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The Challenge Of Persecution
Patriarch and Prophets: Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church Today, by Michael Bourdeaux (Praeger, 1970, 359 pp., $10), and The Urgency of Marxist Christian Dialogue, by Herbert Aptheker (Harper & Row, 1970, 196 pp., $6.95), are reviewed by Blahoslav Hruby, managing editor, “Religion in Communist Dominated Areas,” New York City.
A matter that should be of great concern to Christians in this country is the plight of religious and political dissenters and of Jews and ethnic minorities in the U.S.S.R and other Communist countries, and the violation of human rights there. Nobody can excuse himself by saying that information on this subject is lacking: several works published in recent years deal in detail with these problems, and Religion in Communist Dominated Areas, a semi-monthly of the National Council of Churches, has been covering this area for the past nine years.
Michael Bourdeaux is a clergyman of the Church of England and the author of two previous books on religion in the Soviet Union. He has now produced yet another timely and important volume.
In some church circles, there is a tendency to be very cautious in dealing with the religious situation in Communist countries. This is said to reflect a desire to work toward a dialogue between East and West and toward a detente. In these circles, it seems, the theology of revolution and Christian dialogue with Marxists are cultivated, while protest—or even prayers—on behalf of harassed and persecuted Christians in the Soviet Union are discouraged.
Bourdeaux’s new book is an urgent reminder to the Christian community and to all who are concerned about freedom and human rights. Its great value is that Bourdeaux, instead of describing the plight of the Russian Orthodox Church today, lets the participants in the present drama of that great church provide their own testimony. The documents cover all aspects of Orthodox Church life and are grouped into nine chapters by such topics as “The Persecution of the Clergy” and “Destruction of Parish Life.”
In the concise and perceptive introduction to his book, finished shortly after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia and dedicated to the people of that country, the author does not pass judgment on the Orthodox establishment, which reached a modus vivendi with the Soviet regime. In a well-balanced ecumenical spirit, Bourdeaux recognizes both the Orthodox establishment and dissent. I fully agree with him when he says: “The problem of balance in the presentation of the two positions has been impossible to solve. This book presents the new voices at length, because they have had only an inadequate platform elsewhere, while officials from the Patriarchate have been able to speak at great conferences of churchmen all over the world.”
These documents, seen in the context of the ever increasing number of letters and appeals coming out of the Soviet Union, show a growing solidarity between the Orthodox religious community striving for freedom and human rights and others struggling for the same goals among intellectuals, students, and various nationalities and religious groups.
Bourdeaux rightly appraises these significant documents as “a convincing testimony to the continued vitality of the Russian Orthodox Church among both young and old, both the little educated and intellectuals, in circumstances which would have crushed a purely human agency devoid of the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
To turn from these moving documents to Aptheker’s The Urgency of Marxist-Christian Dialogue is like entering a dream world. Though the book appeared after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, Aptheker writes as if it hadn’t happened. Yet Prague was one of the places where the dialogue he calls for was most advanced, and those who once participated in it are continually attacked in the Communist press. The book has an excellent bibliography and a worthwhile discussion of the views on religion of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, but Christians would be better advised to engage in rational, scholarly examination of present Marxist and Communist systems, especially in light of developments since the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the upsurge in anti-Semitism.
The All-Stars Of Christian Education
Adult Education in the Church, edited by Roy Zuck and Gene Getz (Moody, 1970, 383 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by William Boyd, Christian service director, Western Bible Institute, Denver,
The first of the two sections of this book is “Teaching Adults” and includes the entire scope of adult education in a local church. The writers cover the need for adult education, the biblical foundations, the nature and needs of all ages of adults, and the implications of these for instruction, evangelism, training, and lay movements tangential to the church. The second section, “Helping Families,” deals with current pressures on the family, biblical principles relating to it, and preparation for marriage. Also discussed are elements needed to maintain sound family life, such as marital unity, discipline, worship, sex education, and a family educational program. (This section will be available in a separate paperback binding in July.)
Included are such all-star authors as Sisemore, Moberg, Aultman, Brubaker, Loth, Bayly, Feucht, Hendricks, Fields, Richards, and sixteen others. The variety of the authors’ backgrounds enhances the book’s strength. And through excellent organization, the fragmentation, overlapping, and insufficient correlation that often mar a book with multiple authors are not present.
As would be true of any book having twenty-six authors, the individual chapters range from weak to outstanding. Yet the vast majority are good or excellent. There previously was no one book of evangelical flavor with sufficient scope and depth to become a widely accepted text on adult education. This one will undoubtedly be used as the basic textbook in many college classes in Christian education of adults, and will become a supplementary text in Christian-home classes. Although the content of the “Family” section is not weak, its scope is not great enough for the book to become a primary text in this area. In a local church situation, however, the book could well serve as the primary resource book for training in both adult education and family education. In this vein, it is encouraging to note the increased family emphasis in the adult educational ministry of the church.
Surprisingly, nothing is said in the book about the widening influence of small groups in the church. Some of the benefits and dangers in that area might well have been presented along with some biblical principles for use as guidelines.
Those who have been searching for a textbook for adult education in the church will welcome the appearance of this one.
Newly Published
Jesus and Israel, by Jules Isaac (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, 405 pp., $12.50) and The Trial and Death of Jesus, by Haim Cohn (Harper & Row, 1971, 419 pp., $12.50). Two very significant books. Isaac presents a necessary re-emphasis on the Jewishness of Jesus and on the evil of anti-Semitism, but both he and Cohn are much too skeptical on the Gospels’ accounts of the trial of Jesus in their attempts to remove blame from Jews. Of course, anyone, Jew or Gentile, who fails to see that Jesus died “for the sins of the whole world” has completely missed the point.
Unhooked, edited by James Adair (Baker, 1971, 159 pp., paperback, $1.25). Seventeen ex-addicts tell their stories. This book makes the heart ache and the spirit leap joyously.
Marriage to a Difficult Man, by Elisabeth D. Dodds (Westminster, 1971, 224 pp., $5.95). The delightful, heart-warming story of the “uncommon union” of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards. A well-written look at the domestic life of America’s greatest theologian.
Quest for a Black Theology, edited by James J. Gardiner and J. Deotis Roberts (Pilgrim, 1971, 111 pp., $5.95). Six leading black theologians each contributed an essay. Topics include the Black Messiah, the ethics of black power, and the blackness of black religion.
A Dispensational Theology, by Charles F. Baker (Grace Bible College [Box 9008, Wyoming, Mich. 49509], 1971, 688 pp., $9.95). The traditional subdivisions of theology, except for ethics, are systematically and clearly considered. The author summarizes various views among conservative Protestants before arguing for his own position. On ecclesiology it represents only that small minority of dispensationalists who believe today’s Church began with Paul rather than Pentecost, but this variation does not mar the overall usefulness of the book.
Prophecy and the Seventies, edited by Charles Lee Feinberg (Moody, 1971, 255 pp., $4.95). Twenty-one messages by nine Bible expositors—including Stephen Olford, John Walvoord, and two Jewish Christians—delivered at a conference in 1970 sponsored by the American Board of Missions to the Jews on its seventy-fifth anniversary.
Environmental Ethics, edited by Donald R. Scoby (Burgess, 1971, 239 pp., paperback, $2.95). Not even the most assiduous reader can expect to keep up with all the new eco-books, but by reading this collection of reprinted and original articles one can at least become aware of the diversity of material and concern that our environmental crisis is provoking
Living With Guilt, by Henry McKeating (Judson, 1971, 125 pp., paperback, $1.95). A good analysis of the neuroses of our times—feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and worthlessness. The author thinks the New Testament contains the key to healing and restoration.
The Listener, by H. S. Vigeveno (Regal, 1971, 153 pp., paperback, $.95). If you want to know what atheists, Black Muslims, or Buddhists think, read this book. The author records his conversations with people of these and other non-Christian persuasions. The information reported here should be important to all concerned Christians.
The Scientific Enterprise and Christian Faith, by Malcolm A. Jeeves (Inter-Varsity, 1971, 168 pp., paperback, $2.25). As an alternative to the spate of books available that stress a conflict between science and Scripture, this is a welcome appearance in paperback of a summary of the 1965 International Conference of Science and Faith, which involved three dozen professors who are evangelicals and who are reflective rather than combative on the crucial issues.
Kierkegaard’s Presence in Contemporary American Life, edited by Lewis A. Lawson (Scarecrow, 1971, 299 pp., $7.50). Fourteen articles from the journals of various academic disciplines reveal the diverse influence of the great Dane. Includes a bibliography of over 600 periodical articles in English on Kierkegaard.
Humanistic Psychology: A Christian Interpretation, by John A. Hammes (Grune and Stratton, 1971, 203 pp., $7.95). Here is a good survey of the basic principles of psychological investigation. The author attempts to demonstrate that there is “no disagreement between experimentally established data and those truths proposed by the Christian frame of reference.” An important, well-written book.
The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals 1596–1728, by Robert Middlekauff (Oxford, 1971, 440 pp., $12.50). This great Christian family has long deserved better treatment than the usual caricature. The author makes a very good beginning, with special emphasis on the Mathers’ influence on contemporary and succeeding Americans. In the process he offers an unconventional view of Puritan development on these shores that merits thorough consideration.
Ten Words of Freedom, by Jay G. Williams (Fortress, 1971, 226 pp., paperback, $4.95). A verse-by-verse commentary on the Ten Commandments, useful for one preparing to preach on them.
Carl E. Armerding
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The line of distinction between study of the religion of Israel and study of the theology of the Old Testament is not always clear. The former focuses on a description of the ideas and actions (both good and bad) that were representative of any given period in Israel’s relationship to the divine. The latter, by contrast, seeks to establish what was normative for Hebrew religion, and its context is that of revelation as described in the Old Testament rather than religion per se. Such a definition presumes, of course, a particular understanding of biblical theology that is not always shared by writers on the subject; in actual fact, some of the books described as Old Testament theologies are actually histories of Israel’s religion, and vice versa.
The Religion Of Israel
Religious history (sometimes indistinguishable from what is called Old Testament theology) is amply covered at all levels. Basic to such a discussion is still the classic work of W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (Black, 1907; reprinted with supplements by KTAV, 1969). Smith leans heavily on comparative Semitic materials, drawing much material from primitive Arab cult practices; although his method is inadequate to explain the uniqueness of biblical religion, it does throw much light on externals. For a more theological treatment emphasizing the distinctive element of Israel’s faith in Yahweh as its liberator, Th. C. Vriezen’s The Religion of Ancient Israel (Westminster, translation, 1967) may be recommended. A somewhat more specialized study from the pen of H. H. Rowley, Worship in Ancient Israel (Fortress, 1967), discusses ways in which the worship of Yahweh came into Israel and various aspects of this worship in the temple and the later synagogue. From H. Ringgren comes another general treatment of the subject, Israelite Religion (Fortress, translation, 1966). Ringgren, whose main interest is the period of the monarchy, has written a book of great use to the general reader.
Similarly committed both to comparative methodology and to the uniqueness of Old Testament religion are three by W. F. Albright: Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (Doubleday, revised, 1968), From the Stone Age to Christianity (Doubleday, revised, 1957), and Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan (London University, 1968). The first volume looks at the subject from the standpoint of modern archaeological research and deals particularly with the period between the conquest and the early monarchy; the second is a more extensive analysis of the developing process of monotheism and might be considered Albright’s classic effort; the third contains the mature reflections of the author on the relation between Israelite and Canaanite religion. Also from the pen of an archaeologist, and graced with a foreward by Albright, is the non-technical survey by J. L. Kelso, Archaeology and the Ancient Testament: The Christian God of the Old Testament vs. the Canaanite Religion (Zondervan, 1968).
Greatly divergent views are represented by the collected essays of certain Old Testament scholars, notably A. Alt’s Essays on Old Testament History and Religion (Blackwell, 1966), I. Engnell’s A Rigid Scrutiny (Vanderbilt, 1969), and M. Noth’s The Laws in the Pentateuch and Other Essays (Oliver and Boyd, 1966). Each of these volumes is made up of selections from the author’s more extensive writings; all are intended for the advanced scholar, and despite their unquestioned value, none of them reflects a particularly conservative attitude toward the biblical sources. For a minority report on Hebrew religion, see Y. Kaufmann’s The Religion of Israel, abridged from an eight-volume Hebrew original (University of Chicago, 1960), a book that should be required reading for all aspiring Old Testament scholars. Kaufmann combines reverence for the Scriptures with a creative approach to critical questions, a combination that has produced considerable stimulation to research as well as its share of controversy.
