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Second in a Series (Part II)

Today Israel shows some return to the original sources of inspiration. Interest in the Bible is deeper than in the Talmud. Old Testament stories are taught from kindergarten on and the Israel Bible Study Association sponsors 400 study groups with almost 20,000 members. “The Book” is studied in the Hebrew University; whoever neglects this literature is considered uneducated. Ben-Gurion has said that even as The Promised Land is Israel’s physical homeland, so the Old Testament is her spiritual homeland. Further, he notes (with a measure of enthusiasm) that creation of the state “has been followed by an unprecedented wave of enthusiasm for the Bible among its people and an intense nation-wide interest in biblical studies.” There is even a nightly Old Testament reading on the radio. People are searching out the Bible, especially its historical references to the nation. These references sustain the belief that God has preserved the Jews for a particular purpose, and desires them to remain a distinct Jewish community. Even the New Testament is now widely read. This fact is quite remarkable considering that merely to possess the New Testament has long been viewed as sinful. It is found not only in the Hebrew University but also in some Kibbutzim and in many homes. Tourist guides use it to explain sacred sites. Although the New Testament is regarded mainly as religious literature and mystery, the British and Foreign Bible Society is printing a new Bible edition that combines the Hebrew Old Testament and the New Testament. Tendency to question the New Testament’s historical reliability, actually (and ironically) rests often not upon special Jewish objections but on destructive critical views of liberal Protestant scholars from Wellhausen to Bultmann.

Except for the older residents, many members of the Kibbutzim do not observe religious services and some even serve non-Kosher meat. Religious holidays are kept, but not primarily for their spiritual significance. The Bible is studied mainly as a book of history, and religious traditions seem to have few adherents. While modern Jews are not disposed actually to deny the validity of the religious dimension, they rather “take it for granted” as an aspect of historical-cultural heritage. And the young men and women who at 18 begin two years of military service often become what is described as “fanatically nationalistic.”

Contemporary Jewish thought also tends to downgrade the importance of “inner theological faith” with its demand for personal decision. Instead it emphasizes “historical faith” in divine providence and a “legal faith” in “keeping the commandments.” The resulting emphasis on self-reliance rather than on supernatural redemption may also reinforce a quite humanistic messianism. “I read the Book,” said one driver, “but everybody must save himself.” He pointed to persecutions suffered by the Jews. Hence “only in self-help does God help us” reinforces a “works-religion”; confidence in redemption by natural means is more acceptable than exposition of supernatural Messianic vision.

SPIRITUAL UPTURN IN ISRAEL?

Putting aside for the moment the question of Messiah’s identity, we ask for evidences of spiritual awakening in Israel.

There are 430 leaders in Israel whose duty it is to practice as rabbis, and thousands who do not practice are said to have sufficient knowledge of the Torah and of Judaism to do so. The director of the Rabbinical Center, seat of the chief rabbinate, contends that “a tremendous religious revival is going on in Israel, in contrast to just a socialist search for a better world (as in the Kibbutzim) that first reacted against religion generally and saw no religious commitment inherent in the Jewish state. Director Maurice A. Jaffe now finds “a growing thirst after Hebrew knowledge.” Many Israeli pioneers isolated love for their people and for their state from any love for God; some of the Kibbutzim even substituted the firing of guns for the religious confirmation ritual. But Kibbutzim socialist procedures proved disappointing and left a vacuum in the heart and life of both young and old. The result, says Director Jaffe (who keeps a copy of How to Solve Management Problems near the Torah) is a growing return to Jewish values and knowledge, and in some respects even a return to Jewish religion. “People who haven’t prayed for 30 years are coming to synagogue; some 80 per cent attended services at least on such high holidays as the Day of Atonement and the New Year; some 90 per cent of the total population eat Kosher meat.” While Reform and Liberal Judaism are not prohibited, their impact seems thwarted in many ways; they stand “virtually no chance at all.” More than 40 per cent of Israeli children receive state religious education.

Other observers, however, are not convinced of Israel’s so-called religious revival. At the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Professor of Comparative Religions R. J. Zwi Werblowsky insists no confident verdict is possible until research specialists canvass the army, Kibbutzim, and the population generally. He notes the difficulty of distinguishing spiritual from cultural manifestations in Israel, where so many aspects of religious tradition have reappeared in modern cultural patterns. Except for the last century, the Jews have never had a strictly secular culture pattern; the new Israeli society therefore quite naturally assumed religious overtones. Whether, however, “sabbath observance” has any more religious significance in Israel than do Sunday blue laws for multitudes of Americans is difficult to determine.

It must be granted, nonetheless, that many basic Jewish values do have unmistakable religious force. Determining what religious values function in society depends on how the essence of religion is defined. Professor Werblowsky thinks a “fair amount of traditionalism” is “not necessarily religious”; on the other hand he finds genuine religious commitments possible in nonstandard theological movements (including socialism). The Kibbutz notion of service, “a genuine drive for the redemption of society and self” by hard work, sharing, and justice, even its vision of “a new heaven and new earth” Werblowsky identifies more with Tolstoi than with the Old Testament. In Orthodox rabbinic Judaism as “a system of beliefs and behavior” Werblowsky sees nothing spiritually refreshing. The orthodox he considers “a small, militant minority” who interpret religious observance as an affirmation of faith. Since all Jewish families meet on Passover, however, the question of their regard for the sacramental life over and above social custom remains unanswered. Are degrees or amounts of observance a barometer of religious intensity or apathy? However unsatisfactory Professor Werblowsky’s “comparative religions” approach may be in its tendency to equate all religions, and especially to deflate the lofty distinctives of revealed religion, it raises basic and vital questions.

About 70 per cent of all Jews in Israel are “nonorthodox.” As such many would prefer a civil marriage. They must receive rabbinical marriage, however, since civil marriage is disallowed by law. When required by the law of the community, religious services at marriage and death are therefore no index of orthodoxy. Similarly, reading of the Old Tesament in basically antireligious communal settlements indicates the possible co-existence of virile anti-Judaism with virile Judaism. That one in seven marriages ends in divorce is simply accepted as a social phenomenon. All in all a great many Israelis seem vague and confused about religious ideals.

WHO IS A JEW?

The modern Jew is confused about the nature of Messiah. His answer to “who is a Jew?”—a question prompted by the 1961 Israeli census—is similarly ambiguous. Is being a Jew simply something ethnic? Is religio-moral character something quite irrelevant? Asked why the census questionnaire failed to anticipate the possibility of identifying a “Jew” by religion as well as by nationality, a representative of the Foreign Office replied, “We couldn’t care less (about his religion).” Premier Ben-Gurion, however, declared that a Jew is “one who believes the fifteenth Psalm.” Orthodox Jews insist that to modify the term “Jew” in any way whatever really evades complete and comprehensive identification. Orthodox Jewish rabbis are disposed to depict Israel as “wholly Orthodox, but with varying degrees of observance” (from total commitment to nonattendance at synagogue, and to nonobservance of traditions). To have a Jewish mother is Judaism’s established criterion of Jewry. On the other hand, Jewish free thinkers and nonreligionists wish to claim Jewish status by other considerations than acceptance of Judaism. Actually 70 percent of the population is non-Orthodox, a fact that complicates any religious definition of Jewry. If a nationalistic test alone is applied, are only Israeli Hebrews to be regarded as Jews?

The question “who is a Jew” with its physical-national and spiritual-moral implications occurred also in Jesus’ brush with the religious leaders in the first century. If descent from Abraham were merely a matter of physical being, Jesus asserted, “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham” (Matt. 3:9). Because the Jewish leaders rejected Abraham’s spiritual vision of justification by faith, and instead trusted in their own works, Jesus declared them more the children of the devil than the children of God and of Abraham (John 8:33–47). His essential point was that descent with its privileges is conditioned upon spiritual and moral conformity.

However tenuous it has been at times, the Jewish link to Judaism through 2000 years sometimes occasions the dismissal of all other religions as non-Jewish. Even the historic fact is obscured that Christianity and Judaism are related as fulfillment and promise. In the comprehensive modern definition of “Jew” the Christian Hebrew, curiously, is no longer considered a Jew at heart. This exclusion implies a peculiar judgment on Jesus of Nazareth, on Paul of Tarsus, and also on thousands of first century Christians. While formally in line with that of the Gospels, the modern comprehensive definition of “Jew” really represents a hardening toward Christianity. In modern Israeli terms neither the free-thinker, or Reform Jew, nor the Christian Hebrew is a first-rate Jew. And in a predominantly Jewish nation, the Arab Christian (who represents a substantial minority of the population) fares even worse ideologically despite the fact that the Proclamation of Independence disallows Jewish privilege over non-Jews, and pledges the state to uphold “the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, race, or sex.”

THE JUDGMENT OF EICHMANN

Any comment on the Eichmann trial must be prefaced by open confession that this mass murder of six million Jews remains a dark blot on Gentile conscience, and that Christendom (through indifference rather than intention) shares in the guilt. To score the Jew for not seeing in Eichmann everyman’s potentiality for declension is cheap criticism unless one first registers with sad heart the fact of this unspeakable injustice of the Gentile against the Jew. What may be asked is this: Granted that a comprehensive overview of Nazi atrocities needed rehearsal to prick world conscience, and that Eichmann’s trial was conducted with judicial dignity, to what extent are judicial procedures—established to ascertain and punish guilt—properly used additionally as an educational, publicity and propaganda technic? And what is the real lesson of the trial? Has it clarified the line between personal delinquency and official duty? More pointedly, has it brought Jew and Gentile in the shadow of the horrors of modern history to face afresh the biblical verdict on human nature? Or has it subtly promoted our self-righteousness by assuring us all that the human race is somehow less wicked if only we can rid ourselves of Eichmann?

SCIENCE AND PROVIDENCE

Israel’s spiritual problem may be studied in several ways. Widespread revolt against her own orthodox traditions, and the consequent tendency to apply the messianic concept in novel and even secular directions is a theme reserved for a separate essay. Another facet of Israel’s spiritual predicament may be found in the unresolved—and unfaced—tension between the scientific and religious approaches to the nation’s history and destiny.

The tremendous emphasis on scientific method and techniques is one of the compelling features of this tiny land of Israel. Some philanthropic American Jews, especially those of more liberal religious persuasion, view the Technion and the Hebrew University as a twentieth century compensation for (and even as recreation of) the lost glory of the Hebrew Temple. (Israel came to statehood in 1948 and now has two nuclear reactors in construction.) When one puts alongside the 7500 students in the Hebrew University and its branches—of which more than 1000 students are pursuing careers in science—the 3500 students in various branches of the Technion, and the 600 scientists, researchers and technicians at the Weizmann Institute of Science, he senses the intensity of this emphasis. The overproduction of engineers is not the worst side of this problem, although Israel has already begun to export her engineering graduates to other lands, and the concentration on university vocational rather than liberal arts education raises the question how such skilled and professional workers will eventually be absorbed in a tiny land.

But the larger problem is one of mood and spirit, of science’s implications for the national outlook. It is one thing to justify scientific concentration because Israel is a modern country. But what of Israel’s claim to a providential and spiritual mission? Students in the Technion get little exposure to the humanities; moreover, while some study is offered in the history of science, there is scant emphasis on the philosophy of science. The scientific mind is indoctrinated to seek a wholly mechanical explanation of reality in terms of natural causality.

Ben-Gurion and other leaders have indeed sought to inscribe the sense of divine providence deeply upon the mind of the people, but this conviction is hardly self-sustaining, and it is quickly dissolved in a predominantly sensate and empirical environment. Even Ben-Gurion considers the pantheistic determinist Spinoza one of the great heroes. May it not be that for a generation deeply dedicated to science Spinoza more than Maimonides will determine the spirit of Israel’s leadership?

Does failure to bridge the gulf between science and religion, and between religion and science represent a potential trouble-spot in Israeli ideology? Many leaders admit privately that it does, even while they concede that little is being done about the problem. Scientists at the Technion readily confess that mechanical techniques are inadequate to explain human personality even though this conviction may ride on the edge of humor. “The scientific model of a mechanical brain is usually masculine,” quipped one staff member, “because you can’t chart women on a slide rule.” But an even larger problem remains which the scientific enterprise in Israel quite ignores: The laboratory may produce a mechanical brain; almighty God alone can create a new heart.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

- More fromThe Editor

David E. Kucharsky

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At an assembly of Protestant editors earlier this year, the chairman asked for a show of hands to determine how many had college journalism training. About 10 per cent responded. “All young fellows,” the chairman observed.

Neglect of education in Christian journalism is probably one of the key factors behind the somewhat inferior character of the contemporary Protestant press. No evangelical college in the United States has as much as a department of journalism. Only a handful of texts deal with religious journalism, and gaps abound.

It is only to be expected, therefore, that not a single religious periodical has enough popular appeal to be available on the average U. S. newsstand. Even the current religious boom has failed to achieve such a breakthrough. No one seems to be able (or willing) to put the Christian message into a context that would sustain the interest of a mass reading audience.

Evangelical publications in North America circulate almost exclusively within the evangelical constituency. They assume no appreciable evangelistic role in secular society. Their language and format confine their success for the most part to the evangelical sphere. Creativity is scarce.

By design or otherwise, a great number of religious periodicals operate virtually at the mercy of special interests represented by advertisers or publishers. Super-commercial orientation and provincial editorial policies make for a vapid publication. “Puffs” for advertisers ultimately backfire because the reader-consumer eventually recognizes them as editorial payola.

Some denominational papers tend to deteriorate to the house organ status. Even large circulations may be attributed less to quality content than to high-pressure promotional campaigns which prey on church-versus-church competition, denominational loyalties, and the local minister’s reputation in the eyes of ecclesiastical superiors. Church publication editors are constantly faced with the dilemma of settling for uninteresting editorial content to avoid the risk of more important controversial matter. The easy way is to echo attitudes which are in vogue with the denominational leadership.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY has helped to usher in a new era of religious journalism which holds denominational allegiances in high esteem while transcending these in devout loyalty to the biblical witness in a readable, scholarly magazine attractive to ministers and lay leaders of varying persuasions. This new era might yet see the establishment of a religious news-feature weekly with grass-roots, newsstand appeal. Be that as it may, this much is certain: Literary and technical talent must be developed, and wider recognition achieved of the evangelistic potential of religious journalism.

For readers interested in this field, a bibliography in religious journalism follows. The list was compiled by Miss Marjorie Shelley, a missionary who recently earned a master’s degree in the religious journalism sequence of Syracuse University School of Journalism. Miss Shelley is now training Christian journalists and assisting in literature production in the Ivory Coast.

RELIGIOUS JOURNALISM BIBLIOGRAPHY

BACKGROUNDS IN COMMUNICATIONS

BOYD, MALCOLM, Crisis in Communication: A Christian Examination of the Mass Media. Doubleday, 1957, 128 pages, $2.95. A clergyman in the Episcopal Church, Boyd studies mass media as channels of Christian communication. He was formerly in advertising, television, and radio and is qualified to show how the media can be used for the highest ends.

DEWIRE, HARRY A., The Christian as Communicator. Westminster, 1961, 198 pages, $4.50. With Moreau’s Language and Religious Language, this book emerges to initiate the Westminster Studies in Christian communication. Westminster undertook the series because it felt that the “Christian faith needs to be made relevant to persons in the modern world in terms of the dynamic nature of the faith itself and the channels that are capable of conveying such a faith.”

DILLISTONE, F. W., Christianity and Communication. Scribner’s, 1957; London: Collins, 1956, 156 pages, 12s. 6d. The author discusses the principle of effective communication of the Christian message into the new technological age. The volume will prove valuable to missionaries concerned with communicating across culture barriers.

