Other Side by J. A. Pike with D. Kennedy. HARVARD: Jonathan Edwards: The Narrative of a Puritan Mind by E. H. Davidson. JUDSON: *Return to the World by L. Baulch. LIPPINCOTT: Affectionately, T. S. Eliot by W. T. Levy and V. Scherle. MORROW: The Progress of the Soul: The Interior Career of John Donne by R. E. Hughes. OXFORD: *John Knox by J. Ridley. PRINCETON: John Hus by M. Spinka. REVELL: Then Sings My Soul by G. B. Shea and God Has a Plan for You by H. J. Taylor. SCRIBNERS: Erasmus of Christendom by H. Bainton. WARNER: *God Is Fabulous by F. E. Gardner. WORD: My Greatest Challenge by B. Glass and New Singer, New Song by D. Winter. ZONDERVAN: Black and Free by T. Skinner.

CHURCH HISTORY

CAMBRIDGE: The Great Church in Captivity by S. Runciman. COLUMBIA: Peter in Rome by D. W. O’Connor. CORPUS: *Absolutely Null and Utterly Void by J. J. Hughes. EERDMANS: The History of the Spread of Christianity: A Bibliographical Survey by K. S. Latourette and The Great Light: Luther and the Reformation by J. Atkinson. FORTRESS: Word of God and Tradition by G. Ebeling and Interpreters of Luther edited by J. Pelikan. HARPER & Row: The Centering Moment by H. Thurman. SEABURY: The Church and the Body Politic by F. H. Littell. SWEET: Divorce and Remarriage in the Early Church by P. E. Harrell.

DEVOTIONAL

ABINGDON: The Beatitudes by G. A. Buttrick. AUGSBURG: Advent Chain of Stars by H. Martin. BROADMAN: Devotional Talks on Everyday Objects by R. J. Hastings and This Confident Faith by M. Markham. CHRISTIAN LITERATURE CRUSADE: *Love Not the World by W. Nee. CONCORDIA: The Gospel of John for Today by T. Coates. CORPUS: Man Yearning for Grace by J. Wicks and The Prayers of the New Testament by D. Coggan. DOUBLEDAY: I’ve Got to Talk to Somebody, God by M. Holmes. LOIZEAUX: Living Wisely: Devotional Studies on the First Epistle to the Corinthians by J. A. Blair. MOODY: Look Unto the Hills by V. R. Edman. WORD: The Liberty of Obedience by E. Elliot, Seekers After Mature Faith by E. G. Hinson, and Release From Phoniness by A. Prater.

DRAMA, FICTION, POETRYBAKER: See That Holy Child by S. Bergsma. COLUMBIA: Religious Trends in English Poetry, Vol. VI: 1920–1965 by H. N. Fairchild. EERDMANS: The Silver Trumpet by O. Barfield, The Tent of God by M. Radius, and Ingmar Bergman and the Search For Meaning by J. Gill. FORTRESS: *The Drowning, The Dancing by J. Nilssen. KNOPF: Herod and Mariamne by P. Lagerkvist. JOHN KNOX: Joe Doakes’ Great Quest by F. O. Alexander. MOODY: Beyond the Night by B. Swinford. MORROW: Sacred and Profane by D. Weiss. REVELL: *I Saw Gooley Fly by J. Bayly. STANDARD: Playlets and Skits For Youth Groups, Rallies, Camps.WESTMINSTER: The First Christian Drama by J. W. Bowman. WORD: The Adjustable Halo by K. Anderson. ZONDERVAN: It’s Always Too Soon to Quit by M. Larson.

ECUMENICS, INTER-FAITH DIALOGUE

BROADMAN: Bible Festivals and Holy Days by B. Bates. DOUBLEDAY: All Believers Are Brothers edited by R. Gammon. HARCOURT, BRACE & WORLD: Conversations: Christian and Buddhist by D. A. Graham. HARPER & Row: Furnace of the Lord by E. Elliot. HOLT, RINEHART & WINSTON: *Priests For Tomorrow by R. J. Bunnik. HERDER & HERDER: The Credibility of the Church Today: A Reply to Charles Davis by G. Baum. JUDSON: Protestants, Catholics, and Mary by S. Benko and Ecumenism—Free Church Dilemma by R. Torbet. LIPPINCOTT: The Pagan Church by R. E. Dodge. MCKAY: *The Catholic Revolution by D. J. Roche. MACMILLAN: Marxism and Christianity by G. Girardi. OXFORD: Christianity in World Perspective by K. Cragg. SEABURY: Tomorrow’s Church by P. Day. WESTMINSTER: Religions of the East by J. M. Kitagawa, New Directions in Theology Today: Volume IV—The Church by C. W. Williams, and Icon and Pulpit: The Protestant—Orthodox Encounter by C. S. Calian.

ETHICAL, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND CULTURAL STUDIES

ABINGDON: Guaranteed Annual Income: The Moral Issues by P. Wogaman and The Manipulator and the Church by M. D. Dunnam, G. J. Herbertson, and E. L. Shostrom. BETHANY FELLOWSHIP: *Hang Tough by J. C. Bonner. BRUCE: City with a Chance by F. Aukofer and To Hell with the Kids by V. K. Gruhlke. CORPUS: Non-Violent Direct Action edited by A. P. Hare and H. H. Blumberg. DOUBLEDAY: The New Immorality by B. R. Walker, The Gathering Storm in the Churches by J. K. Hadden, The Last Years of the Church by D. Poling, and The Next Three Million? by G. Lawrence. EERDMANS: American Catholics and Vietnam by T. E. Quigley, The Citizen and the John Birch Society by L. DeKoster, and The Christian and the Nations by A. M. Donner. FORTRESS: Hippies in Our Midst by D. L. Earisman. GOOD NEWS: *Sex Through the Looking Glass by L. Dolphin. HARPER & Row: Parables of Peanuts by R. Short, Christ and the Moral Life by J. M. Gustafson, and Environmental Man by W. Kuhns. HELICON: *Man and Evolution by R. T. Francoeur. HERALD: *The Christian and Revolution by M. Gingerich. HOLT, RINEHART & WINSTON: The Politics of the Gospel by J. M. Paupert. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN: Religion in America, Vol. 12, edited by W. McLoughlin and R. N. Bellah and Religion and Public Education edited by T. R. Sizer. JOHN KNOX: The Religion Business by A. Balk and The Now Generation by D. C. Benson. LIPPINCOTT: The Religious Community and the Secular State by K. Westhues and The Pagan Church by R. Dodge. MACMILLAN: They Call Us Dead Men by D. Berrigan, The Morality Gap by P. H. Furfey, and Elements for a Social Ethic by G. Winter. MOODY: A Reader’s Guide to Religious Literature by B. Batson and For This Time by H. O. Jones. PAULIST: Sex and the New Morality by F. C. Wood, Jr. QUADRANGLE: Understanding Negro History edited by D. W. Hoover. REVELL: Tough Love by B. Milliken and Debs, Dolls and Dope by J. Benton. ST. THOMAS: Poison Drops in the Federal Senate—The School Question from a Parental and Non-Sectarian Standpoint by Z. Montgomery. SCRIBNERS: Norm and Context in Christian Ethics edited by G. H. Outka and P. Ramsey, The Just War by P. Ramsey, The Religious Experience of Mankind by N. Smart, and The Judgment of the Dead by S. G. F. Brandon. SEABURY: Cant You Hear Me Calling? by L. Carter, The Morality of Abortion by C. C. Means, Jr., and Is Anybody Listening to Black America? edited by C. E. Lincoln. SHEED & WARD: The Citizen Christian by J. F. Andrews. TYNDALE: Riots in the Streets by R. Wolff. UNITED: Inside the Outside by J. M. Lichliter. WESTMINSTER: Power Where the Action Is by H. Seifert, Radical Christianity and Its Sources by J. C. Cooper, Society Against Itself by G. H. Crowell, *Should Churches Be Taxed? by D. B. Robertson, and War and Conscience in America by E. L. Long, Jr.

LITURGY, WORSHIP

BAKER: Minister’s Funeral Manual by S. W. Hutton and Sixteen Days on the Church Calendar by C. Miller. DOUBLEDAY: The Worship of Israel: A Reassessment by W. Harrelson. FORTRESS: Organ and Choir in Protestant Worship by E. Liemohn. HELICON: The Underground Mass Book edited by S. McNierney. STANDARD: God Is Everywhere by S. F. Martin. WESTMINSTER: A Commentary on the Confession of 1967 and an Introduction to the Book of Confessions by A. Dowey.

