Page 6198 – Christianity Today (2024)

Alongside the more obvious turmoil that now engulfs Viet Nam, there is a war being waged for souls. A dedicated coterie of American evangelical missionaries and Vietnamese Christians are pressing the claims of the Gospel in the face of numerous adverse circumstances such as Communist hostility, Roman Catholic influence, pagan culture, and sheer indifference. The spiritual conflict is graphically depicted in a new book published by Harper & Row, The Bamboo Cross, by Homer E. Dowdy.

“Viet Nam has its Christian stalwarts to match those of any place and time,” says Dowdy, former Flint, Michigan, newspaper reporter.

Dowdy’s account of guerrilla warfare is written from the behind-the-lines perspective of the Vietnamese mountain tribes-people, whose culture contrasts sharply with the more Oriental-type Vietnamese who have lived in the cities. The account revolves around Sau, a tribe leader, described as a man marked for torture and death if he is ever caught by the Communist Viet Cong.

Dowdy traveled throughout South Viet Nam to gather material. Cast in a novel-like narrative, his book suffers at points from overwriting. Recent political upheavals and Catholic-Buddhist riots serve, however, to focus timely interest on Dowdy’s volume.

“I got around by making myself as little known to the authorities as possible,” he says. “I was afraid if the Army knew I was there, they’d say I couldn’t go. As to front lines, there weren’t any. Small battles spring up all around you, and you never know when you will run into shooting.”

Dowdy recalls one trip with a missionary when they pulled the car up to a row of gunners in a ditch. The troops had cornered some Viet Cong guerrillas in a thicket and were trying to flush them out.

His only injury while in Viet Nam, however, was of a non-combative nature. He injured his right hand against a tree branch while riding an elephant in a tiger hunt. The injury pained him for three months.

Dowdy indicates that it was the acceptance of Christianity by the tribespeople that saved many of them from the Viet Cong. For centuries the mountain people had been reluctant to move down into the rich valley below because of fear of evil spirits. It is doubtful that they would have fled from the Viet Cong had not Sau introduced them to the Gospel.

Once they were in the valley, new problems came up. The tribespeople who were accustomed to the cold mountain air and familiar with the edible wild foods in their native forests found the new locale difficult. In the warmer climate they became ill and languid and quarrelsome, then hungry and angry as their first crops failed because of their inexperience. For a time they turned against Sau.

After they had become adjusted to their new homes, had harvested bountiful crops, and were enjoying more abundance than they had ever known, the Viet Cong again descended upon them. The guerrillas surrounded the valley on three sides and fenced in the people with deep rows of bamboo spikes. Once again they had to move.

The most dramatic episode in the book tells how Sau’s brother Kar led a mass exodus of his village down a river past the bloodthirsty Viet Cong.

The Evangelical Church of Viet Nam is the only Protestant national body in the country. It is the outgrowth of missionary work by the Christian and Missionary Alliance, which started back in 1911, when Robert A. Jaffray crossed from China into what was then French Indo-China. The Alliance currently maintains more than 100 missionaries in Viet Nam.

Dowdy states:

“Not to set up mission schools and orphanages and hospitals, but through teaching of the Bible to establish the Church, believing that a well-taught Church will develop its own conscience tor the physical, social, economic, and educational needs of its people—this has been the guiding rule.”

Airborne Enterprise

A compact twin-engine aircraft designed especially for use in pioneer missionary work underwent initial flight tests this past summer. Carl A. Mortenson, manager of the Evangel-Air development project, said he is satisfied with the results of the tests. He predicts that the plane will be operating in foreign skies within a year.

“The first phase of our flight test program indicates that we have a good basic design which is worth the usual ‘de-bugging’ and refinements normally incorporated into production aircraft built thereafter,” said Mortenson. “We are moving forward with the program leading to final certification and field evaluation.”

The plane, tagged the “Evangel 4500,” had its maiden flight on July 27. On board were Mortenson and Lynn Washburn, former missionary pilot in Peru now with Ozark Airlines. They wore crash helmets, shoulder harnesses, and parachutes. Firefighting equipment was placed at points along the runway. A physician and a nurse stood by with medical supplies.

The flight, made in the area near Hampshire, Illinois, where the plane was built, came off without incident. Another aircraft with a representative of the Federal Aviation Agency aboard flew chase. Since then the “Evangel” has logged more than twenty-five hours in the air.

Mortenson said that in some ways the plane performs even better than had been hoped. One objective of the design was to enable short take-off runs, perhaps as little as 600 feet. Mortenson said the plane surprised them by becoming airborne after a run of only 450 feet.

A defect discovered in the plane’s instrument system will be corrected without much difficulty, he added.

The rationale of the “Evangel” was that a twin-engine aircraft would reduce appreciably the risks involved in missionary flying, particularly in remote areas where landing strips are scarce. Moreover, the plane’s designers came up with a fuselage that handles bulky cargo and readily converts to accommodate six to eight passengers. The design blends power, ruggedness, compactness, and easy maintenance.

A non-profit corporation was established to aid the project. All financing has come through individual contributions. (Sec CHRISTIANITY TODAY, May 10, 1963; February 28, 1964.)

Survival In The Jungle

A noted Southern Baptist clergyman and a missionary pilot survived the crash landing of their single-engine plane in the Peruvian jungle this month.

Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, largest in the Southern Baptist Convention, was on an annual missions tour. Neither he nor the pilot, Floyd Lyons of the Wycliffe Bible Translators’ air arm, was injured.

The pair were flying in a pontoon-equipped Helio Courier when, according to Criswell, “the plane almost exploded. We lost all power and began to sink immediately toward the jungle.”

Lyons spotted a small creek, and though it was filled with rocks and logs he figured it was their only chance. The plane skidded over the obstacles and came to a stop on a sandbank.

A Return To Mombasa

Evangelical Christianity came to the mainland of East Africa in 1844 when the Ludwig Krapf family landed at Mombasa. Four days after arrival Krapf buried his young wife and six days later their infant child. But he clung to Mombasa and to his missionary task and explored the Kenya hinterland as well as the coastal region of Tanganyika to the south. In the ensuing 120 years his missionary successors and their national fellow Christians have spread Christianity throughout Kenya and Tanganyika and have seen the establishment of at least a nominal Christianity in Uganda. Last month the city of Mombasa, still the principal East African port and still predominantly Muslim, hosted a visiting throng of six thousand Christians from these lands.

A revival movement that arose in western Uganda about thirty years ago has spread to many parts of East Africa and unites across denominational lines (without severing them) many who wish to testify to their experience of salvation through Jesus Christ. Locally such people meet weekly in groups for Bible study, prayer, and mutual exhortation and testimony to God’s dealings with them in forgiveness and empowerment since the previous occasion. Such groups are related to one another through movement of participants from one community to another, in some cases through inspiration and instruction by common leaders, and through regional meetings and conventions. Last month’s four-day gathering at Mombasa was such a convention on a grand scale.

A speaker’s platform was set up in the shade of a huge fig tree on a schoolground overlooking the Indian Ocean. Many in the audience sat under mango trees. In the evening, floodlights were turned on. The Anglican communion seemed to be best represented, but the crowd also included large numbers from the Africa Inland Church, planted by the Africa Inland Mission, plus Presbyterians, Methodists, and a sprinkling of Lutherans, Mennonites, and Moravians from Tanganyika. Some sixty missionaries were on hand. The only reported incident was the delay of a special train from Moshi that struck and killed a rhinoceros.

After breakfast each morning an enlarged “team” met in one comer of the grounds screened off with palm-leaf thatch and got set for the work of the day by turning to God and his Word and by exhortation and consultation. Morning and afternoon sessions of the convention lasted from two to three hours. All addresses and public statements were made either in Swahili or in English, with sentence-by-sentence translation into the other language. In the evenings the crowd spread out into sixteen different meeting places in the city. As they returned to their sleeping quarters each night the moonlit streets echoed with the strains of the revival movement’s theme song, “Tukutendereza” (the Lord be praised).

Literacy’s Champion

Friends of Dr. Frank C. Laubach helped him to celebrate his eightieth birthday this month by treating him to a round of banquets throughout the country.

The noted “apostle to the illiterates” was born September 2, 1884, in Benton, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Princeton University and Union Theological Seminary and went to the Philippines as a missionary. There he realized that the people’s greatest handicap was illiteracy, and since then he has probably done more to reduce illiteracy than any other man alive.

By conservative estimate, the “Each One Teach One” method Laubach developed nearly thirty-five years ago has brought the ability to read and write to some 60 million people in more than 100 countries.

“Do you think Christ is smiling at us Christians in America when all we can spare to save the world is one dollar out of twenty-two?” he asks. “If you could say to Christ, ‘Our church has $22,000; what should we do with it?’ would He say, ‘Put $21,000 in stained glass windows and a tower, and then send a thousand dollars abroad’?”

Laubach says that “compassion is our greatest strength. If Americans will mobilize their compassion, I have no doubt at all that we can stop the spread of Communism.”

The Discipling Function

A noted missionary leader suggests that better care of converts would considerably accelerate evangelization in non-Christian lands.

“Where comparisons are possible,” says Dr. Vernon Mortenson, “the number of baptisms is only 15 or 20 per cent of the professed conversions.”

Mortenson is general director of The Evangelical Alliance Mission and president of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association. His observations appear in the September–October issue of the IFMA News.

“If we discipled all professed converts to prepare them to take their proper places as functioning, reproducing members in local churches, we could greatly speed up world evangelization,” said Mortenson.

The lessons, he declared, are these:

“Not to evangelize less, but to disciple more so that the percentage of converts brought to maturity may be greatly increased.

“That every mission should recapture the New Testament emphasis and reshape its methods along New Testament lines to produce solid, steady growth in the churches leading, in turn, to ever higher levels of evangelistic activity and church establishment.

“That renewed emphasis be given to praying out men called to be missionary ‘apostles,’ whose specialization will be churches leading, in turn, to ever highering, counseling, warning, and establishing the believers as functioning members in local spiritual congregations.”

Free Transportation

New Air Force regulations spell out circumstances under which missionary groups and other religious organizations may fly goods abroad free of charge. Such cargo is sent via U. S. Air Force and Air National Guard training flights—which are necessary with or without cargo.

Religious groups may apply for cargo space on international flights through local Air Force transport units. Such units are stationed at Air Force bases throughout the country. Training flights are normally programmed three months in advance.

An Air Force spokesman in Washington said priority is given perishable goods and emergency supplies, particularly when disaster relief is involved. Transportation of individuals would be unusual, he said, but not altogether out of the question.

Training flights usually follow the standard global routes of the Military Air Transport Service, the spokesman added. Cargoes are accepted only if they do not change the flight destinations “appreciably,” he declared, and only when they do not compete with established commercial runs. He said, moreover, that military cargoes have priority and that approving authority for all cargo space applications rests with the Pentagon.

Congo Evacuation

Rebel activity in northeast Congo forced the evacuation of a number of American Protestant missionaries last month. Although a rebel leader vowed to wipe out all religious institutions in captured territories, there were no immediate reports of violence involving missionary personnel.

The Africa Inland Mission reported the evacuation of eighteen stations with some 120 missionaries. Conservative Baptists and the Evangelical Free Church said that dozens of their missionaries also were obliged to leave their posts in the northeast Congo region.

Tax experts threw a scare at religious organizations this month. Spokesmen for the Internal Revenue Service, in public testimony given before a House subcommittee, said that about two dozen foundations—some of them with a religious bent—are under “very active” investigation and face possible revocation of their tax exemptions. Internal Revenue Commissioner Bertram M. Harding and his assistant Mitchell Rogovin, said a conclusion in one or two cases “will be reached very shortly.”

Some observers in Washington insist that the threats are designed merely to discourage foundations from becoming specifically active in the current election campaign. Inasmuch as most of the foundations in question seem to espouse a right-wing political philosophy, the announcement was interpreted as a move to head off propaganda crusades for Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater. Other sources say it is coincidental that hearings by the House Small Business Subcommittee on abuses by tax-exempt foundations were held at the start of the election campaign.

Law prohibits disclosure of the identity of organizations whose tax-exempt status is under scrutiny, but subcommittee chairman Wright Patman, Democrat of Texas, indicated that Texas oil tycoon H. L. Hunt’s Life Line Foundation is one which he feels is no longer entitled to the privilege. An IRS district director has recommended that the Life Line Foundation’s tax exemption be revoked on grounds that its activities are political rather than educational. His IRS superiors, however, have not yet issued a final judgment in the case, and the recommendation has aroused a storm of indignation.

It was brought out during the House hearings that the other foundations whose tax status is in jeopardy use the mass media and have been discussed previously on the floor of Congress.

A year ago Democratic Senator Maurine B. Neuberger of Oregon declared that the 75-year-old Hunt gets “more radical rightwing propaganda for his tax-exempt dollar” than anyone else. She has named a number of other “right-wing groups … masquerading as ‘educational or religious’ organizations … financed by tax-free contributions from businessmen.”

Her list, which she said was not exhaustive, has included: America’s Future, Inc.; American Council of Christian Laymen; American Economic Foundation; Christian Anti-Communism Crusade; Christian’s Echoes Ministry; Christian Freedom Foundation; Church League of America; Circuit Riders; Economists’ National Committee on Monetary Policy; Foundation for Economic Education; and the Inter-Collegiate Society of Individualists.

Mrs. Neuberger said on the Senate floor that “to those who ask me why I concentrate my fire upon the extreme right, I answer that the flood of material which inundates my office daily, rarely, if ever, comes from the left.” She added that “undoubtedly” there will be abuses by groups of all political persuasions¹The exploitation of American foundations by political leftists ii carefully documented in a 412-page book, Foundations—Their Power and Influence, by Rene A. Wormier, general counsel to the Recce Committee of the Eighty-third Congress. and that any reforms “must be applied without regard to the ideological position of the offender.”

What are the boundary lines of political activities by tax-exempt organizations? IRS officials say they are difficult to locate. The Revenue Act of 1954 stipulated that tax-exempt organizations may not devote “a substantial part” of their activities to carrying on propaganda. But what is “substantial”?

The recent lobbying campaign by major American denominations in behalf of the civil rights bill was compared in intensity to the churches’ drive for prohibition earlier in the twentieth century. The National Council of Churches defended its civil rights bill activity on grounds that it did not entail a “substantial” part of the NCC budget.

Rogovin, in his testimony to the House subcommittee, said there is a flat prohibition against such organizations’ backing a candidate in a political campaign. President Johnson, then a Texas Senator, sponsored this ban as an amendment to a 1954 tax bill. A prominent Washington tax lawyer privately asserted, however, that such support is a technical matter and does not of itself disqualify organizations from tax exemptions.

The Christian Century, ecumenical weekly, has through the years made it a fairly regular practice to indicate editorially which presidential candidate it favors. This year the Century endorsed Johnson and promised to “do what we can” to contribute to Goldwater’s defeat.

It looks now as if a number of other liberal Protestant magazines will follow suit. Christianity and Crisis, editorial voice of theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and John C. Bennett, says in its October 5 issue: “We not only oppose Goldwater, we favor President Johnson.”

The endorsement of Johnson marks the first time in its 24-year history that the magazine has come out for a specific political candidate.

Earlier, the United Church Herald, official United Church of Christ organ, and several independent Episcopal publications indicated their opposition to Goldwater.

Charles Templeton: Another Career

Will the social stigma of departure from the ministry, divorce, and remarriage bar a man from becoming Prime Minister of Ontario? Not so, say Toronto supporters of their hometown boy, Charles (Chuck) B. Templeton, 49.

Templeton’s debut in provincial politics, however, was unsuccessful. He lost a September 10 by-election in which he had tried, under the banner of Canada’s Liberal Party, to wrest a seat in the Ontario legislature that has been held by Conservatives for twenty-seven years. And he announced immediately thereafter he was withdrawing as a candidate for the Liberal Party leadership in Ontario (a leader was to be chosen this month).