A number of monographs treating various phases of Canaanite or Israelite religious history could also be mentioned alongside the more general treatments listed above. For research purposes, however, the student should familiarize himself with works on Ugaritic literature, Palestinian archaeology, and Babylonian ritual (cf. our earlier sections on these subjects). Perhaps a coming day will see the production of a much needed major work from an evangelical writer in this fruitful field.
Theology Of The Old Testament
To an earlier generation of theologians, biblical or Old Testament theology was simply the exegetical preparation for doing systematic theology. The older literature in this genre is abundant, and we shall make no attempt to outline the material. Most scholars who write theologies of the Old Testament today have in common a concern that the content of Hebrew theological thought be developed within a historical context. But having said this, we must point out that much difference of opinion exists among the various writers.
To get some idea of the issues involved and the historical development of the subject, the reader should begin with an introductory volume, such as the concise treatment by R. C. Dentan, Preface to Old Testament Theology (Seabury, 1963). Considerably less comprehensive, but important as an apology for a more traditional, Reformed formulation of categories, is E. J. Young’s The Study of Old Testament Theology Today (Revell, 1959). A good survey of seven influential writers on Old Testament theology is Contemporary Old Testament Theologians, edited by Robert Laurin (Judson, 1970).
There is really no “best” textbook on the theology of the Old Testament; the student will be best advised to sample the various volumes mentioned below and learn first-hand the organizing principle used in each. A good starting point is F. F. Bruce’s New Testament Development of Old Testament Themes (Eerdmans, 1968), which opens with a chapter organizing the subject under the category of promise and fulfillment. In actuality, Bruce is arguing against any single “catch-phrase” as dominant within the study of Old Testament theology; he claims that only in light of New Testament fulfillment can a true unity be found (cf. the discussion of von Rad, below).
One approach is to organize the subject under some combination of the doctrines of God, man, and salvation. The older work of L. Koehler, Old Testament Theology (Westminster, translation, 1957), which stresses the concept of God as Lord, contains useful word studies but is marked by the curious description of the cult of Israel as “man’s expedient for his own redemption.” Organized similarly to Koehler, and highly rated for comprehensiveness and clarity, is E. Jacob’s Theology of the Old Testament (Harper, translation, 1958). This volume stresses God’s mastery of history and is, among the theologies organized in the traditional form, perhaps the most useful textbook for students. Although all the theologies noted here are “Christian” in overall point of view, An Outline of Old Testament Theology by Th. C. Vriezen (Westminster, translation, 1958) and A Christian Theology of the Old Testament by G. A. F. Knight (Westminster, 1959) are distinguished by a more definite commitment to a specifically Christian understanding of the Old Testament message. Although it has weaknesses, the latter is characterized by new ways of looking at old subjects and will prove especially useful to the audience for which it was written (i.e., the intelligent churchman). The many paragraphs devoted to Old Testament imagery will be found homiletically useful.
Only two major American works are available representing the traditionally evangelical point of view. In 1948 G. Vos’s useful Biblical Theology (Eerdmans) was published; this was followed in 1962 by J. B. Payne’s Theology of the Older Testament (Zondervan). The former book is rather dated; it fails to consider certain areas of Israel’s thought (e.g. the Wisdom movement) and does not refer to recent theological research. Vos attempts to trace the subject historically, but his subordination of historical matter to categories of traditional covenant theology make the entire work sound more than faintly like another systematic theology. Payne’s work, though significantly different from that of Vos, has been criticized for the same reason. The book is organized on the principle of “testament” or “will” rather than simply “covenant” behind the Hebrew word b’rith (based on Hebrews 9:15 as a starting point!) and constructs its theology on the various relationships involved in this testament. Although each subject is analyzed according to its development throughout ten historical periods, there is little indication of any meaningful distinction between various periods or groups within Israelite history. A European-origin alternative to the two books just mentioned, representing a modified form of dispensationalism, is E. Sauer’s The Dawn of World Redemption (Eerdmans, translation, 1951). Sauer follows a traditional historical outline and can be counted on for a scriptural and sometimes extremely fresh approach to his subject.
Without a doubt the two most influential works in the field are those of the German scholars Walther Eichrodt and Gerhard von Rad. Eichrodt’s Theology of the Old Testament (two volumes, Westminster, translation, 1961, 1967) uses the Covenant concept as the unifying principle and will appeal to those who see theology as firmly rooted in the historical response of the people of God. Especially useful for comparative consideration is Eichrodt’s “Excursus” at the end of the first volume, in which he deals briefly but trenchantly with his competitor von Rad. In his Old Testament Theology (two volumes, Harper & Row, translation, 1962, 1965), von Rad, like Eichrodt, rejects traditional categories of dogmatic theology (although Eichrodt seems to return partially to them in Volume II) and speaks instead of a saving history in the proclamation of God’s mighty works in the context of Israelite worship. Just what relation exists between this proclamation and the actual history of Israel (which is in fact often less than redemptive) is, to von Rad, unimportant; this point is sharply criticized by Eichrodt and modified by some of von Rad’s own students (e.g. R. Rendtorff). The only real point of unity in an Old Testament theology is, for von Rad, the typological exegesis of which he has long been an advocate. Thus we are presented with various “theologies” instead of an Old Testament “theology,” a point that the theological conservative will find difficult to accept.
Three major works from Roman Catholic scholars merit mention. Intended primarily as a students’ handbook is the very useful treatment by P. Heinisch, Theology of the Old Testament (Liturgical Press, translation, 1955). Its approach is systematic (under the headings God, Creation, Human Acts, Life After Death, and Redemption), and only the spelling of the names (following the Douay-Rheims system) and frequent references to papal encyclicals concerning the study of the Bible betray its Catholic heritage. A more ambitious work, P. van Imschoot’s Theology of the Old Testament (Desclee, translation, 1965), again follows dogmatic categories. Especially useful to the specialist are the extensive bibliographies heading each section, which include lesser-known French works along with the standard German and English materials. For the American reader, however, a much more palatable work than either of these is the volume by J. L. McKenzie, The Two-Edged Sword: An Interpretation of the Old Testament (Bruce, 1956). McKenzie’s categories are closer to those of the American biblical-theology movement, and the student wishing to evaluate current Catholic biblical thought might well begin here.
Several additional books will prove very useful for understanding the theology of the Old Testament. H. H. Rowley, the late dean of British Old Testament scholars, has left us two short volumes stressing the unity of the Old Testament and the uniqueness of its theological concepts, though without denying its evident diversity. In The Unity of the Bible (Westminster, 1955) Rowley offers a corrective to tendencies he observed in both church and missionary situations toward an almost complete neglect of the Old Testament. He felt the point of focus had to be the unity of the two testaments, and this forms the burden of his earlier work; by contrast, The Faith of Israel (SCM, 1956) provides a sketch of Old Testament theology. Although no major work on the subject has been written from a conservative evangelical point of view, Rowley’s short study, stressing both revelation through history and revelation through persons, gives some indication of the direction such a book might take.
Equally important in any discussion of Old Testament theology are the works of the American archaeologist and biblical theologian G. E. Wright. Two important monographs, both in the “Studies in Biblical Theology” series (Allenson), are The Old Testament Against Its Environment (1950) and God Who Acts (1952). In the former volume, Wright, like Rowley, is concerned to show the uniqueness of the world of the Bible, a thesis that is introductory to his work in biblical theology. In the second book he portrays Old Testament (and New Testament) theology as a recital of the great acts of God as developed in the salvation history of the testaments. This work has been fundamental in the subsequent development of the biblical-theology movement in North America and should be read by anyone who wants to understand this important trend. A third book by the same author, The Old Testament and Theology (Harper & Row, 1969), is a mature study of the socio-political content of Old Testament thinking about God and a corrective to much current existential emphasis.
Another work stressing the unique contribution of Old Testament theology is the brief treatise of N. H. Snaith, The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament (Shocken, 1964). It is Snaith’s conviction that a distinctive concept of God is at the root of the distinctiveness of the Old Testament, and so the book becomes a study of Hebrew ideas of God: his holiness, his righteousness, his covenant-love, his election-love, and his Spirit as a life-giving power.
The aforementioned provide just a sampling of the kind of works available from which one interested in biblical theology may choose. Important bibliographies have been provided at several points in the more general surveys, and for specific subjects the bibliographies in the better Bible dictionaries should be consulted.
Old Testament Interpretation
Closely related to Old Testament theology, both as a preliminary study and as beneficiary of the results of that discipline, is the category of Old Testament interpretation. Essays on the subject are numerous, but two particularly useful collections may be found in C. Westermann, editor, Essays on Old Testament Interpretation (John Knox, translation, 1963), and B. W. Anderson, editor, The Old Testament and Christian Faith (Harper & Row, 1963). Both books represent more of a German than American or British contribution, but leading thinkers in the area are included. Among the current literature significant articles have been contributed through the medium of two new Festschriften. Essays by G. E. Wright (“Historical Knowledge and Revelation”) and R. L. Hicks (“Form and Content: A Hermeneutical Application”) are contained in Translating and Understanding the Old Testament, in honor of H. G. May (Abingdon, 1970), edited by H. T. Frank and W. L. Reed. Another important article, “The Limits of Old Testament Interpretation” by the Edinburgh scholar N. W. Porteous, is found in Proclamation and Presence, in honor of G. H. Davies (John Knox, 1970), edited by J. I. Durham and J. R. Porter.
Two books may be mentioned that deal specifically with the relation between the testaments. C. Westermann’s The Old Testament and Jesus Christ (Augsburg, 1970) is a translation of a brief but important German work and pleads for a fresh realization that Christ is relevant to the main sections of the Old Testament and not simply to certain proof-texts. A much more difficult book, but one vital to a study of the relation between the testaments, is J. Barr’s Old and New in Interpretation (SCM, 1966). Here Barr continues arguments begun in his Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford, 1961) and closes with an extremely critical analysis of propositional revelation in modern fundamentalism.
Two recent volumes concerned with applying biblical theology to the hermeneutical crisis in the Church are The Authority of the Old Testament (Abingdon, 1967) by J. Bright and Biblical Theology in Crisis (Westminster, 1970) by B. Childs. Bright advocates an American brand of biblical theology as the answer to the embarrassment and confusion the preacher often feels toward his Old Testament; Childs appeals for a reassessment of the biblical-theology movement in view of its current collapse. Significantly, both authors conclude with extended chapters showing how the interpreter might use the principles advocated in approaching certain passages or problems. Childs calls for a return to the Christian canon as the authoritative Scripture with which the theologian is to be concerned vis à vis recent attempts at theologizing from “some form of positivity behind the text, such as Heilsgeschichte, language phenomenology, or in a mode of consciousness illustrated by the text, such as authentic existence or the like.” Coupled with this appeal is another for a recovery of classical exegetical methodology (but not in a pre-critical sense), with its ability to view the Scripture as a whole and to discover therein the “bread of life.”
Significantly, not only Childs but Wright and others have recently taken a new look at the great classical exegetes, particularly Luther and Calvin, whose exegetical work has often been overshadowed by their systematic formulations. We are fortunate today in having access to several works that will help in this recovery. 1969 saw the publication both of J. S. Preus’s From Shadow to Promise: Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to the Young Luther (Belknap) and of an English translation of H. Bornkamm’s important Luther and the Old Testament (Fortress). Major work on Calvin’s exegetical method is still wanting, but for a preliminary bibliography Wright’s article in Translating and Understanding the Old Testament (p. 284) may be consulted.
A corollary to the new interest in classical Christian interpretation is a renewed focus on early rabbinic exegesis. The literature on the subject, particularly from Jewish writers, is voluminous, but pride of place belongs to The Targums and Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge, 1970) by J. Bowker. Through use of selected portions of Genesis as reflected in the Targum (an interpretive Aramaic translation from the Hebrew Bible) of Pseudo-Jonathan, Bowker has written an introduction to Jewish interpretation that will be of exceptional value both to the specialist and to every student concerned with Jewish Scriptures or Christian origins.