MISSIONS, EV ANGELISM, CHURCH OUTREACH

AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY: Multiplying the Loaves by G. H. Wolfensberger. AUGSBURG: Promoting Your Church Library by M. S. Johnson. BROADMAN: The Power of Positive Evangelism by J. R. Bisagno and Our Church in the Crusade of the Americas by W. Dehoney. CHRISTIAN LITERATURE CRUSADE: The God Who Answers by Fire by M. Cleator, Reluctant Missionary by E. Buxton, and Making of a Missionary by D. Sargent. DOUBLEDAY: The Missionary Between the Times by R. P. Beaver. EERDMANS: Second Fronts in Metropolitan Mission by G. Fackre and The Development of Christianity in Latin Caribbean by J. L. Gonzales, Jr. FORTRESS: A Man for Us and A God for Us by F. G. Downing. HARPER & Row: Out of the African Night by W. D. Reyburn and God Speaks Navajo by E. E. Wallis. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN: China—The Remembered Life by P. Frillmann. JOHN KNOX: Soka Gakkai by N. S. Brannen. JUDSON: American Baptists—Whence and Whither by N. H. Maring and Tuned-In Christians by J. J. Savory. SHEED & WARD: The Black Messiah by A. B. Cleage, Jr. WORD: Relevance by R. C. Halverson, Him We Declare by Bardsley and Purcell, Witnessing Laymen Make Living Churches by C. Monro and W. S. Taegel, and Faith for a Secular World by M. Augsburger, ZONDERVAN: Peril by Choice by J. C. Hefley.

PASTORAL THEOLOGY

BAKER: The Preacher: His Life and Work by J. H. Jowett. BIBLICAL RESEARCH PRESS: *Preaching to Modern Man by F. Pack and P. Meador. BRUCE: *Priesthood in Crisis by J. J. Blomjous. EERDMANS: The Church: An Organic Picture of Its Life and Mission by R. Brow. FORTRESS: The Christian in Modern Style by H. E. Horn. HARPER & Row: To Walk the Earth Like Men by W. S. Coffin, Jr., Do You Want to Be Healed? by J. S. Bonnell, and A Place For You by P. Tournier. HERALD: Worship as the Celebration of Covenant and Incarnation by A. Beachy. HOLT, RINEHART & WINSTON: IS It I, Lord? by A. Uleyn. JUDSON: The Church Business Meeting by R. D. Merrill. LIPPINCOTT: Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language by J. A. Sanford and The Couch and the Altar by D. A. Redding. REVELL: Christians HaveTroubles, Too by H. Brandt and H. E. Dowdy. UNITED CHURCH PRESS: Secular Impact by G. Fackre. WARNER: Just Across the Street by D. Oldham. WESTMINSTER: A Pastoral Counseling Casebook by C. K. Aldrich and C. Nighswonger and The Preaching Event by W. L. Malcomson.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

ABINGDON: Communication-Learning for Churchmen, Vol. 1, edited by B. F. Jackson, Jr. BEACON HILL: Audiovisual Tools in the Church by L. E. Wesche and M. Shroeder. CONCORDIA: God, Sex and Youth by W. E. Hulme. FORTRESS: Leading a Church School by R. D. Heim, The Church’s Faith by R. Prenter, and I Believe by H. Thielicke. HERALD: Reshaping the Teaching Ministry by P. M. Dederach. JUDSON: New Ways in Worship for Youth by J. E. Brown, *Team Teaching with the Scotts and Bartons by J. Holcomb, and Exceptional Children: A Special Ministry by C. L. Martin and J. T. Travis. MOODY: *Christian Youth: An In-Depth Study by R. B. Zuck and G. A. Getz. WARNER: Basics for Teaching in the Church by T.F. Miller et al.ZONDERVAN: Sex and the Single Eye by L. Scanzoni.

SERMONS

ABINGDON: Meditations for Communion Services by W. L. Lumpkin. BAKER: Silent Saturday by R. E. Allen. BIBLICAL RESEARCH PRESS: Sermons of Reuel Lemmons.EERDMANS: Virginia Woolf Meets Charlie Brown by D. H. C. Read. FORTRESS: Tradition and Life in the Church by H. von Campenhausen. WORD: Preaching from Great Bible Chapters by K. Yates.

THEOLOGY

ABINGDON: Outline of Christian Belief by C. S. Duthie and From Science to Theology by G. Crespy. AUGSBURG: The Augsburg Confession by G. W. Forell, *Introduction to the Theology of Rudolf Bultmann by W. Schmithals, The Christian Witness in a Secular Age by D. G. Bloesch, and The Law-Gospel Debate by G. O. Forde. BAKER: *Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature by J. McClintock and J. Strong, The Canons of Dort by H. Petersen, and The Biblical Basis for Infant Baptism by D. H. Small. BETHANY FELLOWSHIP: Finney’s Lectures on Theology by C. G. Finney. BRUCE: Changing Face of Theology by P. Fannon. CHRISTIAN LITERATURE CRUSADE: The Person of Christ by H. B. Bonsall and The Question of Healing edited by G. W. Kirby. CONCORDIA: Worship in the Name of Jesus by P. Brunner, Justification of the Ungodly by W. Dantine, and Gospel of Baptism by R. Jungkuntz. EERDMANS: Life in One’s Stride by K. Hamilton. FORTRESS: A Man for Us and a God for Us by F.G. Downing and Christian Theology and Metaphysics by P. R. Baelz. HARPER & Row: Faith and Understanding by R. Bultmann, The Search for a Usable Future by M. E. Marty, and Do We Need the Church? by R. P. McBrien. JOHN KNOX: Secularization and the University by H. E. Smith and The Beginnings of Dialectic Theology, Vol. 1, edited by J. M. Robinson. KREGAL: *Demon Possession by J. L. Nevius. OXFORD: The Cambridge Platonists by G.R. Cragg. PAULIST: Word and Mystery: Biblical Essays on the Person and Mission of Christ by L. J. O’Donovan. SCRIBNERS: Systematic Theology: A Historicist Perspective by G. Kaufman. SEABURY: Pastoral Implications of Biblical Theology by S. Lawton. SHEED&WARD: *IS the Last Supper Finished? by A. A. Vogel, The Cosmic Christ by G. A. Maloney, and Credibility and the Church by H. Küng. VANDERBILT: *The Freedom of Man in Myth by K. W. Bolle. WESTMINSTER: Jesus and Ethics: Four Interpretations by R. H. Hiers.

- More fromRobert L. Cleath

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

Dear Theological Minutemen:

Revolutionary developments in seminary course offerings to keep pace with new emphases in conciliar Christianity are being planned to prepare fledgling ministers for the foment of the moment. If my projections are on target, students in major denominational seminaries may expect some of these new courses this fall:

Languages: Latin and soul-talk—Replace outmoded Hebrew and Greek. Reading knowledge of Latin required for research in ancient Catholic traditions to help expedite Protestant union with the Roman church. Speaking knowledge of soul-talk required for ministry among the black-power elite.

Revolution as Christian Evangelism—Principles of subversion, armed insurrection, and guerrilla warfare as means of manifesting God’s love for subjugated peoples. Lab sections in diversionary tactics, use of Molotov co*cktails for incendiary fellowships, and training of theological and revolutionary snipers.

Christian Communication—Replaces homiletics. Techniques of speaking at public demonstrations, preparation of inflammatory leaflets and slogan posters, organization and control of mass marches, planning of spontaneous incidents to arouse volatile communities. Special unit on semantics: consideration of such terms as “police brutality,” “peace,” “equality,” “law and order” (as a synonym for tyranny), “white racism,” “civil disobedience.”

The Church as Sanctuary—Methods of harboring draft evaders and resisting arrest. Concealment of weapons and ammunition in naves, narthexes, apses, and baptistries. Practice in going limp while handcuffed to a draft-evader.

Ministry to the Power Structure—Means of (1) testifying as an economic expert at government hearings; (2) equating left-wing political objectives (e.g., guaranteed income, defense cutbacks, coalitions with Communists) with biblical Christianity; (3) serving as spokesman at city hall for inner-city citizens while living in plush suburbia.

