Page 6047 – Christianity Today (2024)

Page 6047 – Christianity Today (1)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

Should American taxpayers be required to support church-related schools?

More and more public money is being appropriated for sectarian education, but a legal test may finally be at hand.

Last October the U. S. Supreme Court agreed to rule on whether taxpayers have standing to bring suit against state agencies that subsidize church related schools. A decision is pending.

Now the high court has also agreed to decide on the constitutionality of a New York law requiring the state’s public-school systems to lend textbooks to parochial-school students.

“If it should permit taxpayers to challenge federal spending programs on church-state grounds, and if the justices should strike down the New York school book law, the entire federal program of aid to pupils in church-related schools would be placed in jeopardy,” said a report in the New York Times.

The latest action by the Supreme Court was to hear an appeal by the school board of East Greenbush, New York, a suburb of Albany, and other upstate school officials. New York is one of seven states that lend state-owned textbooks to parochial-school students. The New York law directs school districts to lend fifteen dollars in textbooks each year to each pupil in grades seven through twelve in private schools. About $25 million is spent annually.

The New York Supreme Court declared the textbook law unconstitutional. But the Appellate Division reversed that ruling, and the East Greenbush case was appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court.

The federal government now spends about $60 million a year to purchase textbooks and provide specialized instruction for pupils in church schools.

The money line separating church and state has deteriorated steadily in recent years. Government agencies on local, state, and national levels have grown increasingly open to the idea of budgeting money for hard-pressed religious institutions. This is a throwback to the old European system of state subsidy, under which the established churches have grown stagnant.

The champions of a continuation of the successful American experiment in church-state separation have watched its deterioration somewhat helplessly. Because taxpayers have not had a standing to sue, there has been no way to arrest the trend in the courts. A judicial-review bill sponsored by Senator Sam Ervin, which would give taxpayers such legal standing, has languished in committee.

PROTESTANT PANORAMA

Latest figures released by The Methodist Church show a loss of 21,405 members across the United States over a period of a year. The Methodist constituency now totals an official 10,289,214.

Southern Baptists report gifts to world missions during 1967 amounted to a record $45 million. The Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board got $27.8 million. Twenty other agencies shared the rest and applied it to such things as home missions, theological education, and radio and television projects.

The American Lutheran Church is being urged to put stronger administrative authority at regional and national levels. A report issued by the ALC Long Range Study Committee also calls for a regrouping of program functions and a new method of electing general officers.

PERSONALIA

Ben Hartley, editor of Presbyterian Survey since 1959, turned in a letter of resignation last month in a policy dispute with directors. Hartley, 43, reportedly complained that he had not been given sufficient authority and editorial freedom to run the Survey, which is the official monthly magazine of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. Strong appeals to Hartley to reconsider were expected.

The widow of a Methodist chaplain killed in Viet Nam has joined the Army Nurse Corps and plans to serve in Viet Nam. Mrs. Ambrosio S. Grandea of Baltimore was sworn into the service by a chaplain who helped to conduct her husband’s funeral last year. She volunteered for duty with the provision that she be assured a Viet Nam assignment.

The Rev. Norman Shepherd was named dean of the faculty at Westminster Theological Seminary. He succeeds Dr. Paul Wooley, who resigned as dean for health reasons but will continue to teach.

Governor David F. Cargo of New Mexico disclosed that he has been baptized a Roman Catholic. Cargo, who grew up a Methodist in Michigan, says his decision was a gradual one following his marriage to Ida Jo Anaya, a Roman Catholic. He came under criticism last year for appointing a Catholic priest to head the state’s war on poverty. The priest has recently been reassigned.

The Rt. Rev. John Cyril Emerson Swaby, 62, was elected Anglican bishop of Jamaica. Swaby’s election after six ballots became secure when another candidate withdrew.

Harley Fite, president for twenty years of Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee, plans to retire July 31. The Southern Baptist school has enjoyed steady progress under Fite and now has an enrollment of 1,727 regular students.

A German Lutheran pastor was wounded and hospitalized after he and his party were ambushed by tribal warriors in a wild region of West Irian. An American woman missionary was found safe in Malaysia after she and three children became lost during a hike.

The United Christian Council in Israel elected Robert L. Lindsey as its chairman. The council, largest Protestant organization in Israel, is a cooperative agency in which some thirteen denominations participate.

Former Dean Arthur Foster will leave Berkeley Baptist Divinity School to become “professor of theology and personality” and director of a Center for Theology and the Study of Man as part of Chicago Theological Seminary’s doctoral program. Veteran BBDS teacher Maurice Jackson was named top aide to new President C. Adrian Heaton, who also heads California Baptist Theological Seminary. Leaders of a campaign against the previous BBDS administration have urged full support of Heaton.

A year-long mystery over a Byzantine Catholic bishop was climaxed with the announcement of a major reshuffle in the Ruthenian rite hierarchy. The Most Rev. Nicholas T. Elko was elevated to a titular archbishopric after a Vatican inquiry and an unexplained exile in Rome. Die Ruthenian rite recognizes the Pope but has its own Latin customs and liturgies.

MISCELLANY

“Herald of Truth,” a radio broadcast of the Churches of Christ, makes its debut February 4 on the NBC network. John Allen Chalk is the preacher.

A violent explosion wrecked the ancient Church of St. Vincent in the northern Italian town of St. Vincent. Most of the church’s crypt and its art treasures dating back 800 years were destroyed or badly damaged. Police said vandals had placed sticks of dynamite against a basement window.

Communist Albania officially abrogated all laws dealing with church-state relations. The action is apparently aimed at delivering the coup de grace to formal religious institutions in Albania, Religious News Service said.

The legislature of the central Indian state of Orissa approved a law imposing penalties of up to a year in prison or a $1,000 fine for missionaries convicted of coverting minors, women, or untouchables. The penalties can be doubled, according to the law, for attempts to win converts by “force, fraud, or exploitation of poverty.”

French President Charles de Gaulle reportedly has taken pains to correct a reference to Jews as domineering. The French word “dominateur,” which de Gaulle applied to Jews in a speech November 27, can be translated in either a neutral or pejorative sense. According to informed sources, de Gaulle has told a key rabbi in Paris that he had meant his remarks as praise for the accomplishments of the Jewish people.

The Baptist Unity Movement went out of existence on December 31, 1967. Chairman Howard R. Stewart said the group’s charter was allowed to expire because of “the inability of the group to meet the financial responsibilities involved in the growth of the movement.” He said that about 1,000 persons have been associated with it during its five years of operation.

Deaths

PIERRE VAN PAASSEN, 72, Unitarian clergyman who wrote Days of Our Years, a best-seller published in 1939 about the Jews in Palestine; in New York.

JOSEPH C.CLAPP, 51, president of the University of Corpus Christi (Southern Baptist); in Corpus Christi, Texas.

JOHN B.HIPPS, 83, retired professor of missions at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

The Supreme Court of the state of Washington upheld the constitutionality of a college course dealing with the Bible as literature. Two Bible Presbyterian ministers had sued the University of Washington, charging that the course tended to have adverse religious effects upon students. They vowed an appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court.

The Japan Baptist Convention began a special prayer movement for peace in Viet Nam. Executive Secretary Yoshikazu Nakajima in Tokyo appealed to Baptists around the world to join the movement. A convention statement acknowledged Japan’s “responsibility for World War II” and asserted that “War is evil and contrary to the will of God.”

A Missouri Synod Lutheran congregation in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, was ordered to fire its pastor or face foreclosure of a mortgage. The Rev. C. Donald Pfotenhauer, 37, whose pastorate has been characterized by a charismatic emphasis, wonders whether “there is room in the Missouri Synod for the charismatic gifts of the Spirit.” The Rev. Martin Lieske, president of the synod’s Minnesota South District, which holds the mortgage, says he has failed to see the fruit of the Spirit manifested in the congregation.

Page 6047 – Christianity Today (3)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

The death of Bob Jones, Sr., at age 84 last month closed the era of hard-hitting evangelists of the Billy Sunday ilk, which reached its peak between the two world wars. During the height of his career, Jones preached an estimated 12,000 down-to-earth gospel messages, laced with folksy maxims, to more than 15 million people. He bridged the gap between old-time fundamentalism and the post-war evangelical resurgence.

This was the era when Jones founded his most memorable monument, Bob Jones University. From a small start in Florida, the school moved to Tennessee, then Greenville, South Carolina. It is the world’s largest fundamentalist college, with an enrollment of 4,000 and a modern campus valued at $50 million.

Jones was born in southeast Alabama, the eleventh child of a farmer and Confederate army veteran. As a youth he tried out preaching in the barn and by age 14 had held his first evangelistic meeting. The next year he was licensed to preach by The Methodist Church, which he left years later, charging theological liberalism.

One of the converts during those early years in Alabama was an old blind man who turned out to be the physician who had brought him into the world. Both of Jones’s parents died when he was a teen-ager, and his first wife died of tuberculosis ten months after the wedding. Two years later he courted and married the former Mary Gaston Stollenwerck, who is still living. He attended college in Alabama.

Three years after he received an honorary D.D. from Muskingum College (United Presbyterian) in Ohio, Jones decided to start a college to promote unflinching fundamentalism. Bob Jones University is well known today not only for its conservative, biblical theology but also for its strict discipline and student turnover, a “six-inch rule” to keep the sexes apart, strictly monitored dating, plus the sort of smoking-drinking-dancing ban still common at many conservative Protestant schools.

The school has also supported right-wing politics and segregation of Negroes. In his pamphlet, “Is Segregation Scriptural?,” Jones answered yes. Although the booklet spoke often of “colored friends,” in everyday speech Jones slipped easily into common stereotypes.

Jones also believed in what has been called “second-degree separation,” that is, separation from fellow conservatives who are friendly with more liberal Christians and Roman Catholics. This led to a famous split with Billy Graham, who went one year to Jones’s school and later got an honorary doctorate from it, but who then carried the Jones-type message into an ecumenical era.

The school has earned a good reputation for film teaching and Shakespearean drama productions and has amassed one of the finest collections of religious paintings in North America. Each year a large group of Jones’s “preacher boys” graduate, and many have moved into good pulpits and important missionary jobs. Other graduates have earned good-paying positions in education and industry, even though the school has never been accredited.

Jones died quietly at the hospital on campus. His death followed several years of declining health, which had led him to resign as university board chairman in 1964. His only son, Bob Jones, Jr., succeeded him as chairman and has been president since 1946. Jones is also survived by his grandson, Bob Jones III, who is university vice-president, and by two other grandchildren. After a January 17 funeral attended by more than 5,000 persons, Jones was buried in a small plot in front of the campus auditorium.

YALE CHAPLAIN FACES TRIAL

The life of William Sloane Coffin, Jr., seemed till recently a circuitous quest for a cause. But at 43 Coffin has found a cause, one big enough to win him national distinction. And now his indictment by a federal grand jury promises to make him the first prominent American clergyman in decades to face public trial.

Coffin, the chaplain of Yale University, is accused of conspiring to encourage violations of the draft laws. Named with him were four non-clergy including Benjamin Spock, well-known baby doctor. They were to be arraigned in Boston this week. If convicted, they could receive maximum penalties of five years in prison and $10,000 fines.

Coffin has been a leading critic of the Viet Nam war and has urged resistance to the draft laws. His participation in numerous peace demonstrations last year marked an abrupt reversal of the promilitary outlook of his earlier days. Coffin was an Army captain and paratrooper during World War II and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency as a specialist in Soviet affairs during the Korean War.

He was born in New York City of a well-to-do family. His father was an executive of a firm that retails fine furniture. Young Coffin studied music briefly at Yale after his graduation from Phillips Academy and before his service stint. Between his Army and CIA days he put in some study at Union Theological Seminary, New York, and got a B.A. from Yale. But he didn’t get his B.D. until 1956. Also in that year he was ordained a United Presbyterian minister and married a daughter of pianist Artur Rubinstein.

Coffin’s first chaplaincy job was at Phillips, the second at Williams College; then in 1958 he was named to the Yale post. In 1961 he became a social activist in joining the Freedom Riders, who were demonstrating for integration in Alabama. As the civil-rights campaign lost its steam, Coffin became increasingly interested in Viet Nam. Last October he urged Yale undergraduates to turn in their draft cards and was criticized for that by Yale President Kingman Brewster, Jr.

Two years ago Coffin got into a mild dispute with evangelistically minded Pentecostal students at Yale whose activities threatened to disrupt the interreligious status quo. At that time he was quoted as having decried the emotionalism of the student evangelists and the “devious methods” of another evangelical group on campus.

During 1967 Coffin came to Washington from time to time as part of various protests against the draft and the Viet Nam war. He has apparently been seeking a showdown arrest to dramatize his dissent and was visibly indignant last October 20 when Justice Department officials refused to arrest him. He had turned in a briefcase full of what he said were draft cards and said he wanted to be arrested to precipitate a “moral, legal confrontation” with the government over the draft.

The Justice Department did not act as quickly as Coffin desired, but the ax finally fell last month. Interestingly, the government cited, not the Washington incident, but one in Boston on October 16, a rally at the Arlington Street Church (Unitarian). A number of draft cards are said to have been collected there and several other acts of an alleged conspiracy perpetrated.

VIET NAM: AN URGE TO WORSHIP

This story was distributed recently by the public-relations office of The American Lutheran Church:

Fifty men “squatted in the chapel-of-the-bombed-out-bunker” and in a husky voice sang the Doxology, transforming the terror of artillery blasts into personal praise of God—and peace.

“One moment of time had been redeemed, and only God knows how many men.” So writes Chaplain Lt. Edward A. Olander in one of his regular reports to the Rev. Orlando Ingvoldstad, Jr., director of service to military personnel for The American Lutheran Church.

Twenty ALC chaplains serving with U. S. forces in the Viet Nam area fill Ingvoldstad’s mail regularly with vivid descriptions of the gospel ministry’s effect under the stresses of armed conflict.

Instead of vestments that day, Olander wore a flack vest and helmet. Exploding cannon near this perimeter camp provided a ghastly cadence, in perfect rhythm with the liturgy, he wrote. “Lord have mercy. BOOM! Christ have mercy. BOOM! Lord have mercy. BOOM!”

The lesson for the day spoke of “time running out.” There was a lull in the bombardment. “The eerie stillness of the pockmarked hills haunted our thoughts. Perhaps for us time had run out. As we lustily ‘off-keyed’ our vocal response, this thought became embroidered with terror.”

Olander’s stirring experience deep in the Viet Nam jungle was unusual. He serves in the U. S. Navy and is assigned to five destroyers on the Tonkin Gulf.

The call came by ship radio: “Can you send your chaplain to coordinate ‘Mustang’ by 1100 hours? Will send Holy Helo by 0930. Confirm.” The chaplain confirmed. “Holy Helo” is military lingo for a helicopter carrying a chaplain.

“The First Cavalry Air Mobile at Dong Song was now in this area and American boys on the perimeter, half dead with fatigue, wanted to worship. Mustang was the point farthest out and could be reached only by air,” the chaplain’s letter said.

“The morning liturgy for me began as we chattered over the river bed snaking up the valley heading due north. To my amazement I looked up at the trees for most of the trip.

“The pilot, from Tacoma, Washington, patiently explained this was for security reasons. Higher up we could be spotted, plotted and exterminated. Down here, moving at 100 miles per hour, we were ‘there’ and gone before even being seen.

“I confessed my sins as evil-looking ground rushed by.

“Later, as we climbed higher I saw the crater holes and rusting tank skeletons of several years ago, when death also ruled, but the blood name was French.”

Olander’s more normal routine puts him aboard one after another of the five destroyers, with an occasional call to conduct services on the U.S.S. “Oriskany,” an aircraft carrier.

Olander, a native of Chicago, attended high school and college in Minot, North Dakota, where his mother, Mrs. Alice Olander, still resides. The chaplain is a graduate of Luther Theological Seminary, St. Paul. He served five years as a missionary in Brazil, and was pastor of Crown Lutheran Church, Seattle, before being commissioned.

DIALOGUE IN THE CHILL

With the temperature reading zero along Chicago’s lakefront, the Rev. Francis A. Sohaeffer, head tutor at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, met Bishop James A. Pike for a dialogue January 6 in the city’s newly renovated Auditorium Theater. Lake Michigan’s chill winds seeped into the opulent theater, and the dialogue never loosened up.

The two dialecticians, perhaps having skidded about in Chicago’s first heavy snow of the season, preferred to stay on safe ground. Their topic was, “What Relevance Has Historic Christianity for Modern Man?” They agreed about the relevance but disagreed about “historic.”

Schaeffer referred to his experience at L’Abri, a mission he founded to reach intellectuals and twentieth-century dropouts. The relevant part of Christianity for these people, he says, is its insistence on a personal triune God who cares, and who makes loving and communicating possible. This God has spoken through the Bible and—in a way that Schaeffer did not elaborate—became particularly involved with the Reformation culture in Western Europe.

Pike was more concerned with the future: “We are called to make things come to pass with God in history.… I do not believe in faith in faith, but faith in a living God, and faith which of course changes with culture and history.”