Finally, in the field of homiletical interpretation, anyone concerned with preaching the Old (or New) Testament will want to be familiar with the small work of E. P. Clowney, Preaching and Biblical Theology (Eerdmans, 1961). Clowney represents a combination of abilities as exegete, theologian, and preacher, and calls for a return to great exegetical proclamation through the help of a covenant-oriented biblical theology.
Carl E. Armerding teaches Old Testament at Regent College in Vancouver. He received the B.D. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and the Ph.D. from Brandeis. He spent a year in Israel doing post-doctoral study.
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Eutychus V
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SECRETS OF A POSTMISTRESS
Of late there has been a hue and cry about the loss of privacy in American life. Many people seem to sense a threat in the fact that both government and private agencies systematically collect this information about us.
Those who are so profoundly disturbed obviously have never met Mamie, our local postmaster. (Once when I called her “postmistress,” trying my best to be correct, she nearly threw me out of the post office for using suggestive language on government property.)
Mamie knows everything and never forgets a thing—except once in a while to have the mail delivered. When the February issue of one of four magazines came, Mamie apparently remembered that she was still reading the January issue. Both issues arrived at our house the same day with the January issue neatly dogeared where Mamie had marked her place in the continued fiction piece.
The comprehensiveness of her information was brought home to us a few months after we arrived in town. My wife dashed off a postcard to her mother signing it “M.B.” She was interrupted while addressing it and absent-mindedly mailed it with only her mother’s name on the address side.
The following day when she was in the post office Mamie handed her the card saying, “Here’s your card to your mother. You forgot to address it.” Some of our best friends don’t know my wife’s maiden name, but Mamie does.
Where the FBI collects material, Mamie assimilates it and forms a judgment about the character and personality of the individual involved. By carefully studying what various members of the community are reading, she has put together a mental dossier on each that would put the FBI to shame.
Jim Hicks is the “seed catalogue man.” The fact that he earns his living as a consulting economist is to Mamie not nearly so indicative of his character as the fact that he regularly receives seed catalogues.
Sam Furman is the “writer fellow.” Sam, an electrical engineer, receives Writer’s Digest and other publications designed for the professional writer. I don’t know if Sam has ever put a line
on paper, but he’s forever identified in Mamie’s mind as a writer.
I shudder to think what might happen if some unwary student in our town decided to study Communism directly from Communist publications.
You see, in Mamie’s view a man is not what he does but what he reads. And perhaps she’s more profound than she realizes.
SHAKY GROUND UNDER ‘ISRAEL’
As a faithful reader of your magazine, I am continually rewarded by the insights within its pages. But I believe that a Christian periodical is on shaky ground when it ventures to make political position statements other than those which follow directly from Christian tenets. Such an aspect was not obvious in the editorial “Pressures on Israel” (April 9). A statement weighing purely political issues deserves no place in the editorial pages of your fine magazine, unless the writer considers himself privy to information that is otherwise not widely available.
Surely many of your readers feel, contrary to your editorial opinion, that the first step toward peace in the Middle East (in accordance with the November 22, 1967, United Nations Security Council resolution) must be Israel’s return of Egyptian territories obtained as the result of a pre-emptive first-strike war, and that modern warfare makes an illusory “geographical security” a poor exchange for political security. But to elaborate further on this alternate view would be beside the point, for who is to decide between our varying political convictions? Rather, my point is that essentially non-religious pronouncements on clouded issues serve only to dissipate the authority with which, on other occasions, you can effectively relate the claims of Christ to the affairs of men.
Brookline, Mass.
HERE ARE THE ‘FACTS’
With regard to [John Montgomery’s] “Current Religious Thought” column (“The Last Days of the Late, Great Synod of Missouri,” April 9), please note the following facts:
“Non-evangelical theology that espouses non-inerrancy” is not an issue in “the central trouble-spot, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.” Forty-one of the fifty members of the faculty, over their signatures published in Synod’s official organ, stated November 15, 1970:
We affirm with the Constitution of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (Article II) and in keeping with our vows of ordination and installation that we accept without reservation the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament as the written Word of God and the only rule and norm of faith and of practice and all the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church as a true and unadulterated statement and exposition of the Word of God.
Taking the Scriptures seriously directs Christians, also their theologians, as pilgrims to bring the Word of Life, while there is time, to all who need it, rather than to hover like vultures waiting for churches to die.
“I know you cannot endure evil men.… But I have this against you: you have lost your early love. Think from what a height you have fallen” (Rev. 2:2, 5, NEB).
Secretary of the Faculty
Concordia Seminary
St. Louis, Mo.
I much appreciated Dr. Montgomery’s series on the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church and especially the last installment, despite the chagrin in the Editor’s Note. Christianity needs more men of his caliber who refuse to be mollycoddled into believing that “time” will “implement their mandate and maintain the integrity of the synod’s historic witness without doing irreparable damage to its structure,” for history demonstrates the opposite; who, when they see that a church has departed from the faith, no longer try to work from the inside, but scripturally forsake it, regarding it as apostate; who realize that half of affirming the truth is denying error, in opposition to the doctrinally inclusivistic attitude so prevalent even among evangelicals; who can see an end of being tactful and a need for rebuke, despite pressure groups which would like to minimize doctrine, setting it in contraposition to practice; and whose guide is sola Scriptura. Would that certain other Protestant denominations had men like him!
Cambridge, Mass.
EVIL ARGUMENT
“The Problem of Evil” by Hubert P. Black (April 23) attacks a subject that should receive much more attention than it does.… Dr. Black is to be commended for writing on a subject many short-sighted Christians prefer to avoid. Nevertheless … [his argument] is unacceptable because it contradicts Scripture.
The author tries to defend divine omnipotence. God can do anything, but he limits himself by giving man freedom. Whatever small value this may have relative to omnipotence, it has no bearing on God’s goodness. Can God be good if he grants man freedom, knowing ahead of time what terrible evils man will commit? If God were good, he would not have made such a man.…
Further, the appeal to freedom completely ignores the tragedies of earthquakes in California and Peru, tidal waves in East Pakistan, and the Black Death in medieval Europe. God can control nature, can’t he?… [But] the author contradicts the doctrine of creation ex nihilo in his statement, “God’s power is not limited by natural events that thwart his will but is relative to actual occasions in the sense that they provide the conditions for the exercise of his creative power.” This sentence not only makes God’s acts of creation dependent on a prior existing nature, but also asserts that nature thwarts God’s will. Apparently God cannot prevent tidal waves and earthquakes. The sentence quoted begins by saying that God’s power is not limited, but it ends by nature thwarting God’s power.
Professor of Philosophy
Butler University
Indianapolis, Ind.
The discussion of the problem of evil given in current articles published on the subject might mislead one to suppose that the Scriptures have no contribution to make toward a solution of this problem. Surely the statements of Genesis 50:20 and Romans 8:28 were made by men who had insight into the answer to this question.
Boulder, Colo.
“The Problem of Evil” does not really slip between the horns of the dilemma: if evil exists, how can God be both good and omnipotent?
Though man indeed sins “because he chooses to do so and is responsible and thus culpable,” his sinning act, nevertheless, is predetermined. Only one example is necessary to disprove the article’s contention to the contrary: the greatest sin of all time, the crucifixion of our Lord, was brought about by the “predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23, NASV). Yet human responsibility and guilt for this action are not diminished. Rather they are juxtaposed with divine predetermination in the same verse, “This [Man] … you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put [Him] to death.” Thus, God planned the crucifixion, but men were responsible for its sinfulness. We accept on faith that God is not the author of sin, as James 1:13–17 shows.… From our point of view the problem of evil must remain a problem. God’s predetermination and man’s culpability are equally taught in the Bible. They must be equally accepted. Yet the Christian can rest in the sure hope of the God who works everything—even evil—together for good and his own glory.
Jackson, Miss.
HOW COULD HE?
I was shocked and disappointed to read Eutychus V (“Jesus and Juicy Fruit,” April 23) saying: “I don’t condemn beer drinking.”
(MRS.) GRACE C. MILLER
Anderson, Ind.
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Addison H. Leitch
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John Oman suggested some years ago that the importance of any matter can be measured by the difficulty of defining it. We can understand his point: ordinary things are settled by ordinary explanations, extraordinary things constantly demand further explanation. If you announce that you are “in love,” that may well be understood by someone else who is “in love” but impossible to define to anyone else. In fact, to explain love to someone “in love” sounds like nonsense. Louis Armstrong once said about jazz music, “If I have to explain it to you then you ain’t got it,” or as they are saying in youthful circles today, “If you have to ask what it is you don’t know where it’s at.” There is a measure of truth for us in all this these days as we experience an inundation of information and misinformation, experience, pseudo-experience, and quackery regarding the Holy Spirit. But with others in these confusing times we can try to sort out a few things.
One idea clearly evident from Scripture—and Scripture is the only source for information on this subject—is that the Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of Truth” (John 14:17; 15:26). It would seem, therefore, that he is the subject and source of truth and not the object. When we try to define him we are going at him objectively, and this is quite impossible. We are faced with the same kind of problem when we try to examine our own ego. The ego is always the subject of our examining and not the object of it. In the case of the ego, even our own ego, we can examine only the manifestations of the ego, the outgoing of the person; we can know our own selves essentially only by what shows itself, and the ego never shows itself; in short, we know only indirectly and by implication what the true nature of self or other selves may be. Thus the Holy Spirit is recognized in his works—mighty acts, words of truth, gifts of the Spirit like tongues or healings, fruits of the spirit like love and joy, troublings and anxieties of our own spirits within, reflecting perhaps the work of the Spirit through conscience. And since spiritual things are spiritually discerned, we must be a little hesitant today in passing judgment on all the opinions we hear about manifestations of the Spirit. Since we are directed to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1), there must often be much to be said on both sides.
The Scriptures also tell us that the Spirit is given to “guide you into all truth” (John 16:17). I take it that these words mean what they say about “all truth.” We hear it said that “all truth is God’s truth,” and surely that statement is true. What other ground for truth can there be except in Truth Himself? It follows, then, does it not, that the work of the Holy Spirit could be manifested in many areas not usually thought of as religious or churchy. William Temple once remarked that on the day of judgment many good people will be surprised to discover that God is interested in many other subjects besides religion. God is surely interested in earthworms and oysters, the stars in their courses and the laughter of children. And if all truth is God’s truth, then good Christian people should rejoice in mathematics and poetry, a nice double play, and statues in the park. In religious circles there has been a constant error, a false dichotomy, concerning the sacred and the secular. The Incarnation should have headed that off long ago; surely the idea of “all truth” in the work of the Holy Spirit forces us to rethink such things. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” and “there is a true light that enlightens every man.” Paul says in the first chapter of Romans that even pagans can understand God’s power and deity from the created world, and the wrath of God is against them if they don’t. There is something of the Holy Spirit at work, therefore, in all those who are working on truth, or are concerned with truth, who seek the truth, who wonder, or are troubled, or question. We Christians can rejoice that such seekers are in some measure “in the Spirit” and can earnestly pray that they can recognize what Spirit it is and be led to loyalty and worship.
Another clear office of the Spirit is set forth in these words of our Lord: “He will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:15). Since all things are summed up in Christ and since it is in him that all things “consist,” we can entertain the hope that all seekers after truth will end with Christ. In any case this should be the be-all and end-all for the Christian. Whatever is truly of the Spirit will lead us to Christ. We recognize how this works out in experience. We set ourselves to examine the Spirit only to find that the longer we look at him the more we are looking at Christ. This is a strange and also informative experience: examine the Spirit and he is always pointing away from himself to Christ, so in a sense we miss the Spirit and find Christ. But this is the way it is supposed to be, this is the way the Trinity seems to function: we look at the Spirit and see Christ, who reveals the Father. At this Pentecost season, any sober analysis of the Spirit, therefore, will not, and should not, end with analysis or definition of the Spirit (impossible in spiritual things anyway) but will lead to those things that are essentially visible, the Word become flesh. And Christ incarnate is now in his body, the Church; yet some enthusiasts of the Spirit in our day have forgotten all about the Church. The manifestations of the Spirit will always be related to Christ and therefore always related to the Body of Christ. This is a sobering and controlling fact. The Spirit and the Word are also inevitably bound up together; as the reformers made plain, never the Spirit apart from the Word, never the Word apart from the Spirit.
