Page 5920 – Christianity Today (2024)

EDITORIALS

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster, said Jonathan Swift.

Evangelicals today should follow the lead of that initial oyster-eater. If we look about us, we see all kinds of potential for more effective proclamation of the Gospel. We must transcend our timidity and take that first bite.

The greatest danger posed by today’s radicals is not that Christianity might be overcome but that it might be rendered ineffective. Cries of revolution, instead of goading us into fresh initiatives, sometimes intimidate us into quiet retreat. We cower in the corners of our sanctuaries, hoping that the storms of change will pass by and leave us unscathed.

This kind of reaction is clearly not that prescribed by the New Testament. From the Gospels through the Epistles, boldness is a recurring theme. The Greek parrhesia appears at least twenty times in one form or another. It means candor and plainness of speech, and a confident courage. The leaders of the early Church, facing vastly more serious reprisals than Christians in the West today, nonetheless prayed and talked and acted with a kind of joyous fearlessness. They would have balked at the modern idea that Christians ought not to cultivate an image of authority but ought rather to appear as mere fellow seekers, beggars telling other beggars where to get bread.

Peter and John are illustrious examples of the kind of daring that ought to characterize believers of all ages; the ecclesiastical establishment of their day marveled at their boldness (Acts 4:13). The Apostle Paul, who continually did exploits for the Gospel that involved a high degree of risk, told his proteges that the spirit of fear was not of God.

The word meek in Matthew 5:5, appearing in the context of the especially profound Sermon on the Mount, has perhaps had a dampening influence upon would-be Christian initiators. Virtually all scholars would attest that the Greek praeis did not have anything like the connotation now attached to the English meek. It really suggests something more like gentle strength. The Interpreter’s Bible notes that the Greek word has “sinew,” and That it decidedly does not suggest “sad resignation.” The word was that of Jesus himself, who could hardly be called a milquetoast.

Some might say that boldness brings out pride. What is more likely is that pride can keep us from being bold. We let our fear of failure and error (and the resulting embarrassment) keep us from undertaking new ventures. We would rather leave well enough alone, protecting whatever reputation we already have.

The timidity syndrome is not confined to the ecclesiastical realm. The business world is in the midst of an infatuation with “scientific management,” which sees management as a precise discipline. In problem-solving, computers are replacing people, and the decision-makers who are left are increasingly afraid to go out on a limb. Many seem to think if they wait long enough, the risk will evaporate. But delay itself is a decision, and is often detrimental.

There is, of course, the danger of being too adventurous, or of regarding boldness as an end in itself. These are temptations, partly because boldness is admired no matter what cause it serves. If we are to err, however, this is probably the preferable direction. Christian history seems to bear out an observation Dryden made, “rashness is a better fault than fear.”

To encourage boldness, we may have to become more tolerant of honest mistakes. We ought at least to distinguish between mistakes that result from laziness and those that come out of creative and imaginative effort. Mistakes are part of learning. If a decision made after thorough investigation proves wrong, the maker is still ahead. At the very least his knowledge has been stretched beyond that of his hesitant colleague.

Christian proclamation calls for a holy boldness with a piety appropriate to the day in which we live. It may well be that the so-called Jesus People and Street Christians are the evangelical avant-garde. They are the kind who would be the first to eat an oyster if they thought it was the Christian thing to do. They are not afraid of confronting people with divine demands, of casting aside traditions that have lost meaning, and their methods seem to fit rather well the idea of “gentle strength.”

Is this perhaps what charisma is? Not merely a glamorous image but a creative boldness, a determination to see the potential in new situations and to act decisively. This is the biblical mandate, and indeed the only course for Spirit-sensitized evangelical leaders at every level who seek to make an impact for the Gospel upon our confused culture.

A Penney To Heaven

His middle name suggests his business success but not where his heart was for most of his ninety-five years. James Cash Penney, founder of the well-known department-store chain, slipped away last month to keep an appointment with the Lord whom he loved and served in life.

Penney’s father, a farmer who doubled as a Primitive Baptist minister on Sundays, introduced him in boyhood to the application and worth of Scripture in dealings with others. The Golden Rule became the name of J. C. Penney’s first stores, and the principle to which he pledged himself and his business. He introduced profit-sharing and made his employees “associates.” He held out against automation and self-service because they “depersonalized”; his feel for human values made him seem more a character from Disneyland’s nostalgic Main Street era than a man of our own day.

In 1931, at age 56, Penney was a broken man in deep personal crisis in a Michigan sanitarium. He had lost everything in the depression. One morning he heard the strains of “God will take care of you” coming from the chapel. He went in and someone read Matthew 11:28. Penney committed himself completely to Christ and experienced a “miracle … a dawning sense of rebirth … that joy and peace of mind which comes with the certain knowledge of the everyday and everlasting love and power of Jesus Christ our Lord.”

As he rebuilt his business he also gave himself in service to Christ as never before, from speaking at rescue missions to leadership in the Laymen’s Movement for a Christian World and generous acts of Christian philanthropy.

The New York Times eulogized, “He seemed too good to be true, but he was as he seemed and others recognized it.”

J. C. Penney was a Christian businessman.

A Memorable Woman

Although black people have contributed more than their share to American culture, the gift is seldom acknowledged or appreciated—even in this day of black consciousness. The tourist in Washington, D. C., for example, must look long and hard to find any memorials to black people. As part of a long-overdue corrective, a monument is planned in the nation’s capital to the late Mary McLeod Bethune.

Mrs. Bethune is a happy choice for this symbolic tribute. Through it she will become better known, an honor she richly deserves, for she perhaps more than any other woman in this century provided hope, encouragement, leadership, and inspiration to black people in America. It was partly her great determination to get a better deal for them that paved the way for recent achievements in civil rights.

Mrs. Bethune was a devout Christian believer. And to read her biography is to realize that it was only her unwavering faith that brought her success against awesome odds. She was reared in Methodism and as a youngster attended a Presbyterian school for poor Negroes in South Carolina. A Quaker dressmaker in Denver gave her life’s savings to finance Mrs. Bethune’s later education, and she graduated from Moody Bible Institute hoping to be a missionary to Africa. When a Presbyterian mission board turned her down, she went south again to work in education. She bought land for what is now Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida, with a five-dollar down payment on property that had been part of the city dump and was known as “Hell’s Hole.” She earned the money selling ice cream and sweet potato pies to construction workers. With the growth of the school she gained esteem and worked for Negro rights. She served as advisor to four American presidents before she died in 1955.

Her Christian zeal enabled her to overcome repeated rebuffs. “No matter how deep my hurt,” she said, “I always smiled. I refused to be discouraged, for neither God nor man can use a discouraged person.”

Ailing Seminaries: Unfit To Be Tied?

When he was president of San Francisco Seminary a decade ago, activist Theodore A. Gill remarked: “The seminary is the knot in the end of the church’s thread.” Apparently the United Presbyterian knot is not only slipping—it’s almost untied. United Presbyterian seminaries are in big trouble. In fact, they will be “out of business” and the denomination “up for grabs” unless the schools are drastically changed, according to a scathing report.

The study, made by the Washington, D. C., research firm of Douglas Trout and Associates, has been under wraps since it was submitted to the church’s Council on Theological Education in Louisville last November. It’s time the report was made public. The malaise of the six United Presbyterian seminaries is shared by other mainline denominational schools. Their officials ought to read the Trout findings.

The report sharply attacks the shaky financial base of the seminaries. It accuses the schools of wasteful program duplication and lack of innovation. It charges that they ignore the influence of contemporary life styles and counter-culture movements. “This apparent disregard for and waste of resources is unconscionable,” the report says. Though resources are adequate now, they “are indefensibly and unsupportably inefficient and unbearably uncertain” for the future.

Dr. John W. Meister, executive secretary of the Council on Theological Education, described the 130-page report as “devastating.” The council commissioned the study, funded by an anonymous donor, three years ago.

One of the report’s sixteen recommendations is that the seminaries become “specialist institutions,” rather than offering traditional courses “training traditional pastors for traditional churches.” If the seminaries can’t move quickly in this direction, the report warns, “they will be left to … continuing isolation, ridiculously costly duplication, and eventual and certain bankruptcy.”

The Trout report gives a perceptive analysis of seminary sickness. Its recommendations, however, are mere patching plaster. A major theological restoration is needed. The report finds that the institutions studied have shifted to the left from their original theological positions. These seminaries should return to those sure biblical foundations so articulately defined by the seminary founders. One of the report’s most telling observations is that “the church has made no official recent statement of what is the nature of the ministry—even for the present—much less for the 1970s. Even the costly and extensive Study of the Nature of the Ministry conducted between 1962 and 1966 with a churchwide series of 145 seminars, attended by some 5,300 ministers and 4,800 laymen, did not result in any … definition of ministry because a consensus could not be obtained.” A church that doesn’t know why it exists or where it is going is bound to founder!

We are not picking on the United Presbyterian Church; its problems are simply illustrative. Most churches need to recapture a specific understanding of their mission and ministry. Their seminaries have a key role in this—they are the knot in the end of the thread. But the seminary should serve as the agent—not the initiator—of mission and ministry. The seminary ought not to determine what the church should be. Rather, it should train men for what the church already is, to carry out the goals the church has already established.

Seminaries can lose their sense of being guardians of the “eternal deposit of truth.” Then they become like untied knots, unable to hold fast against the unraveling seams of time.

Mexico For Christ

Last summer the United States’ northern neighbor was the scene of a Congress on Evangelism in which concern was expressed for reaching all of Canada with the Gospel. Now its southern neighbor is the object of an ambitious scheme to bring the good news to the fifty million people in that country. Approximately 7,000 Mexican churches and more than forty denominations are involved in the effort to mobilize all believers in an Evangelism-in-Depth type of campaign that will run until March, 1972.

The Mexican evangelicals are not wealthy, and raising the projected budget of nearly a million dollars will test their faith and determination. The leaders of this evangelistic outreach have called on their fellow believers in the United States and around the world to form prayer groups to intercede for them as they work toward the goals they have set. We urge Christians to accept this challenge.