Other courses in Experimental Sex for Human Fulfillment, New Trends in Liturgical and Paramilitary Dress for Clerics, and Theology of the Absurd should generate further excitement. B.D. holders ill-equipped for a ministry of relevance may enroll in concentrated summer programs of basic training. What better way is there for a minister to become involved in the human predicament, shake up the status quo, and help to create a new world?

EUTYCHUS III

Revoltingly,

FULL STEAM AHEAD

The catastrophic results of Uppsala are in (Aug. 16), and they really are deplorable! Indeed, the consistent evangelical can only prayerfully conclude that he can have nothing whatever to do with the World Council of Churches.…

Let us have full and unflagging support for our own institutions and interests, and let the ecumenists sail their sinking ship until it breaks up on the rocks of inclusivism and apostasy.

RICHARD H. MACKAY

Watertown, Mass.

You point out that “there are two opposing views” within the World Council of Churches. Apparently, the implication is that the two cannot and shall not live together.

I have an idea they could, they would, and they should live together, were both sides to follow the injunction of our Lord to the scribes and Pharisees who “neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others” (Matt. 23:23).

Seemingly, the chief problem in the WCC is that another command of our Lord is being ignored: “… do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”

Yet, in the WCC the left hand is always loud-slapping what the right hand is doing, or not doing, and the right hand is always snapping its fingers, and very sharply at that, at what the left hand is doing, or neglecting to do.

Result? Judgmental statements: “The social engineers are wrong.”

It couldn’t be that it just might benearer to the truth to say: The social engineers are partially wrong? And, it couldn’t be that it just might be closer to the truth to say: The evangelicals are partially wrong?

KURT C. HARTMANN

Editor

The Southern Lutheran

La Vernia, Tex.

I commend … Harold Lindsell’s “Uppsala 1968.” In my estimation it is an excellent example of objective reporting. I wish that every professing Christian in the nation would read the article.

A. A. PAGE

President Emeritus

Pikeville College

OUTREACH TO THE MASSES

“Everything dat’s fastened down is coming loose.” This line from Marc Connelly’s The Green Pastures well describes our time of convulsive change and periodic chaos.

At such a time the Christian Church must arise and assert with power the Gospel of Christ. Often men more readily recognize their spiritual needs under troubling social conditions. With God’s help they can see more clearly the contrast between man’s bankrupt ideas and futile efforts and God’s truth and love. The Church should spur believers today to make an all-out effort to advance the Gospel.

What can they do? Pastor and laymen must not only intensify their efforts to proclaim Christ through witnessing and preaching but also determine to use the mass media more effectively. The Church has hardly tapped the potential of television for gospel proclamation. And though it has done much more with the printed word—with books, magazines, newspapers, pamphlets—it has not even begun to exhaust the possibilities. In academic circles, political circles, community organizations, and many other forums, men committed to the biblical faith have the opportunity to demonstrate the relevance of that faith to human problems. The truth of God’s word must be felt at all levels of society as something pertaining not merely to “the religious realm” but to all of man’s life and aspirations.

In the past five years, publishers have discovered the public’s growing desire for religious books. Opportunities now abound for evangelical writers to publish good manuscripts. But a survey of the flood of religious books published during recent months shows that most of the well-written ones deviate from biblical theology and hold a low view of Scripture. Evangelicals need to seize the initiative to write first-rate Christian books on both the popular and the scholarly level. In the past generation, the books of C. S. Lewis and J. Gresham Machen did much to advance biblical Christianity. Today we need many more like these men to devote themselves to Christian writing—not only of books but also of newspaper and magazine articles, for both the secular and the religious press. A Christian who can articulate his viewpoint with clarity, style, and conviction will not lack for publishing outlets.

Television is the most effective means of penetrating closed doors and closed minds that the Church has ever had. But Christian groups must not be content with Sunday-morning “religious ghetto” programming. They must aim for prime time. The effectiveness of prime-time programming was seen in Billy Graham’s recent TV crusade series, which met with great success in reaching the unchurched. Christians in various communions should join together to coordinate the talent and provide the funds for major network programs.

A hopeful sign for evangelical advance in television as well as in motion pictures, literature, and other arts is the recently established “Fellowship of Christians in the Arts, Media, and Entertainment.” This pan-denominational group, composed of such people as Metropolitan Opera basso Jerome Hines, television and motion picture producer Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr., writer Elisabeth Elliot, and composer-conductor Ray Robinson, is exploring how the arts and mass media may be used more effectively for the cause of Christ. Its first national meeting will be held November 23 and 24 in Palm Springs, California.

If Christians will get off the dime and pledge their abilities and resources to the bold mission of Christian witness throughout the American culture, the results could be astounding. With the blessing of God, people throughout the country could be helped to see that the secret of life is to be found in the purpose of God revealed in Jesus Christ.

In person-to-person contacts, in the pulpit and classroom, in public debate and discussion, in the press and literature, in television, radio, motion pictures, and records, Christians can and must confront our generation with the Christian message. If we fail, the world will never find the only solution to its desperate need.

L. Nelson Bell

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

Has the church lost its sense of urgency in evangelism? Has it substituted something irrelevant for God’s provision for crisis? Has it misunderstood the nature of the world’s predicament?

The Apostle Paul, writing to his spiritual son, Timothy, says: “Preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2). Phillips arrests our attention with this translation, “Never lose your sense of urgency.”

Paul’s appeal for urgency is based on the kingship of Christ, who will judge all men on the return of Christ, which will ring down the curtain of history as we know it; and on the coming of a new kingdom, the kingdom of Christ.

The sense of urgency is heightened, Paul says, by the fact that a time is coming when men will be unwilling to listen to the gospel message: “The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths” (2 Tim. 4:3,4).

Everywhere today we hear of a world in crisis—race, food, economics, population explosion, conflicting ideologies, all magnified by selfishness, hatred, greed, lust, and other sins of the human heart.

The Church is found at the forefront in this cry of “crisis,” but it seems at times to be merely frenzied about symptoms while oblivious to the source and nature of the crisis.

Picture the emergency ward of a large and well-equipped modern hospital. A man is carried in on a stretcher. His face is contorted with pain, his right leg is flexed, and he places a protective hand on his abdomen.

Nurses and doctors hurry in, and a laboratory technician is called. The patient’s temperature is above normal; he is nauseated; the pain, originating in the pit of his stomach, has now localized in his lower right abdomen. A stat blood count shows a marked increase in leukocytes (nature’s army of defense against infection), and there is a “shift to the left” in the differential count, showing that the process of infection is advancing.

Suppose the doctors give an injection to relieve the pain, use medicines to lower the temperature, place an ice bag on his abdomen to cool the area, give a sedative to relieve the nausea and a transfusion to make the blood picture more normal. Then they place the patient in a comfortable bed and hope he will get well.

From this picture even the least informed layman has probably deduced that the patient has an acutely inflamed appendix. Does he need palliative treatment? Is the alleviation of his symptoms the cure for his disease? Are not those responsible for his care culpable if they either misdiagnose or mistreat his condition? And are they not made even more culpable by the fact that the facilities and means of treatment are immediately available? The answer is obvious.

We are living in a time of crisis. The symptoms are to be seen on every hand. All the mass media display for our eyes and din into our ears evidence that men and nations are passing through a series of convulsions.

But has God been taken by surprise? Is his solution for the problems of the world different from what it was in the first Christian century? Is the Gospel, powerful enough then to overcome every obstacle, no longer capable of producing change? Is the crisis so great that the Cross of Jesus Christ must be bypassed? Is it no longer true that Christ is man’s only hope of redemption? Has the wisdom of man transcended the infinite knowledge of God?

Paul told Timothy to “preach the word.” Nothing was said about offering homilies on “being good.” Nor did he tell Timothy to work up a demonstration against the tyrannies of Rome or the degrading traffic in slaves. He did not inveigh against Greek philosophy, nor did he try to drive a wedge between the poor and the rich. His admonition was to “preach the word,” and no doubt Timothy knew as well as Paul that what was “of first importance” in this preaching was “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3,4).

What utter foolishness, you say? How could a message like that transform men and society?

As it was then, this message of the Cross is folly to the world, even though it is God’s answer to the crisis of men and nations. And if this simple message of God’s offer of redemption to sinners becomes foolishness to the visible church also, then the world will indeed be in desperate straits! Part of the crisis is precisely at that point.