The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost suggests some other things. Notice on that day, and notice indeed when the Spirit descended on Jesus at his baptism, how the observers and the recorders have to shift to figures of speech to tell what happened. The Spirit descended on Jesus “as a dove,” and the phenomenon of Pentecost is described “as it were” tongues of flame and “as it were” the sound of rushing wind. There were no exact words or exact analogies and parallels to describe what happened. Charles Finney in his autobiography describes his experience of the Spirit as the shock of electricity going through his body. In the history of the Church there have been shakers and quakers, ecstasies and outcries. It is not an argument in favor of quackery or against Spirit-filled Christians to point out that there can be some pretty wild manifestations of the coming of the Spirit: this may be one of the expectancies of his coming in some situations. We argue that he comes in sober truth, that he comes with the reading and understanding of the word or in the preaching of the word: yet we cannot dismiss out of hand other manifestations that come outside the ordinary experience and structure of things. Our day is filled with reports of the coming of the Spirit. Is there someone wise enough to tell us just how he has to come, in what manner and with what accompanying phenomena? I think not.
A helpful book for me was The Faith That Rebels by D. S. Cairns. Cairns’s rebellion was against the easy dismissal of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, the limiting of his work to certain works and ways. This won’t do. The Holy Spirit works when and where and how he pleases. We can expect the gifts of the Spirit and we can expect the fruits of the Spirit, but we cannot expect to be the referee and call the game. It isn’t our game. We are recipients, not directors.
All this leads to something else that is true. “The wind blows where it wills …” (John 3:8). We do not and cannot know whence it comes and whither it goes. The Pneuma of God is something like the pneuma of nature: he has his own ways and his own times and seasons. How refreshing a gentle breeze; how frightening a tornado! So is the Spirit of God.
Music, language, ecstasies, Jesus freaks, glossolalia, strange accounts of strange healings—these and much more are about us in these days. Who is wise enough for these things? Are these all movements of the Spirit of God or are some demonic? Some things we can say for sure: explosiveness, differences, a certain wildness, need not be unexpected. But there are controls. What of the things of Christ, what is the relationship to the Scriptures, what of the building of the body of Christ? Do the gifts of the Spirit also bring with them the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? Against such there is no law, and we shouldn’t try to enforce one.
Addison H. Leitch is professor of theology at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts. He has the Th.M. from Pittsburgh Seminary and the Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Among his books is “A Reader’s Introduction to the New Testament.”
Scripture-Sanctioned Revolution
Radical involvement in social change on the part of churchmen allegedly finds wide support in both the Old and the New Testament and in historic behavior patterns of the Christian community. Moses’ ultimatum to Pharaoh and the ensuing rebellious action are often cited as biblical warrant for revolt by a covenant people against a corrupt political and social order. Standing in this line of protest are the great prophets of Israel, more than one of whom spent some time in jail, the reward for bashing their heads against an insensitive establishment. Turning to the New Testament we find the often quoted words of Jesus: “I have come to set fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.” And we are assured that Jesus’ followers of post-apostolic days, acting out the moral and ethical implications of the Christain Gospel, were frequently charged with atheism and civil disobedience. On the face of it there appears to be plenty of evidence that biblical religion, far from being inimical to revolution, actually fosters it.
But what kind of revolution? At this point some of us had better do some soul-searching. The revolution supported by Scripture is the revolution that replaces the evil that is in the world with the doing of God’s will. Said Ezekiel: “Ruin! Ruin! I will bring about such ruin as never was before, until the rightful sovereign comes. Then I will give him all” (21:27, NEB). According to the Old Testament, divine judgment rests upon every human enterprise that stands in the way of God’s righteous and holy will. Implied in this insight is the recognition that divine judgment rests upon the economic and political systems of our own day that foster war and widen the gulf between men and nations. But what economic and political system does not do that? Man in his sin is not capable of building God’s kingdom, here or anywhere else. All that man can do is to structure for the day his own systems, out of which violence and strife, always endemic to man, come.
This is not to say that one temporal kingdom is as good as another, or as bad as another. Nor is it to say that the Church ought not to pass discriminating judgment on the works of men and nations. The sovereignty of God works in and through the works of men and nations, and part of the task of the Church is to point to the ways and means through which God’s righteousness is asserting itself in the circumstances of life. The God who in ancient times used pagan King Cyrus as well as the spiritually sensitive Isaiah to work his will can, in our time, use a Marxist as well as an Episcopalian to serve his ends. But the goal of God’s work is neither a Marxian state nor an Episcopal kingdom. The goal of biblical revolution is God’s kingdom in which God’s righteousness dwells.
The churchman who insists on God’s righteousness as the goal of the kingdom will be no less discriminating about the means of bringing it in. The means must be as demanding as the goal. For the sake of argument let us assume that in a particular social situation today, a Marxian solution would make for a more “just” order than the existing one. From this it does not follow that the Christian can either condone or use the means a Marxist uses to achieve his end. The Christian does not deal in human relativities when presenting the mind and will of Christ.
When we study the biblical mandate for revolution, we find the context illuminating. The command of the Lord through Moses to Pharaoh, “Let my people go!,” is invariably coupled with the plea, “that they may serve me in the wilderness.” The prophets most vocal in condemning incompetence and corruption—Isaiah, Amos, and Jeremiah—are the ones who eventually moved furthest toward grace. Their final plea is not for a new social order but for a new covenant between man and God. The purpose of Jesus’ one militant act—the cleansing of the temple—was to restore the room as a house of prayer for all people.
As the most significant works that Jesus’ followers can hope to do, the New Testament cites acts of mercy, love, forgiveness, gentleness, which are the fruits of the spirit of Christ (1 Cor. 13; Matt. 5:7). The New Testament Christians who turned the world upside down wielded the sword of Christ’s spirit.
What disturbs me in the situation today is that some of our clerical revolutionaries, like Jesus’ tempter in the wilderness, want to short-cut the means. They say that there isn’t time to wait for men to love the Lord their God with all their heart, and their neighbors as themselves. They would love the neighbor as Che Guevara loved him, half hoping that from the ruin of a no-good world something better is bound to rise. They want a kingdom now that men and women can manipulate while they are still in their sins. This isn’t necessarily an ignoble or unworthy goal. It is always being tried, and sometimes the new order proves to be an improvement—though often temporary—over the old. But we should not confuse this kind of kingdom with the kingdom of God and his righteousness, which Christians are asked to seek first.—The Reverend VICTOR FIDDES, Westminster United Church, Regina, Saskatchewan.
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Jan Dargatz
Christianity TodayMay 21, 1971
Turbulence is no stranger to the Christian campus, but the intensity varies from year to year, as do the issues. Although evangelical colleges have been spared the embarrassment of open student rebellions, the more subdued forms of dissent have been plentiful. Some of the dissent is mature. Some is not. Be that as it may, CHRISTIANITY TODAYfeels that responsible student spokesmen deserve a wider hearing among church leaders as well as among rank-and-file churchgoers. We present a selection of editorial comment—on a variety of topics—from evangelical college newspapers published during the current academic year.
From The Oracle, Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma:
Militancy is essentially unknown at ORU. Riots, demonstrations, and the marks of unseemly mass behavior simply do not exist. We proceed in an undeniably orderly fashion, pacified if not peaceful.
Our purpose is not to condemn this prevailing air of calm. Assuming the proper role of the University to be teaching and inquiry, reason and rationale, the proper atmosphere of the university should be an atmosphere conducive to quiet reflection, and intensive and extensive study. Our question: is our pacified campus used for this active pursuit of wisdom? Or are we employing peace as a facade to mask an intellectual void and a dearth of problem-solving creativity? What do we do in our state of peace?
Demonstrations, whether in a peaceful or militant context, tend to rely on two initial and subsequent states for their manifestation. First: problem awareness—essentially a process of education, also implying the formulation of attitude and opinion. Second: conviction and a motivation—reflecting just “how much” we believe what we believe. The progression may be expressed as “know, believe, show.”
The conflict comes in the methodology we employ in demonstrating our convictions. The activities of many of our academic brothers would seem to tell us that burning buildings, shouting obscenities and half-formed, half-proved theories, and usurping temporary authority results in studies by Presidential commissions, chaos, tragedy, and very little more. But, what do we have to show for our peacefulness?…
Unfortunately, learning and thinking do not always proceed concurrently. It takes extra energy to become aware, even more energy to act. As an individual, do you have a well-formed opinion as to the whys, wherefores and solutions for Viet Nam, environmental control, racial tension? If not, why not?… Is peace your condition, or your alibi?
Heaven forbid that our pacified campus might be a grave.
From Weather Vane, Eastern Mennonite College, Harrisonburg, Virginia:
Western culture has developed a terrible compulsion—an affliction which compels us to try to institutionalize nature. We don’t just admire a flower in its natural state, we pick it and take it home so everyone can see the beautiful wilted flower.
We don’t sneak up on deer and try to capture their beauty and grace by taking pictures, we sneak up on them and shoot them. Then we cut off their heads and mount them on our walls so everyone can admire the superiority of our guns over the deer’s quickness.
The proposal to build a prayer chapel on the hill behind the administration building is another manifestation of our compulsion to defile.
The hill has always been one of the most sacred spots on campus. Innumerable prayers have been offered while gazing over the panorama offered by that vantage point.… So along comes Western man and says we have to put four walls and a roof up there so we can pray without getting grass stains on our suits.
The Harman Foundation undoubtedly had good intentions in offering the gift. The administration can’t be blamed for accepting the gift. Forty-five thousand dollars is a lot of money—particularly in these days when the economy and therefore gift givers are acting rather anemic. Maybe an argument could even be made that the college needs a prayer chapel more than anything else.
But the college does not need to build a prayer chapel on the hill thereby ruining the chapel God has already built. Not even a rustic prayer chapel. Not even a $45,000 rustic prayer chapel.
If a prayer chapel must be built, let it be built on some vacant land in a less sacred spot.
Better yet, why not let the EMC students do their praying in their hearts and use the money to answer some prayers. The Black Scholarship Fund would look a lot better with a $45,000 transfusion. There are people in Pakistan, in Chicago and even in Virginia who would certainly be glad to have nourishing food.
Is it really necessary to defile our hill?
From The Tartan, Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts:
Just when winter slump starts to set in, and alleged conspiracies and “general escalations” send nihilistic shivers up and down our spines, something good happens like the election of Michael Harrington to a seat on the House Armed Services Committee.
Harrington, of course, is our own representative to the House in Washington. The Armed Services Committee, of course, is the committee that molds and passes recommendations on the Defense Department budget. The combination of the two, Harrington and the Armed Services Committee, just about destroys our faith in the total depravity of the House.
Harrington went to Washington vowing to do all he could to subvert the seniority system which renders new congressmen powerless for their first four or five terms. On top of this, Harrington entered as a vociferous dove and established himself in opposition to old political politics.
This kind of stance for a new representative wasn’t expected to win all kinds of friends for Harrington among the Geritol crowd which holds power in the House. When he spoke at Gordon last term, Harrington said that his most effective role as a representative would be outside the House, helping new-style politicians get elected and educating the people to the reform needed in the House and in policy-making sectors of the government. With his election, Harrington will have a direct voice on allocations of defense funds.
Harrington’s victory is encouraging also because he apparently defeated an organized opposition. His chief opponent for the seat was Louise Day Hicks, a symbol of conservatism, although much of the pressure against Harrington came from higher places.…
He was elected despite this pressure. His response was characteristic, promising to push toward a reordering of priorities in the defense budget.
Which is exactly what we need.
From The Wheaton Record, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois:
Thursday evening, January 21, interested people from Wheaton and surrounding communities were privileged to hear Dr. George Wald, eminent Harvard biology professor and Nobel Laureate, lecture in Edman Chapel.… In short order, Wald not only rejected any supernatural but quickly went on to develop a clearly materialistic philosophy that held that man was merely a collection of atoms and that such “human” characteristics as fatherly concern were solely a result of the organization of these atoms.…
He accepts the entire evolutionary bag, from the initial plasma cloud, through the chance synthesis of organic (carbon chain) compounds, to man. He then applies the same principles of natural selection to the social order, claiming that democracy is the height of the process, the ultimate form of government.