Although the moderator advised the audience at the outset to pay attention to what was said rather than who was saying it, there was no doubt that Pike was cast in the role of antagonist to “historic Christianity.” Schaeffer took pains to avoid direct debate, confining himself to philosophical lecturing. The moderator said he was “inspired and confused” by Schaeffer.

Pike, on the other hand, digressed freely about his own involvement in current theological and social issues. He warmed to his work when discussing demonstrations against government war policies. “Christians have a reputation for being sore thumbs,” he said. “But when we sprinkle holy water on the status quo we nauseate people.… It is man and God who are forever; nations come and go.”

A scattering of applause greeted this last statement. The audience, however, was weighted in favor of the evangelical “side” and sat politely quiet through most of the three hours of talk. Schaeffer, despite his modish riding boots and long hair, does not excite his listeners; yet most of those present did not care to be seen publicly clapping for Pike.

The only overt sign of enthusiasm was reserved for Schaeffer’s definition of a Christian: “To be a true Christian, a man must bow twice. Once metaphysically, to acknowledge he is a creature, and again morally, to acknowledge that he has sinned and must cast himself on Christ.”

Both speakers said modern man can “affirm life,” because God is there. But while Pike stressed the transcendence of God over culture, including modern European and American culture, for the purpose of confronting it with its sins and changing it, Schaeffer warned against using Christian concepts such as transcendence to mask potential idolatries and dictatorships. This issue was not pursued.

The dialogue was sponsored by a three-man corporation named Christian Communications, or ChrisCom, which operates in Chicago. Its purpose: “to promote a better understanding of evangelical Christianity among the general public, and particularly among members of scholarly intellectual circles.” While in Chicago, Schaeffer had a chance to carry ChrisCom’s appeal to the area’s major radio talk show and Irv Kupcinet’s TV conversational.

FRED PEARSON

TREK FOR PEACE

A move “to bring temple, church, mosque and synagogue in meaningful support of the United Nations and other regional structures for peace” took a group of churchmen to major religious capitals last month. Fifteen American clergy were in the group, which made stops at Geneva, Rome, Jerusalem, and Istanbul. They ended up in New Delhi, India, for the International Inter-Religious Symposium on Peace, where it was announced that a world conference on religion and peace was being planned for 1969.

THE NEW MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE

The renowned Malcolm Muggeridge, for eleven months the rector of Edinburgh University, Scotland, resigned last month in protest of a student demand for contraceptive pills. Muggeridge has been a leading British journalist and articulate social critic.

The 64-year-old former editor of Punch, who ten years ago would have been considered something of a skeptic, now looks more and more like an exponent of orthodoxy. His resignation came while he was speaking from the pulpit of John Knox in the High Kirk of St. Giles, Edinburgh. He spoke to more than 2,000 at a university beginning-of-term service.

Muggeridge said that “there is practically nothing [students] could do in a mood of rebelliousness in fighting against our run-down way of life which I would not sympathize with—including the blowing up of this edifice we are in. How sad, how macabre and funny it is, that all they put forward should be a demand for pot and pills.”

The view of the Edinburgh Students’ Representative Council, according to Muggeridge, was that the rector and his assessor had to pass on to the university court whatever the SRC decided. This, he said, was an unacceptable tenet, so he tendered the resignations of himself and of the assessor, Edinburgh barrister Allan Frazer. It was believed to be the first resignation of an Edinburgh rector since the university was founded nearly four centuries ago.

“I have no wish to check any fulfillment of your life,” said Muggeridge. “But whatever life is or is not about, it must not be expressed in terms of drugs, stupefaction, or casual sexual relationships. The road to the future is not on the plastic wings of Playboy magazine or in psychedelic fantasies.” He commended to his listeners the beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Other parts of the address reflected how far Muggeridge has traveled along the path to Christian orthodoxy. Although he specifically disclaimed “any puritanical attitude,” he said some things that no thundering puritan could have disagreed with or improved upon.

“No doubt,” he declared, “we shall go on raising the school age, multiplying and enlarging our universities, increasing public expenditure on education until juvenile delinquency, beats and drug addicts, and general intimations of illiteracy, multiply so alarmingly that, at last, the whole process is called into question. In the same sort of way, the so-called permissive morality of our time will, I am sure, reach its apogee. When birth pills are handed out with the free orange juice and consenting adults wear special ties and blazers, and abortion and divorce … are freely available on the public health, then at last, with the suicide rate up to Scandinavian proportions and the psychiatric wards bursting at the seams, it will be realized that this path … is a disastrous cul-de-sac.”

STRIDES AMID ADVERSITY

Christian witness is bearing fruit in places where opportunities are limited, according to a series of reports from European Baptist Press Service. In Poland, Baptist churches are said to have baptized 120 converts during the past year. In Madrid, the city’s fifth Baptist church was organized on New Year’s Day with thirty-four charter members. In Lisbon, Baptists were getting ready to inaugurate a new bookstore on one of the main thoroughfares.

EBPS quoted Wort and Werk, an East German Baptist newspaper, as reporting that eight young people came forward for public commitment of their lives to Christ’s leadership at the final service of an interdenominational youth week in Lichtenstein.

MORE GREEK UNREST

Under a ruling from the Greek military government, two leading Orthodox Church figures face indictment before a church court and possible expulsion. The newly constituted Holy Synod decided last month to try former Greek Primate Iakovos (no relation to the North American primate) and Archbishop Panteleimon of Salonika.

Charges were not revealed, but the action stems from a law passed in December that calls for dismissal of priests who have “lost their good reputation and necessary prestige.” Informed sources told newsmen the pair had refused to resign, thus necessitating the trials.

Conwell Names New Board

Philadelphia’s old Conwell School of Theology is taking a new lease on life these days. It promises to make a strong bid for a major role on the academic frontier. That the new thrust will be biblically oriented seems assured with an announcement of a new slate of trustees. The eleven-member Conwell board now includes evangelist Billy Graham and several associates, “Bible Study Hour” preacher Ben Haden, pastor Stephen Olford, and author Walter Martin. Conwell’s president, appointed last fall, is Stuart Barton Babbage, also a well-known evangelical.

QUAKERS IN LEGAL BATTLES

Quaker groups took to the courts last month in an effort to strike down U. S. government restrictions against relief shipments to Communist-ruled areas of Viet Nam. The first suit was filed in Washington, and related litigation was to be initiated in Baltimore and Philadelphia. The American Friends Service Committee is also initiating court action to relieve religious organizations from having to withhold tax from employee earnings. The committee’s objection is that much of the money is used for military purposes.

ODDS ON MIXED MARRIAGE

Yeshiva University sociologist Victor Sanua advises parents and religions to encourage their young people to marry persons of their own faith, a decreasing practice among young people.

Basing his opinions on thirty-five years of observation, Sanua says that “the intermarried have a high risk of divorce” but that “those unwilling to identify with any religion had the highest divorce rate.”

Sanua says pledges made by non-Catholic marriage partners that children will be raised Catholic are ignored in half the cases, which often produces interference from in-laws.

Among Jews, only 17 per cent marry outside the faith. The percentages come from a study in Iowa, where religious preference is requested on marriage and divorce forms.

WHERE CHRISTIANITY VANISHED

Remains of an ancient Christian civilization in the Nubian region of the Nile Valley have recently been found but will soon be flooded by Aswan Dam waters. Religious News Service says pioneer archaeologists from the African Missionaries of Verona (Roman Catholic) found an entire cathedral with frescoes, in excellent condition.

The find supports the theory that a Christian civilization flourished in the area from the fifth century on—100 years earlier than previously thought. Islam and Christianity apparently lived side by side for many centuries. The archaeologists think Christianity disappeared from the area not because of Muslim pressure but for internal reasons.

LONELY OPPORTUNITY

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel is looking for an Anglican to serve as chaplain in Tristan da Cunha, often called “the world’s loneliest island.” The Rev. W. P. S. Davies, a Welshman who has been at Tristan for two years, is returning to England. There are about 200 people to be ministered to on the island, which lies in the Atlantic about midway between southern Africa and South America.

Page 6047 – Christianity Today (5)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

The Roman Catholic Church, plagued in recent years by a host of criticism from within its own ranks, showed a bent last month for recovering its traditionally monolithic character. In significant but unrelated actions, bishops in the United States and in South Viet Nam issued collective statements that set precedents.

So many dissidents have emerged and so many conflicting voices have been raised within Roman Catholicism since the Second Vatican Council that the hierarchy apparently feels an urgent need to reassert the church’s unified front. It may be a futile effort: both priests and laymen are finding less and less upon which they can agree. Some are basking in the truths of newly opened Bibles, but many are falling victim to unwarranted presuppositions of higher criticism and are jettisoning the authority of both Scripture and tradition.

The statement by U. S. bishops came in the form of a 25,000-word pastoral letter, the first ever in American Roman Catholic history. In theory at least it was representative of the views of the more than two hundred bishops in this country. Entitled “The Church in Our Day,” it was described as a “major doctrinal statement,” the first in a series designed to interpret actions of the Second Vatican Council.

The letter is largely devotional in tone and abounds in personal admonition. It steers a delicate course between conservative doctrine and progressive methodology and is openly critical of heretical tendencies.

“A new Pelagianism seeks salvation in the correction of structures rather than in conversion to God,” the letter declares. “A new Gnosticism places all its hope in the apt phrase or the esoteric formula rather than in Jesus Christ Crucified and Risen.”

The bishops leave no doubt about where they feel ultimate authority for the interpretation of doctrine rests:

“The Catholic Church sees infallibility as Providence, as grace, a gift she receives in humility for the sake of her Master and for the salvation of her sons and daughters. It is not in arrogance but in wonder that she claims infallibility for her substantive teaching and guidance.”

The letter was prepared by a committee of bishops under the direction of Bishop John J. Wright of Pittsburgh. It was approved for January release by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops at their meeting in November.

Initial reaction among Catholic commentators was generally favorable. But the National Catholic Reporter voiced reservations, complaining that the document failed to break any new ground.

The letter was said to have been drafted for the bishops by a 35-year-old theologian, the Rev. Anthony Padovano, of Immaculate Conception Seminary, Ramsey, New Jersey.

In South Viet Nam, Roman Catholic bishops issued a surprising statement after a three-day meeting. They called for a halt to the bombing of the north and an end to the infiltration of arms into the south. Even more startling was the bishops’ unprecedented criticism of “laziness, hypocrisy, and corruption,” which could hardly be interpreted as anything but an indictment of South Vietnamese officials who are themselves Catholics.

The bishops appealed for negotiations to end the war. This was ironic in that some observers contend that highly placed Catholic prelates had a lot to do with the events that precipitated the war. While Roman Catholics make up less than 10 per cent of the population of South Viet Nam, they have long dominated the public life of that country. President Nguyen Van Thieu is a Catholic and so is a large bloc that consistently supports him in the national legislature.

In the past, the bishops have generally refrained from criticizing the government. Their influence has been indirect, and it was generally associated with a hard line against the Viet Cong.

The new statement on the war quotes Pope Paul VI extensively, and it may be that it is the pontiff who is responsible for the shift. Vatican sources greeted the statement favorably. One was quoted as saying that the Vietnamese hierarchy had finally gotten the message.

The Shelves Are Sagging

A new medical center is being established in northwest Congo by the Paul Carlson Foundation on land donated by the government. It’s located in an area where an estimated 88,000 persons are afflicted with leprosy and will be used as a rehabilitation facility for leprosy patients.

The Paul Carlson Foundation is named after the American medical missionary who died in the Stanleyville massacre of 1964. Its program for the center also calls for a specialty and research program in various phases of medicine as resources permit and medical personnel became available. First workers are Dr. and Mrs. Wallace Thornbloom.

The foundation recently sent to the Congo drugs valued at more than half a million dollars. The drugs were donated by drug companies and sent with the aid of the Congo Protestant Relief Agency and the Medical Assistance Program.

“The shelves are sagging,” said Jody LeVahn, who worked as a nurse under Carlson. “Dr. Paul would really be thrilled to see this.”

The new center, called “The Loko,” is located on a 5,000-acre tract on a picturesque plateau. “Included also are python and elephant in the wooded areas for food for patients,” said the foundation’s announcement.

“There are no government doctors north of the Congo River,” a foundation spokesman said. “This is a strategic time for us medically and spiritually.”

REVAMPING THE CURIA

The resignation of Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal watchdog last month signals the most important turn in Catholicism since Vatican II adjourned. His replacement, Franjo Cardinal Seper, 62, of Yugoslavia, could hardly represent more of a change:

• Ottaviani’s office handed the recent Synod of Bishops a negative catalog of doctrinal errors (see October 27 issue, page 38). Seper was elected by the bishops to head the group that prepared a more moderate, “pastoral” document on belief.

• Ottaviani is one of the strongest anticommunists in the Curia. Under the coexistence-minded Seper, church relations with the Tito government have warmed remarkably, leading to the first concordat with a Communist regime. Two days after he appointed Seper, Pope Paul met with Yugoslav Premier Mika Spiljak.

• At Vatican II, Ottaviani was virtual floor manager for the traditionalists and Curia administrators against the religious-freedom decree and other changes. Seper spoke in favor of religious freedom, as well as decentralized authority and the declaration on Jews.

• Ottaviani has hardly been regarded as an ecumenical figure. His office a year ago forbade Catholics in Rome to join Christian unity services with Protestants—a decision later overruled by the Pope. Seper has spoken for limited liberalization on concelebration of the Eucharist. Last year his diocese was the site of Billy Graham’s first preaching service in a Communist nation.

• In doctrine, Ottaviani personified the disciplinary spirit of his agency, once called the Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition. His office has disapproved work by such eminent theologians as Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, the late John Courtney Murray, and—perhaps with more cause—the late Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In recent years, procedure has mellowed so that accused thinkers have a chance to defend their work, and the Index of Forbidden Books has disappeared.

Seper, by contrast, is considered “fairly open” in theology, Religious News Service said. He has favored an approach to atheism that shows more understanding of its causes, and more freedom for bishops to handle localized theological disputes.

Although Ottaviani has been branded as the Curia conservative (his campaigns against birth control and against psychoanalytic research by Mexican priests last year are cases in point), he has urged total condemnation of war and establishment of “one world republic.” Nearly blind for several years, the 77-year-old cardinal is considered a warm and gracious man in person. He spends much of his limited free time with orphans.

Ottaviani was the tenth of an Italian baker’s dozen children. He joined the Curia in 1929 and has served there ever since. Such long terms are less likely under Pope Paul’s Curia reorganization plans. Ottaviani not only headed the Congregation of the Faith but is a member of six of the other congregations (major offices). As conservative strategist during Vatican II, he won many tactical battles but lost the war. Vatican speculation is that he was a major candidate for the papacy when John was elected, and he was the man who crowned Paul in 1963.

The career of Seper (pronounced Shay’-pair) has been more obscure. He is a Croatian who has lived most of his life in Zagreb, the cultural center of Yugoslavia. He spent much of the 1950s in the touchy job of assistant to Cardinal Stepinac, who was under house arrest. Since Seper became primate in 1960, Yugoslavia has exchanged ambassadors with the Vatican, approved mass pilgrimages of Slavs to Rome and the Holy Land, and revived suppressed church publications. Last year the government permitted the return of émigré priest Krunoslav Draganovic, who had been pursued as a “war criminal” for twenty years.

Catholic liberals were worried when Pope Paul postponed for three months the Curia reorganization that was supposed to begin this month. The Seper appointment was balm, but some were worried again the next day when aging Cardinals Larraona and Lercaro resigned their potentially competing posts as heads of two Curia offices on liturgy. Lercaro’s office was created in 1964 to carry out Vatican II worship reforms and, apparently, to circumvent Larraona. But “new Mass” experiments under Lercaro were criticized at last fall’s Synod of Bishops. The two agencies will now be merged under Benno Cardinal Gut, 70, a Benedictine abbot in Switzerland who has been a cardinal only seven months.

With the advent of Seper, two of the three major posts in the doctrinal office are held by non-Italians. (The number-three man is Monsignor Charles Moeller of the University of Louvain, Belgium, regarded as a liberal.) And the reorganized Curia will be led by three Italians and eight non-Italians, a remarkable shift from the traditional Italian domination. Besides that, several other top Curia figures are expected to resign shortly, particularly Secretary of State Amleto Cardinal Cicognani, 84. Under the reorganization (see September 15 issue, page 47), the secretary of state becomes virtual prime minister, Curia terms are limited to five years with reappointment up to the pope, and a retirement age of 75 is set.

NEW STATISTICS FROM N.C.C.

The 1968 edition of the Yearbook of American Churches, published last month by the National Council of Churches, omits the customary total of U. S. Protestants and provides only a figure for the constituency of the NCC. Also missing are inclusive totals for Eastern Orthodox and for Catholic churches not in communion with Rome.

The new Jewish membership is 5,725,000. The Roman Catholic total, 46,864,910, represents a growth rate slightly faster than that of the population, while Protestants and religious groups as a whole run slightly behind the population increase.

Another change in the first Yearbook edited by Lauris Whitman is separate lists for “current” statistics for 1966 and for the 117 groups with “non-current” reports, perhaps an NCC nudge to keep them up to date. The ranking of the largest denominations on the current list is:

Of these groups, membership losses from the previous year were reported by the Methodists, United Presbyterians, United Church of Christ, and Christian Churches.