MOREAU, JULES LAURENCE, Language and Religious Language. Westminster, 1961, 207 pages, $4.50. See DeWire’s The Christian as Communicator above.

NIDA, EUGENE, Message and Mission: The Communication of the Christian Faith. Harper, 1960, 253 pages, $5. Covering some fundamentals of communication theory and linguistic science, Nida uses the methodological approach to relate theology and culture.

SCHRAMM, WILBUR, Responsibility in Mass Communication. Harper, 1957, 391 pages, $4.50. (Series 9 on Ethics and Economics of Society originated by a study committee of the National Council of Churches; foreword by Charles P. Taft; introduction by Reinhold Niebuhr.) In a thorough study of the ethics of the press, Schramm reanalyzes standards of press performance and considers the philosophy of public communication. The book is well documented and offers valuable references for further study.

EDITING

FERGUSON, ROWENA, Editing the Small Magazine. Columbia University Press, 1958, 271 pages, $4.50. Oxford, 36s.; Toronto, $5.25. This book offers practical guidance in each step of the editorial process for those editing small religious magazines.

PUBLICITY

BRODIE, WILLIAM A., Keeping Your Church in the News. Revell, 1942, 125 pages, $1. A practical guidebook, this work tells pastors how the press functions and how they should prepare copy and pictures as they submit church news.

BRODIE, WILLIAM A., Keeping Your Church Informed. Revell, 1944, 125 pages, $1.50. As a companion volume, this book deals with religious journalism in the church. It discusses direct mail, church papers, kinds of church literature and production of small mailing pieces. It is still valuable though outdated.

BROWN, RICHMOND O., Practical Church Publicity. Broadman, 1953, 174 pages, $2.25. Geared to help those who know nothing about church publicity to do a good job, this book catalogues publicity methods.

HENRY, CARL F. H., Successful Church Publicity. Zondervan, 1943 (2nd ed.), 332 pages, $2. Some religious journalism is included although the main body of the book is concerned with church publicity.

LEIDT, WILLIAM E., Publicity Goes to Church. Seabury, 1959, 122 pages, $2.75. Oxford (Toronto) $2.25. An executive in the Episcopal Church describes methods of printing, gives means of evaluating printing jobs, and generally justifies the use of publicity by the church.

STOODY, RALPH, A Handbook of Church Public Relations. Abingdon, 1959, 255 pages, $4. After discussing the church’s functions, the author surveys means by which television and radio serve the church.

STUBER, STANLEY I., Public Relations Manual for Churches. Doubleday, 1951, 284 pages, $3. Stuber covers a broad outline as he writes about the church’s defense before the world and then discusses techniques available to make it known.

WOLSELEY, ROLAND E., Interpreting the Church Through Press and Radio. Muhlenberg, 1951, 352 pages, $3.75. Problems facing local, area, denominational and international church leaders responsible for publicizing their groups are listed in part of the book. Techniques for using the press and radio are offered as well.

GENERAL SUMMARIES OF TECHNIQUES

BROWNE, BENJAMIN P., Christian Journalism for Today. Judson, 1952, 252 pages, $3.50. The book includes addresses delivered at The Christian Writers and Editors’ Conferences at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Green Lake, Wisconsin, 1948–1951.

BROWNE, BENJAMIN P., The Writers’ Conference Comes to You. Judson, 1956, 424 pages, $5. These are lectures given at various writers’ conferences. Topics include possibilities in the field of Christian journalism, how to write for religious markets, specialized writing fields, and related topics.

BROWNE, BENJAMIN P., Techniques of Christian Writing. Judson, 1960, 382 pages, $5. Lectures from writers’ conferences of the past three years, this volume challenges the writer, outlines some how-to-do-its for fiction, article writing, writing for juveniles, and other areas in religious journalism.

OSTEYEE, EDITH T., Writing for Christian Publications. Judson, 1953, 206 pages, $3. Mrs. Osteyee gives advice on preparation of material for religious publishers. She bases her comments on her experiences and lessons she taught in the correspondence course of the Christian Authors’ Guild.

WOLSELEY, ROLAND, ed., Writing for the Religious Market. Association, 1956, 304 pages, $4. This is a practical guidebook developed from contributions of 18 prominent practitioners in specialized fields of writing. Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic authors offer their advice on “how-to-do-it.”

SPECIALIZED FIELDS

BACHMAN, JOHN W., The Church in the World of Radio-Television. Association, 1960, 191 pages, $3.50. This is an outgrowth of work by the National Council of Churches’ study commission on radio, television, and films.

GREENE, ROBERT S., Television Writing. Harper, 1952, 276 pages, $3.75. Although not geared particularly to the religious market this book offers a practical discussion of writing related to the television field.

GRISWOLD, C. T. and SCHMITZ, C. H., Broadcasting Religion. National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., 1954, 103 pages, paper, $1.50. This volume deals with the possibilities in religious broadcasting. Both authors are experienced in the field.

LAUBACH, FRANK C. and LAUBACH, ROBERT S., Toward World Literacy. Syracuse University Press, 1960, 335 pages, $4.75. For missionaries, workers with American illiterates, and writers who want to clarify their writing, this book offers a description of the famous Laubach literacy techniques but the last half is devoted to writing for new-literates. Readability scales and techniques add to its usefulness.

PARKER, EVERETT C., ELINOR INAMAN, and ROSS SNYDER, Religious Radio. Harper, 1948, 271 pages, $3. After covering the place of radio in the communication of ideas, the authors discuss writing and producing radio programs.

PARKER, EVERETT C., Religious Television. Harper, 1961, 244 pages, $4. This is a similar work for television.

WRITERS’ HELPS

GOSNELL, JANICE and ALLEN, MARY, editors, Christian Writers Market Handbook. Christian Writers’ Institute, 1956, 79 pages, $2, (being revised). A practical guide containing tips on how to write articles and other religious materials. It gives a listing of markets for each of the specialized fields.

WOLSELEY, ROLAND E., Careers in Religious Journalism. Association, 1955, 116 pages, $2.50. This survey of religious journalism as a vocation answers many questions about requirements and opportunities in careers with religious publications, TV, and radio stations and allied groups.

SECULAR BOOKS FOR WRITERS

ARTICLE WRITING

BIRD, GEORGE L., Article Writing and Marketing. Rinehart, 1955, 506 pages, $5 (revised ed.). A thorough work dealing with procedures in getting ideas for articles, outlining the article, markets, procedures to follow in sending material to editors, and techniques and tools essential to the craft.

STEIGLEMAN, WALTER A., Writing the Feature Article. Macmillan, 1950, 435 pages, $3.75. A volume offering techniques and principles of article writing.

EDITORIAL WRITING

WALDROP, A. GAYLE, Editor and Editorial Writer. Rinehart, 1955, 511 pages, $5, (revised edition). Editor-writer relationships are discussed to a degree, but the value of the book is its help to those who want to write editorially.

JUVENILE MATERIALS

LEDERER, WILLIAM J., Spare-Time Article Writing for Money. Norton, 1954, 268 pages, $3.75. The section on juvenile writing deserves special mention.

LEWIS, CLAUDIA, Writing for Young Children. Simon and Schuster, 1954, 115 pages, $3. Special problems and techniques of writing for children and an underlying comprehension of their needs and peculiar interests are all noted.

SHORT STORY WRITING

MOWERY, WILLIAM BYRON, Professional Short-Story Writing. Crowell, 1953, 273 pages, $3.50. Discussing plot, theme, scenes, and other short story techniques, the author offers a thorough guide to the craft of fiction writing. A writer could follow through step by step and having completed the procedure check his writing by the standards analyzed here.

- More fromDavid E. Kucharsky

Steve J. Van Der Weele

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It is always tantalizing for a Christian interested in literature to speculate about the question of whether Shakespeare was a Christian. The materials for such speculation are, obviously, 1. what little we know about his life (and among that, several incidents—perhaps apocryphal—which give little evidence of piety), and 2. the corpus of his writings. Even though it is commonly assumed that he was at least a nominal member of the Church of England, an adherent of the Via Media of the Elizabethan Settlement, neither of the above sources answers the question with any finality. As for the first, it needs only to be pointed out that there was no Boswell for Shakespeare, and that the gall required for interviewing and the patience to pursue the minutiae of people’s lives are of fairly recent origin. And as for attempting to deduce Shakespeare’s personal response towards the Christian faith from his writings, we are confronted with an almost impossible task. It is commonly observed that Shakespeare is no systematic philosopher or theologian, that his plays are woven from many strands—the Christian among them—and that it is dangerous at any point to equate the speech of this or that character with Shakespeare’s own position. Thus, Hiram Haydn, in his book titled The Counter-Renaissance, after examining thoroughly the various winds of docrine which constituted Shakespeare’s intellectual climate, concludes:

Finally, then, I am admitting the traditional defeat. I can establish Shakespeare’s awareness of the intellectual conflicts of his time, his use of Counter-Renaissance ideas and themes. And I can indicate the consistent elements in his point of view as he expressed it in the major tragedies. Yet, when that is done, it is little enough. The man escapes me, as he escapes every one else. There are all the other plays to contradict me; other scholars’ material findings to suggest other influences than those I have cited, and other directions. Most of all, there is the man’s insistent interest in life as spectacle, rather than argument, and the incredible range of his creative sympathies (Scribner’s, 1950, p. 667).

I should like to discuss one of Shakespeare’s sonnets against the background of the above preface outlining the difficulty of any attempt to ascertain Shakespeare’s religion. This sonnet, number 129, seems to me to reflect in a rather pointed way Shakespeare’s acquaintance with the Christian tradition of life and thought.

REFLECTIONS ON SONNET 129

First, let me give a few introductory comments about the sonnet sequence in which this sonnet appears. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets in all. Of these, 152 are usually regarded as a sequential unit; the other two fall outside the sequence. The group of 152 sonnets tells of Shakespeare’s relations with especially two persons: a male friend, whose excellence and virtue he never tires of recounting, and Shakespeare’s mistress, a married woman, “the Dark Lady,” who alternately attracts and repels the poet. Sonnet 129 falls within the group which deals with Shakespeare’s illicit liaison, and indicates the tension he experiences when confronted with the moral law on the one hand, and the beauty, grace, and charm of the woman on the other. In the well-known 129 he comments on the nausea, the bitter delusion which inevitably sets in upon moral dereliction. It will be helpful to have the sonnet before us:

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjur’d, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust:

Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight,

Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,

Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait

On purpose laid to make the taker mad;

Mad in pursuit and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof, and prov’d, a very woe;

Before, a joy propos’d; behind a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

I should like to comment first of all on the interesting use of the words heaven and hell in the last line of the sonnet. Shakespeare has obviously derived these words from historic, medieval Christianity. Nevertheless, he has poured a new meaning into them, and has thus participated in a practice common to Renaissance writers, namely, the secularization of Christian terms. When he uses the word heaven he means, clearly, the anticipated realization of one’s sinful desires; by the word hell he means the remorse he subsequently suffers. Similarly, he employs in other sonnets such words as eternity, love, transgression, angel, bliss, damnation, judgment, hope, faith, grace, penance and hymn in ways foreign to their origin. He even adapts a line from the Lord’s prayer and applies it to his friend: “Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name …” (Sonnet 108). Thus, Shakespeare has contributed to that history of word changes which enables us now to speak blithely about angel food cake, devil’s food squares, and divinity strips.

But despite Shakespeare’s practice of transvaluating terms, the sonnet is permeated with a Christian sensibility. Let us examine it closer, and although we may not solve the problem with which this essay began, we can at least note an important tenet of Christian morality which Shakespeare exhibits for us.

In the first 12 lines Shakespeare makes three assertions about a sinful act—primarily adultery, we must suppose, although other sins are not precluded: 1. The act is essentially one, although it exists in three stages in time: anticipation, realization, and retrospect; 2. Each stage is characterized by irrationality, madness, perversity; 3. Sin is shameful, enervating, and deceptive. Then comes the couplet: “All this the world well knows; yet none knows well / To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.”

SPIRIT OF WESTERN HUMANISM

My contention is that Shakespeare, in the words “All this the world well knows,” is refuting a major premise of humanism—the principle that the good man will not knowingly do wrong, that enlightenment and understanding are so powerful that they must perforce flow into virtuous action, that right conduct and knowledge are two sides of the same coin. This premise was advanced first by Socrates, and continues to the very present. It is an intuition, which, despite numerous qualifications and occasional denials from past and present sources, has persisted as an article of faith with which man seemingly cannot do without, whatever be the metaphysics adduced in its support. One may at least say that no generation has been without those who could subscribe to Pope’s couplet:

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As to be hated needs but to be seen.…

This equation of the identity of knowledge and virtue represents a resilient and, in many ways, noble tradition. Its advocates include the intellectual giants of the West. To be sure, not all thought about ethics has adhered to Plato’s insistence that virtue stems from a knowledge of an ideal world which exerts a divine attraction upon the good man, nor have all idealistic philosophers put matters in the same way that Plato did. Nevertheless, the spirit of this premise has been woven into the very fabric of Western humanism. It underlies the traditional importance placed on education in Western thought (cf. the designation reform school). It was reflected by former Vice-President Nixon in the question he asked when he was being pelted and insulted during his South American tour: “Don’t you people want to hear any facts?” It underlies an observation made by a prisoner in a letter which appeared in a recent issue of the Atlantic (Sept., 1960): “Education and crime are incompatible.” And this assumption has been a key principle in the democratic venture.

THE CHRISTIAN ALTERNATIVE

Christianity has frequently found the equation of knowledge and virtue attractive, for it has experienced much misery from ignorance and from zeal unballasted by learning. It has been compelled to agree with humanism that neither hedonism nor experience are adequate substitutes for knowledge in the attainment of moral wisdom. However, it has taken issue with humanism on a crucial point, namely that enlightenment and knowledge are sufficient to deter one from evil. For one thing, Christian thought, generically speaking, has said that the inner law, man’s conscience, is sufficient to deprive man of the excuse of ignorance. Moreover, Christianity has had to recognize the existence of “presumptuous” sin (Ps. 19:13), sin which is committed in the face of better knowledge. And it has been able to present a staggering amount of evidence from history, past and present, to show that mere knowledge is insufficient to contain the perversity and irrationality of man.

John Calvin’s pronouncements on this subject can be regarded as typical of Christian thought. He discusses the matter at some length in his Institutes, Book II, ii, passim. In these pages he ascribes to man the faculty—imperfect though it is—of discriminating in a general way between good and evil, and he rejects as an extreme position the insistence of those who maintain that all sins arise from deliberate perversity and malice. Nevertheless, he takes issue with Plato for “imputing all sins to ignorance,” and observes further: “… sometimes the turpitude of the crime so oppresses the conscience of the sinner, that, no longer imposing on himself under the false image of virtue, he rushes into evil with the knowledge of his mind and the consent of his will.”

How much of the Christian idea is Shakespeare expressing in his merely negative “none knows well?” It is hard to say. He does not go as far as Roger Ascham, an early contemporary, who in his The Scholemaster first juxtaposes and interrelates the classical and the Christian views on this subject, but then concludes: “Let God’s grace be the bit … Let God’s grace be the bridle.…” But if Shakespeare is less than explicitly Christian, he is at least taking issue with the ethical tenet just discussed, namely, that virtue, though it requires moral heroism and strenuous effort, can be realized through one’s own resources. Shakespeare seems to anticipate Cardinal Newman who points out the limitations of knowledge and even of a liberal education in these words:

Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man (Discourse V, “Knowledge Its Own End,” from The Idea of a University, 1852).

