Page 6172 – Christianity Today (2024)

DEAR DAUGHTER,

Thanks for your long letter. It was good to get a “stream-of-consciousness” type of report—all the things that you would talk about if you were right here curled up on the foot of the bed. Your other letters were delightful and interesting, but I was wondering what was going on beneath the surface.

Please don’t feel that we are upset by all those questions about the basis of your faith. I am sending you several books on apologetics recommended by a professor who would know just what you need.

Daddy says he’s not dealing with apologetics right now and that he’s not in the student atmosphere. In his ministry he’s dealing with people who are facing matters of life and death, heartbreak and tragedy, practical problems of family living, and it’s quite different. They aren’t, for the most part, worrying about philosophies and theologies. They want something of practical use to them today, something to help them face and solve their problems, something that works. And that is what a practical, experiential Christianity does, as I know you have proved to your satisfaction.

Of course, in the environment in which you find yourself you are challenged to dig out the answers for the sake of those whom you meet and also to strengthen your own faith. It seems to me—am I not right?—that this is the first time all these questions about your faith have bothered you.

Do you remember how disgusted you used to get with your older brother when he would want to bat around such questions at the dinner table ad infinitum? He was always taking the opposite side of the question from us just to get our answers. Then he was fortified to meet discussions on the outside.

As you know, his faith tended to be strengthened in an antagonistic environment and to waver in the environment of a Christian college. You, however, have always been the opposite in temperament; in a truly feminine way, you tend to yield to the atmosphere you are in. This yielding to an atmosphere can be both good and bad. It’s good in that you are always able to gather the full value out of whatever situation you are in. You are able to concentrate on the good points and not worry about the bad. It is the quality of sensitivity that enables you to pick up the language, feelings, and ways of people of another culture and background. This quality will help you benefit to the full from your year in France.

But it’s bad in that you will need to guard against having your spiritual life weakened by the unbelief around you. However well it is dressed up in scholarly and attractive form, it is still unbelief—a basic disinclination to yield the will to Christ. Becoming a Christian is primarily a matter of the will. There is either an honest desire to find out how to get into a vital, personal relation with God or else just an idle desire to argue and toss around scholarly terms, thereby further consolidating one’s own refusal of Christ.

So by all means study all these questions to your own satisfaction. But don’t let anybody who just wants to show how smart he can sound throw you off balance spiritually. If a person is truly seeking, help him. Give him all the answers to the limit that you have them. But don’t ever for a moment think that, because you don’t have an answer at your fingertips, there is no answer!

Plenty of thinking Christians have agonized through all these questions before you ever were here and have come through with their faith intact. During the first years of my Bible teaching, I was in about the same frame of mind you seem to be in now. I felt I had to know, that I had to work out in my own mind all the “whys.” I felt I had no right to teach, that I could not stand before a class with any ring of conviction in my voice, if I hadn’t beaten my way through every last question that occurred to me—and plenty of them did!

Finally, though, I became thoroughly satisfied, and my interest in apologetics shifted to the practical aspects of Christianity—the way it works in everyday life, the way prayers are answered, the beautiful, the poetic, the soul-satisfying aspects.

In my teaching I try to speak the language of those not committed to Christ and to bring in apologetics when necessary. Yet it really isn’t argument that wins people to the Lord. It’s just presenting the Scriptures and trying to make them come alive in as many different ways as possible, and then trusting the Holy Spirit to do the real work, not yourself.

But I know what you are after; you want to work through all these questions for yourself. And you should honestly face them. Then you will be ready to be a fine Bible teacher someday. I have wondered occasionally why you hadn’t had to go through all this questioning before now. Just about everyone who is brought up in the Christian faith has to go through this shaking-down process sooner or later before his faith is absolutely his own and not just what he has gotten from his parents or from his environment.

So we’ll see that you get the books as soon as we can get them for you. And in the meantime, be sure that you do everything you can be doing to keep your spiritual life strong and bright in a spiritually chilling environment. You haven’t mentioned having any Christian fellowship at all in the few weeks you have been gone, or even attending any church services except one on ship and one in Tours.

You will have many Christian groups open to you when you get to Paris; with your knowledge of French you can no doubt have some spiritually thrilling experiences as you seek out these minority groups. It will give you the taste and flavor of what it is to be a Christian or a Protestant in an overwhelmingly pagan or Catholic society. Be sure to look up those Christians whose names we gave you.

I’m glad to hear you are keeping up your Bible reading. It’s fine to read the Bible in French, but it might be that you would get more of a blessing out of reading it in English. Anyway, be sure you are getting spiritual nourishment for the day, not just more practice in French.

Another thing about trying to argue with these bright students. Don’t forget that you’re not the kind who finds it easy to win an argument of any kind, any more than I am. Smart as you are, you don’t have that sharp, clipped, overwhelming manner of marshaling facts and arguments in a way that talks other people down.

Your brother Bob has more of that quality. He exults in argument and in his group in Heidelberg was able to take on all comers. Whether it was as intellectually dazzling a group as the one you find yourself in is a question, but still they had been exposed to the same ideas as your group. You are more likely to convince them by what you are and by what Christ means to you than by what you say in argument.

Well, send us another “stream-of-consciousness” letter when you feel like it. Of course, you’re not homesick. You’re a big girl now, all grown-up, or almost. Nothing can take away the wonderful years we have had with you. They are forever written into your conscious and sub-conscious mind. But I would feel that I had done a poor and selfish job if you couldn’t stand to be away from your parents at the age of twenty. I wouldn’t like to think of you over there in the midst of that fine opportunity, all torn up with homesickness.

Of course you know we pray for you constantly.

With love,

MOTHER

Margaret Johnston Hess is the wife of Dr. Bartlett L. Hess, pastor of the Ward Memorial Presbyterian Church, Detroit, Michigan. She is a graduate of Coe College. This letter was written to her daughter, a student at Sweetbriar College, who at that time was taking her junior year abroad by attending the Sorbonne in Paris.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

DEAR SON,

I have no easy answers to your hard questions. But your letter taking me into your confidence again, now that you are inside such illustrious ivy walls, set me up as I haven’t been since you left home. I’ll toss out some comments that I hope will help you when you’re being thrown a curve.

As to how far you should go with girls, God help you, and may God help me not to answer for you, nor to unload my own code on you. But here are some things that may not occur to you in the heat of battle.

Your bride is alive and waiting for you right now with high ideals for you. You might want to sit down sometime, when one of the disrupting candidates is not sitting so close beside you, and describe the kind of girl you want to marry. How would you recommend that she behave in the blistering interim instances you gave? Perhaps you could do worse than follow yourself the recommendations you have in mind for her. The fellow has a way of finding and falling for the kind of girl he deserves. Put your dates in this perspective. How far should you go? How far do you want her to go with someone else? How would you feel about your father and mother going that far with someone aside from each other? How far do you want your little sister to go? Is your contemplated behavior something you’d not mind confessing to her and to your own son someday? As a practical matter, remember that the girl the college freshman is currently raving about is probably not the one he’ll end up with.

Undoubtedly, the happiness of your future home will be created or cheated by your current conduct. Whatever habits you make will be hard to break. Your roommate should consider that sowing wild oats starts something hard to stop. It will take more than a big wedding to break up established pre-marital patterns of misbehavior. There are showers of statistics to prove that promiscuity prior to marriage tends to perpetuate itself after the ceremony.

The marriage vows are just as sacred before the partners meet and pronounce them. And obviously only the partner who comes chaste to the wedding can be trusted to be true. I notice that the Institute of Family Relations offers convincing statistics to sustain my own impression that pre-marital sexual experience is a severe handicap to a satisfactory physical adjustment rather than a help, as the scuttlebutt has it. The best insurance for a successfully thrilling marriage solely from the biological point of view is virginity.

Home is hell without mutual trust and security, and everything one does when single carries confidence or suspicion over into the union or disunion. The guilty party will worry over whether he’ll be found out; the other will be afraid the infidelity will recur. Secondly, any sign of dissension between mother and father, any festering grievances for which each blames the other, such as a child conceived before wedlock or the shock of an earlier or suspected unfaithfulness, no matter how carefully concealed sows uneasiness and may even bring panic among the children. Paul Tournier and other distinguished psychiatrists condemn parental dissension as chiefly responsible for children’s problems.

I think I would call Brad’s atheism more of an emotional block than an intellectual summit he assumes he has reached. I don’t mean to oversimplify every rejection of God as a boy’s projected rebellion against his parents, but I would bet Brad’s rapport with his folks and his friends has not been what it might have been. His antagonistic attitude toward life seems, as you describe it, almost a classical teen-ager’s “neurosis of defiance.” In any case, I am sure you agree that someone in such a negative emotional state cannot be very objective about ultimate authority. Often the dormitory bull session that’s “out to get” religion is dominated by boys who are fanatic unbelievers, who do not want to believe, and who have probably never even read the New Testament. The campus cynic does not normally come to his conclusions conscientiously. Often driven by destructive urges, he chronically questions everything except his own cute little pet questions.

Perhaps the same thing that’s eating Brad accounts, in part at least, for the anti-attitude of your biology professor and even the whole contemporary stance of scientism. To return to Tournier, in his last volume, he exposes the whole secular reaction of our time against religion as “adolescent” (A Whole Person in a Broken World, Harper & Row, 1964). Medieval man’s approach may have been childlike, but our descendants will not consider this age’s attitude as adult. It is more like a big brother’s scorn.

Tournier recognizes in the prevalent condescension toward the Church the same old teen-ager’s “neurosis of defiance.” He believes the objections to the Bible are more emotional than intellectual, that modern man has been led to his present-day position of non-religion more by a contradictory spirit toward his forefathers than by honest doubt or fair trial. Our day has not outgrown God; it has just repressed him. “To say no, consistently, where we said yes before is not to be free.” And while Western man suffers from this compulsion to offend and avert God, he unconsciously yearns for reunion with him like a lost son.

Science, as you know, John, has succumbed to a far more naïve god of its own. It is that strange god, chance, in whom modern scientists believe. “Chance,” writes Franck Abauzit, “explains nothing; it is merely the negation of the spirit, the opposite of reason, the destruction of all intelligibility.” “And yet it is,” as Tournier tells us, “the last word of every scientific explanation of the world. ‘The classical theory of science,’ writes Lecomte de Nouy, ‘simply replaces God with chance. It is nothing more than playing with words.’ Here again, the psychoanalysts will say, is the return of the repressed disguised as in a dream” (Tournier, p. 33).

I don’t know what you can do with this, John; but I do know that the feud between faith and scientific fact is folly “exactly like the quarrel between an adolescent and his parents, in which he scoffs at them by making assertions which are too categorical and they regard every contradiction on his part as an offense” (Tournier, p. 87). It’s high time to challenge science’s sacred trinity of “accident, struggle, and progress.” The doubts so dear to humanism need doubting now.

As for your religion course, an English professor, of all people, gave me a little paperback by Sören Kierkegaard the other day, entitled On Self Examination. I wouldn’t like you to take Kierkegaard’s word on everything, but he puts higher criticism in its place as man’s last and most insidious means of escaping God. The Bible is a mirror, he says, but instead of assisting us to see ourselves in it more clearly than ever, criticism tends to distract us. We exhaust our energy and interest, dating the mirror, measuring it, counting bubbles and cracks. We note the word’s distortion here, its duplication there. We interpret, relate, outline, and evaluate. We do everything to the Bible but look in it and shout, “Hallelujah, it is He!” We miss the crowd about the Cross and forget to cry in bitter shame, “It is I.”

I am sure you will gain much from your course. At least it will test your faith and teach you what problems others will raise that must be answered. But be comforted that John Bunyan, St. Francis, and St. Peter had no Dead Sea Scrolls to prove to them how long this faith could be preserved intact. St. Peter couldn’t even have read them; he wouldn’t have had time, because he was too busy having a religious experience and being true till death. It is not obscurantism to say that the time comes when the examination should stop and the experiment begin.

Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Perhaps the best way to appreciate the Christian position is to go back to Abraham and see how our first citizen got started. He was obviously a man of great wealth; perhaps he owned a huge plantation at the suburban edge of pagan Ur. No doubt his hearth was heavy with specialized figurine gods for every conceivable purpose. But something stirred him to restlessness. Not a nervous breakdown, I think. He could have felt like the little girl I saw in the cartoon the other day. She had just stopped jumping rope. “Why?” someone asked. “Suddenly,” she said, “it all seemed so futile.” Whatever the reason, Abraham wanted more from religion and from life, or someone wanted him to have more, than he’d been getting.

Gradually it dawned on him (or instantly light struck him—who knows?) that some new and vastly superior God seemed to be telling him to get out of Ur and go somewhere else. It was all so new, so difficult to translate, I suppose. His wife Sarah must have feared for his wits. But Abraham, anxious to do better and having nothing better to do, promised this voice that he would give it a try with everything he had. He went all out. And the answer came back, promising unbelievable blessing in return. What happened there was that God got through to a man and a bargain was reached that has made all the difference in the world ever since. Call it a contract if you wish; officially that little arrangement is what we mean when we say the old covenant or Old Testament.

The moral of this story is that Abraham made no mistake. The result surpassed his wildest dreams. And he was not the only one who knew it. History bears witness that Abraham was not talking to himself. The Promised Land appeared out of nowhere; a child came out of a barren womb that set off a chain reaction of descendants distinguished for this same belief. This agreement was carried on through this lineage down to David and ultimately up to Christ. It is hard to believe that all this good news was originally born from a mistaken impression or a madman’s mind.

Now it is your turn and mine to try it, if we wish. We Christians have never been able to talk anyone into belief. We are asked only to gamble on it, as Abraham did. It would not be faith if we had all the facts or if life manipulated us like puppets by letting us peek at all the answers at the back of the book. Grooms risk “I do” in marriage with much less reason for believing it will work. Right now, no doubt, you face some problem too big and painful for you to want—or even be able—to unburden it on me. Instead of handling it on your own, ask the God of Abraham for help. Keep asking until your prayer is so important that you’ll remember next week what you asked for tonight. Help will come, and you will know the solution later, if not now. The religious bull session is usually stale, sometimes stagnating. The real thing is a trial-and-error method—God speaking to you, saying yes or no, in the language of your daily activities and in the deeper knowledge your heart knows.

I think I shall not at this point try to tell you any more than I already have about who Christ is, lest I be guilty of understatement or presumption. For when the time comes, he will come and address you in person. The essential question is, Are you ready to follow him? That is all you have to agree to now. The day Jesus walked up the beach to where Peter and Andrew and James and John were fishing, I notice he asked for nothing more than that. He didn’t ask just then who they thought he was. That question would have been premature; it came later.

Remember, John, how we used to play that game together, “If I had one wish.” You always said you’d wish for as many wishes as you wanted, you rascal. If I had one wish tonight, it would be for you to follow Christ wherever he leads you. That’s my prayer. If you’ll dare to do that much, one step at a time, sometime, as an illustrious pilgrim once promised, you’ll come to know as an inexpressible secret who He really is.

Blessings on you, my son, always,

DAR:bn

YOUR DAD

David A. Redding is pastor of the First Church (United Presbyterian), East Cleveland, Ohio. He holds the degrees of A.B. (Wooster) and B.D. (Oberlin). His writing has appeared in “Life” magazine and “Reader’s Digest” and in the “Christian Herald” and “Presbyterian Life.”

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

Each fall thousands of young people leave the warm Christian life of their home to enter a collegiate world in which Christianity is either ignored or ridiculed. For a few, the consequence of a four-year assault upon their beliefs is permanent alienation from the Church; others turn away but recover their faith later; still others stand firm and emerge with even stronger religious beliefs than they had before.

The degree to which the college environment is hostile to the student’s Christian faith varies greatly. In general, denominational schools are more likely to provide an experience that supports Christian beliefs than non-sectarian ones. But denominational affiliation may mean anything from a program permeated by religious concern to one in which the involvement of the supporting church is almost indiscernible. Indeed, in some church colleges the dedication to academic freedom is so strong that toleration is granted to anti-religious teachings that would be banned at some state-supported institutions.

The student in an institution in which secularism prevails will discover that in many courses, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, religion in any form is held in low regard. The general anti-religious tenor is set by the instructor, and few students dare challenge it. Since Christianity looms largest among the religions of Western civilization, it is likely to receive the most anti-religious barbs.

Some instructors show their disdain for religion by attacking it, others by pointedly ignoring it. When, in ostensibly cataloguing the significant forces of our era, a professor fails to mention religion, he clearly communicates his idea that religion is an ancient and inconsequential concern. The student who raises a question about the role of religion can expect a disbelieving shake of the head from an instructor who just can’t figure out how to cope with such naïveté.

Moreover, the social science and humanities courses often have a strong “debunking” flavor. Much material is presented as though the first twelve years of formal schooling were designed to protect the student from the ugly realities of life, and now at college the truth can be told. Thus a history professor may devote much time to downgrading heroes of the past, attempting to show that they had more than their share of weaknesses and that their noble deeds had base motivations.

The shock many students experience upon encountering this treatment of much they previously held sacred is magnified by the fact that any objective consideration of religion in their public school studies was impossible. The cautious public school teacher, in fact, is likely to avoid religion altogether. The devastating treatment given the idols of history by many college instructors is, likewise, an over-response to the glorification of such figures that too frequently is found in high school history courses.

Some young and callow instructors are still suffering from the trauma of their own collegiate debunking experience. They may derive emotional satisfaction from communicating to their students, in an exaggerated and often distorted way, the revelations they have recently experienced. The student should be warned that such instructors, who often suffer from feelings of insecurity, are unlikely to treat tolerantly those who dare challenge their iconoclastic message.

In sociology and anthropology, religion is likely to be viewed instrumentally. One set of beliefs is regarded as no better than another; the “correctness” of the beliefs is usually considered to be outside the purview of social science. What matters is how usefully a set of religious beliefs functions within a particular social context. Such a cold, detached view of a sacred realm can be very disturbing to a Christian student.

Missionaries are given rather savage treatment whenever notice is taken of them in anthropology courses. The image of the missionary presented seems to be a caricature of a mid-nineteenth-century type who may or may not have existed. He is portrayed as a possibly well-meaning bumbler who is ignorant of cultural differences, hopelessly naïve, and determined to wreck an idyllic native way of life by rudely imposing upon the people his own set of values. To anyone who really knows about the work of modern missionaries, this picture is nothing less than absurdly fraudulent.

The courage to challenge the sweeping allegations of the anti-religionists is greatly needed. Often a query about evidence would reveal the lack of convincing support for a charge directed at a religion or at religion in general. But too frequently the instructor’s dogmatic manner, combined with a general air of uncritical acceptance in the classroom, causes anti-religious calumnies to go unchallenged.

Partly as a consequence of the professorial assault on religion, the student subculture at many institutions offers the Christian young person little support for the retention of his faith. On many American campuses a student expressing a forthright commitment to his religion can expect to be looked upon as distinctly “square.” To speculate in a myopic way about man’s origins and destiny is “in”; but to indicate that one has found satisfying answers is definitely “out.” The Christian freshman who is concerned about social acceptance may well consider it expedient to put his religion aside for four years.

Many factors determine the response that the Christian student makes to this world he has not known before. Probably much of the rejection of religion that occurs in college stems not from logical thought but from personality needs. The undermining elements of the college situation may support the rebellious inclinations of one who has been seething under an autocratic parental regime, a regime in which religion, like everything else, is firmly imposed from above. To embrace agnosticism may thus signify a rejection of parents more than a rejection of religion.

The ostentatious collegiate anti-religionist is often simply a disturbed personality. Persons who feel a deep emotional discomfort may, like the experimental rat in the maze, keep striking out in different directions in an effort to gain relief. Some try successive conversions to different religions; others try to eliminate religion from their lives. The fervor with which anti-religionism is often adopted indicates a great void to be filled.

Another home situation conducive to the collegiate flight from faith is that of hot-house nurture of religion. The young person who has been shielded from all challenges and doubts of skeptics is unprepared for the critical world of the college. This shielding may be responsible for the exaggerated disillusionment some young people feel when first exposed to agnosticism. The student who has earlier encountered some of the critics of his religion and has been helped to weigh their arguments is much less likely to find the skepticism of professors a traumatic experience.

In an era and in a society in which free inquiry and freedom of conviction are highly regarded, it is inevitable that for some the experience of going to college will result in a major alteration of religious outlook. Christianity will undoubtedly lose from the defection of some of the disenchanted. Many young people, however, will respond to the challenges to their faith by developing a far greater depth and maturity of Christian commitment.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

Text: And, behold, a woman … came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment.—Matthew 9:20.

The point on which the evangelists fasten our attention in this miracle is not the grace of the Lord Jesus, nor his power, nor the fact that this woman with the issue of blood was healed by a touch. The fact upon which the writers focus our thought is that the woman touched only the hem of his garment. “If I may touch but his clothes I shall be whole.” She came behind him in the midst of the throng, with her deep craving to be healed, and her sublime faith that Christ’s virtue would pass from him, even through the hem of his garment. She put out her trembling hands and touched, and the thrill of a new life pulsed in her blood.

Now what is the hem of Christ’s garment? Where is the hem of Christ’s garment today? The hem this woman touched was one of the four tassels of blue which hung from the fringe of his coat. That garment woven by his mother’s fingers has long ago moldered into dust. Never again can any sick one creep in behind Jesus and touch that tassel of blue, and send a vibrating thrill to his heart. But is there no hem for us to touch? Can this miracle never be repeated? Are we poorer because Christ has gone to the Father?

The living Lord still walks in our midst in his love and power. His voice no longer falls on the outer ear. We cannot see the print of the nails. The robe with its fringe no longer passes down our streets. But the hem of Christ’s garment can still be touched. For what was this hem, and what is this hem, but that through which his virtue passed out of him? All the world of things seen, all that is beautiful and uplifting and inspiring, all holy influences and wise thoughts and gracious words, are but the channels through which the virtue of Jesus passes to the healing of the issues of body and mind and spirit.

Let me then speak to you of some of the ways in which Christ’s virtue passes out of him. Let us think how we also may touch the hem of his garment, that we also may bring our secret and disabling sore, and, touching the hem, may touch Christ.

Think first of the hem of Christ’s garment in nature. Nature is the visible garment of God, wrought, as Goethe said, by God’s fingers in Time’s roaring loom. This world of rising and setting suns, of silent stars and breathing winds, of sea and shore, of moor and mountain, of meadow and mystic wood, is the garment of the living Lord. Its ribands are not only of blue but of yellow and purple and scarlet, of fleecy white and living green; and its tassels, that every child can touch, are wrought with silver and gold. The Greeks, who peopled every stream with a spirit, and every wood with a nymph, and every hilltop with a god, were feeling after the truth that the visible world is the garment of the invisible. The Hebrew poets declared the light to be God’s robe, the winds to be his whisper, the thunder to be his voice.

Who has not been healed by touching this hem of Christ’s garment? David tells us, in the thirty-sixth Psalm, that when he was sick at heart with men’s pride and deceit and ungodliness, he went out to the world of the open heaven and the everlasting hills, and the song of relief came to his lips, “Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep.” Then his psalm rises higher, and breaks forth in the melody of a healed spirit. Wordsworth, as we know, often wandered lonely on the mountain-side, that he might walk with God in his temple. Shelley, rebellious spirit though he was, declared that the overarching boughs of a green glade were a cathedral, and taught him reverence. Samuel Cox narrates that when he was a youth, earning his bread among rough dock-laborers whose profanity fell with coarsening din upon his ears, he kept a flower upon his desk that he might be chastened and purified by coming into touch with God.

A great part of our earth is bare moor, waste wilderness, barren hillside, inaccessible mountain. God has made it so and kept it so. It is but the hem of his garment which wearied and broken men may touch. To walk abroad in some of these vast solitudes, to mark the bloom on the heather and the enchanting tints of the wild rose, and to hear the song of the lark, is to find a tonic for body and mind, and to realize that strength and calm are revisiting the soul. You said that nature healed you. It was not nature, it was God; and you were touching his garment’s hem.