The 1966 reports from north of the border were Anglican Church of Canada, 1,292,762 members, and United Church of Canada, 1,062,006.

Major groups not supplying 1966 reports ranked as follows:

BRIEFS FOR OPEN HOUSING

The National Council of Churches, in a brief filed with the U. S. Supreme Court January 17, asks that refusal to sell homes to Negroes be made illegal. A group of two dozen Roman Catholic cardinals and bishops said they would also file. The court is currently considering the case of an interracial couple who say they were victims of racial discrimination when they sought unsuccessfully to buy a home in suburban St. Louis.

The NCC friend-of-court document said “Jim Crowism” in housing is “a badge of slavery,” and the Catholic brief said the “constitutional right to purchase a home without discrimination” is grounded in “the very nature of man.”

TRIPLE DEBUT

Two new religious periodicals appeared in January. A third was due February 1.

The Presbyterian Layman, a monthly published by the Presbyterian Lay Committee, Inc., had a six-page first issue, Life-sized but in tabloid newspaper format. It features conservative commentary on current church issues.

The United Church of Christ began publication of Colloquy, described as “an ecumenical magazine to explore, clarify, and criticize church education.” Its first issue abounds with pictures of Negroes in ghettoes. Text matter is liberally salted with profanity.

Religion and Society, Inc., a nonprofit organization in Bayport, Minnesota, announced it would unveil a new magazine “to state the religious presuppositions of society.” Writers for the magazine will be such conservatives as Howard F. Kershner, Russell Kirk, Irving E. Howard, William F. Rickenbacker, Samuel J. Mikolaski, and Edmund A. Opitz, the announcement said.

STRUGGLING WITH A DEBT

The Rev. J. Paul Driscoll founded Mid-City Baptist Church in a New Orleans barber shop back in 1943. “On the first building,” he recalls, “we dug the ditches ourselves.”

Now the church has 4,700 members and is the largest Southern Baptist congregation in the city. Latest statistics showed the church ranked third in baptisms in the whole Southern Baptist Convention, second in total property value, and third in missions giving. But 1968 dawned with a cloud over Mid-City: The Securities and Exchange Commission has court action pending against the church, charging fraudulent sale of bonds. The SEC complains the church used money from bond sales to make payments to previous investors.

Driscoll attributed the church’s problems to “doing business with people who proved to be unreliable.” Mid-City is among twenty-two churches that have filed suit to recover several million dollars for bonds delivered to two Texas companies that are in receivership. The two firms held four million dollars’ worth of bonds that Mid-City had issued to finance a high-rise apartment building and hotel. The original plan was for the church to construct a sanctuary or auditorium on the ground level and to conduct intensive evangelism among the hotel-apartment tenants. Mid-City is strongly evangelistic.

Driscoll says “it looks like almost twenty-five years of hard work might be lost. But even if we have to dig ditches again and have to work twenty-five more years, I’m convinced the Lord will see us through.”

Riot Report To Hit Churches

America’s churches, which are getting blamed for most everything these days, apparently are in for more of the same—from the government.

Katherine Peden tipped off a Louisville audience last month that the country’s religious organizations will get a going over when the President’s Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders issues its report soon.

“I think we are going to hear some uncomfortable things, and I think some of you will squirm when you see what we have to say about the service or lack of service of our nation’s churches,” said Miss Peden, prominent Kentucky political figure who is one of the eleven members of the commission.

Although she refused to elaborate, Miss Peden implied that she thought that the churches were not doing enough to stem urban unrest.

The problem of black power and urban unrest promises to be in the forefront of the churches’ concern this year. In Washington, Martin Luther King made plans for a mass demonstration in the capital during cherry-blossom time. Stokely Carmichael also was making plans there for a new coalition of Washington Negro leaders.

A group of Negro churchmen, the Committee of 100 Ministers, promptly denounced Carmichael’s plan as “an unholy alliance.” A day later Carmichael attended services in a Baptist church whose pastor is chairman of the committee. Dr. E. C. Smith greeted him publicly and explained later that the criticism of the coalition “was nothing personal” against Carmichael.

It turns out that Carmiobael had taught a youth group at the church while attending Howard University several years ago. Actually, however, Carmichael allowed, he’s a Methodist and not a Baptist.

In Detroit, black power took on a more ominous note when the Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr., turned down a $100,000 Ford Foundation grant because he claimed conditions put on the grant were a denial of self-determination. The rejection may have triggered an end to the coalition of black and white leaders formed to rebuild the city after last summer’s riots. Cleage, pastor of Central United Church of Christ, which worships a “black Jesus,” was offered the money for a black separatist group he heads. The group has pulled out of the coalition because “whites have tried to absorb blacks paternalisticailly and then on terms set by whites.”

INCENSED AT INCENSE

The air of peace and good will was temporarily suspended during Eastern Orthodox Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem.

A midnight procession in the Basilica of the Nativity was attended by Dr. Angus Campbell MacInnes, Anglican archbishop in Jerusalem, in an ecumenical gesture said to have drawn much favorable comment from Orthodox leaders.

But the Monophysite churches had a brief, sharp dispute on Christmas afternoon at the Altar of the Circumcision, which is owned by the Armenian Church. Priests of the Syrian Church, chanting evensong at the altar with the permission of Armenian authorities, complained that their fellow Monophysites of the Coptic Church at a neighboring altar, also owned by the Armenian Church, had offered incense beyond what is considered the dividing line. The Armenian Chief Dragoman Darabit, on whose permission both ceremonies depend, quickly settled the issue.

An Israeli military officer reportedly was overcome by the heavy odor of incense in the Grotto of the Nativity and, near to fainting, had to be given first aid by a Greek Orthodox priest.

AFGHANISTAN: A CHURCH IS BORN

In Afghanistan, a remote Asian land with a population of 15,000,000, there are probably fewer Christians than in any other country on earth. But under Prime Minister Mohammed Hashim Maiwandwal, policies against Christians have eased somewhat, and the government is giving permission for construction of a Protestant church in the Afghanistan capital of Kabul.

The church, planned to go up this year at a cost of $255,000, is the dream of J. Christy Wilson, Jr., a United Presbyterian minister who has been in Afghanistan for fifteen years. Wilson is the government-appointed chaplain to Protestant embassy personnel. The new building will house his Community Christian Church (forty-six members, weekly attendance of 200) as well as smaller congregations of German-speaking Lutherans and of Anglicans, who get periodic clergy visits. There are three other Protestant congregations in Afghanistan for foreigners, but none has ever had a building of its own.

Although several Christians from Muslim lands have been assigned to embassies in Kabul, Wilson knows of no citizen of officially Islamic Afghanistan who publicly professes Christ. A few Afghans attend his services out of curiosity. Many more learn about Christianity from Radio Voice of the Gospel, the Lutheran shortwave station in Ethiopia, which provides the only Persian-language Christian broadcasting available.

Page 6047 – Christianity Today (7)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

The Answer To Irrationalism

Set Forth Your Case, by Clark Pinnock (Craig, 1967, 94 pp., $1.50), is reviewed, by Robert L. Cleath, assistant editor,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Many men of our day, bound by the strait jacket of antisupernatural thought, are coming to believe that life is absurd. In a desperate quest to find meaning and satisfaction, they are retreating into the catacombs of subjective irrationalism. To show contemporaries that irrationalism and despair need not plague men and that the Gospel of Christ offers a sure hope based on substantial evidence, Clark Pinnock has written this brief, scintillating apologetic work, Set Forth Your Case.

This thirty-year-old theologian from New Orleans Baptist Seminary considers apologetics—the defense of the truthfulness of the Christian religion—an indispensable tool for evangelism. Its intent, he claims, is “not to coerce people to accept the Christian faith but to make it possible for them to do so intelligently. The data we possess about the gospel is sufficient to make it sensible for the non-Christian to begin his search for the ultimate clue with Christianity.” Although he is aware that without the convicting and illuminating action of the Holy Spirit even the soundest apologetic has no power to make a man a Christian, Pinnock rests his case on the historical events and biblical revelation that provide a rational basis for Christianity. He refuses to surrender the belief that “the heart cannot delight in what the mind rejects as false.”

Pinnock presents his apologetic against the backdrop of current humanistic philosophy and theology. He claims that modern theology has sold out to a philosophical irrationalism that separates the “lower story” of reason, fact, and history from the “upper story” of intuition, faith, and conjecture. The Bible is placed in the lower story while the non-verbal “work of God” occupies the upper story, where “encounter with God” takes place. Meaning is found apart from fact. The subject who has faith becomes more important than the object of his faith. Ambiguous and solipsistic, modern theology turns away from evidences, claims Pinnock, and thus destroys the vital means of challenging the non-Christian to believe in Jesus Christ.

Evangelical Christians, for whom the personal experience of grace is a reality, are cautioned by Pinnock not to allow the subjective validating process of the new liberalism to become the basis for establishing the truthfulness of the Gospel. He states, “The uniqueness of the Christian message is not found at the point of experience at all but in the incarnation datum.” Biblical faith is not a leap in the dark but a response motivated by the revealed promises of God. Pinnock recognizes the necessary role that spiritual experience plays in personal verification: “Apart from the work of the Spirit the gospel itself could only be truth on ice, cold and fruitless.” But he maintains that the deep joy yielded by the Gospel is related to its truthfulness.

Presenting his positive case for Christianity, Pinnock discusses topics crucial for today: the historical reliability of the New Testament; the identity, claims, and miracles of Jesus Christ; evidences for the resurrection; the indispensability of the propositional revelation of Scripture to sound theology; the knowledge of God; the mythology of evolution; and the need for well-trained, articulate apologists to invade all of human culture. His discussions of these topics are too brief. Yet his lines of argument and selective evidence ignite the mind and make one realize that his arguments merit serious consideration by all truth-seekers.

Pinnock advances his position on key topics in full view of competing contemporary views. Before considering Christ’s identity, he sets forth the reasons why the old and new “quests for the historical Jesus” have failed. The old quest rightly used inductive methodology but failed because it limited Jesus strictly to his human proportions. The new quest’s fallacy is that it retains a naturalistic bias and rejects the inductive procedure. Resting his case on New Testament evidence, Pinnock asserts that Jesus is readily approachable. The evidence shows him to be the Messiah, human and divine. Pinnock refers to Jesus’ personal claims, his authority, his miracles, and his work of redemption. He argues that the evidence obligates men to acknowledge Jesus either as a criminal megalomaniac or as the Messiah he claimed to be.

The young Baptist theologian sees the bodily resurrection of Christ as central to the integrity of the Saviour and the Gospel. He considers current thought that bases knowledge of the resurrection strictly on “immediate” experience as a departure from the apostolic proclamation that pointed both to historical evidence and spiritual awareness. Succinctly and effectively he recites evidence for the resurrection: the empty tomb, the conduct of Christ’s opponents and apostles, the appearances, the subsequent ministry of the Church. He concludes, “The resurrection stands within the realm of historical factuality.”

The brevity with which Pinnock has treated his themes precludes recognition of this work as a landmark volume in apologetics. Yet he has enunciated the approach needed for a generation that is rebelling against sham. His bare-knuckles challenge of current leading theological ideas will be cheered by people who possess but cannot adequately articulate a disdain for the irrational aberrations sweeping through the ecclesiastical intelligentsia. His forthright, well-reasoned advocacy of the historic Christian position will provoke the uncommitted to consider the claims of the Gospel. And the committed who absorb Pinnock’s arguments will be better able to set forth their case for Christ. His selective bibliography will point readers toward a deeper study of apologetics than this short, easily read book allows.

Christians need to heed Pinnock’s insistence that the Gospel be presented in a rationally compelling manner. He states: “The notion that nobody is ever converted to Christ by argument is a foolish platitude.” He is right. In our intellect-oriented age that is fast succumbing to irrational philosophies, Spirit-filled Christians must be equipped with sound arguments based on biblical revelation and historical evidence in order to register a powerful witness for Jesus Christ. Laymen would do well to study the case set forth by Pinnock. Those who do are bound to become more effective Christian persuaders.

Kirk, Buckley, And The ‘Wasp Mafia’

The Conservative Tradition in America, by Allen Guttmann (Oxford, 1967, 214 pp., $6), is reviewed by Harry R. Butman, editor, “The Congregationalist,” and pastor, Congregational Church of the Messiah, Los Angeles, California.

Although few pastors will be able to appreciate fully the glittering expertise with which Dr. Guttmann handles a host of obscure political theorists, many will thank him for coming up with an acceptable definition of “conservative.” When, in Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty scornfully informed Alice that when he used a word, “it means precisely what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less,” he set the pattern for the use many moderns make of “conservative” and its companion term, “liberal.”

Not so Dr. Guttmann. To him, “conservatism” and “liberalism” describe two different attitudes toward change. The conservative sets high value on a society that is orderly, disciplined, and hierarchical, with a strong sense of the past. This is a definition that many ministers who call themselves conservatives can gladly accept.

My daughter once said to me, “Father, the trouble with you is that you think American society came to its flower on Martha’s Vineyard in the 1890s.” With conservatism in this sense Guttmann has a measure of sympathy, and he states its case with scholarship and literary grace.

But though the author esteems conservatism as a political philosophy, and a philosophy that has powerfully influenced important American authors, one gets the impression that he wouldn’t have a real live conservative around the house. Russell Kirk is his bête noire, and he reserves his darkest and most deft pejoratives for Kirk’s The Conservative Mind. His estimate of William Buckley is somewhat less than fair to that literate and witty voice of conservatism. The list of “good” and “bad” categories on page 161 is closer to caricature than one expects to find in a serious book, and the quotation of Norman Mailer’s ugly summary of those who voted for Barry Goldwater as “a Wasp Mafia” is at the best ungenerous.

But the book has provocative chapters. The one on the military establishment points out, with documentation, that, far from being reactionaries, generals on the whole have been close to the liberal position. A fresh and fascinating aspect of the book is its description of the influence of conservative thought on American literature; with broad scope and skill Guttmann shows how poets and novelists have been moved by the conservative attitude toward the past.

Although he is essentially critical of conservatism, the author recognizes its strength: “… there is … a joy in continuity as well as in inauguration. There is a pride in preservation as well as in creation.” And he epigrammatically concludes, “Socialism with a sense of the past is the name of my desire.”

Pike’S Apologia

If This Be Heresy, by James A. Pike (Harper & Row, 1967, 205 pp., $4.95), and The Bishop Pike Affair, by William Stringfellow and Anthony Towne (Harper & Row, 1967, 266 pp., $4.95, paper, $2.25), are reviewed by Peter R. Doyle, rector, St. James Episcopal Church, Leesburg, Virginia.

Bishop Pike’s If This Be Heresy cannot in any sense be considered a serious addition to constructive Christian theology. It is, however, his latest assertion of the real basis of his own beliefs: experience—experience taken in the widest sense, experience that is open to any and all “truth” that may be proffered it from all the investigations of the human spirit. Beginning with a detailed exegesis of each word of the book’s title and continuing through chapters called “Qualm and Quest,” “The Authority Crisis,” “Bases for Belief,” “Facts—Faith,” “The Style of Life,” “Life After Death,” and “God,” Pike proceeds (1) to discredit bases of faith professed in standard Christian teaching and (2) to establish the new basis that is nourished by the modern sciences and humanities.

Reading For Perspective

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

A Second Touch, by Keith Miller (Word, $3.50). Those who profited from Miller’s The Taste of New Wine will like its sequel: an extremely personal and disturbingly candid approach to honest and creative Christian living.

A Question of Conscience, by Charles Davis (Harper & Row, $6.95). A brilliant English priest-theologian sensitively but forthrightly gives his personal, theological, and ecclesiastical reasons for leaving Roman Catholicism.

The New Testament from 26 Translations, Curtis Vaughan, general editor (Zondervan, $12.50). For every phrase of the King James New Testament, the editors provide several variant readings from twenty-five later translations to help clarify the meaning of the text.

The book does not reflect the best logical reasoning of which the bishop is capable. It does reflect his profound personal response to the attacks made on him by his peers; this often interrupts his argument. Although the number of footnotes suggests thorough scholarship, one is quickly disillusioned about the quality of that scholarship. Pike proves himself ignorant of the real basis for classical Anglicanism in the Scriptures, the Fathers, and the Continental Reformers. He is uncritically responsive to the most radical and questionable modern biblical reductionism. His discussion of studies of extrasensory perception as a means of validation of religious truth (but not Christian truth) will surprise no one who knows of his purported séance on national TV.

The Bishop Pike Affair is a fascinating study in theological polemic. Claiming to offer an “objective” analysis of the theological controversy Pike has aroused, the writers—one a lawyer, the other a poet—proceed to discredit, by character assassination, the attackers of Bishop Pike; to demolish, by labeling, the views against which he writes; and to dismiss, in advance and by assertion, the very possibility of a Christian church’s trying its members for errors in the exposition of Christian teaching.

Like Bishop Pike, these writers reveal themselves ignorant of Anglican history, of the role of theology in that history, and of the real issues involved in some of the classical Christian dogmas. Like Pike they ignore the oaths of allegiance to Scripture taken by all ministers in Anglicanism; like him they parrot the recent definition of Anglicanism as so “comprehensive” that anyone within it can honorably believe anything and still remain in good standing. Unlike Pike, however, they write viciously and slanderously.