Was Shakespeare a Christian? The answer, again, is that it is difficult to say with final certainty. But the sonnet just considered is one of any number of instances where it is obvious that Shakespeare had encountered the full impact of historic Christianity. Sonnet 146, for example, where the soul chides the body for neglecting the interior life, is reminiscent of many medieval poems on this subject.

There are still other data which indicate clearly that Shakespeare was aware of the Christian option of life and thought. For one thing, there is the strong moral concern, the ethical stimulation universally acknowledged in his plays. Moreover, such a speech as Portia’s mercy speech has no antecedent in Shakespeare’s sources and comes gratuitously—strong evidence that Shakespeare’s consciousness was suffused with the Christian habit of thought. Again, references to the Bible and biblical overtones are frequent. And consider, finally, such lines as these, written without obvious dramatic necessity, written also without inhibition or self-consciousness:

… All the souls that were were forfeit once;

And He that might the vantage best have took

Found out the remedy.

(Measure for Measure, II, ii, 73 ff.)

… King Pharamond … Who died within the year of our redemption Four hundred twenty-six; (Henry the Fifth, I, ii, 58 ff.)

Forthwith a power of English shall we levy;

… To chase these pagans in those holy fields

Over whose acres walk’d those blessed feet

Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d

For our advantage on the bitter cross.

(Henry IV, Part I, I, i, 22 ff.)

There is a true beauty about these lines. It is difficult, or at least distressing, to suppose that the author of such lines as these should have spurned the resources of God’s better beauty, grace.

- More fromSteve J. Van Der Weele

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The following list provides pastor and layman with a bibliography of the best available books additional to the Bible for deepening the spiritual life. Not all these works are in the strict genre of devotional literature, and some were certainly not written with a devotional intent. But it is safe to say that all are capable of performing radical spiritual surgery on sensitive Christian hearts.

Several criteria have been employed in the selection of titles:

1. Excluded on principle are works of general religiosity (for example, books by K. Gibran), works of general mysticism (Jakob Boehme, Madame Guyon), works doctrinally objectionable (Fulton Sheen’s Life of Christ), works of a social-gospel cast (Sheldon’s In His Steps), works reflecting simply the peace-of-mind or positive-thinking mood (Peale, Blanton), and works of sweetness-and-light (Grace Livingston Hill).

2. Only in-print titles are included. Thus the reader should not expect such classics as Adolph Saphir’s The Lord’s Prayer, David McIntyre’s Prayer Life of Our Lord, or Isaac Watts’ The World to Come; it is hoped that publishing houses engaged in reprinting services will bring back these and other great devotional writings of the past.

3. Only works written in English or available in English translation are included. Many writings of Continental divines of the late sixteenth to early eighteenth century are therefore outside the scope of this list (English translations are badly needed of such works as Johann Gerhard’s Homiliae XXXVI seu meditationes breves diebus dominicis atque festis accomodatae).

THE WINDS OF MODERNITY

It is natural to ask why such passages as these breathe an atmosphere almost totally different from that in church life today. Several contributing factors can be cited, all of which must be taken into account for a full explanation. First of all, one must note what Andrew Dickson White termed “the warfare of science with theology” which, since the middle of the nineteenth century, has resulted in the growth of a mechanistic, reductionist attitude on the part of both scientist and nonscientist. Scientific method presupposes a closed universe governed by invariable law; in such a universe, religious devotion and prayer for specifics seem archaic and meaningless. “Among the professional and scientific classes it has been the inability of traditional religion to justify itself in the light of modern science … that has led to the rapid growth of a tolerant indifference, a skeptical agnosticism, or a dogmatic atheism” (John Herman Randall, Jr., The Making of the Modern Mind, p. 535). Secondly, and more important, we have the secular “success philosophy” which has turned generations of Americans (church members included) from seeking God to seeking personal achievement and recognition by society. “The major influence affecting religious beliefs and attitudes has been the growth of our manifold secular faiths and interests.… Though men repeat the old phrases their real concern has turned elsewhere” (Ibid., p. 538). In the secularistic activism of modern life, few find time or motivation for devotional exercises. Thirdly, observation of the churches themselves reveals that organized religion has shifted its goals to accord more fully with the modern temper. “The main stress of religious energy [has been turned] away from the supernatural to the social, from transcending the human to the serving of human needs.… It is not that the churches practice a conscious hypocrisy about Christian teachings but rather that religious doctrines have been turned into counters in a game men play to bring their consciences to terms with their universe. It is less a question of what the pastors say than the fact that they are no longer listened to. Having lost the capacity for belief, they have lost also the power to instill belief.” (Max Lerner, America As a Civilization, pp. 708, 711. The Rev. Mackerel is a fictional example of the suburban modernist clergyman; he receives a salary raise when he makes the stirring sermonic point that “It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us”). But this is not the only way that the church has widened the gap between the ideal and the real in Christian devotional life.

In their writings, not a few twentieth-century theologians have (in many cases unwittingly) encouraged the trend away from Christian devotional exercises. I refer not merely to publications by religious liberals who would justify an anthropocentric religion (e.g., Curtis W. Reese, The Meaning of Humanism) nor solely to works by those who would interpret prayer largely in terms of introspection or meditation (e.g., William Adams Brown, The Life of Prayer in a World of Science, especially pp. 13–15) influential as such writings have been. What concerns me more is the doctrinal emphasis characteristic of some of the foremost theologians within the Reformation framework of belief.

MODERN THEOLOGY WIDENS THE GULF

For several decades, Karl Barth and the so-called “neo-orthodox” school of Christian thought have excessively stressed the sovereignty and transcendence of God. The work of Rudolph Otto (cf. Walter Leibrecht, ed., Religion and Culture; Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich, pp. 6, 10; also Barth’s recent work, The Humanity of God; and note especially Otto’s Idea of the Holy), and the Kierkegaard revival (cf. Jaroslav Pelikan, Pools for Christ, 1955, pp. 1–27), have likewise moved the gravitational center of theology. Nygren’s Agape and Eros (Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. by Philip S. Watson, see especially part I) has sharply distinguished God’s unmotivated, selfless, unconditioned love from all varieties of human desire. Now obviously no Christian who subjects his theology to the testimony of Revelation would deny the great contribution which this transcendence movement has made. In an era of watered-down, man-centered, social-gospel liberalism, Barth’s Commentary on Romans came as a clarion-call to a Reformation re-emphasis on justification by grace alone. However, the neo-orthodox and Lundensian movements do not seem productive of a positive attitude in the devotional realm. In his Basic Christian Ethics Ramsey writes:

One has to go in heavily for analogy, or even commute back and forth from one meaning to another, ever to suppose that “love,” or any other single term, can adequately convey the meaning of a Christian’s response to God and also his love for neighbor. The words “faith,” “obedience,” “humility,” and—to indicate greater intimacy and warmth—the words “gratitude” and “thankfulness,” and—to keep the distance between God and man—the expression “to glorify” are preferable, singly or as a cluster, for describing how Christians think of themselves standing in relation to God.… Strictly speaking, the Christian church is not a community of prayer, but a community of memory.… Strictly speaking, Christians are not lovers of God; they are theodidacti, “taught of God” (Paul Ramsey, Basic Christian Ethics, pp. 129, 132; cf. Nygren, op cit., pp. 212–14, 219).

When such radical stress is placed upon the “otherness of God,” and when one observes the frightening extent to which Christian devotional writers have sometimes slipped into eros-synergism (examples of synergistic error in Christian devotional classics may be found in such works as Francis de Sales’ Introduction to a Devout Life, ed. by Thomas S. Kepler, and John Wesley’s Christian Perfection, ed. by Thomas S. Kepler. A precedent for all such eros-related devotional literature was Augustine’s De quantitate animae, where Augustine “distinguishes seven aspects of the Soul, or rather seven steps, gradus, by which it climbs to its perfection” (Edward Kennard Rand, Founders of the Middle Ages, p. 260), and thus downgraded if not degraded the ideal of the saint’s true devotion, it does not seem strange that the present-day Christian pastor-finds it easy, amid his hectic and activistic responsibilities, to rationalize a very loose attitude toward the “quest for holiness.” And the clergyman’s personal reticence in this regard has as a logical consequent a laissez-faire approach to the devotional lives of his parishioners—out of whose homes come a good number of the church members of the next generation. If one assumes that this situation is not the ideal one, can a Revelation-based theology present a more balanced approach?

THE BIBLE AND THE LIFE OF FAITH

Not all great exhibitions of Christian devotion are to be found in the distant past. The following is a 1951 diary entry by James Elliot who, in January, 1956, was killed while attempting to bring the Christian message to the Auca Indians in Ecuador.

I walked out to the hill just now. It is exalting, delicious. To stand embraced by the shadows of a friendly tree with the wind tugging at your coat tail and the heavens hailing your heart—to gaze and glory and give oneself again to God, what more could a man ask? Oh the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on earth. I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him, please Him. Perhaps in mercy He shall give me a host of children that I may lead them through the vast star fields to explore His delicacies whose finger ends set them to burning. But if not, if only I may see Him, smell His garments and smile into my Lover’s eyes—ah then, not stars nor children shall matter, only Himself (“Excerpts from Jim Elliot’s Diary,” His Magazine, Apr., 1956, p. 9).

How have such modern saints of God reconciled a life of personal devotion with the Reformation principle of sola gratia? The basic answer is, I believe, that they have given proper weight to the two other cardinal watchwords of Protestant theology: sola scriptura and sola fide.

One of the most remarkable—and to many in our day, most irritating—characteristic of the great Protestant Reformers was their insistence that the Bible be allowed to speak for itself, that its message be not limited either by existing cultural conditions or by predetermined religio-philosophical conceptions. To Calvin, for example, it would have been inconceivable to allow the low spiritual state of the city of Geneva to influence biblical teaching as to how people ought to live. Calvin’s problem, as he saw it, was not to fit the biblical message to the time but to discover precisely what the Bible teaches, and then to conform the culture to that divine message. Luther, in dealing with the scholastics, was not impressed by the flawless logic of the medieval synthesis, for he saw it as a substitution of human categories for the revelational basis of Christian theology. If the Bible, taken on its own ground, opposed the whole idea of human merit by which the medieval church justified its practice, then the problem was not to engage in finer casuistry in biblical interpretation but unequivocally to conform church life and theology to God’s Word.

The Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura which grew out of the precise position just described asserts that “the prophetic and apostolic writing of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged.” (Formula of Concord, epitome, part 1; cf. Westminster Confession of Faith, chap. 1, part 10: “The Supreme Judge, by whom all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture).” The question with regard to the devotional life, viewed from this perspective, is simply this: What does the Bible say on the matter? And the answer is no less clean-cut. The New Testament contains literally thousands of explicit commands with regard to growth in Christian life. Moreover, it has been frequently noted that the Pauline writings, which comprise such a large portion of the New Testament, typically employ an outline consisting of “doctrine,” then “response” (e.g., Romans, where the ouv of 12:1 divides the book into two such sections. Sanday and Headlam comment on this verse: “We now reach the concluding portion of the Epistle, that devoted to the practical application of the previous discussion. An equally marked division between the theoretical and the practical portion is found in the Epistle to the Ephesians (chap. 4); and one similar, although not so strongly marked, in Galatians (v. 1 or 2); Colossians (3:1); 1 Thessalonians (4:1); 2 Thessalonians (3:6). A comparison with the Epistles of St. Peter and St. John will show how special a characteristic of St. Paul is this method of construction” (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 5th ed., p. 351). And over against the Lundensian suspicion of agape-love directed toward God, we have Jesus’ crucial summation of the Decalogue in the words “Thou shalt love [agapāseis] the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength” (Mark 12:30; cf. Matt. 22:37; Luke 10:27).

THE LIFE OF FAITH AND JUSTIFICATION

But biblical teaching in this matter goes beyond the sphere of command. It relates the devotional life directly to the central truth of justification. Man is not commanded to love God because his salvation is unsure—in order to obtain merit in God’s eyes. To the contrary, the command comes because the Christian has already been saved, and a life in communion with God is the only consistent possibility in light of so great salvation. “We love him,” John says, “because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). “Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit,” was one of our Lord’s frequent emphases. The central theme of James’ often-misunderstood epistle is that “faith without works is dead.” Adolf Köberle has made this point with telling effect:

The justification of prayerlessness has never been derived from the article of justification. It was the age of the Illumination that first brought about that weakening of fervor and of discipline in prayer which our race has not yet succeeded in overcoming.… Properly understood the use of such discipline can never endanger the nature of the Gospel but, on the contrary, will only demonstrate and strengthen it.… That the suppression of our self-love requires unrelenting self-discipline certainly deprives us of every basis for self-satisfaction, every idea of meritorious action, and sternly directs the one who is fasting to seek the forgiveness of sins.… The admonition of Scripture to the disciples and the congregations to crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof, to mortify our members, to strive to enter in through the strait gate, to fight a good fight, to strive to attain the goal—all these admonitions after all only testify how easily the believer may still be lost and what full measure of grace is needed if any one is to be saved (Adolf Köberle, The Quest for Holiness, trans. from the 3d German edition by John C. Mattes, Augsburg, 1938, pp. 174, 184–85).

Thus the very nature of God’s free, unmerited grace, as revealed in the Bible and expressed on the Cross, necessitates a devotional response of the whole man to God. Only if this is understood does the Reformation concept of sola fide—with fides seen both as faith and as faithfulness—carry its proper theological weight. The Word of our God is unique in that it alone “stands forever” (Isa. 40:8), and that its first and great commandment is still to “love the Lord thy God.” If the testimony of Holy Writ is rendered ineffective through attempts to make God’s revelation fit predetermined categories, the result will always be heresy and weakness. God grant then, where the devotional life is concerned, that we (clergyman and layman alike) may pray not only “God be merciful to me a sinner” but also “Lord, increase our faith.”

- More fromJohn W. Montgomery

Addison H. Leitch

Where God Broke Through: The Sacred Sites

Baker’s Bible Atlas, by Charles F. Pfeiffer (Baker, 1961, 333 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Wilbur M. Smith, Professor of English Bible, Fuller Theological Seminary.

During the last five years, four important Bible atlases have appeared in English, and the appearance of a fifth can only be justified if it has merits which give it distinct value. The four preceding Bible atlases of outstanding merit are the Westminster Bible Atlas, by Wright and Filson; the Nelson Bible Atlas, edited by Grollenburg; the Rand McNally Bible Atlas, by Kraeling; and the Geography of the Bible, by Baly and published by Lutterworth Press. We will use the initials W, N, and R in reference to the first three respectively for purposes of comparison.

As to words in the text, the Baker Atlas has about the same as W and N, while R has more than three times the amount of text of any of the other three. The Baker Atlas uses the Hammond maps, as well as a number of black and white maps, totaling 43, which is considerably more than any of the others, although the maps of W and N are decidedly larger and therefore more easily read. The Baker Atlas has the least number of illustrations, 74, as compared to W with 110, N with 408, R with 265, and even Baly with 97. The Baker Adas may be purchased at a figure below the other three. W and N are $15 each, and R is $8.95.

The editor of this volume is professor of Old Testament at Gordon College. He is well equipped linguistically and otherwise to edit a volume like this, and every page bears testimony to the care with which the project has been carried out. The style is clear, even attractive, and the entire work is thoroughly conservative, more so than the Westminster or the Rand McNally.

