Page 6015 – Christianity Today (2024)

The cry to “make Christianity relevant” grows more urgent each year. As humanity’s problems mount, Christian and unbeliever alike look to biblical religion with more desperation. The past year has been particularly trying for both church and society, causing many to plead inwardly, “God, do something!”

The call for relevance comes from churchmen of widely varying theological perspectives, from Unitarians to Pentecostalists. They differ on what relevance is and how to achieve it. But a large segment of the religious spectrum agrees that Christian principles must be brought to bear more meaningfully upon modern man, his problems and his aspirations. So much already has been said about the need for relevance that in many professional religious circles the topic has become trite and further mention is avoided. But the basic longing for a faith more germane to the times is getting ever more intense.

One is almost tempted to conclude that man’s problems are too many and too complex for the Christian faith to interact with them to any helpful degree. Surely this is an extraordinary age in that man has all the potential for self-annihilation. People today are concerned about mere survival, as our sophistication keeps backfiring.

Since the dawn of civilization men have promoted trade, sensing that everyone can benefit by exchange of goods. Now they transport anything anywhere—promptly. Yet there is as much if not more material imbalance as ever. Biafrans starve, not because the world lacks the means to get food to them but because of man-made obstacles. Nationalism and racial prejudices, which were supposed to wither away with the increase of education, seem instead to be on the increase.

Firearms, which for hundreds of years have enabled man to master the wilderness and maintain order among clustered humanity, have suddenly and almost inexplicably become instruments of oppression and violence in the hands of the depraved. The rash of assassinations and other senseless killings is forcing bans on good inventions that have been perverted to evil ends.

The art of diplomacy, so finely honed over the centuries, seems to have lost its potential for the maintenance of peace as Americans sit out a war that they didn’t want and that won’t end. The specter of an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation between the United States, China, and the Soviet Union hangs over the world. Seizure of the “Pueblo” and Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia were two crises of the type we have virtually learned to expect. Turmoil in the Middle East seems ever on the edge of another crucial showdown, and that area of the world keeps shaping up as the probable focal point of the next great world war—which could be man’s last.

The United, States is a citadel of democracy whose citizens have enjoyed more freedom, opportunity, and affluence than any other nation in history. Yet now the nation faces revolt after revolt on the campus and in the ghetto as flames of anarchy seem to burn ever more brightly.

In the midst of this thunderous upheaval, with all its brutality, irrationality, and immorality, the world increasingly wonders whether Christianity can offer something to ease the pain and cure the malady. People everywhere are asking, “If God is God, why does he let all this happen?” Christians are among those who are confused over the relevance of their faith to current problems.

One thing is certain: no one can “make Christianity relevant,” as the cliche has it. If we believe Scripture, then by nature and definition Christianity is relevant to all aspects of man’s fife. But discovering the relevance of Christianity is something else. We have to break new ground as we seek to determine what bearing our faith has on this or that situation.

The trouble is that the world often thinks of Christianity only in terms of its search for problem-solving principles and persons. We are engaged in a global manhunt for a new messiah, longing evermore intensely for someone or something to deliver us from all our problems. Our mentality is much like that of the old Children of Israel, who looked not for a spiritual saviour but for a political wizard to bring them out of all their temporal difficulties.

Today’s man thinks he knows what he needs most: solutions for his environmental problems. But God works in another dimension. He offers us the potential for dealing with our immediately hostile habitat, but he holds out something far better—victory over evil per se. Our failure to deal with God on the metaphysical level keeps us from discovering Christianity’s real relevance.

Christians must affirm that God can intervene in a special way in the affairs of modern man. But he doesn’t always choose to do so. (If we don’t grant God that right, we end up with the image of a very small god.) In some ways we are faced with the divine majestic silence, the hiddenness of God, which causes some to wonder whether he really lives and reigns and rules. God is quite aware of the world’s massive power axis, in which one foolish decision could set off a nuclear holocaust. However, he has his ultimate goals in view, and his purposes are good and will come to pass, or else he is not God.

God’s goodness, in short, is not always immediately apparent. He is not necessarily where the “action” is. What may seem a gain today may be a loss tomorrow, and vice versa. Only God knows what is good for man and what is evil. The search for relevance must take the sovereignty of God into account.

Christianity nonetheless is man’s greatest resource and only hope, more so in 1969 than ever before. The Messiah came, and people who longed for him most missed him altogether. Similarly, we grope for a relevant Christianity, not always realizing that we already have it. It is up to Christians to show that man’s problems are deeper than he thinks and that Scripture addresses itself primarily to these.

Churchmen must stop trying to pull Christianity along with history. It is above and beyond the tide of men and events, and to try to deal with it merely in terms of how if fits in with the latest sociological hang-up is to mistake its identity and degrade its applicability. Unless religion transcends temporal anxieties, it is not worthy of the designation. Christianity is infinitely more than social first aid.

Behind much of the clamor for relevance is the desire for an exclusively utilitarian Christianity. Those seeking Christianity merely for its material serviceability will never really find it. If God is the One he says he is, and his Son did what the Bible said he did, then the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit deserve our commitment and allegiance for their own sake. The world might as well stop expecting benefits from Christianity as long as it is unwilling to accept its demands.

There are, however, several very significant things to be said for “Christian relevance.”

Probably the most relevant aspect of true Christianity for 1969 is its changelessness. Flexibility in ultimates is no asset, even in our rapidly changing world. If the object of faith is subject to change, who can have faith in it? Faith must be placed in something that cannot be altered.