They study first the history of Bishop Pike and his theological development, and of the opposition to him. Next they analyze the controversy, with copious references to earlier “heresy trials” in the Episcopal Church. They conclude with a really useful collection of documents relating to the whole episode.

The viciousness with which they write and the lengths to which they go to discredit those who oppose Pike (as in the whole section from page 140 to page 197) must not, however, detract from the very important issue this Pike affair raises: the faithfulness of the leaders of a Christian denomination to their oaths to proclaim the truths of Scripture “as this Church has received” them.

The authors reveal the desperate measures the Episcopal bishops took to avoid a heresy trial—to avoid, that is, a debate on what really is, and what really is not, the Christian faith. The failure of Episcopal leaders to proclaim for their people the truth of Christian affirmation, and their successful efforts to amend canon law so that trials of bishops will now be almost impossible to institute, indicate the degree to which this one denomination may be departing from its stated task: to witness to the biblical truth of Jesus Christ, and to provide leadership that honors that task. One hopes that other denominations will profit from this example. And one hopes also that the leaders of every Christian denomination will be less afraid of the disapproval of men than of the judgment of God.

Schleiermacher Revisited

The Eternal Covenant, by Gerhard Spiegler (Harper & Row, 1967, 205 pp., $5.50), is reviewed by R. Allan Killen, professor of apologetics and systematic theology, Covenant Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

This book, written by a liberal about the father of liberalism, is important reading for anyone who wants to understand Friedrich Schleiermacher’s theological system. And Spiegler’s method of approach and analysis is a good example of what needs to be done with many other theologies, such as those of Barth, Tillich, and Bultmann.

The strength and value of the book lies in two things. First, the method of analysis is good, though there is room for improvement. Spiegler writes: “In theology, just as in all other modes of inquiry, problem identification and specification must precede all efforts to find a problem solution.” Second, the author presents the philosophical basis of the answer given by Schleiermacher, rather than merely discussing his dependence on the thought forms of his age.

Spiegler opens his real study in chapter 2 with a presentation of Schleiermacher’s theological project, his “quest for the eternal covenant between the Christian faith and culture.” It would have been an immense help had the author stated at this beginning point the philosophical problem that held Schleiermacher prisoner throughout his life, that of The One and The Many. The reader will gain much by keeping this problem in mind. Schleiermacher’s polar dialectic, in his speculative presuppositional philosophy, and his theology, based upon the “feeling of dependence,” are his two answers to this problem.

Schleiermacher’s dialectic is not Hegel’s triadic dialectic, which explains and governs the development of God, the universe, and man. It is a polar dialectic existing within a three-tiered system. In the top story of Schleiermacher’s three-story philosophical-theological edifice we find a pre-suppositional absoluteness that is static. In the middle there is the relativity of a polar dialectic or antithesis between universality and particularity, or identity and difference. The bottom contains the world with its empirical sciences and particulars.

Schleiermacher first identified God with the world. In his second, more mature stage, he identified him with the absolute. From that point on he retained a contradiction in his thinking, since he identified God philosophically with the absolute—which separated him entirely from the world—but theologically with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, as the presence of God in the Church. Spiegler says that he should have identified God with the second story; then he could have admitted that universals and particulars exist in tension in both God and the world. In Schleiermacher’s philosophy, God is absolutely other and as good as dead. But one who reads his theology finds that he is alive!

The explanation of the tensional polar dialectic present in the second story of Schleiermacher’s system—and also in existence—throws much light upon the presence of the ontological elements of individualization and participation, form and dynamics, destiny and freedom, in Paul Tillich’s theology. The “theological project” of the eternal covenant between Christian faith and culture reveals the origin of Tillich’s view of “The Theology of Culture.”

Denuding A Vital Concept

Messianic Theology and Christian Faith, by George A. Riggan (Westminster, 1967, 208 pp., $6), is reviewed by Charles Lee Feinberg, Talbot Theological Seminary, La Mirada, California.

This important volume contains lectures delivered by George A. Riggan, Riley Professor of Systematic Theology at Hartford Seminary Foundation, to Protestant chaplains in the Far East, and then to groups of laymen and college students in this country. His subject is the historical meaning of the fact that one was called the Messiah and, by implication, the significance of being a Christian.

Riggan moves ably from the messianic kingship in ancient Israel and in Hebrew prophecy, through the beginnings of ecclesiastical messianism and apocalyptic messianism, to New Testament messianism. He first explores the meaning of the term “messiah,” finding that it does not move away from its etymological meaning of “anointed one.” At the beginning it was used to denote the ruling king in Israel. After the exile in Babylon, royal messianism was replaced by priestly messianism. Only with the advent of apocalypticism did messianism come to signify a supernatural and preexistent person through whom God would bring in his eternal kingdom in another world.

When Riggan comes to New Testament messianism, he finds he cannot apply to Jesus the four messianic titles—Christos, Son of Man, Servant of God, Son of God. Why? Because they all emanate from a post-Easter theology, he says, in which the minimal facts of the Gospel were reconstructed by the community of the faithful. Riggan’s final emphasis is that somehow in the life and work of Jesus there is a release of therapeutic energies that can have meaning for us today. His thinking always converges on “the time being.”

I find myself in disagreement with Riggan’s basic postulate, that the messiah concept was at the beginning related only to the anointed king. That it was so used, and even of Gentiles like Cyrus, there is no denying. But surely the Old Testament makes it clear that the technical and eschatological use of the term did not await the rise of apocalypticism or the appearance of the canonical Daniel or the non-canonical Enoch and related works. To denude the term of this vital element is to do harm to the entire discussion.

Furthermore, Riggan seriously overuses the idea of Israel’s borrowing from her neighbors; one is left with the impression that practically nothing was original in Israel. The author constantly questions Old Testament sources, but not on the basis of better evidence. He feels that the descriptions of many events are based on a distortion of facts. Throughout he shows an anti-supernatural bias. He takes great liberties in interpreting Scriptures; for example, can one legitimately accuse Jeremiah of “delusions of grandeur” and “theological megalomania”? Ill-founded criticism is seen in such verdicts as his denial of historicity of the man Daniel and of the authenticity of the greater part of the Synoptic contribution. Somehow, he nevertheless claims, the theologies about Jesus release healing energies that are of great benefit to us today. It is well and good to interpret Second Corinthians 5:19 as “God is the reintegration of fragmented human existence”—but how, Dr. Riggan, how?

Where Parents Go Wrong

Parents on Trial, by David Wilkerson with Claire Cox (Hawthorn, 1967, 188 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Paul Rader, director, Reality Evangelism, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Why did our child go wrong? Where did we fail? What should we do? These questions plague many parents. Parents on Trial, by Teen Challenge founder David Wilkerson, is one of the sources of practical answers. No mere survey or digest of answers and formulas, the book is based on the experiences, hopes, and heartbreaks of the author’s ministry to teen-age gangs in New York slums.

Wilkerson warns his reader, “You will not like everything you read. Much of it is not very pretty, and some may be shocking.” But the stark fact remains: “Delinquency and drug addiction can strike any home.” Why kids go wrong or right is the responsibility of the parents, says Wilkerson, because “every word and deed is a fiber woven into the character of a child, which ultimately determines how that child fits into the fabric of society.” The evidences of what he calls “potluck parents” are seen, he says, in our jails, street gangs, and mental hospitals, in the rising rates of drug addiction, illegitimacy, alcoholism, divorce, and homosexuality.

Accounts of actual cases illustrate twelve readable chapters: “Six Dead”; “But I Was a Good Mother”; “Why Some Kids Have Given Up on Parents”; “The ‘Hidden’ Delinquents”; “Part-time Parents”; “Like Father Like Son”; “Danger Ahead—Watch the Signs!”; “Homosexuality Starts at Home”; “The ‘Other Half of Illegitimacy”; “God Is for Squares”; “Life Without Father—Exceptions to the Rule”; and “They Are Your Kids, Wrong—Or Right.”

Worth rereading and remembering are his lists of “Ten Ways to Produce a Delinquent,” six factors that contribute to drug addiction, warning signs of drug addiction, and the causes of homosexuality. The scriptural passages he discusses should be studied prayerfully.

Wilkerson’s conclusions are hopeful: “The course of a child’s life can be favorably influenced by parents of any educational or economic standing if they are not afraid to work at being good parents.… Devoted, dedicated, hard-working mothers and fathers can weigh the balance in favor of decency and the building of moral character.”

For parents, this book should be required reading. Others who would do well to read it are ministers, teachers, social workers, judges, policemen, lawyers—and also children. It is both disturbing and encouraging, critical and helpful, shocking and hopeful.

Twice Hanged In Effigy

William Anderson Scott, No Ordinary Man, by Clifford Merrill Drury (Arthur H. Clark, 1967, 352 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by Ilion T. Jones, professor emeritus of practical theology, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Francisco, California.

This is biography at its best. Its author is a distinguished teacher of church history who is a master at portraying important personages of the past within the social and intellectual currents of their day, and making them and the issues in which they were involved come to life again.

The subject of this study is a colorful Presbyterian minister of the Civil War period who held pastorates in New Orleans, New York City, and San Francisco. He became personally involved in nearly all the stirring issues of those difficult days, and his positive, advanced, often unpopular positions resulted in many tense situations in his churches and in the cities where he lived. Twice in San Francisco he was hanged in effigy.

But his strong Christian character carried him through these unpleasant experiences, and he managed to hold the respect and affection of the great majority of the people. He was given the highest office in his denomination, the moderatorship of the Presbyterian General Assembly. He left as a legacy to the future a college, a theological seminary (now San Francisco Theological Seminary), a journal of religion of some importance, and an outstanding example of ability, efficiency, courage, and integrity.

Dr. Drury is right. William Anderson Scott was “no ordinary man.”

The Highest Aspiration

Make Love Your Aim, by Eugenia Price (Zondervan, 1967, 191 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by Margaret Johnston Hess, minister’s wife and Bible class teacher, Livonia, Michigan.

This is one of those delightful books that agree with what you already think but push it a little bit further. Most of the ideas you could have figured out yourself if you’d stopped to think—but the author did stop to think, and there it is all set down for you, neatly, logically, practically.

Miss Price explains the framework of her discussion—that God is love, and all love is of God. At one point she seems to be backing off the liberal end of things theologically, until she briskly supports her thesis with chapter and verse from First John. Her interpretations of Scripture are fresh and unfettered by ordinary conservative thought-patterns, yet wholly legitimate. Some are like a breath of fresh air in a closed room.

“We show love, true love, when we concern ourselves first and always with the way the other person feels—not with how that other person is making us feel,” she says. Love is what keeps utter personal freedom in check. “God is love and love is man’s deepest need, and therefore when man meets God, man’s deepest need is met.” “We can only learn of love as we learn of God.”

Love-giving is even more important than love-getting. We can learn to love—by practicing. True love frees rather than binds. The love that is God-love is thinking and acting toward other human beings in terms of their own good.

This book is less personal, more objective than some of Miss Price’s earlier books. It is practical, easy to read, and fast moving. For the person who feels he knows all about love, it effectively articulates what usually is in the realm of intuition. For having trouble with love, it could be an invaluable gift, pointing the way to Christ through our need to love and be loved.

Book Briefs

Jesus, edited by Hugh Anderson (Prentice-Hall, 1967, 182 pp., $4.95). A sampler of 19th and 20th century views of Jesus based on different approaches to the Gospels. Includes writings by Bornkamm, Goguel, Renan, Strauss, Schweitzer, Harnack, Bultmann, and others.

Paul and the Agon Motif, by Victor C. Pfitzner (Brill, 1967, 232 pp., 28 guilders). A scholarly study of Paul’s use of the athletic metaphor, a traditional concept perhaps adopted from its use in Hellenistic synagogues.

Instrument of Thy Peace, by Alan Paton (Seabury Press, 1968, 124 pp., $3.50). The author of Cry, the Beloved Country has written a book “for sinners, for those who with all their hearts wish to be better, purer, less selfish, more useful” based on the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi.

Religion and Modern Man, by John B. Magee (Harper & Row, 1967, 510 pp., $8). A stimulating, objective college textbook that introduces the student to live religious options in the world today.

The Two Swords, by Donald E. Boles (Iowa State University, 1967, 831 pp., $10.95). A comprehensive study of the debate over religion in the schools in which the significant court cases and reaction to them are considered.

On Judaism, by Martin Buber (Schocken Books, 1967, 242 pp., $5.95). Addresses by the perceptive Jewish scholar from two periods 1909–1918 and 1939–1951. He calls upon Jews to “await the voice of God whether it comes out of the storm or out of the stillness that follows it.”

Selected Writings of Martin Luther, edited by Theodore G. Tappert (Fortress, 1967, 4 vols., 484 pp., 408 pp., 483 pp. and 403 pp., $2.95 ea.). This four-volume library of important selections from Luther’s writings, arranged chronologically, is a good buy for students of Reformation theology.

Answers To Eutychus Iii’S Quiz

(1) Homer A. Rodeheaver; trombone. (2) Father Divine. (3) Human government. (4) Harry Emerson Fosdick. (5) A stone commemorating God’s help (1 Sam. 7:12). (6) Father Charles Coughlin. (7) Aimee Semple McPherson. (8) William Randolph Hearst. (9) By the Bible concordance they used: Strong’s for the strong; Young’s for the young; Cruden’s for the crude. (10) Oral Roberts; by placing their hands on the radio or TV; to obtain healing.

Ideas

Page 6047 – Christianity Today (9)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

A major publication project enlisting 500 scholars inevitably holds importance for the academic world. When it takes the form of The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Paul Edwards, editor; Macmillan, 1967, eight volumes, 4,300 pp., $219.50), its bearing on religious concerns is apparent. And a five-million-word work spanning the history of philosophy and dealing with its major themes in the context of contemporary concern is sure to carry weight among college and university students.

The publishers claim that this is the most comprehensive philosophical reference work published in any language. Although the project is rather modest when compared to the broader Hastings’ Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (1908), its full presentation of philosophical concepts and theories marks a noteworthy advance over the brief definitions and essays characteristic of Baldwin’s Dictionary of Psychology and Philosophy (1901). It includes 900 articles on individual thinkers, and many contemporary names and themes appear. Some essays run the length of short books. Plato and Bertrand Russell each get more than 20,000 words, and an article on psychology runs 25,000 words. The 35,000-word entry on the history of semantics discusses linguistic theories with an eye on the current debate. A 65,000-word article on “Logic, History of” combines the efforts of a dozen writers.

Although the Christian religion is anchored in special revelation, it does not—at least in evangelical circles—assert a “ghetto” epistemology; rather, it presses a truth-claim upon all men. And what respected philosophers say, on the other hand, influences the philosophy of religion and leaves a mark upon theological discussion. What, then, does this new effort promise for the dialogue between theologians and philosophers?

A reviewer could hardly be expected to read all 1,450 articles before venturing a judgment on the work. He must be content with fair sampling, from within the special interests of his field. In our case, an appraisal must concentrate on the overall stance of the essays toward religious realities, and in particular toward the historic Christian faith.

At very least, the encyclopedia makes accessible a great deal of useful material about the currents of recent philosophy, and its biographical listings are often of considerable help. Not only the essays on our century’s philosophers but also those on its theologians, including Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, and Niebuhr, tend to run longer than those in Encyclopaedia Britannica and are worthy entries.

But how acceptable are the essays on the Christian religion and its bearing on philosophical concerns? The essay on “Christianity” by John Hick notes that the body of Christian doctrine differs from philosophical systems by “its essential relation to and dependence on particular historical events and experiences” (2/105). “Christianity … begins with particular, nonrecurrent historical events that are regarded as revelatory and on the basis of which Christian faith makes certain limited statements about the ultimate nature and structure of reality.” Although the facts of faith that are said to define mainstream Christianity leave in doubt an ontological Trinity, the historical fall of Adam, the bodily resurrection of Christ, and a final judgment of mankind, the essay itemizes the following minimal postulates: “the reality of God and the propriety of speaking to him in a threefold manner …; the divine creation of the universe; human sinfulness; divine incarnation in the person of Jesus, the Christ; his reconciliation of man to God; his founding of the Christian church and the continuing operation of his Spirit within it; and an eventual end to human history and the fulfillment of God’s purpose for his creation.” The origin of the Christian Church is traced to the resurrection-faith more than to the resurrection-fact, heaven is translated existentially, and universal salvation regarded as a possibility. Hick sunders Christian belief into two levels, a primal level consisting of direct reports of experience and a secondary level consisting of theological interpretation—an approach that dismisses the biblical interpretation of events as supernaturally given. The unique biblical events are “seen by faith as revelatory of God.” The essay on “Revelation” (7/189), also by Hick, concedes that the view of propositional divine revelation was virtually axiomatic a century ago and still remains the majority position. But it is uncritically asserted to be a post-biblical view, and a commitment to natural theology is held to be integral to it. The view of revelation promulgated by twentieth-century neo-Protestant theologians is said to be non-propositional.