And yet rather than let evolution take its course Wald hopes to arouse public action to oppose those very forces of natural selection he affirms. To applaud the natural selection process in the social sphere and in the same breath to lament the plight of the “little man” at the hands of the gigantic corporations basking in their evolutionary “fitness” seems to me inconsistent.
However, this inconsistency seems to me not nearly so grave as the problems of value that Wald seems to create for himself. What does Wald do when faced with someone who does not share Wald’s concern for pollution, but rather by virtue of the organization of his atoms has a deep concern for himself?
Perhaps this man is organized selfishly, perhaps he wants to pollute. Is the organization of Wald’s atoms right and those of his adversary wrong? And who decides this kind of question? Without an external moral standard Wald seems caught in the inconsistency of making seemingly objective statements of value like “the whole noble human enterprise.”
Doubtless Wald has a concern for humanity, shown perhaps most vividly in his abhorrence of the possibility of nuclear suicide. Yet, as he spoke of how terrible that would be, I tried to put myself in his philosophical shoes, so to speak. As I sat in my seat with visions of the earth as one gigantic glowing cinder, I remarked to myself, perhaps a trifle bitterly, “What would be so bad about that? The atoms could always reorganize.”
From Chimes, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan:
Last Monday night the faculty approved a Student Religious Activities Committee proposal which calls for the suspension of the current regulations imposing regular chapel attendance on students and sets forth a number of avenues for encouraging “lively, significant, and well-attended chapels on campus,” attendance of which is a matter of individual responsibility.
The faculty refused to name their plan “voluntary” chapel because they felt that “voluntary” implied a take-it-or-leave-it attitude which failed to reflect the necessity for communal worship in the institutional life of a Christian academic community. Nevertheless, according to the most commonly understood meaning of the term, Calvin College is about to establish a system of voluntary chapel which acknowledges that the college, by definition, requires the explicit worship of God in addition to the implicit worship carried on in the classroom, library, and coffee shop, a system which demands the active support of everyone who claims to belong to this community, but a system which places the decision of whether to attend a specific service and which service to attend completely in the province of individual responsibility. No more Polaroids, warning letters from the chaplain, six-skips-and-you’re-out.
The faculty’s action is the culmination of years of persuasion and pressure by multitudes of people. But finally reason and trust have won out; finally a majority of the faculty have become convinced that students possess “a reasonable degree of Christian commitment and maturity.” The despair and disillusionment which were created almost every year when the issue of “compulsory chapel” was raised—almost every year in recent memory, that is—are forever dispelled now that the faculty has agreed that willing worship is more likely to engender “a higher degree of spirituality” than forced worship.
But the quest for a vibrant program of significant, voluntarily-joined worship services is only half finished. The burden of responsibility for establishing a new tradition of voluntary chapel now passes to the student body, who must respond to the challenge of the faculty by manifesting a commitment to the communal worship of God [unnecessary] under the old system.…
From The Houghton Star, Houghton College, Houghton, New York:
Because of the rejection of the Christian presuppositions, the most challenging task facing the Church of Jesus Christ is the redefining and reinstatement of the Christian world view as a viable intellectual alternative to modern secular society. The Christian educational institution must bear the responsibility of that task. Such a responsibility demands that the Christian college or university move out of its higher level Sunday school syndrome into an intellectual community dedicated to the investigation of the philosophical content of Christianity found in both Holy Scriptures and doctrines of the historical Church. Our concern should not be with relating Christianity to a particular discipline but rather formulating and developing disciplines which are based upon the Christian presuppositions. For example, psychologists who are Christians should not be concerned with relating psychology to Christianity, but rather developing a Christian psychology which is one discipline within the perspective of the Christian world view.…
The student must endeavor to fully understand to the best of his ability the Christian philosophy. He must abandon any view that he previously had of faith as a non-intellectual subject and discipline himself to the serious study of the intellectual content of the Christian faith. The student must follow this path or cease to call himself a student. The Christian college is not a state college, and the difference does not lie in the fact that we have stricter rules or longer skirts but rather in the basic Christian philosophy to which we adhere. Any student who cannot commit himself to the intellectual investigation of the Christian faith within his areas of study has no place in this academic community.
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Carl F. H. Henry
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The deepest problems of secular liberal-arts education today stem from the theory that truth and values are relative, a fallout of this generation’s commitment to evolutionary perspectives. The loss of authoritative norms explains, in part, the strident student shift from reason and persuasion to mob pressure and compulsion. An evolutionary perspective provides no basis for universal and enduring human rights or responsibilities, nor can it fix normative limits of escalation or deescalation of protest and disruption. It cannot, in fact, supply any fixed norms of ethics whatever, or any unchanging truths.
Amid lost confidence in liberal learning on secular campuses, evangelical students have—and yet neglect—a tremendous opportunity to counter radical assaults on liberal education by their own kind of demonstrations. To face the reality of the supernatural, the objectivity of truth and values, and the moral and spiritual significance of Jesus of Nazareth is crucial to any honest system of education and culture. Yet few issues are more evaded, and more arbitrarily prejudged, than these.
Nowhere, apparently, has a vanguard of evangelical students raised the pivotal questions bypassed in most modern classrooms, by pinpointing the failure of secular faculties to wrestle with the ever critical problems of the history of thought that are decisive for human dignity and the role of reason in society. Who is God if he is? What is moral?—and so what? Is any truth final? Is Christ just a “four-letter word”? These are great issues that believing collegians should be demonstrating for. However much some of us might cringe at placards and banners, they are an in-thing that bespeaks the importance of symbols in a mass-media age, and they can be appropriated to bring visibility to the really important questions of life.
Why do evangelical students by and large take less initiative for the triumph of truth than for the triumph of grace? Our evangelical colleges champion the Christocentric view of life. But they often fail to dissect the life-situations and thought-struggles that inundate most people today. Amid basic efforts to preserve and herald the truth of the Gospel, they forgo a direct confrontation over the truth of truth and the meaning of meaning. Too easily evangelical dialogue bounces within personal and pietistic dimensions when, in fact, it ought to grapple with the very survival of civilization.
The image that evangelical colleges present to the world must embrace truth, justice, and grace as concerns indispensable to Christian education. We are debtors not simply to the evangelical community but to the whole modern world in which we live. Evangelical schools bear this global duty in respect to truth no less than evangelical missions bear a world-wide task in respect to grace.
Over half the world population is sealed against overt evangelical proclamation. But the other half is locked up far more than we realize to American evangelical resources for its impressions of the credibility of Christianity. As never before our global burden in these harried years is one of intellectually responsible formulation and communication of the truth. Classrooms where teachers and students use reason to face the agenda of the world, grapple with ideas in the context of the truth of revelation, and apply the test of coherence to every truth-claim are the launch-pads of this witness. Valid ideas presented precisely and attractively through every available means can and must be the stock-in-trade of evangelical education.
The mission of the evangelical college is nothing less than to make known the whole truth for the whole man for new life in a new world. Only a comprehensive perspective like this can undermine the presumptive definitions of human nature and destiny posed by utopian ideologies, speculative rationalisms, and self-fulfillment theories, and can illumine the vision of the ideal man and society by the truth of revelation. This banner maintains, moreover, the indispensable and indissoluble bond linking truth, justice, and grace, and by claiming this present world for God’s spiritual purpose in creation, reopens man’s soul to the eternal transcendent world.
SCIENCE AT THE SECOND COMING
By self-learned charms Pankrator Science flies
Over myths and shadows to the truths of sense.
Iron eyes on scarlet stock, fey with surmise,
Decode all things, miniscule and immense.
Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,
Nature now composes one pragmatic crown.
Roentgen-eyed and flush, Science flies to baste
Seamless truth in one theoretic gown.
Inmost fate says no. The cloud-compelling smith,
Unprogrammed Truth, smites Science in the eyes.
The web is rent, the skeins are split; and myth
Decodes into judgment, free from surmise.
Science avows its Lord, but legions find
Horror before them, vanity behind.
DAVID S. BERKELEY
Unveiling the reality of the supernatural and expounding the special method whereby God and his ways are to be known demand an intellectual precision that draws the world of unbelief and doubt inescapably into the crossfire of ideas. For this engagement Bible departments must be keen and exciting, philosophy classes powerful and relevant. Campus achievements exhibited to donors and alumni must involve victories of Christian thought and truth more than physical expansion, athletic prowess, even evangelistic endeavor.
To say, as some do, that the distinctive contribution of Christianity to the world of learning and life is one of perspective, is not enough. To be sure, the Christian view of God and the cosmos and man does involve a unique perspective on the whole of reality. But so, for that matter, does Buddhism, or any other ism one cares to mention. The unique contribution of biblical religion is the truth of revelation and its implications for human redemption and destiny.
Only if—as we believe—revelational truth is of one and the same order as all other truth, or, as Christians also contend, if the validity of any and all truth depends ultimately on the truth of God and his revelation, have we a platform for integrated learning in the context of Judeo-Christian revelation. Christian education that overstresses the uniqueness of the Christian perspective without attending seriously also to the final truth of the Christian revelation faces rough going in the seething world of thought. Nor is it enough simply to affirm the validity of the Christian revelation; nothing less than lucid marshalling of intellectual evidence will make plain why evangelicals are convinced that they have meshed mind with the eternal world.
If, on the other hand, the truth of revelation is truth of a different order, truth whose validity and authority rest simply on subjective preference or internal decision, then we ought to conserve our time and energy and explore the possibilities of merger with Zen Buddhism.
The world we seek to confront is precommitted to evolution as the ultimate explanatory principle, and the limitation of knowledge to the horizons of human history. Unless we grapple with these prejudices, what seem to us to be bold and brave claims for faith will appear to others as tender-minded credulity. It will not do, therefore, to portray the evangelical campus to the world simply as an institution that believes in the inerrancy of the Bible. To be sure, the Word of God cannot be broken, and the authority and plenary inspiration of Scripture is a foundational affirmation. But our day of intellectual relativism and moral nothingness (even amid notable social concern) requires more than formulas that are mainly intended to reassure apprehensive evangelical donors.
In a 1965 statement, spokesmen for faith-affirming colleges concurred that “the over-all purpose of the evangelical college, as a distinct type of institution, is to present the whole truth, with a view to the rational integration of learning in the context of the ‘Judeo-Christian’ revelation, and to promote the realization of Christian values in student character.”
Only if evangelical learning highlights and vindicates the presuppositions of this umbrella-statement will this comprehensive purpose become significant. For the contemporary mind neither concedes nor comprehends that knowledge is a unitary whole; that integration is ideally rational; that divine revelation supplies the ideal context for integration; that “Judeo-Christian” revelation is incomparably unique; that academic learning has inescapable implications for a student’s moral outlook and behaviour. Because the academic mood on many campuses is implicitly if not overtly naturalistic and relativistic, demonstrating the viability of evangelical alternatives requires an earnest wrestling with undergirding convictions. As the 1965 statement put it, our faith-affirming colleges are called to exhibit “the rational integration of the major fields of learning in the context of the ‘Judeo-Christian’ revelation.” Without a fulfillment of this intellectual priority, non-theistic views, however weak, will remain pervasively influential, while Christian theism, however superior, remains notably unimpressive.
If we take seriously the biblical correlation of learning and values, knowledge and piety, then our schools will strive to graduate men and women who not only know the truth of revelation but also live the real life. We are not in the business of producing Übermenschen or philosopher-kings, but students for whom Jesus Christ is Logos and Light and Life. No one in the moral history of the West has been more unjustifiably reduced to a footnote in modern texts on ethics than Jesus of Nazareth; in an age suffocating with moral pollution, evangelical colleges have the opportunity to rectify this injustice in word and deed.