Also peculiarly relevant for this year is the discipline that accompanies the Christian faith. No feat of lasting value is ever accomplished without discipline, and the Christian faith brings with it a divine call to supreme discipline, actually more demanding than any human being can attain. The Old Testament had the law as its discipline; we have the discipline of love, justice, and stewardship, as well as the example of Christ’s life. One of these days even secular man may learn in a dramatic new way the importance of discipline. It may come as a reaction to anarchy, though we can all pray that it does not take that to awaken us.

Christianity also offers challenge, and in that respect too is clearly relevant. The mechanization and automation of our age are robbing our people more and more of the opportunity of challenge. The Church can fill the void as no other institution can.

Other aspects of Christian relevance include the chance for freedom, reconciliation, a new capacity for good, victory over evil. But such things are not readily discerned by the worldly man—he doesn’t see the need. One other thing to put before secular man, however, is hope, the hope that springs from the love of God. God offers us the prospect and potential of good works, but our eternal destiny does not depend upon how successfully we perform these. Indeed, if we utterly fail, as we so often do, there still is hope. God has made his favor available to all men, though they do not deserve it. Grace is freely offered to the penitent sinner if he will only trust God. If everything else comes crashing down, God will still be alive and concerned for the eternal welfare of those who are his as well as those who are not but ought to be.

How much more relevant can you get?

’69 Countdown

Zero hour is near. Clock-watchers with the official time begin countdown. TEN. Supply-watchers ready the food, horns, bells, and confetti. NINE. Calendar-watchers take their posts, ready to turn the new leaf where the “number of days elapsed” now appears computer style. EIGHT. Ties are checked for security of peaked hats that insist on slipping over one ear. SEVEN. Weather-watchers gaze on the moonlight-reflected rhinestone-encrusted earth. SIX. The maintenance crew mentally measures snow drifts and anticipates sore muscles. FIVE. They know even the wisest resolutions won’t clear a path through the snow—FOUR—or through life either. Both require hard work to implement good intentions. THREE. The snow shoveler who works toward his goal one shovelful at a time will ultimately clear the path. TWO. And the man who sets his sights on Christ and lives by the rules of his kingdom can anticipate a year well done. ONE. Happy, successful new year! ZERO.

Pigs Versus People

The revolutionists of our day loudly protest that they feel depersonalized. Caught up in a computer culture, gigantic university structures, and Social Security and draft-board numeration, they rightfully complain that they feel like “its” and “things.”

But they themselves help to perpetuate what they protest. In confrontations with police, administrators, and government officials, student and non-student protestors heckle them not only with force but also with obscenities. And their usual name for their opponents is “pigs.” Need we remind them that this too is depersonalizing and dehumanizing? If the revolters want to gain proper respect for their dignity as human beings, they might give some thought to the golden rule.

30,000 Dead

Thirty thousand Americans have now been killed in the Viet Nam war. The new figure didn’t even make the front page of most newspapers. We’ve become calloused to the statistics that roll in week after week. Unless we have been personally touched by the tragedy of the war, it seems far away and we remain unconcerned.

Thirty thousand husbands and fathers and sons and brothers—and many thousands of grieving parents and children and wives. We cannot allow ourselves to be unmoved by this vast ocean of suffering. Like our Lord, we must reach out in compassion toward the heartbroken and lonely.

Thirty thousand today—and who knows how many more before it’s all over. Let us do all we can to show the love of Christ to those whose lives have been touched by the terror of war.

The Table Talks

The dispute over the shape of the table at the Paris peace talks suggests that the negotiators need the advice of a good carpenter. If the consultant is ingenious and imaginative, perhaps as a compromise he can devise a true cross between a round and a square table. What a boon this would be to the furniture industry—manufacturers would have a field day turning out copies of the newest thing in tables.

Come to think of it, there is a Carpenter upon whom the Paris negotiators could profitably call. His is the design for a truly peaceful world.

Bumper Stickers

The best way to get mass exposure for a simple idea these days is not, as some people think, through an hour of prime time on NBC-TV or a full-page ad in the New York Times. Visibility is more effective, farther-reaching, and cheaper through bumper stickers. All you need is the consent of car-owners—something politicians clearly acquired during the recent elections. In fact, the politicians’ expertise in the production and use of bumper stickers probably merits study.

Perhaps evangelicals ought to get in on the opportunity for the sake of the Gospel. Some well-prepared bumper stickers might go a long way toward establishing at least a climate for evangelism. The text of the message is all-important. To do the job it must get to the heart of things clearly, but with imagination. Like the one lamenting the Redskins’ losingest season in years: BRING PRO FOOTBALL BACK TO WASHINGTON.

Suggestions?

Will Revival Come?

Throughout its history the Church has often been a suffering Church even while it has been a powerfully witnessing Church. Today for the most part it is neither. It is a confused Church, an impotent Church, a directionless Church. It seems unsure of its calling and unsure of its destiny. In the midst of the swirling currents of dissatisfaction and riptides of dissent in our times, it seems to have little to say. Therefore it has become the object of the world’s scorn.

Like the Laodicean church, the Church of the sixties asserts, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing”—not knowing that it is “wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” It does not serve the world as it should because it is spiritually depressed and lethargic, if not fast asleep. It desperately needs to be quickened by God, but it will not meet the conditions for quickening. It seems too rebellious to repent, too proud to pray, too haughty to humble itself, too spoiled to seek God’s renewing mercy.