Life is by no means static, and the mistakes of today can snowball into the disasters of tomorrow. Concern with symptoms is good to a point, for it shows awareness of impending danger. It is tragic, however, if the Church’s response to crisis becomes simply a nebulous affirmation that “the Church is mission” (whatever that means) rather than the bold declaration that Jesus Christ came into the world and died for us sinners and that he arose again from the dead. Nor does the message stop there. It is the message of a coming King and the setting up of his eternal kingdom.

To the call for “involvement” our response is, “Of course!” But what shall the Church be involved in? Not, surely, in becoming a part of a lost world order, but rather, as a called out people, in bearing witness to Christ’s love and redeeming power in a festering social order.

Crisis is all about us—in the lives of individuals, in the life of our nation, in the world as a whole. But there is no crisis for which God does not have the answer. To the Church and individual Christians he has entrusted his formula for solving the situation.

Not long ago I received a letter from a school teacher in one of the most sophisticated high schools in Texas. The children she teaches come from homes deeply involved in the space age. But the church she has attended and others of which she is aware are also sophisticated—preaching “another gospel” and frantically trying to solve the world’s problems without reference to the Gospel of personal redemption. She wrote, “Much is being said about ‘experimental ministries.’ I would be thankful if those responsible would make it possible for us to have in this area a church where the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached, and give us two years to try the ‘experiment.’”

Have we lost our sense of urgency? Have we lost confidence in God’s remedy? Are we now so far removed from God’s methods of solving crises that we are completely insensitive to his Spirit’s leading? Has the magnitude of the world’s problems blinded our eyes to the power of the Gospel, of the Holy Spirit, and of prayer?

How wonderful if the Church could shift its emphasis from new programs and pressures for church union to a simple preaching, teaching, and living of Jesus Christ, the crucified Son of God! Our Lord is the “Christ of every crisis.” Let’s give him a chance.

- More fromL. Nelson Bell

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

In Defense Of Creationism

A Symposium on Creation, essays by Henry M. Morris and others (Baker, 1968, 156 pp., $1.95), is reviewed by A. E. Wilder Smith, professor of pharmacology, University of Illinois at the Medical Center, Chicago.

Publication of a symposium on creation is possible, practically speaking, only in English, for in most other language areas conformity of thought to the evolutionary view has progressed so far that in general only evolutionary thought reaches the scientifically minded public. American Christians can be very grateful for the faith and hard scientific work that led to the appearance of this volume.

Dr. Henry M. Morris opens with an excellent discussion of “Science versus Scientism.” New branches of science are, of necessity, developed by scientists trained in older scientific disciplines. For example, modern geology was founded by mathematicians, stonemasons, zoologists, theologians, and gentlemen of leisure. A few generations later, however, nobody is considered capable of contributing to this discipline who has not been indoctrinated in the specialized geology formulated by these original non-geologists. Other disciplines in science follow the same practice. This dogmatic insistence that only those who follow the interpretation of facts laid down by the founders are qualified to contribute to the field is what Morris calls “scientism.” Over against “scientism” he sets “science” or factual knowledge, as distinguished from the mere interpretation of facts.

Morris cites Dr. Blum’s well-knownwritings on the thermodynamics of biology, particularly his work on the second law of thermodynamics and entropy. Because the second law indicates merely the direction in which a reaction will proceed but does not tell us how fast it will go, Morris views all geochronometers as suspect on principle. For the second law is fundamental to all processes. The section on uniformitarianism is particularly valuable.

Reading For Perspective

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

•The Pattern of New Testament Truth, by George Eldon Ladd (Eerdmans, $3.75). Contending for the unity of New Testament theology, this professor shows that the Synoptic writers, John, and Paul share a common view of God.

•Grace Is Not a Blue-Eyed Blond, by R. Lofton Hudson (Word, $3.95). A lively and creative look at concepts that pertain to personal predicaments of people today: grace, sin, friendship, temptation, forgiveness, love, faith, guts.

•Black and Free, by Tom Skinner (Zondervan, $2.95). Negro evangelical Skinner relates his rise from gang leader of the Harlem Lords to his calling as a Christian evangelist and offers candid comments on black power, Dr. King, Negro evangelicals, and the cures of racism.

Dr. John W. Klotz, scientist and theologian, contributes a chapter on “Creationist Viewpoints” that repays careful study. The point of view from which one observes a fact alters what one sees. The creationist observes creation and preservation and sees a Creator. The materialist observes the same objects and sees only matter. Older scientists, such as Newton, observed the cosmos and interpreted it as a giant machine; they believed in mechanics. Later scientists pressed Newton’s logic a little further than he did—he reverenced the Creator—and from Newton’s machine removed, by process of Occam’s razor, the God Newton interpreted as being behind the machine. (One might add at this point that modern physicists have largely given up the idea of a machine as the expression of cosmic ultimate reality and, with Sir James Jeans, regard ultimate reality as pure mathematical thought.)

Klotz concludes by developing the idea of the fitness of the environment as an argument for creation. The views advanced are squarely based on the conviction that our interpretation of the facts is conditioned by our faith or lack of it. Nevertheless, creationism should stand in harmony with observed facts. Biology teachers will find this section especially useful, for it will help them base their teaching on the creationist view.

Dr. Paul A. Zimmerman deals with the explosive question: “Can we accept theistic evolution?” The theistic evolutionist believes in the “availability” of billions of years to achieve his ends, whereas today’s informed creationist is little concerned with time as such in solving his problems. For he (with Einstein) knows that time is a property of matter created along with it. Prior to creation it did not exist. These differing philosophies determine the interpretation of the days of Genesis 1 and 2. Several points mentioned in Genesis 2 are, however, incompatible with the idea that human development took place over long periods of time—even under the theistic evolutionary scheme of things. Man was formed from “dirt,” “soil,” “particles of dust,” “clods of soil,” directly, not through the use of living, organic matter. Similar considerations are applied to the Genesis account of Eve’s origin. Zimmerman mentions some instructive Roman Catholic attempts at retaining the identity of Adam and Eve as the original pair and at the same time harmonizing this with the theistic evolutionary view. His own views on Eden and the Fall are interesting and orthodox.

The upshot of Zimmerman’s contribution is that, scientifically, the position of the theistic evolutionist is much more precarious than that of the creationist, for scientific evolution as taught practically universally today cannot tolerate any supernaturalism at all. If God is not supernatural, who or what is? So the term “theistic evolution” combines the uncombinable.

Dr. R. Clyde McCone’s essays on “The Origins of Civilization” and “Evolutionary Time: A Moral Issue” offer valuable insights. McCone takes the view that events discernible to man can never be in conflict with the events revealed to man. The question of evolutionary time is handled in a particularly provocative way.

Donald W. Patten’s two contributions, “The Noachian Flood and Mountain Uplifts” and “The Ice Epoch,” have been treated at least in part in his book, The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch. Some of his views are certainly not orthodox, particularly on the extra-terrestrial origin of the ice that precipitated the Ice Epoch. But though these views will shock the orthodox geologist, he presents them well and convincingly. New horizons are opened, whether or not one agrees with the presentation.

Although these essays are of necessity somewhat heterogeneous, the book is well worth careful study by the student of science and Scripture and is a valuable contribution to the armory of the scientific creationist today.

Degradation Of Democratic Dogma

America’s Political Dilemma: From Limited to Unlimited Democracy, by Gottfried Dietze (Johns Hopkins Press, 1968, 298 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Russell Kirk, syndicated columnist and lecturer, Mecosta, Michigan.

The American republic, characterized by what Orestes Brownson called “territorial democracy,” is sinking into plebiscitary democracy, characterized by concentration of power in the President. This is the thesis of Professor Dietze, a youngish and very able scholar, our best writer on the Federalist papers, and a redoubtable defender of the theory and actuality of private property.

Dietze, who holds doctoral degrees from Heidelberg, Princeton, and Virginia, confesses to looking at American politics through foreign spectacles—as did Tocqueville, by whom he is mightily influenced. One would scarcely guess this from the study itself, however, for Dietze is marvelously at home in American thought and institutions.