Think, secondly, of the hem of Christ’s garment in art. By art I include all that is pure and lovely and noble in literature, in architecture, in music, in sculpture and painting, and in all the works of men done under the inspiration of the Spirit of God. There are few who have not felt nature to be the garment of God. But there are undiscerning eyes to which, as to Wordsworth’s dullard—

A primrose by a river’s brim

A yellow primrose was to him,

And it was nothing more.

There are some who never see a lovely hillside without thinking of it as a place to parcel out in profitable allotments. These are the soldiers who cast lots for Christ’s garment at the foot of the Cross. These are becoming fewer every day. Yet there are still many who do not realize that art is also the hem of Christ’s garment. You have gone to a noble music, weary, chafed, losing heart almost with yourself, and as you listened to some impassioned melody a great peace possessed you. Have you not in some dull and listless hour taken up a master in literature and read some story of love and grace, and of strenuous deed, or mused again over some poem which was full of light and truth, to find that your dullness had passed away? The depths within were broken up, tears came to your eyes, prayer was upon your lips, and you passed into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

How many have touched Christ through some great painting? I remember standing before Raphael’s “Madonna and Child,” which is the peculiar glory of the Dresden gallery. A company of tourists, careless in thought and light in speech, entered the room. As the solemn power of that great picture was felt, silence sealed every lip. The mingled majesty and simplicity of the Holy Child and the meek submission and saintly purity of the Virgin breathed forth an atmosphere of faith. One of the company, a young girl whose light laugh and jesting words had been ringing through the corridor, looked up to the picture with wonder and delight. Then a soft haze filled her eyes and she reverently bowed herself. It was not an act of devotion or of adoration of the picture. Her New England blood would not have allowed her to kneel. But she had touched the hem of the garment, and there flashed upon her the shallowness, and pettiness, and selfishness of the life which she was tempted to lead. In the instant, things low and mean and idle were smitten within her, and she was healed of her plague.

Art may be sordid in motive and base in purpose. It may become the garment of a leprosy, spotting not merely the flesh but the spirit. But art may be, and should be, the hem of Christ’s robe, through which, at the touch of need and reverence and faith, Christ’s virtue flows.

Think, thirdly, of the hem of Christ’s garment in the word. This is the tassel of blue which most have touched. If thousands have found Christ’s healing pass into them through nature and through art, tens of thousands have found still better healing through the inspired Scriptures of God. The Word of God is the closest garment of his thought. It is significant that Christ is called the Word, simply because God in Christ passed out to reveal himself, and to work his miracles, in and by a word. This Bible is something more than a book. A personality indwells in its pages. The roughest and rudest spirit will not lightly abuse a single page of it. One of our modern writers tells us of a man purposing a crime in which he will glut the revenge of his embittered spirit. As he sits in his room evolving his plans, his eyes fall upon a Bible. It seems a living thing. He shrinks back from it, but as he touches it his murderous hate is purged. He had simply brushed against the hem of the garment.

It was my duty some time ago to accompany to the place of burial the mourners of one of our beloved dead. As we stood round the open grave our eyes were held by a neighboring tombstone, on whose base there was cut the inscription—

He was a man, take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again.

There are some occasions in life for which Shakespeare is not enough. A few yards away there stood a simpler gravestone, with the words, “Because I live, ye shall live also,” and those whose hearts were heavy found instant healing.

So in all times of need we can touch this hem. When we are tempted, we can, like Jesus, find a word through which our will shall be reinforced. When we need light and guidance, there is always some counsel that will show the path of truth and honor. When we require comfort, there are on every page the words of the only secure consolation the world knows. When we have lost hope and heart, and have tried many physicians, and are nothing better but rather grown worse, we have to turn and apply to our souls some great word out of this book to find ourselves healed—“Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee,” or “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him,” or “What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.”

The healing of his seamless dress,

Is by our beds of pain;

We touch him in life’s throng and press,

And we are whole again.

Think, fourthly, of the hem of Christ’s garment in the ministries of the Church. By the Church I mean the congregations of believing men and women, “the solemn troops and sweet societies,” bound together in the bonds of a common faith and love. By its ministries I mean the offices of psalm and prayer, the exposition of the Word, the power and helpfulness of its fellowship, the outgoing of sympathy and of inspiration in its service of God and of man. If there be anything earthly and visible which the most unspiritual man can see to be the garment of Christ, it is these gracious ministries of the Church. Sometimes they may seem dull to weariness. Too often they yield no blessing. The pool of healing is not always stirred. The bush is not always burning with hallowed fire. But surely no one ever took part in these ministries, and came with a need or a trouble, who did not receive strength and light and healing.

I marvel at the neglect of the public worship of God. I marvel at it the more in these busy and hustling and over-driven days, when men and women need so supremely a place of quiet, a time of meditation, an hour of recollection. I marvel that young men and women, in the years when the things that are beautiful are attractive to them, do not hunger after the beauty of holiness; and I marvel still more that the older men and women who are walking in those trying levels of middle life and are bearing the heat and burden of the day do not come eagerly to touch the hem of Christ’s garment. There are issues often shameful, sometimes secret, sometimes exhausting, which Christ heals through the ministries of the Church.

Here is a man who has come into God’s house bewildered about his duty, and as he prays he sees the way before him as in a vision. Here is a woman afflicted with fear about her life, or burdened by her deep anxiety for those dear to her. As she sits she catches the contagion of faith, and peace like a dove descends upon her. Here are young men and women tempted by this alluring world, feeling the rush within them of their hot young blood. They find themselves chastened, and their whole nature roused to choose the straight and narrow way. Even little children as they have sung their hymn have realized that they were touching Jesus.

Think, fifthly, of the hem of Christ’s garment in the sacrament of the Supper. Nothing else brings us so near Christ, and through nothing else does his virtue pass so immediately as the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Before the Church itself was organized, before a line of the New Testament was written, before even the Old Testament had become the book of light and leading to Christian men, the Lord’s Supper was the rite of constant use. It is this ordinance, so universal wherever Christian men are met, with its white cloth and bread and wine, which all men feel to be “the sight/Of a sweepy garment, vast and white,/With a hem that I could recognize.” This is the hem that all men recognize. At times a too great reverence has been paid to it. In the north of Scotland, the fine Celtic awe and reverence for sacred things has invested it with such sanctity that poor sin-sick men and women have not always dared to approach it for their healing. The Romish church has also felt its sacredness so keenly that they have called this hem of the garment by the very name of the Lord, and have forgotten that its bread and wine are only symbols and not the very flesh and blood of Jesus.

The Lord’s Supper is only the Supper, and its elements are only signs; but they are elements and signs through which there passes to repentant men the healing of the issues of their lives. What is the virtue which passes from Christ in this sacrament? It is the virtue of his death on the Cross. Had there been no Cross there might have been a supper of fellowship, but not a feast of healing. “Ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come,” and in showing it you touch the hem of his garment and are healed.

What do we bring, as penitents, to the Lord’s Supper? We bring the memory and conscience of our slip and fall, our broken vows, our unfulfilled resolves, our too feeble struggle with sin, our distaste for goodness and for God. “Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat.” These words are read in a silence which reveals that many find them searching and scaring. But they are the words of most gracious invitation. “Let a man examine himself”—of his envy and pride, and passion, and ill will to his neighbor, and dishonesty, sickness of soul and its issue of shame in his life—and “so let him eat, and eating, be healed.”

What sore and shameful issue is draining you of strength and peace and hope? How many, like this woman, are the subjects of chronic sin? Chronic weakness against temptation, chronic habits of sloth, chronic distrust and doubt, chronic prayerlessness; how these, and similar sins, drain our lives of gladness! How many have ceased to expect or to hope to be holy, and have become content with a life of a mean level of morality? All of us may be healed by touching this hem of his garment in an appealing faith.

But no healing, be it remembered, comes from nature or art, or the word, or the ministries of the Church, or even from this sacrament, in themselves. Do not, I beseech you, play the idolator with any of them. They may be only dead and bare signs. It is the Lord who healeth us. It is his power, his grace, his Cross; and these are but the hem of his garment through which his healing flows. When we come, in faith on him, to touch any one of them, virtue will pass out of him.—Chapter 23, “The Hem of Christ’s Garment,” from The Cross in Christian Experience, by William M. Clow (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908). Used by permission.

Plans have been unveiled for a ten-day meeting, conceived as a potential landmark in Christian history, which will bring together 1,200 influential churchmen from around the world to discuss evangelism. The meeting will be known as the World Congress on Evangelism. It will be held October 26 through November 4, 1966, in West Berlin.

“Our prayer,” says evangelist Billy Graham, honorary chairman of the event, “is that through the medium of the World Congress on Evangelism the Church today will receive renewed power and a sense of urgency such as was characteristic of the early Church after Pentecost.”

The congress will be sponsored by the magazine CHRISTIANITY TODAY as a tenth-anniversary project. Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, will serve as chairman.

The congress will have seven aims, all related to evangelism.

Theme of the meeting will be, “So Send I You,” taken from Jesus’ words to his disciples in John 20:21: “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” The words are also found in the high priestly prayer of John’s Gospel, a section of which has come to much prominence in ecumenical discussions: “As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world” (John 17:18).

West Berlin’s Kongresshalle, which has been reserved for the event, has a main auditorium seating 1,264 persons, plus three smaller halls wired for simultaneous translations. Congress proceedings will be conducted in English, German, French, and Spanish, and possibly a fifth language.

Plans are predicated on the participation of more than 700 delegates, 300 guests, and 100 observers.

Attendance will be by invitation only. Participants will be (1) leading evangelists from many countries; (2) denominational leaders whose administrative responsibilities concern the Church’s involvement in evangelistic activity; and (3) teachers and scholars whose areas of specialization relate significantly to evangelistic concerns.

Graham declares his hope “that the congress will speak to the whole Church with clarity and authority on evangelism and the mission of the Church. Many of the recent statements coming from church conferences have been vague and confusing on the subject of evangelism.”

Some sixty church leaders, representing many countries, have been asked to serve on a sponsoring committee for the congress.

The event will begin with a night of prayer. The congress program will include addresses on the biblical basis of evangelism, special papers, panel discussions, group discussions, and reports on the progress of evangelism throughout the world and the urgency of the task in the coming years.

“The overriding concern of the congress,” says Henry, “will be the absolute necessity of fulfilling Christ’s command that his disciples go into all the world and preach the Gospel.” He outlines the formal, seven-fold purpose of the meeting as follows:

(1) To define biblical evangelism; (2) to expound the relevance of Christ’s Gospel to the modern world; (3) to stress the urgency of evangelistic proclamation throughout the world in this generation; (4) to discover new methods of relating biblical evangelism to our times; (5) to study the obstacles to biblical evangelism and to propose the means of overcoming them; (6) to discover the types of evangelistic endeavor currently employed in various lands; and (7) to summon the Church to recognize the priority of its evangelistic task.

Henry adds: “We hope that one by-product of the congress will be an advance within many churches from a type of modern evangelism that relies on the minister for evangelistic messages, to an evangelistic church membership.”

Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, general director of the National Association of Evangelicals, will serve as chairman of a seven-member executive committee for the congress. Dr. W. Stanley Mooneyham, special assistant to Graham and moderator of the National Association of Free Will Baptists, will be coordinating director. Other members of the executive committee, along with Henry, Taylor, and Mooneyham, are Robert C. Van Kampen, a business executive of Wheaton, Illinois; George M. Wilson, of Minneapolis, executive vice-president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association; Dr. Robert P. Evans of Paris, European director of Greater Europe Mission: and the Rev. Walter Smyth of Atlanta, vice-president in charge of crusade planning for BGEA.

The program committee for the congress consists of Evans; Henry; the Rev. Gilbert Kirby of London, general secretary of the World Evangelical Fellowship; I. Ben Wati of New Delhi, executive secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India; Anglican Bishop A. W. Goodwin-Hudson, rector of St. Paul’s Church (Portman Square) in London; Dr. Rene Pache, director of Emmaus Bible Institute in Vennes-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland; and the Rev. James Dickson, a Presbyterian missionary in Taipei, Taiwan.