Would it be too bold to say that there are signs that God is pronouncing judgment by abandonment? That he is permitting the Church to go its own way? Surely it is true that God’s hand is not shortened so that it cannot save. Nor is his ear heavy so that he cannot hear. But might not God be saying, “I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me; I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, ‘Here am I, here am I,’ to a nation that did not call on my name” (Isa. 65:1)?

There will be no spiritual awakening outside the Church until first there is a revival of true religion inside the Church. God is always ready to bring renewal. He did it again and again in the Old Testament when his people had drawn away from him. He has done it again and again in the last two thousand years, especially in Western Christendom. But revival has not come in our day and it will not come—until God’s people “humble themselves, and pray, and seek [God’s] face, and turn from their wicked ways.” When this happens, God promises, “then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

CHURCH AND STATE

In medieval times, the alliance between Christianity and the Empire became so firmly welded that the Church was not a state; it was the State. The State as such was merely the secular side of the universal ecclesiastical corporation.… There were struggles between the Pope and the Emperor, but the contest lay between two officials, never between two separate and distinct bodies. There was no quarrel between Church and State in our sense of the term.… The vice of the medieval state, like that of the classical state, was that it united Church and State in one.—From R. H. Murray’s book The Political Consequences of the Reformation.

A few months ago my brother died in a hospital in Chicago. He was only fifty. His basic illness was emotional and spiritual, not physical. He had a great need to be recognized and accepted, to be a somebody, to feel satisfaction as a bread-winner, husband, and father. When in his late forties it became evident that he would not succeed in any of these, he began to die more rapidly.

My brother was an alcoholic. But this form of slow suicide which he had practiced for twenty years or more seemingly was not fast enough for him. Last July during one of his “benders” he told me he had cancer. I know this was only his own idea, not that of a doctor, and I didn’t take him seriously. But when he underwent exploratory surgery last August, his prediction turned out to be true. The diagnosis was the death sentence he wanted. Statistically he had a 30–40 per cent chance of “beating the rap.” But deep down within him, in the psychic processes we call the unconscious, the “death instinct” had taken over.

One day he talked frankly to me about his death: “Dying is the best thing that can happen to me. Will you say a few words over me when I’m gone? Tell them I lived a rough life and didn’t amount to much.”

The ministry of a pastor to a terminally ill patient can be considered in two ways, as a person-to-person relationship and as a symbolic ministry.

Religion—which is for me centered in the Gospel of Christ—is best communicated in a face-to-face relationship, I feel. Religion that remains isolated in words, concepts, doctrines, strikes me as cold and distant. My ministry as a pastor, then, is to incarnate (imperfectly, to be sure) those theological truths of God’s love, understanding, and acceptance.

This person-to-person ministry includes the following personal expressions:

1. Listening. To listen well is hard work, but it is very important for a pastor. I listened to my brother’s review of his life. A bad-conduct discharge after fourteen years in the Navy, divorce, dissatisfaction, failure to be a father to his son—this was a part of what came pouring out.

2. Understanding. Could I sense what it was like to be in my brother’s shoes? Could I feel a part of the body reduced to eighty-five pounds, with an open wound in the abdomen? Could I sense something of the failure he had experienced? Could I begin to understand what it was like to work up to a fairly good job and then time after time end up at the bottom?

3. Acceptance. This is the crucial part of any relationship. Am I acceptable just as I am to the other person? I am opposed to pastors or religious groups who push toward conversion without showing acceptance of the person as he is.

The key to acceptance of my brother was my seeing myself in him. I could accept his prodigal ways because I too was a prodigal. Accepting myself became the key to accepting him.

A person who cannot accept himself and deal realistically with his own guilt is ill fitted for a pastoral ministry. How can he possibly accept others in their guilt, if he has never accepted his own?

4. Reality confrontation. At times during my brother’s illness he thought he was nearly well and was going home. My discussions with the doctors were enough to convince me that this would probably never happen. Although I too had trouble accepting this, time and time again I gently tried to bring this fact home to my brother. “I want you to get well, but you may die.” He always liked my frankness. He did not like “doctor talk” that brought about false hope.

5. Support. This is the reassurance, the encouragement, that each of us needs when the going is rough. Often my brother felt like screaming out between pain shots. It was more than he could stand, he thought. How would he make it through the lonely hours of the night? The doctors and nurses and I all tried to work together to provide this support he so desperately needed.

6. Hope. The hope I tried to communicate had two sides. One part of it was for now. I hoped he would recover and have a chance to live the satisfying life he had never lived before. I grasped at little improvements along the way—an increase in appetite, in alertness—and communicated this hope to my brother, the hope that he would live. This may seem like a paradox. How could I do this and yet also confront him with the fact of probable death? I don’t know. Somehow I managed to hold these two together.

The other hope I tried to communicate to my brother, a hope that I believe he accepted, was hope in a God who loved and cared for him.

The second part of the pastor’s ministry is the symbolic side. By this I mean that he is a representative of God, religion, the Church. What he represents is largely determined by persons to whom he ministers. It is up to the pastor to meet the patient at whatever image of God he holds and help him work through toward the concept of a God of love. Many people under the stress of illness see God as a stem punisher. The pastor needs to communicate a God of love, not only in what he says but also in what he does. His symbolic ministry includes anything he does to help the patient draw upon religious resources.

Prayer is the most common religious resource. My brother tended, at first, to look upon prayer as a way of stemming the tide of illness—almost as a form of magic. In another stage of his illness, he used it to help him face the pain, to hold himself together. The most touching way he used it was to offer his life, his soul, to God. His prayers here reflected acceptance of death and surrender to God.