Political aspirations represented a new career for Templeton, and some shouted “effrontery” at his immediate drive for the Prime Minister’s office.

Templeton, however, has mastered new careers before. He started as a syndicated sports cartoonist and became perhaps the greatest evangelist Canada ever produced (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, March 31, 1958; Dec. 20, 1963); later he became a successful playwright, a national TV personality, and finally a §24,000-a-year newspaper executive with Canada’s largest daily, the Toronto Star.

What’s Templeton’s secret of worldly success? He’s a communicator—and a jolly good one! He also has an apparent honest concern for people that is appealing.

He feels Canada’s moral standards are below par and blames bad home environment and the failure of the Church to communicate a vital and relevant faith. He favors repeal of the national ban on contraceptives and feels the Church needs to get more immediately interested in politics, where its moral force can be brought to bear. “They can’t do this unless they’re out there where life is lived—in the political area.”

Since Templeton left his twenty-year ministry, due to doubts about the nature and purpose of God, he has been a searcher for “other media of communication where I may be able to play a useful role.” He seeks now in the political arena, and some speculate he even sees himself as Canada’s Prime Minister someday. Indeed, in the past few years, he has been asked a few times to run federally. He sees Canada’s role as a leader of the middle powers in world affairs, but in close relation to the U. N. The West’s influence in the world will increase, he says, where the Judaeo-Christian tradition is expressed in a concern for people, rather than in power politics. The big moral issue the West faces concerns integrity in our dealings with other nations, with each other, in business, in society, in the home. As for the cold war, he says it can be settled only when Russia decides to allow it to happen. The rift between Russia and China will make it possible.

Successful second marriage to a pretty TV singer adds to the ambition and optimism of Chuck Templeton. Politically, his wife, Sylvia, will be good for him. She’s personable and speaks French—a product of her Montreal upbringing. They regularly attend the United Church with their four children.

Templeton’s optimistic pitch for political office, however, lacked a notable factor—official support from an influential portion of Canada’s Liberal top brass. So he rested his hope mainly in appeal to party grass roots, and failed.

Three years yet remain before Ontario Liberals have a chance to unseat the Conservatives, who have held provincial power for the past twenty-one years. Templeton may still figure in their future.

KENNETH G. WARES

The Call To Awake

Evangelist Billy Graham renewed his plea for moral awakening during a ten-day crusade in Omaha, Nebraska, this month. The crusade opened to nightly crowds of more than 16,000.

“The Communists want America intact,” said Graham. “They want our industries and our material wealth so they are waiting until we are soft enough for them to take over. The great need is for a spiritual awakening that will throw back the tide of evil.”

Graham and his team were welcomed to the Midlands by Nebraska Governor Frank B. Morrison, who issued a proclamation declaring September 4–13 as “Billy Graham Days” in the state.

Following the Omaha meetings Graham was scheduled to conduct a ten-day crusade in Boston, beginning September 18.

Books For The President

A delegation from the Christian Booksellers Association was scheduled to visit the White House this month to present fifty books to President Johnson. A White House spokesman said the books were intended for Johnson’s personal library.

The books were chosen by means of a poll of bookstore owners and operators who are members of the evangelically oriented CBA. Several evangelical librarians have expressed disappointment that the organization introduced the commercial element into the selection process so conspicuously. They say that the resulting selections are not representative enough of the best in evangelical literature.

The CBA made a similar presentation of fifty other books to President Eisenhower in 1956.

Campus Mission

A new campus religious movement makes its debut this fall.

Known as “Campus Mission,” the nonsectarian work will stress person-to-person contacts, avoid elaborate organization, and have no official chapters as such. The founder, the Rev. Neil H. Swanson, says that focal points of training will be seminars, where selected students and student workers will gather, and an extensive program of reading materials to be published especially for Campus Mission.

Swanson, who for the last six years has been executive secretary of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, plans to write much of the literature himself.

A novel feature planned by the minister is a series of tape-recorded “experimental conversations” between, “mature Christians” and students with questions about religion. He hopes that these talks, which may be set up in advance, will help to teach the person-to-person approach to Christian witness.

Swanson also hopes to develop contacts with existing campus religious organizations such as the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and Campus Crusade for Christ. Regarding the orientation of Campus Mission as compared with these two organizations, Swanson said that the “kind of people” his work would attract might be “different” from those reached by Campus Crusade and IVCF. “But I’m not sure about that,” he added.

A few titles Swanson plans to issue are “How to Talk About Religion,” “Each One Reach One,” “On Thinking You Are What You Are Not,” and “Beyond Doctrine.”

The last title does not imply an “eclectic” position, according to Swanson. The object was rather to avoid making an “idol out of a particular theory.” He did indicate that his position might be more liberal than conservative, but at the same time he expressed doubts about the validity and meaning of such labels.

A Life Spared

The nine-year-old daughter of a Christian Reformed Church minister miraculously escaped serious harm last month after being abducted by a sex pervert. An account of the incident appears in the Banner, the church’s weekly magazine.

The girl, Kristin Smith, daughter of the Rev. and Mrs. Thomas L. Smith of South Bend, Indiana, was seized early one afternoon near her home and held prisoner for twelve hours. part of the time the abductor kept her in the trunk of his car. At two o’clock the following morning he threw her gagged and bound from a bridge into a river twenty-one feet below. She landed on a sandbar, narrowly missing the main river channel, which is fourteen feet deep at that point.

Kristin was able to work the gag out of her mouth and call for help. Her cries were heard, and she was rescued by rowboat. She suffered only a minor injury.

A suspect was in the hands of police within half an hour.

Campus Mission will also seek to avoid becoming too “professional.” The stress will be on students reaching students, “knowhow,” and “tools.”

Founded with the conviction that the college and university campus represents a “major area of mission,” the work will be financed by an annual grant for three years by Lilly Endowment, Inc., and matching private contributions.

The beginning of Campus Mission this fall coincides with the “real start of the college boom,” as it has been called. The year 1964 marks the first big campus influx of World War II babies. IVCF has announced that it has just accepted twenty-seven new staff workers to cope with the mushrooming student population.

Impact On History?

A prominent New York minister roundly criticized Governor and Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller last month, asserting that “this divorce and re-marriage, far from being a private affair, may easily have changed the course of American history.”

The Rev. Harald Bredesen, pastor of the First Reformed Church of Mount Vernon, New York, said Mrs. Rockefeller was “unjust” in seeking custody of her children from her former husband, Dr. James S. Murphy.

Bredesen, well-known for his role in the current charismatic revival, is chairman of the board of Blessed Trinity Society. In a Sunday morning sermon, he said that Mrs. Rockefeller, “having broken her first contract, of lifelong fidelity to her husband, now [seeks] to break her second, a separation agreement that preceded their legal divorce, leaving the four children with her husband.”

“What was his offense?” Bredesen asked. “Simply that another man whose power and prestige were as great as his principle is small, coveted his wife and she coveted him. To have him she was willing to break up her marriage and sign away her children. She was willing to sacrifice the happiness of both their families to have him. And now that she has him, she wants her children too. Her desire is quite natural, and quite unjust.”

Bredesen, who did not mention in the sermon that Murphy also remarried, noted that for Rockefeller as a presidential candidate “the tide was running fairly strong … but it slacked. His lapse cost him his chance to become the leader of his nation at an incomparably significant juncture of history, and it left the way clear for his political opposite.”

Jerusalem And Christian Interests

Pope Paul VI reportedly plans to establish a permanent theological study center in Jerusalem that will improve the Roman Catholic Church’s relations with other sectors of Christendom as well as with non-Christian religions. According to Religious News Service, he has entrusted preparations for the center to Father Theodore M. Hesburg, president of the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, who also heads the International Federation of Catholic Universities.

It was not immediately ascertained whether the center would be established in the Jordanian or the Israeli sector of Jerusalem. However, there are no diplomatic relations between Israel and Vatican City, which might indicate that the Pope is thinking of the Jordanian side. Moreover, there is already a pontifical institute operated by the Vatican in the Israeli portion of the city.

Informed observers say the Vatican has never retracted its position that Jerusalem should be an international city. This viewpoint, if perpetuated, would probably deter establishment of a new study center anywhere in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, an American Christian Holy Land Library had been proposed by Dr. G. Douglas Young, director of the American Institute of Holy Land Studies (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, August 28, 1964).

Disappointing Preview

Publication of portions of a purported draft declaration on Catholic-Jewish relations—consisting of paragraphs 32 to 34 of the schema on ecumenism to be submitted to the current session of the Second Vatican Council—stirred reactions in Jewish circles ranging from sharp disappointment to outright criticism.

Religious News Service reported from New York that disappointment was felt because of what some commentators said was a failure to deal adequately with the ancient charge of deicide made against the Jews in regard to the crucifixion of Christ. Other commentators took exception to what they considered an unfortunate stress on the church’s “great desire” for the conversion of the Jews.

There was no explanation of how the presumably secret document came into the possession of newspapers that ran the complete text of the three sections of the schema, sections representing a revision of an original draft presented, but not voted upon, at the Vatican Council’s second session.

The earlier version of the Catholic-Jewish declaration emphasized that all mankind, and not the Jews alone, was responsible for the death of Christ, and this was hailed by Jewish leaders as a clear repudiation of the charge of deicide.

However, according to an unofficial translation, the new text merely states that Catholics should “refrain from accusing the Jews of our times of what was perpetrated during the Passion of Christ.”

Pressure On ‘Purity’

Bowing before increased pressure from both religious and secular fronts, the Israel Chief Rabbinate announced last month that it would delete specific reference to the Bene Israel community from India in its instructions on marriage. The directives singled out members of the Bene Israel by requiring investigation of their racial “purity” before allowing them to marry Jews outside their community.

Chief Rabbi Issar Yehuda Unterman capitulated after a session of the Knesset (parliament). During the Knesset debate Prime Minister Levi Eshkol urged the Rabbinate “to take public opinion into account, and to find a way of dispelling the causes of the sense of unfairness and removing every reason for a sense of discrimination” against the members of the Bene Israel community. He emphasized that they were “Jews in all respects … without any limitation or distinction, equal in rights to all other Jews in all matters, including the laws of personal status.”

Following a dramatic all-night session with the mayor of Jerusalem and other mediators, leaders of the Bene Israel agreed to accept the revised directives and to call off a five-week-old sitdown strike by thirty families in the government building.

The day before the Knesset convened, Unterman spoke to a rally of 500 rabbis and gave no indication that a solution was remotely possible. He declared that “the aboltion of the directives would mean the abolition of all the decisions ever made by the Chief Rabbinate.”

The rabbinical wall of resistance began to crumble, however, following the Prime Minister’s Knesset speech in which he strongly upheld the Bene Israel position. His statement received the approval of the Knesset by a vote of 43 to 2 with 30 abstentions.

A second telling blow that undoubtedly influenced the Rabbinate to back down was the loss of much support it had previously enjoyed from the religious segment of the population. At the same Sunday rally an authoritative orthodox Israeli voice was raised in condemnation of the Chief Rabbinate’s directives aimed at the Bene Israel. Rabbi M. Hacohen of the Ministry for Religious Affairs said that the directives were “out of place.”

The Books and Issues in Theology Issue gathers together a variety of significant theological concerns. A survey of forthcoming religious books singles out volumes of special interest. An index of Continental theologians accompanies the continuing assessment of the European theological situation. Several essays deal with the heavy burden of duty resting upon the clergy today. Recognized as contributing to this burden are the secondary demands upon ministerial time and the doctrinal flux of our age.

This issue also contains the annual index, now a treasured resource in the libraries of ministerial and lay readers alike.

On Social Action Committees

Throughout the churches there are many signs of dissatisfaction with the social action committees of various major denominations. There is a growing feeling that these committees are used to promote the ideological views of those who head them.

The argument for their existence is that such committees are needed to prod the social conscience of the Church. Without them, it is said, the Church would fail to penetrate the society of which it is a part, and would stagnate.

What is the primary responsibility of the Church? To preach the Gospel of God’s redemption and renewal of the individual through Jesus Christ, or to reform society? According to the Bible, the Church is basically and inescapably committed to the proclamation of the Gospel. Yet it must not only sow the divine seed but also, when the seed takes root and grows into eternal life, nurture it. Along with its proclamation of the gospel message, the Church is through its redeemed members obligated to be the salt of the earth.

The Church must look thoughtfully at its entire program of evangelism, missions, and education. The basic philosophy of the Christian mission must be clearly understood if the Church is to fulfill its legitimate role in the world. Disturbed by a growing lack of influence on the twentieth century, the Church is in grave peril of an increasing deviation from its divinely assigned task. It is in danger of fanning the flames of futility when it should and could be fighting Satan’s fires by faithful preaching of the Word. And this includes both the evangelistic and prophetic aspects of the inspired Word—in short, the whole counsel of God.

A study of the sources of social, political, and economic pronouncements made by church courts will disclose that they almost invariably originate in social action committees and are presented in a “report” that is frequently passed without adequate study or debate.

More is at stake in the issuance of such politico-economic edicts than is usually acknowledged. Whether these edicts truly represent the member churches for which the social action committees profess to speak and whether these committees have the necessary knowledge and competence to decide secular issues are not the only concerns, important as they are. The Church of Christ has no jurisdiction in the realm of politico-economic legislation; it has no mandate for commitments that fall outside the Church’s spiritual and moral responsibility, no authority to become involved in controversial secular issues. The fundamental issue is one of the Church’s jurisdiction—whether there is a Word of God in such pronouncements.

When the Church commits itself, or is committed to, debatable politico-economic positions, its authority and competence in ecclesiastical matters will soon be questioned also. Not only do secular pronouncements introduce a divisive influence among Christians, but in the minds of people generally they tend to break down respect for the Church and promote doubt about its qualification to speak authoritatively on spiritual and moral subjects.

The social conscience of Christians does indeed need prodding. But surely there are many methods of achieving this result without perpetuating the errors and risks of present procedures.

Questions need to be answered about the areas covered by social action reports. Why is social concern confined chiefly to certain areas? Why is a word so seldom spoken against the dangers of alcohol, against the liquor industry’s subtly misleading advertisements and its seeming stranglehold on sports promotion? Complacency about alcohol reaches into the official leadership of many local congregations, where social drinking is accepted as a desirable way of life. Why the silence of many social action committees?

Why so little word against the pornography found in stores and theaters in every hamlet, town, and city? Why so little comment about the view of sex that is debasing our national life, leading young people astray, and affecting the older generation as well?

The Surgeon General’s report gives evidence that excessive cigarette smoking predisposes to lung cancer. But this hazard is largely disregarded while many church sociologists set an example of chain smoking. Why are social action committees silent?

We are not advocating that either corporate churches or our pulpits become platforms of “Do this” and “Don’t do that.” Legalistic Christianity has little to commend it. But we are asking why social action committees frequently neglect certain critical social issues that obviously involve questions of morality and indulge in legislative matters mainly involving politico-economic choices.

A Challenge Not A Spectacle

The 1963 Demographic Yearbook of the United Nations shows that the world’s population is growing even more rapidly than the rate of 1.7 (46 million annually) which caused such consternation when it was announced in 1961. Last year the rate had risen to 2.1, a global increase of 63 million. Moreover, countries with the fewest natural resources, lowest food production, and minimal medical and sanitary services are growing fastest.

What do these facts say to evangelical Christians who in this country enjoy an abundance of material and spiritual sustenance? Surely they speak eloquently to the obligation of stewardship. We who feed our dogs a better diet than that on which millions barely survive and who are nourished spiritually to the point of surfeit through the preaching of the Word and through the printed page need to awake to the realization that the population explosion is not a spectacle to be watched in impassive unconcern but a call to more prayerful giving.