Christian education needs to recapture the ethical excitement of this dimension of Christian learning and witness. Forged mainly in terms of negations, as often happens, Christian ethical concern soon loses its critically important role of illuminating the line between morality and immorality in terms of the truth of revelation and scriptural principles of conduct. To say this is not to decry campus rules, nor to imply that the alcohol traffic, the tobacco industry, and the cinema no longer pose any moral issues. Indeed, it is ironical that some evangelical schools relaxed rules on movie attendance precisely at a time when X-rated films began to deluge the theaters; and on smoking just when medical research convinced even government agencies to discourage the cigarette habit. Evangelical colleges could become a moral force in our drifting society by training disciplined, dedicated young people who are able to discuss intelligently the issues of our time—from abortion to vivisection and voodoo and Zen. If recent American politics has failed to inspire youth to anything higher than opting out of the system and its commitments, then evangelical education has the special opportunity of integrating the issues of truth, righteousness, and justice in a claim from which no human being can drop out and still remain human.
We should note, moreover, that in expounding “the whole truth, with a view to rational integration … in the context of ‘Judeo-Christian revelation,’” the faith-affirming colleges in the 1965 declaration consider the Bible to be “an integrating force” and “not merely … an additive.” The Christian Apostle to the Gentiles set even the atoning sacrifice and bodily resurrection of the crucified Jesus in this scriptural context; fundamentally important to the Christian message, he avers, is “that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised the third day according to the scriptures …” (1 Cor. 15:3, 4).
This rationale for human life and destiny seems as alien to the modern mind as it did to the Athenians when Paul first proclaimed it. The most conspicuous difference between the first and the twentieth centuries is not that the Christian rationale as such now seems foreign. It is, rather, that for modern man, every speculative alternative has lost credibility. Another difference is that much of the Christian task force today, despite its impressive endowments and properties and libraries, its salaried personnel and small army of young followers, lacks the boldness of apostolic times to put the world on the defensive.
While Christian education centers in the manifestation of God in Christ, evangelical colleges have always sensed the need for a more explicit and articulate delineation of basic beliefs. The theological ambiguity of modern ecumenism has, in fact, unwittingly created fresh respect for succinctly stated positions; open-ended pluralistic ruminations on Christian identity are falling out of fashion if not out of favor. Once again, in a day when ecumenical institutions are more concerned with with structure than with truth, the great ecumenical creeds—particularly the Apostles’ and Nicene—provide a basis for stressing central articles of Christian faith. In view of its criterion of the Scriptures as the divine rule of faith and practice, a tenet reaffirmed by the Protestant Reformation, evangelical education holds the ecumenical creeds of Christendom to be proximate normative expressions of the historic Christian faith.
Totalitarianism or even tax-supported education is hampered by the interests or antagonisms of ruling forces; evangelical education, on the other hand, thrives where and because open competition prevails in the world of ideas, and can best serve where it fulfills its specific mission with competence. In a non-evangelical college, a student may easily accumulate a kaleidoscopic confusion of views gleaned from left-of-center liberals, conservatives, naturalistic philosophers, relativistic anthropologists, and Marxist economists, with one or two demonstrative burn-the-building-and-de-stroy-the-system activists thrown in for good measure. In such a time as this, it will be scant credit to evangelical education, however, merely to be able to label itself as unlike other education. As far back as 1945 the Harvard Report on General Education in a Free Society saw no possibility of a return to theistically oriented education. How much more today, then, do faith-affirming colleges have the unique responsibility of propelling a systematic theistic view into a naturalistic climate, and of delineating the unified view of life required by revelational theism.
Carl F. H. Henry is editor-at-large ofChristianity Today, professor-at-large of Eastern Baptist Seminary, and vice-president of the directors of the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies. He is currently visiting professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
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Frank E. Gaebelein
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Education in America, which began with Christian colleges and schools, is in trouble. Private education in particular is facing the greatest crisis in the nearly three and a half centuries of its history. Many independent and private institutions are confronting difficulties that threaten their survival. The shift from black to red has become the common rather than exceptional outcome of annual operations—a trend that, if not checked, will certainly decimate the independent colleges and schools of the nation.
“But for years education has been crying poor,” someone says. “Are things really so critical?” The answer is yes. The New Depression in Higher Education (McGraw-Hill, 1971) by Earl F. Cheit reports an intensive study made for the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. Judging from a cross section of American colleges and universities, Dr. Cheit, former vice-chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, concludes that two-thirds of public and private higher institutions are either having financial troubles right now or are moving toward them. In The Red and the Black, William F. Jellema, research director of the Association of American Colleges, presents the preliminary report of the association’s study of the current and projected financial state of private colleges. A comprehensive questionnaire, sent to most of the independent, accredited four-year colleges in the nation, elicited replies from three-quarters of them. According to the report, the “average” institution among the 554 respondents concluded its annual operations with a net current fund surplus of $39,000 for the year 1967–68; this has now changed to a projected current deficit for 1970–71 of $115,000. No wonder Dr. Jellema says: “Private colleges and universities are apprehensive and they have reason to be. Most colleges are staying in the red and they are getting redder, while colleges in the black are generally growing grayer.”
Averages, however, reflect individual cases. At Columbia the 1970–71 deficit is estimated at $15.3 million. At Princeton, the deficit grew from $1 million last year to about $2.5 million this year. Johns Hopkins estimates a $4.3 million deficit this year. And President Nathan A. Pusey of Harvard, which has a billion-dollar endowment, states in his eighteenth annual report: “Fiscally it [1969–70] was the first year during the Pusey administration when the University did not operate safely in the black.” Deficits are jeopardizing the future of hundreds of other private institutions and of many independent secondary schools, especially those with resident enrollments.
The reason for the deficits is plain. Tuition and other student fees do not fully meet costs of accredited education. Other income—from gifts, endowment, foundations, and federal and state aid—is progressively lagging behind soaring operating costs.
Tuition has been raised so high that it deters enrollment and threatens scholarship funds. (Yale, where annual charges have risen to $4,400, now has a plan under which students may defer up to 18 per cent of the tuition and make repayments at an adjusted percentage of their gross income over a period of thirty-five years after graduation.)
Dipping into unrestricted endowment has in numerous instances led to borrowing to meet current obligations, and this has added heavy interest charges to budgets. Moreover, disruption and violence on campuses have made headline news even though only a minority of schools are implicated, and this has fostered a suspicion of higher education that damages its support.
This, then, is the general scene. And the Christian colleges and schools stand right in the middle of it all. In some areas, such as campus disorders, their problems are far less than those of secular institutions; in others, particularly finances, their problems are if anything more severe. They too are struggling with the inflation spiral and insufficient income, and their administrators are voicing deep concern. When asked, “What do you predict for American higher education ten years from now?” Dr. Hudson T. Armerding of Wheaton College summed matters up like this: “There is a possibility that private higher education as we now know it may not be in existence ten years from now. It will prevail only if the American public believes that the distinctiveness is worth preserving” (Ladies Home Journal, Sept. 1970).
In a statement discussing the dilemma of Christian higher education, Dr. John W. Snyder, who has moved from the presidency of Westmont College to become vice-chancellor of the University of California at Santa Barbara, says, “But you, the reader, must make a decision too. Without your support in very real terms, Christian higher education can well become a thing of the past.” A recent letter to the constituency of Houghton College from President Stephen W. Paine refers to that Christian campus as “unthreatened by the shadow of fear that creeps ahead of student unrest” but goes on to remark, “A shadow does threaten Houghton, however, a chronic lack of funds.…” At Seattle Pacific College, President David L. McKenna, after discussing financial problems in his 1970 report, makes this discerning comment: “The immediate threat … is that there will be an educational deficit created by low salaries, limited instructional equipment, inadequate library resources, and deferred maintenance on a beautiful campus. The will to live is strong, but the will to live effectively is stronger.”
Here Dr. McKenna identifies the critical point beyond which no college or school, least of all a Christian one, dares go. A chronic operating deficit inevitably pushes an institution into an educational deficit. And Christian education cannot slip into a decline in quality without imperiling its very reason for being. In the balances are nothing less than the hard-won gains of the last three decades, during which many Christian colleges and schools have built up their campuses, developed and deepened their programs, and gained full accreditation. If the principle that Christian education stands obligated to excellence for the glory of God is valid, then for our colleges and schools to be driven into the morass of quality deficits would be tragic and ultimately suicidal.
So much for the crisis. What can be done about it? No understanding observer would question that Christian institutions are making sincere and prayerful efforts to continue and to do so on more than a mere survival basis. But not all well-meant policies are wise. One of the hazards of crisis is the temptation to adopt palliative measures that may only aggravate problems. There are no panaceas for present difficulties. Every educational administrator knows that his institution must rescrutinize its operations and learn to practice every economy compatible with maintaining quality, which can never be negotiable. Instead of proceeding on a day-by-day expediency, a college should have, as Dr. Joseph A. Kershaw, professor of economics at Williams College, has said, a clear and comprehensive plan of how it expects to live through the present stress, which may last for years. Faculty, because their welfare is linked with that of the institution, must know the difficulties the school faces and what it is doing about them. Change in both the structure and the practice of education must be considered.
Because Christian education is committed to the living Lord in whom all things hold together and who makes all things new, it need never fear change, even sweeping change. The biblical world view is spacious enough to comprehend all truth and all necessary change. Therefore, Christian education must explore new paths, though this may mean breaking with traditional ways of doing things. Not only shifts like restructuring the curriculum or reordering the academic calendar, but such things as the consortium plan, in which colleges share their resources (ten Christian colleges—Gordon, Eastern Mennonite, Messiah, Taylor, Bethel, Wheaton, Greenville, Seattle Pacific, Malone, and Westmont—are already involved in such a plan, see April 9 issue, page 44), and other new patterns of student life and extramural learning, require consideration. Historically, independent education has made some of the great forward steps in teaching and learning. Christian institutions must realize that responsiveness to new situations and varying needs can be entirely compatible with unchanging doctrine and abiding spiritual values.
Dr. Earl F. Cheit, whose New Depression in Education has already been mentioned, names in this book three things colleges and universities must do to surmount their economic problems: First, they must show they are “reasonably governable”; second, they “must demonstrate that they are reasonably efficient in their internal operations”; third, they must have “a unifying set of purposes … that the supporting public can understand and defer to.”
Measured by such requirements, the confessing Christian colleges richly deserve support. They have not had violence on their campuses. To be sure, their students are by no means free from the impatience and rebellion of youth today, nor do all their students escape the pitfalls of present-day society. Yet there are Christian colleges and secondary schools that are showing they can relate to the restless student mind and can do so in a context of prayer, trust, and love. As for the reasonably efficient internal operation of which Dr. Cheit speaks, few institutions have had more experience in dollar-stretching than the Christian colleges and schools. And when it comes to unified purpose, if there is one distinctive that puts Christian education in a class by itself, it is the definiteness of its purpose. Christian education knows its identity. It is committed to the unity of all truth in God and to the integration of all fields of learning with the biblical world view. It knows what it is for and where it is going. Judged by these criteria, then, it deserves adequate support.
But is it getting it? Honesty compels a blunt no, and some plain speaking is in order. A crisis cannot last indefinitely; it has to be resolved either favorably or unfavorably. So with private Christian institutions today. These schools must have greatly renewed and enlarged support or else suffer mortal damage. Mere maintenance of their present level of support would be tantamount to a vote for their shutdown.
Where is this help to come from? There are only two avenues—government or private sources.
A proposal linking indirect federal aid with private giving comes from Congressman John B. Anderson (R.-Ill.). He has introduced a bill in the House enabling persons who contribute up to $100 to a college or university of their choice to subtract that amount from their federal tax, providing it does not exceed 20 per cent of their tax liability. Corporations would also receive a tax credit on gifts up to $5,000, providing it does not exceed 10 per cent of their tax liability. If enacted into law, this plan might well lead to increased giving.
Meanwhile, four-year colleges are now facing a definite decrease in federal assistance. Urban renewal, transportation, and ecological needs are competing with education for tax dollars. Aid to junior colleges and community colleges is outrunning that available to private four-year colleges and universities. The pinch comes particularly in relation to capital funds. One Christian liberal-arts college had top priority in its state for capital funds needed to begin a new science building, but the state had no federal money to dispense.
To accept or reject federal aid is a matter of conscience that different Christian institutions will determine differently. But those that decide to accept it stand on shaky ground if they put their hope for survival in government funds.