The sensitive pastor prays selectively. He does not always pray with every patient, nor does he always pray the way a patient desires. His prayers should have elements of comfort, reality, and hope all bound together, if possible.

Scripture is another important resource. The pastor needs to select passages carefully to meet the need of the patient. My brother saw himself as the prodigal son of Luke 15. The comparison fit, and it helped him feel accepted by God.

The pastor should have selections of Scripture ready in his mind. Portions like the Twenty-third Psalm still bring comfort.—HAROLD R. NELSON, director of pastoral care, The Swedish Covenant Hospital, Chicago, Illinois.

Two hundred years ago John Newton had plumbed the depths of depravity, living as the slave of a prostitute. Into that situation God came with his love and mercy. His grace was applied to the heart of a wretched sinner, and John Newton was marvelously saved.

Some years later he wrote:

Amazing grace—how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

These are hard words for men to sing with any conviction these days. Moving in an aura of respectability, comparing themselves with many who are less fortunate, basking in the sophistication of this day of scientific achievement, and feeling very secure in a time of unprecedented affluence, many are inclined to think they are doing God a favor if they condescend to have their names placed on a church roll.

A friend of mine recently asked a businessman if he was saved. He admitted he was not. When asked how he could be saved, by grace or by works, he replied, “By grace.” “How do you get grace?” my friend asked. “By working for it,” was the reply.

How typical of the thinking of most of us! We talk about God’s grace, but down deep in our hearts we feel that we earn and merit salvation by being and doing good. We feel that we must have some part in our redemption from sin—provided, of course, we are even willing to admit we are sinners.

Grace cannot be earned. It is God’s free mercy conferred on unworthy sinners because of faith in what God’s Son has done for us. We need an abrupt awakening to the fact that there is nothing we can do to merit God’s grace. All we can do is accept it as his gift of love, and on the basis of Christ’s atoning work.

Basic to the whole problem of recognizing God’s grace for what it is is the necessity of recognizing sin for what it is. We are only too anxious and willing to gloss over the nature of sin that it is an offense against a holy God, an offense whose solution could be found only in the death and resurrection of the Son of God.

I recently read and pondered the first chapter of First John for hours. This was done from two perspectives: first, the authenticity of the message, and secondly, the marvel of God’s grace.

John begins by saying simply, “Christ was alive when the world began, yet I myself have seen Him with my own eyes and listened to Him speak. I have touched Him with my own hands. He is God’s Message of life. This One Who is Life from God has been shown to us and we guarantee that we have seen Him; I am speaking of Christ, Who is eternal Life. He was with the Father and then was shown to us. Again I say, we are telling you about what we ourselves have actually seen and heard, so that you may share the fellowship and the joys we have with the Father and with Jesus Christ His Son” (vss. 1–3, Living Letters).

Here is the basis of assurance, that the one in whom we believe has been clearly revealed as the divine Son of God and that John and others who wrote about him had personal contact with him.

Later in this chapter John faces the fact of sin in our hearts and outlines God’s plan of salvation. We see that it is all by grace.

Today we hear little about the necessity of confessing sins. Oh, there are prepared confessions that we glibly recite in a worship service, after which the minister states that our sins have been absolved. But this is neither confession of sin nor forgiveness of sin at a personal level, which involves a confrontation of the sin in our hearts and faith in the cleansing and forgiving power of Jesus Christ.

First of all, are we fooling ourselves and saying we have no sin? Many have done so, refusing to face up to the truth. Whether we care to admit it or not, we are rotten sinners, and the best things we do are as “filthy rags” in God’s sight.

John states the alternative to self-delusion: “But if we confess our sins to Him, He can be depended on to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from every wrong. And it is perfectly proper for God to do this for us because Christ died to wash away our sins” (vs. 9). Verse 8 tells us the nature of the divine detergent: “the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from every sin.”

Where, then, is there any place for human pride, boasting, or endeavor? It simply does not exist. Our salvation depends solely on the grace of God and is received by faith, and in no other way.

Only too often we regard sin as a trivial matter, something to be glossed over or ignored or, at worst, as a weakness. I know no better way to become aware of the enormity and consequences of sin than to realize that the price of redemption was nothing less than the death and resurrection of God’s Son.

Furthermore, God’s forgiveness in Christ is a matter of grace, not divine leniency. And this grace involves a forgiveness beyond the full comprehension of man, a forgiveness that makes us as though we had never sinned. That is grace.

Even though we Christians may fail miserably by falling again into sin, the grace of God is seen in our Lord’s advocacy in our behalf. That, too, is grace.

Not only is the penalty for sin taken by our Saviour; in God’s view, the sins are blotted out forever. That too is grace.

God’s forgiveness and cleansing carries with it no condition other than the requirement that we believe and accept what Christ has done on our behalf. That too is grace.

I write as one who has experienced the grace of God in marvelous ways. I have willfully sinned only to turn to him in sorrowful confession and then to realize that I was forgiven, that all was well, because of the efficacy of my Lord’s atonement. That is a conscious experiencing of God’s grace and of the release and comfort it gives to sinsick souls.

Why have songs of praise and thanksgiving for the grace of God become passe in many churches? Is it because we no longer understand the meaning of grace? In our sophisticated and self-sufficient age, are Christians oblivious to what God has done for them? Why do we no longer sing, “Jesus Paid It All, All to Him I Owe?,” or “Nothing but the Blood of Jesus?”

Corny? Theologically unacceptable? No longer relevant for our generation? No indeed.

Why fall for Satan’s lies? Let’s face up to it: But for the grace of God, all of us are lost and undone. Without his grace, none of us can hope to spend eternity with him.