The New Testament speaks repeatedly and incisively about disregard of human need. “If anyone has this world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” John asks. The collection for the poor in Jerusalem was close to the heart of Paul. By parable and by action our Lord taught the obligation of helping the needy.

But the tragedy of the world’s millions transcends hunger and disease. Its deepest aspect is spiritual. Multitudes who lack adequate food and shelter are starving for the bread of life; as world population mounts, the number of human beings who have never even heard of Christ is soaring far beyond the number who have been evangelized.

Demographic statistics are not just for U. N. researchers. They compel Christians in this affluent land to rethink their stewardship. In a lost, suffering, and sinful world none of us has the right to hug to himself his material prosperity and to enjoy only within his immediate fellowship the unsearchable riches of Christ. Insensitivity to the command to share in healing the sick and feeding the hungry, disobedience of the Great Commission—these are an affront to the God who gave his only Son for the lost world. The unanswerable argument for Christians to give for the amelioration of physical and spiritual need is found in Paul’s words: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.

A Specter In Contemporary Theology

A question that New Testament critics can no longer evade haunts European theology today. In Hugh Anderson’s words, it is this: “What bearing or relevance for Christian faith or theology has historical knowledge that is gained from historico-scientific research?” (Jesus and Christian Origins, Oxford University Press, 1964, p. 93).

Ever since John the Baptist’s clarion call, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” the relation of the historical Jesus to the preached Christ has been of vital concern. In the nineteenth century, naturalistic historicism rejected the apostolic Christ as a speculative invention and professed to discover an original non-miraculous Jesus. In the twentieth century, naturalistic scientism, reflected in the imaginative religious mood of Bultmann, commended the “apostolically proclaimed Christ” but dismissed the life, deeds, and words of Jesus of Nazareth as irrelevant to Christian faith. Whereas the old rationalistic liberalism championed the historical Jesus at the expense of the “kerygmatic Christ,” its dialectical-existential successor championed the “kerygmatic Christ” to the neglect of the historical Jesus. The “witness of faith” thus replaced interest in the “facts of history”; existential experience rather than objective history became the pivot of divine revelation.

At first the new theology’s description of revelation in wholly transcendent categories, independent of historical correlation, was welcomed. It seemed a necessary corrective to rationalistic liberalism’s derivation of Christian realities from the socio-cultural environment. But theological neglect of the historical foundation of Christian belief proved costly. Preserving only an oblique reference to the bare fact of Jesus’ life and crucifixion, Bultmann’s existentialism ran the risk of dissolving the Christian kerygma into a Christ-myth and the Gospel into a speculative theory of existence. In defining faith as a frontier moment of repeated existential decision, Bultmann rejected the evangelical view that Jesus of Nazareth is the ground of Christian faith. And Barth, despite his tardy repudiation of existentialism and his firmer connection of kerygma with divine deeds, by distinguishing Geschichte from Historie obscured Christianity’s historical foundations also. For Barth and Bultmann alike, historical exegesis is no valid avenue of knowledge concerning Jesus Christ but a faithless clinging to this-worldly props.

But the debate over the significance of the historical Jesus for Christian theology has now become a central issue in contemporary theology. By suppressing historical interest in Jesus Christ, the kerygma-theology encouraged a Docetic Christology; that is to say, it tended to reduce the Christ’s presence in history to a phantom appearance. While the kerygmatic repetition that Christ is Lord held sole importance, the historical facets of the life and ministry of Jesus became irrelevant.

Present-day Christian theology can be rescued from this costly development only by a full rehabilitation of the historical realities of the Gospel. Because biblical Christianity demands an open interest in the historical Jesus, both post-Barthian and post-Bultmannian scholars now insistently raise the question of the connection or unity of the historical Jesus with the kerygmatic Christ, and the link between the teaching of Jesus and the apostolic proclamation. In their “new quest” for the historical Jesus, Bultmann’s successors struggle to establish the continuity of the kerygma with the mission and message of Jesus of Nazareth. But their use of lingering existential categories such as “the immediacy of Jesus for me” and “encounter with the selfhood of Jesus” precludes a definitive contribution to a historical investigation of the relation between the historic Jesus and the kerygmatic Christ. The “new questers” know that to dehistorize the kerygma is theologically illegitimate. But their assertion that historical aspects of the life and work of Jesus are inseparably related to the Christ of faith hangs in mid-air. Even some of the critics who advance beyond the Marburg mythology and the post-Bultmann reconstructions as well do no justice to the realities of historical revelation.

Is it really true, as Hugh Anderson would have us believe, that Christ’s incarnation, resurrection, and ascension are events “concerning which the historian qua historian can really say nothing, save that a number of people came to hold belief in these things at a certain time in the course of human history” (ibid., p. 60)? Did the evangelists suppress their instinct for historical reality when they testified to these great events? That historical science cannot fully plumb the realities of the biblical kerygma is no reason for succumbing to negative historical criticism, or for demeaning what historical investigation can establish. To be sure, the historico-scientific method of research about Jesus cannot fully explain the psychological processes by which he was recognized as the Christ; faith-response is not open to historical study. Nor does the historical fact of the empty tomb of itself give assurance of a Risen Lord. But the sensitive historian is not so bound to an intra-worldly nexus of causes and effects that he must ascribe New Testament realities to subjective factors at the great cost of discrediting competent eyewitnesses.

Anderson endorses Bultmann’s call to rid the apostolic message of “the false scandal of the obsolete mythological world view, ideas and language, in which it has been clothed in the New Testament” (p. 53). He insists that “the Bible’s language about God, the world, and history is permeated with mythological traits,” so that “there is no escape from the task of demythologizing” (p. 75). He ignores the contributions of conservative scholars like Machen and Warfield to the history-and-faith controversy, while he disparages the “uncritical evangelicals” (p. 76) and speaks of biblical authoritarianism as uncritical (p. 78). He approves the liberal theology taught in American Protestant seminaries by Bushnell, Clarke, and Brown as “deeply evangelical” (p. 62). He prizes the socio-historical method above a strictly historical approach to the New Testament (p. 70) because it stresses historical-human factors in the reception and interpretation of revelation and the kerygma (p. 75).

The merit of Anderson’s book lies in its full reflection of influential theological currents, in its recognition of the crucial importance of the history-faith problem for contemporary Christianity, in its analysis of certain weaknesses of existential exegesis, and in its awareness of significant recent biblical studies by New Testament scholars. But at the central point of commentary on faith-history tensions, Anderson fails to provide either an adequate solution or a clear alternative. Despite emphasis on the importance of history for the kerygma, he reduces that history to relative importance and, in fact, leaves its range and character in doubt. Indeed, he limits the role of the historical method. The historian, he says, “may constantly protect the Church’s theology from relapsing into a historical speculation … he can preserve … the truth that our faith and our religion are rooted and grounded in a particular history and person and life; he can … throw some light on how Jesus’ contemporaries understood him and even, to some extent, on how he may have wished to be understood” (p. 316). But if the historian cannot, as Anderson insists he cannot, grant legitimacy to any historical grounding of faith; if he cannot authenticate any sure words or deeds of Jesus; if the records upon which he depends transform the basic historical facts of the life of Jesus; and if, moreover, faith is wholly dependent upon encounter by the Risen Christ, as Anderson also contends—then the historian’s inquiry is foredoomed to irrelevance. The modern theological road often follows many welcome detours around peril-fraught landscapes. Anderson steers a non-Bultmannian course for a large part of his journey. But his observance of historical markers is hurried, and he is mainly concerned with the vision of the kerygmatic Christ. In the last analysis, Bultmann’s existentialism still remains the shortest route between Spirit-faith and historical skepticism.

In Search Of An Identity

The greensward of Chicago’s Midway divides the gray Gothic of the University of Chicago’s inner campus from the sharply contrasting modern architecture of its new Center for Continuing Education. No less striking were the contrasts within this conference center last month when the Faculty Christian Fellowship, related to the National Council of Churches, met there for six days to consider “Faith and Learning in the University.”

No single theological view pretended to hegemony at the start of the conference or was awarded it during the course of the conference. While one speaker would champion Luther and Calvin, another would claim that Johann Sebastian Bach was “just as significant to the study of theology” as the two great Reformers. Claims were pressed by a Roman Catholic observer and a Unitarian speaker. There were calls for theological revision, but no guidelines for such revision were agreed on.

Assembling for its first national meeting since its founding conference eleven years ago (regional meetings are held annually), the FCF was confessedly at a crossroads. This conference highlighted its continuing search for an identity. Formed originally for college and university teachers, the FCF was to give “inclusive expression to the concerns and life of a community of Christian teachers dedicated to an exploration of the meaning of faith and its implications for higher learning and the teaching vocation.” No doctrinal basis was established, although study groups turned often to the thought of men like Tillich and the Niebuhrs.

There were various attempts to make FCF an organization with a definite membership, but these failed. A major continuing problem has been the inability of the leadership to arrive at a clear understanding of just what the FCF is, what it should do, and who should compose it. Financial help from several foundations has consequently ceased, able professors have dropped out, and some of its leaders now speak of the “failure of the FCF.”

Early this year the members of the governing FCF general committee asked the NCC Commission on Higher Education to replace them with an NCC faculty committee, which would cooperate with denominational board personnel.

The Chicago conference, thus faced with an accomplished fact, reflected a common uncertainty as to where this new development will lead. Missouri Synod Lutheran and Southern Baptist voices expressed uneasiness over NCC control. Interest was shown in a non-competing indigenous order of Christian scholars, in which prayer and theological study would hold a prominent place.

Daily lecturer for the Chicago conference was theologian Joseph Haroutunian of the university’s Divinity School. Witty and ebullient, he proved a popular choice, while striking a more biblical note than was reflected in most of the conference speeches and seminar discussions. He pleaded for the centrality of the Cross by which Christ effected restoration of communion of man with God and man with man. He was disturbed by the extent of popular acceptance of Bishop John Robinson’s Honest to God.

But many at the conference were not. One suggested that perhaps terms like “God” and “theology” should be abandoned. Another said: “We are not as far from certain atheistic professors as we thought.” But evangelicals were also heard from, even if the weight of opinion was decidedly not on their side.

The conference was well organized and gave large opportunity for a stimulating exchange of ideas on a competent level. But the theological mood was aptly described by one conferee: “We are like Abraham, who ‘went out, not knowing whither he went.’” And in the current organizational transition, this also seemed to describe quite well the Faculty Christian Fellowship.

Three Little Words

Had the Reformation been only a debate whether priority of authority belongs to the Pope, it might have been just another recorded and all but forgotten medieval scholastic controversy that might have left history unchanged. But the Reformation was much more. It was also the joyous spiritual dynamic that flowed from Luther to others on his discovery that a man can find his peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ. The excitement and power of this truth turned the Reformation into a historic movement that continues today and still shapes Protestantism, providing joy and peace men find nowhere else.

Justification by faith alone—this is theological shorthand for the heart of the Protestant message. It has always been the one truth about which Lutherans in particular were confident.

At least it was. Even on this point, things seem to be changing. Not that something new has been added—though it has; rather, something old seems, if not disappearing, at least obscured.

Last year the Lutheran World Federation met in Helsinki. The assembly theme was “Christ Today,” and the chief task of the assembly was to show the meaning and relevance of “justification by faith” to modern man. Delegates asked how this cardinal truth can be shown to have significance for the many today who no longer believe in God, or at least have little sense of sin and guilt.

The assembly drew up a statement of the meaning of justification by faith; yet it could not muster enough agreement to issue the statement as an approved assembly pronouncement.

On the first day of September of this year the federation’s Executive Committee met in Iceland. It was informed that “Assembly Document 75,” as the section on justification by faith is called, will, with slight revisions by the federation’s Commission on Theology, be distributed by Lutheran World Federation headquarters to member and non-member churches, and also be published in book form. It was emphasized, however, that this statement on justification by faith “should not be viewed as a systematic presentation of the common opinion of the LWF.”

What was wrong? Why could not a world gathering of Lutheranism, whose baptized membership is more than 56 million, issue a commonly accepted statement about the meaning of justification by faith to its own membership and to the modern unbelieving men of our times? A truth about which Luther was confident, a truth that not only Lutherans but Protestants in general have long regarded as a cardinal, central, clear tenet of the Gospel—has this truth now become so obscure and uncertain that a world gathering of Lutherans, even with the help of a theological commission, cannot with one voice speak to modern men?

Some delegates at Helsinki opposed the issuance of any LWF statement on justification because this might be regarded by some people as having “quasi-confessional authority.” If the assembly’s intention had been to formulate a creed, one could understand such reluctance. But Helsinki was not engaged in creed-writing; it was trying to proclaim the heart of the Gospel to modern men. Even in this limited attempt, the delegates could not find one voice.

Other Helsinki delegates questioned whether such words as “sin,” “grace,” and “justification” should still be used to explain the Gospel, or whether these should be dropped and new definitive concepts adopted. Here we seem to come closer to what muted the voice of Lutheranism at Helsinki and reduced it to the position where it now issues a document—and a book—telling modern man what justification by faith means and at the same time explaining in effect, “We are not all agreed that this is the meaning that justification by faith has for the modern man of the twentieth century.”

If the Church of Christ cannot issue a statement telling its contemporaries how to be justified through faith and what it means to be so justified, and if it cannot declare that “sin” is the kind of reality from which a man can be “justified” through “grace,” then something is woefully wrong and the trumpet no longer sends out a certain sound.

The Neglected Treasure

Reports stemming from recent Christian Booksellers’ Conventions show that the Bible is still far and away the world’s best seller. Moreover, the circulation of religious literature in general is increasing, and even the largest book publishers have found a fertile field in Christian devotional material representing the conservative tradition.

Books about the Bible, devotional and theological works, must never supersede the devotional use of the Word of God itself. Even in some seminary circles one hears more about Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann than about the Bible.

The abiding attraction of the Bible as represented by the number of copies Americans buy each year contrasts ironically with the fact that biblical norms are so little practiced in government, in business and labor, in home and personal life. Surely no greater tragedy can befall a nation than that of paying homage to a book that is left unread, and giving lip service to a way of life that is not followed. For by this attitude men pass judgment upon the Book, and they will awaken to discover some day that the Book, in turn, has passed judgment upon them.

The dismaying discrepancy between Bible buying and Bible reading on the part of American people should be a call to repentance. At a time when the Bible cannot be used in public school devotions and when the gap between the Christian faith and the American state is widening, there is need for a greater use of the Bible by the individual.

If the American people would use with mind and heart the spiritual treasure their money has bought, our nation might experience a radical awakening.

Nobody Goes Scot Free

The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith has now learned from an interview of Roman Catholics that 61 per cent believe that Jews are “most responsible for crucifying Christ.” An earlier report showed 69 per cent of the Protestants interviewed gave the same answer. According to the study the Roman Catholic respondents “were inclined to attribute evil motives to the Jews for rejecting Christ as the Messiah.” All this, the league feels, creates an unnecessary anti-Semitism.

Is it perhaps also true that the very questions asked create an unnecessary anti-Semitism? Is not the question about who is “most responsible” itself prejudicial?

But the difficulty lies deeper. Too often such questions are asked on the presupposition of total Jewish innocence of the death of Christ, so that any answer from either a Protestant or a Catholic that implies (in any degree) Jewish involvement and guilt is labeled as anti-Semitic. When the league’s president, Dore Schary, says “the issue is in Christian hands,” he speaks only half of the truth. He says, “Jews will not pay the price of conversion.” But he should also recognize that Christians cannot concede their Christian faith to establish Jewish innocence. This is also a source of anti-Semitism, and it is not “in Christian hands.”