Books of this type must always conform to a certain general sequence of subjects, and this one is no exception, except for its last three chapters on “The Centuries Between,” “The Bible Lands Today,” and a fine study of “Biblical Archaeology in the Twentieth Century.”

I thought when I studied Kraeling’s chapter on the “Table of Nations,” as recorded in Genesis 10, that it could hardly be improved upon, but Pfeiffer on this list of nations has definitely improved on Kraeling in his treatment of the descendants of Canaan. For some reason, however, towards the end he seems to have lost interest in the subject, and of the 17 descendants of Arphaxad nothing is said about 13 of them. Chapter XXIV, “The Geography of the Book of Revelation,” is not quite satisfactory, for a thorough discussion of such a subject should also include Jerusalem, the Euphrates River, and Megiddo. In the table of contents the title is more accurate, “The Seven Churches of Revelation.”

The proofreading and indexing have not been done as carefully as one could wish. I do not ever recall seeing the name of Caesar Tiberius spelled Tiberias, and the distinguished archaeologist and late professor Woolley is sometimes referred to here as Wooley. While Sellin is referred to in the text, he is not in the index, and likewise Cyrus H. Gordon and others. The index references are not complete: for example, Kraeling is given one reference in the index, but I have found at least three other occurrences in the text itself.

There are three matters concerning this work which one acquainted with this type of literature will recognize as serious weaknesses. In the first place, nowhere in the volume is there any reference to relevant literature. The Westminster Atlas has given us excellent helps along this line, and Baly presents us with a wonderful bibliography.

In the second place, and this seems to me a serious matter, one is surprised to find in page after page of discussions of biblical events a total absence of biblical references. On page 136 nearly a full column is devoted to discussing Saul’s death, including a number of geographical details, but the reader would not know from the text where to find an account in the Bible of the event. If he thinks of it, he must turn to the word “Beth-shan” in the Geographical Gazetteer at the end of the book where he will find 16 lines of material about this town, with adequate references. In the chapter on “The Life of Christ” in the paragraphs on Caesarea Philippi, Bethany, and Ephraim, there are no references to the places in the Gospels where the events in these places are recorded. On pages 30 and 31, where a number of rivers are discussed, hardly any of them contain references to the scriptural data. The most amazing illustration of serious lack of reference material is in the chapter titled “Exile and Restoration,” where in five successive pages one finds only two incidental references, both to the early chapters of Ezra.

A double index, as it were, one technical as the Geographical Gazetteer, and a general index of names will no doubt cause some confusion, much turning of pages, and delay in ascertaining certain information which one will necessarily seek in a work like this. More serious, however, is the vast amount of material which is absolutely irrelevant to basic biblical investigation in the Geographical Gazetteer. There are innumerable paragraphs on many obscure towns in Gaul, others in Spain, Italy, Greece, strange names in Armenia, et cetera, and a good deal of discussion of the Saxons, Britain, Canterbury, London, Lincoln, and even the English Channel! Not only do these towns have no relation to biblical geography, but in many cases the amount of material assigned to them is not proportionately assigned as, for example, the five lines of small type given to Lutetia, an early name for Paris, and then 10 more lines to Paris itself, which together is more space than is assigned to the two more or less significant biblical towns of Jezreel and Derbe!

The amount of material assigned to these extra-biblical sites occupies 10 full columns, or nearly one-seventh of the entire Gazetteer. No doubt the reason for inserting all of this is that the editor has included a map of the spread of Christianity, and I suppose he felt compelled to say something about the scores of geographical terms on this map in the Gazetteer. It would have been better had he omitted the map, and omitted this comparatively irrelevant material, to allow him more space for biblical matters.

In spite of these criticisms, however, the atlas is eminently worthwhile. It illuminates many passages in the Word of God and will prove an excellent guide for anyone beginning the study of biblical history. The approach to the great events of redemptive history is not only one of open-mindedness, supported with accurate scholarship, but one of reverence as well. I am sure that many institutions will immediately adopt this work as a text for the basically-important subjects it discusses. The makeup of the volume is in every way of high quality.

WILBUR M. SMITH

John Calvin: No Fatalist

Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, by John Calvin, newly translated and introduced by J. K. S. Reid (Jas. Clarke, 1961, 191 pp., 17s. 6d), is reviewed by Herbert M. Carson, Vicar of St. Pauls, Cambridge, England.

In popular image Calvin is a fatalistic thinker for whom God’s chief concern is to damn irretrievably and unjustly the bulk of the human race. Unhappily some who would not care to be considered as representing the popular mind, share the same misunderstanding. Professor Reid’s new translation may dispel such prejudices by showing what Calvin really did teach on this doctrine.

The work represents the Genevan’s mature reflections on the subject (he had already treated it in The Institutes), and the occasion of its production was the attack on his position by two critics, Pighius and Georgius. The form is therefore polemical, and the modern reader may find it repellent if he is unfamiliar with the abusive epithets of sixteenth-century theologians. The fact that it deals with critics of Calvin’s day does not limit the book’s significance to historians, for the objections of his opponents are those which still recur in the minds of those who study the doctrine. In fact, the very critcism of Pighius is voiced in the introduction by Professor Reid. It is interesting to compare the former’s objection (p. 55) with Reid’s remarks on page 44. The only difference is that the sixteenth-century theologian writes more lucidly than the twentieth-century commentator!

The characteristics of Calvin’s approach are his extensive quotations from Augustine, and his readiness to deal with biblical evidence. The former shows his doctrine was not a novel product coined in Geneva. The latter demonstrates that, whether one agrees with Calvin or not, it must be admitted that this is no philosopher engaged in metaphysical speculation, but a serious exegete grappling with the Scriptures.

There is a succinct summary of what Calvin believes to be the biblical position on page 58. “God by His eternal goodwill which has no cause outside itself, destined those whom He pleased to salvation, rejecting the rest; those whom He dignified by gratuitous adoption He illumined by His Spirit, so that they receive life offered in Christ, while others voluntarily disbelieve, so that they may remain in darkness destitute of the light of faith.” To establish this, he faces these objections. Does this doctrine make God unjust? Is God not represented thus as the author of evil? Is God’s foreknowledge not being ignored as the real key to the problem? (On this Calvin aptly comments: “The real question is whether what He foresees is what He will make of them, or what they will be in themselves.” p. 71.) What of the Christian’s assurance of salvation? How does the preaching of the Gospel fare at the hands of this doctrine? He faces these questions honestly, and answers from the Bible.

One last word. Is it really profitable to give such sustained study to this doctrine? Calvin replies (p. 56): “It is rather a solid argument excellently fitted to the use of the godly. For it builds up faith soundly, trains us to humility, elevates us to admiration of the immense goodness of God towards us, and excites us to praise this goodness.”

HERBERT M. CARSON

The Bible In English

No Greater Heritage, by Charles Gulston (Paternoster, 1960, 256 pp., 15s., and Eerdmans, 1961, 233 pp., $1.95, paperback), is reviewed by Joyce M. Horn, Research Historian, London University.

The one hundred and twentieth anniversary of a Bible being presented to the Boers, who embarked on the great South African trek of 1837, inspired this book on biblical translations. It ranges in content from Bede and King Alfred to Wycliffe and Tyndale, and from the King James Version to recent discoveries and the work of modern Bible societies.

The story is told with enthusiasm and a sense of the romantic. It is intended for popular reading and those with little historical knowledge. Church historians will find it at times fanciful and speculative, and not always entirely accurate. The Dark Ages, for instance, are seriously distorted by an over-dependence on Bede. More important is the disproportionate balance of the book. Together Wycliffe and Tyndale account for more than half of it, and Tyndale’s 70 pages compare with seven on subsequent translations. This latter chapter could have been expanded, and some assessment of twentieth-century versions would have completed the story. On the other hand it is readily confessed that the dramatic chapters on Tyndale are the most absorbing part of the book. In places the style is rambling, and the suspense, latent in some events, is in some measure dissipated by the author’s tendency to betray the conclusion of the story before it is reached. Despite the blemishes the book does impart something of the author’s confidence in the power and relevance of the Word of God.

J. M. HORN

Shadow Of Bultmann

The Study of Divinity, by D. E. Nineham (SPCK, 1960, 27 pp., 5s. 6d.), is reviewed by Gervase E. Duffield, London Manager,CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Professor Nineham is the first occupant of the newly-created chair of divinity in London University. In this inaugural lecture he was unable to follow the common precedent of surveying the work of his predecessors, and so he set out to explore the nature of the subject he was to teach.

The first ingredient in the study of divinity is a knowledge of texts and linguistics, but we are warned that “etymology is a notoriously bad guide to the meaning words bear in practice” (p. 7). “The reader of ancient writings needs more than a good text and a good lexicon” (p. 17). And so the second ingredient is seen to be a knowledge of the life, culture, and thought of the ancient world, for words acquire meanings and overtones that do not always appear in dictionaries.

Thirdly, the student needs to examine the total content of the Bible viewed as a unity. By way of contrast with nineteenth-century liberalism, this is a great gain and a result of the modern biblical theology movement. But even when the total message of the biblical revelation is ascertained, it must still be communicated to the ordinary man. Dr. Nineham recognizes the parting of the ways here. Some assert that if the Bible uses a category, “then simply by virtue of its widespread use in the Bible, that category has indefeasible validity; if modern man can make nothing of it, that is a defect in him to be corrected by appropriate training” (p. 22). Others wish to demythologize the Bible, strip it of its primitive thought-forms, and refurnish it with modern equivalents. The author prefers the latter method, though he admits some of its dangers. But is he right in his choice? To judge from recent attempts at demythologizing by Bultmann, Gogarten, and others, the enterprise is perilous indeed. To distinguish the “real Gospel” from early thought is difficult and hazardous, if not impossible. What all too often happens is that the resultant message is so watered down to make it acceptable that it is scarcely recognizable as biblical at all. Persistent rumors that some of Bultmann’s pupils are abandoning their faith are not therefore surprising.

The lecture ends on a happier note. The student must understand the culture to which he is addressing his biblical message. As the old Puritan divine put it, the minister must know two books, the book of ordinary life, and the Book of God. Finally, the student of divinity must be a man of prayer and seek to wait on God.

G. E. DUFFIELD

Deluge And Debate

The Genesis Flood, by Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb, Jr. (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1961, 518 pages, $8.95), is reviewed by Donald C. Boardman, Chairman, Department of Geology, Wheaton College (Illinois).

Evangelical Christians today are faced with problems of the proper interpretation of scientific data. More young people are being trained in our colleges and universities than ever before. Leaders in the evangelical world have a responsibility toward those students, who are children of God through trust in Jesus Christ as Lord, in strengthening their faith as they explore the mysteries of science. There is therefore great need for books which will help these and other Christians in an unbelieving world. Unfortunately, despite much obvious work on the part of the authors, this volume is not such a book.

The Genesis Flood presents five theses:

1.The Noahic flood was universal rather than local (chaps. I, II, III).

2.Uniformitarianism cannot be compatible with a Christian interpretation of Scripture (chap. IV).

3.The rock strata and fossils everywhere were deposited by the Noahic flood (chaps. V, VI).

4.The earth is much younger than geologists have proposed (chap. VII).

5.The flood occurred three to five thousand years before Abraham (App. II).

One of the major difficulties of this book is that the authors overlook a basic premise of scientists, namely, that the scientist looks critically at his methods and conclusions, because he realizes that as soon as he is positive that he is completely right in his conclusions, he ceases to be a true scientist. This does not mean that the scientist cannot have confidence in conclusions he has reached, but he does recognize that all conclusions are the result of the present state of his knowledge. It is customary, therefore, in scientific papers to mention the problems engendered by the conclusions. Thus almost every scientific paper will have some statements discussing the difficulties of the method employed and problems with the conclusion reached. The authors of this book have based many of their arguments against accepted scientific theories upon quotations of this nature. An example is shown by their statement on the subject of varves.

Varves are the seasonal deposits of sediments in lakes. During the summer the sediments tend to be thicker and more oxidized than those deposited during the winter time. By counting the seasonal layers in a lake deposit, it is possible to determine how many years elapsed in the laying down of the total thickness of sediment. The dating of sediments by varves is a complex matter. It requires detailed study of the layers. Workers in this field recognize that it is difficult to make very exact interpretations as to the length of time taken to make the deposits. The authors of The Genesis Flood quote R. F. Flint of Yale who has listed some of these difficulties. One would get the impression that Flint does not accept varve dating. On the contrary, geologists including Flint have confidence that general age dating can be done with varves and that they indicate sedimentation has been going on for a much longer period of time than Morris and Whitcomb propose.

A second difficulty seems to be that many quotations in the book are from secondary sources. An example is seen on pages 418–419 where the authors are attempting to prove that the many layers of petrified trees in Yellowstone Park are the result of the Noahic flood. The quotations are from (1) an article by J. L. Kulp in the American Scientific Affiliation Journal, (2) Arnold’s Introduction to Paleobotany, and (3) Miller’s Introduction to Historical Geology. None of these reports describes direct observations of the area. Each, however, is consistent with the original report. Morris and Whitcomb give a description which they evidently made from an illustration which Miller copied from a United States Geological Survey report of about 1890, and reach a conclusion which is different from that of any author quoted. The authors might have taken the desciption which the original author had made, or better yet, consulted some worker who has recently studied the area. Dr. Erling Dorf, a paleobotanist at Princeton University, has spent a number of years investigating this succession of petrified forests. He has described his work quite fully in the 1960 Billings Geological Society Guidebook. He shows that there are over 30 successive forests which grew to maturity and were covered with volcanic ash. The top of the ash bed in each case weathered to form soil in which the next forest grew. The authors of The Genesis Flood cannot believe the evidence thus shown as it indicates much more time than their hypothesis can accept.

It is doubtful if any of the five theses proposed in this volume is proved. In fact, most of them would probably be rejected by any reader who took the time to look up some of the references given as evidence. Dr. McCampbell who wrote the foreword has quite accurately evaluated the viewpoint of the authors when he says (p. XVII): “The various methods of geological time-measurement are analyzed and their basic assumptions adjudged inadequate by them, whenever these assumptions lead to results in contradiction to biblical inferences.” After reviewing the arguments of the book, the author of the foreword concludes: “From the writer’s viewpoint as a professional geologist, these explanations and contentions are difficult to accept.” This will probably be the conclusion of most scientists and Bible scholars.

DONALD C. BOARDMAN

Humor, A Gift Of God

Serve Him With Mirth, by Leslie B. Flynn (Zondervan, 1961, 191 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, Vice President, Fuller Theological Seminary.

Flynn shows convincingly that God made man to laugh and that humor is an integral element of real life. He argues that they are a saving salt without which man would be poorer. To bulwark his thesis he cites many biblical instances in which humor is the controlling factor. These illustrations are timely and provocative. The book concludes with the final laughter of God, and in an appendix there are a number of excellent anecdotes which are mirth-provoking and usable for any minister or lay person who is in the public eye.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Vs. Nonbiblical Dualism

Sex and the Church, edited by Oscar E. Feucht, Harry G. Coiner, Alfred von Rohr Sauer, and Paul G. Hansen (Concordia, 1961, 277 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Robert Paul Roth, Professor of New Testament and Dean of the Graduate School, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.

This book is the fifth volume in a series on marriage and family research by a team of professors and pastors in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. A most thorough investigation is made of sex attitudes in the Old and New Testaments, the ancient Church Fathers, the Middle Ages, the period of the Reformation, the subsequent Age of Orthodoxy, the influence of Puritanism, Pietism and Rationalism, and the pronouncements of various Lutheran bodies in America to the present day. A comparative study of Protestant and Roman Catholic views is placed alongside an examination of current sociological research of such authors as van de Velde, Kinsey, Duvall, and Landis. The thoroughness and objectivity of this church-sponsored publication demonstrates the integrity of purpose in the team of authors. No point of view is slighted. All facts are reported with utmost candor.