Beyond Mexico lie the smaller Central American republics and the great continent of South America. If the Mexican program succeeds, it will challenge many of the other countries of Latin America to similar programs of complete saturation and especially those where the churches have grown by leaps and bounds and now have a task force that could evangelize to a finish.

Water Beds

The popularity of the new high-priced water beds may merely show how many desperate insomniacs there are. More likely it signifies a high level of sexual dissatisfaction in our culture. Actually a large, flat plastic bag full of heated water, the bed provides an undulating motion with the movement of the occupant(s). Some makers and retailers play down the sexual implications, but others coyly advertise them. Says one: “Two things are better on a water bed. One of them is sleep.”

We suspect that the so-called new freedom in matters of sex may have made its practice more frequent but not more satisfactory. There is a basic incongruity in the attempt by the “liberated” to make sex more pleasurable by separating it from love. The young bride of Canticles cries, “Upon my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves.…”

The sexual drive finds its highest fulfillment when a man and a woman are committed to one another in that kind of soul relationship described by Christ as making them one flesh, one that the word of God compares to the tie between him and his people. It was God who made sex to be one of our greatest physical experiences. It is most truly rewarding when used according to his rules—water bed or no.

The Therapy Of Lent

Nowhere in Scripture is the Lenten observance explicitly prescribed, but there are principles behind it that are clearly biblical. One is the need for repentance, which Vance Havner discusses in this issue, beginning on page 12. Modern pilgrims invariably want to take a short cut to avoid repentance.

Another Lenten principle we tend to overlook is the human need for occasional periods of austerity and isolation. Scholars differ on the contemporary relevance of fasting as a condition to spirituality. But there is little question that fasting can be a factor in spiritual therapy, not to mention possible physical and mental benefits.

Then there is the need to get away from it all. If there were ever an age that should heed this principle, ours is it. Yet despite the example of a number of biblical characters, we simply do not make room in our lives for genuine retreats. Often what we call retreats are short periods that are more taxing than our routine. Little wonder so many are uptight!

Many of the troubles and sorrows found in the world today are due to someone’s inability to say “no.” The Christian religion is a positive affirmation of faith in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in the Scriptures, and for that reason a true believer can never be accused of following a negative religion. Still, just as there are positive and negative poles to a magnet, so too there are positive and negative aspects to being a Christian.

The positive side has to do with faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to his will. The negative calls for a rejecting of the blandishments and devices of Satan, which can only end in misery and defeat.

We are living in a permissive society, in a time when much that is evil goes unchallenged. It is not easy to go against current mores and to stand up and say no when one is convinced that something is contrary to the holy will of God. But exactly that is necessary.

The Bible offers many examples of men who were able to say no at a crucial time in their lives. Abraham said no to the natural desire to stay in his own home and with his own people when God had called him to go out, not knowing where he was going. He said no to the natural impulse to spare his son, Isaac, “accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure” (Heb. 11:19).

Moses said no to the impulse to stay in the affluence and security of Pharoah’s household, “choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin” (Heb. 11:25).

Joseph said no when tempted by a beautiful woman who offered her body and her companionship to a lonely young man. His response was, “How … can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” (Gen. 39:9).

Daniel said no when confronted with a preferment that included turning from a Spartan way of life to eating food from the king’s table. With strong conviction he “resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s rich food or with the wine which he drank” (Dan. 1:8).

Daniel’s three companions said no to the temptation to save their lives by bowing before the image Nebuchadnezzar had set up. They answered with the challenging affirmation, “We have no need to answer you in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out of your hand, O King. But if not, be it known to you, O King, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image which you have set up” (Dan. 3:16–18).

Later Daniel again said no, confronted this time with the temptation to buy safety at the cost of compromise by obeying the king’s decree against public worship. We read that “when Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open towards Jerusalem; and he got down upon his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before God, as he had done previously” (Dan. 6:10).

Our Lord tells us, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself [say no to self] and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24)—and that is not easy! All of us face the seemingly overwhelming temptation to trim our sails in these days of permissive living. When temptation comes, it is so much easier to compromise a little to avoid criticism or even reprisals.

The pressures of this world are so pervasive and persistent that Paul warns against letting the “world around you squeeze you into its own mold” (Rom. 12:2, Phillips). The soul that succumbs to the pressures of the world, the flesh, and the devil is in a desperate state.

One problem today is that many parents have failed to say no to their children. The welfare of those children demanded a firm attitude in moral and spiritual matters that the parents were unprepared to exercise.

We are often inclined to forget that the Ten Commandments contain both “You shalls” and “You shall nots.” We often fail in both directions. In a day when “anything goes,” it is necessary for Christians to swim against the tide by saying no to evil and yes to what is good.

Parents must say no to their children at times, being careful not to “over-correct” them, but remembering the neglected truth that “foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him” (Prov. 22:15).

Young people must learn the meaning of the injunction, “My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent” (Prov. 1:10). In this day of mobs and demonstrations, they should heed the warning, “You shall not follow a multitude to do evil” (Exod. 23:2).

Living in the shadow of God’s moral balances, we must learn not only the danger of compromise but also the blessing that comes from saying no to temptation. This is no onetime decision, of course; we must keep making it all through life. However, as the old hymn says, “each victory will help you some other to win.”

God does not call Christians to live as hermits in a sin-dominated social order. But he offers the means whereby they can act as salt in a putrefying society and lights in the midst of spiritual darkness. This requires the positive witness of a committed spirit and the equally positive witness of an unswerving rejection of any compromise with evil.

By what criteria shall we decide? How can we be confident that we are within the will of God in a particular circ*mstance? The answer must be found in the revelation God has given us in his written Word. I believe that there is no contingency of modern life that is not dealt with in the Bible and that the Christian who seeks the guidance of the Holy Spirit will know the course of action he should take if only he will wait for God to speak in his perfect timing.

Many years ago I came face to face with the claims of science and modern scholarship. I had to decide, either to accept the “assured findings” of men that went counter to the clearly stated truths of God’s Word, or to believe God’s revelation of truth regardless. A yes to faith and a no to unbelief brought peace of heart and later vindication of the decision. The same decision confronts each succeeding generation.

The grace to say no must be exercised with the assurance that God has not left his children to grope in darkness. Rather, he has made plain a way of life that is alien to this world but just as real as the air we breathe and the food that sustains our bodies.

The grace to say no is one that must be cultivated, not with a hard, unyielding stubbornness but with the joy of knowing that God is a personal God, that he is deeply concerned with every detail of our lives, and that he will surely open up the way he wants us to take.

Piety In The Flesh

A Call to Christian Character, edited by Bruce Shelley (Zondervan, 1970, 186 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by John A. Baird, Jr., vice-president, Eastern Baptist College, Saint Davids, Pennsylvania.

Ralph Keiper, one of the contributors to this forceful book, says that some Christians think of the Holy Spirit as a sort of mother-in-law. His statement reflects the contemporary distaste for piety. The word itself and the concept behind it are unpopular. Many people confuse piety with piousness and think it refers to a rigid and hypocritical stance. In such a climate, how can much be achieved by a volume with the audacious subtitle “Toward a Recovery of Biblical Piety”?

Bruce Shelley’s introduction affirms the need for believers to recapture a significant personal devotional life and to understand what true piety is, realizing that it has a dimension of its own between mechanical social action and characterless identification with the culture of success. This study proposes to show piety as a life-style featuring Christianity in the flesh, one based on personal discipline that includes prayer, Bible study, and public worship. First Peter 1:15 provides the pivot for this plan for quality living: “As he who called you is holy, so you must be holy in all your conduct.”

The eleven articles in the book are based on chapel talks given by faculty members at the Conservative Baptist Seminary. Shelley, who is professor of church history, pairs piety with the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Prophets, and other parts of the Bible. Other chapters relate piety to psychology, theology, home, and church. One of the best concentrates upon piety and Christ with a skillful approach to the Sermon on the Mount. The writers maintain a strong biblical foundation, making some 470 references to Scripture.

Piety is shown to be a present possibility, though the godly man has always been a person ahead of his time. God’s people are attacked today in a variety of ways. The personal commitment of many seminarians is weak. Contemporary substitutes for spirituality abound, and “Brand X” religious experiences press upon us with unending beguilement.

Piety is handicapped by being partially negative (unrighteous means and ways must be avoided); in our Dale Carnegie culture this becomes a significant obstacle. Many think that negative thoughts indicate improper motivation, and tolerance has become the most admired Christian virtue.

How honest is this book? Does it include a frank admission of the shortcomings of some evangelicals? Is there acknowledgment that piety may skirt close to pharisaism? Will the reader learn that holiness and good health are not always concomitant? The answer to each question is yes, and rank assertions like these give the messages a wholesome integrity. There is a candid acknowledgment that too much church business may separate families instead of bringing them together, and that expository preaching may fail when unrelated to current problems.

This collection is a creditable achievement. Varied writing makes an engaging blend with unity of purpose, and piety comes alive as Spirit-controlled maturity in Jesus Christ throughout all aspects of life.

The Apostolic Church, Inside And Out

Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Times, by Leonhard Goppelt, translated by Robert A. Guelich (Harper and Row, 1970, paperback, 238 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by George Eldon Ladd, professor of New Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Dr. Guelich has done a great service to the English-speaking Christian community by making available one of the best fruits of German critical scholarship in a thoroughly readable and idiomatic translation. In terms of scholarly output, German biblical scholarship constantly puts American scholarship to shame. Goppelt’s work appeared in German as the first volume of an eighteen-part history of the Christian Church.

German theology has often been noted for vigor and novelty rather than for sound conservative scholarship. It is refreshing to have a work embodying the best of German scholarship that is not hostile to traditional positions. Goppelt rejects the “purely historical” (i.e., naturalistic) perspective which is that of a modern philosophical world view rather than the perspective of the Church itself. “The picture of primitive Christianity is just as impossible to ascertain ‘purely historically’ as is the picture of Jesus.” The Church was born under a twofold stimulus: Jesus’ messianic proclamation and the Easter event. Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God had the purpose of gathering a redeemed community through faith that would respond to the God of Israel. The resurrection appearances cannot be reduced to mere visions. Paul had visions when the Exalted One disclosed himself through the Spirit; at Easter, Christ appeared bodily, i.e., in person. The empty tomb is no later legend but had to be interpreted through the appearances when the disciples encountered the Risen One in person.