It is amazing grace. Thank God for it.

L. NELSON BELL

No Studied Neglect

Each year on December 26 a friend of mine is given to surveying his ravaged household and addressing thus a wilting wife and family: “Just think, 364 more days and we go through the whole wretched business again.” For him it is a season of stocktaking, wound-licking, and shuddering masoch*stic memories.

I know what he means. In my own youthful circles we invariably had party games—an institution mystifying to strangers and totally disruptive of family life. There is, for example, no clutch of circ*mstance quite so fell as being required to pass half a matchbox from nose to nose while standing next to a man who has grown a beard for Christmas (go on, try it).

A clerical critic declares that Christmas is made an excuse for meretricious salesmanship, and adds that for a month before the feast (he was lucky) the cry is “Buy … Adeste, Fideles … Nylons for your lady … It came upon the midnight clear. What come, Mommy? Santa Claus, my darling.”

The aforementioned S.C. comes in for a clobbering from many quarters. Any child who believes in him, announced eminent psychiatrist Dr. Brock Chisholm two decades ago, “has had his ability to think permanently injured and will become the kind of man who will develop a sore back when there is a tough job to do, and refuse to think realistically when war threatens.” Punning apart, I do like that last clause. It has all sorts of interesting overtones for today.

It reminded me, moreover, of George Washington, who spoiled the Hessian Yuletide by crossing the Delaware and surprising their revels 192 December 25ths ago. He wouldn’t have caught napping the early New Englanders, who are reported as having worked steadily through 12.25.1620 in “studied neglect” of the day. About forty years later the General Court of Massachusetts decreed punishment for those who kept the season: “… anybody who is found observing, by abstinence from labor, feasting, or any other way, any such days as Christmas day, shall pay for every such offense five shillings.”

Alas, things evidently deteriorated after that, and in 1827 Bishop Case was constrained to write to his wife: “The devil has stolen from us … Christmas, the day of our spiritual redemption, and converted it into a day of worldly festivity.” The diabolical possession has continued to this day.

What to do? Next Christmas some intrepid dissentients are planning to cross the Delaware and astonish a few Hessians. Care to join us?

Speaking Of Tongues

With the publication of “The Confusion About Tongues” (Dec. 6), you may have touched off an emotion-charged issue similar to the George Wallace matter, but I commend you for it. It is about time we study the matter on the basis of what the Scripture says instead of the experience of some friend.

I would only add that the conduct of those who preach this experience as necessary for all Christians, usually supports Dr. Tuland’s contention that tongues is a sign of spiritual immaturity rather than spiritual maturity.

Grabill Missionary Church

Grabill, Ind.

It upsets me that Dr. Tuland seems to dismiss those experiences which are not acceptable to the mind. Has he ever been in love? How does his mind comprehend the “foolishness” of the Gospel? If I were to accept his criteria, I would probably be living a dull life. I get so sick of all this “well balanced” theology. It’s sterile. He ought to get out of his office and see that many people are liberated by tongues. It is beautiful!

Muskegon, Mich.

Dr. Tuland’s one-sided conclusions about the gift of speaking in tongues could almost lead a person to rebuke the Holy Spirit for giving anyone such a worthless and troublesome gift. However, I am restrained from doing this when I see that the Apostle Paul does list this gift along with the other wonderful gifts of the Spirit in 1 Cor. 12 and that he goes on to state that we should “earnestly desire the spiritual gifts” in 1 Cor. 14:1. When I add to this the fact that he thanks God for this gift in his own life in 1 Cor. 14:18, I begin to wonder whether much of the confusion about tongues might not be dispelled with some balanced positive teaching on the subject.

Bethel Lutheran Church of Burien

Seattle, Wash.

I am sorry that he felt in his approach he could discredit an experience of the Holy Spirit that has been and is so meaningful to thousands of us who too are God’s children. I sincerely question his scholarship on Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 14; also the authenticity of the attempt to judge this experience quite unlike Paul did who dealt with tongues experientially (1 Cor. 14:5, 18).

Yes, I speak in tongues daily in my devotions and occasionally in a group where the interpretation makes the gift of tongues coequal with the gift of prophecy (1 Cor. 14:5). We feel that both prophecy and tongues (with interpretation when necessary to be understood) are relevant to the needs of this hour. The depth of edification and inner strength derived in my own life and in the lives of countless others through tongues is too precious and too practical to be summarily dismissed. This experience is not only scriptural but proven in strengthening us in the inner man that we may be more effective witnesses of our Lord Jesus Christ to meet the needs of people.

President

Oral Roberts University

Tulsa, Okla.

“The Confusion About Tongues” seems to me the most lucid and honest treatment of this subject.… I believe that many thousands of Christians and pastors could well use this and help both those with the experience and those looking that way.

First Baptist Church

Aberdeen, Wash.

I think when this charismatic revival is sweeping the church that we ought to be more fair.… Mr. Tuland’s attitude of course has been the standard attitude of the major denominations for the past sixty years and they have missed much of the fire and zeal that they might have had if they had known all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Tongues may indeed be the least of the gifts, but we often have to be open to whatever gifts God has for us.

The Penn Hills Presbyterian Church

Verona, Pa.

The Study Predicament

You have done it again! The article by Dr. White entitled “Pastor’s Predicament—When to Study?” (Dec. 6) was a masterpiece. I am sure that it gave encouragement to not only me but thousands of other evangelical pastors caught in the organizational throes of the mechanics of modern church life.