The historical survey revealed a marked change in sex attitudes beginning after New Testament times and carrying through the Middle Ages but not completely absent even today. The biblical view held sex to be basically a good element in the original creation with the purpose of marriage to be primarily for the fulfillment of our being in the image of God, the sacramental union of person with person. A blessed result of this was procreation, endearing love, and companionship. A nonbiblical dualism crept into Christendom, however, which has taught that sex is basically evil but tolerated only for the procreation of the race. This has colored both Roman Catholic and Protestant views in that for Romanists the married state was considered less holy than the celibate and for Protestants sex became excused only through strained theological rationalizations. The inevitable reaction of modernism with its “radar objectivity” exposed the deceit in the general practice of sex, but, although no salutary direction has been agreed upon by the social scientists, most agree that the old restrictions of chastity before and fidelity within marriage make for a happier and more stable community. Within the secular point of view, no reason can be found why this should be so. The final chapter of the book provides a compendium of answers to basic questions answered according to the Christian understanding of sinful man living in the redemption of Christ. Here sex is seen to be not a concession to the flesh but the God-pleasing fulfillment of man’s blessed creaturehood as the image of God. From the Christian point of view our knowledge in sex can only be compared with the knowledge of Christ for his Church. Procreation in sex can only be compared with the creation of God himself. And edifying companionship in sex can only be compared with the communion of Christ with his friends.

ROBERT PAUL ROTH

Exemplar For Piety

A Faith of Our Own, by Austin Farrer (World Publishing Co., 1961, 224 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Lewis B. Smedes, Professor of Bible, Calvin College.

Anyone planning to write a book on practical Christianity would do well to read Dr. Farrer’s book first. One ought to read it, not for its theology but for a fine example of how to write a book. Farrer’s theology, from this Calvinist’s perspective, ranges from excellent to rather doubtful. But his form is first-rate. Dr. Farrer is a poet of feeling, a priest of perception, and a scholar of sense. Moreover, he is a disciplined writer. He makes his point without preaching it, he is practical without being superficial, and he finds the final answer to Christian living in grace rather than gimmicks. He made at least one reader reconsider some of his sub-Christian attitudes and habits. And he made at least one teacher think of many better ways of saying some things than he had done before. Dr. Farrer writes the kind of book that I would like one day to write.

Resisting the temptation to quote an example of theology that I could poke holes in, I offer instead a taste of Farrer’s devotion: “O God, save me from myself, save me from myself; this frivolous self which plays with your creation, this vain self which is clever about your creation, this greedy self which exploits your creation, this lazy self which soothes itself with your creation; this self which throws the thick shadow of its own purposes and desires in every direction in which I try to look, so that I cannot see what it is that you, my Lord and God, are showing to me! Teach me to stand out of my own light and let your daylight shine.” Though I object to some of his Anglo-Catholic theology, I devoutly admire Farrer’s Christian piety.

LEWIS B. SMEDES

Letters From Dr. Fosdick

Dear Mr. Brown, by Harry Emerson Fosdick (Harper, 1961, 191 pp., $3), is reviewed by William D. Livingstone, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, San Diego, California.

One always looks forward eagerly to a book by Dr. Fosdick. He has been for several decades one of the outstanding preachers and religious writers in America. Though he is now in his eighties, he still displays the same brilliance of mind, warmth of spirit, and facility of tongue and pen. His books are immensely readable, and this volume is no exception. He writes not with a glassy polish but with a ruggedness that commands one’s interest and attention, and his work is full and rich with references to persons outstanding in many different fields. To read one of Dr. Fosdick’s books is a rewarding experience.

In saying this, however, I as an evangelical cannot help but feel disappointment especially when Dr. Fosdick deals with theological matters as he does in this present volume. The format of the book is a supposed series of letters written to a young man who is inquiring about religion, and specifically about the Christian faith. Dr. Fosdick deals intelligently with various aspects of the young man’s inquiry, and yet what he sets forth as Christianity is quite different from the historic Christian faith. Fosdick is apparently still an unreconstructed modernist, and in his discussion he continues, as he has done in the past, to downgrade the supernatural, downgrade God, downgrade the Bible, Christ, miracles, the atonement, and the Church. The influence of this man over the years has been incalculable though, from the reviewer’s viewpoint, tragically on the wrong side. Who knows what might have happened in Protestantism if his great mind and influential voice had been on the side of evangelical Christianity? As it is, Fosdick presents God as a personal and immanent Being, but the doctrine of the Trinity is discounted; he interprets the term “supernatural” as an “upper compartment” rather than that God is not bound by the laws which he himself has established but is free to work with and through them; and he denies miracles along with much of the supernatural element in the Bible. Having thus blurred the uniqueness of Christianity, he puts the Christian faith on a level with non-Christian religions and tries to see the best in all of them. Repudiating the biblical doctrine of substitutionary atonement, Fosdick writes: “Can you imagine a modern courtroom in a civilized country where an innocent man would be deliberately punished for another man’s crime?” He comments, “Only in certain belated theologies it is retained as an explanation of our Lord’s death.” Along with other modernists, he believes that redemption is not the unique work of Christ. He says, “Christ’s life of saviorhood is to be continued in the vicarious sacrifice of His disciples’ lives.”

It is always of interest to me to note the use that modernists make of the Bible. They are quick to deny the validity of any passage of Scripture with which they disagree, but will naively resort to “proof-texts” to support their own opinions. Fosdick’s attitude toward war is a case in point. He uses a quotation of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew to prove his point regarding the futility of war: “All who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Now this is the only place in the Gospels where Jesus says this, and yet Dr. Fosdick has denied the Virgin Birth for the reason that it is referred to in only two Gospels. If the story of the Virgin Birth is not true, how then can we know that this account of Jesus’ words is true? This seems to me to be the strange dilemma in which a modernist finds himself. In conclusion I would say that Dear Mr. Brown is a very readable volume, but from the point of view of the Christian faith not a very edifying one.

WILLIAM D. LIVINGSTONE

Paulinism

Paul and His Recent Interpreters, by E. Earle Ellis (Eerdmans, 1961, 63 pp., $1.75, paperback), is reviewed by Ralph Gwinn, Associate Professor of Religion, Knoxville College.

Here is an important, well-written, thoroughly-documented work. A casual perusal of the authors in the index will reveal the careful scholarship of the author. The book begins with a brief review of Paul’s life, reviews some of the chronological and introductory questions, and gives the background of Paul’s thought. Then follow two chapters dealing with two specific areas, namely, Pauline eschatology and the authorship of the Pastorals.

The author approaches the former question by a thorough study of 2 Corinthians 5:1–10, and shows that this passage is neither Platonic nor Gnostic in its background but is Hebraic and in accord with the teaching of Christ in the Gospels.

In the chapter on the authorship of the Pastorals, Dr. Ellis forces a reappraisal of the whole question. An easy acceptance of non-Pauline authorship is hardly possible in the light of this study.

The book is worthy of careful consideration.

RALPH GWINN

South Of The Border

Land of Eldorado, by Sante Uberto Barbieri (Friendship Press, 1961, 162 pp., $2.95), is reviewed by C. Stanley Lowell, Editor of Church and State.

This is the best general book on the religious situation in Latin America that I have read since the somewhat more copious treatment by Dr. Stanley Rycroft, Religion and Faith in Latin America. The Land of Eldorado is written by the right man—Sante Uberto Barbieri of Buenos Aires. Soundly evangelical, ruggedly outspoken, a man of rare wisdom and patience, this Methodist bishop has become one of the best-known Protestant leaders in Latin America. He writes from long experience and from all the deep Protestant conviction of a convert from Rome.

Bishop Barbieri has a way of illuminating complex matters with felicitous bursts of words. His quick description of the priest-police alliance (p. 14) which has meant so much misery to Protestants could not have been more succintly done.

This Methodist bishop has sympathetic regard for groups like the Pentecostals who have been so active and fruitful in Latin America. He notes that “75 per cent of the 6000 missionaries working in Latin America and the West Indies have been sent by the so-called ‘non-historical’ groups.”

There are quotations from the bulletins of the Reverend James Goff, Presbyterian missionary of Barranquilla, who is secretary of the Evangelical Confederation of Colombia. I wish the writer had devoted some space to one of Mr. Golf’s busy sidelines, namely, that of publicizing via his bulletins every act of violence perpetrated against Protestants in Colombia. His relentless publicity has caused consternation among the Roman hierarchy, and a steady diminution of anti-Protestant outbreaks has resulted. Mr. Golf’s life has frequently been threatened.

Bishop Barbieri discusses sympathetically the problems created by Protestant proliferation and also the prospects of the ecumenical movement in these countries. He bewails lack of communication among the groups and hopes that ecumenicity will find more favor than it has to this point. He feels there is particular value in a co-operative effort for the training of Protestant clergy. Yet the bishop wisely and realistically sees that the virile Protestant leadership in Latin America today is not to be found in the old line Protestant denominations but is evidenced in new groups whose very names may be unknown to many Protestants north of the border.

C. STANLEY LOWELL

Adequacy Of The Faith

Christ and Human Values, by Albert Clayton Reid (Broadman, 1961, 109 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Stuart Cornelius Hackett, Professor of Philosophy, Louisiana College.

These eight popular and inspirational lectures, originally delivered at Mercer University in connection with a religious emphasis week, express a familiar theme. Dr. Reid, professor and chairman of the department of philosophy at Wake Forest College, emphasizes the thesis that humanity confronts a multiple crisis from which it can be extricated only through a revitalized Christian faith which surges forth into every area of personal and social life with transforming ethical power.

This brief book is neither philosophy nor theology, although it contains smatterings of both. Instead, it is a graphic account of moral conditions and a personal confession of the adequacy of faith in Christ to solve the problems posed by these conditions. In the course of pursuing this main line of thought, the author discusses such varied topics as the demand for excellence in the Christian ministry, the importance of the humanities as a foundation for adequate education, and the necessity for controlling environmental influences which play a decisive role in character formation. In short, the book calls not for searching critical analysis but for a passing word of appreciation for its motivation of deeper moral concern and strengthened Christian commitment.

STUART CORNELIUS HACKETT

Religion And Psychology

Disorders of the Emotional and Spiritual Life, by W. L. Northridge (Channel Press, 1961, 125 pp., $3) and Victory Over Suffering, by A. Graham Ikin (Channel Press, 1961, 144 pp., $2.50), are reviewed by Theodore J. Jansma, Chaplain-Counselor of the Christian Sanitorium, Wyckoff, New Jersey.

These books deal with the same subject but in a different way. They are the products of firsthand and wide experience, as reflected in the many case illustrations presented, but the experience of the two authors differs as widely as the personality and orientation of each. Northridge combines a pastoral concern with a considerable knowledge of psychiatry and psychology. The doctor and the pastor find a happy meeting in him. He offers much helpful insight on some of the common emotional problems, such as depression, doubt, grief, the sin against the Holy Spirit, and others. Ikin is more of a mystic, a sort of faith healer, though more sophisticated and sober than the usual sort. At times she seems to drift off into spiritism and parapsychology, but she is by no means an obscurantist with respect to dynamic psychology.

Both authors belong to a liberal school of theology, Ikin being the more outspoken. She views the Old Testament as primitive religion with a vengeful god, in contrast with a New Testament picture of a warm and accepting god. Both writers have much to say about forgiveness, but they define it more in humanistic than Christian terms. Ikin sees sin as a failure to be our best selves rather than as an affront to a holy God. Both of them link forgiveness with the death of Christ, but they omit the substitution of Christ and his satisfaction of divine justice.

The books are compact and readable and, if read with discrimination, they provide many stimulating ideas.

THEODORE J. JANSMA

Counsel For Counselors

The Minister as Marriage Counselor, by Charles William Stewart (Abingdon, 1961, 223 pp., $4), is reviewed by Hugh David Burcham, Pastor of First United Presbyterian Church, Oakland, California.

The author of this book writes out of his deep concern that for all the need there is for marriage counseling, and for all the opportunities for the parish minister to make a contribution to society in this field from a Christian perspective, no more than ten per cent of the ministers in America really measure up by training and experience as qualified counselors.

Dr. Stewart, currently professor of psychology of religion and counseling at Iliff School of Theology, has served pastorates in Connecticut and New Jersey. He has written widely in the field of counseling, and has served as President of the Marriage Council of Denver, Colorado. His present book, while intended primarily for ministers and divinity students, is largely nontechnical in language, and should be helpful to any interested layman. The text is supplemented by an appendix that lists training organizations available to ministers in the field of marriage counseling, and a bibliography of good recent books in the field.

The author divides the total area of marriage counseling into three subareas: (1) pre-marital counseling, (2) marriage counseling (with husband and/or wife but not primarily involving children), and (3) family counseling. The bulk of the volume is given to a consideration of the minister’s opportunities in each of these three areas. Of particular interest in developing his idea of counseling procedure is his “role-playing” technique in which the minister as counselor seeks to draw from those he counsels their own solutions to the problems they face. In nondirective relationship to them, the minister serves as a stimulus, catalyst, and guide; not as one who holds all the answers.

The degree of “permissive” atmosphere which the author champions throughout the counseling experience may seem to some an excessive bending over backwards: “The counselor does not advise separation, just as he does not advise ‘staying married.’ Such advice takes the reins of responsibility out of the couple’s hands. Rather he is for the individuals, for their right to choose their own destiny under God” (p. 81). While there may be little to argue against such a role for the counselor in dealing with couples who are committed to Christian standards, the question may well be raised about couples who are neither committed nor even aware of historic Christian standards. Does the author’s kind of counseling procedure, if persistently followed, really provide them with what they may well urgently need at the time they come to the minister—that is, real guidance to and understanding of Christian standards, and support in motivating such persons toward those standards?

The closing chapters on “Group Marriage Counseling,” “A Pastoral Counseling Center,” and “Family Life Education in the Church,” contained for me some new ideas that challenged the sufficiency of my own pastoral ministry in these areas. They made me feel—as I think the author designed—that more than a few of us pastors have a considerable way to go before we can begin to regard ourselves adequate in the service we are rendering as marriage counselors, either to members of our church or to the larger community.

HUGH DAVID BURCHAM

Boy, School, And Parent

Letters From a Headmaster’s Study, by Charles Martin (Oxford, 1961, 126 pp., $3), is reviewed by Frank E. Gaebelein, Headmaster of The Stony Brook School.

This small volume is made up of 15 letters written by Canon Charles Martin of St. Albans School in Washington, D. C., to parents of the boys attending the school. The letters, which are actually informal essays, deal with questions of interest and concern to fathers and mothers. Among the subjects treated are “Hard Work,” “Understanding Your Boy,” “Discipline Is Necessary,” “Holidays, Parents, and Parties,” and “Sex: An Attitude Toward It.”

These chapters are full of good sense, firm conviction tolerantly expressed, kindly understanding, and earnest religious application. Insights that a psychologist might phrase in technical language are set forth by Dr. Martin in readable and companionable style. Although the letters were written by an Episcopal clergyman about a particular school and for a particular group of parents, the advice they contain and their Christian orientation are of more than denominational significance. Some readers may find the discussion of adolescent drinking under parental supervision a little too concessive, although Dr. Martin makes it plain that he desires abstinence for his boys.