(Second in a Series on Satan)

We live in two worlds, two realms, God’s and Satan’s. Because of this we are daily confronted with two mysteries, the mystery of God in Christ and the mystery of iniquity. Out of these mysteries proceed truths of which every Christian should be aware. They lie at the heart of our problems, hopes, joys, fears—at the heart of victory or defeat.

We sing, “This Is My Father’s World,” and such it is, by creation. All around us we see the evidences of God’s glory, power, and wisdom. But at the moment this is also Satan’s world, by fraud, deceit, and usurpation.

The mystery of iniquity stems from the fact that Satan—spoken of in the Bible as “the prince of this world,” “the prince of the power of the air,” “the deceiver of the world,” and “the god of this world”—is unceasingly at work deceiving, lying, accusing, and tempting.

The mystery of God in Christ rests upon the fact that God has provided for all who believe in and accept his Son, victory over Satan, deliverance from sin, and a glorious eternity with him.

These two worlds, each operating within the realm of the other while at the same time the two are completely separate as to origin, work, and future, account for the mysteries by which we are constantly confronted.

They explain the antithesis between righteousness and sin, the former an attribute of God, the latter an attribute of Satan. Around us we see evidences of good and of evil, of spiritual light and spiritual darkness, and of the two realms of existence—spiritual life or spiritual death.

Our Lord’s parable of the sower speaks of the gospel message as the good seed, and tells how Satan either plucks the message from the hearer’s heart or deceives all whom he can by sowing tares in the midst of the wheat, thereby confusing an unbelieving world. Unconverted church members are an unending source of weakness to the visible Church and of strength to the enemy of souls.

Only as we recognize the existence of two worlds can we understand the difference between truth and error. God is truth and the source of all truth. Satan is the instigator of error and therefore of all evil that proceeds from error. Where-ever truth is preached and taught, the Devil immediately presents his counterfeit, error—and error can produce a thousand bypaths that lead to death and destruction.

How explain the antithesis of love and hate without admitting these two realms—that of God and that of Satan? God is love. This love is so perfect and complete that it takes in the whole world and goes to the utmost length in the gift of his Son. But Satan hates God and man, and whenever he can he implants in men’s hearts hate—hate for mankind and hate for what is good. Just as God is the epitome of love, Satan is the epitome of hate. This malignant power screams forth from the headlines of every newspaper.

The worlds of faith and unbelief are a part of the picture: God requires faith and the Devil inspires unbelief. The drama of Eden has never ceased, for as long as Satan’s realm exists he will foster unbelief. So, too, while God demands obedence, we find disobedience the accepted way of life for millions.

These two worlds are characterized by wisdom and foolishness. Christ, the power of God unto salvation, is the source of all true wisdom; but this wisdom is challenged at every turn by the satanic insinuation that the beginning of wisdom is not in the fear of the Lord but in man-devised philosophies, so much desired to make men wise but so deadly in their ultimate effect.

The heavens are spiritual and eternal; this world is material and temporary. God is the sovereign ruler of heaven while, for the time being, Satan dominates this world. The Apostle John tells us, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world is in the power of [or, “nests in the hand of”] the evil one” (1 John 5:19). Ignorance of this fact is man’s greatest danger.

Freedom and bondage are also characteristics of these two worlds. The Christian is free, for Christ has set him free. The unbeliever is bound by the countless chains of the enemy. Passions of the flesh, blindness of the mind, stubbornness of the heart are all links in the chains of Satan, and nothing less than divine intervention can set the prisoner free. Only those who have experienced the saving and freeing grace of God understand what this means: one moment bound, the next set free. One moment a prisoner of Satan’s realm, the next a citizen of the Kingdom.

Eternal destinies are involved. To believe otherwise is to deny the multiplied statements of Scripture. The Christian has eternal life; the unbeliever faces eternal separation from God. The Christian immediately acquires eternal life when he receives Christ; the unbeliever is already spiritually dead, and only a miracle (regeneration) can bring him to life. One of Satan’s most popular delusions is that there is no hell, but our Lord’s affirmations on the subject should be sufficient. Let no man deceive: hell is a place of eternal separation from God, so awful in its reality that fire and flames are used to describe it.

The two realms of which we speak involve forgiveness and judgment—forgiveness of sins for all who will accept God’s offer, certain judgment for all who refuse. Many emphasize God’s love while overlooking his judgment of sin. The Cross was more than a demonstration of God’s love: it was also overwhelming evidence of the awfulness of sin. One may attempt to take advantage of the grace of God only to find the necessity and certainty of God’s judgment—too late.

These two realms are peopled by two kinds of people, children of God and children of the Devil. The Apostle John writes: “By this it may be seen who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil; whoever does not do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10). Startling? It should be, for this is a far cry from much that is taught today.

One of these co-existing worlds is peopled by the redeemed, the other by the lost. That Satan denies this truth and camouflages his children no more changes the fact than do his other lies. He who is the father of lies would have you and me take refuge in his delusions. But God has not left himself without a witness: for you and me, for all who will believe, the Gospel is still the power of God unto salvation.

With eyes wide open to the nature of things—that there are two worlds, two realms, and that there is no excuse to stay in Satan’s world, Christians have the obligation to live as children of light, aware of the One who has redeemed and of the enemy who would damn. To do this is to be wise unto salvation.

Concerning Language And Truth

The New Hermeneutic, edited by James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb, Jr. (Harper & Row, 1964, 243 pp., $5), is reviewed by Samuel J. Mikolaski, professor of theology, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana.

The New Hermeneutic is Volume II of “New Frontiers in Theology,” a series composed of three volumes of discussions between Continental and American theologians. Volume I, The Later Heidegger and Theology, appeared in 1963, and Volume III, Theology as History, is in preparation. The present book results from a “Consultation on Hermeneutics” at Drew University.

James M. Robinson (Southern California School of Theology) introduces the essays with a long paper on “Hermeneutic Since Barth.” The key essays are the republished “Word of God and Hermeneutic” by Gerhard Ebeling (Zürich) and “The New Testament and the Hermeneutical Problem” by Ernst Fuchs (Marburg). American contributors to the discussion include John Dillenberger (San Francisco Theological Seminary), Robert W. Funk (Drew), Amos N. Wilder (Harvard), and John B. Cobb (Southern California School of Theology), and there is a final response from Professor Fuchs.

Because the opinions of Ebeling and Fuchs are an important extension and variation of Bultmann’s interpretative method, this book is a striking contribution to understanding between European and American theologians. Though Bultmann is profoundly influential in Europe and existentialist theology is an increasingly significant factor in this country, clarification of the precise meaning of its categories and internal shifts of opinion has been needed. To comment briefly on a many-sided book is difficult. I can speak only of a few salient features and ideas.

First, despite the profound anxiety with which scholars of many schools view the technique and results of demythologizing, it is well to see that Bultmann, Ebeling, and Fuchs have certain positive objectives in view. Europeans are enormously conditioned by interest in Luther. Ebeling’s creative reinterpretation of the Reformer does attempt to keep the Word central, though he indicts orthodox theology for making Scripture coextensive with the Word. One might reply that the content of Scripture is crucial to the conservative view, but still the primacy of Scripture to Ebeling in his own way is apparent. He bemoans the displacement of exegesis, for example, in the classical liberal era. The key-feature of his hermeneutic is that Scripture is Word in its proclamation. It is not the understanding of but through language that he pleads for. He refrains from answering why Scripture is unique for this; the event-character of the Word as the Word of God is decisive. Our task is that the text by the sermon become a hermeneutical aid in understanding present experience.

To this Fuchs adds that Christians must revert to interest in history (beyond kerygma) simply because the Gospels do in fact just that. In a significant reductio ad absurdum he asks Bultmann why we should not demythologize Jesus’ expectation of the future, if judgment is the way to understand the Son of Man doctrine. He clearly exhibits the ethical, “decisional” character of existentialist ontology. We speak not to inform or that others may understand, but because they do understand. The norm of preaching is morality—the interaction of the text with daily life—where the truth of the New Testament is experienced. He does claim the defense of one, and only one, Gospel (p. 237).

Robinson’s essay serves to introduce hermeneutic in its new way of usage, in contrast to the old hermeneutics. Despite the valiant attempt by extensive scholarly apparatus to show what hermeneutic means and ought to mean (as seen historically), the argument has an air of unreality about it. Is there an “original” sense of hermeneia? What are the “existentiality of existence” (p. 44), the “call of being” to which it is man’s nature to answer (p. 47), and the “uncorrupted language of being” (p. 49)? Is this theology quite so unique, and is it unique in the way alleged? To claim that the recognition of levels of meaning not only semantically but culturally, and between cultural modes and reality, is new, is to claim too much.

Surely the enormous output of exegetical material in Britain and America of the past eighty years has not been blind to these elements. What of James Denney and P. T. Forsyth, especially the latter’s attempt to interpret “blood” in Scripture? Ought we not to take account of Leonard Hodgson (who contributed to a symposium with Ebeling), Austin Farrer (who has written on Bultmann), H. D. Lewis, Ian Ramsay, and many others who are engaging the question of religion, reality, and language? Can anyone now write on hermeneutic without reference to the fundamental questions raised by James Barr? Is it really a fair assessment of the conservatives’ interest in biblical interpretation (which Ebeling warmly acknowledges) for Robinson to relegate their extensive work to a footnote (p. 15)? What of A. Berkley Michelsen’s Interpreting the Bible (Eerdmans)? Does not the hermeneutical question lie, analogously, at the base of many of the Socratic dialogues of Plato? What of the juxtaposition of Homer and Zenophanes, Aeschylus and Euripides, Protagoras and Plato. Augustine and the Gnostics, which Professor Bambrough of Cambridge has called attention to recently? Too much of the discussion ranges around a doctrine of being without an ontology, and a logic of decision without an epistemology. I have a feeling that John Dewey constructs a doctrine of being as action more consistently than theologians do. It would be helpful if, once for all, American existentialist theologians told us who it is that objectifies God, and what that unhappy phrase means specifically.

In my judgment, by far the best essay on the Continental perspective is the one by Professor Amos Wilder, who makes three trenchant criticisms: (1) the slighting of belief or content of faith; (2) the dehumanization of man to whose mind the appeal of truth must come; (3) the failure to grasp the meaning of the future for Christians who are not just individually responsible now but are socially adapted for the Kingdom of God to come. “The content of the kerygma as an object of faith is obscured and the New Testament teaching on belief is slighted. Man is asked to respond as a matter of the will alone; all that we associate with man’s reason and imagination is neglected.… Logos is divorced from truth and belief, and this is connected with the anthropological criterion used” (p. 209).

This book does not grapple with the parallel development and results of logical analysis in philosophy today. Logical analysis is particularly prevalent in Britain, where tackling theological issues by such methods is in full tilt, though advances in the philosophical faculties of this country, as these may bear on theology, are considerable. In particular this concerns the revelational function of language, its odd theological usage, and the consequent question of the empirical placing of theological statements. Throughout this book one senses a failure to say what it is that must relate to life, or what the content of faith is. In short, existentialism must engage the question of truth, not as an ephemeral whisp, but as the function of language. Do theological statements state or purport to state what is in fact the case? It is not enough to say as does Fuchs that love is self-guaranteeing (authenticating?). The question is, Is it true that God is love? Why should God be love any more than a sweet potato? If God is love, do we know this revelationally? In other words, does revelation have something to do with truth, and does truth have something to do with language?

SAMUEL J. MIKOLASKI

The Forms Of Nonviolence

Nonviolence: A Christian Interpretation, by William Robert Miller (Association, 1964, 380 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by John A. Petersen, pastor, North Haledon Christian Reformed Church, North Haledon, New Jersey.

The summer of 1964 has made us increasingly aware of the difficulty the Negro has in choosing between violence and nonviolence as a way of achieving his goal. This book, though it ranges over a much wider area than the tension between white and black Americans, can be of much value to all who desire a deeper understanding of the Negro’s problem of finding a way to the better life. It is an excellent guide to those principles and strategies for securing and exercising human rights that come under the general designation “nonviolent.”

The author, editor of the United Church Herald, was formerly the editor of Fellowship, a periodical dedicated to the promotion of nonviolence in all social relations. This book reveals how close this subject has been to Miller’s heart and how all-absorbing a scholarly pursuit it has been in his life. His aim in writing this volume is “to show how contemporary man, without embracing nonviolence as a way of life, can nevertheless make effective use of it as a method of solving social problems.”

Miller leads us through the definition of a number of terms by which we can understand the concept itself, terms drawn mainly from two religious traditions: Hinduism and Christianity. He asserts the superiority of the latter, particularly because of its emphasis upon “agapaic” love as that virtue which is the true motivation of nonviolence.

Basic to the development of a program of nonviolence is the distinction of its three forms: nonresistance, passive resistance, and active nonviolent resistance. The first may mean turning the other cheek, that by not resisting evil one may overcome it. The second is exemplified in such action as the walkout or the boycott, “the deliberate refusal to fulfill a role which the opponent depends upon the resister to perform.” The third is seen in the sit-in or “any form of action which tactically takes the offensive and moves into the problem area rather than withdrawing from it.” From this ascending scale there, is no escaping the problem of possible civil disobedience, the serious implications of which Miller does not lightly pass over.

Areas of application become wider as the book progresses. Miller deals with the place of nonviolence as at least an auxiliary arm in revolution and the establishing of a new government. He even dares to apply this by way of example to a hoped-for reconstituting of state governments in the South. From there he goes on to illustrate how nonviolence may be an alternative to nuclear war and a means of keeping the peace between disputing nations. Miller envisions a U. N. nonviolent task force that would with great moral courage insert itself between battling armies and constrain them to negotiate a peaceful settlement.

JOHN A. PETERSEN

New, But Second-Hand

The Russian Religious Renaissance of the Twentieth Century, by Nicolas Zernov (Harper & Row, 1963, 410 pp., $7), is reviewed by Georges Florovsky, professor of Eastern church history, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The phrase “Russian Religious Renaissance” was coined by the late Nicolas Berdyaev. In 1935 he published in the Russian magazine Put (“The Way”), of which he was the editor, an inspiring article under this title. The name denotes the many-sided movement of religious awakening that had exploded in certain circles of Russian society by the end of the last century and came to fruition in the subsequent decades. It was a significant and potent episode in the history of Russian culture, with manifold reflections and ramifications on various levels: personal conversions, philosophical search and theological speculations, renewal in art and literature, a new apprehension of moral and social issues. Indeed, it is an important and promising field for study. Dr. Zernov has therefore chosen a timely subject for his new book.

Unfortunately, he was neither able nor competent to cope with it. He is a journalist, not a scholar. In all his books he glides valiantly on the surface and never probes in the depth. He likes summary statements and sweeping generalizations. It may be entertaining—especially for the common reader who wants a book for easy reading. But this kind of presentation is misleading and very often only obscures the real issues. There is, of course, some valid and relevant material in the book, but it must be used with caution and discrimination. Zernov’s use of material is highly subjective and selective—or perhaps his knowledge of the field is incomplete.

What is missing in the book is, first of all, a right perspective. Zernov is not aware of the discordant variety of trends that he hurriedly summarizes under the vague concept of “conversion,” “rediscovery of,” or “return” to, “religion.” He does not notice that different people were rediscovering different “religions.” Nor is he duly cognizant of the erratic character of many trends. On page 324, he declares: “The Russian Renaissance gave to the Russian Church a number of great theologians and religious thinkers.” This statement may be true, but it needs qualification. The reader does not find in the book any adequate information on what these thinkers and theologians have actually contributed to the Church. He does find in the book some impressionistic and usually complimentary snapshots of certain personalities, but he gets almost nothing on their thoughts and ideas.