Whatever disappointment evangelical scholars will feel at this overview will be moderated, however, by the recognition that in the context of the encyclopedia as a whole, the Christian view might have been set forth by a radical critic. For one will not find here adequate representation of contemporary scholars who champion historic Christianity with philosophical competence. The Amsterdam scholar H. Dooyeweerd gets a passing name-mention, though the essay on Dutch philosophy concedes that only the Calvinist “philosophy of the idea of Law” has remained immune to the phenomenological and existential dominance of philosophical fortunes in the Netherlands. C. S. Lewis is mentioned in an essay on immortality and a tangential reference in an essay on religion and science. Evangelical scholars like Gordon H. Clark, Alvin Plantinga, W. Harry Jellema, Cornelius Van Til, and Edward John Carnell, who have been engaged at the frontiers of theological-philosophical debate, are wholly ignored.

This leads on to the question of objectivity in the handling of faith-and-reason concerns. Any encyclopedia will reflect largely the dominant view of its times, and in many parts of the American academic world today the climate of thought is either overtly or implicitly naturalistic. The problems that contemporary postulations raise for traditional views will, therefore, find prominent expression. But the neglect of alternative perspectives, and the setting of Christian positions almost exclusively in the context of modern criticism, will give a propagandistic character to a reference work. This encyclopedia is not free from such a bias.

The editor, Paul Edwards, concedes that the project reflects somewhat the editorial decisions of one raised in the Anglo-Saxon empirical and analytical tradition; that is a rather mild acknowledgment. Major essays (“Atheism,” “Life, Meaning and Value of,” “My Death,” and “Why?”) are from Edwards’s perspective, and there is a running concern to overcome any notion that atheists are moral outlaws (1/175, 7/156). It is amusing to find Edwards wrestling with Billy Graham and the Devil and coming up with a refutation that Graham can still explain on his own approach, that of a revelational interpretation of human unbelief.

On the whole the encyclopedia is professionally first rate; its academic standard is high. It does contain a great deal of naturalism and thus gives added publicity to the secularism and paganism of much American scholarship. But then, professional philosophies today seldom discuss ideas of revelation and the supernatural, even in the mood of Barth and Brunner.

Not a few topics could have been assigned to other philosophers of good standing and equal competence who would have done more justice to orthodox Christianity. There is no article on the “Supernatural” or “Transcendent.” In the essay on “Metaphysics, History of” Roger Hancock tells us that the analytical philosophers are making “the most original and important contributions to metaphysics” in the English-speaking world at present (5/299), and he apparently thinks that the case for rational metaphysics can now be ignored. Edwards supplies some of the ablest criticisms of existential metaphysics and of speculative ontologies like Paul Tillich’s that abandon rational knowledge of ultimate reality, and Frederick Ferré in an essay on “Analogy in Theology” points to the difficulties of nonunivocal theology; but neither notes the interest of evangelical theology in rational divine revelation and conceptual knowledge of God. Space allotments sometimes seem artificial, except as reflections of special interests. Wilhelm Reich, the Austrian psychiatrist and critic of traditional norms of sexual conduct, gets three times the space given Hans Reichenbach. Renan, who rejected the supernatural, gets generous coverage, and Bertrand Russell, who gets a page and a quarter in Encyclopaedia Britannica, gets twenty-two pages here.

There is a tendency to reflect the modern case for Christianity in terms of a reliance on analogical, existential, and linguistic theology. Evangelical scholars along with the naturalists escort these views to a skeptical outcome, but rational theism remains as an alternative. However, in view of secular theologians’ eager appeal to the “scientific method” as a reason for abandoning the case for the supernatural, it is noteworthy that this major encyclopedia devotes only four pages to “Scientific Method,” with an essay that begins on a skeptical note about the possibility of a prescriptive methodology for science in general one concludes that “many people expect too much of the scientific method as a guide in their personal lives.” Moreover, the essay on “Metaphysics” by W. H. Walsh includes some pointed criticisms of linguistic and analytic philosophy. But the essay on “God, Concepts of” by H. P. Owen (3/344) leaves an impression that divine transcendence as affirmed by Christianity requires a rejection of univocal knowledge of God, and its overview of divine attributes and of issues bearing on the objective existence and existential reality of God is hurried.

On “Psychology” we read that there has been “notable progress toward a policy of coexistence” between philosophers and psychologists, and that “here and there some progress toward cooperation has been made.” The essay on “Rebirth” says: “See ‘Reincarnation.’” The essay on “Reason,” whether intentionally or not, gives the impression that the true friend of reason is not the philosopher who pitches reason’s claims high but those—including psychoanalysts—who dissent from rationalism as a philosophical doctrine.

The encyclopedia does not wholly succeed in its attempt to make philosophical subjects intelligible to the ordinary reader, but this is as often due to the subject matter as to the handling. For the serious student in philosophy it is an important reference tool, and those churchmen determined to relate Christianity effectively to the modern world cannot afford to neglect its perspectives. It will at times disappoint the technician interested in serious interaction at theology-philosophy frontiers (the essay on “Love,” for example, surely needs supplementation in view of the extended recent discussions of eros and agape.) Yet it captures the mood of an influential segment of contemporary philosophers with deep doubts about the reality of the supernatural, of whose questions the informed churchman will want to be aware, and it expounds the perennial issues of philosophy through contributions from scholars of outstanding reputations. But if the basic commitments of philosophy concern the nature and modes of knowledge, and if these determine what is philosophically problematic and how intelligibility is maintained, then a truly encyclopedic work ought not so fully to ignore the contributions of a host of capable Christian scholars to philosophical discussion.

To hear some Christians talk about modern versions of the Scriptures, one would think that the slightest mistranslation or paraphrase could sweep away God’s Word in its entirety.

First it was the Revised Standard Version, that “perversion” of Scripture, as one writer put it, whose “evident purpose is to deny inspiration, rob Jesus of his deity, and reduce him to a mere man.” Now it is the American Bible Society’s Today’s English Version (Good News for Modern Man), whose press run has already passed five million copies. Critics say the omission of the word “blood” in Colossians 1:14 and 20 and in Revelation 1:5 minimizes the Atonement; what they overlook is that in the first verse “blood” does not occur even in the Greek (here the King James Version is in error) and that the new translation may actually make the text more understandable to many readers. Good News for Modern Man reads “through his death” rather than “through his blood.”

None of these remarks is intended to deny the need for accurate translations. Bible-believing Christians have long recognized that divine revelation is given in verbal and propositional form; hence no effort should be spared to achieve a sound text and reliable versions. Nor dare we minimize the real harm that can be done by an improper translation or paraphrase.

In some cases, recent versions deliberately obfuscate the text. It is hard to see, for instance, how the translation of Genesis 12:3c by the RSV—“and by you all the families of the earth will bless themselves”—does anything but destroy the meaning of the passage. For although the reflective rather than the passive voice is a legitimate rendering of the Hebrew niphil, the spiritual import of the promise certainly calls for an emphasis upon that blessing which will come from the hand of God through Abraham’s seed—“in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” The reference is to a promised redeemer rather than to a blessing formula.

Similarly, the careful scholar cannot condone the imposition of a preconceived idea upon passages that speak of the ekklesia (“church” or “congregation”) in the New English Bible. The NEB reserves the translation “church” for the ekklesia in Jerusalem and refers to all other ekklesiae, those founded by the apostles throughout the Roman world, as “congregations.” Here the translation is clearly influenced by ecumenical concerns.

No one should doubt that translations are fallible, as these examples clearly indicate. Yet believers must not lose sight of the fact that “scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35), that “not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (Matt. 5:18). They must always keep in view the spiritual dynamic and abiding character of God’s irrepressible Word. “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord abides for ever” (1 Pet. 1:24, 25).

Several facts help to put the issues in proper perspective. First, there has probably never been a translation that has not met with some objection, often legitimate. And part of the reason is that no translation has ever been perfect. Church historians will note that even the King James Version met with considerable rejection in its day, particularly among those, such as the American Pilgrims, who preferred the more “conservative” Geneva version of 1560. It was many years before the intrinsic merits of the version of 1611 established it as the great Bible of the English-speaking world.

Second, it must never be forgotten that Scripture is the best interpreter of Scripture and that the Bible itself tends to correct deviant translations. An excellent case in point is the rendering of Isaiah 7:14 in the RSV. Here the translators have shied away from the word “virgin,” choosing the more general of two possible meanings of the Hebrew word—“a young woman shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” But the New Testament quotes the verse again in such obvious reference to the virgin birth of Jesus Christ that all misunderstanding is inevitably corrected—“Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son …” (Matt. 1:23, RSV).

Third, it is also true that some verses in Scripture have never been well translated and that, for this reason as for others, the task of producing new translations must go on. In Second Timothy 3:16, for instance, the Greek word theopneustos has never been correctly translated by any English version, with the possible exception of the Amplified Bible, which includes the correct meaning along with others.

In this verse the New Testament speaks of the Old Testament, noting that “all Scripture is inspired by God.” Now the English phrase “is inspired by” (RSV) or “is given by inspiration of” (KJV) translates the one word theopneustos. And this word, as B. B. Warfield pointed out at the beginning of this century, “very distinctly does not mean inspired of God.” It means “God-breathed.” Paul taught that the Scriptures are the direct result of the breathing-out of God. Much as God created man by breathing into him so that he became a living soul, so also did God breathe out the Scriptures so that they became a living revelation. Warfield writes, “The Greek term has nothing to say of inspiring or of inspiration: it speaks only of a ‘spiring’ or ‘spiration.’ What it says of Scripture is, not that it is ‘breathed into by God’ or that it is the product of the Divine ‘inbreathing’ into its human authors, but that it is breathed out by God, ‘God-breathed,’ the product of the creative breath of God (The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture, p. 133).

Recognizing the imperfection of all translations and looking forward to the needs of a new generation, evangelical linguists and those who have literary sensitivities would do well to pool their resources to produce a great new version, even if it takes many years. In this task they would be assisted by much preliminary work that has already been done, such as the improved Greek text under the auspices of the American Bible Society.

Finally, it must also be argued that the effectiveness of the Word of God lies, not solely in the fact of its divine origin, though that is of primary importance, but also in the fact that the living God speaks through its pages. “We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:12, 13). J. I. Packer writes, “Without the Spirit’s help there can be no grasp of the message of Scripture, no conviction of the truth of Scripture, and no faith in the God of Scripture” (“Fundamentalism” and the Word of God, p. 112). That all three of these occur in the reading of Scripture is stirring evidence of God’s supernatural power operating through the reading of the book.

In the midst of the confusing proliferation of translations and in the face of the errors that doubtless accompany them, Christians should be confident that Scripture provides its own defense. The success of God’s gracious activity in history does not depend upon our defense of it, and neither does the power and efficacy of the Word. Scripture bears witness to Scripture. And the Spirit of God acting in Scripture has never ceased to claim men for God and to redirect their destiny.

It was a section of the thirteenth chapter of Romans that changed the life of St. Augustine as he turned to the Bible in the garden of a friend’s estate near Milan. Luther tells how in meditating upon the Scripture he felt himself to be “reborn,” and relates how Romans 1:17 became for him “a gate to heaven.” Wesley’s meditation upon Scripture led to his conversion in the little meeting in Aldersgate.

So it has been in all ages, for whenever the Word of God is faithfully preached and studied it never fails to do its transforming work in the hearts of men and women. It is despised and rejected by some. It is overlooked by many. But still it works, asserting its astonishing claims and drawing men to Jesus Christ as its focal point and author. Luther wrote, “We must make a great difference between God’s Word and the word of man. A man’s word is a little sound, that flies into the air, and soon vanishes; but the Word of God is greater than heaven and earth, yea, greater than death and hell, for it forms part of the power of God, and endures everlastingly.”

SEVEN MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT?

Is the world drawing closer to the midnight of nuclear holocaust? The editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists believe it is. On the cover of their January issue they moved forward the hands on the doomsday clock to seven minutes to midnight—five minutes closer than its previous setting in 1963 and the first move forward (rather than backward) since 1953. Only twice before had the hands been set closer: at three minutes to midnight in 1949, when Russia exploded its first bomb, and at two minutes to midnight in 1953, when both the Soviet Union and the United States produced hydrogen bombs.

Bulletin editor Dr. Eugene Rabinowitch said the latest movement was necessitated by the “dismal world record” of the past five years, during which nations have been “drifting back to pre-atomic pursuits of their narrow national interests, with power politics again replacing attempts to build a stable, peaceful world.” As evidence of deteriorating conditions he noted the development of atomic weapons by France and Red China, the Arab-Israeli and Indo-Pakistani wars, escalation of the Viet Nam war, and competition between America and Russia to produce an anti-ballistic-missile.

For over twenty years the world has been haunted by the fear of a holocaust far worse than Hiroshima that would shatter the civilized world. Profound awareness of this horrible possibility has led to restraint in the use of American military power in Viet Nam and elsewhere. President Johnson and Secretary Rusk have continued the search of their predecessors for a feasible international program of nuclear-arms control.

Despite their conscientious efforts, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and increase of nationalism throughout the world in the past five years have heightened global dangers. No longer can world tensions be understood strictly in terms of a stand-off between America and the Soviet Union. Two other nuclear-club members are beginning to flex their muscles. The bellicose policies of Mao Tse-tung and the grandiose maneuvers of Charles de Gaulle show that new power bases are emerging in the Far East and western Europe. The grievous war in Viet Nam and the touchy stalemate in the Middle East could easily explode into global conflict. Israeli intelligence recently reported that Russia has replaced the weapons lost by the Arabs in the six-day war and sent 3,500 technicians to Egypt to rebuild the Arab bloc so that they will, by Israeli estimates, be prepared for war in six months. The land of Israel could be the scene of great war in our generation.

Threatening though the world situation is, those who believe the Bible are confident that God will not permit man to bring on a cataclysmic destruction of civilization. The day will surely come, however, when in God’s sovereignty the world will experience the fire of judgment. This will occur when Jesus Christ returns “in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 1:8).

The clock is ticking. The hands are moving toward the midnight hour. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warns men of nuclear doomsday. The Bible warns men of a greater doom—the judgment of Almighty God. It calls them to prepare for that hour by trusting in Jesus Christ, so that his coming will mean not wrath but salvation.

UNITARIAN ISM IN FLUX

Unitarianism is a religious philosophy “on the wing” with built-in expectations of theological change. No official statement of belief is binding upon adherents.

Last September the Rev. Duncan Howlett of All Souls Church (Unitarian), Washington, D. C., discontinued use of the Lord’s Prayer. Last month he announced he had abandoned prayer entirely. Although he surrendered belief in a personal God some years ago, he thereafter fashioned his weekly pulpit intercession to the “Spirit of Truth.” But he now asks, “How can you pray to truth?” Since he now believes God “is not an entity … to which it is meaningful to pray,” he will henceforth substitute an “aspiration.”

Dr. Howlett should be commended for consistency. If applied further, the same principle will require him also to abandon any claim that All Souls is a church rather than an ethical society or meeting house, and to forfeit the presumption of Christian identity.

The Unitarian Universalist Association, with headquarters in Boston, lists 700 churches with a legal membership of 140,000 in the United States. According to one estimate, about 60 per cent of the Unitarian clergy are now theists while 40 per cent are naturalists. Early Unitarians like Channing and Priestley accepted the validity of revelation and believed in miracle, including Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead. But though they insisted on the supernaturalness of his works, they denied the supernaturalness of his being. Of Unitarian theists today, perhaps no more than 10 per cent, or 6 in 100 overall, believe that Jesus Christ performed supernatural works.

No durable framework of conviction can be built on unstable belief, and the Unitarian escape to subjective religious experience is no abiding place for a theology at odds with itself. The distance from Channing to Howlett is great, but except by an act of will even Howlett cannot stop where he prefers to. Abandonment of the God and Father of Jesus Christ, and of the Lord’s Prayer, leads outside the church, and to greater reverence for non-Christian religious leaders than for Jesus Christ.

THE SELF-ASSERTING SOCIAL-ACTION CURIA

In an incisive review of Paul Ramsey’s Who Speaks for the Church? in the Reporter (January 11 issue), a specialist in international affairs who is now a Brookings Institution research scholar echoes the deep dismay of many Protestant lay leaders over current NCC-WCC political entanglements. With an analytical eye on the 1966 Geneva and 1967 Detroit conferences on church and society, Dr. Ernest W. Lefever, three years an international-affairs specialist on the NCC executive staff, declares that the “militant words” of the Detroit conference disappointed many top policymakers in Washington as well as other Protestant laymen. Lefever notes that even many Protestants who since World War II have looked approvingly upon the churches’ growing interest in social questions are passing an adverse judgment. They are, he says, “shocked by the sweeping condemnations of the Federal government, the apparent confusion between coercion under law and lawless violence.”

Lefever identifies Ramsey’s chief target as “the Protestant ecumenical establishment, a group of perhaps two hundred denominational and council secretaries of social-action and overseas missions, their executive staff colleagues, professors of ethics, and other church leaders concerned chiefly with social questions.” The cohesive likemindedness of the self-perpetuating “social-action curia” is doubly remarkable in view of the diversity of American Protestantism and its emphasis on representative leadership.