Legal Tests

Is the Supreme Court bent on a complete realignment of the American church-state relationship?

Some observers who fear such intent drew a sigh of relief following the court’s refusal to hear a plea aimed at striking the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. The denial came November 23 in a brief statement whose effect was to leave standing the pledge as it has been known since 1954, when Congress approved addition of the words that officially acknowledge God. Parents from New York had complained that having to repeat the phrase violated their religious precepts, in that they neither acknowledged a deity per se nor encouraged their children to do so.

Connecticut’s 85-year-old law against birth control, meanwhile, was back before the Supreme Court. This time the court agreed to hear a case involving constitutionality of the statute that forbids sale or use of drugs and contraceptives in birth control and bars physicians and other medical advisers from prescribing their use. The court had declined to rule on the law in 1961 on the ground that no one had been arrested for violating it. A new test case was initiated following the arrest of two officials of the New Haven Planned Parenthood League.

In Annapolis, Maryland, a circuit court began hearing testimony in a case testing the constitutionality of state aid to church-related colleges. Both sides agree that it will eventually end up in the U. S. Supreme Court.

Maintaining The Succession

“Another Bishop dead! I verily believe they die to vex me,” complained Viscount Melbourne, British Prime Minister of more than a century ago. His sense of outrage would have been greater today when England has many more bishops and the Prime Minister still has to fill the vacant sees. That the Prime Minister himself need not be a member of the Church of England (Mr. Harold Wilson is not) is evidently of no importance.

Early in 1962 the Church Assembly set up a commission “to examine the whole method of Crown Appointments to Ecclesiastical Offices and to make recommendations”—the ninth such commission in less than a century. After thirty-four months and fifteen meetings, this body has recommended in its newly published report that the present system of the selection of diocesan bishops by the Prime Minister should continue, with some minor reforms.

One reform would regularize the premier’s present informal consultations with the Archbishop of Canterbury and others concerned. The commission suggested also that an archbishop or bishop who refused to confirm and consecrate a duly elected bishop should no longer incur the penalties of Praemunire: taking him out of the Crown’s protection and involving the forfeiture of his lands and goods. Though the Church Times comments that the findings will conjure up “gloomy thoughts of mountainous labours producing ridiculous mice,” the report will, if implemented, remove the constant danger that for disobedience to the civil arm the Archbishop of Canterbury could be consigned to the Tower of London.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Whither The State Church?

A report by the Synod of the Evangelical Church of Anhalt in East Germany shows that while there was a decrease in church life during the last ten years, those remaining loyal to their church increased their religious activities and giving.

Providing comparative figures for various aspects of church life in 1954 and 1963, the report disclosed:

Church attendance dropping from 700,000 to 350,000; membership from 423,000 to 260,000; baptisms from 5,700 to 2,400; church weddings from 2,100 to 860; and children attending catechism classes from 23.000 to 11,000.

The report as relayed by Religious News Service emphasized, however, that loyal church members increased their attendance at Holy Communion services and their giving to the church. In one district, contributions were said to have increased from 45,000 East German marks to 108,000.

Observers say the decrease in participation at church rites was largely due to atheistic pressure exerted by the East German Communists and the resulting hesitation of large groups of believers to identify themselves very openly with the church.

Several church leaders in East and West Germany have welcomed rather than regretted the development, which leads away from the so-called Volkskirche (People’s Church), i.e., an established, national, semistate institution (which the Evangelical Church in Germany has been for centuries) into which children are automatically born as the result of the religious affiliation held by their parents.

RNS says this form of the church is now going through a severe crisis and possibly heading for ultimate dissolution because most nominal church members who used to hold church membership only, or at least primarily, because of traditional, social, and prestige considerations tend to sever affiliation without great scruples now that it involves afflictions and material disadvantages in an atheistic state.

The Congo Toll

Seven Protestant missionaries are known to have been slain by Congolese rebels during the last week of November. That brought the toll for the year to ten. Thirty-two other Protestant missionary personnel—men, women, and children—were missing as of the middle of December.

The British Foreign Office confirmed the deaths of three missionaries in addition to those reported immediately following American-Belgian rescue operations at Stanleyville and Paulis (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, December 18, 1964). The three were Cyril Taylor, about 45, of New Zealand; James Rodger, 40, a Presbyterian from Dundee, Scotland; and Miss Muriel Harman, about 60, of Victoria, British Columbia. All served under Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.

WEC reported that the Aubrey Brown family, previously unaccounted for, is safe and well. The Unevangelized Fields Mission said that Mr. and Mrs. George Kerrigan, who had also been reported missing, were free and unharmed.

In neighboring Sudan, a Presbyterian station in the capital of Khartoum was burned by a rioting mob, and two American missionaries were injured. It was not immediately learned if the mission had been singled out, or merely caught in crossfire.

The Manalistas

The Iglesia Ni Cristo (Church of Christ) has been described as the “most aggressive and closely-knit of the Philippine minorities.” Now marking its fiftieth year since it was founded by Felix Manalo, Methodist-turned-Adventist minister, the sect claims about a million adherents scattered over the Philippine archipelago. Immense baroque churches are rising up in the countryside. Moreover, the Iglesia has already distinguished itself as a potent force in Philippine politics

Iglesia adherents, often called Manalistas, are said to represent a bloc of 500,000 qualified voters whose views have been proving crucial in national elections. Manilista-supported candidates have been faring better than those backed by the Roman Catholic Church.

The Iglesia sect rests upon the passage in Revelation 7 (verses 1–3) that tells of “another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God.” The sect believes that founder Manalo is this angel or messenger of God who bears heavenly tidings in that part of the world. Also cited is a portion in Isaiah that tells of a “ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country.” The “east,” the Manalistas claim, refers to the Philippines, and they point further to Isaiah: “Wherefore, glorify ye the Lord in the east, even the name of the Lord God of Israel, in the isles of the sea.”

Evangelicals in the Philippines have always felt that the Roman Catholic Church is the dominant religion in the country. But with the rise of the Manalistas in politics, evangelicals now view them with great concern as a more serious threat to the true Christian cause. Since the Iglesia is a purely indigenous sect founded by a Filipino, it has all the tastes and colors of nationalism. And the nationalistic spirit is now strong in the Philippines.

Founder Manalo died in 1963. He was succeeded by his son, Erano Manalo, who has already shown himself a capable leader. Erano has waged a sustained bombardment of rallies and radio broadcasts against the Roman Catholic Church.

Last spring newspapers in the Philippines carried announcements of the formation of a new Catholic political party. The publicized reason for its establishment was to neutralize the influence of the Iglesia. Thus a third force shapes up for next November’s elections. And although this third force may not openly bear the name of “Catholic Party,” there is speculation that virtually all its key figures will turn out to be Roman Catholic lay leaders. Such speculation is causing alarm and anxiety among evangelicals.

EUSTAQUIO RAMIENTOS

Australian Milestone

Two veteran Lutheran evangelists became the first full-blooded Australian aboriginals admitted to the ministry of any church, according to Lutheran World Federation News Service. Conrad Raberaba and Peter Bulla, members of tribes that carry on a primitive existence in the barren hills and deserts of central Australia, were ordained at an outdoor service at Hermannsburg in November.

Raberaba, 47, has been an aide to the missionary pastor of a Lutheran church at Hermannsburg, and will now be assistant pastor. He was reared in the Christian faith by his mother, although she went away to live with a non-Christian after his father’s early death. His faith has been tested by the loss of five of his six children.

Bulla has been assigned to continue preaching among his own people, the Pitjinjaras. A gray-haired evangelist of long experience, he was the instrument by whom forty-six tribesmen were brought to the Christian faith a few months ago.

The ordination service was attended by more than 600, most of them being Christian aboriginals. Officiating, by appointment of the president general of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia, was the president of the church’s Victoria district, Dr. V. G. Roennfeldt.

T. Leo Brannon is pastor of the First Methodist Church of Samson, Alabama. He received the B.S. degree from Troy State College and the B.D. from Emory University.

A dutch newspaper headlined the close of the most recent session of the Vatican Council this way: “Pope Closes Session of Saddened Council.” It was a Roman Catholic paper, and its headline called forth a dozen questions. The phrase “saddened council” evoked vivid memories of the surprising final week of the session, a week of severe crisis. A veritable shock wave was felt when the news came out that the schema on freedom of religion was to be postponed until a following session. A petition to get the schema approved at this session was signed by a great number of council fathers. But the effort failed when the Pope himself decided to put the schema to a vote only after the council was called into its fourth session.

That this schema on religious freedom had become a point of intense controversy was well known. The American desire for a forthright proclamation clashed sharply with the views of the Italian and Spanish bishops. Many bishops felt that this matter more than any other called for a clear and decisive statement; they wanted the outside world to sense no hesitation at Rome on this particular issue. These bishops rightly supposed that the world was not anxious about what the council might say about Mariology but was most eager to bear what the Roman church was going to say about freedom of religion. This was why the postponement of a decision on this schema was received with such bitter disappointment. For these bishops the papal decision was simply inexplicable.

In the second place, there were the last-minute papal changes in the schema on ecumenicity, changes that markedly narrowed the schema’s ecumenical outreach. Besides this there was also a papal addition, a nota explicativa, which high authority heavy-handedly forced on the schema on the collegial office of bishops. The “note” was clearly meant to give the papal authority a heavier accent than it had in the schema. This was the sort of activity that led to the Roman Catholic newspaper’s characterization of the council as a saddened one.

At the final sitting, it appeared as though everything that had occurred in that week had been forgiven and forgotten. But this was mere window-dressing. Clearly, the council was confronting a crisis. And many felt it deeply, though no one was prepared to speculate on the outcome. Many interpreted the final week as evidence that the Pope had for the first time intervened in the situation in a way that demonstrated his basic sympathies with the conservative wing of the church. The question was asked whether Michael Serafian was right after all when before the recent session he said in his book The Pilgrim, Pope Paul VI, that the Pope, following a serious personal crisis, had chosen to bring the church back to its former traditional course.

In any case, we can no longer blame the curia for conservative feet-dragging, for it has now become clear that the Pope himself is directly and decisively involved in the situation. This is a further cause for regret and disillusionment among many Catholics. I do not mean that they are shorn of respect for the papal office or that they are prepared to display any disobedience to the Pope. But they are asking questions.

The papal additions to the schema are as serious as the reluctance to take action on religious freedom. If these additions were to be voted on separately, they would be badly defeated. But they cannot be voted on separately. The vote must be called on the entire schema, and this will be approved. Obviously, this is a forced vote. It leaves many bishops restless and disgruntled. Many are asking why the Pope forced this situation on them.

Why was this last moment chosen to force on the council a statement it had shown no desire to make during its long weeks of labor? Is this strategy not in conflict with the very meaning and purpose of the council? Was the idea of the council not to let the voice of the church be heard through the ecumenical episcopate? And is the action not in conflict with the assured guidance of the Spirit possessed by the councils as well as by the Pope? Conciliarism is dead in the sense that Rome long ago abandoned the notion that the councils stand above the Pope. But Rome has held that the college of bishops has a genuine authority “along with the Pope.” Does this authority allow for such heavy-handed interventions from above which allow no room for decision-making by the council? Very likely, the disillusionment of many delegates is related to the fear that this council may actually lose all real significance because of papal interventions. That is, they fear that the Second Vatican Council will not result in any real complement to balance the one-sidedness of the First Vatican of almost a hundred years ago.

A period of crisis may well have been introduced by the papal intervention. During the present intermission we will be hearing a great deal of discussion about the real motives of Pope Paul. Already suggestions have been made that Paul had begun to be concerned about the progressive tendencies within the council long before, but only now had come to grips with them. No one should underestimate the difficulties the Pope has in keeping the church calm and united in these days. One needed only to observe the intense differences in outlook manifest at the council to appreciate the task Paul has in keeping all the tendencies united within the church. Has the Pope indeed come out for one side and against the other? Is this why he has insisted that the schema on the church has changed nothing in the traditional doctrine of the church even though at the inception of his pontificate he expressed the hope that the Spirit would lead the council to a clearer insight into the essence of the church?