The weakest chapter is the eleventh: “The Divine Wisdom.” There are vague phrases here, but Zernov even does not attempt to describe the “theology of Sophia” as it has been elaborated, after Vladimir Solovyev, by Florensky and Bulgakov (and, in a drastically different form, by Berdyaev). In a rather naïve manner he traces this “Sophianic vision” back to the peculiarity of the Russian religious mind, and he does not take seriously its obvious dependence upon German mysticism (Jacob Boehme) and German idealistic philosophy (especially Schelling).

But even his portraits are utterly simplified. Father Paul Florensky, for instance, was undoubtedly an outstanding person. But three pages on him in Zernov’s book give no real impression of this great and erratic personality. Zernov does not mention, or probably does not know of, the impressive if rather biased portrait of Florensky by L. Sabaneeff that appeared in the Russian Review of October, 1961, and was recently published in English; in this the whole ambiguity of the person and also the ideology was persuasively emphasized. Nor does he use the informative Russian article on Florensky by E. Modestov in the magazine Mosty (“The Bridges”), published in Munich (Vol. II, 1959), in which one finds revealing data on the post-Revolutionary career of Florensky. Zernov’s portraits are essays in “complimentary iconography.” Again, in order to understand Berdyaev one has to turn to the excellent biography by Donald Lowrie, Rebellious Prophet (1960). There you meet a real man, with his striving and failures, with his problems and aspirations. The skeleton of Zernov’s books is very simple: Russian Intelligentsia was for a long time away from religion and then in the period of Renaissance came back to it. There is too little flesh and blood in the picture.

The major charge that must be brought forward is that Zernov has no understanding of the problematic character of the “Russian Renaissance.” It was indeed a mighty move and movement, but will its heritage stay? Or was it rather a side way, that had its historical justification and value but will hardly be followed in the future? One is compelled to ask this question: Is not the “Russian Religious Mind” itself under the judgment of the Universal Christian Tradition, rather than an independent religious value by itself? Zernov probably will decline this question. But the searching reader who is interested not only in the history of Russia but also in the problems of faith is bound to raise this question. What is the significance of the “Russian Religious Renaissance” in the perspective of the contemporary return to Scripture and tradition, to the eternal values of the divine revelation?

Zernov is described on the book jacket as a “world authority on Russian religious thought.” It is hardly true: he is simply a writer of popular books. Nor is his new book “a firsthand account of the important cultural movement.…” That is precisely what his book is not. It is a distinctively “second-hand book,” a compilation.

GEORGES FLOROVSKY

The Point At Issue

The Case for Calvinism, by Cornelius Van Til (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1964, 154 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by James Daane, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

With this book Cornelius Van Til responds to the trilogy published by Westminster Press in 1959: The Case for Orthodox Theology, by Edward John Carnell; The Case for Theology in Liberal Perspective, by L. Harold DeWolf; and The Case for a New Reformation Theology, by William Hordern. Van Til makes his case for Calvinism, convinced that the theological methods of Carnell, Hordern, and DeWolf are basically similar and essentially destructive of Christianity. Each, in varying degrees, allows man to retain a spirit of proud and sinful autonomy by permitting him to retain some knowledge, material or formal, by which he can evaluate and judge the revelation of God in Christ.

Van Til is kinder to and yet more critical of Carnell, his former student, amazed as he is at the mystery of Carnell’s erroneous adoption of a theological method that is “destructive of Christianity.”

To Van Til’s credit, he knows the importance of working with the proper theological method. He knows that a man’s theology is shaped by his methodology. He urges that Christian theology has its own distinctive presuppositions and method and that these are not brought to, but brought up out of, the Christian faith itself.

Van Til’s basic criticism of the three authors mentioned is that each works with a theological method informed by the presupposition that man possesses some bit of knowledge, a criterion of value, or a principle of logic (for example, the law of non-contradiction) that favorably relates him to, and enables him to judge, the revelation of God that comes in Christ. This, according to Van Til, is in principle to subscribe to a natural theology, which then permits one to dictate the terms and contents of God’s special revelation in Christ.

The truly biblical thinker for Van Til is the Calvinist who, if not always in fact yet by ideal definition, allows the Bible to set all the presuppositions concerning the human possibilities of knowing God.

The basic biblical presuppositions involved here, according to Van Til, are: God’s general revelation; man’s ethically sinful nature which rejects the knowledge of revelation; and the consequence that the sinner, epistemologically speaking, knows nothing.

Van Til makes a distinction which we must recognize if we are to understand his thought. He distinguishes between the “psychological” and the “epistemological” (cf. his Common Grace). Psychologically man possesses such knowledge of God as comes to him through general revelation, a revelation that constantly impinges upon his consciousness. But being ethically sinful, the sinner wholly rejects the truth of general revelation when as a thinking man he reflects on it. Consequently, epistemologically, the sinner has no knowledge of God (or of himself, or the world). The sinner’s whole-hearted rejection of revelation, in Van Til’s view, means the total loss of the knowledge it conveys.

On this distinction between “psychological” and “epistemological” rests Van Til’s basic criticism of DeWolf, Hordern, and Carnell. DeWolf, says Van Til, confuses Calvin’s teaching about God’s general revelation to man with man’s response to that revelation. In other words, DeWolf allows man’s response to retain some part of revelation. Similarly, Hordern is said to confuse Calvin’s doctrine of general revelation with “natural theology,” for Hordern believes that because of general revelation the sinner does have some knowledge of God. Again—and similarly—Van Til accuses Carnell of turning common grace into “natural theology,” i.e., of thinking that common grace enables sinful man to accept and retain some knowledge of God. This, according to Van Til, is the serious flaw in Carnell’s method (and in that of Hordern and DeWolf), a flaw that makes Carnell’s theology as destructive of Christianity as the liberal theology of DeWolf and the New Reformation theology of Hordern.

Carnell has been criticized by others for his understanding of the so-called “point of contact,” but two observations regarding Van Til’s criticism are in order. First, Calvin, as well as Reformed theologians generally, believed that common grace enables the unregenerate man to have and to hold some valid knowledge of God. For them God’s common grace, and the general operations of the Holy Spirit, meant that sinful men are restrained from wholly rejecting all knowledge of God. The classical representatives of Calvinistic thought did not—nor to my knowledge did any of the non-so-classical representatives—make Van Til’s peculiar distinction between the “psychological” and the “epistemological,” nor did they hold to the position he wishes to protect by this distinction. And it is significant that in all his allusions to Calvin and to Reformed Calvinistic creeds, Van Til does not once quote Calvin or these creeds to support his position, or to demonstrate that it is the position of “Calvinism.” His case for Calvinism rests on the force of his own pleadings, with no supportive evidence adduced from traditional Calvinistic thought. Contrary to Van Til’s claim, such thought held that common grace restrains sin and enables the sinner to possess greater virtue and a greater knowledge of God than his own sin would allow.

A second observation is in order. Even if we grant that sinful men reject the knowledge of God that impinges on their consciousness through general revelation, do they thereby lose all knowledge of what they reject? If they do, what does general revelation continue to reveal? Again, if they do, is sin then stronger than God’s revelation? And finally, what function does common grace serve, if sinners wholly lose that knowledge of God which they sinfully reject? It seems clear that non-recognition of what classical Calvinism has always seen as the achievement of common grace leads Van Til into the error of accusing Carnell of turning common grace into natural theology. Traditional Calvinism rejected natural theology; but it also acknowledged the truth of common grace and did not confuse this acknowledgment with a surrender to natural theology.

Van Til’s avowed acceptance of common grace and attempt to ward off its force by his distinction between the psychological and the epistemological not only raises more questions than it answers; it also makes his Calvinism unrecognizable and his case for it unconvincing. For it is not by traditional Calvinism but only by “another Calvinism” that Carnell’s theology can be judged as one that “requires the destruction of Christianity,” one that “would require him to create God in man’s image” and “would force him to the denial of God as the Creator of man,” and one that “requires the reduction of God’s electing love for sinners to a society of autonomous men.”

Van Til himself, however, does not escape what he calls the “autonomous man.” His purpose, he writes, is “to bring the challenge of the Gospel of Christ to modern man,” because Christianity is modern man’s only hope. “However,” he adds, “this cannot be shown to be true unless it be made evident that Christianity not only has its own methodology but also that only its methodology gives meaning to human life.” In making this “evident,” Van Til himself appeals to something in man to which the truth of Christianity will hopefully appear “evident.” And with this, Van Til’s “autonomous man” has returned.

JAMES DAANE

First-Fruits Of Vatican Ii

The Church’s Worship, by D. J. Crichton (G. Chapman, 1964, 246 pp., 10s. 6d. paper, 25s. cased), is reviewed by Angus W. Morrison, minister, St. Ninian’s Priory Church, Whithorn, Scotland, and Presbyterian observer at the Second Vatican Council.

The final votes on the “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy” were received with most un-liturgical applause by the Council Fathers: readers are now able to see an English text with a lively and appreciative commentary by the editor of Liturgy and are invited to add their own acclamations. “Since the Council of Trent we have, in the matter of liturgy, been living an unnatural liturgical life.… It cannot be said that reform is premature.” “The low Mass, and to some extent the High Mass, as we have known it, is a thing of the past.… Whenever the Mass is celebrated with the people present, it will be a communal activity in which all will have to take their several parts.” “One cannot but feel that even in baptism it would be a good thing to read the words of our Lord about this sacrament either before or during its administration.” “We have restored a balance that has long been wanting and by implication the purpose of the ministry of the word is seen to be the opening of the mind and heart of the participants so that they may fruitfully feed on Christ’s Body in Holy Communion.” “The Church makes it clear … that communion under one kind is but a disciplinary regulation and that there is no objection in principle to communion under both kinds.” The way is open for a great pulling down of mental and physical shutters that have long darkened the worship of the churches of the Roman communion. If our interest and applause can hasten this work, then we certainly should not begrudge them.

Yet this new vision will show us more sharply than ever that it is in the field of worship that the disunity of Christians reveals itself most to the light of day. While we share in the theology and thrill of the “paschal progress,” the whole import of the history of salvation, the journey of Christ, we are far from agreed on the manner of the continuing presence of the Lord in his Church and in the worship of the people. Is the liturgy of the Church in glory the same as that of the Church on the way? Is the mystery of “Emmanuel—God-with-us” the same as the Church’s call in mysterio “Maranatha—The Lord is coming”? The former promotes the latter, but the latter does not continue the former—this is the nice degree of distinction into which your reviewer is led by Father Crichton in his opening exposition of the theology of the constitution; and it is a distinction that must be tested to show if it belongs more to logic than to God.

The book is primarily a lead toward an intelligent and vigorous application of the council constitution in England; but indirectly it signals new beginnings for interchurch dialogue. It could also remind Protestantism to reassess the “active and conscious participation” of its own congregations, and inspire the council to include experimental versions of the Mass in Western vernaculars even in this next session.

ANGUS W. MORRISON

On The Rugged Frontiers

Men of God, by H. H. Rowley (Nelson, 1963, 306 pp., $8.50), is reviewed by J. Hardee Kennedy, dean, School of Theology, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana.

With the publication of Men of God, students of the Old Testament must acknowledge increased indebtedness to Dr. H. H. Rowley, emeritus professor of Hebrew language and literature at the University of Manchester. The materials are not new, for the eight lectures making up the book were originally delivered in the John Rylands Library and appeared subsequently in the Bulletin of the library. Reissued now in an attractive single volume, they are given the prospect of an appreciably larger circulation.

Each lecture is concerned with a particular aspect of the life or work of a major Old Testament personage. Chapter titles suggest the segments of study: Moses and the Decalogue, Elijah on Mount Carmel, The Marriage of Hosea, Hezekiah’s Reform and Rebellion, The Early Prophecies of Jeremiah in Their Setting, The Book of Ezekiel in Modern Study, Nehemiah’s Mission and Its Background, Sanballat and the Samaritan Temple.

A rare combination of reverence and critical acumen marks this forthright approach to troublesome problems in serious study of the Old Testament. In a manner characteristic of his prodigious literary work, the author chooses knotty problems and live issues in current historical research and textual analysis. This he does with an unmistakable perspective of sturdy faith in the basic importance and revelational nature of the biblical materials under scrutiny.

Noteworthy also is the superior skill with which Rowley carries out a dual mission in communication with specialist and non-specialist readers. Since each study is relatively brief, self-contained, and free of technical language, the student having little specialized training is enabled to appreciate the present position of scholarship on many thorny questions in Old Testament study. At the same time, the exacting standards of the specialist are satisfied. The text is marked by cogent argument and the use of scholarly resources and includes extensive footnotes directing the researcher to a wide range of literature and viewpoints. Indices of subjects, authors, and biblical texts provide a useful supplement.

Incisive observations, widely scattered and axiom-like, are a third notable feature. For example: “For religion every age is an age of peril. Sometimes it lies in the tendency to decay from within and sometimes in attacks from without” (p. 37). “But history rarely goes along the lines laid down by the planners, because so many factors other than reason go into its making” (p. 276).

The author’s well-known advocacy of the Kenite hypothesis is sharply articulated in the treatment of Moses’s relation to the Decalogue, but his failure to cite the alternatives is unfortunate. Elsewhere the prevailing method is “a brief summary of the problem and of the solutions” (p. 228). Repetition is natural, even inevitable, in the works of so prolific a writer (e.g., pp. 17, 228); but in the present volume restatement is discreetly pertinent and succinct, and it neither bores nor distracts. The final chapter is inappropriately titled “Sanballat and the Samaritan Temple.” This investigation is actually an extension of the preceding chapter and is concerned principally with the relation of Nehemiah to the establishment of the Temple.

Men of God is a work of extraordinary scholarship that boldly probes frontiers at difficult points. The strongly reasoned contention that the religion of Yahwism had some form of Decalogue as far back as it may be traced, and that nothing less than the person of Moses and the occasion of the covenant could account for the Ethical Decalogue, is not easily challenged. Against the chaotic state of criticism. Rowley adduces formidable evidence for the essential unity of the Book of Ezekiel and for a Babylonian ministry of the prophet immediately before and after the fall of Jerusalem, thus concurring with Muilenburg, Ellison, and others in returning to the critical position of half a century ago. Appeal to the Elephantine papyri for comparative dates in the Persian period yields a cogent argument for reversal of the traditional Ezra-Nehemiah sequence and clarification of biblical notices on Nehemiah’s mission, but the results must be viewed as probability and not proof.

J. HARDEE KENNEDY

A Mennonite Challenge

The Christian Witness to the State, by John Howard Yoder (Faith and Life, 1964, 90 pp., $1.50), is reviewed by William A. Mueller, professor of church history, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana.

In this book, written with clarity and with great perception of the problem, Professor Yoder presents a fresh Mennonite view of the church-and-state issue. The perennial question of the pacifist on the harmonizing of force and non-resistance is answered in depth, with the biblical witness always clearly in view. Reinhold Niebuhr, with whom the author has grappled in utmost seriousness, holds that the Mennonite type of pacifism has validity only as a symbolic reminder to all Christians of the absolute demand of the Gospel. Is this position then irrelevant, since Mennonites do not claim to determine the policy of the state? Yoder denies this emphatically. Christ is even now Lord of all men. The state as an order of preservation and providence against rampant evil safeguards the existence of the Church. In fact, the very meaning of history—“and therefore the significance of the state—lies in the creation and the work of the church” (p. 13). The true Christian believer ought to have a constant concern for the highest welfare of his nation and for the statesmen that control its destiny.

How does the Christian witness to the state express itself concretely? Yoder answers: (1) by the Church’s own obedience to Christ’s “standard of discipleship” (p. 16); (2) by a constant acknowledgment of Christ’s Lordship in Christian decision-making; (3) by creative imagination within the Christian community; (4) by work toward specific goals. Through pastoral counsel, constructive social criticism, warnings to the state against overreaching itself, and, on the part of believers, wariness of utopianism, the Church, whether pacifist or non-pacifist, may fulfill her witness towards the state.