Another Ramsey target is the bureaucratic process whereby this small, unrepresentative minority appears to speak for the whole of Protestantism.

Lefever hails Ramsey’s book as “already a landmark” in the debate over the Church and politics, but he holds out little hope that it will have a sobering effect upon the ecumenical establishment: “With the present activist mood of the Protestant establishment, there seems little chance that much of Ramsey’s advice will be heeded.”

The Protestant world, given Geneva 1966 and Detroit 1967, will be tempted to view Uppsala 1968 as a final test of ecumenical responsibility and responsiveness.

BOB JONES, SR.

Bob Jones, Sr., who died January 16, helped to shepherd conservative Protestantism from the turmoil of the 1920s until its resurgence after World War II. His charming, folksy style made him the outstanding evangelist between Billy Sunday and Billy Graham. Jones saw the need for Christian higher education and built the largest, best-equipped institution of its kind in the world. He also had the courage to stand for his convictions against theological drift of his day. Along with the good side of fundamentalism-faithfulness to Bible proclamation—Jones exemplified its limitations. He opposed conservatives with strategy different from his own, imposed needless restrictions on students, and lacked breadth theologically and socially—particularly in his unbiblical opposition to full opportunity for Negroes. Yet he was faithful in proclaiming the good news of individual redemption. Millions heard, and countless thousands believed.

L. Nelson Bell

Page 6047 – Christianity Today (11)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

No scientific achievement has attracted more interest in our day than the transplanting of a human heart. No doubt in future years we will see persons walking around whose blood is sent coursing through their bodies by the heart of another person. Probably such transplants will always be rare, however, for the right combination of donor and recipient will always be hard to achieve, technical problems will always be great, and the body’s tendency to reject foreign tissue will continue.

Not surprisingly, recent interest has centered on the physical aspects of this remarkable operation. If we shift our thoughts to the spiritual condition of the human heart (the mind, soul, and spirit, the entire emotional nature), we are confronted with truths of eternal import that God has revealed.

The Bible gives us the diagnosis of mankind’s condition, and it is depressing. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Jesus tells us the symptoms of this condition: “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander” (Matt. 15:19).

If we are willing to face up to the truth, we know that these evil things lurk within our own hearts. The crime, violence, discord, and sorrow of life are the result of depravity in the human heart.

The divine laboratory is uncomfortably clear in its diagnosis. “I the LORD search the mind and try the heart” (Jer. 17:10a). This gives no comfort to those who would like to hide their condition from him.

God’s procedures are different from man’s. “The LORD sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7).

One of man’s greatest follies is trying to cover up his sins in God’s presence. “Would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart” (Ps. 44:21). This offers little comfort to the hypocrite. “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart” (Prov. 21:2).

Many laboratory procedures call for the evaluation of findings according to a norm. This is also true in the divine laboratory. We read Jesus’ words, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts; for what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15).

One of the functions of the Bible is to enable us to experience God’s diagnostic methods in relation to our own hearts. “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (Heb. 4:12, 13). Frightening? To those who reject the diagnosis, yes. But for those who accept the cure, it brings joy and peace!

Looking down the ages, the Apostle John tells us of God’s ultimate revelation: “All the churches shall know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you as your works deserve” (Rev. 2:23).

The unregenerate heart is the sindominated heart, continuing in its waywardness. “As for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will requite their deeds upon their own heads, says the Lord GOD” (Ezek. 11:21).

The Bible makes clear the condition of the unregenerate heart, and at the same time it tells plainly how cure can be effected. Let’s be objective and honest about it. The disease is spiritual; it goes down to the depths of man’s rebellion against God. Therefore, the cure is supernatural—a work of God, a work of transformation.

What Christ offers is not a healed heart but a new heart. His work is one of creation, not medication. David sensed this when he prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me” (Ps. 51:10). Paul speaks of it also: “… put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col. 3:10). Our Lord tells us “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

What is involved is a divine operation in which the Physician not only does the work but also supplies the transplant. He promises, “I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit in them; I will take away the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 11:19).

For those who refuse the operation there is no comfort: “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, says the Lord GOD. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord GOD, so turn, and live” (Ezek. 18:30–32).

This creation of a new heart is a work of the Holy Spirit; “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). We are told by Paul that “real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal” (Rom. 2:29b). He further says: “Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:22–24).

As the human body tends to reject tissue from another person, so we by nature are set to reject a new heart in Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who gives the enabling power. The Apostle Paul says, “Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God”; and then he goes on to show why many reject God and the things of the Spirit: “The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:12, 14).

This rejection process can be mutual; for ultimately we may be rejected by God: “By your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed” (Rom. 2:5).

This offer of a new heart comes from the grace and mercy of a loving God. He offers us everything; all we need do is accept. All that is necessary is that we realize our sinfulness, confess it, and repent of it, with faith in the One who carries out the work of regeneration.

A new heart. Every person in the world needs one—and can have one.

    • More fromL. Nelson Bell

—Robert L. Cleath

Page 6047 – Christianity Today (13)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

Every fancier of religions reading cannot help being elated by the vigorous upsurge these days in the publication of religious books. The offerings of the past year spanned the spectrum from obtuse, radical theological tomes to popular, practical devotional aids. Our crop of Choice Evangelical Books for 1967 (see page 12) is clearly superior to that of 1966. If the books scheduled to appear this spring live up to publishers’ expectations, we should be in for an even more stimulating season of reading.

In the controversial field of theology, the bleat goes on. New volumes by such well-known writers as Paul Tillich, John A. T. Robinson, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Albert Outler, Kyle Haselden, John Macquarrie, Paul van Buren, Roger Shinn, Hans Küng, and Edward Schillebeeckx may bring about wool gathering in some readers’ minds but probably will produce some solid food for thought. On the conservative side, new works by G. C. Berkouwer, Kenneth Hamilton, Jacob Jocz, and Samuel Mikolaski show promise of advancing evangelical theology.

Books that evangelical readers should especially watch for include The Pattern of New Testament Truth by George Ladd, The Social Conscience of the Evangelical by Sherwood Wirt, Volume V of Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, What’s New in Religion? by Kenneth Hamilton, The New Testament by Oscar Cullmann, Who Shall Ascend? by Elisabeth Elliot, The New Evangelical Theology by Millard Erickson, and Studies in the Fourth Gospel by Leon Morris.

For well-heeled Bible connoisseurs who have yearned for a Latin Vulgate version illustrated by Salvador Dali, the Italian firm of Rizoli Editore is publishing an exquisite five-volume “Ad Personam” edition (limited to ninety-nine copies) with a top price of $17,500. At this price, one original Dali and 104 reproductions are included. The least expensive “deluxe” edition, with kairas goat-leather binding and color plates, will be sold to 1,499 people for $1,800. A medium-priced “grand deluxe” set in morocco leather will include a gold mold of Dali’s hand and be offered to 199 buyers at $2,700. The first volume of the Dali Bible recently reached America; the other four will be ready by Easter, 1969.

The following list of books selected from publishers’ reports and arranged by categories shows that the outlook is good for the new book season. Volumes publishers consider most significant in their new religious lines are indicated by an asterisk (*).

AESTHETICS, ARCHITECTURE, MUSICBROADMAN: A Window on the Mountain by W. and W. Pearce. DOUBLEDAY: Byzantine and Medieval Music by R. Goldron. EERDMANS: Hymns and the Faith by E. Routley. HARVARD: The Theory of the Avant-Garde by Poggioli. HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON: To Build a Church by J. E. Morse. OXFORD: Signs and Symbols in Christian Art by G. Ferguson. SEABURY: The Seccular Use of Church Buildings by J. G. Davies. STANDARD: Favorite Hymns of Praise.UNITED CHURCH PRESS: FOCUS: Building for Christian Education by M. C. Widber.

APOLOGETICS, PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCEBAKER: Man in God’s Milieu by B. Kruithof and Symposium on Creation by D. W. Patten. BETHANY FELLOWSHIP: After Its Kind by B. C. Nelson. BIBLICAL RESEARCH PRESS: *Science and Christian Faith by W. H. Davis. CHRISTOPHER: *Royce and Hocking—American Idealists by D. S. Robinson. DOUBLEDAY: Man-Made Morals by W. H. Marnell. GOSPEL LIGHT: Who Says? and It All Depends, both by F. Ridenour. HARPER & Row: What Is Called Thinking? by M. Heidegger, A Dynamic Psychology of Religion by P. Pruyser, and Kierkegaard on Christ and Christian Coherence by P. Sponheim. HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON: Peasant of the Garonne by J. Maritain and Jewish Philosophy in Modern Times by N. Rotenstreich. LIPPINCOTT: Commitments and Consequences by P. B. May. MACMILLAN: The Christian-Marxist Dialogue by Oestreicher. PAULIST: Science and Faith in the Twenty-first Century by D. Brophy. PRINCETON: Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship by V. Eller. SCRIBNERS: Prophecy in a Technocratic Era by A. van Leeuwen. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: God the Creator by R. C. Neville. WESTMINSTER: Living Without God by D. O. Woodyard, The ABC’s of Christian Faith by J. D. Smart, and Prayer in the Secular City by D. Rhymes. WORLD: Christian Faith and the Space Age by J. G. Williams. ZONDERVAN: *God, the Atom, and the Universe by J. Reid.

ARCHAEOLOGYWORLD: The World of the Bible by A. Jirku. ZONDERVAN: Archaeology and the Ancient Testament by J. L. Kelso.

BIBLICAL STUDIES, GENERALABINGDON: Young Readers Bible by H. M. Bullock and E. C. Peterson, and Strange Facts About the Bible by W. Garrison. FUNK AND WAGNALLS: Questions and Answers About the Bible by G. Stimpson. MACMILLAN: The Macmillan Bible Atlas by Aharoni and Avi-Yonah.SHEED AND WARD: Wellsprings of Scripture by J. M. Ford.

BIBLICAL STUDIES, OLD TESTAMENTABINGDON: Rebellion in the Wilderness by G. W. Coats. BAKER: The United Kingdom by C. Pfeiffer and The Book of Micah by T. M. Bennett. CONCORDIA: I and II Samuel by R. Behrke and Jeremiah and Lamentations by N, Habel.DOUBLEDAY: Essays on Old Testament History and Religion by A. Alt, Psalms II by M. Dahood and Isaiah II by J. L. McKenzie.GOSPEL LIGHT: Wisdom by H. S. Vigeveno and Sword and Trowel by J. D. Murch. JOHN KNOX: Theocracy and Eschatology by O. Plöger and Personalities Around David by H. Rolston. MACMILLAN: The Relevance of the Prophets by Scott. Paulist: How Does the Christian Confront the Old Testament? by P. Benoit et al.PRENTICE-HALL: The World of the Restoration by J. M. Myers. REGNERY: The Wisdom of the Psalms by R. Guardini. SEABURY: The Knowledge of God in Ancient Israel by R. C. Denton. TYNDALE: *Living Lessons of Life and Love: Ruth, Esther, Job, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon paraphrased by K. Taylor. WESTMINSTER: The Old Testament Understanding of God by J. S. Chesnut. ZONDERVAN: Israel and the Nations in Prophecy by R. De Haan.

BIBLICAL STUDIES, NEW TESTAMENTABINGDON: Theology and Ethics in Paul by V. P. Furnish. ASSOCIATION: The Cotton Patch Version of Paul’s Epistles by C. Jordan. BAKER: Epistle to the Galatians by W. Hendriksen. CONCORDIA: Romans by M. Franzmann. EERDMANS: The Pattern of New Testament Truth by G. Ladd, Jesus and the Twelve by R. Meye, Studies in the Fourth Gospel by L. Morris, and In the Holy Land by Robinson and Winward. HARPER & Row: The First Epistle to the Corinthians by C. K. Barrett and History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel by J. L. Martyn. SEABURY: St. Luke by G. B. Caird and St. Mark by D. E. Nineham. SHEED AND WARD: The Spiritual Journey of St. Paul by L. Cerfaux. WESTMINSTER: Jesus and the Power of Satan by J. Kallas and The New Testament by O. Cullmann. WORLD: The Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles by J. H. E. Hull.ZONDERVAN: Faith That Works by J. L. Bird, Living in Hope of Eternal Life by P. Patterson, and A Hebrew Christian Looks at Romans by S. C. Mills.

BIOGRAPHYABINGDON: *A Song of Ascents by E. S. Jones. CONCORDIA: Life in Two Worlds by L. Spitz. DOUBLEDAY: The Secular Saint by A. Brockway. EERDMANS: Spurgeon: Heir of the Puritans by E. W. Bacon and The Burning Heart by A. S. Wood. LOIZEAUX: *Jerry McAuley and His Mission by A. Bonner and Angola Beloved by T. E. Wilson. OXFORD: Harnack and Troeltsch by W. Pauck and Saint Patrick by R. P. C. Hanson. PRENTICE-HALL: *Todd by D. Melton.REVELL: This Is My Story, This Is My Song by J. Hines and No Man Walks Alone by F. Ellis. SEABURY: Dying We Live by H. Gollwitzer et al.WORLD: Jesus: Man and Master by M. C. Morrison.

CHURCH HISTORYAUGSBURG: The Maturing of American Lutheranism by H. T. Neve and B. A. Johnson and Lutherans in Concert by F. K. Wentz. BAKER: From the Rock to the Gates of Hell by A. W. Blackwood. CONCORDIA: History of Theology by G. Hagglund. DOUBLEDAY: The Puritan Revolution: A Documentary History.HARVARD: The Tragic Week by I. Ullman, Isaac Backus on Church,State, and Calvinism by Backus, and John Cotton on the Churches of New England by J. Cotton. HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON: *The Progress of the Protestant by J. Haverstick. JUDSON: The Beginnings of Our Religion by E. M. Baxter. MACMILLAN: Those Dutch Catholics by Van Der Plas.

DEVOTIONALABINGDON: A Devotional Anthology of the Early Church by G. Harkness. BROADMAN: With God in the Garden by J. E. Mead. CONCORDIA: Great Prayers by H. Huxhold, Off-Key Praises by J. Strietelmeier and Give Your Life a Lift by H. Gockel. EERDMANS: The Crisis of Piety by D. Bloesch. HARPER& Row: Discover the Power Within You by E. Butterworth. JUDSON: *There’s Always More by E. S. Whitehouse. LIPPINCOTT: Just as I Am by E. Price and Notes for Living by R. I. Lindquist. MACMILLAN: *Love, Love at the End by Berrigan. REVELL: It Is Toward Evening by V. Havner. TYNDALE: Life Is Tremendous! by C. E. Jones and Teenage Devotions for Campers by K. Taylor. UNITED CHURCH PRESS: Tune In by H. C. Ahrens.

DRAMA, FICTION, POETRYAUGSBURG: Cross Words and Lenten Chancel Dramas, both by W. A. Poovey. BAKER: The Shape of a Song by M. Brown and Poems of Protest and Faith by C. Miller. BROADMAN: Brother Fred Chicken, Superpastor by R. Milham. DOUBLEDAY: The Road to Bithynia by F. G. Slaughter. EERDMANS: YOU! Jonah! by T. Carlisle and Contemporary Writers in Christian Perspective by R. Jellema. JOHN KNOX: The Map of Clay by J. Clemo. REVELL: The Many Faces of Love by L. Fiedler. UNITED CHURCH PRESS: Best Church Plays by A. Johnson and Wheels in the Air by W. T. Joyner. WORLD: The God Game by K. Olsson. YALE: The Old English “Advent” by R. B. Burlin and From Shadowy Types to Truth by W. G. Madsen. ZONDERVAN: Voice of the Morning by A. L. Wilson and To Life Anew by C. Hunter.

ECUMENICS, INTER-FAITH DIALOGUEAUGSBURG: Protestant Agreement on the Lord’s Supper by E. M. Skibbe. BROADMAN: Neighbors Yet Strangers by A. J. Jones. FUNK AND WAGNALLS: *Ecumenism or New Reformation? by T. Molnar and What the Jews Believe by P. S. Bernstein. JOHN KNOX: *The New Day by W. J. Boney and L. E. Molumby and Ad Limina Apostolorum: An Appraisal of Vatican II by K. Barth. PAULIST: Progress and Decline in the History of Church Renewal edited by R. Aubert, The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World by G. Baum and D. R. Campion. REGNERY: The Historical Road of Anglicanism by C. E. Simcox. SEABURY: *The Anglican Eucharist in Ecumenical Perspective by E. F. Echlin. SHEED AND WARD: *The Underground Church by M. Boyd and Paths to Unity by R. E. Modras. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: *The Impact of the Church Upon Its Culture by J. Brauer and *The Dialogue Between Theology and Psychology by P. Homans. WESTMINSTER: Introducing Contemporary Catholicism by T. Westow.WORLD: In Search of Meaning by C. H. Voss.