The other source of help is private giving. Recent federal legislation limiting the lifespan of foundations and requiring them to distribute principal as well as income will doubtless be reflected in more foundation support for independent education. And in support from its entire constituency—alumni, parents, friends, churches, indeed the Christian public as a whole—lies the chief hope for resolution of the crisis. But this hope will not be realized without radical changes in present patterns of stewardship.
Christian education is the poor relation of many evangelical givers. Maturity in stewardship entails the capacity to see beyond immediate results and to support enterprises having long-range goals. Certain forms of witness and outreach bring quick and often dramatic responses. This is neither to decry their importance nor to begrudge the help they receive. Compared with these more spectacular enterprises, Christian education, like a time bomb, has delayed results. Also like a time bomb, it does not always go off—a fact it shares with all forms of witness. So it takes maturity in stewardship to support Christian education.
Another mark of maturity is resistance to superficial judgments. As has already been said, the shocking breakdown of control on some campuses has bred a mood of disillusionment with higher education. Such an attitude, which spreads by a kind of osmosis, ought not to hamper giving to Christian institutions, which have been free from violence and disruption. Likewise, maturity carries with it an understanding tolerance that does not confuse nonessentials with vital issues. For a college or school to lose support, as some most regrettably have, because of students’ dress or hair styles, points to inability to understand that these outward changes should not be equated with departure from the faith.
But more must be said. Despite recession and inflation, this remains an affluent society. Important exceptions there are, and the existence of so many poor and disadvantaged among us stands out as a sore spot in our national life. But evangelicals by and large belong to the majority sometimes called middle America. On the one hand, the cost of living has gone up; on the other hand, as a feature article in the New York Times (December 9, 1970) shows, opulence is becoming a way of life for the middle class. Even reckoned in inflation-adjusted dollars, the earnings of the average family rose from $6,900 to $9,400 during the last decade. Many a Christian family is in the $12,000-plus bracket and has color TV sets, two or more cars, and other luxuries. Advertisements for expensive foreign travel dot the pages of Christian periodicals. One speaks of these things not judgmentally but factually; they are signs of material prosperity. And as one contemplates them, some of the things the New Testament says about stewardship come to mind.
To what extent is our Christian giving sacrificial? What was our Lord really saying to us when he commended the widow who gave her two mites? Have we ever given up anything—the purchase of the latest model car, an additional TV, a better hi-fi set, a luxury vacation—for the sake of giving more to Christian enterprises? These are not comfortable questions. Yet they may show us that a more mature pattern of giving, one that includes even modest sacrifices of what some euphemistically call “the good things of life” and persuade themselves they simply must have, could greatly help Christian education continue its important work.
If our colleges and schools are being winnowed in this time of troubles, the faithfulness of their constituencies is no less being sifted. The kind of stewardship with which Christians respond now and in the next few years will make the difference between life and death for not a few worthy Christian institutions. Colleges or schools die in different ways—some by merger and consequent loss of identity, others by closing through bankruptcy, others by slow bleeding through diminishing enrollment resulting from a decline into mediocrity. Every good institution lost will mean a larger deficit in Christian leadership while secularism and materialism continue to offer stones to people who are starving for lack of the bread of life. It will mean the curtailing of the kind of education that can fill the empty place in young lives—and this at a time when youth so greatly need the unambiguous presentation of Christ and his claims upon them.
But if the Christian public, realizing the extent to which future leadership in all forms of Christian life and service is at stake, would prayerfully revise their giving so that at least a third of it would go to education committed to the biblical world view and the maintenance of quality to the glory of God, then the crisis could be surmounted.
Frank E. Gaebelein is headmaster emeritus of the Stony Brook School and former co-editor ofChristianity Today.Two of his books, “Christian Education in a Democracy” and “The Pattern of God’s Truth,” are widely recognized contributions to the field of Christian education.
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In this issue we call attention to the plight of Christian higher education and its pressing need for the prayers, encouragement, and financial help of God’s people. A school can perform no greater service to the nation and to the world than to boldly declare its fidelity to Jesus Christ and his Gospel and to educate men and women in the Christian life and world view. One of the most effective ways for the Church to encourage social betterment is to send capable, Christ-loving young people into the world of men to witness and to serve as professional men, businessmen, teachers, politicians, voters, parents—not to mention missionaries and ministers and full-time Christian workers.
We managed to go to press with this issue on time despite the threats of the anti-war demonstrators to seal off access to downtown Washington and thus shut down government operations. There were moments of unpleasantness; “trashing” was common, and here and there traffic was slowed to a crawl. While a city bus with one of our staff members aboard stopped for a traffic light, several demonstrators pulled out valve stems from the tires, and our colleague was obliged to finish his journey to the office au pied. But then, probably more walking would be beneficial to us all. After the Monday effort ground to a halt, Tuesday dawned bright, fair, windy, and generally peaceful. We hope the end of the Mayday thrust also marks the end of what is surely a less than persuasive way of making dissent known.
G. C. Berkouwer
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The debate between Hans Küng and Karl Rahner is surely one of the most remarkable events within today’s remarkable period of Roman Catholic history. The debate was struck off by the appearance of Küng’s book, Infallible? An Inquiry. Rahner responded vigorously to the book by saying that if Küng continued to theologize along these lines, he would have to be dealt with theologically as a “liberal Protestant.” To Rahner, Küng’s views were rationalistic, a clear transgression of the limits for any Catholic critique of the church’s infallible teaching authority.
Understandably, Rahner’s sharp attack was hard for Küng to digest. He responded, in two lengthy articles, by saying that he owed his understanding of the time-conditioned and limited character of dogma to Rahner himself.
In the March edition of “Stimmen der Zeit,” Karl Rahner offered his reply to Küng’s response to him. It is clear that Rahner is not about to take back anything from what he has often said about the history of dogma. Dogma is historically conditioned and time-bound, and therefore always remains an inadequate, human formulation of God’s absolute truth. This is exactly what Küng, too, has insisted, what he has developed, and what, he says, he has learned from Rahner himself.
But now a crucial disagreement rises between Rahner and Küng. Rahner distinguishes between the relativity, inadequacy, and limitation of dogma on one hand and any element of error on the other. Say what one must of the relativity of dogma, it is, in its infallibility, kept free from all error, according to Rahner. He characterizes his way of doing theology as “system-immanent.” What he means is that he works within the Catholic system of infallible teaching. Any element of error would be an attack on the system.
The fact that dogma is affected by its time and circumstances implies that we may and must interpret it. But we must also respect the truth, which has always been embodied in dogma. We must bow before the unchanging truth guaranteed by the Holy Spirit, who was given to the church to lead it into truth. To interpret dogma is another matter than to give dogma a new meaning. From this it is clear that the nature of interpretation plays a crucial role in Rahner’s thinking. If one works within the system, he is bound to see to it that all the new interpretations of dogma (e.g. Mariology, transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass) come out in agreement with what the church intended to express in them. The motto of Paul VI applies to dogma: “What was, is.”
Küng has been working for over a decade with all sorts of historical and exegetical questions that surround the notion of infallibility. Obvious errors have been made, Küng has argued, that demonstrate the relativity of the church’s teaching authority. And, he has said, exegesis has compelled the church to rethink its convictions about the primate and offices of the church.
Küng has looked at the church’s history a good deal more critically than has Rahner. It is not as though Küng does not believe that the Holy Spirit has guided the church through its history. He does contend that the Spirit’s guidance—as promised by the Lord—means that the church will not swerve from the truth in a fundamental sense. But he does not think that the Spirit guarantees immunity from all danger or error.
In taking account of what Rahner has said about dogma, we cannot avoid the impression that there remains severe tension. For example: Rahner criticized the traditional interpretation of the saying, “no salvation outside the church,” as being “rigoristic”—harsh. But this expression is not just another theologian’s word. It comes from church doctrine; it was used in the Council of Florence (1439) to exclude Jews, heathen, schismatics, and heretics from the possibility of salvation. Later the expression was softened, as, for example, by Pius IX in the nineteenth century. A distinction was drawn between what was done in ignorance and what was done in willed persistence; only in the latter instance was one excluded from salvation. When, in 1949, the American theologian Feeney wanted to use the ancient expression against American secularization, the Holy Office instructed Cardinal Cushing that Feeney’s interpretation was intolerably rigoristic. Subsequently, Feeney was excommunicated in the famous Boston heresy case.
Thus we note a significant shift in one of the important utterances of the church about the exclusiveness of salvation. A transition was made from a rigorous to a flexible or mild interpretation. Rahner opts for the milder. His feelings were expressed in his view of “anonymous Christianity.” Here he took a broad and tolerant view of those who were otherwise thought of as “outside” the walls. Now, my point is that it seems impossible to contend that what is now interpreted as the real meaning of “no salvation outside the church” is what was intended in earlier days.
Hans Küng has insisted that Catholics should openly admit that profound changes have taken place in the understanding of church dogma. He wants Catholics to stop insisting that the church has always and really taught one and the same truth.
But Rahner has chosen not to accept Küng’s way. He opts for the other solution: there has been no change; there has only been interpretation. The task is to keep interpretation within the unchangeable and infallible dogma of the church. Everything that can be said about the time-conditioned character of dogma must be said without threatening the absolute teaching authority of the church.
Rahner, in short, has elected to follow the path of the traditional construction of the infallible church—all his well-known progressive tendencies notwithstanding. As a result, a kind of necessity, even coercion, hangs over all interpretation of dogma. Any critical testing of dogma by the Word of God has a hard time finding a place within Rahner’s “system-immanent.”
Rahner says that in his last semester of lectures on dogmatics he has had a biblical exegete present. But this is hardly convincing. The real question is whether we can tolerate a disturbance in the development of dogma when the Word of God tests it. At bottom, Rahner’s notion of the untouchability of the infallible dogma sets us before the same problem as that faced by Luther and Calvin. I do not mean to say that Kung is really a crypto-Protestant and that Rahner is at heart a conservative Roman Catholic dogmatician. The business is too complicated for that.
But Küng does put his finger on very weighty problems of tradition (historical development and historical changes), and calls the church to reconsider its understanding of the infallibility of the church and the pope. At this critical period in the church, Rahner has taken up the case for the traditional doctrine. The conservatives in the church will surely be obliged to him. But the problem that Küng puts on the agenda cannot be resolved by summoning up the traditional stand. The problem will stay there, and will finally be decisive for the future of Roman Catholicism.
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Blahoslav Hruby
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Several international meetings have been held to collect and analyze information on Communist policies toward religious bodies, anti-religious propaganda, “underground” churches, and related matters.
The latest and probably most significant of these meetings took place in Ottawa last month. More than seventy persons participated, including two professors from Yugoslavia. Scholars who had been invited from the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland did not arrive because of “pressing” duties.
The International Symposium on Religion and Atheism in Communist Societies was closed to the press in an apparent effort to create a relaxed atmosphere in which a dialogue could develop between participants from varying ideological persuasions. Thus observers couldn’t quote participants directly. But papers presented at the symposium are to be published by Carleton University. The university, along with its Committee on Soviet and East European Studies, sponsored the symposium in cooperation with the Canadian Association of Slavists and the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.
Certain apprehension was expressed during the five-day session about the relations of the Vatican and the World Council of Churches with the Soviet Union and other Communist countries. Several participants voiced fear that both the Vatican and the WCC might be going too far and too fast in efforts to accommodate Communist leaders.
Some wondered whether an “ecumenical Munich” might not be in the offing in which dissenting Christians and underground churches would be forgotten or sacrificed to obtain a modus vivendi with Communist governments. Such an appeasement mood is seen, it was pointed out, in the failure of such international bodies as the Vatican and the WCC to recognize documents that have been coming from religious dissenters in the Soviet Union.
The problem of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union received considerable attention. Those present seemed to agree that the Jewish community in North America does more for Jews in the Soviet Union than Christians do for their fellow believers there.
It was emphasized that recent worldwide protests against harassment of Jews and, in particular, their difficulties emigrating to Israel, had had some positive results. It was suggested, moreover, that an interreligious and ecumenical approach to the problems of the Jews, anti-Semitism, and religious and national dissenters would be more effective than fragmented efforts.