A few gaps exist. He seems unaware of a very good book on nearly the same theme, Alfred de Grazia’s Republic in Crisis: Congress against the Executive Force (1965), and also of Lord Percy of Newcastle’s Heresy of Democracy, which touches on much that Dietze takes up. And some of the shrewdest and most mordant criticism of American democratic theories—and their corruption—comes from John Randolph of Roanoke, Orestes Brownson, and Henry Adams, none of whom is mentioned in the text of this volume, though Brownson appears in the bibliography.

Dietze’s footnotes often are penetrating:

A reduction of age qualifications for voting would diminish the rationality of the electorate further. Youngsters generally are less educated, less mature, less reasonable than their elders. So far American parents often suffer from the irrational demands of their children. Should suffrage be extended to a younger age group, the whole nation might suffer from these immature demands. The Nineteenth Amendment increased the chances of a political candidate with good looks irrespective of brains. The lowering of the voting age increases the chances for the election of bobby soxer’s idols.

Unlike most other professors of politics, Dietze is an admirer of Barry Goldwater, whom he quotes more than once and whose courage and frankness he praises. He is an opponent of the “strong president” notion of American government. Assassination, he fears, will increase as the President concentrates all real power of decision in his person; for when a people are subjected to a government of men, and not of laws, resentments are expressed through this ancient way of tempering despotism.

America’s drift toward social democracy has devitalized the “vital center,” Dietze believes; and the illusion of a “value-free science” of society has corrupted American political thought in our century. The more we slip into the heresy that the voice of the people is the voice of God, the more we slide away from liberty and order.

But Dietze is not without hope: “Emotional and passionate as the American demos may have become, it still is composed of rational beings who might again prefer the permanent public good to temporary convenience.” Amen to that.

Surveying Christianity’S Relations

Christianity and the World of Thought, edited by Hudson T. Armerding (Moody, 1968, 350 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Elva McAllaster, professor of English, Greenville College, Greenville, Illinois.

President Hudson Armerding of Wheaton College has brought together sixteen essays, very uneven in quality, written by sixteen Christian scholars respected within the evangelical world who seek to show the relation of Christianity to their chosen fields. The fields are social science, modern literature, philosophy, theology, education, astronomy, history, biology, anthropology, sociology, geology, archaeology, philosophy of science, church music, psychology, and psychiatry. (One disappointing omission is art, a field which evangelicals too often ignore, and to which they often respond naïvely when they do respond.) Each chapter is followed by a selected bibliography, and some of these listings will probably become much thumbed and marked in personal libraries. The chapters likely to be received most enthusiastically are by E. Mansell Pattison (University of Washington School of Medicine) on psychiatry, Arthur F. Holmes (Wheaton) on philosophy, and James M. Murk (doctoral candidate, University of Chicago), on anthropology.

The book as a whole would have profited from a clearer and more consistent definition of the expected reading audience. Some passages seem to speak to college freshmen, some to graduate students, some to the writer’s professional peers, some to no recognized audience. More frequent evidence that the chapters were written for 1968—rather than 1958 or 1928—would also have been valuable. On sociology, for instance, one would have expected more allusion to racial violence and urban despair; on church music, to the jazz mass and guitars.

A few representative topics and viewpoints:

“Perhaps there is no clearer depiction of the predicament and anguish of unregenerate, contemporary man than in some of the artistically sound, modern novels.”—Beatrice Batson (Wheaton), modern literature.

“There is no reason why an able man like Moses could not have written the first five books of the Bible.”—R. Allan Killen (Covenant Theological Seminary), theology.

“But man, being fractured in the totality of his person, has in the crossroads of human endeavor tried to make his own way.”—Cornelius Jaarsma (Calvin College), education.

“… the more beautiful a melody is from the sensuous point of view, the less desirable it is as a hymn melody.”—Lee Olson (Nyack Missionary College), church music.

“… but with what statistics does one describe a saint, an ethical decision, the love of God or the new birth, all of which may be as real in experience as any other kind of behavior.”—John M. Vayhinger (Iliff School of Theology), psychology.

“Conceivably even the system of Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, will give way to some new world realization in the ever changing drama of man’s vision of inscrutable eternity.”—Karel Hujer (University of Chattanooga), astronomy.

Some profitable uses of this book might be:

1. Preachers and laymen—If you have been out of college for a while, buy this book as a refresher course. Review fields you studied, presented here in useful juxtaposition. Challenge what you feel is faulty logic. Note premises that invite argument.

2. Students, undergraduate and graduate—Read the chapter on your major field. Discuss it with someone. You may find its contents very helpful. You may also find that it challenges you to learn more and understand more—perhaps more than you feel the author of the chapter knows—and to write more effectively.

3. Christian professors—Have your majors read the chapter on your discipline. Invite them to try the same general project: to state concisely what Christianity says to their field, and what their field says to Christians. Also, decide for yourself whether the chapter is effective. If you think it is, cite it to your colleagues and in your lectures. If not, start planning an essay in which you will attempt to grasp the topic with firmer hands.

A Sequel: The Church’S Plot

Those Incredible Christians, by Hugh J. Schonfield (Bernard Geis Associates, 1968, 266 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Robert C. Campbell, dean and professor of New Testament, California Baptist Theological Seminary, Covina.

Hugh Schonfield intends this volume as a sequel to his The Passover Plot. The previous volume was an ingenious attempt to describe Jesus’ death as a fraud no novelist would attempt to devise. Jesus cleverly tried to force the fulfillment of messianic prophecies by attempting to feign death, with the help of Joseph of Arimathea, who was to revive him shortly thereafter. Schonfield records Jesus’ attempt as a failure and unwittingly committed his own attempt to the same doom.

Schonfield recognized that The Passover Plot failed to explain the vitality and expansion of the Christian Church. Those Incredible Christians is meant to be this explanation. This time Schonfield is not so creative or ingenious. He has simply revived the argument of the Tübingen school in its extreme form of a Pauline-Petrine dissension.

Besides Jesus, the heroes are Peter, James, and the Jerusalem church. They never saw Jesus as a founder of a religion or church, or as a revealer of God, or as Deity. He was simply a man convinced he was the Messiah.

Paul and John are the villains. Their Christology and doctrine of redemption through the cross relate to heathen mystery religions, not to Jesus and the apostles. Moreover, they drew heavily on Jewish occultism rather than the Scriptures. John taught love, mercy, and truth, but acted out egoism, aggressiveness and bigotry. The Christian doctrines that most disturb Schonfield are the Trinity and the understanding of Christ as the God-man.

Schonfield’s reconstruction grows out of a thorough knowledge, and a more thorough selectivity and interpretation, of the sources. The early Christians expected the King who had been killed by the Romans to return soon from heaven. This story could have undermined the Roman empire, but it was well checked by unbelieving Jews. The original Jewish Christianity was unacceptable to Paul, who refused Jewish legalism and emphasized personal union with Christ, which in Schonfield’s words “was the greatest weakness in his case for redemption by faith alone.” Paul’s teaching changed the course of Christian waters. Thus “Pauline heresy served as the basis for Christian orthodoxy, and the legitimate church was outlawed as heretical.” The Acts contributed to this Pauline acceptance. The church in Rome followed the Pauline line and usurped leadership in the Christian world by propagation and by denigration of Jewish Christian leadership. It claimed to be “the inheritor of the tradition of the Apostles,” an assertion that “illustrates the power of a lie if it is a thumping big one.” This Roman church repudiated militant Messianism and placated the government. Paul’s spiritual gospel, divorced from Judaism, was the theological base of this apostate church. The Roman takeover—especially of the Gentile churches largely founded by Paul—was relatively easy. The final step in the perversion of the early Church was forgery, fraud, and forced harmonizing of the New Testament documents. Through such means Peter was made to subscribe to Paul’s teachings.

Schonfield simplistically identifies himself and nineteenth-century radical New Testament scholars as “historians” seeking the truth as opposed to the “theologians” who compel the Church to consider Jesus in terms of a Pauline Christianity. The original Christology, he contends, was the “true apostolic tradition” of adoptionism. Jesus was simply “a man who was anointed by the Holy Spirit at his baptism in order that he might become the Messiah.” This clear bending of our historic sources Schonfield calls objective historical research. Concerning the history of the Church, he says, “It is rare to find it treated objectively and without a conscious Christian bias.” Seemingly ignorant of his own bias, he maintains, “We have looked very sharply and without blinkers” at this evidence. But few scholars will agree.