To analyze this phase of the council is extremely difficult. But the intense disappointment obvious among many Catholics is not hard to understand at all. The great question that still must be answered is: Does real harmony exist between the Pope and the council? Or are there now tensions and disagreements of such magnitude that they can be relieved only by pressure from above? In my judgment this is a decisive question for the council, so decisive that it will determine the council’s future significance for the Roman church.

Finally, it has been said frequently that Rome has become so ecumenical that the question now is how the Protestant churches are to respond. In all likelihood, in view of the recent session, this question will be muffled for the time being. Indeed, Catholic awareness of Protestant reaction is one of the reasons for the extreme disappointment that Catholics feel in the recent council session. The way things have gone has brought about a new situation in the council. Those who refused in the past to make predictions for the council are now thankful that they were hesitant. But now too, even in view of what has taken place recently, we shall do well to withhold prognosis. The council is not yet over.

For what will 1964 be most remembered? Some North American churchmen would say it is too early to assess the long-range impact of such events as Khrushchev’s ouster, the Congo massacre, the passage of the U. S. civil rights bill, and the emergence of Communist China as a nuclear power. But other church leaders in the United States and Canada declare that the historic proportions of at least some of the big developments are quite clear. They note that many of the events seem to have profound moral implications.

Dr. Lester Harnish, president of the American Baptist Convention, says that from the standpoint of the conscience of the Christian Church “the blowup in the Congo will stand out in the perspective of history.” He regards it particularly noteworthy after so many years of missionary endeavor in the Congo. Harnish notes that the “savagery differs from its counterpart in Mississippi in quantity but not in naked bestial*ty. The Bible belt of America and the heart of Africa are still basically unchanged by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which still produces a new man through the miracle of the new birth. We have a long road ahead as the Church of the living God.”

Bishop Lloyd C. Wicke, president of the Methodist Council of Bishops, asserts that the events surrounding the U. S. elections of 1964 “may warp our national and international behavior for a generation.” “Internationally,” he adds, “one may take his choice between the explosion of a nuclear device in China, the coup which remanded a Soviet prime minister to the rear ranks, and the monumental struggles in Africa for its soul. On strict humanitarian grounds, the breakthrough in the new knowledge of certain viruses may be longest remembered. Or, would we choose the passage of the civil rights bill?”

Evangelist Billy Graham asserts that “1964 will be remembered as a year of riots, revolt, and revolution throughout the world. It will also be remembered for the accelerated pace within the Church away from orthodox Christianity. I have been appalled at some of the statements from Christian leaders having to do with faith and morality. Some of them seem sub-Christian and even pagan.”

In the opinion of Presiding Bishop John E. Hines of the Episcopal Church, “the events of 1964 which will leave a determinative mark historically include the passage of civil rights legislation by the U. S. Congress and the continuing search of the Second Vatican Council for aggiornamento. Both activities or achievements bear the mark of compromise. This is the ‘pound of flesh’ extracted by practical politics in power deliberations. But it is clear that the concerned majority of citizens of this country are determined that social justice shall transcend partisan politics, and that due process for the guarantee of individual rights shall be available to ‘even the least of these—brethren.’ It is also clear that when a vast communion such as the Roman Catholic Church can—in open debate—move towards an internationalizing of outlook, plus the extending of an invitation to non-Romans to ‘talk it over’ on local levels, the ecumenical picture begins to possess substance undreamed of a decade ago.”

Dr. Ernest M. Howse, moderator of the United Church of Canada, suggests that “discoveries in the fields of automation and cybernation made in 1964 but as yet unpublicized may be as momentous for the future as printing was five centuries ago. Of recorded events, perhaps the explosion of China’s nuclear bomb may have the most vivid, immediate, and momentous consequences. Perhaps this may be the final factor in turning all the nations of the world to seek through the only world organization available the means to an enduring peace for all mankind.”

Archbishop Iakovos, primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in North and South America, states that the year “will be best memorialized for two momentous religious events: the encounter between the churches of the East and West, personified by Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul, and the meeting of the American West and the European West when our American cardinals met with the Pope to vote on the passage of the historic schema on religious liberty. From the first meeting, a meeting of two pilgrims in the Holy Land, the world felt both relief from the discord of the divided past and hope for a unified Christian future. The second meeting in which the American West may be said to have lost to the European West at least for the moment the progressivism and liberalism which our American brethren revealed, provided the world with a most encouraging excitement and gives the promise of that religious liberty which may at long last become a reality to the glory of God.”

Dr. Stephen J. England, president of the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), agrees. He says that the most significant development of 1964 lies in the “complex of events included in the openness of Roman Christianity to change and dialogue.” This complex, he adds, includes the Pope’s trip to the Holy Land and his meeting there with Patriarch Athenagoras and the invitations extended to non-Catholic observers by the Second Vatican Council. “These things will be profoundly influential in the ongoing life of the total Church.”

According to the Rev. Gordon Van Oostenburg, president of the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America, “1964 will be remembered as the year in which our government passed the civil rights legislation. This event seen in the context of the rising social strife in Africa and the worldwide prominence given to Martin Luther King in receiving the Nobel Peace Prize causes our government’s action to emerge as the most significant event of the year.”

Dr. Samuel Young, chairman of the general superintendents’ board of the Church of the Nazarene, observes that “the changes of 1964 confront the Church with the fact that political and social revolution must have an adequate religious base to avoid self-destruction.” The classic example, he declares, is Africa, “where freedom has been granted only to move toward dictatorship in cases where there has not been adequate ground in democracy and freedom.”

Says Dr. Nathan Bailey, president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, “Nationally, 1964 has seen the United States make a bold and decisive commitment to a philosophy of socialism in government which will lead ultimately to totalitarianism and the appearance of anti-Christ. Of greater eternal significance, however, is the widespread and open acceptance of the doctrine of universalism on the part of many Protestant churches. As the Church abandons the uniqueness and exclusiveness of the gospel message, it is destroying the validity of its own existence and is thereby literally committing suicide.”

Dr. Theodore Carcich, vice-president of the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference for its North American division, sounds a note of thanks: “Besides bringing us another year closer to the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ, 1964 is remembered most for the providence of God which spared our world from a nuclear holocaust, thus permitting the Church to press toward a triumphant completion of the gospel commission.”

Protestant Panorama

Southern Baptist missionaries in Indonesia voted to work toward establishment of a “Christian Evangelistic Study Center.”

Episcopal Church Executive Council restated the denomination’s opposition to legalized gambling and commissioned preparation of a new position paper to reflect its opposition “in modern day terms.”

Portuguese Presbyterians, faced with a shortage of ministers, are placing new emphasis on training laymen to serve churches and Sunday schools. A new course for lay workers in night classes is planned.

Miscellany

A rally in Monrovia, Liberia, marked the tenth anniversary of gospel broadcasting to Africa by the Rev. Howard O. Jones, associate evangelist on the Billy Graham team. Jones plans soon to expand his ministry to include a half-hour weekly gospel broadcast to Negroes in the United States.

The Free Gospel Church of Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania, is protesting proposed condemnation of its property and subsequent transfer to a Roman Catholic parish by the Allegheny County Redevelopment Authority.

Leaders of the Prague Christian Peace Conference denounced plans for the NATO multilateral nuclear force.

A New York state court ordered a temporary injunction against the showing of a comedy film, “John Goldfarb, Please Go Home.” The suit was brought by Notre Dame University, which claims that the film and the book in which it is based downgrade the school’s image. The film was to have opened in New York on Christmas day.

A manufacturer in Clifton, New Jersey, reported in December that he had sold some 7,000 banners reading “One Nation Under God.” The flying of the banners over public buildings has been spearheaded by the Knights of Columbus. One of the pennants was placed under the American flag which flies over the City Hall in Newark, New Jersey’s largest city.

A 25-year-old photographer in Gennazzano, Italy, was accused of stealing $160,000 worth of church art from a Roman Catholic monastery where he had been raised as an orphan.

The Parent Royal Commission on Quebec Education issued a report urging elimination of religious examinations from Quebec public schools. It also asked an end to the “regular and obligatory participation of students in numerous religious exercises.”

Three men were arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, following the explosion of a gas-filled balloon outside the Negro First Baptist Church. The noise caused near panic among Sunday morning worshippers.

Personalia

Dr. Herbert Gezork will retire next August 31 after serving fifteen years as president of Andover Newton Theological School.

The Rt. Rev. Roland Koh was appointed Anglican Bishop of Jesselton, Sabah (formerly North Borneo). He is Chinese and a convert from Buddhism.

Dr. Nils A. Dahl, Norwegian New Testament scholar, was appointed a professor at Yale Divinity School.

They Say

“Sooner or later, all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.”—Dr. Martin Luther King, in accepting the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

IOWA, HER AFFECTIONS,

LIKE THE RIVERS OF HER BORDERS,

FLOW TO AN INSEPARABLE UNION

This inscription is found on a Civil War monument that stands besides Iowa’s Capitol building overlooking Des Moines, site of last month’s two-day meeting of the policymaking General Board of the National Council of Churches. Footprints in the snow around the monument were few, suggesting that the twenty-degree weather had not encouraged sightseeing expeditions among board members. If any read the inscription, a wistful sigh might well have been the response. For though the NCC wholeheartedly seeks church unity, the affections of many both inside and outside the churches (low not toward the council. Indeed, one board member spoke of the “rising tide” of criticism of the NCC, and the chief concern of this board meeting was confrontation of that criticism in an effort to repair the NCC image, which has suffered badly in many quarters. In centering its attention on public relations the meeting was reminiscent of that of just five years ago in Detroit, when the council struggled in the aftermath of the Cleveland study conference which had urged U.S. recognition of Red China.

At a Des Moines Kiwanis luncheon on the eve of the board meeting, NCC President Reuben H. Mueller, senior bishop of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, denounced as “absolutely unfounded” accusations that the council has Communist leanings. Next day at the President’s Luncheon of the General Board he excoriated some of NCC’s critics as “men and organizations whose religion is pugnacious and narrow, and whose patriotism is measured by the dollars that gullible people send them to fatten their bank accounts.” “This kind,” he continued, “not only makes the National Council of Churches its favorite whipping boy, but practices Hitler’s theory of the big lie: If you tell it often enough and loud enough the common people will begin to believe it! This is how Nazi Germany was born. And this is how religious Fascism is at work in the United States today. Everywhere I go in this country I find people saying: ‘These accusations must be so, for no one representing the council gives answer to those criticisms and charges.’” Bishop Mueller added that he was “not nearly concerned so much with the professional religious baiter” as with the “good, sincere people who have been led to become critical of the social application of the Gospel through definite efforts of the churches.”

The council’s general secretary, Dr. R. H. Edwin Espy, in his report to the board also spoke at length about current attacks on the NCC, which he saw basically directed toward “the present religious establishment as represented in the mainline Protestant and Orthodox communions which comprise the council. It is the ecumenical orientation of these communions, with all that ecumenicity carries with it, that the attackers seek to destroy.” He pointed to “increasing evidence” of a profound “polarization … between clergy and laity.” He also reported that contributions to the NCC from donors (individuals, corporations, and foundations) are “falling short of a reasonable anticipation of 10 per cent of income from this source.”

Dr. Samuel D. Proctor, an American Baptist Negro minister and former associate director of the Peace Corps, was approved as the new general director of public interpretation. The General Public Interpretation Committee voiced its conviction that the “time has come for greater efforts at defending the council, as strategically as possible, against false charges.” This stimulated a lengthy floor discussion on how best to implement this. One result may be production of a compendium of past political pronouncements for the purpose of studying the theological bases given in conjunction with them, though one speaker confessed the wide theological “discrepancy” among the member denominations.

Such critics of the NCC as Billy James Hargis and Gerald L. K. Smith were mentioned, but highly respected Eugene Smith, executive secretary for the U. S. Conference of the World Council of Churches, rose to assert that there is much criticism of the NCC from “fair people,” many of whom “believe our concept of mission is imperialism.” He spoke of “church renewal” as a point of contact with such persons. Dr. Edward Grant, former moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), followed him to warn that it “is easy to overstate the case for the NCC” and be “cut down” in the process. He also spoke of “ill-advised” criticisms of the churches by members of the NCC staff. But University of Oregon President Arthur Flemming, an NCC vice-president and former Eisenhower cabinet member, countered with a defense of the right of staff members to become involved in the issues of the day.