The analysis of the traditional Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed views of church-state relations is worth pondering. But Yoder holds that “all of the positions analyzed thus far, conservative or liberal, old or new, pacifist or not, have one thing in common. They speak of the moral problem of an entire society without considering faith as a decisive dimension” (p. 68). Nor does Yoder agree with those who demand that the Christian must have a clearly defined theory about the state before he can validly act and bear his witness. Mennonites, on the other hand, are summoned to a new creative interaction, under Christ’s absolute Lordship, with the best interests of the state.

WILLIAM A. MUELLER

Book Briefs

The Face on the Cutting Room Floor: The Story of Movie and Television Censorship, by Murray Schumach (William Morrow, 1964, 304 pp., §6.95). How movie and television censorship operates in a maze of all kinds of pressures and counterpressures; told with more sensationalism than moral concern.

The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, by Guenter Lewy (McGraw-Hill, 1964, 416 pp., $7.50). The author researches the controversial matter of the role the Roman Catholic Church played, or failed to play, in Hitlerian Germany.

A. W. Tozer: A Twentieth Century Prophet, by David J. Fant, Jr. (Christian Publications, 1964, 180 pp., $3.50).

Priest and Worker: The Autobiography of Henri Perrin, translated by Bernard Wall (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, 247 pp., $4.95). The story of the priest-worker kind of missionary effort that developed after World War II and was suppressed by Rome in 1954. Material is gathered from the notes and letters of the late Frenchman, Father Henri Perrin.

Daniel: Dialogues on Realization, by Martin Buber, translated by Maurice Friedman (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, 147 pp., §4). First published in 1913, Buber’s Daniel now in translation throws light on a transition stage in Buber’s movement toward a philosophy of dialogue. For students only.

An Introduction to the Apocryphal Books of the Old and New Testament, by H. T. Andrews, revised and edited by Charles F. Pfeiffer (Baker, 1964, 141 pp., §2.95). Written sixty years ago but revised and brought up to date. A good readable introduction.

The Celebration of the Gospel: A Study in Christian Worship, by H. Grady Hardin, Joseph D. Quillian, Jr., and James F. White (Abingdon, 1964, 192 pp., §3.25). A thoughtful and profitable discussion of Christian worship as seen within the context of the whole Gospel.

Black Man’s America, by Simeon Booker (Prentice-Hall, 1964, 230 pp., $4.95). A Negro reporter in outspoken, hard-hitting language tells the story of the bitterness, politics, resentment, and hopes that are the civil rights revolution.

Plain Talk about Christian Words, by Manford George Gutzke (Royal Publishers, 1964, 222 pp., $3.95). Extended definition and study of nine basic biblical words.

The Theology of Marriage: The Historical Development of Christian Attitudes Toward Sex and Sanctity in Marriage, by Joseph E. Kerns, S. J. (Sheed & Ward, 1964, 302 pp., §6). A Roman Catholic view on what happens to a man and his spiritual life when he marries.

The John Birch Society: Anatomy of a Protest, by J. Allen Broyles (Beacon, 1964, 169 pp., $4.50). A New England Methodist minister presents a documented critical analysis of the history, personnel, goals, and methods of the John Birch Society.

The Apostolic Fathers, Vol. I, by Robert M. Grant (Nelson, 1964, 193 pp., §4). An introduction to the Apostolic Fathers and to many commentaries on their writings.

In the Rustling Grass, by Herbert F. Brokering and Sister Noemi (Augsburg, 1964, 64 pp., §3.50). A Lutheran clergyman and a Benedictine nun combine words and photographs to convey, rather uniquely, the story of the life of Christ.

Paperbacks

What Was Bugging Ol’ Pharaoh?, by Charles M. Schulz (Warner, 1964, 64 pp., §1). The creator of “Peanuts” carries on his unique ministry in these cartoons dealing with teen-age utterances such as “Somehow, singing choruses around an electric barbecue never seems to do much for me!” Minister and parents: please note.

The Boy Who Ran Away: The Parable of the Prodigal Son, by Irene Elmer; Eight Bags of Gold, by Janice Kramer; The Good Samaritan: The Story of the Good Neighbor, by Janice Kramer; The Rich Tool: A Parable of a Man and His Treasures, by Janice Kramer, all illustrated by Sally Mathews; The Great Surprise: The Story of Zacchaeus, by Mary Warren, illustrated by Betty Wind (Concordia, 1964, 32 pp., $.35 each). Well-written stories for children in a very attractive format.

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold, by C. S. Lewis (Eerdmans, 1964, 313 pp., $1.95). A significant but hard-to-categorize novel by the late C. S. Lewis. First published in 1956.

The Holy Bible (World, 1964, 1100 pp., $1.95). The Revised Standard Version in a quality paperback.

The Word on the Air, edited by Girault M. Jones (Seabury, 1964, 158 pp., $1.95). Twenty-six Episcopal radio sermons.

What’s Lutheran in Education?, by Allan Hart Jahsmann (Concordia, 1964, 185 pp., $2.25). Explorations into the principles and practices of Lutheran education.

The Responsible Church and the Foreign Mission, by Peter Beyerhaus and Henry Lefever (World Dominion Press, 1964, 199 pp., 10s. 6d.). An English presentation (not translation) of Beyerhaus’s German study by the same title. An important contribution to missionary thinking.

Phantastes and Lilith, by George MacDonald (Eerdmans, 1964, 420 pp., $2.45). Two fine novels by George MacDonald. W. H. Auden says of Lilith that it is equal to anything of Poe. C. S. Lewis said his reading of Phantastes was like crossing a frontier.

The Story of Theology, by R. A. Finlayson (Inter-Varsity, 1963, 55 pp., $1.25). Historical studies on some basic themes of Christian truth.

A Christian View of Modern Science, by Robert L. Reymond (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1964, 30 pp., $.60). A view of science in the perspective of C. Van Til, H. Dooyeweerd, and D. H. Vollenhoven.

Studies in Genesis One, by Edward J. Young (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1964, 105 pp., $1.50). Three articles on the first two chapters of Genesis that appeared in the Westminster Theological Journal.

A Man Called Peter, by Catherine Marshall (Fawcett Publications, 1964, 351 pp., $.75). First time in paperback.

Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, by Karl Barth (Doubleday, 1964, 184 pp., $1.25).

The Principle of Protestantism, by Philip Schaff (United Church Press, 1964, 268 pp., $4.50). Volume I of the “Lancaster Series on the Mercersburg Theology,” edited by Bard Thompson and George H. Bricker.

Christianity Today once more announces titles of religious books to be published this fall and winter. The purpose of this semiannual forecast is to alert our readers to what is coming in religious literature.

If the titles selected are truly representative, this forecast may open a window into what is going on in the thinking of the Church. The titles listed reveal a continuing concern about ethical problems, both personal and social. They also reflect increasing interest in the Protestant-Roman Catholic “getting to know you” movement.

In the realm of theological writing the outlook is less reassuring. Here, with some happy exceptions, solid works are few. During the years between the world wars, theological studies exploded. While the world was at peace, scholars labored and brought forth new theologies. A whole group of theologians of unusual stature and influence appeared. Barth, Brunner, Thurneysen, Tillich, Niebuhr, Bultmann, and others stood large on the horizon. But all are creeping toward fourscore years, and time is silencing their pens. The problems they raised are for the most part still with us, and no group of comparable theological stature has arisen to take their place. The galaxy of retiring theologians has left us with that knotty problem which now occupies the center of theological concern: in what sense are God’s redemptive realities present in our time and history? The list of new titles indicates that some evangelicals are addressing themselves to this problem. May their number increase.

NEW TESTAMENT: Abingdon will publish The Corinthian Church—A Biblical Approach to Urban Culture by William Baird; Baker, The Holy Spirit in the New Testament by Henry Barclay Swete; Fortress, The Theology of St. Paul by D. E. H. Whiteley; Harper & Row, Jesus and the Kingdom by George Ladd and Paul by Richard Longnecker; Helicon, Baptism in the New Testament by J. Delorme and others; Inter-Varsity, The Gospels and Acts by Donald Guthrie; Nelson, Jesus, Paul and Judaism by Leonhard Goppelt; Oxford, New Testament Detection by W. Gordon Robinson; Westminster, The Use of Analogy in the Letters of Paul by Oscar Cullmann; and Yale, The Composition and Order of the Fourth Gospel: Bultmann’s Literaiy Theory by Dwight M. Smith, Jr.

OLD TESTAMENT: Fortress will present From the Exile to Christ by Werner Foerster; Harper & Row, All the Kingdoms of the Earth by Norman Gottwald; Lippincott, The Old Testament by Robert Davidson; Prentice-Hall, The Living Story of the Old Testament by Walter Russell Bowie; and Westminster, The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic by D. S. Russell.

THEOLOGY: Daughters of St. Paul will be coming out with The Creed of a Catholic by Winifred Hurley; Eerdmans, The Work of Christ by G. C. Berkouwer, Easter Faith and History by Daniel P. Fuller, and The Cross in the New Testament by Leon Morris; Fortress, The Scope of Grace by Philip J. Hefner; Helicon, Power and Poverty in the Church by Yves Congar, O. P.; Herder, Man and Wife in Scripture by Pierre Grelot and Word and Revelation by Hans Urs von Balthasar; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Ultimate Questions: An Anthology of Modern Russian Religious Thought by Alexander Schmemann; John Knox, The Systematic Theology of Paul Tillich: A Review and Analysis by Alexander J. McKelway; Lippincott, The Christian Faith by F. W. Dillistone; McGraw-Hill, Summa Theologiae (Vols. III, IV, VI, XXII) by St. Thomas Aquinas, edited by Thomas Gilby, O. P., P. K. Meagher, O. P., and T. C. O’Brien, O. P.; New American Library, Divine Grace and Man by Peter Fransen and The Meaning and End of Religion by Wilfred Cantwell Smith; Scribner’s, Schleiermacher on Christ and Religion: A New Introduction by Richard R. Niebuhr; Westminster, The Omnipotence of God by Howard A. Redmond; and Zondervan, Vital Heart of Christianity by Merrill C. Tenney and Our Lord’s Resurrection by W. J. Sparrow-Simpson.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION: Daughters of St. Paul will put out Discipline Concepts in Education by Anthony M. Brown; Helicon, Theology and the University edited by John Coulsen; Judson, Learning to Worship by Edna M. Baxter; Revell, As Matthew Saw the Master by William P. Barker; Westminster, The Local Church in Transition: Theology, Education and Ministry by Gerald H. Slusser; and Zondervan, I Was a Mormon by Einar Anderson and The Kingdom of the Cults by W. R. Martin.

ART AND ARCHITECTURE: From Abingdon will come Hymns Today and Tomorrow by Erik Routley; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, The New Churches of Europe by G. E. Kidder-Smith; New American Library, The Romance of Leonardo Da Vinci by Dimitri Merejkowski; W. W. Norton, The Temple and the House by Lord Raglan; Oxford, Protestant Worship and Church Architecture: Theological and Historical Considerations by James F. White; and Pantheon, The Art and Thought of Michelangelo by C. de Tolnay.

ETHICAL AND SOCIAL STUDIES: Abingdon will print Portrait of the Church—Warts and All by Benjamin Garrison and The Pulpit Speaks on Race by Alfred T. Davies; Association, The Freedom Revolution and the Churches by Robert W. Spike; Baker, Of Sex and Saints by Donald F. Tweedie; Beacon, Women and Religion by Margaret Brackenbury Crook; Broadman, Crises in Morality by C. W. Scudder and The Church’s Ministry in Mental Retardation by Harold W. Stubblefield; Devin-Adair, Never Say Nigger!: The Experiences of a White Teacher in a Black School by Robert Kendall; Eerdmans, Principles of Conduct: Aspects of Biblical Ethics by John Murray; Harper & Row, Christian Sex Ethics by V. A. Demant; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Baal, Christ, and Mohammed: Religion and Revolution in North Africa by John K. Cooley and Protestant Concepts of Church and State by Thomas G. Sanders; John Knox, The Right to Silence: Privileged Communication and the Pastor by William H. Tiemann; McGraw-Hill, The Cry of the Russian Evangelicals by J. C. Pollock; Nelson, Religion Can Conquer Communism by O. K. and Marjorie Armstrong; New American Library, The PuritanHeritage: American’s Roots in the Bible by Joseph Gaer and Ben Siegel, Dr. Tom Dooley, My Story, and What Modern Catholics Think About Birth Control: A New Symposium edited by William Birmingham; United Church Press, FOR—The Open Door by Allen Hackett; Westminster, The Meaning of Christian Values Today by William L. Bradley and Society and Love: Ethical Problems of Family Life by Roger Mehl; and Zondervan, Encyclopedia of Counseling Terms by Clyde M. Narramore.

DEVOTIONAL: Baker will be coming out with Devotions and Prayers by Richard Baxter and Morning and Evening: Devotions from the Bible by C. H. Spurgeon; Broadman, Conquering Inner Space by John Warren Steen; Eerdmans, The Gospel of Our Sufferings by Sören Kierkegaard; Fortress, Last Things First by E. Gordon Rupp; Herder and Herder, The Epistle to the Romans: Theological Meditations by Karl Hermann Schelkle, S. J.; Revell, There’s Always Hope by Robert V. Ozment; and Zondervan, Then and There by V. Raymond Edman.

APOLOGETICS, PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE: Harcourt, Brace & World will publish Three Essays: Leonardo, Descartes, Max Weber by Karl Jaspers and Newman’s Apologia: A Classic Reconsidered edited by Vincent F. Blehl, S. J., and Francis X. Connolly; Harper & Row, The Future of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, This People Israel: The Meaning of Jewish Existence by Leo Baeck, Catholicism: Religion of Tomorrow? by Henri Fesquet, From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought by Karl Löwith, Varieties of Unbelief by Martin E. Marty, and Philosophical Interrogations edited by Sydney and Beatrice Rome; David McKay, Acts of Darkness by J. A. Cuddon; New American Library of World Literature, A Guide to St. Thomas Aquinas by Joseph Pieper and The Essential Augustine by Vernon J. Bourke; Pantheon, Beyond Theology by Alan Watts and Existence and Existent (a reissue) by Jacques Maritain; Regnery, A Contemporary Philosophy of Religion by James A. Overholser; Seabury, Teilhard de Chardin: Pilgrim of the Future edited by Neville Braybrooke, Canterbury Essays and Addresses by Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and The Day Is at Hand by Arthur Lichtenberger; Sheed & Ward, The Search for God by Robert W. Gleason, S.J.; University of Chicago, The Works of Sir Thomas Browne edited by Geoffrey Keynes; and Van Nostrand, Ethics and Science by Henry Margenau.

ARCHAEOLOGY: Abingdon will offer Archaeology in Biblical Research by Walter G. Williams; Association, Archaeology of the New Testament by R. K. Harrison; Eerdmans, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A College Textbook and a Study Guide by Menaham Mansoor; Regnery, The Theology of Jewish Christianity by Jean Danielou, S.J.; and University of Chicago, Signs and Wonder Upon Pharaoh by John A. Wilson.

PASTORAL THEOLOGY: Abingdon will be publishing A Psychiatrist Looks at Religion and Health by James A. Knight; Association, Love and Sexuality by Robert Grimm; Baker, Parson to Parson by Adolph Bedsole; Concordia, Toward a More Excellent Ministry by Richard R. Caemmerer and Alfred O. Fuerbringer; Doubleday, The Road to Salvation by Theodor Bovet; Harper & Row, The Heart of Man by Erich Fromm and Suicide and the Soul by James Hillman; Helicon, Contraception and Catholics: A New Appraisal by Louis Dupre; Herder and Herder, Existential Psychology From Analysis to Synthesis by Igor A. Caruso; Judson, The Campus Ministry by George L. Earnshaw; John Knox, To Resist or To Surrender? by Paul Tournier; Prentice-Hall, Preaching and Pastoral Care by Arthur L. Teikmanis; Revell, A Minister’s Obstacles by Ralph G. Turnbull; Sheed & Ward, Paul on Preaching by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, O. P.; Van Nostrand, Best Sermons (Vol. IX) by G. Paul Butler; and Westminster, The Dynamics of Forgiveness by James F. Emerson, Jr., and Suffering, A Christian Understanding by Merrill Proudfoot.