The Church began as a religious party within Judaism, similar to, yet different from, the Qumran community. The Essenes considered themselves the true Israel; the Church thought of itself as the new Israel, the people not of the end time but of the new eon that had dawned with the resurrection. Goppelt regards the early sermons in Acts as embodying trustworthy traditions, accurately reproducing the outlines of the earliest apostolic kerygma. He outlines the life and thought of the Church in Palestine, the development of Hellenistic Gentile Christianity, the inner and outward separation of the Church from Judaism, its mission in the world of Hellenism, its conflict with syncretism, and its consolidation in the Roman Empire down to 135 A.D.

The book skillfully weaves together the external history of the church and the internal development of its life and thought. It constantly interacts with alternative solutions, particularly in German scholarship. Goppelt believes that Hellenistic Christianity arose before Paul, and that while its kerygma reflects the influence of Hellenistic thought, it embodies a common tradition with Hebraic thought. Paul’s essential message was not fundamentally different from that of Jerusalem. Goppelt treats not only factual history but the history of theology, and of church organization, and life.

The book is well documented by references to contemporary literature. The translation has added books available in English. All in all, in my judgment this is one of the best histories of the apostolic age ever written.

New Light On Freud

Theology After Freud, by Peter Homans (Bobbs-Merrill, 1970, 254 pp., paperback, $4.25), is reviewed by Glenn R. Wittig, reference librarian, Speer Library, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.

Peter Homans, assistant professor of religion and personality at the University of Chicago Divinity School, has attempted to create, not another psychology of religion, nor another pastoral psychology, but a framework for a psychology of Protestant doctrine—specifically that of transcendence—on the basis of an “iconic” reading of Freud, a reading that supersedes the common mechanistic and dynamic understandings. The result of his efforts (arranged as theological responses to, and post-Protestant theological experimentations with, Freud) is a penetrating analysis and synthesis of psychology and theology.

Homans is equally at ease in the two disciplines and has drawn testimony from writers in both groups. He is also a persistent inquisitor. He analyzes and interrogates all viewpoints, and extracts from the various positions connecting links toward new paradigms. The images he finds most fruitful toward reclaiming the lost dimension of transcendence are fantasy, nostalgia, hope, and especially distance.

At this point a similarity with the death-of-God theologians can be detected. Homans, who is not to be classed with the radicals though he may be sympathetic with their cause, works on a psychological plane in a fashion similar to what Altizer does with the history of religions. His talk about abandoning the concept of the object so it can become once again a “transcendental guide” presents a dialecticism similar to that employed by Altizer.

Homans succeeds in giving Freud a new day in court. Freud is no longer a villain to theology. He can be read in a new way; psychoanalysis can be construed as a theory of cultural interpretation as well as a therapy. Freud, rather than being only reductive, can offer a way of mediating between the “gaps” created by a deficient theology.

The effectiveness of Homans’s work is, however, lessened by a poor presentation of several key concepts. His interpretation of transcendence is presumed throughout Part One. When he does explain the term, he gives it a predominantly psychological, self-aspiring connotation, with no acknowledgment of the place and function of revelation. Transference, likewise, is shrouded in an obscure and circuitous discussion of Freud’s thought.

Furthermore, after Homans has won a case for a higher reading of Freud, and has examined Norman O. Brown, David Bakan, and Phillip Reiff as ingenious post-Protestant experimenters with Freud, his implication that Jung’s work embodies the necessary constructive approach to the present task is perplexing.

Yet Homans has accomplished more in the synthesis of theology and psychology than anyone else. He has indicated the value of psychology for a post mortem dei theology, and has provided a feasible structure for further investigations. This important work should be studied.

Newly Published

Abortion: The Myths, the Realities, and the Arguments, by Germain Grisez (Corpus, 1970, 559 pp., paperback, $6.95). A comprehensive, well-documented investigation by a philosophy professor at Georgetown University. It is intended not only for reading but for reference, and demands consideration by all who would speak to the issue.

Marriage in Black and White, by Joseph R. Washington, Jr. (Beacon, 1971, 358 pp., $7.50). An outstanding book by a religion professor at the University of Virginia. Fully documents laws, opinions, and practices regarding interracial sex and marriage. Illumines hypocrisy. Urges that black-white marriages be fully acceptable though the author doesn’t expect them en masse.

The Two Natures in Christ, by Martin Chemnitz (Concordia, 1971, 542 pp., $12.50). A major writing by one of the greatest sixteenth-century Lutheran theologians is finally offered in English translation by J. A. O. Preus.

Church Cooperation and Unity in America: A Historical Review 1900–1970, by Samuel McCrea Cavert (Association, 1970, 400 pp., $15). Traces, in a reasonably objective way, how Christians in the United States have worked together in such fields as missions, evangelism, education, research, and social action. Specialists in these fields collaborated with the author, a gentlemanly ecumenist of considerable renown. Includes a forty-two-page definitive bibliography.

Let’s Know the Bible, by John W. Cawood (Revell, 1971, 152 pp., $3.95). The style and structure make this a good book for introducing late grade-school and early high-school children to the Bible. Adults with little knowledge of the Bible also might benefit from this study.

Can Man Hope to Be Human?, by Wallace E. Fisher (Abingdon, 1971, 160 pp., $3.95). Without forsaking biblical principles, the author examines the problems facing the majority of those “outside the Church,” those who in no way claim to be Christians. He offers sound guidelines for winning those people—the first one being listen.

The Song of Songs, by Arthur G. Clarke (Walterick, 1971, 112 pp., paperback, $1.95). A popular, conservative commentary that sees Solomon as trying to come between a Shulamite and her shepherd-lover. Refreshing.

Christian Baptism, by B. F. Smith (Broadman, 1971, 180 pp., $4.95). A documented survey by a Baptist of the history of baptism from the first century to the present.

A Reader’s Introduction to the New Testament, by Addison H. Leitch (Doubleday, 1971, 160 pp., $5.95). A simple, sparkling book-by-book survey intended to lure the reader into encountering the New Testament for himself. The author teaches at Gordon-Conwell.

The Suicide of Christian Theology, by John Warwick Montgomery (Bethany Fellowship, 1970, 528 pp., $7.95). Montgomery’s admirers will welcome this collection of more than twoscore of his essays and lectures of the sixties (many first appeared in CHRISTIANITY TODAY). Even those who don’t admire him can find food for thought (and to choke on).

Elizabethan Puritanism, edited by Leonard J. Trinterud (Oxford, 1971, 454 pp., $11.50). An outstanding collection of sixteenth-century documents, divided into three groups by the degree of activism of those seeking reform. Important for understanding the origins of a major influence in Anglo-American history.

Historic Patterns of Church Growth: A Study of Five Churches, by Harold R. Cook (Moody, 1971, 128 pp., paperback, $1.95). The favorable responses to the Gospel of the ancient Armenians and Irish and of the modern Hawaiians, Karens, and Bataks are summarized and then compared. A valuable aid to discussing missions strategy today.

The Spirit of the Reformed Tradition, by M. Eugene Osterhaven (Eerdmans, 1971, 190 pp., paperback, $3.45). Frequent quotations from Calvin and his spiritual heirs do not keep this book from being one man’s view of what ought to be instead of what actually is. More often than not one feels that the Christian tradition as a whole is what the author is speaking for. When distinctively Reformed views are presented, the discussion is too brief.

The Third World and Mission, by Dennis E. Clark (Word, 1971, 129 pp., $3.95). An important discussion of the problems of missions and the Church in the third world, a term that is used “to refer to the independent nations of Asia, Africa, and South America who increasingly want to determine their destinies apart from the influences and pressures of the so-called great powers.” The author combines description of the problems with narration (italicized) of situations that have actually occurred.

Christ Matters!, by Joe Hale (Tidings, 1971, 87 pp., $1). An apologetic for the complete Gospel—social concern and action fused with the preaching of salvation through faith. The author is a United Methodist evangelism director.

Aspects of Religion in the Soviet Union 1917–1967, edited by Richard H. Marshall, Jr. (Chicago, 1971, 489 pp.). An indispensable work on the subject. Eighteen authoritative, documented essays by specialists on such topics as Khrushchev’s religious policy and anti-religious organizations and on most of the various groups, such as Muslims, Mennonites, Lutherans, Catholics. Jews, and Orthodox.

Christ the Crisis, by Friedrich Gogarten (John Knox, 1970, 308 pp., $7.95). A translation of the final book by one of the more influential academic theologians. Intended as a prolegomenon to a Christology for our times.

The Great Debate Today, by Cornelius Van Til (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1971, 239 pp., paperback, $4.50). To quote from the conclusion: “The great debate today concerns the question: Who and what is Christ? Is he what the traditional Protestant creeds … say he is, or is he what modernist and neo-orthodox theologians say he is? We have discovered that these two positions stand squarely opposed to one another at every point.”

Gospel Radio, by Barry Siedell (Back to the Bible, 1971, 158 pp., paperback, $.75). Hardly exhaustive, but the best overview yet of evangelism via the air waves. Chief failure is insensitivity to the potential of Christian proclamation within the context of secular programming.

Daniel: The Key to Prophetic Revelation, by John F. Walvoord (Moody, 1971, 317 pp., $6.95). A major commentary by the president of Dallas Seminary, understanding Daniel as supporting a premillennial eschatology, but considering alternate views.

Integration and Development in Israel, edited by S. N. Eisenstadt et al. (Praeger, 1970, 703 pp., $20). Twenty-eight previously published articles providing an excellent overview of the socio-economic situation in Israel.

Our Rebel Emotions, by Bernard Mobbs (Seabury, 1971, 127 pp., $3.50). An excellent study that should be helpful to most people.

Beyond Feminism, by Marilyn Brown Oden (Abingdon, 1971, 112 pp., $3.50). The Christian feminist recognizes responsibility beyond the fight for rights. “The woman of faith speaks with authority, listens with sensitivity, and responds with love.” This author has done just that.

Some of the above books will later be reviewed at greater length.