Dr. Grant had earlier conveyed to the board the gist of a 1964 resolution of his church’s General Assembly, which criticized the NCC Commission on Religion and Race for some of its activities and asked that it “work more closely” with local churchmen and church councils.

Extensive debate accompanied approval of comprehensive guidelines for a broad anti-poverty strategy for church groups from the denominational to congregational level. The proposals laid stress upon helping those in need improve their own living standards. Church groups were called on, among other things, to: seek a more adequate federal housing bill in 1965; support preventive social, psychiatric, health, and rehabilitation services; work for increases both in state unemployment compensation and in minimum-wage-law rates; and organize more church-related credit unions.

Upon conclusion of the reading of the proposed “action objectives.” Henry M. Bulloch, editor of church school publications for the Methodist Publishing House, urged that the paper be sent back to committee for complete reworking inasmuch as it reflected a philosophy for which the NCC “is under fire,” namely, that “we think in terms of big government—the church does not do the job itself but gets someone else to do it.” A move for recommittal was later defeated, but not before the board amended its approval of the “action objectives” by asking the Division of Christian Life and Work to edit them to reflect contributions from industrial and labor leaders by means of consultations. In proposing the amendment. Dr. Dow Kirkpatrick, pastor of the First Methodist Church of Evanston, Illinois, said that referral back to committee would mean reconsideration “by folk with the same bias as reflected in the report—turn first to government.” With some three-fifths of the 250-member board present in Des Moines, the vote for amendment was about as close as it could get—53 to 52.

In other action, the board approved continuation of overseas distribution of U. S. government surplus commodities by the NCC’s central department of Church World Service. Use of government food resources by the churches, said the board, “does not jeopardize the historic position of the American churches concerning separation of Church and State, when accompanied by appropriate safeguards.” The past decade Church World Service has shipped foodstuffs weighing two and a half billion pounds valued at $250 million.

The board heard detailed plans for a previously announced long-range mission of relief and education in Mississippi—called the Delta Ministry. Also, a companion program in the north was announced for the first time and approved: “Metropolitan Chicago as a focal point of world mission.” It will seek support from churches the world over through the World Council of Churches. The basic purpose is “to assist the churches in metropolitan Chicago to contribute to the development of an open society in which civil rights and the resources to utilize them are extended to all persons in the metropolis and to further explorations in the ministry of the laity in the metropolitan setting.”

Who’S Doing What?

A series of regional meetings is the next step planned by a coterie of churchmen who are spearheading an ecumenical drive for equal-opportunity programs in the United States.

Most of the initiative for the drive comes from the National Council of Churches’ Commission on Religion and Race. Formal sponsorship is shared with representatives of the National Catholic Welfare Conference and the Synagogue Council of America.

Churchmen associated with the effort are largely those who led the religious lobby in behalf of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Their first meeting since passage of the bill took place in November at a conference center in Warrenton. Virginia.

According to the Rev. Bruce Hanson of the NCC commission, the main purpose of the four-day closed-door session was to receive a government briefing on ways to implement the civil rights law, the federal anti-poverty program, and other public-assistance measures. A secondary purpose, said Hanson, was to discuss the proposed regional meetings.

Several government officials addressed the Warrenton meeting, including Le Roy Collins, director of the Community Relations Service created by the Civil Rights Act, and Burke Marshall, assistant attorney general for civil rights.

Hanson says the federal government has a problem of coordinating its plethora of programs, particularly in letting the public know who’s doing what.

Anna Hedgeman, an official of the NCC commission, was quoted as saying that the churchmen at Warrenton were remarkably enthusiastic. “The meeting gave them a new appreciation of government people. They were very much impressed.”

Pulpit Exchange

Churches of the six communions participating in the Consultation on Church Union will take part in a pulpit exchange on Sunday, January 17, the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

Announcement of the observance, which was proposed at the consultation’s meeting last April, was made by Episcopal Bishop Robert F. Gibson, Jr., chairman of the consultation.

Local congregations of the Methodist, Protestant Episcopal. United Presbyterian, and Evangelical United Brethren churches, the United Church of Christ, and the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) will take part.

Arrangements for the exchanges will be made locally, but denominational leaders are encouraging the project as a means of stimulating discussion and helping participating communions to become better acquainted.

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, January 18–25, is promoted internationally by the World Council of Churches and sponsored in the United States by the National Council of Churches. It coincides with the Roman Catholic Chair of Unity Octave.

Gibson said the January 17 date for the pulpit exchange was chosen because “people of many communions throughout the world will be thinking earnestly about the unity of the Church this week.”

The Consultation on Church Union will hold its fourth session in Lexington, Kentucky, April 5–8.

Togetherness At The Altar

A Roman Catholic priest and a Dutch Reformed pastor officiated at a mixed marriage in the chapel of the Catholic University of Nijmegen, Holland. Protestant and Catholic guests joined in singing nuptial hymns.

The couple exchanging vows were Herman Hebinck, 21, a Roman Catholic medical student at the university, and Elleke Tenhoopen, a 20-year-old Protestant, enrolled in a social science course.

Father H. Vanwaesberghe, S. J., who is taking a graduate course at the university, conducted the wedding ritual and blessed the rings. Reformed Pastor N. Hefting delivered a sermon during the ceremony.

A New Year’s resolution to expound the eschatological teachings of the Bible more often might well be made by many ministers. Michael Green demonstrates the enduring relevance of this theme in a refreshing article beginning on the opposite page. In the doctrine of Christian hope, he says, we have an intelligible answer to the modern quest for purpose.

Leading churchmen select the most historic event of the year (page 45).

The distinguished world head of the Salvation Army, General Frederick Coutts, recalls the founding of that great Christian movement and describes its contemporary outreach (page 6).

We return to the topic of preaching in pictures. By “pictures” we do not mean illustrations. This facet of the homiletical art is not our present concern. Amazing possibilities of flashing images on the screen of the mind reside in a single word, it may be, or in a colorful phrase, or in a vivid sentence.

Henry Grady Davis, in his Design For Preaching, urges us to look well to words that are “sensuous rather than abstract, and specific rather than general.” By “sensuous,” he explains, is meant words that are “close to the five senses, suggesting pictures the mind can see, sounds it can hear, things it can touch, taste, smell.”

He singles out the late Peter Marshall as a preacher who went strongly for words and phrases that were bursting with image-creating power. Instead of saying vaguely, “We avoid thinking of death,” Marshall will say, “We disguise death with flowers.” Instead of referring abstractly to “the spot where Jesus lay,” Marshall will point to “the cold stone slab,” thereby creating at once a feeling-tone and a sharp etching in the mind. Or, once more, instead of being content with a general remark about “the odors of Jesus’ tomb,” Marshall will take pains to specify the “strange scents of linen and bandages, and spices, and close air, and blood.”

Earlier in this corner we have reminded ourselves that the Bible abounds with these lively concretions, these vivid metaphors, these sensory, image-springing sentences. Let it now be said that the growingly effective preacher will find a wealth of help in those wide tracts of reading where the literary masters have left their incalculably valuable treasures.

At this point my mind runs immediately to such a minister—indeed such an inspirer of ministers—as the late Professor Halford Lucco*ck. True, he seemed in his own preaching to be much more occupied with the fruit of the Gospel than with its root. But what is under discussion at the moment is not sermon-content. Our concern is sermon-style. (The preacher who knows grace as doctrine has no excuse for being graceless in delivery.) My point is that you simply cannot read Lucco*ck, whether his sermons or his lectures on preaching, without being struck by the pictorial quality of his diction. He flashes images all over the place. What is so obvious, and at the same time so effortless, is his ability to draw from the vast and varied fields of literature—from Robert Browning to Ogden Nash, from Plato to Punch.

Even the title of Lucco*ck’s book on preaching skirts around all stuffiness and lands right in the middle of concreteness: In the Minister’s Workshop. Forget the halo, brother! Here is the place of hard work.

Or take his chapter titles. Chapter 3 announces that “Sermons Are Tools.” He could have said “instruments.” “Tools” is terse, less abstract, rings with stronger overtones. In this chapter, by the way, he has flash-quotes from such literary lights as George Bernard Shaw, Van Wyck Brooks, Robert Browning, Carl Van Doren, George Moore, C. E. Montague, and Christopher Morley. The Motley bit is to the effect that the test of good writing is the power “to set fire to that damp sponge called the brain.”

Chapter 4 is entitled “An Art Is a Band of Music.” Preaching is more than art, but homiletics, on any definition of it, cannot be less. This conceded, Lucco*ck draws on the suggestiveness of Robert Louis Stevenson’s observation that “an art is a band of music”—something at which you work and work and work, after the manner of a famous band or orchestra under its ceaselessly toiling director. The chapter, though short, is sprinkled with polished quarry-stones from Kipling, J. B. Priestley, David Morton, and Joseph Conrad.

There there is Chapter 10, called, picturesquely, “The Harvest of the Eye.” Here the roll of authors whose names are called and whose work is sampled includes Morley, Huxley, Blake, Thompson, Shakespeare, De la Mare, Cather, and Sterne. Old, to be sure, but never drained of its dramatic charm is the Francis Thompson couplet:

… Christ walking on the water,

Not of Gennesaret, but Thames!

It is enough! It is in fact too much. Were it not done so artfully and without strain, it might easily become a boring parade of literary affectation. Lucco*ck’s published sermons, though they scintillate with these brilliantly employed gems from the classics or near-classics, would be stronger if they drew more heavily from Holy Scripture and the deep wells of theology.

For something sturdier in biblical structure, wealthier in theological content, yet similarly vivid in its literary allusions and applications, consider the accompanying sermon by the distinguished Glasgow minister of half a century ago, Dr. William Clow. Interwoven with biblical quotation and doctrinal exposition are discreet references to Wordsworth and his “primrose by a river’s brim”; to Shelley and his wildly rebellious spirit subdued to reverence by “the overarching boughs of a green glade,” which hushed him as though they were a cathedral; to Raphael and his “Madonna and Child,” marked by such incredible grace and purity that a jesting girl, seeing it, falls instantly into speechless wonder; to Shakespeare, with his immortal line, “I shall not look upon his like again”; and to Whittier and his hauntingly lovely couplet about the Great Physician,

The healing of His seamless dress

Is by our beds of pain.

Here was one man’s way of putting literature under levy for the Gospel’s sake.

Is there something here that many of us have been neglecting, something that would lend concreteness and color to our preaching?

A Time for Christian Candor, by James A. Pike (Harper & Row, 1964, 160 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by David A. Redding, minister, First United Presbyterian Church, East Cleveland, Ohio.

Roasting Pike has become a popular sport. Let this review begin in appreciation. My first reaction is one of praise to God for giving us a rigorous house-cleaner in the very communion whose attic accumulation may require it most. Dr. Pike is no “red dean” but a red-blooded bishop. He is busy reconstructing theology for the sake of churched and unchurched alike who up to now couldn’t care less. Pike is at the opposite pole of those picturesque and hopelessly futile English rectors portrayed in For Heaven’s Sake, who feel on solid ground only when assisting the Church to die in quiet and inconsequential dignity. Here’s one bishop who will risk radical surgery before seeing the Church pass on in her sleep. Moreover, however heroic his measures may appear to his critics, his aim is high—to reinstate Christian thought to a position of pertinent eminence among those who now take the religion page to be vapid obituary.

However, Dr. Pike barges into theology a little presumptuously. As a compliment and a criticism let me say that he reminds me some of a bustling aunt who comes in to help while the housewife is hospitalized. Determined to do something where it will show, she proceeds to clear out the refrigerator, consulting no one. The refrigerator obviously demands attention, but all the banging as someone else’s favorite dishes go into the garbage can bothers me a bit. Creeds and Codes may be buckets, as Fosdick found out too, but that doesn’t excuse officious bouleversem*nt. It’s true that we have this treasure in earthen vessels, but sound earthen vessels are rare. Earth itself is a vessel that I don’t want exploded (simply because it seems a bit obsolete) until I’m sure there’s plenty of room for us to establish the treasure on Mars.