Understanding The Renaissance

The Crisis of the Renaissance, 1520–1600, by Andre Chastel (SIKA, 1968, 217 pp., $21.50), is reviewed by Dominic A. LaRusso, professor of rhetoric, University of Oregon, Eugene.

This marvelous volume, one of a series on that kaleidoscopic period called the Renaissance, sets a high standard for its forthcoming companions. Its striking and tasteful format presents the 144 illustrations in what seems to be the best possible light. Its color reproductions are superb, the quality of the plates uniformly high. Both art-lovers and Renaissance buffs will give the volume a warm welcome.

Its theme is that one can hardly understand the period 1520–1600 without understanding the influence of the important forces of society upon one another; that one can appreciate the role of visual symbols in the life of the Renaissance man only if he knows how literary, philosophical, political, and social forces impinged upon the development of these symbols. Despite the inherent pitfalls of such an attempt, Professor Chastel handles his broadly based discussion well.

A vast undertaking of this sort requires giant steps, and at times many readers may be left behind. Such conclusions as, “The French incurred a good deal of rather disingenuous opprobrium when they sought in Suleyman the political and military counterpoise they needed to offset the power of the Empire,” cannot be read without misgivings by persons who are unfamiliar with Renaissance history. And those who do know something of the intricacies of this epoch will wonder how such a volume could be undertaken without some serious concern for relevant works of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Caravaggio. When Chastel speaks of “the many ways in which art and society became closely associated in the ephemeral and spectacular,” one expects at least a mention of the influential commedia dell’arte, of the stock characters of Harlequin, Pantalone, and Scaramouche, of the ground swells caused by the literary movement known as Ciceronianism and the artistic modifications encouraged by the arte per arte advocates.

But these blemishes are minor. Throughout this attempt to record the dominant mood, attitude, or thought of the period as mirrored in various artistic masterpieces, one feels the warmth of Professor Chastel’s sensitive understanding of the majestic persons, places, events, and things that marked this very special era.

Secret Code In John’S Gospel?

History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, by J. Louis Martyn (Harper & Row, 1968, 168 pp., $7), is reviewed by Robert H. Gundry, chairman of the Division of Biblical Studies and Philosophy, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.

Because some critical scholars have recently supported the historicity of the fourth Gospel, the presence of the word “history” in the title of this book may mislead some. The author refers not to the history of Jesus but to the history of the later Johannine church as portrayed in the fourth Gospel. Since prima facie the fourth evangelist gives the history of Jesus, Martyn claims that the evangelist has actually developed certain older traditions about Jesus into coded accounts of the conflict between church and synagogue in his own time and place.

For example, the bulk of John 9 (verses 8–41) becomes the dramatic expansion of a traditional miracle story in the initial verses. In the dramatic expansion, Jesus stands for an early Christian preacher in the Johannine church, the blind man for his convert, the Jewish officials for the Jewish council in the city where the fourth evangelist lived, the casting of the blind man out of the synagogue for the expulsion of the convert from the synagogue fellowship, the fearful parents for secret Jewish believers in John’s city, and so on. Thus Martyn thinks that by decoding parts of the fourth Gospel he can rewrite in fine detail the history of the controversy between the Johannine church and the neighborhood synagogue.

He finds clues to the code in minutiae of the text (“We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day” [9:4], the “we” betraying a double image of Christ and his disciple-preacher), undivergence of literary form from the Synoptic norm (the un-Synoptic post-healing dialogue, betraying dramatic expansion of an originally short healing story), and in Jewish history current to the time of John’s writing (the Jewish benediction against heretics, represented by the expulsion of the former blind man from the synagogue).

Those who share Martyn’s confidence in form-critical procedure practiced with pessimism toward the authenticity of the gospel tradition will find this book stimulating. Those who do not will find it largely fanciful. The marvelous inventiveness Martyn finds in the fourth evangelist excites one’s admiration and doubt. Are we to pay no attention to claims within the Gospel that its contents stem from an eyewitness to Jesus’ ministry? Have not recent discoveries and studies tended to restore confidence in the reliability of John?

Martyn’s identifications of historical background, however, may well be correct, even though they are not the source for inventive amplification but the occasion for mentioning certain aspects of authentic tradition about Jesus. And his analysis of the meaning of the text frequently shows perception, as in the comment that the primary point of the bread-manna sign in chapter 6 is not Moses-Messiah typology but—in view of the crowd’s failure to see the parallel—God’s sovereign election.

From Naturalism To Christ

Journey Into Light, by Emile Cailliet (Zondervan, 1968, $3.95) is reviewed by L. Nelson Bell, executive editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Some books challenge the mind or fire the imagination. Others cater in some way to our lesser needs. Journey Into Light above all else speaks to the heart. Admittedly thinking of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Dr. Emile Cailliet tells the story of his journey from naturalism into the light of Christianity through a simple faith in Jesus Christ.

This is not to say that Dr. Cailliet does not challenge the mind, for he does. He is a scholar of great distinction. In 1932 he was commended by the President of France for his research and writings and elected to the prestigious French Academy of· Sciences, and two years later the French government conferred on him a medal for “distinguished service in the field of letters.” But in this book he primarily leads the reader into the things of the Spirit by relating his own journey into the deep things of God.

Educated in a tradition that was “naturalistic to the core,” Cailliet was forced to face reality as a soldier in the French army in World War I. After the war he resumed his academic career and began writing a book that he felt would speak to his own soul and satisfy his longing heart.

Strange as it may seem, he had never seen a Bible until he was twenty-three, well along in his graduate work. When he married a Scotch-Irish girl, a devout Christian, he made it clear that religion was to be taboo in their home. But God had his own plans. One day his wife begged a copy of the Bible from a Huguenot minister and a little later timidly stood before her husband with the book in her hand. “A Bible you say? Where is it? Show me. I have never seen one before!” Grabbing the book from her hands, he rushed to his study to read, and as he read he realized that this was the book for which he had been longing for years—the book that understood him. Anyone who has doubts about the inherent power of the Holy Spirit in the Bible should read this account.

As one makes his way through this book he is overwhelmed at the depth of Dr. Cailliet’s scholarship, his wide knowledge of literature, his gift of evaluating knowledge with truth and coming to Spirit-directed conclusions. In telling of his journey into light, he quotes some men of our day whose journeys have been less enlightening to themselves and those who have followed them. His rejection of attempts to tamper with New Testament Christianity in order to make it more acceptable to the naturalistically minded places us greatly in his debt.

A fine chapter on “A Charter for the Christian Scholar” contains such valuable comments as this:

Thus set in its proper setting, certitude conditions the very relevance of New Testament scholarship as a whole. It constitutes the faith-principle without which the most outstanding historian is bound to miss the mark. Not that such a historian actually proceeds for one moment without any faith-principle! No historian does. The reason he will miss the mark is that either he does not see what is there, and this is darkness; or he sees what is not there, and this is error. In either case he sins against sanity which is health of intellect.

Here is a book that warms the heart and lifts the spirit, written by one who has made the long journey into light and found that this light leads over the horizon into eternity.

BOOK BRIEFS

Population in Perspective, edited by Louise B. Young (Oxford, 1968, 460 pp., $10). Selected essays from demographers, economists, anthropologists, biologists, philosophers, churchmen, and novelists on today’s population problems.

Social Scientific Studies of Religion: A Bibliography, by Morris I. Berkowitz and J. Edmund Johnson (University of Pittsburgh, 1967, 258 pp., $7.95). An excellent aid to religious research.

The New Testament in Greek and English, (American Bible Society, 1968, 920 pp., $2.75 bound, $4.75 looseleaf). The United Bible Societies, 1966 Greek text edited by Aland, Black, Metzger, and Wikgren is paralleled with the remarkably successful “Today’s English Version.” Excellent for Bible scholars.

The Struggle of the Unbeliever, by James J. Kavanaugh (Trident, 1967, 207 pp., $7.95). The modern priest who left his “outdated church” presents an apologetic based on the thought of John Henry Newman, Blondel, and Scheler. He stresses that faith consists not of adherence to a certain body of truths but of a personal search for a real God.

Toward the Year 2000: Work in Progress, edited by Daniel Bell (Houghton Mifflin, 1968, 400 pp„ $6.50). The Commission on the Year 2000 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences reports on work it has initiated to study future ramifications of present policies, anticipate coming problems, and seek advance solutions.