Central Baptist Church

Gainesville, Ga.

From many sermons I have heard lately I am prompted to ask—Do they ever study? They seem to take their sermons from newspapers and magazines and put them in a clerical garb.

Oak Park, Ill.

With all his getting, a preacher must get the habit of thinking, the habit of allround thinking, of thinking fruitfully so as to follow truth up into its higher altitudes. Amid his varied activities he should steal daily into some nook of calm for intensive, concentrated, severe, independent thinking. It is thus that thoughts come into flower. It is thus that the Word of the Lord springs up within him and that he is so far ready to prophesy. Therefore, by diligent reading, research, study, and thought, he should prepare for the pulpit.…

There was never a great preacher who was not a great student. He may have missed college and seminary both, but he was a student. He may not have had any well-appointed “study” nor walls lined with costly volumes, nor rich study gown; nor elegant leisure for dawdling over many books, but if he was a great preacher—a useful preacher, he was a great student—a diligent student!

Minneapolis, Minn.

For This Time

One of my favorite columns in CHRISTIANITY TODAY is A Layman and His Faith by Dr. L. Nelson Bell.

In the December 6 issue he writes under the caption “Turmoil or Peace.” This article is especially relevant “for such a time as this.”

I especially like the concluding sentences.

Los Angeles, Calif.

Mr. Nixon’S Comeback

I appreciate your balanced and sound editorial appraisal of the awesome burdens facing Mr. Nixon (Nov. 22).…

Here in the liberal East … Hubert Humphrey amassed huge blocks of votes.… Barry Goldwater’s proposal to cut off the eastern corner of the nation and float it to sea has never sounded more appealing! Before it floats, however, I hope to flee to the banks of the Wabash with my files of CHRISTIANITY TODAY!

Mr. Nixon’s impressive comeback, together with the nine million Wallace votes constitutes a very definite mandate for moderate conservatism. But Mr. Nixon’s foes are numerous and he will need the fervent prayers of evangelicals who believe in the efficacy of prayer and divine blessing that he might restore national unity and govern wisely. God bless him.

Watertown, Mass.

The editorial on Mr. Nixon distressed me a great deal. I certainly agree that we should unite in supporting the President-elect; however, the article seemed to be somewhat biased. The author states that Mr. Nixon, ‘… for some reason or another …”, was not supported by minority groups during the campaign. It was quite evident to many that the Nixon-Agnew ticket made no attempt at encouraging minority groups in any way. Indeed the choice of Agnew and Strom Thurmond’s subsequent help in swinging most of the normally Democratic South probably gave the election to Nixon. The obsession evangelicals seem to have for Mr. Nixon and other Republicans is certainly not founded on the Christian ethics or principles of these candidates. As a Christian interested in doing all possible to implement programs for the poor and underprivileged I cannot comprehend or sympathize with the alignment many Christians seem to have with political conservatives.

Los Angeles, Calif.

Transmitting Life

Congratulations are due to you and to Dr. Henry for arranging the symposium on “the transmission of life” in your November 8 issue.

While some of the discussion about abortion was necessarily inconclusive, the firm stand on the matter of chastity as a non-option was a needed word to preacher and pew-warmer alike.

Chairman

Social Action Committee

Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec

Ottawa, Ont.

All of these articles are based on the Bible and on common sense. The first one goes back as far as Moses. But all of them speak of problems we, the people, face today.

New Orleans, La.

Professor Montgomery does well in calling attention to an alternative interpretation of Ex. 21:22–24 (Letters, Dec. 6). He perverts truth, however, by asserting that I follow David Mace, an English sociologist, “against virtually all serious exegetes.” On the contrary, measured by the weight of scholarly opinion Montgomery’s view has little support. The view advanced in my paper follows the traditional, normative interpretation of the passage as the following evidence confirms:

1. The translation presented in the paper has the support of the following ancient translations: LXX, Pesh*tta, Vulgate, Onkelos, and Targum Jonathan. Of the English translations I consulted it agrees with AV, RV (ASV), Rotherham, JPS, Moffatt, American, Basic Eng., RSV, Jerusalem, Berkeley, Torah (1962), Confraternity, and Amplified. To my knowledge the only translations that disagree are the Improved (1912) and Young’s Literal (a non-interpretative translation).

2. Commentators with whom I concur in my article are: Philo, Jarchi, Aben Ezra, Rashi, Maimonides, Lange (with translation of Charles M. Mead), Murphy, S. R. Driver, A. H. McNeile, Dummelow, Philip C. Johnson (in Wycliffe Bible Commentary), J. Edgar Park (in IB). Most recently John E. Huesman (The Jerome Bible Commentary, 1968) supports this view.

In addition, Montgomery is mistaken when he says: “The equality of mother and unborn child in Exodus 21 is upheld … by a classic Old Testament scholar such as the nineteenth-century Protestant Delitzsch.” In reality, Keil (not Delitzsch) is making a different point; namely, the child in question is not a fetus but a fully developed human being. Lange calls this interpretation “strange.” Obviously, Keil’s interpretation has nothing to do with Montgomery’s conclusion.

Chairman, Div. of Old Testament

Dallas Theological Seminary

Dallas, Tex.

Re: Prof. Montgomery’s criticism.…

Why hold on to the medically absurd interpretation of Exodus 21:22–24? The possibility of a fetus aborted by the shock of injury to its mother actually surviving seems too small for it to be a serious grammatical option. The ancient Assyrian text also quoted by Waltke shows far more familiarity with the medical facts than his modern critics when it presumes fetal death in such a situation.