FARE COMMENT

Taxicab drivers will universally tell you they are father-confessors to the world. That hasn’t been my experience. When I hop into a taxi desiring a quiet, meditative ride to my destination, I invariably get a loquacious driver who either wants to unload his frustrations with life or to impart some words of wisdom.

Some time ago I boarded a cab in an eastern metropolis driven by a lightskinned Negro of middle age. His license showed the name Harold James. After the normal exchange of pleasantries about the weather and traffic we gravitated to the subject of race relations.

“You know, we didn’t make this problem,” my modern Jehu said. “You did. It was your people that brought my people to this country. We didn’t ask for any visas. Man, there wasn’t no quota on us. They just stacked us up like cord wood and brought us over.”

I had the sinking feeling that it was going to be an emotionally exhausting ride. “Well, that’s true,” I said, “but that’s all done now. We’re both here and we’ve got to live together.”

“Not only that,” he continued, undeterred, “your ancestors weren’t exactly on the up-and-up about this whole race thing. Matter of fact, they were hypocrites.”

Not wishing to challenge the point I replied, “How’s that?”

“Well, you take a look at my skin.”

I did. It was decidedly milk chocolate.

“God didn’t give me that skin color. You folks did. That segregation massa preached was all right for the living room, but it didn’t make it back to the bedroom!”

I was relieved to hear him chuckling as he repeated his point. “No sir, it didn’t make it back to the bedroom.” Then he asked, “You know what the Bible says?”

“I know some things it says.”

“Well, the Bible says we’re the same race. Did you know that?”

“Does it really?”

“Yessir, the Bible talks about two races, Jews and Gentiles. We’re both Gentiles. And you know what else it says?”

“What?” I was beginning to be intrigued with Mr. James.

“It says even that don’t make any difference. In Galatians it says that ‘ye are all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.… And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed.’ So you see, my skin may be black, but the Bible says I’m Abraham’s seed. And every Christian in the world is my brother, right?”

Right on, brother.

PAYING DUE ATTENTION

I would like to express my personal appreciation to you for publishing “The New Evangelism” (Jan. 29) by Professor Kenneth Hamilton. I had the privilege of hearing Professor Hamilton’s address at the Canadian Congress on Evangelism and expressed the hope at that time that it would be published in a place where it would receive a wide audience. Thanks to you, his message will have the attention which it deserves.

Asst. Prof. of New Testament

Regent College

Vancouver, B.C.

HIGH THEOLOGY LOW

The only thing high about “High Theology in the Andes” (Jan. 15) is the location of the meeting. I believe you report some of the saddest news of 1970. When the reputed cream of evangelical theologians from a continent we have been led to believe is almost the private domain of conservative theology meets for the first time and capitulates to the “Inter-Varsity bloc” with its errant Scripture, it is indeed sad news.… One can almost hear the cries of “gringo theological imperialism” if anyone this side of the Rio Grande questions the theology put forth at Cochabamba. Nevertheless, this decision to get rid of the offending word “inerrant” clearly puts the signers on the far side of the continental divide in theology, where the only direction is down, increasing numbers of errors admitted and theology gradually deteriorating.

In addition to the basic bad news, there are two other very ominous signs in the report. We can only guess why those who hold to an inerrant Scripture were willing to sign a document that deliberately left this out. I’m sure the motive was a good one.… But it is a dangerous ploy. Theological deterioration in a group rarely starts with rejection of a basic doctrine but rather with indifference as to the importance of significance of that doctrine. Compromise usually begins at the point of silence.…

The second very ominous element had to do with the motive given for choosing the compromise wording—“to aid communication with the grass-roots churchman.” Surely this doesn’t mean what it seems to say? Surely we would not follow the strategy of liberal theological wolves who dress themselves in theologically conservative sheep’s terminology in an effort to keep non-theologians in the dark about what is actually happening to their heretofore “simplistic” theology?

Columbia Bible College

Columbia, S. C.

RETREAT TO FORTRESS U.S.A.

I have just read Eric Fife’s article “American Leadership in World Missions” (Jan. 29). The point he makes is true enough—the Lord has plenty of leaders besides Americans—but misleading. Obeying the Great Commission has nothing to do with “leadership.” It has a great deal to do with faithfulness.…

Fife’s article says that a decline in number of American missionaries might be God’s will, and hints throughout that the missionary movement has peaked and nationals will now take over the task. This is most unfortunate. Two billion have yet to hear the Gospel. With the greatest admiration for the nationals and hearty agreement that where national Christians exist they should evangelize their neighbors, I doubt whether it is God’s will for the powerful churches of America (highest GNP ever, $10 billion spent for liquor, professional football at an all-time high) to retreat to Fortress U.S.A.

Dean

School of World Mission

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

I [am dismayed] over some of Fife’s emphases. I would he had told us who is contending for “American” leadership in the worldwide task of the Church. What I hear at missionary conferences these days is the call to American Christians to go overseas to serve, not to rule. No one in his right mind is advocating paternalism. Or the right of Americans to dominate. The missionaries I know rejoice in the growing effectiveness of national leadership in the churches overseas.

But what of Fife’s highly speculative thesis that a decline in the number of American missionaries might be “the will of God for this time”? Grant the remote possibility, but how is God’s worldwide cause to be advanced by hoisting such a dark flag? Cut it down!…

What is the scriptural or factual warrant for Fife’s negativism about missions? Throughout the world today people are more winnable than they have ever been.… Nothing is … more peripheral to the current debate on missions than taking potshots at such straw issues as American Leadership or American Extravagance. Better to focus attention on the biblical mandate to Christians to be at work in the midst of this receptivity, gathering in the harvest that God is granting his Church.… Let us stand with him; resist the negative and accent the positive.

Associate Dean

School of World Mission

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, Calif.

BIBLICAL EVIDENCE FOR ECONOMICS

Your lead editorial on economics (“Capitalism vs. Communism,” Feb. 12) is incredible! In pure fact it errs grossly. In capitalism at least as much as communism, the economic decision-makers represent a very tiny, self-perpetuating minority. By no honest stretch of imagination can the little old lady who owns a share or two of General Motors, or the man whose company pension plan has invested in ITT, be called economic decision-makers.

Whether credited to the ingenuity of Marx or CHRISTIANITY TODAY, use of the Mosaic “Thou shalt not steal” as biblical proof for capitalism is one of the most amazing pieces of exegesis I have ever seen. Some scholars believe the correct translation of that commandment should be, “Thou shalt not kidnap.” But suppose the traditional translation is correct; it hardly proves capitalism. Ownership of personal possessions is permissible under communism as well as capitalism (though prohibited in some tribal economies). Furthermore, one should not steal from the government, and/or that which the community holds for the common good. Indeed, the commandment could be understood to prohibit exploitation as being a form of theft. “Thou shalt not steal” should mean one must not take from any man that which is rightfully his. Such as human dignity.…

It is as patently ridiculous to hunt biblical evidence for modern economics as for modern science. But if one does so, it is amusing to speculate the effect biblical economics might have on modern capitalism. The semi-centennial jubilee when all loans and debts were simply forgiven, for example, or the biblical dislike of interest.…

The Bible does, however, give some principles which individual Christians should apply in their businesses and in their families. It says, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”; it tells us to pray for our daily bread; it warns us against striving to lay up riches on earth.… None of these principles were evident in your editorial.

Teaneck, N. J.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE TELEPHONE?

Shame on Mr. Tiffin (“Education: The Good Old Days That Never Were,” Feb. 12). Or should it be the New York rioters? They had no business tearing down “telephone wires” because Mr. Bell was only thirteen years old at the time and living in Scotland. Give the man a break—that telephone will never get invented if rioters knock it off before it arrives.

Hammond, Ind.

This scribe has wasted considerable time watching television panels where experts pool their ignorance discussing the fix we are in and what to do about it. Like Omar, I usually come out the same door I went in. God is writing on the wall these days, but the soothsayers and “smoothsayers” cannot decipher the heavenly hieroglyphics. (Witness, for instance, a seminar on the Middle East!)

Likewise, I read the speeches of churchmen in our religious conclaves trying to arouse the brethren about evangelism or social action. The audience reaction is usually, “I move we accept this as information and be dismissed.” It will take more than highly promoted conventions with a parade of celebrities to meet our problem of a sick church trying to minister to a sick world. If God ever rends the heavens and comes down again in real revival, he may begin in some obscure country church where a little band of nobodies in holy desperation prays like Jehoshaphat, “We know not what to do but our eyes are upon thee.”

One of England’s best preachers has said:

I am never tired of saying that what the Church needs to do is not to organize evangelistic campaigns to attract outside people but to begin herself to live the Christian life. If she did that, men and women would be crowding into our buildings. They would say, what is the secret of this?

Evangelism is the outflow and overflow of the inflow of the Spirit in a normal New Testament church. By “normal” I do not mean average; the average today is subnormal. Nor do I mean perfect, for there are no perfect churches. There can, however, be healthy churches, blameless though not faultless, mature though not perfectly so. When we try to pressure half-hearted and indifferent church members into soul-winning drives, it is an admission that we have failed in the New Testament pattern of faith in Christ, fellowship with Christ, faithfulness to Christ, and fruitfulness for Christ. If we abide, we shall abound.

If the time, money, and effort spent in trying to work up evangelism in lukewarm churches were spent in calling the churches themselves to repentance, confession, cleansing, and empowering, evangelism would be a natural result. We are trying to produce the results without the cause, the fruit without the tree. The New Testament epistle-writers concentrated not on stirring up Christians to evangelize but rather on developing healthy Christians through spiritual food, rest, and exercise. Healthy Christians are naturally soul-winners, by life and by lip.

God ordered the human race to be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth and then put within man the instinct to mate and carry out the divine commission. Our Lord said, “Go, make disciples.” As someone has said, the fruit of a Christian is another Christian” and the Holy Spirit has been given to motivate us in carrying out the Great Commission. Trying to organize and stimulate Christians to evangelize without the urge is an exercise in futility. Pep meetings are not necessary to urge young people to fall in love, marry, and raise families!