The Permissible Lie, by Samm S. Baker (World, 1968, 236 pp., $5.95). A former Madison Avenue copywriter criticizes unethical advertising practices in hope of helping people become more discriminating consumers. The ad industry won’t like it, but most book-buyers will.

New Singer, New Song, by David Winter (Word, 1968, 160 pp., $3.95). The story of Cliff Richard, Britain’s top pop singer. Winter writes of Richard, “The whole world of show business lay at his feet. He had more money than he could spend. Every whim could be indulged.” But he was not satisfied until he found Christ.

PAPERBACKS

The Conspiracy that Failed, by Edd Doerr (Americans United for Separation of Church and State, 1968, 186 pp., $2.25). An informative account of last year’s fracas over church-state separation in New York, which ended in the defeat of the proposed new constitution.

How to Succeed in Family Living, by Clyde M. Narramore (Gospel Light, 1968, 120 pp., $.95). Biblically oriented guidelines for happy family life. Popular level; not profound.

What Do We Know About Jesus?, by Otto Betz (Westminster, 1968, 124 pp., $1.65). A German scholar stresses that the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith must always be seen together.

Not My Own, by Alfred Martin (Moody, 1968, 166 pp., $.50). A biblical exposition of the role of man as a steward of God’s gifts.

Family Pastoral Care, by Russell J. Becker, Counseling with Senior Citizens, by J. Paul Brown, Helping Youth in Conflict, by Francis I. Frellick, and Ministering to the Physically Sick, by Carl J. Scherzer (Prentice-Hall, 1963–65, 144 pp., each, $1.50 each). Paperback reprints in the “Successful Pastoral Counseling Series.”

A Guidebook for Developing the Church Youth Program, by Janet Burton (Baker, 1968, 123 pp., $1.95). Help on banquets, retreats, “Youth Sunday” programs, fellowships.

Let’s Face It, by Bruce Shelley (Moody, 1968, 127 pp., $.50). Simple yet profound advice on how to face a variety of personal problems: discouragement, fear, guilt, greed, anger, gluttony, pride, and others.

New Theology No. 5, edited by Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman (Macmillan, 1968, 252 pp., $1.95). This time around the new-theology collection includes articles on secular, hopeful, and future theology by a stellar group of theological pace-setters.

In a Barley Field, by J. Vernon McGee (Regal, 1968, 192 pp., $.95). A valuable exposition of the Book of Ruth that illustrates the truth of the “kinsman-redeemer” concept.

View Issue
Subscribe
Give a Gift
Archives

The Rev. Jaroslav J. Vajda, editor of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod monthly “This Day,” wrote this report in Vienna, Austria, after his visit to a Slovak cultural conference on a scholarship from Comenius University in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, had been cut short by last month’s Soviet invasion:

The day after I completed investigation of the far-reaching effects of Czechoslovakia’s liberalization on its 510,000-member Lutheran Church, the scene was totally and abruptly revised with the sudden occupation by Warsaw Pact forces.

There was no immediate assurance of a return to the pre-occupation freedoms enjoyed during seven brief months under Communist Party Secretary Alexander Dubcek. In my week in the capital of Slovakia, I heard exciting signs of this atmosphere in announcements to congregations.

For the first time since 1948, parents would register their children for religious instruction with local church authorities; the previous practice of registering with public-school officials frightened and frustrated most parents from doing so. There would be no persecution of registrants as in the past, and the church could extend training to an earlier age.

Parishioners of the 10,000-member Bratislava Lutheran Church were asked to sign petitions to restore broadcasting of worship from the large 200-year-old mother church in the capital, where the pulpit microphone had not been used since 1951. More than half the 300 worshipers lined up to sign; a marked contrast to the quick scattering of churchgoers from a service I attended there in 1965.

The church biweekly, “Lutheran Messenger from the Tatra Foothills,” handed to members after services, was bigger than usual and carried a strong pro-Dubcek editorial appealing for dialogue between Marxism and Christianity. The paper’s former editor, Joseph Juras, was released from a six-year imprisonment just two months ago.

The edition also carried a defense of the late Bishop Vladimir Cobrda, former head of Slovakia’s Lutherans, who was tried for subversion five years ago at age 83. The onetime war hero, decorated for resistance to the Nazi occupation, got a suspended sentence and died, crushed, a short time later. His is one of thousands of names being rehabilitated after public disgrace under the Stalinist Novotny regime. Dozens of the nation’s 350 Lutheran pastors had been deposed or imprisoned; a few were beginning to return to their parishes.

The church rejoiced over the increase of ministerial students: eight a few years ago, fifty-two for the upcoming fall term at the Bratislava Lutheran Seminary.

There were hopes that charitable institutions confiscated by previous regimes would be returned. Publishing, down to a few hymnals and New Testaments, was also expected to increase now that the excuse of a paper shortage was no longer quoted. Lay officers (presbyters) hoped to be able to function without threat to their jobs or to the education of their children. Children of church members could now expect to enter college without hindrance. (Children of Lutheran pastors, prominent in national and cultural leadership far out of proportion to their numbers, were special victims of discrimination after the 1948 Communist takeover.)

Since January, the first youth programs in a generation had begun. Two hundred young people attended a Bible institute in one town, 120 in another. Youths who had previously taken the risk of enrolling for the two-year confirmation course did not even know the Lord’s Prayer.

As of August 18, the Lutherans had a leadership crisis. Of three district officials, one had died and had not been replaced. Bratislava Bishop Jan Chabada was on leave for illness. No general conference of clergy has been held for years. In the spring, church leaders issued a statement supporting Dubcek and pleading for correction of past wrongs and more freedom in the future.

I wrote down these encouraging reports Tuesday, August 20. That night at 11:30 the Russians began moving in. All night long they streamed over the Danube bridge into the city in endless lines of tanks and military vehicles. Airplanes unloaded troops and supplies, and by morning the city of 300,000 was completely enclosed in a trap of armor. From my dormitory window I saw tanks so numerous they could not move.

Such things happen in films. We could not believe they were taking place before our eyes.

At 7 A.M. the local TV station went on the air with bulletins. Government officials asked the people to remain calm and not provoke the occupiers. Although Soviet soldiers surrounded the studios and the announcer warned that each segment might be the last, broadcasts continued until 2 P.M.

At noon the entire country was asked to stop all activity for two minutes as a sign of support for the government. Whistles and horns were blown, and a church bell rang as I walked to Safarik Square at the base of the Danube bridge.

A group of youths carrying the Czech flag marched toward the circle of tanks chanting “Dubcek and Svoboda, this is our liberty.” (Svoboda, the president’s name, means freedom.)

In minutes a crowd of nearly 1,000 formed a human barricade and prevented military vehicles from entering the city. After a half hour an armored car drove into the crowd, firing shots in the air. The crowd separated but then began to clamor up the sides of the tank, throwing sticks and stones. Soldiers began firing over the heads of the crowd, and people ran in all directions. Two youths were said later to have been killed.

Low-flying jets buzzed the ancient city all afternoon as scattered shooting continued. A hundred yards from my dormitory window some boys rolled up a canvas banner, set fire to it, and stuffed it into the path of a passing tank, which was crippled.

By late afternoon every tank had been painted or chalked with a swastika or “Go Home.” A girl on the steps of the university administration building on the square shouted “Fascist” at a passing tank and was killed at the foot of a column. At 6:30 P.M., as we left the city with twenty-one American students in a hastily hired bus, we saw behind a Russian tank and gun the inscription a young man had chiseled into that column: “Here the Russians killed a 17-year-old Slovak girl.” At the foot of the pillar lay a bouquet and the scarf the girl had worn.

As we reached the Austrian border five miles west of the city we left a determined people, their dreams of freedom shattered, their intellectuals facing arrest, the night of terror they recalled from 1939 falling again with the Soviet invasion.

The border was still in friendly Slovak hands, just an hour before the first curfew. Night had already settled as we transferred to transportation that was still free. The border guards said, “Tell your people that we shall not give up.”

A part of our own freedom depended on that determination.

NEAR-SPLIT ON RACE-SPLITTING

Indonesians became unexpected mediators between South Africans and Hollanders at last month’s Reformed Ecumenical Synod, preventing a complete split between them and a predicted collapse of this small world confessional movement. The Asians proposed a marriage of majority and minority reports on race relations, one of which was too vague for many delegates, the other too explicit.