BIBLE COMMENTARIES AND DICTIONARIES: Baker will print Colossians and Philemon by William Hendriksen and The Acts of the Apostles by Richard B. Rackham; Eerdmans, The Johannine Epistles by John R. W. Stott and Open Letter to Evangelicals: A Devotional and Homiletic Commentary on the First Epistle of St. John by R. E. O. White; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Conversation with the Bible by Markus Barth; Inter-Varsity, Proverbs by Derek Kidner; John Knox, Deuteronomy, Joshua by Edward P. Blair, I and II Kings, I and II Chronicles by Robert C. Dentan, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon by J. Coert Rylaarsdam, and Isaiah by G. Ernest Wright (with the appearance of these the twenty-five-volume set of “The Layman’s Bible Commentary” will be complete); and Westminster, Bible Encyclopedia for Children by Cecil Northcott.

BIBLICAL STUDIES: Abingdon will present Crisis and Response by Roy Lee Honeycutt, Jr.; Cambridge, The Temple and theCommunity in Qumran and the New Testament by Bertil Gartner; Doubleday, The Ten Commandments for Today by Robert I. Kahn; Eerdmans, Free Before God: The Ten Commandments—A Study of Basic Biblical Themes by Ronald S. Wallace; Fortress, Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel by H. Wheeler Robinson and The Sacrifice of Christ by C. F. D. Moule; Harper & Row, Harper Study Bible edited by Harold Lindsell; Helicon, Dogmatic vs. Biblical Theology edited by Herbert Vorgrimler; Loizeaux, The Book of the Revelation by Lehman Strauss; Oxford, From the Apostles’ Faith to the Apostles’ Creed by O. Sydney Barr; Scribner’s, The Ancient Way: Life and Landmarks of the Holy Land by J. Franklin Ewing, S. J.; and Zondervan, From Prison in Rome by E. M. Blaiklock and Expository Sermons on Revelation (No. 3) by W. A. Criswell.

CHURCH HISTORY: Abingdon will publish Rebels with a Cause by Frank S. Mead; Augsburg, The United Evangelical Lutheran Church by John M. Jensen; Bethany, The Church and Its Culture: A History of the Church in Changing Cultures by Richard M. Pope; Eerdmans, Light in the North: The Story of the Scottish Covenanters by J. D. Douglas and God’s Word into English (revised) by Dewey M. Beegle; Fortress, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic, Biblical Christ by Martin Kähler and Pia Desideria by Philipp Jacob Spener; Harper & Row, The Horizon History of Christianity by Roland H. Bainton, Southern White Protestantism by Kenneth K. Bailey, Church Crises and Church Councils by Jean Guitton, Men Who Shaped the Western Church by Hans von Campenhausen, and The Reformation by Hans Hillerbrand; Helicon, Catholics in Colonial America by Msgr. John Tracy Ellis and Vatican II: Last of the Councils by Rock Caporale, S. J.; Herder and Herder, John XXIII: A Documentation of His Life and Work by the editors of Herder, and World Protestantism by Willem Hendrik van de Pol; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, The Chair of Peter: A History of the Papacy by Friedrich Gontard; Judson, Baptists in New Jersey by Norman H. Maring; McGraw-Hill, The First Six Hundred Years by Jean Danielou and Henri Irenee Marrou (Vol. I of “The Christian Centuries: A New History of the Catholic Church”); Nelson, Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman (Vol. XV) edited by Vincent Blehl and C. S. Dessain; Princeton, Christianity and History by E. Harris Harbison, George of Bohemia, King of Heretics by Frederick G. Heymann, and The Two Kingdoms: Ecclesiology in Carolingian Political Thought by Karl F. Morrison; Westminster, A New Testament History: The Story of the Emerging Church by Floyd V. Filson; and Yale, England’s Earliest Protestants, 1520–1535 by William A. Clebsch.

ECUMENICS: Beacon will issue From Jesus to Christianity by Morton E. Enslin; Eerdmans, The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism by G. C. Berkouwer; Fortress, Roman and Evangelical by Per Erik Persson; Harper & Row, Unity and Freedom by Augustin Cardinal Bea and Obedient Rebels by Jaroslav Pelikan; Herder and Herder, Unity Through Love by Jean Guitton; Nelson, Justification by Hans Küng; Prentice-Hall, Ecumenics: The Science of the Church Universal by John A. MacKay; Seabury, Protestant Churches and Reform Today edited by William J. Wolf; United Church Press, Vatican Diary 1962—A Protestant Observes the First Session of Vatican Council II and Vatican Diary 1963—A Protestant Observes the Second Session of Vatican Council II, both by Douglas Horton; Westminster, Two Biblical Faiths: Protestant and Catholic by Franz J. Leenhardt; and Holt, Rinehart and Winston, one that defies categorizing, A Pope Laughs: Stories of John XXIII collected by Kurt Klinger.

MISSIONS: Abingdon will offer Our Christian Hope by Georgia Harkness; Baker, Talking About Jesus With a Jewish Neighbor by Albert Huisjen; Broadman, To Change the World by Ross Coggins; Harper & Row, Christianity in the Computer Age by A. Q. Morton and James McLeman and Crucial Issues in Church Growth Today by Donald McGavran; McGraw-Hill, With God in Russia by Walter J. Ciszek, S. J., and Daniel L. Flaherty, S. J.; Revell, The Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert E. Coleman; and Zondervan, Each One Teach One and Win One for Christ by Frank C. Laubach.

SERMONS: Abingdon will issue How Jesus Helped People by Alan Walker; Baker, Christmas Messages by Leslie B. Flynn, Prelude to the Cross by Paul T. Fryhling, Resurrection Messages by John M. Gordon, The Word of the Lord for Special Days by J. Ralph Grant, and Grace Triumphant by C. H. Spurgeon; Broadman, Preaching from John’s Gospel by Kyle M. Yates and Day of Resurrection by Leslie B. Flynn; Harper & Row, The Showing Forth of Christ by John Donne; Nelson, The Christian Year (Vol. I) by George W. Forell; Revell, Why Not Just Be Christians? by Vance Havner; and Zondervan, Simple Sermons for Time and Eternity by W. H. Ford, Bible Men of Prayer by E. M. Bounds, and Life by the Spirit by A. Skevington Wood.

The influence of Bultmann has become so blunted that European seminaries once known as “Bultmann centers”—Tübingen, Zürich, Marburg, Mainz—no longer fit this designation. This is all the more true in such “secondary strongholds” of Bultmannism as Heidelberg and Bonn. Even Marburg, where Bultmann now lives in retirement, is hardly a secure fortress of his views. Kümmel, since 1951 Bultmann’s successor at Marburg, is a vocal critic of his master. And Fuchs’s arrival in 1960 brought in a post-Bultmannian champion, one whose lectures are heard by two-thirds of Marburg’s 300 theological students. Colorful in personality and strongly polemic, Fuchs with his dark sayings, vivid illustrations, and prophetic note readily captures student interest. Walter Schmithals, another Bultmann disciple, also broadly retains his former teacher’s perspective at Marburg.

In Tübingen, Ernst Käsemann draws 500 of the 700 divinity students to the university’s largest lecture hall, a following two times as large as that which Barth enjoyed in his prime at Basel, with its enrollment of about 300. But this turnout represents as much an interest in Käsemann’s tart phrasing and mocking of other positions (“the pietists want proof in their pockets”) as it does an actual Bultmannian commitment. While Käsemann’s hostility to the Fuchs-Ebeling existential setting of the hermeneutical problem convinces quite a few, most students remain committed to the Fuchs-Ebeling perspective. In either case, the temper is Bultmannian. At Tübingen also is Hans Rückert, the repentant Nazi church historian, who is friendly to Bultmannism and respected by Bultmann scholars. Both Otto Michel in New Testament and Adolf Köberle in systematic theology give important representation to conservative theology. But their following is larger in the older generation than among today’s students, who expect more show and scrap in the classroom.

Next to Marburg, Bultmannians consider the Zürich influence most important because of the scholarly work of Gerhard Ebeling, who, like Käsemann of Tübingen, gives more scope than Bultmann to the historical Jesus. In Mainz, Braun and Mezger register their impact somewhat to Bultmann’s left, while Wolfhardt Pannenberg is a forthright opponent of Bultmann’s theology. Philipp Vielhauer carries forward the Bultmannian view in Bonn, where no successor has yet been named to Erich Dinkler, another Bultmannian now at Heidelberg.

Gerhard von Rad is currently the drawing card at Heidelberg. Most students feel they ought not to miss this “exciting Old Testament voice” along the way, and Von Rad gets a hearing from at least half the 700 students. Von Rad is sometimes called “the Bultmann of the Old Testament,” a designation encouraged by his break with the old Erlangen understanding of Heilsgeschichte in the interest of a “history of traditions of revelation” approach. In Von Rad’s scheme, the Old Testament becomes a collation of theologically significant existential confessions of faith, but historical foundations remain in doubt. Yet it is noteworthy that the critical struggle characterizing New Testament theology, torn as it is between competing emphases on the historical Jesus and on Docetic tendencies, does not pervade Old Testament studies.

With an eye on the efforts of Von Rad and others—Ulrich Alt of Leipzig, Walter Zimmerli of Göttingen, and Hans Kraus of Hamburg—the Göttingen theologian, Otto Weber, observes: “All the things that New Testament theology could also have rediscovered (history, the covenant, the event of the Word) have been found in Old Testament theology.” Although no single theological influence predominates at Heidelberg, Bultmannian theology has become influential through the presence of Erich Dinkler and Günther Bornkamm, who retain Bultmann’s methodological premises yet deviate to stress knowledge of the historical Jesus. Karl Kuhn likewise has Bultmannian sympathies, but as a Qumran specialist he thinks Bultmann exaggerates the supposed Gnostic influence on the New Testament. Thus he stresses the late Jewish background more along the line of Jeremias of Göttingen. But other Heidelberg scholars are also well received. Both Peter Brunner and Edmund Schlink have long exerted strong influence for the Barthian stream of dialectical theology, although their interest is shifting increasingly in the direction of ecumenical theology.

The mood in Erlangen, where there are 320 students, has much less in common with Bultmann than with Barth and Brunner. Its dominant interest in Brunner probably comes from Paul Althaus’s emphasis on general revelation and on law as distinct from Gospel.

Göttingen has never been dominated by the influence of Bultmann. Of the 300 students, Hans Conzelmann and Joachim Jeremias each draw about 200 to their lectures, where Conzelmann promotes the Bultmannian line but Jeremias rejects it. Reformed theologian Otto Weber outdraws all his colleagues, however; he is not only an able teacher but also a fluent and vigorous lecturer. Through Weber’s influence, and now also through that of his colleague in Lutheran theology, Ernest Wolf, Barth’s position has long been the dominant force at Göttingen and perhaps still is.

At Hamburg, Thielicke’s teaching ability and public popularity attract the largest following from the 300 students. Leonhard Goppelt is appreciated for his historical overview within a broadly conservative framework, although students do not find in him a definitive point of view. Thielicke, Goppelt, and Hans Rudolf Müller-Schweffe are all aggressively anti-Bultmannian, and Thielicke is a firm critic of Barth as well. Bultmann has gained a measure of student influence through biblical studies that support his systematic theology; Barth’s dogmatic writings, on the other hand, are bypassed by most students because of their discouraging length.

The Netherlands and Switzerland, particularly Basel, are broadly conservative exceptions to the dominant pattern of European theology. Basel has never shown great enthusiasm for Bultmann because of Barth’s opposition and that of Oscar Cullman. Both men have recognized the enmity between demythology and the Gospel. Although Barth’s retirement has made Basel a less exciting center for American students, his spirited off-campus student colloquia there still preserve some of his vigorous influence. Except for Cullman’s contribution, the school has little atmosphere of theological controversy. But this is doubtless due in part to a professorial tendency to read lectures prepared for forthcoming books rather than for classroom use.

Swedish theology, more than that of other Scandinavian countries, has moved largely outside the orbit of Continental debate. Denmark, on the other hand, has been most actively engaged. Neither at Uppsala, with 700 students, nor at Lund, with 420, is there much concern with normative theology of any kind. At Lund, Anders Nygren and Gustaf Aulén brought systematic theology to prominence; it has been New Testament exegesis, however, that has traditionally exerted a stronger influence at Uppsala. Since philosophical existentialism is foreign to both Norway and Sweden, any translation of biblical theology into existential categories would only have made Christianity even less intelligible to the “modern man” in those lands. Hence Bultmannian influence, as through his former student, Nils Ahstrup Dahl, New Testament professor of the State Faculty of the Church of Norway, carries little existential significance beyond the broad emphasis on contemporary relevance. Yet Dahl denies that divine revelation is objectively given in history and is thus knowable by historical critical investigation. Reider Hauge, the State Faculty theologian, is a former student of Barth. Despite large indebtedness to his teacher, Hauge questions Barth’s universalistic tendencies, shares Brunner’s commitment to general revelation, and emphasizes the person of Christ as the center of revelation more than objective propositions and subjective decision.

Theological debate in Norway, however, has revolved much more around the classic modernist-conservative themes than around a dispute over dialectical-existential theology. It was a protest against Ritschlian emphases within the State Faculty of Theology that in 1907 led to a faculty division and brought about establishment of a Free Faculty in the Church of Norway. Whereas the State Faculty has enviable facilities, the Free Faculty has 350 students, more than four times the number enrolled under the State Faculty. More open ecumenically, the State Faculty is also less confessionalistic and theologically more diverse. The Free Faculty is more confessionalistic, unreservedly rejects the dialectical theology, and insists on the full inspiration of Scripture. At the same time, the Free Faculty is not totally committed to the orthodox Protestant view of the Bible. Its theologian, Leiv Aalen, contends that inspiration bears only on the Bible’s function of “speaking of creation and salvation in Christ,” and this, he insists, the Bible does everywhere, either directly or indirectly. Aalen considers Genesis a figurative and symbolic representation not to be literally interpreted, and admits elements of “an ancient world view” into the larger scriptural testimony.

In Denmark, where the early Barth of the Römerbrief exerted considerable influence forty years ago, that influence soon attached itself also to Gogarten and finally to Bultmann, to whom a small circle still responds. But independently of his European interpreters, it was Sören Kierkegaard who most directly influenced the Danish scene. That other nineteenth-century Danish opponent of Hegelianism, N. F. S. Grundtvig, also left an enduring impression. In Copenhagen, where there are 280 divinity students, N. H. Söe is broadly sympathetic to the later Barth. Barth’s influence, thinks Söe, will in the long run outrank that of Bultmann.

The young pastor or theologian who tries to keep reasonably abreast of contemporary theological thought soon becomes bewildered by the sheer volume of German scholarship. More immediate translations and such series as Harper’s “New Frontiers in Theology” which discuss noteworthy developments help reduce the language barrier. But so many theologians clamor for attention that the lack of an index to the multitude of German names is an imposing obstacle.

Probably the easiest and most helpful way to group German theologians is in terms of faculties of theology. Because the most significant faculties are part of Germany’s famous universities, German theology is integrally connected with the German academic tradition. Since the partition of Germany after the Second World War, the West has been deprived of much of East Germany’s intellectual life, including the scholarship of the theological faculties still functioning at Leipzig and Halle-Wittenberg. Little is heard from the land of Luther in contemporary German theological debate. But this silence is more than offset by the volley of words thundering from such theologically momentous cities as Göttingen, Marburg, Heidelberg, and Tübingen.