Which comes first, revival or evangelism? This is not a chicken-or-egg question. Scripture, reason, and experience teach that God begins with his own people. David must have the joy of salvation restored before he can teach transgressors God’s ways and see sinners converted. And Peter must be converted himself before he can strengthen the brethren and feed the sheep.

But revivals should not be necessary. God meant that we should grow in grace continually. Springtime is often used as an illustration of revival, but Christian growth should be continuous, not seasonal. Periodic backsliding and repenting are not normal Christian experience and should never be so regarded. When we have a vigorous daily Christian experience, revival is unnecessary, for a glowing fire does not need rekindling. But because our condition is subnormal, revival is necessary to get us back to normal. Then it has served its purpose. Revivals are not supposed to last; to try to live at revival pitch all the time would make Christians and churches abnormal. Excesses have followed some revivals because some dear souls attempted to live on the mountaintop all the time.

Nevertheless, just now the number-one item on the agenda is repentance in the Church accompanied by confession and forsaking of sin, reconciliation and restitution, separation from the world, submission to the Lordship of Christ, and the filling of the Spirit. Finney said, “Revival is a new beginning of obedience to God.” It is not an emotional binge, although of course it affects the emotions because it affects the whole man. Nor does it begin happily; it starts with a broken and contrite heart. Evangelism is happy business because we are getting out the Good News, but revivals do not begin with singing choruses and working up a good feeling as one might do at a Rotary Club.

As I read report after report of great church congresses and conferences and conventions that spend all their time on peace, poverty, and pollution and leave the primary need, I long to read of one session where programs are thrown into the waste basket and the assembly goes to its knees. We have passed enough resolutions. God’s people must be called to repentance, and the repenting must begin with the delegates! Our Lord’s call to repentance in Revelation began with the angels of the churches, not the backsliders out on the fringe. To recruit a Gideon’s Band we must begin with a Gideon.

If someone objects that we do not have time in our great meetings for this, the reply must be that we don’t have time for anything else! The time is too short, the need too great. There is of course the element of divine sovereignty in revival. “The wind bloweth where it listeth,” but God has never failed to visit his people when they call on him in desperate, prevailing prayer. But as long as we feel we have a few tricks up our sleeves, however, he will leave us to perform them. Laodicea was rich, flush with goods and in need of nothing. Nothing much will happen until we realize that we are wretched, miserable, blind, poor, and naked in the sight of the Lord of the Lampstands, the Christ of the Candlesticks.

It is going to take some robust and rugged preaching to sound this trumpet blast. Are we afraid to call the Church to repentance? Is popularity too precious to risk? Do we fear the threats of Jezebel if we call for a showdown on Carmel? Are we unwilling to offend church members who give checks to the church while they live for the world, the flesh, and the devil? True revival is no bargain-counter proposition; the price is high for the preacher who preaches it and the people who respond. So we politely dodge it. We substitute evangelistic pep rallies and social-action crusades. We put on shows and call in the world to popularize the Gospel. If God ever grants us a visitation, we will be red with embarrassment because of the pitiful ways we have tried to promote the work of God in the energy of the flesh.

So this scribe still longs to read of a meeting held somewhere for the express purpose of calling the Church to repentance. How many would come I do not know. Of course, it could be worked in typical American fashion, with committees and fanfare and the governor there to make a speech. It would have little use for our boasted expertise and know-how. The publicity might come later, as in the Welsh Revival. Nowadays we try to create the revival before it happens. Pentecost was its own publicity! The crowd came after the Spirit came! If what we need comes, it may put to shame our pet projects, the programs that we set up on our own and then ask God to bless. We cannot make it happen or regulate it by our stopwatches. God is not promoting religious extravaganzas, and the minute flesh begins to glory in his presence, the Shekinah fades and “Ichabod” is written over the door. But there is hope today if a few hungry hearts, unwilling to be satisfied with the good, will press through as Elisha did with Elijah, unwilling to stop at Bethel or Jericho though schools of the prophets line the roadway, determined to make it to Jordan and God’s very best.

We thank God for present-day evangelism in all its forms, for every gospel sermon preached, every soul saved. But the good can be the enemy of the best. The hour is too late and the need too desperate for halfway measures. Ought we not to concentrate on church revival, since that precedes and produces all else that we seek? There is no use working on Item 2 or 3 or 4 until we have attended to Item 1. When the channel has been cleared to the inflow of God’s Spirit, the outflow and overflow will be assured. Why not start at the beginning?

Vance Havner is an evangelist who lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. He was orddined by the Southern Baptist Convention. He is the author of some twenty books.

In an article entitled “On Calling People ‘Prophets’ in 1970” (Interpretation, October, 1970), W. Sibley Towner draws attention to the popular designation of persuasive or provocative persons as “prophets.” He describes the style, rhetoric, constituencies, and message of Old Testament prophetism and warns against abandonment of the biblical model. “The religious community has an interest in maintaining important content in the terms prophet and prophetic,” he says, “lest they become so generally applied as to become meaningless or so wrongly employed as to become dangerous.”

There is also a need to examine prophetism as it is seen in the current charismatic movement within the Church. As Towner says, any prophetic phenomena, within or outside the Church, must be evaluated according to the sources from which they confessedly spring, the Old Testament and the New Testament.

A discussion of the gift of prophecy as revealed in the New Testament must find its roots in the Old Testament proclamation of Joel 2:28, 29: “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions; and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my Spirit.” This utterance of the prophet found its fulfillment in the Pentecostal demonstration of the Spirit recorded in Acts 2:1–21. It is important to note, however, that there is no record that any of the apostles or other believers acted as prophets on the day of Pentecost except in the preaching of the Gospel by Peter (2:14–36). In other words, the first evidence of the fulfillment of Joel’s message about prophecy was the public preaching of the Word of God. Not until Acts 11:27 do we learn of the existence in the Church of persons called prophets. There are several other passages where they are mentioned (Acts 13:1; 15:32; 21:9, 10; 1 Cor. 12:28, 29; Eph. 3:5; 4:11). But these passages do not tell us much about the nature of New Testament prophetism, and other more instructive passages must be considered in detail.

The Greek word prophetes is derived from pro plus phemi, “to speak for or before,” and propheteuo is the verb meaning to prophesy. As is true of all other basic New Testament concepts, these words for prophet and prophesy have Old Testament antecedents. The principal Hebrew term for prophet is nabhi, a word that occurs more than three hundred times in the Old Testament. The etymology of this word is most uncertain, coming possibly from the Akkadian nabu, “to announce.” Historical, contextual, and theological investigations reveal, however, that a nabhi was one who served as the “mouth” or spokesman for another, higher authority (Exod. 7:1, 2; cf. 4:15, 16). Whenever the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) translates nabhi, it uses the term prophetes, the very term employed by the New Testament writers for “prophet.” That is, there is no difference between the Old Testament nabhi and the New Testament prophetes. And unless there is information to the contrary, we must assume no essential difference in the nature and function of Old Testament and New Testament prophetism. Joel had said that men would prophesy in “the day of the Lord,” and Peter declared that this prediction had been fulfilled. As a typical Hebrew prophet, Joel would undoubtedly have had no other misunderstanding of the prophetic concept than that of the Old Testament as a whole.

The Old Testament prophet of God was a conscious, active vehicle of divine revelation—he was not an ecstatic, dervish-type of automaton in the hands of a higher Power. This lack of passivity and of intense emotional display served to distinguish the prophet of Jehovah from the prophets of surrounding heathen nations; one can easily see this by reading the account of the Egyptian envoy Wen-Amon (ca. 1100 B.C.), who, while in Phoenicia, witnessed a young prophet who was seized by one of his gods and who was “having his frenzy.” The ancient Babylonians and Assyrians had their mahhu and baru prophets who, too, were “possessed” by their gods and made to act in most irrational, uncontrollable ways. A more familiar illustration of this is the account of the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, who, in their contest with Elijah, cut themselves with knives and lances “after their manner” (1 Kings 18:28). We find demon-possessed Saul “acting like a prophet” by becoming semi-conscious and immobile when attempting to apprehend David at Ramah (1 Sam. 19:23, 24). The context of this passage makes it clear that Saul’s behavior was not the ordinary behavior of the true prophets of God. Only in the case of later apocalyptics such as Ezekiel and Daniel can there be any suspicion of ecstaticism, and even there, there is no evidence of irrationality or subconsciousness. Reactions such as those of Ezekiel at Tel-abib (Ezek. 3:15), where he sat “overwhelmed” for seven days, seem due not so much to an extreme psychical experience as to the import of the divine revelation he had been given.

A second important characteristic of Old Testament prophetism was its emphasis on proclamation as well as prediction. And that proclamation was generally not in cryptic, esoteric terms but in language of eproof, correction, judgment, comfort, and encouragement that the least initiated could well understand. The oracles of the prophets were nearly always expositions or reminders of the Mosaic Law, centered in revelation that had already been propounded in Israel’s past. This is not to deny the predictive element; virtually all the writing prophets speak of the future, both immediate and eschatological. But the emphasis was decidedly historical, contemporary, and practical for the personal and national life.

With this Old Testament orientation in view, let us consider again the New Testament teaching on prophetism, remembering that it will be essentially a continuation of that revealed in the Old. In the early Church, the gift of prophecy was shared only by those upon whom God was pleased to bestow it (Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 12:10; 13:2; Eph. 4:11). Everyone could share the Gospel with others (Acts 8:4), but only those with the prophetic gift could herald it with prophetic authority and ability. It seems quite likely that though all prophets were not apostles (in the narrow sense), the apostles were all prophets (Eph. 3:5). An interesting point is that in the four recorded instances of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts (2:1–4; 8:17; 10:44–46; 19:6), on only one occasion (19:6) is prophesying a result. This would certainly suggest that the gift was selectively given, in this case to the Ephesian church leaders. Other persons who are named and designated prophets are Barnabas, Symeon, Lucius, and Manaen (Acts 13:1); Agabus (Acts 11:28; 21:10); Judas and Silas (Acts 15:32); and perhaps the daughters of Philip (Acts 21:9).

Although the word prophetes occurs more than twice as many times in Acts as in all of Paul’s epistles (thirty times in Acts, fourteen in Paul), and propheteuo occurs twenty-eight times in Acts and the rest of the New Testament and only eleven times in Paul, the meaning of the two words is unclear except in Paul. And practically all the Pauline teaching on the subject is in First Corinthians.