ETHICAL, SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, CULTURAL STUDIESABINGDON: Tomorrow’s Church by W. A. Holmes and Dialogue in Medicine and Theology by D. White. ASSOCIATION: Treat Me Cool, Lord by C. F. Burke. BROADMAN: *Morality and the Mass Media by K. Haselden and The Radiant You by M. Caldwell. DOUBLEDAY: Out of the Whirlwind by A. H. Friedlander. EERDMANS: Death and Contemporary Man by C. G. Carlozzi. FRIENDSHIP: Why Black Power? by J. Barndt. FUNK AND WAGNALLS: Bible and Sword by B. Tuchman. GOSPEL LIGHT: HOW to Succeed in Family Living by C. M. Narramore and *Inside Jerusalem by A. T. Olson. HARPER & Row: Religious Issues in American History by E. S. Gaustad and On Being Responsible by J. M. Gustafson and J. T. Laney. HAWTHORN: *Family Planning in an Exploding Population by J. O’Brien. HERALD: *Vietnam: Who Cares? by A. Beechy. JOHN KNOX: Reflections on Protest by B. Douglass and What’s Right? by C. E. Nelson. LIPPINCOTT: The Bible and Flying Saucers by B. H. Downing. OXFORD: Black Power and White Protestants by J. C. Hough. REGNERY: Nightmare in Detroit by V. G. Sauter and B. Hines. REVELL: Hey, Preach—You’re Comin’ Through by D. Wilkerson and Some of My Best Friends Were Addicts by V. Ely. SCRIBNERS: Restless Adventure by R. L. Shinn and The Religious Experience of Mankind by N. Smart. SEABURY: The Edge of the Ghetto by J. Fish et al. and Citizen Power and Social Change by M. Ruoss. SHEED AND WARD: Beyond Birth Control by S. Callahan and Ethics by T. M. Garrett. UNITED CHURCH PRESS: Black and White Together by R. Barbour. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: Prayer in the Public Schools by W. K. Muir. WESTMINSTER: The Situation Ethics Debate by H. Cox.

LITURGY, WORSHIPBAKER: Minister’s Marriage Manual by S. W. Hutton. JUDSON: Manual of Worship by J. E. Skoglund. WESTMINSTER: Sunday by W. Rordorf and Corporate Worship in the Reformed Tradition by J. H. Nichols. WORLD: Sourcebook for Christian Worship by P. S. McElroy.

MISSIONS, EVANGELISM, CHURCH OUTREACHABINGDON: Protestant Crosscurrents in Mission by N. A. Horner. ASSOCIATION: The Free Church Today by A. Rouner and The Holy Spirit in Five Worlds by W. E. Oates. AUGSBURG: *NO Easter for East Germany? by A. C. Currier. BAKER: Tell Every Man by D. Haskin and Advancing the Smaller Local Church by W. C. Mavis. EERDMANS: All Loves Excelling by R. P. Beaver and The Inescapable Calling by K. Strachan. HARPER & Row: *The Secular Congregation by R. A. Raines and A Leopard Tamed by E. Vandevort. JUDSON: The Church in the University by H. Ambrose and Doing the Gospel in South East Asia by R. E. Brown. LIPPINCOTT: Operation Brother’s Brother by C. E. Bryant. UNITED CHURCH PRESS: Creative Ministries by D. F. Marshall and *Christian Secularity by G. Fackre. WORD: A Second Touch by K. Miller. ZONDERVAN: Praying Together by R. Rinker.

PASTORAL THEOLOGYABINGDON: Profession: Minister by J. Glasse. BAKER: *Proclaiming the New Testament: Luke by R. Earle, The Preacher’s Heritage, Task and Resources by R. G. Turnbull, and History of Preaching by E. C. Dargan. BETHANY FELLOWSHIP: *Divorce and Remarriage by G. Duty. BROADMAN: Rejoicing on Great Days by C. R. Angell. DOUBLEDAY: Letters to Philip: On How to Treat a Woman by C. Shedd. EERDMANS: Earthly Things by O. Hartman. HARPER & Row: The Seven Worlds of the Minister by G. Kennedy. JUDSON: The Neo-Married by H. Hovde and Preaching According to Plan by G. H. Asquith. LIPPINCOTT: Dreams by J. A. Sanford. MEREDITH: The New Catholic Treasury of Wit and Humor by P. Bussard. PRENTICE-HALL: Referral in Pastoral Counseling by Oglesby and Ministering to Prisoners and Their Families by Kandle and Cassler. TYNDALE: HOW to Be Happy Though Married by T. LaHaye. WESTMINSTER: The Search for Meaning by A. J. Ungersma, The Big Change by R. R. Dolan, From Call to Service by G. E. Whitlock, and Guilt: Theory and Therapy by E. V. Stein. ZONDERVAN: Communication for the Church by R. W. McLaughlin and The Family in Dialogue by A. D. Bell.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATIONAUGSBURG: Clues to the Kingdom by E. H. Hong and The World of Art—The World of Youth by P. A. Schreivogel. BAKER: 100 Bible Games by E. Allen. DOUBLEDAY: What’s the Difference? by L. Cassels. GOSPEL LIGHT: Help! I’m a Camp Counselor by N. H. Wright. HARPER & Row: Religion Goes to School by J. V. Panoch and D. L. Barr. JUDSON: The Drop-Ins by W. Mild and Education for Change by J. Ban. PRENTICE-HALL: Christian Education Where the Learning Is by V. E. Foster. REVELL: Focus on People in Church Education by L. Le Bar.WESTMINSTER: Bible for Children by J. L. Klink.

SERMONSBAKER: Sermons in a Nutshell by J. Ellis and The Treasury of Alexander Whyte by A. Whyte. CONCORDIA: The Invitation of God by A. Koeberle. JUDSON: Sermons from Thanksgiving to Easter by D. A. MacLennan.TRIDENT: Best Sermons by P. Butler.

THEOLOGYABINGDON: The Lord’s Supper by W. Barclay and The Pusher and the Puller by J. E. Carothers. AUGSBURG: When God Speaks by P. A. Quanbeck, The Bible’s Authority Today by R. H. Bryant, and The Death and Resurrection of Christ by N. Söderblom. BETHANY FELLOWSHIP: Speaking in Tongues by L. Christenson and Mystery of Iniquity by F. J. Huegel. DOUBLEDAY: Evolution and Christian Hope by E. Benz. EERDMANS: The Sacraments by G. C. Berkouwer, *What’s New in Religion by K. Hamilton, The Covenant by J. Jocz, By Oath Consigned by M. Kline, The Reality of Faith by H. Kuitert, The Creative Theology of P. T. Forsyth by S. Mikolaski and Union with Christ by L. Smedes. HARPER & Row: In the End God by J. A. T. Robinson and A History of Christian Thought by P. Tillich. HARVARD: *Religion in a Technical Age by S. A. Miller. JOHN KNOX: Between Faith and Unfaith by L. J. Averill, With the Spirit’s Sword by C. A. M. Hall, Flux and Fidelity by K. Haselden, Martin Heidegger by J. Macquarrie, and Ludwig Wittgenstein by D. Hudson. LIPPINCOTT: From the Ashes of Christianity by M. J. Irion. MACMILLAN: Structures of Christian Priesthood by Audet, Contemporary Spirituality by Gleason, New Theology No. 5 by M. Marty and Peerman, Theological Explorations by Van Buren, Theological Ethics by Sellers. OXFORD: Experience and God by J. E. Smith, Documents of the Christian Church by H. Bettenson, and Who Trusts in God by A. C. Outler. PAULIST: The Seven Sacraments by E. Schillebeeckx, Bultmann and Christian Faith by R. Marle, The Christ in Jesus by S. B. Marrow, and Nature, Grace and Religious Development by B. McLaughlin. REVELL: *The New Evangelical Theology by M. Erickson and Gospel of the Life Beyond by H. Lockyer. SHEED AND WARD: The Cosmic Christ by G. A. Maloney, Life in the Spirit by H. Küng, A Priestly People by R. A. Brungs, The Church by H. Küng, and Revelation and Theology by E. Schillebeeckx. TRIDENT: The Struggle of the Unbeliever by J. Kavanaugh. UNITED CHURCH PRESS: The Marrow of Theology by W. Ames. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: Religious Symbols and God by W. Rowe. WESTMINSTER: The Ambiguity of Religion by D. Harned, The Christian Understanding of Atonement by F. W. Dillistone, New Directions in Theology Today by R. L. Shinn, The Shape of the Theological Task by R. T. Voelkel, Spirit of the Living God by D. Moody, *Jesus—God and Man by W. Pannenberg, and God Up There? by D. Cairns.WORLD: Atheism Is Dead by A. Lelyveld, The Shaping of Modern Christian Thought by W. F. Groff and D. E. Miller, The Scope of Theology by D. T. Jenkins, and Basic Readings in Theology by A. D. Galloway. ZONDERVAN: Creation or Evolution by D. C. Spanner.

    • More from—Robert L. Cleath

Page 6047 – Christianity Today (15)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

Dear Quiz Kids:

The recent radio trivia games (Who was Lamont Cranston?) made me think that you religiophiles might, as a respite from life’s trials, enjoy a quiz on the minutiae of American religion. Your grasp of the grand sweep of great events and major doctrines of the faith may be profound, but the real depth of your religious erudition will be seen in your ability to retrieve the tidbits of info called for by the following questions:

1. Who was Billy Sunday’s song leader during his heyday, and what instrument did he play?

2. George Baker married a blonde and commuted between his several heavens. By what name was this religious figure better known?

3. Name the third dispensation.

4. Who preached the highly publicized 1922 sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”

5. You have often sung, “Here I raise mine Ebenezer.” Just what is it you are here raising?

6. What priest from the Shrine of the Little Flower was a frequent critic of FDR on his national radio broadcast?

7. What flamboyant evangelist was thought drowned in the Pacific Ocean in 1926 only to turn up five weeks later in Mexico alleging kidnaping?

8. What publisher is said to have telegraphed his editors: “Puff Graham”?

9. On what basis were ministers formerly categorized as strong, young, or crude?

10. What religious broadcaster invites listeners to establish a “point of contact” with him? How? Why?

If you answer all ten correctly (answers on page 40), you are entitled to a splinter from a chair demolished by Billy Sunday during a sermon in his 1915 Omaha campaign; for nine right, a swatch of skin from a rattlesnake handled by a miracle-worker in the hills of Tennessee to demonstrate his powers; for eight correct, a drop of duck blood like that poured by Father Philip Berrigan on draft files last year. If you score five or less, send in your old Christian Endeavor pin as a proper show of contrition.

EUTYCHUS III

Trivially and convivially,

OF LOVE AND MARRIAGE

I consider “A Minister’s Wife Speaks Out About Sex” by Opal Lincoln Gee (Jan. 5) to be the finest concise statement of the Christian view of marriage I have seen.

J. ROY CLIFFORD

The Tabernacle Baptist Church

Richmond, Va.

LITURGY—MORE OR LESS

Although I have been eagerly awaiting a scholarly evangelical appraisal of the liturgical movement, I was somewhat disappointed with Professor Donald G. Bloesch’s critique, “What’s Wrong with the Liturgical Movement?” (Jan. 5).…

A thoroughgoing critique should be based not on superficial aspects of “high church” worship but on some of the movement’s deeper theological considerations.… Evangelical theologians need to respond to the liturgical movement’s seemingly contradictory secularization of worship on one hand and their formalization of it on the other.…

Dr. Bloesch is not correct when he states that the movement aims to focus attention on the choir rather than the congregation. Many liturgists favor having the choir sing from the rear of the church or even intermingled with the congregation to make singing truly an act of praise and worship by the entire congregation and not just “a mighty good show.” I am grateful, however, for Dr. Bloesch’s other comments concerning singing and the selection of hymns.…

Concerning the Lord’s Supper, evangelical Christians are always justified in re-echoing Luther’s classic labeling of the sacrifice of the Mass as “that dunghill of Popery,” but merely because we reject the idea of a repeated sacrifice or a localized presence; we err greatly when we fail to see that the Lord’s Supper can make a vital contribution to an evangelical worship service.…

What is needed today is a truly evangelical eucharistic theology. We should respond to the liturgical movement not on the basis of externals, but with a positive presentation of what we believe about the Lord’s Supper. Our investigation and critique of their movement should be carried on with a spirit of openness and humility. Perhaps there is something in their dual emphasis on the Word and the sacrament that would enrich evangelical worship.

DEIRDRE B. DAY

Dallas, Tex.

You might want to review the front-page story in the New York Times (Dec. 25) on the Africanization of Christianity. This trend toward cultism has many implications for future missionary efforts—there and in other underdeveloped parts of the world.

There needs to be more serious consideration of how much accepted as normative Christianity (such as the altar call) represents an accommodation with the world or contemporary life styles. Furthermore, these African cults—and some that have appeared in South America—seem to develop out of liturgical excesses in normative Christian groups. Which brings me back to my contention that the need may be for less liturgy rather than more.

BELDEN MENKUS

Bergenfield, N. J.

SPEAKING OF UNITY

I was interested to note the editorial, “The Overlooked Majority Tries Harder” (Jan. 5) … I feel very deeply that we must speak out these days in favor of closer understanding and ties among evangelicals with a view to closer action.

WILLIAM W. CONLEY

Chairman, Department of Missions

St. Paul Bible College

St. Paul, Minn.

Is group action really the answer to the world’s need? Even if that group is wholly united and wholly biblical, how impressed will the world be? Men in Jesus’ day were impressed, not by the fact that crowds followed Christ, but by the works that he wrought.

STEVE GROSECLOSE

Holdrege Assembly of God

Holdrege, Neb.

ANSWERING A LETTER

I was shocked at … the letter of Mr. Alan J. Krauss concerning the cover of November 24 (Eutychus and his kin, Jan. 5).…

I believe the Negro has been grossly subjugated, exploited, and humiliated in America, and I have done and am doing all I can to help him gain equal rights and the respect to which every American is entitled. I am on the board of directors and am the director of publicity for a non-profit organization whose primary aim is to provide scholarships in college education for Negroes. During 1967 I preached in perhaps ten Negro churches, and my message often was, in essence: “I want the will of God done; I want your brotherhood; I want your interests served.”

But I also urge these brethren of mine to refrain from violence, to continue to make Christ their pattern, to educate themselves and their youth, and to take peaceful advantage of the many and sweeping opportunities now available to them.

This is in sharp contrast, of course, to the politics of the “new left” or the “new breed.” These advocates favor violence … estrangement, fragmentation, chaos. Their advocacy will bring disaster, both to the Negro’s hopes and to America. What I advocate will have considerable prospect of bringing fruition to the dream of equality, progress, and a unified nation.

VERNON W. SMITH

Director of Publicity

Foundation for Christian Education

Nashville, Tenn.

I quite agree with [Mr. Krauss] in regard to the word “despicable”.… Why must you generally take such a negative attitude to such an important aspect of the Gospel? Christians have enough trouble without adding to it by such improper caricatures.

WILLIAM HAUB

First Methodist Church

Washington, Mo.

When a conciliar action is taken and its proceedings “leaked” to the press, there seems frequently to be a waiting period in which public reaction is assessed. If this reaction proves to be negative, then the responsible officials of NCC make the (to us) evasive statement that a given conference is speaking to rather than for the churches. If it be true that at the Detroit conference the way was left open to the conclusion that the sniper in the tower might be the agent for righteous action, then it seems to me that the NCC left itself open to all of the rebuke which is implied in the cover cartoon. Somewhere there needs to be a courageous confrontation from a neutral source with the vaguely directed pronouncements of the supposed avant-garde of the council.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Professor of the Philosophy of Religion

Asbury Theological Seminary

Wilmore, Ky.

KEEPING THE PEACE PEACEFULLY

I enjoyed Dr. Laurin’s article, “Significance of the Patriarchal Narratives” (Dec. 22). A lot of jokes have been made about Sarah’s age when she was inducted into the harem of the king of Gerar.… I am told that until a very recent date native African chiefs used to take wives from all the leading families of their neighbors, irrespective of age or ugliness. The poor ladies were really hostages for the good behavior of their tribes. It was a lot cheaper way of insuring peace than a standing army. True, it did not always work as a deterrent, but neither did a standing army. (One hates to suggest that President Johnson and DeGaulle might try keeping a harem, but it would probably work as well as the U.N.) Abraham was a rich man with many servants and some reputation as a warrior. The king of Gerar, finding there was no daughter, decided to seize a sister. That she was ninety years old did not matter; she was to be a pledge that Abraham would be a good boy. What would have happened if Isaac had been born a Philistine prince? Happily God took care of the situation, for Abraham’s sake—and ours. Fillmore, Calif.

O.T. BRYANT

ONE OF A KIND

I appreciate CHRISTIANITY TODAY more than any other magazine that comes to my study. I think this magazine is in a class by itself.

JAMES L. CLEMENTS

Memorial Methodist Church

Lynchburg, Va.

Page 6047 – Christianity Today (17)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

ALTHAUS, PAUL, The Theology of Martin Luther (Fortress, 464 pp., $8). Althaus’s definitive work on Luther’s theology, distributed in English in 1967, treats the Reformer’s thought on twenty-eight topics.

ARMSTRONG, O. K., AND ARMSTRONG, MARJORIE M., The Indomitable Baptists (Doubleday, 392 pp., $5.95). The Armstrongs tell the rollicking story of the individualistic, fervent Baptists with appreciation and candor.

BAVINCK, J. H., The Church Between Temple and Mosque (Eerdmans, 206 pp., $2.65). In this posthumous work Professor Bavinck discusses the uniqueness of Christianity in relation to other religions, the status of man before God as shown in Romans 1, and the point of contact the Church has with adherents of other religions.