One of the speakers who had been invited to the Ottawa symposium was Dr. Erika Kadlecova. She had lost her position as director of the Office for Church Affairs in Czechoslovakia as punishment for her “liberalism” under Alexander Dubcek. She had supported the Christian-Marxist dialogue and urged that Christians not be treated as second-class citizens. The dialogue fell into disrepute after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, and Dr. Kadlecova has been reported working as a ticket-seller in a cinema.
Participants in Ottawa agreed that international meetings should continue at regular intervals and that their work should be coordinated. Another meeting will probably be held in London in 1973 under the auspices of the Center for the Study of Religion and Communism.
Although the religious issue is primary, the meetings have been organized not by churchmen but by scholars. Major denominations in the United States and abroad have yet to demonstrate any substantial interest in the plight of persecuted believers in the Communist countries. Neither has there been much grass-roots interest: Religious Ferment in Russia by Michael Bourdeaux has sold only 600 copies in the United States.
Seasoned Insight
The American general who led the United Nations peace team to an armistice in Korea seriously doubts that a settlement to the war in Viet Nam can be negotiated.
“We’ve practically thrown away the lives of 50,000 men,” says retired Lieutenant General William K. Harrison. “The only thing we can do is get out slowly, and Mr. Nixon is doing his best.”
Harrison feels it would be suicidal to pull out all American forces at once. He wonders why anti-war critics now urging such a move did not speak up when the American military buildup began. “Nobody complained about the war until it started to drag out,” he declares. “Now it is being called immoral.”
Harrison, now 75, was chief U. N. negotiator at Panmunjom, Korea, from May, 1952, until a truce was signed on July 27, 1953. He probably has more experience negotiating with Communists than any other living American. Long active in the Officers Christian Union, he currently serves as its president.
In an interview in his home near Clearwater, Florida, last month, Harrison said that time is on the side of North Viet Nam. “The enemy has got us by the throats,” he stated. “The situation is such that we cannot expect to get any concessions from them at the negotiating table.”
Harrison said that he does not feel the United States should have become involved militarily in Viet Nam, but that once forces were committed victory should have been sought. Military strategists may have underestimated enemy capability, he added, but the cause of much of the problem is that U. S. forces’ hands have been tied. He doubts that the Soviet Union or even China would have entered the war had the harbor at Haiphong been bombed. “They have more to fear from each other,” he observed.
Harrison expressed sympathy for Lieutenant William Calley because “in the heat of battle anything can happen,” but noted that “from all evidence, he committed murder and should be punished.”
DAVID KUCHARSKY
Distinguishing Holiness
To distinguish itself from “mystical sects who currently make use of the word ‘holiness’” and to make room for Canadians, the National Holiness Association has changed its name to the Christian Holiness Association.
The decision came at the organization’s 103rd convention in Kansas City last month, where 2,000 delegates represented 1.5 million constituents of twelve affiliated and eleven cooperating denominations. The theme of the meeting was “Absolutely the Lord’s!”
The convention demonstrated the relevance of rigorous self-surrender for the modern generation. Youth from the association’s eighty educational institutions swarmed the conclave. In a seminar titled “Rapping With the Now Generation,” hippies—puffing on cigarettes in front of the anti-tobacco Wesleyans—were brought in from the streets to serve as impromptu panelists. Listening teams from seven area seminaries and numerous colleges engaged in dialogue with speakers. “There is a new religious revolution among young people that has not yet fully bubbled to the surface in all news media,” commented Asbury College president Dr. Dennis Kinlaw.
Female delegates also confronted the feminist revolution when Verda Nye, vice-president of the National Organization of Women, spoke. She was invited over the protest of one CHA executive member who had misgivings about bringing in outside “trouble-makers.” Miss Nye was instead moved by the warmth of Wesleyan women. She broke into tears as Miriam Millenger, Nazarene missionary-nurse, testified. “Oh, I was blessed,” she later commented, expressing what seemed to be sincere interest in the Gospel. A personal follow-up was planned.
Another group, however, received scant attention. Only two blacks attended the convention, and speakers bypassed specific mention of ministry to Negroes. A social-action seminar was attended by only a dozen persons, and seminar speaker Dr. Leslie Parrott said: “I’m not so sure I believe in social action. If you preach to the needs of people that will take care of it.” Some of the Wesleyan denominations originally came into being over the anti-slavery issue.
Realignment, Southern Style
Three independent, conservative groups within the one-million-member Presbyterian Church, U. S., called for a realignment of Presbyterianism last month that would create a “fervently evangelistic Church, faithful to the Bible, the Reformed faith, and Presbyterian polity [government].”
The proposal, issued in Atlanta, in effect asks for the formation of a denomination by persons of Presbyterian and Reformed faith who oppose both the Consultation on Church Union (COCU) and a projected merger of the Southern Presbyterian Church with the 3.2-million-member United Presbyterian Church.
Executive committees of Presbyterian Churchmen United (composed of clergymen and elders), Concerned Presbyterians (laymen), and the Presbyterian Journal (a weekly magazine long opposed to UP-Southern Presbyterian merger) released the document.
The statement reaffirms commitment to the constitution of the present Presbyterian Church, U.S., and opposes actions that would “destroy the historic witness of our church to the true message and mission of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The document continues: “We hope and pray for the restoration and preservation of our church as a truly Reformed and evangelical body.”
In other sessions the Executive Committee urged cooperation with Key 73 as well as between sister holiness bodies. “We do not need organic merger as badly as we need unity of purpose and spirit …” pleaded Myron F. Boyd, CHA president and bishop of the Free Methodist Church. He and the other officers were reelected.
JAMES S. TINNEY
Religion In Transit
The Roman Catholic archdiocese of New York has announced that Birthright, a counseling service giving alternatives to abortion, has been set up as its special service to residents of New York (see April 23 issue, page 36).
The rector, wardens, and vestry of St. Thomas Episcopal Church (New York), one of the denomination’s most influential parishes, charged national Episcopal leaders with “authoritarianism” and said the parish had lost confidence in them because church money had been allocated to some groups “practicing or advocating” violence and radical social reform.
The United Presbyterian Church reported that for the first time since 1967 giving to the general mission of the church was up for a quarterly period: an 18 per cent increase for the first quarter of 1971. Local income also rose markedly.
United Methodist churches in the southern California earthquake suffered between $700,000 and $1 million in damages.
The Mormon Church will have three million members by July, according to reports at its 141st anniversary in Salt Lake City last month, where record growth was cited.
The American Bible Society has sold or given away nearly two million copies of its 1971 Daily Bible Reading plan—more than twice as many as in 1970.
A new type of gonorrhea, resistant to conventional treatment, has aggravated an already “rampant epidemic” of venereal disease in California, according to public health officials. They cited, in order, promiscuity, parental permissiveness, and the Pill as causes for the rising incidence of the disease among the young. Three-fourths of the infected are said to be under age 24.
A two-week crusade coinciding with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Alaska Baptist Convention brought 450 new members to churches there.
The smallest Lutheran synod in the United States, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (Eielsen Synod), is now down to five congregations and about seventy-five members—and counting.
The rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar has sold more than one million albums and is headed for the two-million mark, according to a Decca Record spokesman. Superstar is also scheduled to become a movie.
Regional offices of the American Lutheran Church in Washington, Chicago, Dallas, Palo Alto, and Minneapolis have been closed; twenty-two positions were dropped in the action.
Personalia
After eight years as editor of the California Southern Baptist, Dr. J. Terry Young will become a theology professor at New Orleans Baptist Seminary.
Noted biographer Gerard Noel has become editor of the Catholic Herald, one of Britain’s two leading mass-circulation weeklies.
American Baptist missionary Roger W. Getz of the Philippines will become head of Viet Nam Christian Service in June. The organization is administered by Church World Service, Lutheran World Relief, and the Mennonite Central Committee.
Dr. Raymond M. Olsen has resigned as president of California Lutheran (ALC and LCA) College in Thousand Oaks, reportedly because of frustrations encountered in trying to make the small liberal-arts school financially stable.
They Say
Methodist Bishop Gerald H. Kennedy of Los Angeles about reports that the COCU effort to merge nine Protestant denominations may be dead: “The best news I’ve heard of in a long time.” On preaching (to the Minneapolis Ministerial Association): “Preaching only gets dull when fellows forget what the Gospel is.… It takes a real gift to make preaching boring, but we can do it.”
Dr. Charles S. MacKenzie, Presbyterian educator and evangelical clergyman now pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in San Mateo, California, will become president of Grove City College, Pennsylvania, September 1 … The Reverend Charles A. Platt, pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Ridgewood, New Jersey, has been named president of the Lord’s Day Alliance of the United States.
The Latin America Mission has extended until 1974 its loan of Mr. and Mrs. David M. Howard to Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. Howard will continue as IV’s missionary director during this period and will head the 1973 Urbana missionary convention.
The Reverend C. Peter Wagner, a Quaker, has been named associate professor of Latin American studies at Fuller Seminary’s School of World Mission and executive director of Fuller’s Evangelistic Association. He has been active in Bolivian interdenominational activities for fifteen years.
Jewish evangelist Morris Cerullo, president of World Evangelism, plans two Spanish crusades this summer: Miami, June 21–25, and Los Angeles, July 28–August 1.
Ailing Adam Clayton Powell, 62, the former U. S. congressman, announced his resignation last month from the pastorate of Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York. The clergyman is also retiring from politics, plans to live at Bimini in the Bahama Islands.
United Presbyterian activist professor-theologian Robert McAfee Brown was arrested Good Friday for blocking the entrance to the Berkeley (California) draft-board office. The Stanford University Religion Department head’s son, Peter, 22, was arrested with him.
A few days after federal indictments against twenty-three members of the Black P Stone. Nation charged with defrauding the government of almost $1 million in antipoverty funds, the Reverend John R. Fry, pastor of Chicago’s First Presbyterian Church, announced his resignation. Fry, who had been criticized for harboring the coalition of street gangs in his church, defended them as having “great influence and promise.” Fry will become visiting lecturer on social ethics at San Francisco (United Presbyterian) Seminary.
As expected (see April 23 issue, page 42), the Reverend George Sweeting, senior pastor of Chicago’s Moody Memorial Church, will become president of Moody Bible Institute August 1. Dr. William Culbertson, MBI president since 1948, will stay on in the newly created post of chancellor.
The editor of the Toronto Presbyterian Record, Decourcy H. Rayner, was elected president of the Associated Church Press at its fifty-fifth annual convention in Philadelphia last month, succeeding Christian Herald editor Kenneth L. Wilson, who completed his two-year term.
World Scene
The Navigators have resumed work in Taiwan after an absence of more than a decade. Two staffers have moved to Taichung, and nationals from Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, and Australia are expected to join them shortly.
A small band of militant Jewish youths released frogs and mice in the offices of two New York Soviet agencies to harass Russians with ten symbolic plagues during Passover week.
Papers read at the Jerusalem Conference on Biblical Prophecy, to be held in Israel June 15–18, will be published in book form, according to conference coordinator Gaylord Briley. He said that some 3,000 participants are being asked to the parley and that attendance is by invitation only.
American archaeologists are expected to begin excavations this July in Hesban, presumed site of the remains of the biblical city of Heshbon, the Israelites’ first great military conquest on their way from Sinai to the Promised Land, The effort is sponsored by Andrews University (Seventh-day Adventist) in Berrien Springs, Michigan.
Roman Catholics in the city of Worms have appealed to Pope Paul VI to reconsider the papal order condemning and excommunicating Martin Luther as a heretic 450 years ago.
The Vatican’s Liturgy Congregation has renewed an old campaign to get rid of such old favorite wedding marches as “Here Comes the Bride” in church weddings. More “sacred” music should replace the offending selections, the commission said.
While the priest’s away, the laymen will pray—in Church of Our Lady (Catholic) at Fort Qu’appelle, Saskatchewan. The laity, with official consent, prayed the rosary, read Scripture, and distributed Communion while their priest attended a priests’ conference at Regina.
The International Christian Broadcasters have set June 13 as the annual day of prayer for gospel broadcasting around the world. The ICB has more than fifty missionary radio and TV stations.
- More fromBlahoslav Hruby