And a new bucket will not necessarily be an improvement. The recent milk cartons have advantages; yet after chewing wax and having cardboard leak over my grey flannel suit, I don’t see why we have to go about breaking all the bottles in sight. Unquestionably Pike has a point, but now that he’s made it let’s not require a new model creed annually, like cars. We don’t want the Church to be a curiosity shop any more than a museum. Let’s talk more about the treasure and less about the bucket, lest we get distracted and divisive. It was good of Dr. Pike to put in that “often the idolatry of the ‘liberal’ churchman is the glorification of modern thought.”

Tossing out the Trinity, junking commandments, in effect reopening the Bible for fresh canonization, seems a little reckless and sophom*oric. For the most part Pike’s bark is worse than his bite, but occasionally he becomes a bit violent and unnecessarily controversial. If the Trinity were as superannuated as he feels, which it most certainly is not, how much wiser he would be to wait for its demise than to saw it off at such expensive shock to all of us. Part of Dr. Pike’s extremism may stem from allergy to rigid colleagues who want to keep everything looking just as Queen Elizabeth the First left it, but we must not go into convulsions. The Unitarians tried paring theology down, too, and it is my understanding that their slender demonstration is dwindling rather than reaching out ever so relevantly. It may be difficult to improve on the great commandment; and if the Resurrection occurred today, could we put it down any better than we have it? The Bible in my opinion does not need updating at the present time.

I am surprised that Dr. Pike finds it so necessary to poke at Calvin’s presentation of predestination, as if to prove his association with other distinguished liberals who take a kind of unhealthy pride in identifying themselves in this way. There ought to be a time when we pick at that, perhaps along with the Trinity, particularly at the mistaken impressions it makes. Granted the difficult questions it raises, might this not also be a suitable time to begin appreciating what a mighty attempt it was for “finite mind to comprehend infinity”? Frankly, while I’ve taken my turn banging the bucket, I know of no alternative that can touch Calvin’s masterful thesis, nor begin to do justice to the facts of faith and life. Anyone can shoot at it, but it stands and will stand long after our paper-wads have done their worst.

The same holds true for Dr. Pike’s objecting, along with the Bishop of Woolwich, to graphic language. He insists that such terms as “came down from heaven,” “descended,” and “ascended” are “incredible to us” (p. 135). Again, one wonders how well his new dictionary will do. Those words were never meant to be taken geographically. Apostles were at a loss for words. How can we speak of the infinite except to impose on the language more freight than it will bear? When Frost says, “… demands of us a certain height,” he does not mean inches, nor altitude; but we don’t make fun of the poet for taking liberties with a word that means “up.” Theologians may squelch the words of poetic wonder, the words that mean so much more than they mean when we address them to divinity; but they will not come “up” with any other words that will wear half so well. God save us from a theology that can’t have “lilies,” or “sparrows,” or “height or depth or any other creature.”

I regret also that Dr. Pike has to allude condescendingly to fundamentalists for confusing vessels with the treasure without, so far as I can see, confessing any fetish or idolatry of his own. I don’t think he means for us to assume that he’s dispensing the only enlightened position of those who have arrived, but that is his impression.

Frankly, liberal though I’ve been, I have to agree with P. T. Forsythe that the shining witnesses, when they come, come preponderantly from the more conservative backgrounds. This is why I feel Dr. Pike’s objection of bibliolotry unnecessarily severe. Christianity has more to fear from footloose interpretation. Along with John P. Roche, “There are a lot of things that scare me to death—nuclear war, automobile accidents, lung cancer, to mention but three—but I have only a limited time to devote to fright. I have, therefore, a scale of priorities on which the menace from bibliolotry … ranks twenty-third—between the fear of being eaten by piranha and the fear of college presidents.”

I attended a divinity school that reputedly never got around to the Bible till about two weeks before commencement, which perhaps disqualifies my comment on the Book; but I am beginning to believe that the Bible should mean so much to a Christian he has trouble not believing it is the very words, as it is the Word, of God—wherever you open it, it hits you in the eye. As disturbing as a literal viewpoint is, the alternatives are more hazardous and hoodwinking. Something must be one’s ultimate criterion, his infallible guide; I personally feel much safer, and on much more sacred ground, if the Bible occupies this place. Otherwise our faith is at the mercy of whatever whim or passion happens to be sweeping the campus or whoever is “in” at the time, whether it be “reason” or a bishop’s fancy.

I think Dr. Pike’s attitude toward the Trinity, predestination, or any other classic stand of the Church ought to be this stand he has taken on confirmation:

For example though confirming is a large part of my work as a bishop, it is an open secret that we do not know exactly what confirmation is. Nevertheless, I do not hesitate to perform it, since I do trust that God is in it—effective for us owing to our intentions—trust that it is a means of grace. If that is the case, I do not need to know precisely, in the light of various historical fluctuations concerning the relationship of confirmation to baptism and to the Eucharist, what the answer is about this particular period of history and in my particular communion. And so with the other rites and ceremonies of the church. God is present in it all and is ever ready to be in relationship with those who seem to be open to Him [p. 57].

I would feel even more impressed with Dr. Pike’s contribution if he were a little less confident of bringing everything up to date and being capable of reducing the “antiquated complications” of our fathers to such crystal clarity. Frankly, I find both Augustine and Calvin more readable and more relevant. I say this only because this is supposed to be A Time for Christian Candor, not turgidity, and “to show that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”

Nonetheless, I believe Bishop Pike to be a great Christian leader of our time. If we can remember that other reformers got carried away also—Luther left the Book of James in the appendix of his Bible—and not expect to be always in leaden agreement with our colleagues, we can appreciate his reveille to a dynamic and unified Church. And whatever others may say, he feels, “This book is at one with even the most conventional theologians in these essential things of the Catholic faith, ‘the faith once and for all delivered to the saints’” (p. 12).

In The Right Direction

Our Christian Hope, by Georgia Harkness (Abingdon, 1964, 176 pp., $3), is reviewed by William Childs Robinson, professor of ecclesiastical history, church polity, and apologetics, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

Some years ago this distinguished Methodist scholar gave us A Return to Ideals, in which she decoded the articles of the Christian faith into Platonic ideals. Since then she recognizes a turn toward biblical theology and to the faith of the Reformation. Accordingly, this is less Platonic and more biblical than the earlier book. She describes this as a book on Christian hope grounded in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ as recorded in the Bible. This does not mean, however, sola scriptura; rather, it means Scripture and philosophy, or perhaps a choice: either biblical resurrection or Platonic immortality—each is satisfactory. Thus Dr. Harkness writes:

Current theology leans toward resurrection rather than immortality to avoid Platonic overtones of a natural immortality of the soul and to stress that eternal life is bestowed by God rather than something for man to claim in his own right. It also seeks to avoid the dilemma of a dualism in the soul-body relation whereby the body dies and the soul lives on. However, it is a transfigured body—not the corpse that goes into the grave or the crematorium—that lives beyond death by God’s grace and power. This being the case, it has never seemed to me essential to draw the sharp line which some do between personal immortality and resurrection. Perhaps the term “eternal life” had best be used, for it covers both.

It is our hope that Dr. Harkness will be spared enough additional years to proclaim as her own and man’s only hope the living God of the Bible who made earth as well as heaven, who became incarnate for us and our salvation, who rose again from the dead with the body with which he suffered, and who will come again in glory to resurrect his people from the dead and bring them into a new heaven and a new earth.

The book is, as mentioned above, a step toward a more biblical position. Perhaps the next best thing about it is that it struggles to find meaning in place of despair, purpose in place of frustration, assurance in place of anxiety. And the answer? The reviewer does not hesitate in saying that Christian assurance comes as one anchors in the promises of God, which are all yea in Christ Jesus.

WILLIAM CHILDS ROBINSON

Jungle Tail-Twister?

Verdict on Schweitzer: The Man Behind the Legend of Lambaréné, by Gerald McKnight (John Day, 1964, 256 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This is an unsympathetic evaluation of Albert Schweitzer, and it passes an almost wholly negative verdict on the man and his mission. Schweitzer emerges as an opportunist who went to the African jungles “out of his own conceit” and “twisted the world’s tail” periodically to advance his medical mission and image.

There is much about Schweitzer that many of us are indeed prone to question, despite the adulation of humanist and liberal enthusiasts. Schweitzer’s theological misunderstanding of Jesus, his philosophical enthronement of “reverence for life,” his autocratic spirit at Lambaréné, and his perpetuation of primitive hospital conditions that foredoom his African compound to dissolution at his death, are proper subjects of criticism. Doubtless the legend of Lambaréné has been overplayed and Schweitzer hardly merits the oft-heard tribute to “the most revered figure of our age.”

But more can be said for Schweitzer than this book says. To depict him essentially as “part overlord, part deity and part parent” of a subsidized mission project whose main service is to establish Schweitzer’s image as a great humanitarian, overlooks the fact that, at whatever cost, he made Africa his home and life. And some criticisms of mission procedure might well be erased if the critic himself spent a year rather than a vacation on the field.

If Gerald McKnight’s complaint is right, however, that Schweitzer to this day feels that African mentality cannot be trusted and that Africans are too immature to be treated as human, the legend of the man and his philosophy as well need radical revision. For, in that event, Schweitzer’s “reverence for life” seems also to embrace a touch of irreverence for the Africans to whom he ministers.

CARL F. H. HENRY

No Rebottled Import

Spiritual Counsels and Letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel, edited with an introductory essay by Douglas V. Steere (Darton, Longman and Todd [London], 1964, 186 pp., 22s. 6d.; also Harper & Row, $5), is reviewed by J. D. Douglas, British editorial director, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

In a little Gloucestershire churchyard can be seen the tombstone of Friedrich von Hügel (1852–1925) with its simple words: “Whom have I in heaven but Thee?” Baron of the Holy Roman Empire (an inherited title), master of seven languages, and one of the greatest religious thinkers of modern times, von Hügel never held an office in the Roman Catholic Church, consorted indeed with its stormy petrels such as Tyrrell and Loisy, and would have rejoiced over John XXIII’s Vatican Council.

In this volume an American Quaker gives selections from the baron’s letters (most of which have not been reproduced since 1933) and published works, skillfully arranged, and preceded by a brilliant thirty-four-page essay on von Hügel as a spiritual director. Mr. Steere contends that von Hügel’s theological writings recovered for the Anglo-Saxon world the dimension of transcendence in the Christian faith, thus saving Britain from the “long and debilitating hangover that would almost certainly have followed if British religion had been compelled to receive this corrective by means of a rebottled import of continental Barthianism.”

A superb chapter entitled “Man’s Plumb-Line and God’s Reality” shows how well von Hügel apprehended the vulnerability of an anti-intellectual religion to the charge that all religion is essentially a mere projection of the mind. One of his major preoccupations was with the relation of Christianity to history. A religious woman, he writes to his niece, is often not only tiresome, unbalanced and excessive, but “she bores everyone, she has no historical sense” (p. 176).

Like Samuel Rutherford, however, von Hügel is chiefly remembered as a guide and encourager of souls. Here was a Roman Catholic who did not believe in purgatory hereafter, a religious man who expressed horror when it was reported that the Anglo-Catholic Pusey read only religious books, and a mystic who walked through this world with open eyes.

Thus as a special counselor of Evelyn Underhill, and concerned at how badly her sophisticated religion needed “de-intellectualizing,” he strongly advised her to spend two afternoons a week “visiting the poor” (praying for them was no substitute), in order “to thaw out the cerebral accent in her religion and to break open her heart to the needs of all” (p. 16, quoting the editor’s paraphrase). He does it all in language that is winsome and compassionate but never cloying. Those who tend to restrict their souls to an insubstantial diet prescribed by their own religious tradition are offered in this book a welcome tonic as von Hügel guides his niece Gwendolyn along “many a flinty furlong.” For the man who reminded her that “a great foot, a pierced foot, prevents that door closing there,” adoration was the essence of religion. Adeste Fidelis!