The Apostle first discusses the matter with the Corinthians in reference to the man who prays or prophesies with his head covered and the woman who does so with her head uncovered (1 Cor. 11:4, 5). All that can be learned here is that praying and prophesying were not synonymous and that women had the right to do both. In chapter 13 of First Corinthians, where Paul expounds on the primacy of love, he maintains that prophecy is inadequate without love. But of more interest to us here is his definition of prophecy—it is the apprehending of “all mysteries” (13:2). In its technical, New Testament sense, “mystery” suggests information available only through revelation, i.e., the Gospel itself. Prophecy, in this sense, is the clear understanding of the Gospel, a sharpened understanding that comes as a special gift of God to certain of his saints. This peculiar insight will one day be done away with, however; the time will pass when only a limited number clearly understand the revelation of God (13:8, 9).

In chapter 14 we find the fullest expression of Paul on prophetism; indeed, along with and in contrast to the gift of tongues, prophecy is there predominant. The Apostle declares the superiority of prophecy compared to other gifts, its purpose, its nature, and its controls. Because we cannot judge the validity of any spiritual manifestation in today’s Church on its own intrinsic or extrinsic worth but only on the basis of the Scriptures, let us examine this chapter.

In his opening argument, Paul urges the Corinthians to seek spiritual things, especially the ability to prophesy (14:1). This is to be preferred to tongues, for example, for which speaking in tongues enables a man to thrill in his private understanding of the Gospel (mysteries), prophecy allows him to share his comprehension with others (14:2–5). A crucial teaching in the present passage is in verse six, where there are four means of understandable communication as opposed to unintelligible tongues. One of these four, prophesying, is obviously considered different from the other three (revelation, knowledge, and teaching). This means that prophesying does not necessarily involve the reception of revelation. One could be a prophet even if he had not received revelation. Furthermore, a revelation could be different from a prophecy and no doubt often was. In any case, Paul states that he would rather speak five words with understanding (that is, to prophesy; cf. 14:1, 19) than ten thousand words in a tongue.

The purpose of prophecy in the New Testament Church was to persuade believers of the authenticity of their Christian faith (14:22) and to convince unbelievers of the credibility of the Gospel of Christ (14:24, 25). If an unbeliever should come into an assembly of the saints and hear everyone speaking with tongues, he would doubt the sanity of the group. If, on the other hand, he should find the body of believers prophesying, he perchance would repent of his sin and turn to Christ. There is only one message that can so convict and convince—the Gospel, so prophesying here most surely means the proclamation of that message.

The nature of prophetism, as we have seen, was principally proclamation of revelation and not reception of revelation; however, it is also apparent from First Corinthians 14 that prophets could and did receive revelation (14:29–33). Whether or not all did we cannot know. What is certain is that at any given service only two or three prophets were to share their revelations while the others sat in judgment upon them and their messages. This judgment was not so much to determine whether the utterance was true as to reveal whether or not the speaker was in fact a man of God (cf. 14:37, 38). And the speakers were to take turns. This could be done because the “spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets” (14:32). The New Testament prophet, as much as the Old, was an active participant in the revelatory and proclamatory process; he was not merely an instrument upon whom God played, one who was rendered incapable of self-control. He might not be able to conjure up his revelation, but he was obligated to announce it in an orderly, democratic way.

The basic control over the content of prophetic revelation was the need for its absolute harmony with the apostolic Word of God. Any prophet who preached a revelation in a way that ran counter to the commandment of the Apostle, either in method or in content, was to be considered spurious (14:37, 38). This, too, was the criterion by which the Old Testament prophet was judged. Did or did not his message conform to the Law of God as revealed through Moses? He or the New Testament prophet might be able to perform signs and wonders in abundance, but if his message should contradict the Word of God written it was to be ignored and the prophet rejected as a divine messenger (Deut. 13:1–5; 18:20–22).

Such warnings against false prophets were necessary in the light of the widespread sorcery and divination of the day. Paul and Barnabas encountered a sorcerer on Cyprus, Bar-jesus by name, as had Philip at Samaria years before (Acts 8:9). Both sorcerers had supernatural power, but they received their inspiration from the spirit of Satan. It was to avoid counterfeit spiritual movements within the Church that Paul outlined to the Corinthians such detailed instructions concerning the gift of prophecy. The sorcerers just described could easily be exposed because of their infidelity to truth. Quite a different case is that of the Philippian maiden who, demon possessed, followed Paul and Silas about, announcing that they were servants of the Most High God. This they were in every sense, but though her statement was true and biblical, she was nonetheless false because falsely motivated. She became a means of harassment and an impediment to the apostles, all the while preaching a true message. The truth of the proclamation alone, then, was an insufficient guide to the godliness of the prophet. Paul had to have the witness of the Holy Spirit to enable him to perceive and contend with this error of divination.

The biblical teaching or prophetism suggests the following principles concerning the possibility of prophetism in the contemporary church:

1. Any prophetic gift must be evaluated in the light of the Word of God and not on the basis of personal or attested empirical observation.

2. Any person who claims the gift of prophecy (a) cannot fail to have a predictive prophecy come to pass (Deut. 18:20–22); (b) cannot say anything contrary to the Word of God (Deut. 13:1–5; 1 Cor. 14:37); (c) must follow biblical procedure in its application and practice (1 Cor. 14:29–33). On the basis of (a) alone many well-known “prophets,” both within the Church and outside it, stand exposed as something less than divine messengers because many of their predictions have not been fulfilled in the designated time. And any modern “prophet” who mishandles written revelation in any way or who is methodologically unsound in his use of the gift similarly discredits himself.

3. Because the Word of God written is an eternally completed document, there is little likelihood that further revelation is either needed or possible. John makes it clear in his epistles that by the time of their composition (ca. A.D. 90) it was already difficult to distinguish true prophets from false (1 John 4:1–6). By the end of the post-apostolic period, few of the Fathers recognized the continuance of the gift of prophecy as a vehicle of revelation. The perversions of Montanism, with its insistence upon post-biblical inspiration and revelation, caused the coup de grace to fall upon prophecy. Men of God saw more and more clearly that the inability to distinguish true prophets from false rendered revelatory prophetism well nigh obsolete and, indeed, potentially dangerous to the well-being of the Church. Only sporadically throughout subsequent church history, as now again in recent years, has there been serious re-examination of the possibility of prophetism as a gift. This writer suggests that because there are no absolutely adequate standards for evaluating such a spiritual movement, the safer course is to question its authenticity and to limit oneself to the clear teaching of Scripture on any given matter. The gift of prophecy, as it relates to revelation, was, it would appear, necessary only until the canon was complete and men thus had the fullness of revelation.

God’s gift to the Church of the prophet as a herald of the kerygma (Eph. 4:11) continues, however. In an age when men are called prophets because they overturn, disturb, and confuse, it is reassuring to know that there are genuine spokesmen for God—men who are prophets not because they proclaim creative messages of the imagination but because they rightly divide the word of truth. And they preach it with the conviction that comes from knowing they have been divinely chosen and ordained minister in and to the Church functions in society. we conceive of modern prophecy in these terms, then we can devoutly wish that all God’s servants were prophets.

Eugene H. Merrill is professor of Bible at Berkshire Christian College in Lenox, Massachusetts. He has the Ph.D. from Bob Jones University and is now enrolled in a doctoral program in Semitics at Columbia University.

Basic directions in the philosophy of science have undergone radical shifts within the last decade. For many years, operationism in physics, logical positivism in philosophy, and radical behaviorism in psychology emphasized the necessity for empirical confirmation of truth. Dust-bowl empiricism rode the crest of scientific popularity for a long time, making it fashionable to ridicule the use of abstract terms like soul or mind. Such non-public constructs, it was felt, had no place in the fact-seeking operations of science. Someone has said that Watson, in his revolutionary attempts to put psychology on the same scientific plane as physiology, took the mind out of psychology. Bergmann asserted that no term without an exhaustive empirical referent was meaningful. This approach is epitomized in the popular detective’s insistence, “All we want are the facts, ma’am, just the facts.”

Slowly, men of science and philosophy began to see the sterility of an approach to knowledge that excluded all consideration of unobservable reality. Common sense rather forcibly dictates that words like choice, intention, beauty, and mind point to referents that though non-empirical are in some sense real and should therefore have a place in scientific as well as lay thinking. An embarrassing gap became apparent between what everyone intuitively “knows” and what scientists were studying. Scientific research was in danger of becoming a precise but irrelevant investigation of trivia. Carnap, Hempel, Pap, and others expressed their concern that words defined explicitly and exhaustively in terms of their empirical referents do not begin to cover the world of reality. It became obvious that much exists that cannot be verified by positivistic criteria, that a new approach was needed to allow scientists to deal with unobserved and inherently unobservable reality.

In an article entitled Strong Inference, Platt argued that progress in scientific understanding depends not upon proof but upon disproof: Can we reject an explanation proposed to account for observed phenomena? If so, we are that much closer to the “true” explanation. Such thinking led to a newer philosophy of science, one that recognizes the inherent unprovability of propositions (empirical or non-empirical), yet offers a structure within which hypothetical constructs can gain probabilistic confirmation. The approach may be summarized by four steps necessary for arriving at some understanding of unseen reality: (1) formulate—either intuitively or on the basis of prior investigation—a number of possible explanations for certain phenomena; (2) logically derive from each explanation a set of specific predictions about how things should be if that explanation were true; (3) determine how well each set of predictions fits with observable, consensually agreed upon reality; (4) discard the explanation having the smallest correlation between its set of predictions and phenomenal data. The four-step process may then be repeated with the remaining alternatives; each time a more intricate pattern of predictions is generated, until all but one explanation has been discarded on the basis of poor fit with empirical reality, and the remaining explanation gracefully accords with the data.