Lubbock Bible Church

Lubbock, Tex.

Much time, ink, and mental energy is expended these days on the polarization in various church bodies between evangelism and social action. Some say there is really no question, since evangelism and social action are two sides of the same coin. They tell us the Church has concentrated too long on the vertical man-to-God relationship and is now beginning to catch up on the horizontal man-to-man relationship. So today the watchwords are Relevance and Involvement, and we are getting more excited over Lazarus in his poverty than over Dives on his way to hell. Some are for putting the robe on the prodigal while he is still feeding swine, killing the fatted calf for a generation still feeding on husks. They seem to have forgotten that the prodigal was rehabilitated after he returned to the Father.

But there is a true social involvement for every Christian, and it naturally derives from his commitment to Christ as Lord. My father was an old-fashioned Christian who probably never heard a sermon on the social implications of Christianity, but he worked hard for better roads, better schools, cleaner politics. He did not wave a placard and join a demonstration, but his religion was expressed in all his contacts. I often think of him when I hear people today talk as though nobody ever thought about a Christian’s obligations in society until they came along.

The most basic problem today, however, is not evangelism and/or social action. Neither of these will be any better than the people engaged in them. A sick church cannot help a sick world. The first item on the agenda now is repentance and renewal within the church. A healthy Christianity will issue in evangelism and a powerful impact on society. We are trying to propagate a weak, anemic Christianity. We have confused average Christians with normal Christians and have filled our churches with the average kind, subnormal and sickly. We must have healthy Christians, men so yielded to Christ and filled with the Spirit that there will be a mighty inflow of divine power that will overflow into every area of life. Only repentance and revival can revitalize our churches. Until that happens, we will have one group compassing sea and land to make more proselytes of the kind already too numerous and the other promoting a truncated social program under religious auspices. Neither evangelism nor social action will amount to much until there is a change in those trying to do them. Except we repent, we will continue to be split into evangelism and social-action camps, ranting at each other instead of admitting the needs we all have in common.

What transcends both evangelism and social involvement is the Spirit of God moving into and through yielded lives, a divine current that gives everything it touches either a charge or a shock. We might as well try to run a factory on a flashlight battery as to undertake the mission of the Church on mere human energy and enthusiasm. Like a huge electric sign with letters “out” or quivering because of poor connections, our witness today is weak, and the world cannot read our message.

Something might happen if Christians stopped wrangling and turned to God in holy desperation. I do not mean a formal day of prayer arranged by a committee, with maybe the mayor on hand to make a speech. What is needed might happen if some of our august conventions could forget the order of business long enough to attend to what is really our most important business just now and try God’s formula—humbling ourselves, praying, seeking his face, and turning from our wicked ways. We quote that verse often, but somehow we don’t get around to doing what it says.

We seem to have the idea that all we need to do is start a drive, put on a kickoff supper, make a few rousing speeches, flex our muscles, and plunge into an evangelistic crusade or a social program. But it is not as simple as that. The average church member today is not ready for evangelism, witnessing, social involvement, or any other enterprise. There must be a radical inner renewal before we are ready to do the Lord’s work. Like Ahimaaz after the death of Absalom, we want to run before we are ready. But if we do, we will find on arrival that we, like Ahimaaz, have no tidings and can report only a tumult. Isaiah was not ready to say “Here am I” until he had first said “Woe is me!” Such a confrontation with a holy God is the first primary need in the Church today. Except we repent, we shall all perish.

To serve on a committee in a day obsessed with communication, one must use the right words or he will make the tragic mistake of communicating that he has nothing to communicate.

To begin with, one should understand what committeemanship is all about. It has been said that a camel is a horse put together by a committee. Generally, when people do not know what to do about something they appoint a committee. The committee can take the problem, analyze it, theorize about it, dilute it, alter it, philosophize a bit, and then come up with a camel.

Now, there may be nothing wrong with this, for perhaps a camel is what was intended in the first place. Maybe the committee could have put together a good horse—a Trojan Horse that could unlock all sorts of gates no one really wanted unlocked, or a war steed that required firm, decisive action, or a workhorse that demanded really getting a down-to-earth job done. But perhaps none of these was really wanted; what was wanted was a camel. Camels are far more exotic; they suggest far-away and therefore interesting places, refreshing oases in romantic deserts, Arab tents in purple shadows. The committee that puts together a camel may well have done its job.

How does one function on a committee today? The basic requirement is to use correct committee terminology. A member who does not do this will find he has little to say. He certainly will not understand the other members. And when his term expires, he will be sloughed off and replaced by someone more involved and relevant.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. The following is a guide to proper terminology for the aspiring committeemen. Words are arranged by frequency of usage and importance.

Communication. This is a must word, an absolutely must word. It has been used so much that no one has a very clear idea of what it means, but no matter. You can talk about communication as if you understood it Lord put his own life powers and the powers of the world around him into captivity to the will of the Father. He knew fully what he did: “The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me” (John 5:36; 9:4).

The uneasy tension between man’s lower self and his higher self will not be cured by chemical means alone, though we welcome further knowledge about man’s brain and his tendencies. Man needs transformation of his inner life. In Christ this redemption is provided by God, not only through the death of the Cross but also in the perfection of our Lord’s normative humanity. To be truly spiritual involves the capacity to decide rightly. Put into common language, it means knowing fully what one is doing.

What this calls for is an increase of our scientific knowledge of the world as well as the redemption and redirection of our capacities and interests in accordance with God’s self-revelation in Christ.