It is possible for a man to spend many years teaching boys and dealing with parents and yet know comparatively little about them. The writer of these letters is not such a man. That his 30 years in education have taught him much is evidenced by the wisdom that shines through these pages. As one of his colleagues in the headmastership, I am indebted to him for communicating so unpretentiously and effectively some very important truths about youth and education and the God-given obligations of parenthood.

Whether their sons attend an independent school like St. Albans or whether they attend a public high school, fathers and mothers will find a good deal in this book to help them understand their boys. And teachers, school heads, and ministers will also find it of much value.

FRANK E. GAEBELEIN

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A capacity crowd in Filadelfia Hall in Oslo, Norway, witnessed the opening of the tenth World Methodist Conference on August 17. Surrounding the rostrum were 49 flags representing nations in which Methodists live. His Majesty King Olav V of Norway led a list of dignitaries who were on hand for the opening, in addition to more than 2,000 members, delegates, and representatives.

The theme of the conference, “New Life in the Spirit,” came into early prominence through the presidential address by Dr. Harold Roberts, principal of Richmond College, London, in terms of Methodism’s need for “the recovery of a positive theological emphasis.” The address set the mood for the entire nine-day conference, which was basically theological in emphasis. Speaker after speaker echoed Dr. Roberts’ insistence upon a solid doctrinal foundation as the only secure basis for the personal and subjective appropriation of grace. Christian experience, however understood, was certainly not regarded by the speakers at Oslo as something which floats nebulously upon the ether of mere human responses.

An early emphasis upon the basis of the biblical understanding of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, grounded in studies of both the Old and the New Testaments, undergirded the theological orientation of the conference sessions. Well-received was the clear assertion of the discontinuity between God’s Spirit and the spirit of man, made with emphasis by Dr. Percy Scott, principal of Hartley-Victoria College of Manchester, England. Such an assertion marks a radical departure from the theological mood of a generation ago. So does the note struck by Dr. Maldwyn L. Edwards, president of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, to the effect that the place of man’s willingness to accept grace is the sole point at which God and man can meet in effective relationship. Parallel to this was a statement by Dr. Hurst Anderson, president of American University, that even “the most Christlike humanism” can never be a substitute for the Christian Gospel.

Conference leaders explored with especial care the question of the work of God’s Spirit. Accepting the historic theological formulation of the doctrine of the Person of the Holy Spirit, they sought to explore the distinctive Wesleyan understanding of the Holy Spirit’s operation in the lives of men. Many of the conclusions drawn were extremely general: that the Holy Spirit is “the one mighty agent of regeneration and sanctification,” and that Reinhold Niebuhr makes too little of the power of grace to effect social transformation. There was an expressed rejection of mere “token righteousness,” in favor of a sanctification of the whole of life.

Conference speakers and leaders of discussion groups sought to apply this theme to several areas of church concern—to youth work and youth problems, to international relations, to education, and to the pressing question of man’s social and economic life. No major common denominator to these discussions was discernible beyond the broad generalization that there is a “mind of the Spirit” to be discerned, and the expressed hope that group discussions may serve to clarify this for the Church.

There were searchings of heart among “the people called Methodists” at Oslo, particularly at three points. The first two of these searchings were concerned with the denomination’s outreach to the world, the third related itself to its place in the ecumenical movement.

There was an expression of concern at the manner in which Methodism’s social outreach can and should be implemented. The Social Creed of the Church underwent searching criticism, particularly for the omission, in its classic formulation, of any direct reference to the Holy Spirit. The emphasis of the present conference stood in bold contrast to this, and by implication called into question the major thrust of the denomination’s social outreach for three decades following 1910. Dr. Mack B. Stokes, associate dean and professor of systematic theology at Candler School of Theology, in Atlanta, gave an address which was vitally significant to the conference’s exploration of the theme “New Life in the Spirit” as it relates to the society of our day. There was wide agreement in the gathering that the energizing of the Holy Spirit is the sine qua non of a vital social outreach.

The second area of heart searching was that suggested by the inability of the Church to deal with greater effectiveness with many of the specific sore areas in today’s life. This was voiced by representatives from all lands, particularly from Great Britain and the United States. Leaders expressed continuing concern at the rising tide of materialism, and at the inability of the Church to provide an effective spiritual counterthrust. This acknowledgment found expression especially in the discussions relating to the Church’s seeming lack of rapport with youth.

Youth work received much attention during the course of the sessions. The accent fell upon the need for making the Church’s witness relevant to young people, and upon the imperative need for a quality of spiritual life upon the part of adults which will render the Christian message attractive to youth.

A third area of self-analysis was that of the relation of the strengthening of the Methodist Church (and this was the explicit purpose of the conference) to the deepening of the ecumenical spirit. After all, ecumenicity does demand the surrender of some denominational prerogatives to the wider Church. This appears to be one of the questions which remains unsettled in Methodism. For the present, the conference let the issue rest, with the assumption that a strengthened Methodist Church would ultimately issue in good for the Oikumené.

As noted above, the major pattern of the tenth World Methodist Conference was theological. No doubt a great deal of ecclesiastical work was performed in committees. Attention was given to revision of the Constitution of the Conference, and to further denominational unions, particularly the proposed merger of the Evangelical United Brethren Church with The Methodist Church. The question of closer rapport with the several Negro Methodist bodies in the United States was also considered, and several new agencies within the conference were projected.

Missions received a great deal of attention, the churches of Latin America, Africa, and Eastern and Southeastern Asia being ably represented in the conference program. Ten delegates represented also the lands of Eastern Europe, five from East Germany, two each from Poland and Czechoslovakia, and one from Yugoslavia.

Among addresses delivered toward the end of the conference, three deserve special notice. Dean William R. Cannon of Candler School of Theology presented on the closing morning an address titled, “The Work of the Holy Spirit in Personal Life” which abounded in deep insights and careful distinctions.

The second message to which special attention should be drawn was that given by the executive secretary of U. S. Methodism’s Board of Evangelism, Dr. Harry Denman on the subject, “The Universal Gospel.” Dr. Denman expressed, in fine combination, the dual thrust of the Christian Gospel, as it is designed to touch the life of the individual, and through him the disturbed areas of man’s corporate life. In a manner characteristic of himself, he stressed the mandate of Christ to reach the people whom institutional religion has neglected in the past.

The incoming president of the World Methodist Conference, Bishop Fred Pierce Corson of Philadelphia, delivered the final message, “Greater Achievement through the Spirit.” Bishop Corson called Methodists to a six-pronged thrust into today’s world, beginning with “a more convincing theological impact,” and issuing in Methodism’s increased spiritual role as a positive force in today’s world. He emphasized that this can be achieved “only through and by the Holy Spirit working in us.”

H. B. K.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Dr. H. Orton Wiley, 83, noted Arminian theologian and past president of the Pasadena (California) College of the Church of the Nazarene; in Pasadena … Bishop Georg Olof Rosenqvist, 68, for seven years the head of the Lutheran Church of Finland’s Porvoo Diocese, comprising all Swedish-speaking congregations in the country; in Helsinki … Dr. Ernest Milton Halliday, 83, retired Congregational home missions administrator; in New York City.

Appointments: As speaker for “The Bible Study Hour,” Dr. D. Reginald Thomas, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Germantown, Pa. Thomas succeeds the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse for the program which is broadcast weekly by the NBC radio network and 50 independent U. S. stations … as president of the San Francisco Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Arno Q. Weniger … as president of Spring Arbor (Mich.) College of The Free Methodist Church, Dr. David L. McKenna … as Bishop of Bradford in the Church of England, the Rt. Rev. Clements George St. Michael Parker … as Bishop of Edinburgh in the Episcopal Church in Scotland, Canon Kenneth Moir Carey … as staff consultant of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Rabbi Arthur Gilbert.

Elections: As moderator of the North American Baptist General Conference, Edwin H. Marklein … as president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, E. E. (Tad) Wieman … as president of the National Conference of the Methodist Youth Fellowship, Leslie Parish … as president of the National Mennonite Youth Fellowship, Marion Bontrager.

Seed Scattering

Hundreds of Protestant ministers in and around Philadelphia returned from vacation to a spiritual phenomenon. Evangelist Billy Graham’s call to repentance had become the rallying point for a degree of Christian co-operation never before achieved in the area. Religious indifference was being dispelled at a time of year when ordinarily it is at its peak.

As the crusade moved into its final week and a climactic rally in Philadelphia’s 100,000-seat Municipal Stadium September 17, even the most stiff-necked skeptic had to concede a grass-roots breakthrough in the fourth largest U. S. city, historic hub of the Eastern Seaboard population concentration.

Despite rain, heat, and the attraction of beach and mountain, an aggregate of some 210,000 turned out for the first 10 meetings of the crusade, with nearly 5,000 of these making public confessions of Christ.

The intensity of the crusade was mirrored in press coverage. The Bulletin and the Inquirer, Philadelphia’s two largest dailies, featured front-page crusade stories in virtually every edition for more than a week.

“It’s like putting a Gospel tract in the hands of every Philadelphian every day,” commented Graham.

The initial meetings were held in cavernous Convention Hall, which in 1948 played host to three political conventions (the candidates: Harry Truman, Thomas E. Dewey, and Henry A. Wallace). The crusade moved out-of-doors for the second week end and a trio of memorable meetings in Municipal Stadium. The first of the stadium meetings proceeded through a drenching rain while some 35,000 persons, most of them young people, huddled under raincoats and umbrellas.

The usual invitation was given and while it was still raining, approximately 1,300 stepped forward to record decisions.

A team member said it was “almost a festival spirit for the Lord.”

Two days later, some 50,000 sat under a boiling sun at the stadium. The temperature was in the nineties.

The crusade returned temporarily to Convention Hall the following Tuesday. By the starting hour the hall had been filled to legal capacity (about 15,000, including standees) and another 3,500 were obliged to stand in the street for the entire service to listen via the public address system. The following night saw another overflow crowd which was steered into a large room adjoining the hall.

The vacation season seemed to have no appreciable effect upon the crusade’s appeal to various walks of life. Tattooed truck drivers sat with prim stenographers while crew-cut adolescents shared sons books with buxom matrons. Among the first to respond to Graham’s invitation were a lawyer, a dentist, a nuclear physicist, a Main Line debutante, and a high school football star.

Some observers attributed the far-reaching effect of the crusade in part to a growing awareness of the acute international situation.

As usual, Graham took no credit to himself. He reiterated that his role was merely that of a seed scatterer, and he reminded his audiences that only divine action could cause the seeds to sprout:

“The Holy Spirit has prepared you for this hour. He’s calling for you. Don’t resist him!”

Television Crusade

An eight-night television crusade which will cost the Graham organization an estimated $500,000 or more is scheduled to begin Sunday, September 17, in many principal U. S. cities.

The crusade will consist of eight hour-long programs which are to be scheduled on consecutive nights, concluding September 24.

It represents the most intensive mass media evangelistic effort ever attempted.

The programs are being filmed while the evangelist’s Philadelphia crusade is in progress. One of them will show the August 25 meeting in Municipal Stadium where 35,000 persons sat in the rain for the entire service and 1,300 stepped forward onto the soggy turf to present their lives to Christ.

The television films will be preserved and will be offered in England to local churches for consecutive eight-night showings.

Here is a partial listing of U. S. cities and stations which have scheduled the TV crusade:

A Baptist’s Challenge

A Baptist minister in Orlando, Florida, is challenging Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev to join in a worldwide prayer crusade for peace.

The Rev. Auburn Hayes, pastor of the Colonial Baptist Church, cabled an invitation to the Russian leader last month to attend a prayer meeting in Moscow or East Berlin.

Hayes is founder of the Worldwide Prayer Fellowship which will launch a prayer crusade for world peace September 24 to help counteract the Communist Party Progress in Moscow in October.

In his message Hayes told the premier: “You are talking about peace. We are praying for peace. Why can’t we join in this crusade? Prayer is more powerful than all the atomic bombs in the world.”

No Recovery

The Christian Brothers winery in Sacramento, California, apparently will not be able to recover $489,000 paid in federal taxes in 1951, 1952, and 1955.

Federal Judge Sherrill Halbert’s midsummer ruling rejected the brothers’ plea, which claimed that the winery was part of their institution at Napa, California, developing produce used to support the order’s 14 schools.

Halbert ruled that the De La Salle Institute operated by the Christian Brothers was exempt from taxation as a church institution, but that the winery was a taxable adjunct of the institute.

Winery operations were reorganized in 1957 to avoid further tax difficulties, and were incorporated as the Monte La Salle Vineyards, a tax-paying corporation owned by the brothers.

The federal government in 1958 sued to collect taxes from the brothers, claiming that the winery operation was not tax-exempt under the law. The case was decided in favor of the government, and the Christian Brothers paid the taxes under protest, later appealing the decision.

Fallout Pews

North Carolina’s Roman Catholic churches, following a suggestion by Bishop Vincent S. Waters of Raleigh, are converting basem*nts into fallout shelters, stocked with supplies, for use in the event of nuclear attack. The project has already been completed at the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Raleigh. Another church in Charlotte which is laying similar plans will be able to accommodate 300 persons.

Orthodox Ecumenism

Archbishop Iakovos, Greek Orthodox primate of North and South America, says there may be some major progress toward union of all Orthodox churches in the Western Hemisphere within the next two years.

At a press conference preceding the opening of the tenth international conference of the Greek Orthodox Youth of America in New York last month, the archbishop said the Orthodox bodies are on the “right path” toward union and some announcement on this subject might be forthcoming within two years.

“We must organize ourselves into one Orthodox Church in the Americas and make our contribution to the culture and the civilization more essential,” he said.

Discussing the Pan-Orthodox meeting scheduled to be held this month on the island of Rhodes, the archbishop said the movement toward Christian unity will be one of the major topics there.

Called by Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras of Istanbul, supreme leader of Eastern Orthodoxy, the Pan-Orthodox meeting is a preliminary gathering to prepare for the larger Pan-Orthodox Council which will follow at a date which is yet to be announced.

Lutheran Dissolution?

The strife-ridden Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America should be dissolved, according to a resolution adopted last month at the annual convention of the 15,000-member Evangelical Lutheran Synod in Mankato, Minnesota.

The ELS, smallest of four members belonging to the 90-year-old conference, also voted to reaffirm the suspension of fellowship relations with the 2,400,000-member Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, which has been in effect since 1955. The Missouri Synod is the largest conference body.

The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, second largest conference body with some 350,000 members, voted a similar suspension last month.

Since two of the conference’s synods now refuse to have fellowship with the Missouri Synod, the conference is no longer functioning according to its intended purpose and its existence “is no longer truthful,” the resolution said.

Assemblies’ Advances

The Assemblies of God (international headquarters in Springfield, Missouri) met in their 29th biennial business convention in Memorial Coliseum, Portland, Oregon, August 23–29. Some 4,600 persons registered, representing 20,692 churches in the United States and 70 foreign countries with a total membership of 1,254,048. The U. S. statistics this year show 508,602 members in 8,233 churches. In 1916 the Assemblies had 118 churches with a total membership of 6,703.

Legislation enacted in Portland authorizes establishing 8,000 new churches in the next 10 years. The Assemblies’ outreach abroad is illustrated by its foreign missionary giving: nearly $5,000,000 in 1960.

At a foreign missions rally, the Calvary Temple of Denver was awarded a plaque for raising $115,000 in two years.

“Global Conquest” is the Assemblies program for gathering funds to undergird missions in three ways: 1. literature; 2. training of nationals; and 3. direct evangelism.