Empiricists are quick to point out that such a thoroughly inductive procedure runs the logical risk of affirming the consequent. If Fido was run through a large sausage grinder, he is dead; therefore, if Fido is dead, he was sausaged. The conclusion is faulty and represents the inevitable risk taken in thinking inductively. Yet one may minimize the chance of error by generating a set of predictions detailed enough that if the predicted events do occur, it is extremely unlikely that the hypothesis from which the predictions flow is incorrect. One still runs the risk of being wrong, of course, but the opportunity to explore unseen reality more than justifies the risk.

Three important implications of this new approach to the philosophy of science stand out for the thinking Christian. First, science is admitting its incurable impotency in ever arriving at final truth. Conclusions based on scientific investigation must always be stated in terms of probability. Second, if we are not to discard our brains in accepting a religious faith, we must accept the necessity of an ultimate tie between our beliefs and consensually agreed upon public reality. Although Scripture teaches the very real existence of many intangible entities, these entities must interact with one another and with empirical phenomena in at least partially specifiable ways. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the new approach to approximating truth allows for the independent existence of non-empirical, non-public constructs within a scientific framework. Terms like soul, mind, and new life in Christ are sensible terms that one can study and probabilistically validate by specifying what events will be observed if these entities are real. The Christian who desires to use these terms can no longer be labeled soft-headed. It is rather the atheist who rejects spiritual reality because it lacks absolute test-tube proof who is out of step with modern scientific thinking. The Bible’s description of man’s nature, an example of a hypothetical construct that can now be studied, seems more consistent with what people do and think than the many available theories of man. If competing schools of thought can be shown to account less well than biblical conceptions for the mass of observable data, then our beliefs receive probabilistic confirmation and become the most likely explanation.

To step from intellectually recognizing a position as most probably true to committing one’s intellect and will to that position is to exercise saving faith. Christians must recognize that revelation provides the only means of discovering absolute truth and by faith rest in the certainty of God’s self-revelation through his Word and Jesus Christ. Moving from probability via faith to the certainty of revelation is not meant to be an accurate description of what persons usually do when they accept the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. Yet by describing a credible basis for faith on current scientific grounds, we offer to that faith a measure of intelligent support and provide an answer to the concern that faith is a flight from reason.

Lawrence J. Crabb, Jr., is a staff psychologist and assistant professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, from which he received the Ph.D. last year.

This paper was read to an assembly of Anglican priests and youth leaders at the “Carmarthen Conference for Youth Leaders and Junior Clergy” of the Church in Wales at Carmarthen during Easter, 1945, and is reprinted from “God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics” by C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper (Eerdmans, 1970, pp. 89–103).

Some of you are priests and some are leaders of youth organizations. I have little right to address either. It is for priests to teach me, not for me to teach them. I have never helped to organize youth, and while I was young myself I successfully avoided being organized. If I address you it is in response to a request so urged that I regard compliance as a matter of Obedience.

I am to talk about Apologetics. Apologetics means of course Defence. The first question is—what do you propose to defend? Christianity, of course: and Christianity as understood by the Church in Wales. And here at the outset I must deal with an unpleasant business. It seems to the layman that in the Church of England we often hear from our priests doctrine which is not Anglican Christianity. It may depart from Anglican Christianity in either of two ways: (1) It may be so ‘broad’ or ‘liberal’ or ‘modern’ that it in fact excludes any real Supernaturalism and thus ceases to be Christian at all. (2) It may, on the other hand, be Roman. It is not, of course, for me to define to you what Anglican Christianity is—I am your pupil, not your teacher. But I insist that wherever you draw the lines, bounding lines must exist, beyond which your doctrine will cease either to be Anglican or to be Christian: and I suggest also that the lines come a great deal sooner than many modern priests think. I think it is your duty to fix the lines clearly in your own minds: and if you wish to go beyond them you must change your profession.

This is your duty not specially as Christians or as priests but as honest men. There is a danger here of the clergy developing a special professional conscience which obscures the very plain moral issue. Men who have passed beyond these boundary lines in either direction are apt to protest that they have come by their unorthodox opinions honestly. In defence of those opinions they are prepared to suffer obloquy and to forfeit professional advancement. They thus come to feel like martyrs. But this simply misses the point which so gravely scandalizes the layman. We never doubted that the unorthodox opinions were honestly held: what we complain of is your continuing your ministry after you have come to hold them. We always knew that a man who makes his living as a paid agent of the Conservative Party may honestly change his views and honestly become a Communist. What we deny is that he can honestly continue to be a Conservative agent and to receive money from one party while he supports the policy of another.

Even when we have thus ruled out teaching which is in direct contradiction to our profession, we must define our task still further. We are to defend Christianity itself—the faith preached by the Apostles, attested by the Martyrs, embodied in the Creeds, expounded by the Fathers. This must be clearly distinguished from the whole of what any one of us may think about God and Man. Each of us has his individual emphasis: each holds, in addition to the Faith, many opinions which seem to him to be consistent with it and true and important. And so perhaps they are. But as apologists it is not our business to defend them. We are defending Christianity; not ‘my religion.’ When we mention our personal opinions we must always make quite clear the difference between them and the Faith itself. St. Paul has given us the model in 1 Corinthians 7:25: on a certain point he has ‘no commandment of the Lord’ but gives ‘his judgement.’ No one is left in doubt as to the difference in status implied.

This distinction, which is demanded by honesty, also gives the apologist a great tactical advantage. The great difficulty is to get modern audiences to realize that you are preaching Christianity solely and simply because you happen to think it true; they always suppose you are preaching it because you like it or think it good for society or something of that sort. Now a clearly maintained distinction between what the Faith actually says and what you would like it to have said or what you understand or what you personally find helpful or think probable, forces your audience to realize that you are tied to your data just as the scientist is tied by the results of the experiments; that you are not just saying what you like. This immediately helps them to realize that what is being discussed is a question about objective fact—not gas about ideals and points of view.

Secondly, this scrupulous care to preserve the Christian message as something distinct from one’s own ideas, has one very good effect upon the apologist himself. It forces him, again and again, to face up to those elements in original Christianity which he personally finds obscure or repulsive. He is saved from the temptation to skip or slur or ignore what he finds disagreeable. And the man who yields to that temptation will, of course, never progress in Christian knowledge. For obviously the doctrines which one finds easy are the doctrines which give Christian sanction to truths you already knew. The new truth which you do not know and which you need must, in the very nature of things, be hidden precisely in the doctrines you least like and least understand. It is just the same here as in science. The phenomenon which is troublesome, which doesn’t fit in with the current scientific theories, is the phenomenon which compels reconsideration and thus leads to new knowledge. Science progresses because scientists, instead of running away from such troublesome phenomena or hushing them up, are constantly seeking them out. In the same way, there will be progress in Christian knowledge only as long as we accept the challenge of the difficult or repellent doctrines. A ‘liberal’ Christianity which considers itself free to alter the Faith whenever the Faith looks perplexing or repellent must be completely stagnant. Progress is made only into a resisting material.

From this there follows a corollary about the Apologist’s private reading. There are two questions he will naturally ask himself. (1) Have I been ‘keeping up,’ keeping abreast of recent movements in theology? (2) Have I stood firm … amidst all these ‘winds of doctrine’? (Eph. 4:14). I want to say emphatically that the second question is far the more important of the two. Our upbringing and the whole atmosphere of the world we live in make it certain that our main temptation will be that of yielding to winds of doctrine, not that of ignoring them. We are not at all likely to be hidebound: we are very likely indeed to be the slaves of fashion. If one has to choose between reading the new books and reading the old, one must choose the old: not because they are necessarily better but because they contain precisely those truths of which our own age is neglectful. The standard of permanent Christianity must be kept clear in our minds and it is against that standard that we must test all contemporary thought. In fact, we must at all costs not move with the times. We serve One who said ‘Heaven and Earth shall move with the times, but my words shall not move with the times’ (Matt. 24:35; Mark 13:31; Luke 21:33).

I am speaking, so far, of theological reading. Scientific reading is a different matter. If you know any science it is very desirable that you should keep it up. We have to answer the current scientific attitude towards Christianity, not the attitude which scientists adopted one hundred years ago. Science is in continual change and we must try to keep abreast of it. For the same reason, we must be very cautious of snatching at any scientific theory which, for the moment, seems to be in our favour. We may mention such things; but we must mention them lightly and without claiming that they are more than ‘interesting.’ Sentences beginning ‘Science has now proved’ should be avoided. If we try to base our apologetic on some recent development in science, we shall usually find that just as we have put the finishing touches to our argument science has changed its mind and quietly withdrawn the theory we have been using as our foundation stone. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes is a sound principle (‘I fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts,’ Virgil, Aeneid, bk. II, line 49).

While we are on the subject of science, let me digress for a moment. I believe that any Christian who is qualified to write a good popular book on any science may do much more by that than by any directly apologetic work. The difficulty we are up against is this. We can make people (often) attend to the Christian point of view for half an hour or so; but the moment they have gone away from our lecture or laid down our article, they are plunged back into a world where the opposite position is taken for granted. As long as that situation exists, widespread success is simply impossible. We must attack the enemy’s line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way round. Our Faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or Astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written in direct defence of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books. In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian. The first step to the re-conversion of this country is a series, produced by Christians, which can beat the Penguin and the Thinkers Library on their own ground. Its Christianity would have to be latent, not explicit: and of course its science perfectly honest. Science twisted in the interests of apologetics would be sin and folly. But I must return to my immediate subject.

Our business is to present that which is timeless (the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, Heb. 13:8) in the particular language of our own age. The bad preacher does exactly the opposite: he takes the ideas of our own age and tricks them out in the traditional language of Christianity. Thus, for example, he may think about the Beveridge Report … (a plan for the present Social Security system in Britain) and talk about the coming of the Kingdom. The core of his thought is merely contemporary; only the superficies is traditional. But your teaching must be timeless at its heart and wear a modern dress.

This raises the question of Theology and Politics. The nearest I can get to a settlement of the frontier problem between them is this:—that Theology teaches us what ends are desirable and what means are lawful, while Politics teaches what means are effective. Thus Theology tells us that every man ought to have a decent wage. Politics tells by what means this is likely to be attained. Theology tells us which of these means are consistent with justice and charity. On the political question guidance comes not from Revelation but from natural prudence, knowledge of complicated facts and ripe experience. If we have these qualifications we may, of course, state our political opinions: but then we must make it quite clear that we are giving our personal judgment and have no command from the Lord. Not many priests have these qualifications. Most political sermons teach the congregation nothing except what newspapers are taken at the Rectory.