Several young churches were accepted at the RES meetings in Holland, making it an organization of thirty denominations with five million members. The synod has met every five years since 1948. Major members are the U. S. Christian Reformed Church, the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, and two of the three Boer churches—the large Dutch Reformed Church and the Reformed Church in South Africa.

Although members of the group share a deep love for the Bible, Reformed confessions, and presbyterian government, it soon became evident that they have grown far apart on such issues as ordination of women, the World Council of Churches, and—especially—apartheid.

The meeting drew scores of journalists, because the South African Dutch churches have had virtually no recent contact with other churches. For the first time since 1960, they discussed apartheid with fellow Christians in public.

The original study report on race was considered a rather weak piece of work. Professor J. van den Berg of the Free University of Amsterdam had added a strong anti-apartheid minority report. Yet South Africans, also dissatisfied, added their own comments. A synod advisory committee was also unable to write one report. A majority chose sides with the South Africans; a minority of Hollanders and Indonesians issued a strong minority report.

After one and one-half days of hard discussion, the synod followed an Indonesian’s original suggestion and appointed three “wise men” to seek a compromise: Professors Klooster of Grand Rapids, Sudarmo of Djakarta, and Helberg of Pretoria.

After eight continuous hours of consultation the three men proposed resolutions based on both reports. With amendments, their work was accepted by a simple voice vote, though South Africans still thought it went too far and the Dutch not far enough.

The document says, “Marriage is primarily a personal and family matter. Church and state must refrain from prohibiting interracial marriages”—a clear strike at South African laws. Moreover, the churches are advised to not only reject “every form of racial discrimination and racism” but also “subtle forms of racial discrimination found in many countries today with respect to housing, employment, education, law enforcement, etc.”

It was unclear whether South African apartheid had been condemned. A motion to spell this out was rejected, both by South Africans and by those who didn’t want to endanger the measure of unity that had been found.

On other subjects the synod spoke less unitedly. By 25 to 22, it supported the Free Church of Scotland’s opposition to women in “the governing or teaching orders of the Church,” thereby rejecting a committee proposal to study the issue.

With a somewhat bigger majority the synod repeated its advice to shun membership in the World Council of Churches at the present time. The same thing was said about the International Council of Christian Churches, with the addition that churches are free to decide this one for themselves. This was done despite the fact that three synod members are in the WCC and only one is in the ICCC. The synod, however, did ask members to investigate the ICCC role in church splits in Pakistan and Cameroun.

JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN

PENTECOSTAL GROWTH IN CANADA

The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada told tales of growth as 300 leaders celebrated an August golden-jubilee convention in Windsor, Ontario. Canada’s fastest-growing major denomination has added 5 per cent a year to its constituency since 1950. Last year fifty-seven new congregations brought the total to 745.

In a strong evangelism resolution, the group—counterpart to the U. S. Assemblies of God—called for a national program of personal evangelism, preparation of a manual, and increased instruction in methods at Assemblies colleges. They moved boldly into TV evangelism, with “Cross-roads,” a program sponsored by the Sudbury, Ontario, church, planned as a future national TV voice of the Assemblies.

At a jangling Offerama—in which Assemblies across Canada phoned in contributions to the 166 missionaries—$131,620 was contributed, nearly $30,000 more than the amount two years ago.

Looking outward, denominational Editor Earl Kulbeck said, “Like nearly all fundamentalists, we buried our heads for years and neglected social matters. But more recently we’ve decided that nobody should do better social work than born-again Christians.” A resolution opposed proposals by the nation’s new Liberal government to legalize lotteries and hom*osexuality and urged a “gigantic” letter-writing campaign against them.

Delegates also expressed considerable opposition to the Ontario government’s proposal to tax denominational property, but the convention did not take action since it was not a national issue.

The convention chose the Rev. Robert Taitinger, 41, of Edmonton, Alberta, as general superintendent, to succeed retiring ten-year veteran the Rev. Tom Johnstone, 65.

In near-100-degree heat August 24 the delegates decided to switch conventions back to the usual September date since “August is proving to be a very unsatisfactory month.” By Monday, temperatures were more comfortable, and they rescinded the action.

JAMES L. HUFFMAN

FUNDAMENTALISTS ON THE BEACH

President Johnson wired: “You go forth with the gratitude of this nation and the admiration of your President.” New Jersey Governor Richard Hughes, a Democratic vice-presidential possibility, welcomed “your large and distinguished international group.” Chiang Kai-shek said the organization is “known and highly esteemed around the world” for its fundamentalism and anticommunism.

Thus armed with establishment credentials, the International Council of Christian Churches’ August assembly at Cape May, New Jersey, proceeded to assault the religious establishment. The fundamentalist council had invited three of its major targets—Billy Graham, Carl F. H. Henry, and Eugene Carson Blake—to speak, but plans didn’t pan out.

The ICCC condemned the Roman Catholic Church, the World Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Revised Standard Version, and all Communists everywhere.

Although ICCC orthodoxy had held Tito-type Communists to be the same as the rest, the invasion of Czechoslovakia brought the assessment that peaceful coexistence is now a myth, “for they cannot even coexist as Communists.” The religious-liberty resolution was the only time non-Communists were condemned: several ICCC pastors have been jailed in the Cameroun, and the members think U. S. income-tax enforcement is loaded against conservatives.

The resolution on Roman Catholicism, more acid than the 1965 statement,¹The resolution said, “The whole ststem of Poperyis a system of nondage and tyranmy—the bondage and tyranny of anti-Christianity. By a colossal web of superstiton … Rome has enslaved millions of the human race. By the galkling chains of an intolerable priesthood, Rome has imprisoned the souls of those who have fallen prey to her blasphemies. By the cunning of her decits Rome has brought down whole nations to mental and even physical slavery …” etc. didn’t discuss the Pope’s current weak spot—the birth-control stand. It brought dissent by a moderate minority from Sweden, Holland, and New Zealand. No less anti-Catholic than the hawks led by Northern Ireland’s Ian Paisley, they sought to convince troubled Catholics rather than intimidate them.

The ICCC, ever alert to soft spots in the WCC, paid to bring as an observer the Rev. Apostolos Bliates, pastor of one of Greece’s biggest Protestant churches. The Greek evangelicals are restive about their WCC ties, partly because of the move toward Catholicism. But Bliates said that the resolution on Catholics was too strong even for Greek palates, and that the ICCC should be more careful about politics and more friendly toward non-ICCC evangelicals.

Most of the ICCC groups have pulled out of other denominations, and much of the council’s effort is aimed at getting others to follow suit, which makes for some tedious sessions. All thirty minutes of the British report were spent on the picketing and protests against “His Dis-Grace” the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Pope; nothing was said of evangelism or other church tasks. By contrast, many speeches offered an intelligent, forceful expression of biblical belief.

The ICCC never gives out constituency estimates, so it’s hard to guess just what the 480 delegates and 2,000 visitors at Cape May represented. But the movement is growing, fueled by such events as the WCC’s Uppsala assembly and the dismissal of heresy charges against Principal Lloyd Geering in New Zealand.

At the ICCC meeting the Rev. Carl McIntire was more omnipresent than his arch-rivals Blake and Pope Paul were at Uppsala or Vatican II. Dr. A. Rackotobe of an independent Reformed church in Madagascar exclaimed with enthusiasm, “The world is beginning to rot. Happily, Dr. McIntire is the salt.… Apart from Dr. McIntire the whole world is in deep darkness.”

At 62, McIntire is a hard-working, happy warrior. He has been ICCC president twenty years and is in his thirty-fifth year at the Bible Presbyterian Church in Collingswood, New Jersey, whose 1,800 members constitute nearly a fourth of that denomination. From there he puts out a weekly paper and a daily radio program he says is on 600 stations.

But Cape May is an increasingly important base. McIntire picked up the long-vacant 333-room beachfront Admiral Hotel for $300,000 and spent $1.5 million restoring its Victorian grandeur and putting up a large auditorium. Then he acquired several more Victorian buildings and—last December—the 100-room Congress Hall for $550,000. All this makes McIntire’s group the town’s biggest taxpayer. The Admiral’s summer conference features such speakers as Strom Thurmond, John Stormer, and Edgar Bundy. The bookstore sells Carleton Putnam’s notorious Race and Reason.

RICHARD N. OSTLING