Some time ago the denomination’s Executive Presbytery authorized closing of the Assemblies’ office in the Interchurch Center, New York, and discontinuance of cooperation with Church World Service. Among actions taken by the General Presbytery were the first changes of its doctrinal statement since its original adoption in 1916. The changes, made after a two-year study of the denomination’s “Statement of Fundamental Truths,” strengthen the position on the doctrine of the Scriptures, the deity of Christ, the Church, baptism by the Holy Ghost, and salvation.

Said General Superintendent Thomas F. Zimmerman, who is also president of the National Association of Evangelicals:

“The Assemblies of God has been a bulwark for fundamentalism in these modern days and has, without compromise, stood for the great truths of the Bible for which men in the past have been willing to give their lives.”

A resolution adopted by the convention which authorized the 8,000 additional churches in the next decade also called for the first 500 within a year. The very first of these churches will be located in Norwalk, Connecticut, and the funds for it were raised on the spot.

A second resolution authorized establishment of a theological seminary. Still another called for the denomination to assume responsibility for a television program which might eventually be nationwide.

A resolution which would have made each organization of the denomination responsible to the Executive Presbytery was postponed until the next convention. Considerable discussion arose over the eligibility of laymen to hold office in the General Council.

“Revivaltime,” radio voice of the Assemblies of God, continues over an average of 340 stations at a biennial cost of about $988,000, of which some 50 per cent is given by churches.

Ground was broken in 1960 for a denominational administration building and publishing plant which will cost about $3,000,000. It is scheduled to be in use before the end of the year, housing about 550 headquarters employees. The 8,300 Assemblies’ Sunday Schools were challenged to raise $200,000 needed for furnishings.

Among those who addressed the convention which frequently had public attendances of more than 7,000 was Governor Mark Hatfield of Oregon, Mayor Terry Schrunk of Portland, Zimmerman, and the Rev. J. P. Hogan, assistant superintendent and executive director of foreign missions.

Ecumenical Indoctrination

The premium was on histrionics last month as the ecumenical movement paraded its ideological colors before 1,825 hand-picked delegates at the North American Ecumenical Youth Assembly in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sponsors called it the most widely representative gathering of young Christians ever held in North America.

It was a well-tailored indoctrination in the desirability of organizational unity among Christians, but it fell short of being comprehensive in that it skimmed over the theological hazards implicit in Christian inclusivism.

The week-long program relied heavily upon dramatics to put across its broad “message of reconciliation” as in one platform act when a veil picturing the head of Christ was cut apart as a symbol of the “scandal of division.”

Nearly 40 denominations were represented by the delegates, most of them high school juniors and seniors or college freshmen and sophom*ores. Each was selected by his denomination. Conveniently, the assembly was held in conjunction with the national youth meetings of 12 major denominations.

Some observers felt that most of the young delegates regarded the presentations somewhat passively. The program appeared to transpire in pre-packaged fashion devoid of spontaneity. These observers felt that this lack of enthusiasm must have disappointed the program’s sponsors, who spared little expense in their effort to communicate ecumenism effectively.

The program included two stage productions which had been especially commissioned by the assembly-planning committee and which were enacted by professional casts imported from New York for the occasion. One of the productions was subsequently referred to by a platform speaker as “that sordid play.” He quoted the playright as saying that there was no message and that the purpose was simply to show a “glimpse of life.”

The assembly was held under auspices of the National Council of Churches, the Canadian Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, and the World Council of Christian Education. It was the second in a WCC series. The first, for Europeans, was held at Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1960, and the third is scheduled for December 1962, in Africa.

These assemblies include no legislative sessions, hence no resolutions or statements. Talk of a common communion service such as one which sidelighted the Lausanne assembly came from the Ann Arbor platform repeatedly, but a move to organize delegates for a similar service failed to gain much support.

Principal speakers at Ann Arbor were Dr. George Johnston, principal of United Theological College in Montreal, who led a daily Bible study on 2 Corinthians 5–6 and related passages; U. Kyaw Than, Burmese Baptist layman who is associate general secretary of the East Asia Christian Conference; and William String-fellow, Episcopal layman who practices law in the East Harlem section of New York.

Worship services each morning were led by representatives of various traditions, including Greek Archbishop Iakovos and Salvation Army Commissioner Norman S. Marshall.

In his closing address Stringfellow asserted that the trouble with the assembly was that it was not ecumenical. Absence of Roman Catholic and “some evangelical Protestant” delegations was mentioned several times. Stringfellow also derided what he called “the American idea of religion,” which he said is “openly hos tile to the biblical description of the Church as the Body of Christ living in the midst of the world on behalf of the world.”

A Minor Test

The so-called “Blake-Pike” proposal to merge United Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, and the United Church of Christ faces a minor test in Detroit this month at the triennial General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

It is virtually a foregone conclusion that the convention will vote to pursue merger conversations. The Episcopal Joint Commission on Approaches to Unity reportedly has already decided to recommend the move on the convention floor and to suggest also that invitations be extended to representatives of the Polish National Catholic Church to enter into the merger conversations as well.

Undoubtedly the “stone of stumbling and rock of offence” to merger lies in the area of the historic episcopate. Some Episcopal voices have already stated that the real choice in merger is between Pan-Protestantism (which is church union) on the one side, and Catholicity or the acceptance of the historic episcopate (which is re-union, not union) on the other.

Inasmuch as Blake has called for the establishment of a church that is “truly catholic, and truly evangelical,” some observers feel that he is willing to scrap the historic Reformed view of the church and to accept the episcopate. To do so would be to come to terms with Episcopalian requirements which claim that the episcopate is organic to the Church.

Such a concession might also entail views such as those which appeared in The American Church Quarterly declaring that “Christendom … can never conceivably be reunited on a Protestant basis” and asserting that present union churches are a “clubbing together of small minorities of non-Roman, non-Orthodox Christians for the sake of carrying on the work of schism more effectively.”

The editorial also states:

“The sixteenth century Reformation largely failed because it produced schism rather than integral reform. The raison d’être of the Ecumenical Movement is thus that it seeks to undo this unhappy consequence of the sixteenth century. Unfortunately this implied criticism of the sixteenth century Reformation is, in the strategy of the Ecumenical Movement, either suppressed or its explication avoided in devious ways.”

A Missionary’s Exit

A British missionary, arrested in Lisbon on July 19 and held for 36 days without charges being pressed against him, was deported last month by the Portuguese government.

Dr. Cecil Scott, British representative on the Evangelical League for Missionary and Educational Work in Portugal, was escorted from a Lisbon jail to the airport, where he was placed aboard a plane bound for Paris. His wife accompanied him.

No formal charges were ever made against the missionary, a resident of Lisbon for many years, who had performed mission service in Angola. The police report of July 19 merely stated that he had been picked up for questioning.

However, his arrest—and that of American Methodist missionary Raymond E. Noah in Angola—came at a time when official Portuguese agencies were charging that the departure of 41 foreign students from the country could be attributed to a “clandestine organization” which had been active in Portugal “spreading rumors that overseas students risk persecution.”

An Overseas Ministry statement also said that “certain persons connected with Protestant activities” in Angola “are more directly employed in campaigning against the Portuguese authorities than in achieving their evangelistic aims.”

The American missionary was released in Lisbon eight days before the deportation of Dr. Scott. After being placed in the custody of U. S. Embassy officials, Mr. Noah left the country via plane to Geneva, Switzerland.

Libel In Bible?

Lawyers are being libeled by The New English Bible, Ontario’s Attorney General Kelso Roberts charged in a public address in Sarnia last month.

Roberts spoke to an audience made up largely of lawyers—among them Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker—at the opening of a county courthouse.

The attorney general noted that the new version of the Bible substituted the word “lawyer” for “scribe” so that the profession is linked consistently to Pharisees.

He cited one passage: “Alas you lawyers and pharisees, hypocrites …”

“This,” said Roberts, “is the unkindest slur of all.”

He added that the scholars must have had “their tongues in cheeks” in making the translation. The word “lawyer” is not related in any way to “scribe,” he said. In ancient times “scribe” was used to designate a public servant who wrote, kept accounts, transcribed manuscripts, and interpreted ecclesiastical works, Roberts declared.

Native Sects

Many parts of South Africa are witnessing a mushroom growth of native sects in which attempts to “Africanize” Christianity are blended with superstitious beliefs and old tribal customs.

One of the most common sights in all cities of the lower half of Africa is a gathering of African men and women in a vacant plot on Sunday afternoons. They are dressed in white, with colored sashes, and they shuffle or stamp their feet around a man beating a tom-tom.

Sometimes these white-robed crowds gather round a tree, declared “holy” by the leader or “prophet” of the group. Others gather near cemeteries, and in some places one can see a dozen groups at the same time.

But all these sects have one thing in common—the tom-tom which pulses its way through every ceremony. It dates back from about 1930 when a preacher in Northern Transvaal is said to have had a vision that he should use a tom-tom to praise the Lord. He did—and started a vogue which has not yet burned itself out.

Buddhism for Burma

The establishment of Buddhism as the state religion of Burma was assured when the Chamber of Nationalities, the nation’s upper legislative house in Rangoon, endorsed the government hill by a vote of 100 to 15.

Action of the Chamber of Nationalities followed the earlier vote of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, which had approved the state religion measure by a vote of 220 to 15.

It was announced that the Parliament would be called in to a joint session to pass a State Religion Promotion Act, one that will send into motion the government organization and program involved in establishing the state religion.

Because Buddhism is the dominant religion in Burma and because of Premier U Nu’s pressure on legislators, passage of the state religion measure had been foreordained from the time it was proposed.

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Saints and thinkers of the early Church had generally frowned upon physical beautification. Later, medieval authorities demanded that woman or man spend his spare time in pure thought and celibate prayer, not in priming the body. But at the breaking of the Renaissance, about 500 years ago, the old Oriental practice of beautification became a moving force in Western society. Hairdressing and cosmetics advanced with a flourish.

The West became concerned about the body and beauty at the time of such earthly discoveries as the circulation of the blood (nobody would massage the scalp to get healthy hair until he was aware of the circulation of the blood). Emancipated courtly ladies and lovers went wild with new-found techniques. Plaited pony-tails, long curls, waves, bobbed hair, egg shampoos, scalp washes in milk or—if you happen to be Queen Elizabeth—in wine, make an old story. Famous sculptors turned beauticians and thus added precision and status to the profession. Hair-cutting became widely acknowledged as an art rather than an ignoble business. Gradually the modern creations of cosmetology snowballed into the infamous Pompadour of the eighteenth century where the hair was kneaded with pomade and flour, drawn up over a cushion of wool, twisted into curls and knots, decorated with artificial flowers, and left that way for weeks.

Ecclesiastical bodies were forced to condone what they could no longer control. The English parliament in 1770 gamely enacted a statute to invoke “the penalty of the law in force against witchcraft and like misdemeanors” upon all those women who “impose upon, seduce, and betray into matrimony any of his Majesty’s subjects, by scents, paints, cosmetic washes, false hair,” and the like. But nothing has ever stemmed the tide. Today cosmetics and the art of physical beautification are about the biggest business in the United States.

After delineating more fully this history of cosmetological theory and operation for the National Convention of Cosmetology in Chicago some months ago, I presented the state board examiners with the following thesis: there are at least three basic perspectives in which cosmetology can be and, as a matter of fact, is being practiced in America; only one of these possible perspectives is Christian; whichever way cosmetology goes, history seems to suggest, so also goes the nation.

The Cult of Beauty

One perspective which rules the training and operation of beauticians and their patrons is the Cult of Beauty perspective. Beauty determines, motivates, and shapes all that is done. Beauty is never quite clearly defined (philosophers themselves have been looking for Beauty with a capital B for 2000 years, one of those black cats in the dark room that is not there), but adherents to the Cult of Beauty believe it is a certain pleasing if not perfect proportion. This Beauty is believed to be the key to a full life, happiness, even fame; it is virtually worshiped. That is what “cult” means. Beautification then becomes a magical operation and its steps become a ritual exercised religiously by its devotees. Devotees of Beauty honor beauticians as priestesses; their worship of Beauty is not comic opera but tragically serious.

Such worship of Beauty, however, is pagan. “Pagan” does not mean “primitive”; by definition “pagan” means simply “not Christian.” Christians do not worship Beauty, either physical or the capital B variety. To say that the Cult of Beauty perspective is pagan is not saying that the Cult of Beauty is not a reasonable way of thinking or a hard-working way of living; in fact, the Cult of Beauty probably always lends a successful cast to the profession of cosmetology. That the Cult of Beauty perspective is pagan means only this, that wherever this intensive, limited horizon sets the tone and pace of hairdressing and cosmetics, whether its patron saints come from Ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, Pompadour France, or Hollywood America, there you have the pagan alternative dominating cosmetology.

Automatic Beautification

A second perspective is the Automatic Beauty Shop perspective. Here beauty is a commodity anybody can buy, provided she has the money. Beauty is not worshiped, for it is something done by machines handled by trained experts who efficiently, painlessly (as reasonably as their technological know-how permits) supply the demand for beauty. Beauty is considered a necessity of life, like bread and water; you get it by visiting your beautician three times a year.

This peculiarly twentieth-century perspective is secular. “Secular” does not mean “immoral”; “secular” means simply that “the heart of the matter is gone.” Human beauticians are reduced to flawless technicians getting pay, and customers become patients needing the treatment. The whole impersonal business has drab, disheartening, unhuman possibilities.

Devaluing the Body

Both these perspectives, as well as the traditional medieval disparagement of physical beautification, work out of the age-old dichotomy of man the assumption that man is split up into a mind or soul and a body, a view developed in ancient times, intensified in the medieval period, and as powerfully latent in the modern era as ever. Standard philosophers have almost unfailingly contended that the body is so impermanent and its adornment worth so much less than cultivation of the mind or soul that preoccupations such as hair dressing and cosmetics should be neglected, if not rejected, as they interfere with the truly important and essential activities of men and women. Beauticians, on the other hand, throughout history, have concerned themselves with man or woman as an object worthy of beautification, a body, something physical in which a person can find enjoyment and happiness; they have thereby implicitly denied or at least omitted as “none of our business” any mental or spiritual factors there might be in man.

But this divisive, split-up analysis of man, no matter which side you take, does not do justice to the biblical view of man as a unified whole, a personal creature in God’s Garden. In order to get physical beautification into a radically Christian perspective, traditional dichotomistic anthropologies will have to undergo a critical re-formation. Man is not cut up into mind and body but is an integral whole.

Seeking a Christian Perspective

A guiding perspective which can rule the training and operation of beauticians and their patrons, a perspective implied and supported by a Reformed anthropology, could be called the Style For a Woman perspective. In this perspective Beauty is neither idolized nor considered a commodity but is viewed wholly as a matter of style. Not every person can be “beautiful”—whatever that means; but everyone has the capacity, even duty, to be groomed, and that includes aesthetic enhancement as well as hygienic care. Within the Style For a Woman perspective, competent men or women groom others as a service, a rather intimate service—hair-washing and styling is not far away from the biblical foot-washing—and this service is performed in a sphere of leisure. To become stylized is a luxury, not a bare necessary; therefore the performance deserves the restfulness, color, and celebration that goes with moments of luxury. Beauticians of the Style For a Woman perspective are not clinical physiologists who address themselves to bodies and heads of hair but are persons who are aware that here comes a whole woman at leisure, and their competence as beauticians is measured by their ability to give the woman style, to coax out hidden glories a la Frank Lloyd Wright, with a level of conversation and modest personal interest that relaxes and invigorates the whole woman. Beauticians of this mind are dedicated to the end of making every hair-washing an enjoyable and fruitful experience. No unspoken promises of Beauty are made. There is just the assurance of hair washed and dressed, sculptured about one’s most comely features, during a pause that refreshes physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.