In the north of West Germany is Hamburg, newest of the schools of theology. Organized by Helmut Thielicke (b. 1900) in 1954, it now has nine professors. Thielicke, its professor of systematic theology and rector of the university since 1960, is known in America primarily for his university sermons and his interest in Spurgeon. Of more abiding significance, however, is his three-volume work, Theologische Ethik (Mohr, 1951–58), not yet available in English translation.

South of Hamburg lies Münster, famous during the Reformation as the site of a radical uprising. Founded in 1780, the university has both a Protestant and a Catholic theological faculty. Its best-known professors of theology are Willi Marxsen and Kurt Aland. Marxsen (b. 1919), professor of New Testament exegesis and theology and a leader of the Redaktionsgeschichte school of New Testament criticism, has written an important study of Mark that achieved a second edition in 1959. Kurt Aland (b. 1915) is professor of ecclesiastical history, but he is perhaps better known for a new synopsis of the Gospels with an up-to-date critical apparatus which he is preparing with the aid of his students at Münster and the latest mechanical equipment available. Available in English are his Problem of the New Testament Canon (Canterbury, 1962) and Did the Early Church Baptize Infants? (Westminster, 1963).

Over the years Göttingen has had a number of well-known theologians. Names such as Michaelis, Ewald, Wellhausen, Ritschl, Weiss, W. Bauer, and Gogarten are known in theological circles for brilliant and often highly controversial theories. Today that tradition is still just as brilliant but probably not so radical. In fact Joachim Jeremias (b. 1900), professor of New Testament studies, is broadly conservative. Like Schleiermacher and Bultmann (whom he opposes), he comes from the Pietist tradition of the Herrnhuter (Moravian Brethren). Jeremias is best known in America for his books Jesus’ Promise to the Nations (Allenson, 1958) and The Parables of Jesus (second ed., Scribner, 1963). Untranslated is his two-volume study of Jerusalem in the time of Jesus (second ed., 1958). Jeremias’s new colleague in New Testament is Hans Conzelmann (b. 1915), whose important study, The Theology of St. Luke, has been translated into English (Harper, 1960). Conzelmann is a Bultmannian who has given up the “new quest of the historical Jesus.” Also in the biblical field is Walther Zimmerli (b. 1907), professor of Old Testament and pro-rector of the university, whose major contributions to scholarship are his commentaries on Ecclesiastes (1936) and Ezekiel (1955) and his study of Genesis 1–11 (1957), which are all untranslated.

But more widely known in America today is the faculty of theology at Marburg. Preceding Rudolf Bultmann in the faculty of theology have been such notables as Adolf Jülicher, Wilhelm Herrmann, Karl Budde, Rudolf Otto, and Hans von Soden. Both Bultmann and Martin Heidegger belonged to the “Old Marburger” club. Bultmann is a major molder of such influential concepts in contemporary thought as demythologizing, form criticism, and kerygmatic theology. Bultmann’s successor in New Testament is Werner Georg Kümmel (b. 1905), formerly president of the international body of scholars known as the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, publishers of New Testament Studies. Among Kümmel’s works available in English are Promise and Fulfilment—The Eschatological Message of Jesus (“Studies in Biblical Theology” 23; Allenson, 1957) and Man in the New Testament (Westminster, 1963). Even better known is the radical post-Bultmannian, Ernst Fuchs (b. 1903), also professor of New Testament. His untranslated work on the quest of the historical Jesus places him in a position very close to that of the nineteenth-century liberals; his The New Hermeneutic will appear as the second volume of “New Frontiers in Theology.”

The capital city of West Germany, Bonn, has a relatively new university, founded in 1818. Here Bruno Bauer fled after his break with the Hengstenberg school. Currently professor of Old Testament exegesis is Martin Noth (b. 1902), who carries on the form critical tradition in the area of Old Testament studies. In English are his famous History of Israel (second ed., Harper, 1960) and a commentary on Exodus (Westminster, 1962). One of the most promising of the younger professors of New Testament in Germany is Cameroun-born Philipp Vielhauer (b. 1914), whose work on the Son of man sayings in Jesus’ preaching (1957) has been warmly received in Germany. At Bonn too is the Roman Catholic historian Hubert Jedlin (b. 1900), author of a three-volume History of the Council of Trent (Herder, 1957–65?).

Farther south along the Rhine lies Mainz. Its Johannes Gutenberg University was founded in 1477 and has both Protestant and Catholic theological faculties. Closed for well over a century, it reopened its doors in 1946 and now has Herbert Braun (b. 1903) and Wolfhardt Pannenberg (b. 1928) on its Faculty of Evangelical Theology. Braun’s chef-d’oeuvre is his two-volume study of the relation of Jesus and the synoptic tradition to the Qumran community (1957). Pannenberg is Mainz’ professor of systematic theology and at the age of thirty-five has already established himself as an authority on the Christian understanding of history. A projected volume in the “New Frontiers in Theology” series will make his thought readily available in the United States.

Heidelberg’s university is among Europe’s oldest. Founded in 1386, it is also among the largest of Germany’s schools of higher education, with some 13,000 students. Former faculty members include Richard Rothe, Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber, and Martin Dibelius. Today its theological faculty is probably the strongest in all Europe; at least seven professors have earned international reputations. Among them is Gerhard von Rad (b. 1901), professor of Old Testament exegesis and author of such important works as Old Testament Theology (Vol. I, Harper, 1962) and the recent commentary on Genesis (Westminster, 1961). His approach to the Old Testament has been compared with that of Bultmann to the New Testament. Also in the field of Old Testament is Claus Westermann (b. 1909), whose major work has been done in the field of Old Testament hermeneutics. The professor of systematic theology, Peter Brunner (b. 1900), has established a solid reputation for his Barthian interpretation of Calvin and Luther, but his works have not been published in English. Günther Bornkamm (b. 1905), professor of New Testament exegesis, became known in this country as a conservative post-Bultmannian on the basis of his book Jesus of Nazareth (Harper, 1960). More recent is a book written in collaboration with two of his students, Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew (Westminster, 1963). A newer arrival on the New Testament faculty is Erich Dinkler (b. 1909), co-editor with Bultmann of the journal Theologische Rundschau. Bornkamm’s brother Heinrich (b. 1901), a specialist in Reformation history, is the author of Luther’s World of Thought (Concordia, 1958). Although Heinz Eduard Todt is now professor of social ethics, his chief claim to fame is his untranslated study of the Son of Man sayings in the synoptic tradition (Mohr, 1959).

Tübingen’s university, founded in 1477, is known to most English-speaking theologians for its radical application of Hegelian philosophy to the New Testament (the so-called “Tübingen school”) in the nineteenth century. In years past its halls heard the voices of Ferdinand Christian Baur, David Friedrich Strauss, Adolf Schlatter, Gerhard Kittel, and Karl Heim. Its most important faculty members today are Artur Weiser (b. 1893) in Old Testament, Hermann Diem (b. 1900) in systematic theology, and Ernst Käsemann (b. 1906) in New Testament. Weiser’s magnum opus appeared in the United States as The Old Testament: Its Formation and Development (Association, 1961), regarded by some as the most adequate introduction to the Old Testament and now in its fifth edition in Germany. Although Diem’s Dogmatics is the primary source of his recognition, he is also a Kierkegaard scholar of some consequence. Käsemann is known as the initiator of “the new quest of the historical Jesus” through his 1954 article, “Das Problem des historischen Jesus,” which appeared in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche. In the faculty of Catholic theology Hans Küng (b. 1928) carries on the ecumenical tradition of Karl Adam.

The Swiss Seminaries

Although Basel and Zürich are technically in Switzerland, the theological faculties have long been closely linked to those of Germany.

Karl Barth was the towering giant who placed Basel on the theological map for most Americans. Now retired, he has been succeeded by thirty-five-year-old Heinrich Ott (b. 1929). Ott’s untranslated book, Thinking and Being (1959), is widely regarded as doing for the “later Heidegger” what Bultmann did for the “earlier Heidegger.” His essay, “What is Systematic Theology?,” forms the core of The Later Heidegger and Theology, first volume of the series “New Frontiers in Theology,” edited by James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb (Harper, 1963). He studied under both Barth and Bultmann and holds a position usually closer to the former than to the latter. At Basel as Ott’s colleague in systematic theology is the extreme left-wing theologian, Fritz Buri (b. 1907). Neither of Buri’s two volumes in systematic theology, Dogmatik als Selbstverständnis des christlichen Glaubens (Haupt, 1956, 1962), has as yet been translated. Walther Eichrodt has been Basel’s professor of Old Testament since 1922. The first volume of his monumental Theology of the Old Testament is now available in English (Westminster, 1961). In the area of early church history and New Testament is Oscar Cullmann (b. 1902), who also teaches at the Sorbonne in Paris. He is renowned in the English-speaking world through such works as Christology of the New Testament (Westminster, 1959) and Christ and Time (second ed., Westminster, 1964).

Just as Basel is known to us as Karl Barth’s home, so Zürich is known as the home of Emil Brunner. At least two other Zürich theologians today are well known in theological circles in America. Brunner’s successor is Gerhard Ebeling (b. 1912), editor of Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, and author of The Nature of Faith (Fortress, 1962) and Word and Faith (Fortress, 1963). Far more conservative is the New Testament scholar Eduard Schweizer (b. 1913), best known for his article on the Spirit of God in Kittel’s Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament and for two volumes in the series “Studies in Biblical Theology,” Lordship and Discipleship (Allenson, 1960) and Church Order in the New Testament (Allenson, 1961). (Karl Barth’s brother Heinrich is a professor in Zürich’s philosophy department.)

In the Bavarian region, Erlangen stands alone. In recent years it has maintained a more moderate stance than most German universities. In the last century the great conservative scholar Theodor Zahn taught New Testament there. The New Testament department is still relatively right-wing. Both Paul Althaus (b. 1888) and Ethelbert Stauffer (b. 1902) have upheld a strong anti-Bultmannian outlook, but from divergent points of view. Available in English are Althaus’s Fact and Faith in the Kerygma of Today (Fortress, 1959) and Stauffer’s New Testament Theology (SCM, 1955).

In The East Zone

The East Zone of Germany has its theological heritage, too. Leipzig once heard the voices of Franz Delitzsch, Rudolf Kittel, Albrecht Alt, Konstantin von Tischendorf, Paul Tillich, and Ernst Fuchs. Halle was founded by the German Pietist Philipp Spener. Later its faculty included such greats as August Francke, Christian Wolff, Johannes Semler, Wilhelm Gesenius, Willibald Beyschlag, Martin Kähler, Friedrich Loofs, Hermann Gunkel, Julius Schniewind, Otto Eissfeldt, and Kurt Aland. It merged with Wittenberg in 1817 and became Martin Luther University. Today, however, both schools are somewhat isolated politically.

Berlin stands out as a lone star in the East German sky. The Free University of Berlin, founded in 1948, now has some 12,000 students. Its theological studies are found in the philosophy department, where Helmut Gollwitzer (b. 1908) is professor of Protestant theology. His name has become known to theologians in America largely as a result of his introduction to and selection from Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics that appeared recently as a Harper Torchbook (Harper, 1962). In years gone by Berlin could boast more outstanding persons than any other theological faculty in Germany, including Friedrich Schleiermacher, W. M. L. de Wette, Neander, I. A. Dorner, E. W. Hengstenberg, Otto Pfleiderer, Bernhard Weiss, Adolf von Harnack, Reinhold Seeberg, Karl Holl, Adolf Deissmann, and Hans Lietzmann.

This guide has fixed attention on those theologians who are known to Americans through English translations of their works, although several others have been included because their untranslated works are of special significance. To avoid excessive cataloguing we have omitted Fohrer, Loewenich, Dörries, Otto Weber, Kraus, Michel, Goppelt, Campenhausen, Kuhn, Schlink, and Lortz, names that those versed in German theology may feel should have been included. Several of the men mentioned in this survey represent positions with which many will violently disagree; but the aim of all reading, of course, is to learn what is valuable and to dismiss the chaff. Germany is still a leader in theological thought today. Evangelicals dare not neglect its scholarship, because it begs for interaction with them and not only with those in America who represent other theological traditions.

DEAR STUART,

I know what you mean when you write that you are uneasy about going to a parish ministry when you are ordained. Our troubles are well-publicized. Our mental breakdowns have been counted and discussed in the press. Sociologists study our complaints, national magazines record our casualties. A picture has been painted of the pastor’s lot as anxiety-ridden, frustrating, crowded with triviality.

The picture is probably a true one.

I doubt if the parish ministry has ever been more anxious, more difficult, more filled with the possibility of failure. That’s what is good about it. This may well be the most exciting time in the long history of the pastorate. Never has this call offered more to the man who wants the Lord to give him a job that is bigger than he is, who prefers risks to certainty, who is willing to fail ten times to succeed once.

Anxiety? Plenty of it. For one thing, people today take seriously what ministers say and do. If they didn’t, pastors wouldn’t have to be so wary of people who want to use them. Because people take pastors seriously, some of them are mad at their minister all of the time and quite a few are likely to be at any given time. If a pastor is lucky today, he can often have extremists on both sides of him, equally unhappy. Sometimes he gets tired of the uproar and wishes that no one cared what he thought. (Monday is usually my day to feel this way.) But most days he is glad that they do care. In these days of secularism, racial turmoil, and moral disintegration, the minister has to speak. If his words result in anxiety, it is because people are listening.

We can’t deny that it is frustrating, either. Somehow the church spelled with a small c doesn’t correspond very well with the Church we discussed in seminary. The pastor discovers early that most of his members have a very different view of the Christian faith from any he has read. They are not divided into liberal and evangelical, Bultmannian and post-Bultmannian. In fact, they aren’t easily classified at all. If there is a majority view, it may be a kind of eclectic universalism whose major premise is that any belief is good as long as you believe it sincerely. The parish church is not a well-drilled Christian army waiting to commission a seminary graduate as its general. It is a confused gaggle of saints, pagans, and people with unrealized possibilities. In short, it is a group of people who need their pastor more than they know. They will often surprise their minister, when their faith and vision outrun his. They will more often disappoint him. For the minister, the parish represents an unanswered challenge that will never be completely answered.

I don’t know about the triviality. I do know that there is never time enough to read or write. We don’t play much of a role in history. The history-making concerns are always being crowded aside. The great issues before the Congress and the United Nations are great issues to us, too. But we are always being interrupted by the crushing concerns of our people, people whose names won’t be remembered by the historians. The pastor is called from his study to go to the emergency room at the hospital, to drink coffee late at night in strangers’ kitchens. He is summoned from his typewriter and his books to hold dying hands, to look into eyes glazed with grief. And so often there is nothing he can do—nothing but suffer along with them, and care enough to be hurt when they are hurt, and pray. He will not take the hurt away with good theology and a smattering of amateur psychiatry. All he can do is care, and trust, and hope. Is this trivial? I don’t know. But I do know that the pastor should care. Hardly anyone else does, and people need him for that.

The parish minister is constantly being brought into bruising contact with the brutality of life. He has many more failures than successes, and the successes are so slow and intangible that he’s never sure that there are any. He is often insecure, often alone, too often faced with tasks beyond his power.

Yet, can you understand what I mean when I say that this is what is good about it? The very things of which we complain are the exciting, the worthwhile part of a pastor’s life. If no one cared what we said, if our churches were bands of perfected saints who didn’t need us, if we didn’t share the joy and heartbreak of people of little fame, it would all be safe, but empty. The pastorate is not quiet and comfortable. If it ever gets that way, it will be no place for the Lord’s children to serve.

Yours in anxiety and joy,

Malcolm Nygren