BERKHOF, HENDRIKUS, Christ the Meaning of History (John Knox, 224 pp., $5.50). Berkhof asserts that the historical Christ makes possible the understanding of modern history; this is the English edition of a book originally published in the Netherlands.

BROWN, COLIN, Karl Barth and the Christian Message (Inter-Varsity, 163 pp., $1.95). Brown’s assessment of Barth’s major themes, both commends and criticizes the Basel professor for the “Christ-idea” that dominates his theology.

CULLMANN, OSCAR, Salvation in History (Harper, 352 pp., $6.50). This English translation of Cullmann’s 1965 work seeks to show that “salvation-history” is found in all the major books of the New Testament.

GAEBELEIN, FRANK E., editor, A Christianity Today Reader (Meredith, 271 pp., $7.95). The content, scope, and style of CHRISTIANITY TODAY are communicated in this stimulating selection of articles, editorials, news stories, and features from the magazine’s first decade.

HENRY, CARL F. H., Evangelicals at the Brink of Crisis (Word Books, 120 pp., $3.95). Viewing developments in theology, evangelism, ecumenism, and society-at-large, editor Henry considers the next ten years critical for evangelicals.

HENRY, CARL F. H., and MOONEYHAM, W. STANLEY, editors, One Race, One Gospel, One Task, Volumes I and II (World Wide, 319 and 527 pp., $4.95 and $6.95). Illuminating and inspiring addresses and papers from the World Congress on Evangelism provide the biblical basis, theological rationale, contemporary world analysis, and modern strategy for confronting all men with the Gospel.

HOEKSEMA, HERMAN, Reformed Dogmatics (Reformed Free Publishing Association, 917 pp., $14.95). Hoeksema’s summa, a modern statement of Reformed theology (with its insistence on total depravity and amillennialism), attempts to synthesize truth exegeted from Scripture into a systematic whole.

HOWARD, THOMAS, Christ the Tiger (Lippincott, 160 pp., $2.25). A young “conservative-rebel” describes his spiritual pilgrimage through a cozy childhood, broadening college experience, and the graduate student world of belles lettres to a vision of Christ’s splendor.

JOHNSON, JAMES L., Code Name Sebastian (Lippincott, 270 pp., $4.50). In this suspenseful novel, a minister of the Gospel learns the meaning of worldly involvement when he is thrust into an espionage plot in the Negev.

KITCHEN, K. A., Ancient Orient and Old Testament (Inter-Varsity, 191 pp., $3.95). This well-documented book applies the findings of recent Near Eastern studies to certain historical problems of the Old Testament, showing that theologically orthodox views are “much closer to the real facts than is commonly realized.”

KITTEL, GERHARD, editor, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Volume IV (Eerdmans, 1,126 pp., $22.50). This fourth volume of the foremost New Testament word-study reference work shines the light of scholarship on vital biblical terms beginning with l, m, and n.

LADD, GEORGE ELDON, The New Testament and Criticism (Eerdmans, 222 pp., $3.95). An evangelical scholar calls for openness without compromise and the use of sound historical-theological methodology in the practice of New Testament criticism.

LEWIS, C. S., Christian Reflections (Eerdmans, 176 pp., $3.95). The brilliant mind, sparkling style, and devout faith of C. S. Lewis serve the cause of truth in fourteen essays pertaining to Christian faith and culture.

LITTLE, PAUL E., Know Why You Believe (Scripture, 96 pp., $1.25). Contending that “Christianity is rational,” Little considers crucial questions of the Christian faith and gives answers that show the sound intellectual basis for evangelical belief.

PETERSEN, WILLIAM J., Another Hand On Mine McGraw-Hill, 228 pp., $5.50). The excited pulsebeat of medical missionary work in Africa is felt as Eternity’s executive editor tells the life story of Dr. Carl K. Becker of the African Inland Mission.

PFEIFFER, CHARLES F., AND VOS, HOWARD F., The Wycliffe Historical Geography of Bible Lands (Moody, 104 pp., $8.95). Students of the Scriptures will highly value this appealing survey of historical, geographical, biblical, and archaeological material pertaining to ten “Bible lands.”

PHILLIPS, J. B., Ring of Truth (Macmillan, 125 pp., $2.95). The noted translator shares the personal discoveries in his scholarly work that lead him to believe that “we have in the New Testament words that bear the hallmark of reality and the ring of truth.”

PINNOCK, CLARK H., Set Forth Your Case (Craig, 94 pp., $1.50). Pinnock’s brief but stimulating attempt to unmask irrational modern theology and present evidences for the biblical Gospel challenges the unbeliever and provides rational ammunition for the Christian witness.

RAMSEY, PAUL, Who Speaks for the Church? (Abingdon, 192 pp., $2.45). Ramsey presents a devastating critique of the practices of ecumenical ethicists who usurp the role of political policy-maker; he directs churchmen to the proper task of attending to the moral and political ethos of our time.

SHOEMAKER, HELEN SMITH, I Stand by the Door (Harper & Row, 220 pp., $4.95). The ministry of the late Samuel Shoemaker—prophet, evangelist, and helper of men—comes alive in this biography by his wife.

TRUEBLOOD, D.ELTON, The Incendiary Fellowship (Harper & Row, 121 pp., $2.50). Trueblood calls the Church to live out its life with an incendiary purpose that will spiritually ignite the world.

TURNBULL, RALPH G., editor, Baker’s Dictionary of Practical Theology (Baker, 469 pp., $8.95). This source-book of knowledge on preaching, homiletics, hermeneutics, evangelism-missions, counseling, administration, stewardship, worship, education, and the role of the pastor will be thought a godsend by many ministers.

Ralph P. Martin

Page 6047 – Christianity Today (19)

  1. View Issue
  2. Subscribe
  3. Give a Gift
  4. Archives

Choosing the year’s “top twenty” in the field of New Testament has been difficult, not because of an embarrassment of riches but because of the opposite—a dearth.

Two points about the list call for mention. First, though the intention was to list only books dated 1967, sometimes crossing the Atlantic entails a change of year; a number of American volumes published in 1966 did not reach the British market until the following year. Second, the criteria for selection have been (a) usefulness to the serious student of the New Testament, so that he will want to keep the books at hand for future reference; and (b) originality, a quality that opens a new window on a familiar theme and sets our minds in pursuit of new understanding of the eternal gospel message.

By the most obvious standards—size, extent of coverage, and depth of penetration, as well as usefulness and orginality—pride of place must go to the fourth volume of Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Eerdmans). This significant thesaurus of biblical learning treats in depth the main New Testament words that have their first letter in lambda, mu, and nu; among these are such vitally important theological terms as word (logos), myth (mythos), and law (nomos). Indeed, a whole range of interest in New Testament matters is covered in this fourth volume, whether of place names (Nazareth), personal names (Moses), or theological concepts (witness: martys). Alert students will need no further encouragement in spite of the high price; this is a case where price and value go together.

Second and third place are shared by two publications that differ in compass but have equal claim to notice. Both are by internationally known writers whose seasoned and well-balanced scholarship is not liable to shoot off at an unpredictable tangent or to be swept along by the swiftly flowing Bultmannian stream. Both books, to be sure, present a viable and (to the evangelical mind) necessary corrective to the post-Bultmannian view, which is often accepted as if there were no alternatives. Oscar Cullmann’s Salvation in History (SCM; Harper & Row) reaffirms and elaborates the thesis of Heilsgeschichte he so lucidly presented in his groundbreaking Christ and Time. This latest work has both a polemic (against the Bultmann school) and an irenic (in dialogue with Roman Catholic scholarship) purpose, and on both accounts it commands our attention. C.F.D. Moule’s slender paperback The Phenomenon of the New Testament (SCM, “Studies in Biblical Theology”) goes right to the heart of the New Testament faith with a spirited, urbane defense of Jesus’ historicity (against both latter-day mythologists and the Bultmannians, who separate the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith) and of the supernatural origins of apostolic Christianity. It admirably complements the collection of essays on the same themes edited by Carl F. H. Henry, published by Eerdmans and now in Britain by the Tyndale Press: Jesus of Nazareth: Saviour and Lord.

A bold and timely attempt to show that evangelical scholarship can be both intellectually respectable and spiritually satisfying is made by George E. Ladd in The New Testament and Criticism (Eerdmans). Indeed, our author claims, the two must go together if we are not to be delivered over to the clutches of either an obscurantism that extolls a blinkered piety or a barren negativism that by analysis, dissection, and systematic doubt leaves the New Testament reader with a theological cadaver. Ladd’s purpose is to show that an evangelical understanding of the Bible as the Word of God written (he has the New Testament chiefly in mind) is not hostile to sober criticism; indeed, an evangelical faith demands a critical methodology in the reconstruction of the historical side of the process of revelation. His clear evaluations of textual, literary, and historical criticism—including some excellent pages on form criticism—are much to the point and ought to be heeded on both sides of the Atlantic.

Sharing much of the same conviction in his positive attitude to the New Testament documents is J. B. Phillips, who, as much grieved as angered by the baneful effects of our modern negative critics, has given us his personal testimony as a skilled practitioner of the art of translation. What sort of impression do the New Testament books make on this man who has spent many years poring over them? The answer comes in The Ring of Truth (Hodder and Stoughton; Macmillan), a moving piece of autobiography that is calculated to settle any whose faith has been unnerved by an unthinking acceptance of our current doubters, whether of the death-of-God camp or of the Bishop of Woolwich’s Honest to God—Exploration into God school.

Three books have posed similar questions that are fundamental to the Christian faith. How much do we know of the Jesus who walked and taught in Galilee? How much do we need to know? Is anything like an objective portrait possible, or is the entire gospel tradition seen today only through the refracting (and so distorting) prism of the early Church? C. K. Barrett (Jesus and the Gospel Tradition, SPCK) takes a fresh look at these matters, arguing from the premise that Jesus “was a genuinely historical figure that was being viewed through the refracting medium of the resurrection faith.” He does not deny altogether that some continuity exists between the Jesus who lived in a pre-Easter situation and the Lord confessed by the Church, for he finds the prospect of suffering and the hope of vindication to be the main strands that bind together much of Jesus’ teaching and activity; but vindication did not come, he says, in the way Jesus envisaged. “He died with the disillusioned avowal that God had forsaken him. But again he was mistaken: God had not forsaken him”—a revolutionary conclusion, recalling Albert Schweitzer’s judgment, and just as questionable as Barrett’s contention that Jesus’ teaching did not, except incidentally, concern himself. What about Matthew 11:25 ff.?

Another assessment of the teaching of Jesus, more radically conceived and executed, is offered by N. Perrin in Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus (SCM). The title should not awaken too many hopes, for the author by his reductionist technique leaves us with precious little of an authentic nature. Parts of this book are excellent and exciting—his exposition of the parables, for instance—but much is vitiated by a gigantic basic assumption. Often, almost ad nauseam, but with no attempt to justify it, he repeats this presupposition: “The early Church absolutely identified the risen Lord of her experience with the historical Jesus and vice versa.” The sting of this quotation lies in its “vice versa,” for that implies—and the whole book is governed by this implication—that our vision of the historical Jesus is possible only through the refracting and distorting prism of the early Church. We must dissent from this view, and so cast doubt on many of Perrin’s interlocking arguments.

A more serious grappling with history is found in S. G. F. Brandon’s Jesus and the Zealots (Manchester Universty Press). His thorough treatment of the events that led up to the Jewish war of A.D. 66 and the effect of the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 are a valuable part of the book, even if the thesis that finds a Zealot influence in many sections of the Gospels must be taken with caution.

The year 1967 has been a good one for the Son of Man question, with two notable monographs dealing with this enigmatic title on the lips of Jesus. M. D. Hooker confines her attention to Mark, entitling her work The Son of Man in Mark (SPCK; McGill University, Montreal) and comes up with a conservative conclusion in defense of the Son of Man sayings, “which may well go back to Jesus himself.” This conclusion would give writers like Perrin a fit of apoplexy, of course; and it runs counter to the general stream of German New Testament science. Her work concentrates (rightly, I believe) on the background material in Daniel 7, and she sees the pattern of suffering-vindication as the leading motif. Other backgrounds are possible, of course, and it is the merit of Frederick H. Borsch’s study of The Son of Man in Myth and History (SCM; Westminster) that it sifts all the extant material in an effort to find a clue to this title. Some studies of the Son of Man problem may be more original and provocative than this, but surely none can be more exhaustive—it fills 409 pages. Students will welcome the full citation of some material, especially from Near Eastern sources that are not readily accessible. Borsch’s chief point is that Jesus accepted a vocation that linked the First Man of Iranian religion and Adam as the king of paradise in syncretistic Jewish documents, with the servant concept that embraced a great variety of Israel’s saints and prophets. This is a striking combination, which, despite the author’s disclaimer, has Jesus casting about for a destiny to fulfill. Our provisional response must be to recall Occam’s razor: assumptions must not be multiplied unnecessarily. Why go so far afield when Daniel and Isaiah’s Servant passages were close at hand to Jesus?

The Book of Acts too has had its share of attention. Two substantial commentaries, that by J. Munck in the Anchor Bible (Doubleday) and that by R. P. C. Hanson in the New Clarendon Bible (Oxford) have some excellent qualities. Both place a fairly high estimate on the historical worth of the history—at least by radical German and American standards. The fullest discussion of Luke as a historian and theologian is given by E. Earle Ellis’s edition of the Gospel of Luke (Nelson), whose introduction has been justly hailed as the most complete summary of recent Lukan studies. His commentary abounds with incisive and pithy comments. By contrast, Helmut Flender’s St. Luke: Theologian of Redemptive History (SPCK; Fortress) reads like a typical piece of Teutonic research—even in translation. It would be a pity to overlook it on that account, however, for he offers a scheme of analysis of Lukan history that is an alternative to the reigning hypothesis of Hans Conzelmann. Certainly his discovery of a dialectic in Luke’s writings is a fruitful contribution. Turning back to the more elementary and down-to-earth, we take note of J. H. E. Hull’s study of The Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles (Lutterworth; World), which has a message for the pastor and church administrator as well as for the scholar.

The New Testament epistles have been overshadowed in this year’s list. K. Grayston’s commentary on Philippians and Thessalonians (“Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible”) completes the series and is one of the best, offering some luminous thoughts and helpful exegesis. And that indefatigable commentator W. Hendriksen has finished Ephesians (Baker) in his journey through the whole New Testament.

One general introduction has appeared in the year. Since its author is W. D. Davies, its appearance constitutes an event; and we are not disappointed with this Invitation to the New Testament (Darton, Longman and Todd; Doubleday). Here learning is worn lightly as we are led leisurely and painlessly through the central areas of background and text. It is unrivaled as a primer for the college freshman. Equally meritorious is J. A. Fitzmyer’s Pauline Theology: A Brief Sketch (Prentice-Hall), which packs a great deal into a small paperback and contains many starting points for future study. Its author, a Catholic scholar, is an enthusiastic exegete of Paul. And last on the list is The Prayers of Jesus (Allenson) by J. Jeremias, whose illumination of Jesus’ word Abba is well known. This fuller treatment will not only inform the mind but also teach us how to pray. And isn’t that the true test of any book on the New Testament?

Other 1967 publications that merit mention are: R. Scroggs, The Last Adam (Fortress); F. Mussner, The Historical Jesus in the Gospel of St. John (Herder); four volumes in the “Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible,” those on Romans (by E. Best), Galatians (W. Neil), Peter and Jude (A. R. C. Leaney), and Hebrews (J. G. Davies) (the volume on Philippians and Thessalonians was mentioned earlier in this article); E. Lohse, History of the Suffering and Death of Jesus Christ (Fortress); R. A. Harrisville, The Miracle of Mark (Fortress); two volumes of Nelson’s Century Bible, that on Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon by G. Johnston, and that on James, Jude, and Second Peter by E. M. Sidebottom; L. Hartman, Prophecy Interpreted: The Formation of Some Jewish Apocalyptic Texts and the Eschatological Discourse, Mark 13 Par. (Lund); R. P. Martin, Carmen Christi: Philippians 2:5–11 in Recent Interpretation and in the Setting of Early Christian Worship (Cambridge); and F. V. Filson, Yesterday: A Study of Hebrews in the Light of Chapter 13 (SCM, “Studies in Biblical Theology”).

Finally, from Darton, Longman and Todd and from Doubleday came the Reader’s Edition of the New Testament in The Jerusalem Bible, a publication well received in all branches of the Christian faith.

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

    • More fromRalph P. Martin
Page 6047 – Christianity Today (2024)
Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Annamae Dooley

Last Updated:

Views: 6161

Rating: 4.4 / 5 (65 voted)

Reviews: 80% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Annamae Dooley

Birthday: 2001-07-26

Address: 9687 Tambra Meadow, Bradleyhaven, TN 53219

Phone: +9316045904039

Job: Future Coordinator

Hobby: Archery, Couponing, Poi, Kite flying, Knitting, Rappelling, Baseball

Introduction: My name is Annamae Dooley, I am a witty, quaint, lovely, clever, rich, sparkling, powerful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.