J. D. DOUGLAS

Primer On Marxism

Communism: Why It Is and How It Works, by Thomas P. Neill and James Collins (Sheed & Ward, 1964, 216 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Lester DeKoster, director of libraries, Calvin College and Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The St. Louis Institute on Freedom and Communism, established in 1961 so that “every citizen of the United States today should possess some sound knowledge and basic understanding of the issues which have arisen in the confrontation of freedom and totalitarianism in the modern world,” produced over station KMOX-TV a series of talks that form the substance of this book. There are twenty-six lectures, ranging from the background out of which Marxism arose to “Your Part in the Struggle.”

The early chapters are an admirably clear sketch of the course of the Industrial Revolution, especially in England, and of the economic views of Adam Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo. The authors describe the evils of unrestricted competition, the rise of the British labor movement, the schemes of the Utopian Socialists, and the progress of legislative correction of the worst abuses. That so radical a solution to the problems of exploitation and injustice as that proposed by Marx should arise out of the tragedies imposed upon workmen and their families by unrestrained greed becomes understandable. And that legislation in fact mitigated evils which Marxism only multiplied becomes the authors’ first significant criticism of the effect of Marx upon history.

As the authors move to the philosophy of Marxism, with its roots in that of Hegel, their efforts at simplification are less successful. They seem sometimes to be talking-down to their TV and reading audience; and while they pass over the familiar phenomenology of the dialectic, philosophy of history, and doctrine of man, the logical involvement of these in the Hegelian system and their influence upon Marxism is hardly adequately explained. There is, however, a useful discussion of Marxist humanism, in terms of the injustice Marx hoped to ameliorate, the share in production Marx wanted all men to have, and the central role assigned to man in Marxism’s theory of economic life.

Lenin emerges as the dynamic, dedicated, tireless revolutionary that he was, though some specific reference to his works for the ideas the authors assign to him would have been helpful.

“Your part” is, the authors say well, to study, trust your government, strengthen democracy at home and abroad, expose Communism for its falsity, emphasize the Judaeo-Christian heritage we enjoy, and support efforts to bolster democracy around the world through foreign aid.

Occasionally there is some liberty with fact, and simplification verges upon falsification; but these qualifications accepted, the reader may learn much about the worldwide struggle in which we play a part. Another edition would profit by the inclusion of a reading list and index.

LESTER DEKOSTER

With An Occasional Nod

The End Is Not Yet, by Ulrich E. Simon (James Nisbet, 1964, 221 pp., 25s.), is reviewed by Geoffrey S. R. Cox, vicar of Gorsley with Clifford’s Mesne, Gloucestershire, England.

“Who is this who darkens counsel by words …,” said the Lord to Job, “by words without knowledge?” Although Professor Simon shows great erudition, the absence of knowledge and wisdom in the scriptural sense is more than made up for by the multiplicity of words.

The “Library of Constructive Theology,” of which this is a volume, suffers from its terms of reference, namely “the desire [of the writers] to lay stress on the value and validity of religious experience, and to develop their theology on the basis of the religious consciousness.” This work is therefore largely a “natural theology,” with only an occasional nod in the direction of the Bible, and it derives its authority from no higher source than human religious consciousness and experience.

Subtitled “A Study in Christian Eschatology,” the book is divided into four parts. Part I opens with some of the pagan background in “The Quest for Life Eternal.” and continues with a summary of present-day scholars’ views on the Old and New Testament ideas concerning the End. Simon flits about rather erratically, picking and choosing as he wishes in the history of the doctrine, before concluding this part with an exposition (under the completely misleading title “The Doctrine of the Last Things”) of the relevant Quaestiones LXIX–XCIX of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.

He then tries in Part II to express the whole range of views in the form of a discussion among a Protestant sectarian (American), a Catholic dogmatist (French), a Marxist (Russian), and a psychologist (Swiss), with himself—liberal Protestant (English)—as chairman, but he failed to bring the subject to life for your reviewer. Indeed this section is the most tedious ninety pages of the whole book.

Chapter 13, “The Symbolism of the End,” makes up Part III, and is a stimulating and comprehensive survey of its subject. Indeed, this chapter deserves close study and a full review of its own—and is almost worth the price of the whole book!

In Part IV, “Formulations,” the author claims that “the traditional doctrine is taken for granted [sic] and an attempt is made to test it, interpret it, and offer it to the judgment of the contemporary reader.” These ninety-five wordy but staccato theses defy comment or quotation. The shorthand style does nothing to encourage clarity … or concentration … or comprehension.

To sum up, the book lacks focus and definition since it has no other source or authority than “religious consciousness and religious experience.” Professor Simon does not seem to have a clear aim in mind, and the effect is therefore generally unsatisfying. This volume is redeemed from verbose mediocrity only by rare flashes of (biblical) insight, especially in the chapter on symbolism. If, as has been said, the marks of good theology are clarity and simplicity, then this is very bad theology indeed.

GEOFFREY S. R. COX

Babble Your Troubles Away?

Tongue Speaking: An Experiment in Spiritual Experience, by Morton T. Kelsey (Doubleday, 1964, 252 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Spiros Zodhiates, general secretary, American Mission to Greeks, Ridgefield, New Jersey.

The author of this highly interesting book, an Episcopal clergyman with extensive training in Jungian psychology, has made a unique attempt to find in the charismatic movement some empirical substantiation for the theory of the “great archetypes” (the inherited and unconscious ideas of experiences of the human race—Carl Jung’s chief contribution to psychology). Kelsey says (p. 16), “If there is any reality to glossolalia, there can be no doubt that something beyond the man himself takes hold of him,” by which he means the Holy Spirit, whom he then refers to as “it” (p. 15) and seems to identify with either the self or the “collective unconscious” (pp. 195, 205).

The subtitle of the book is incorrect, since Mr. Kelsey did not conduct a controlled experiment in tongue-speaking but has merely written up the results of a little research and much speculation. There are a number of glaring errors. He says that the Patriarch of Constantinople discussed glossolalia “during a recent visit to this country” (p. 7), whereas Athenagoras has not been in the United States since 1948; he claims that speaking in tongues was “central to the apostolic narrative” (p. 31), whereas it is mentioned in only six chapters in the New Testament, one of which is doubtful (Mark 16:17); he implies that the saintly James H. McConkey taught “tongues theology” (p. 73); and most incredible of all, he states that “virtually all conservative Protestant theology … follows the track of the basic rationalism of Aristotle and Aquinas, and so has little place for any direct experience of the spiritual, tongues included” (p. 186, italics added).

Finding Jung in some ways superior to both Jesus and Paul, he sniffs a little disdainfully at the notion of demons and puts all cases of glossolalia, pagan and Christian, into the same metaphysical pot. Further, accepting no criteria from the New Testament by which to evaluate the experience, he accepts the only criterion remaining: the pragmatic one. It makes people feel “happy and carefree.” So do narcotics. We are cautioned against disorder and spiritual pride, of course, but there is no mention of the New Birth as a spiritual prerequisite. The book is, in short, an exhibit of a learned natural man’s half-hearted attempt at the interpretation of spiritual experience.

SPIROS ZODHIATES

Book Briefs

Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship, by Alan Watts (Pantheon, 1964, 236 pp., $4.95). A sophisticated critique of Christianity that is more fascinated by evil than by good. On the matter of sex the author asserts that the Church believes the Word became flesh but only down to the neckline.

William Carey: Missionary Pioneer and Statesman, by F. Deaville Walker (Moody, 1964, 256 pp., $3.95). One of the “Tyndale Series of Great Biographies.”

Two Biblical Faiths: Protestant and Catholic, by Franz J. Leenhardt, translated by Harold Knight (Westminster, 1964, 128 pp., $2.75). Author shows that Protestants and Roman Catholics, who hold a common Holy Scripture, always reach an impasse in theological dialogue because the two read the Scriptures in different ways. He urges that this difference must be recognized and cannot be papered over with frail reconciliations.

A Practical Church Dictionary, compiled by James M. Malloch, edited by Kay Smallzried (Morehouse-Barlow, 1964, 520 pp., $13.95). If you want a definition of yoga, zuffolo, or zucchette, this book can help—but its definitions of religious concepts are so loaded with personal judgments about history and theology as to make the dictionary a kind of liberal confession of faith.

Revell’s Guide to Christian Colleges 1965–1966, edited by Marden L. Perry (Revell, 1964, 160 pp., $4.95). For the first time, a directory of Christian (loosely used) Protestant colleges, universities (not seminaries), and Bible schools, with all the necessary detail for an overall picture of the religious and educational posture of the school.

Recent American Philosophy, by Andrew J. Reck (Pantheon, 1964, 344 pp., $5.95). A concentrated study of ten American philosophers.

The Life and Times of Martin Luther, by J. H. Merle D’Aubigne (Moody, 1964, 559 pp., $4.95). One of the “Tyndale Series of Great Biographies.”

Spilled Milk: Litanies for Living, by Kay Smallzried (Oxford, 1964, 85 pp., $2.95). Sensitive and perceptive litanies that bring everything from spilled milk under the light of the Eternal.

Kept for the Master’s Use, by Frances Ridley Havergal (Revell, 1964, 64 pp., $1). Devotional essays—warm, vibrant, and biblical.

Newman’s Apologia: A Classic Reconsidered, edited by Vincent Ferrer Blehl, S. J., and Francis X. Connolly (Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964, 182 pp., $4.50). Eight Roman Catholic scholars re-examine Newman’s famous Apologia, in which he relates why he returned to Rome.

Church and Metropolis, by Perry L. Norton (Seabury, 1964, 128 pp., $2.95). A city planner’s viewpoint of the slow-changing church in the fast-changing metropolis.

Paperbacks

Sermons on Genesis, by Harold A. Bosley (Abingdon, 1964, 224 pp., $1.75). After beginning with the judgment that Billy Graham’s campaigns are only a superficial manifestation of religious revival, Bosley declares, “I treat Genesis as a rich repository of religious experience, and the legends as parables which throw light on our life today.” He then makes the reader wonder why he bothers at all, since “any attempt to use Genesis as normative in determining the value of later insights is suspect at once.” Since all “later insights” come later than Genesis, Genesis becomes normative for nothing, and all sermons on Genesis of less than superficial relevance.

Psychiatric Aspects of the Prevention of Nuclear War (Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, 1964, 104 pp., $1.50). Formulated by the Group’s committee on social issues.

The Personal Evangelist, by Joe Ellis (Standard, 1964, 128 pp., $1.25). Extended, practical, “how to do it” advice for the personal evangelist.

The Church of the Catacombs, by Walter Oetting (Concordia, 1964, 131 pp., $1.95). An introduction to the surging life of the early church, from the apostles to A.D. 250. Based on firsthand accounts.

Vatican Diary 1962: A Protestant Observes the First Session of Vatican II and Vatican Diary 1963: A Protestant Observes the Second Session of Vatican II, by Douglas Horton (United Church Press, 1964, 206 and 203 pp., $3 each).

Understanding the Learner, by George E. Riday (Judson, 1964, 125 pp., $1.50). A book to teach the teacher about the learner so that the learner will learn more from the teacher. Fills a need.

Liturgy Coming to Life, by John A. T. Robinson (Westminster, 1964, 109 pp., $1.45). The bishop who has become famous more for what he overlooks than for what he looks over now oversees the place of liturgy in a “religionless Christianity.”

What Is Conservatism?, by Frank S. Meyer (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, 242 pp., $2.75). A timely, important, and provocative examination of American conservatism by twelve leading conservative thinkers and spokesmen.

The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, by Louis Bouyer (World, 1964, 242 pp., $1.95). The theological story of a Protestant clergyman who returned to Rome.

Missionary Health Manual, by Paul E. Adolph (Moody, 1964, 188 pp., $2.50). What missionaries, especially foreign, should know—or have at their fingertips—about diseases, precautionary measures, immunization, and first aid. Revised edition; first published in 1954.

Reprints

The Holy War, by John Bunyan (Moody, 1964, 378 pp., $4.95).

Our Lord Prays for His Own: Thoughts on John 17, by Marcus Rainsford (Moody, 1964, 476 pp., $4.95). A great classic of devotional and expository literature, grounded in the great Christian truths contained in the seventeenth chapter of John.