Our great danger at present is lest the Church should continue to practise a merely missionary technique in, what has become a missionary situation. A century ago our task was to edify those who had been brought up in the Faith: our present task is chiefly to convert and instruct infidels. Great Britain is as much part of the mission field as China. Now if you were sent to the Bantus you would be taught their language and traditions. You need similar teaching about the language and mental habits of your own uneducated and unbelieving fellow countrymen. Many priests are quite ignorant on this subject. What I know about it I have learned from talking in R.A.F. (the Royal Air Force) camps. They were mostly inhabited by Englishmen and, therefore, some of what I shall say may be irrelevant to the situation in Wales. You will sift out what does not apply.

(1) I find that the uneducated Englishman is an almost total sceptic about History. I had expected he would disbelieve the Gospels because they contain miracles: but he really disbelieves them because they deal with things that happened 2,000 years ago. He would disbelieve equally in the battle of Actium if he heard of it. To those who have had our kind of education, his state of mind is very difficult to realize. To us the Present has always appeared as one section in a huge continuous process. In his mind the Present occupied almost the whole field of vision. Beyond it, isolated from it, and quite unimportant, is something called ‘The Old Days’—a small, comic jungle in which highwaymen, Queen Elizabeth, knights-in-armour etc. wander about. Then (strangest of all) beyond The Old Days comes a picture of ‘Primitive Man.’ He is ‘Science,’ not ‘history,’ and is therefore felt to be much more real than The Old Days. In other words, the Prehistoric is much more believed in than the Historic.

(2) He has a distrust (very rational in the state of his knowledge) of ancient texts. Thus a man has sometimes said to me ‘These records were written in the days before printing, weren’t they? and you haven’t got the original bit of paper, have you? So what it comes to is that someone wrote something and someone else copied it and someone else copied that and so on. Well, by the time it comes to us, it won’t be in the least like the original.’ This is a difficult objection to deal with because one cannot, there and then, start teaching the whole science of textual criticism. But at this point their real religion (i.e. faith in ‘science’) has come to my aid. The assurance that there is a ‘Science’ called ‘Textual Criticism’ and that its results (not only as regards the New Testament, but as regards ancient texts in general) are generally accepted, will usually be received without objection. (I need hardly point out that the word ‘text’ must not be used, since to your audience it means only ‘a scriptural quotation.’)

(3) A sense of sin is almost totally lacking. Our situation is thus very different from that of the Apostles. The Pagans (and still more the metuentes) to whom they preached were haunted by a sense of guilt and to them the Gospel was, therefore, ‘good news.’ (The metuentes or ‘god-fearers’ were a class of Gentiles who worshipped God without submitting to circumcision and the other ceremonial obligations of the Jewish Law. See Psalm 118:4 and Acts 10:2.) We address people who have been trained to believe that whatever goes wrong in the world is someone else’s fault—the Capitalists’, the Government’s, the Nazis’, the Generals’ etc. They approach God Himself as His judges. They want to know, not whether they can be acquitted for sin, but whether He can be acquitted for creating such a world.

In attacking this fatal insensibility it is useless to direct attention (a) To sins your audience do not commit, or (b) To things they do, but do not regard as sins. They are usually not drunkards. They are mostly fornicators, but then they do not feel fornication to be wrong. It is, therefore, useless to dwell on either of these subjects. (Now that contraceptives have removed the obviously uncharitable element in fornication I do not myself think we can expect people to recognize it as sin until they have accepted Christianity as a whole.)

I cannot offer you a water-tight technique for awakening the sense of sin. I can only say that, in my experience, if one begins from the sin that has been one’s own chief problem during the last week, one is very often surprised at the way this shaft goes home. But whatever method we use, our continual effort must be to get their mind away from public affairs and ‘crime’ and bring them down to brass tacks—to the whole network of spite, greed, envy, unfairness and conceit in the lives of ‘ordinary decent people’ like themselves (and ourselves).

Two items are very much in the forefront of the news these days: the Laotian-Viet Nam situation and the Arab-Israeli peace quest. Americans are expecting Mr. Nixon to fulfill his campaign promise of disengagement and the end of military action in Southeast Asia, and his chance for reelection may well turn on whether he succeeds. Time is running out. The Egyptian-Israeli peace hope is complicated by the national aspirations of the Soviet Union and the United States, both of whom have a stake in the outcome. At the moment the larger interests of all parties would seem to be served by a peace agreement. We do not foresee lasting peace in that area until the return of the Prince of Peace. Current developments suggest, however, the possibility of a period of time without war, and even this would be no mean achievement.

We announce happily that David E. Kucharsky is now managing editor, a title more in line with the many responsibilities he bears and an expression of our appreciation for his great contribution to the magazine. (Kucharsky, incidentally, is to appear on the NBC-TV network’s “Today” program, Monday morning, March 15, to report on the plight of five captive missionaries in Viet Nam.) And we welcome to the masthead as editorial assistant Cheryl Forbes, a graduate of the University of Maryland, who has been assigned duties in the book, letters, and editorial sections.

Late last year Pope Paul VI made papal history by undertaking the longest journey ever made by a pope. He visited Manila (where he survived an assassination attempt) and flew on to Samoa. Then he spent four days in Australia and returned home via Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Ceylon. It was a long and exhausting journey for a seventy-three-year-old man.

Just how large the crowds were that greeted him in Australia is not easy to say. As one journalist put it, there was a funny sort of numbers game. Tour organizers, police, and the press gave divergent estimates of the numbers at most functions. They agreed that about 5,000 were waiting at the airport when the Pope arrived (50,000 had been predicted). But at a Mass held on the Randwick racecourse one estimate put the attendance at 250,000, another at 200,000 and yet another at 150,000. Whatever the number actually present at any function, however, hundreds of thousands more watched on television. There is no doubt that very many Australians took a deep interest in the visit.

Pope Paul made some notable pronouncements. He rebuked Australia for self-centeredness and materialism: “the temptation to be satisfied when the material means are fulfilled is one that confronts society when it reaches your standard of living.” He spoke up for the rights of our aboriginal people. He warned against isolationism.

He seemed sympathetic to the protests of modern youth, but for a reason most people would not have anticipated, namely, its criticism of the “permissive society.” But the Pope thought youth’s rejection of the commercialized and aggressive society something like a “ray of light.”

The visit was clearly meant to be a friendly one, and there was no attempt at polemics. On the contrary, one of the highlights was an ecumenical service in the Sydney Town Hall. The Pope and Anglican Bishop Garnsey gave short addresses, and parts were taken in the simple service of Bible reading and prayer by representatives of the

Churches of Christ, the Presbyterian, and the Orthodox Churches as well as Roman Catholics and Anglicans. Such a service had never previously been held in Australia, nor probably anywhere else.

Both speakers sounded the note of unity, and both referred to John 17. Bishop Garnsey spoke of the “earnest and honest conversation” between the Roman Catholic Church and the Australian Council of Churches, adding, “We believe that it is the Holy Spirit that is leading, sometimes driving us into this cooperation. It is not because we seek safety in a hostile world, not because it is nice and comfortable to be together. It is rather a search for truth, a search for renewal, a search for obedience, that will lead us out into costly service.”

The Pope also spoke of the cost. “History cannot be written overnight,” he said, “and the honest hesitations of sensitive consciences always demand our respect and understanding. There is no easy way. The reconciling work of our Lord was achieved through suffering and the Cross. The unity which the ecumenical movement strives to serve has to be bought at a similar price.”

This was a most impressive service. It formed a landmark in relations between Roman Catholics and the Protestants. It certainly gave heart to those working for the reunion of the sundered denominations.

But it may not be too much to say that most comment referred not to anything done at the service but to some who were absent. The Most Reverend Marcus Loane, Anglican archbishop of Sydney, announced some weeks before the service that he could not in conscience attend. His decision was received with understanding and sympathy by Roman Catholics and by Christian leaders generally. But it was harshly criticized by many members of the general public. The Baptist Church joined Archbishop Loane in refusing to attend.

Marcus Loane gave his reasons for staying away. “The Roman Catholic Church,” he wrote in his diocesan paper, “continues to adhere to certain dogmas which are totally alien to the whole character of the New Testament. It still holds that the Pope is the Vicegerent of Christ and the infallible Head of the Church on earth; that Tradition is of equal authority with Scripture as the guide and rule of faith; that Transubstantiation takes place when the priest offers the prayer of Consecration so that the bread and wine become the body and blood, the soul and divinity, of Christ; that the Mass is a sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead; that the Virgin Mary is a mediatrix whose intercession is necessary in order to procure God’s favour; and that justification before God depends on the works that we do as well as on our faith in what Christ has done. These are doctrines which still create lines of cleavage which it is impossible to ignore. They are radically inconsistent with the New Testament as the sovereign rule of faith as well as with the Reformation Settlement of the Church of England in the reign of Elizabeth I. And they are all summed up in the office which is held by the Pope.

“It is for this reason that one cannot pretend that the barriers have all disappeared. These are questions of truth which must be resolved before we can share in common worship or in unfettered fellowship.”

In the vigorous discussion provoked by these happenings, most of those interested in promoting ecumenism feel it a pity that the onward march to unity has thus been hindered. But very few seem to have faced the issues the archbishop raised.

Perhaps people think it is unwise to do anything to disturb the friendliness that increasingly marks relations between the churches. To have sectarian bitterness replaced by a cordial willingness to talk and even to pray together is certainly a great gain. But Christian unity cannot be built on nothing more than friendliness, as leaders in all the denominations know well enough.

No good purpose can be served by glossing over the issues Marcus Loane has raised. It may be possible to have another opinion about the wisdom of attending the ecumenical service. But there is no getting past the fact that the archbishop has drawn attention to big and important issues.

Sooner or later, someone must say to our Roman Catholic friends in all kindness: “Have you changed your opinion on any of the matters Archbishop Loane raised? If so, which and how? If not, where do we go from here?”