The Style For a Woman perspective has a Christian warmth and sanity about it. “Christian” does not mean “moralistic” nor “humanistic”; “Christian” means something “done in Christ’s name,” whether it be the proverbial cup of cold water or the caress of a comb. When the “style for a woman” perspective puts dedication and depth into the work because the worker realizes the importance before God of working with a human being, a whole person created by the Lord God with glories waiting to be developed and blemishes needing to be dressed, then you have action that is “Christian.” If there is anything our tottering social and political affairs need today, it is action permeated by the dedicated warmth and open joy of Christian sanity. Such action can be shown and taught even at the hairdressers.

CALVIN SEERVELD

Department of Philosophy

Trinity Christian College

Worth, Illinois

Ideas

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More than fifty years have passed since America experienced under D. L. Moody’s preaching the last great spiritual awakening. This was one of four significant movements in slightly more than two centuries of American religious life. Each revival was accompanied by new religious vision and vitality, and marked an era of both personal quickening and community transformation. Distressingly enough, each movement was also followed by a period of social decline and decay, attended by debauchery and immorality, the sure hallmarks of waning and spent spiritual vigor. No more than 50 years ever separated one awakening from another, and each awakening came at the height of cultural declension.

Today at another crossroads in her national life America desperately needs a long-overdue spiritual refreshing. The tide of evil from two world wars is running full; doom and despair threaten to inundate the nation on every hand. Has secularism so eroded and warped America’s being that spiritual renewal and power are no longer possible? Is there no likelihood of national revival?

The first Great Awakening in America came during the 1740’s and followed two wars—that of King William (1689–1697) and that of Queen Anne (1701–1713). Wickedness and spiritual sloth gripped the colonies. “The churches, once the supreme arbiters of community faith and practice were losing their hold on the people. Drunkenness and debauchery were the order of the day; even among the clergy there was ample evidence of egregious conduct. Samuel Whitman’s observation, in an election sermon preached in Connecticut in 1714, ‘that religion is on the wane among us,’ may well have been the understatement of the year” (Clifton Olmstead, History of Religion in the United States, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1960). Into this spiritual vacuum strode giants like Theodorus Frelinghuysen, George Whitefield, Samuel Davies, Gilbert Tennent, and Jonathan Edwards. Revival came. Observers wrote that “the very face of the town seemed to be strangely altered”; taverns were “empty of all but lodgers”; congregations were “bathed in tears”; transformed people embraced “each other with streaming eyes; and all were lost in wonder, love, and praise”; every listener was “eager to drink in the words of the minister”; and “young people became eager to participate in preaching and personal evangelism.” Thirty to forty thousand converts were added to the churches. Public morals improved. Every segment of American life felt the power of this thrust.

The effects of this Great Awakening gradually subsided, however, and following the American Revolution religion and morality became moribund. To some extent the decline of piety in America reflected the influence of the French Revolution of 1789 when atheistic rationalism sapped the vital wellsprings of religious life and burrowed itself deeply into American life, especially into the colleges. Then came the second awakening, but this time apart from great preaching by pulpit masters like Whitefield. The effects of the awakening had enduring value nonetheless. Multitudes came under conviction of sin. Infidelity was confounded. “… drunkards, profane swearers, liars, quarrelsome persons, etc., are remarkably reformed … many fell down as men slain in battle.” Those who lived in folly and vice “are now reduced to order and are daily joining in the worship of God … and offering up their supplications to a throne of grace.” College campuses responded. Under Timothy Dwight at Yale “a remarkable transformation took place.” Hampden-Sydney, Washington College, Amherst, Dartmouth, Williams and others felt the force of revival quickening. So constructive was the awakening that it left “a positive influence for good that would not be effaced from American society for years to come” (Olmstead, op. cit., 263).

The third period of revival followed hard upon the War of 1812. Here the key figure was Charles Grandison Finney, a converted lawyer, whose preaching caused sinners under conviction to seek the grace and mercy of a loving Saviour. Not alone in his endeavors, Finney was aided by men like Elder Knapp who took Boston by storm despite the opposition of anti-revival ministers who “charged that he wore old clothes in the pulpit in order to secure a more sympathetic response in the offerings.” From Knapp’s ministry came the famous Tremont Temple which today still ranks high among the great American Baptist churches. And the famous NYC Fulton Street Prayer Meeting, although not begun until 1858, owed its spark to the spiritual impulse of this third era of revival quickening which was to influence American life for thirty years. Oddly enough, this revival decade of the 1830’s saw also the rise of some of the cults indigenous to American contemporary life such as Mormonism.

The fourth period of awakening is inseparably linked to Dwight Lyman Moody, perhaps the greatest evangelist since Whitefield, Wesley and Edwards. His ministry after the Civil War was re-enforced in subsequent efforts by J. Wilbur Chapman, Reuben Torrey, Gypsy Smith and Billy Sunday. Under Moody’s influence numerous projects brought unmistakable gains to American religious life. Among them were the Student Volunteer Movement in foreign missions, the new impetus to the missionary work of the YMCA and the YWCA at home and abroad, the Northfield Con ferences, and the Northfield schools. And what was to become the Bible institute movement commenced with the opening of the Bible school in Chicago that later bore Moody’s famous name. Moody left his indelible imprint upon American religious life both in the number of people he reached for God and in the changes that followed in the cities and rural areas of America.

Now in the 1960’s, America is in the fifth period of its religious life. More than half a century has passed since the last awakening led by Moody. Two world wars have come and gone. They have torn American life asunder. Indications everywhere point to needed spiritual awakening. The divorce rate has quadrupled since 1890, has doubled since 1918. Between 1950 and 1958 illegitimate births increased over 45 per cent; in 1958 alone 79,000 of the 308,700 illegitimate children were born to teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19. According to the F.B.I., crimes have been increasing four times as rapidly as the population. In 1959 there were almost 1,600,000 classifiable crimes among which were registered 8,600 murders, 15,000 rapes, and almost 700,000 burglaries. New York City alone had over 17,000 automobile thefts and those mostly by teenagers. In 1940 there were 173,706 people in prisons and reformatories; in 1959 there were 207,513. Some TV shows have been fixed, some labor unions have been headed by known gangsters, and some prominent business men have been convicted of collusion in illegal price fixing. All these facts point to the need for spiritual, moral refreshing. It may well be asked, “Watchman, what of the night?”

Into the contemporary scene has come Billy Graham, a prominent symbol of hope for revival in our times. Is the present awakening, however, the kind that characterized American Christianity in former days? Comparisons—because of oversimplification—always run the risk of error, of course, especially where spiritual matters are concerned. Nonetheless three observations suggest a negative answer to our query. 1. There is little if any evidence of an upward trend in the moral life of the great cities. To what extent yesterday’s and today’s “big cities” may be “equated” for comparative purposes is, of course, a matter of considerable discussion. Generally speaking, however, in cities “turned upside down for God” we have nothing today to match the stories of Whitefield in Philadelphia, Edwards at Northampton, and Moody in Chicago, for example. 2. Revival has not broken out in local churches on an overall community scale. 3. While Graham has addressed all classes of society, only the middle class has been reached significantly. Finney reached many professional people of his day as well as factory workers and giants of commerce like Marshall Field and Cyrus McCormick. Also the down-and-outers, and the then-designated “working class” showed particular response to Moody’s preaching. Perhaps today’s economy is less stratified, or at least has different measures of status. At any rate, not all segments of society are noticeably responding to the Gospel. These comments in no way disparage what Graham has accomplished under God. Thousands have been converted, millions of Christians have been helped by his radio, TV, and mass evangelism endeavors. Nor should Graham be cancelled out as the possible key figure in an awakening of the sort described above. However, awakenings like those of the 18th and 19th centuries have not come in the present era.

One may well compare the conditions at the time of former revivals with those of today. Have any new elements so penetrated the scene as to distinguish the present from all preceding periods? The answer is yes. What are these factors?

From 1890 to 1920 America experienced a flood of immigration. Millions of people came from southern Europe, most of them either dynamically or at least nominally attached to the Roman Catholic Church. Of many origins, they formed the great “melting pot” of which much has been said by historians. To this day these Romanist forces have not been assimilated into our traditionally Protestant America. In fact, while the Roman Catholic element in American life (13 per cent of the population in 1850, 23 per cent in 1958) has become numerically large and politically aggressive, at no time in the history of that church in America has it experienced anything like the revivals or awakenings of Protestantism. Since the Romanists represent a large, strategic portion of the population it seems logical that no truly great awakening can occur apart from significant impact on the Roman Catholics.

Another unique facet of the present scene is the marked change in the educational milieu. Born in the womb of the Christian faith, institutions of higher learning were formerly the friends and fearless advocates of that faith. Today they often stand as the enemies and assailants of historic Christianity. Faster than the pulpits of the land can attract young people to Christ the colleges turn them out as skeptics and agnostics. Many young people receive excellent secular education, of course. Without the integrating perspective of Christianity, however, such education soon destroys itself and its people. It cannot pump into the blood stream of national life those nutriments essential for survival, let alone vitality. Much of today’s secularism and paganism is the fruit of education divorced from the Christian faith.

Another marked difference from former times is the revolutionary pace of scientific activity. More technological changes have come in the last fifty years than in the previous several centuries. Jet planes span the continent in just a few short hours; radio and television bring on-the-scene reports of events that once required months to communicate. This overwhelming transformation of daily life brings its own peculiar tensions, however. Everywhere men sense with uncanny terror the dread edge of some tragic abyss. Many look for a “savior” to guarantee peace through some major scientific or political breakthrough and to quiet people’s alarms and fears.

Politics has not proved to be that “savior,” as evidenced by the unbroken succession of wars. Nor has secular education solved our problems. Rather it has demonstrated that knowledge without spiritual foundations only deepens a nation’s difficulties. The technical progress of science in recent decades has been staggering; but even scientists despair of the future and grimly warn men of science’s monstrous power to wipe humanity from the earth. Not through politics, education or science but only through spiritual renewal are a country’s soundness and wholeness to be established. America’s history reiterates this truth. But to us in the twentieth century such universal refreshing has not yet come.

No one is naive enough to expect religious renewal to solve every problem. No revival has ever done that. But through revivals nations have returned to God; through them saved people, quickened churches; improved communities have brought fresh dynamic into national life. Men and nations have gained courage, insight and daring to meet the demands of the hour. Revivals have recaptured and sharpened the vision of what men can be in Christ, and have furnished the inner motivation and power whereby men go forth conquering and to conquer.

If revival is to sweep America, spiritual renewal must catch up and permeate not only some but all phases of life and thought. Areas like sciences and education and politics which heretofore seemed secondary or incidental to the influence of revival have come to special prominence. No sphere whatever in today’s complex welter of men and things dare remain untouched by the judging and healing hand of God.

However dark and desperate the time may be, it can never stay nor withstand the awakening light and renewing power of the Holy Spirit. Ministries of men like Billy Graham have already yielded a rich, even if token, harvest, as far as total revival is concerned. They uncover a burgeoning sense of need by countless people in America and throughout the world, a need once met only by widespread spiritual awakening, the same need that in this generation can be met only by a similarly all-encompassing renewal. Without such full and overflowing measure of the Spirit of God America has no prospect but that of hollow men in arid times.

I Believe …

Early Christians did more than simply lament the evil of the world around them; they displayed the power of a holy life.

Today we could profit from several pertinent questions. Is my Christian walk and experience arresting to others? Do I frequent the House of God with greater zest than theatre patrons crowd Broadway on opening night? Do the Scriptures magnetize me with greater compulsion than do obscene paperbacks their prey?

If the world considers Christianity irrelevant, even undesirable, perhaps the dissonance of our empty lives is in part responsible. Only deep hunger for God and being fed of Him can yield the convincing melody of a life attuned to glory.

POPE JOHN’S JULY ENCYCLICAL AND SOME UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Commenting on the July encyclical of Pope John XXIII, a prominent Protestant churchman found (misderived, we think) comfort in the fact that the Roman pontiff virtually pronounces socialism as no longer “merely a swear word” for Roman Catholics. Among other things the Pope generously affirms the duty of the wealthy nations of the world to help the poorer ones to develop, but without trying to impose political ideals on those who are being helped.

Although the encyclical is one of the great social documents of our times, and we shall refer to it on more than one occasion, its political overtones ought to be made obvious. The Denver Register (America’s “national Catholic newspaper”), boldly identifies the Alliance for Progress Charter adopted in Uruguay by all Latin American republics except Cuba as answering the Vatican plea. The poverty and predicament of the great masses of Latin America are to be relieved in the main by American foreign aid. The Register openly captions its report: “Alliance for Progress Answers Pope’s Plea” (Aug. 27 issue).

As we write we have before us an essay extolling the great blessings that accrue to those embracing Romanism. Yet the world awaits an adequate explanation of why countries which have enjoyed such blessings for centuries remain in ignorance, poverty, and sometimes in actual squalor. Spain, Portugal, and some Latin American countries are exploited by dictators while material want and crass superstition abound.

One of our correspondents suggests that we ask His Holiness “if he can name one Roman Catholic country wealthy enough to help the poor ones, and whether it is merely a coincidence that within the geographical limits of the Christian world, the illiterate, poverty-stricken, backward countries are all, without exception, Roman Catholic.… All of us Protestants should remind ourselves that there is no Protestant country with any degree of illiteracy and poverty, and that in fact, all the rich, literate, and highly-developed countries in the world are, without exception, Protestant.…” Issuing his private encyclical, our social-minded correspondent adds for good measure: “The countries outside the Communist orbit which still have dictators are mostly Roman Catholic …” An embarrassing possibility now, however, is that Protestant-oriented British Guiana will introduce Communist rule to South America.

WORLD ARMS RACE AND THE MORALIZING OF POWER

The world’s mad arms race quickened its frightening pace as the Soviets ended the 1958 moratorium on testing nuclear weapons. The Communist regime announced plans for super-bombs whose explosive potential equals from 20 to 100-million tons of TNT. Already, Tass reported, Russia has rockets similar to those manned by her cosmic astronauts, which are able to rain death upon any spot on the globe.

The only language the power-hungry naturalists have ever understood is the language of more power. The fact that Khrushchev’s rocket-rattling surprised and shocked Western leaders only indicates their naive understanding of the history of thought and the nature of man. Khrushchev made it clear that strongly-worded phrases fashioned with Harvard artiness hold no terror for him.

Christianity is a religion of peace. The Church has no mandate to fuel the arms race. It must nourish the believer’s aspirations toward constructive thought and life, and guard against sweeping man’s energies into the service of irrational impulses and resentments.

Yet the Church has a firm message calling both East and West to higher ground. Khrushchev’s thesis is: communism and peace (peaceful co-existence is a strategic interim posture). Eisenhower’s thesis (and the Free World’s generally) is: peace with justice. But the biblical thesis is grace and peace.

No century in history provides clearer evidence than ours that the virtues of peace and justice cannot be superimposed upon unregenerate human nature. The answer to the problem of the human race is a new society of regenerate men and women. If the Church must remind the powers that be, as indeed she must, that the only deterrent to slavery is the use of force in the service of justice, it must also remind the children of our age, as the biblical writers do, that enduring peace has Messianic roots, and that it deals not merely with political tensions but with the grip of sin and the stench of death upon our spirits.