Iam a man and count nothing human as indifferent to me, said the ancient Roman playwright Terrence. What do I as a man assert myself to be? For the Christian, what is man under God? The widely varying answers to these questions are strongly influenced by three major Western traditions.

First, systems of Idealism maintain that the universe is pervaded by mind or is ultimately of the nature of mind. Modern Idealism can no longer (except as expressed in cults like Christian Science) denigrate the physical world and the body. It is notable, however, that theology of the idealistic type, like that of Heidegger and Tillich, questions the ultimate value of personality. It is viewed as ephemeral, or as part of a higher reality, or as a means to some higher end. However, non-personal or supra-personal language, such as the assertion that God is the Ground of our Being, is neither higher nor more meaningful than personal language. It is simply impersonal anthropomorphic language. The idealist’s stress on spirit and value should not blind us to his rejection of the personal God and of the ultimate value of created persons, who, Scripture tells us, can enjoy personal knowledge of the Father and the Son (John 17:20–26).

More important has been Naturalism’s shaping of modern man’s view of himself. Behaviorists claim that everything about anything can be accounted for on the horizontal plane by natural processes, and that only this approach can provide an acceptable view of man in the scientific age. They have pressed the scientific method into defending the questionable premise that stimulus and response can adequately account for all human activity and human nature. Humanists like Arthur Koestler and J. Bronowski protest this reduction of humanity to the conditioned response. They claim that as creative agent man in all his activities shows himself to be more than a causally determined creature.

The critical point for modern man is whether personality involves for essential human nature more than our discussing the function and dissolution of the body.

Third, as based upon the biblical revelation, the Christian doctrine of creation implies that ultimate reality is of the nature of personal life and personal relations (Gen. 1:26). There is an important relation between the Christian doctrine of creation and the Christian view of personality. Neither the personal life of God nor the personal lives of human beings are transient modes in which a more real and enduring system of psychological patterns expresses itself.

From texts like Genesis 1–2; Psalm 8, and Psalm 139:13–16 we learn that man is the goal of the divine creative activity and the center of God’s interest. A noteworthy duality appears in the biblical teaching: (a) Man is aware of his biological origin; he is fashioned from the dust of the earth (Gen. 2:7; 3:19; Job 34:15; Ps. 103:14; Eccl. 12:7). (b) Man is also made aware of his uniqueness in relation to God his maker within the context of the biblical revelation (Rom. 1:19–23); he is fashioned in the image of God (Gen. 1:26, 27; 2:7).

Given man’s divine origin, what is his nature? General agreement exists among theologians on the meaning of biblical terms. The Hebrew term nephesh denotes chiefly “life-principle” of the body (Lev. 17:14). In the case of man it also signifies self-conscious life or a living personal being (Gen. 2:7; cf. Job 16:4; Isa. 1:14). Ruach is used for spirit or breath of life (Gen. 6:17; 7:15) and embraces the entire range of human and divine powers. Corresponding terms in Greek are psyche (soul) and pneuma (spirit), though argument continues on whether these are synonyms or two distinguishable yet vitally related aspects of the person. Basar in Hebrew and sarx in Greek identify the flesh. The body and its parts are instruments of the self, denoted by the Hebrew and Greek pronouns ’ni, ’noki, and ego. Spirit as a constituent element of personality occurs in Job 32:8; First Samuel 16:14 and Psalm 104:4. In both Testaments the heart is the center of self-conscious life and psychical activity (cf. Ps. 51; Rom. 1:9, 10) and is equivalent to the mind or self. Man’s uniqueness centers in his being created in the image (selem) and likeness (demuth) of God. Thus seen, man is a self-conscious spiritual reality.

From the biblical data we infer two points. First, each man is a personal being who enjoys a self-conscious existence and can act with purpose. He is a thinking, feeling, willing creature. We cannot define man either by attributing to him an undifferentiated unity or by reducing the distinctions within his nature to one or another of them; but neither dare we consider these distinctions as divisions of his nature. Second, the spiritual reality of the self implies a psychical realm that transcends the physical realm and includes God and spirits. (A parallel view is seen in the duality of mind and brain that some recent neurological opinion allows.)

God is Creater of both body and mind and has sanctified both. The doctrine of the resurrection shows the value Christian faith places on the body. The doctrine of the Christian life confirms this, for the physical life of man is the material out of which the spiritual life in Christ is built.

It may be helpful to consider a fourfold way of understanding human nature: Man is a self, an intelligent self, a valuing self, and a purposing self.

Man Is A Self

I take the self to be a non-reducible reality that we intuitively know ourselves and other selves to be. A person is not simply a unity of conscious experiences; he is the subject of that unity. This the pronoun “I” expresses as a commonplace of language.

Scientific study of the human brain tempts some to reduce mind to functions of the brain and the person to functions of the body. Neurologists have shown that, physiologically, thinking is based upon the patterned transfer of electro-chemical energy in the cerebral cortex and other related regions of the brain.

From his description of the physiological process, Lord Walter Russell Brain has concluded that the only necessary condition for the awareness of sense-data is a physio-chemical event in the cerebral cortex, and that “mind is the function by which the living organism reacts to its environment” (Science and Man). He is hopeful that new knowledge will be able to explain mental activity in terms of physics and chemistry.

Contemporary neurological descriptions of perception and thinking do not point to any single viewpoint. More important, however, neither in language nor in the results of their research do scientists and philosophers seem able to escape the problem of the mystery of human selfhood.

Several observations are pertinent: First, the self intrudes into language patterns, not simply out of habit, but because it is impossible to speak without disclosing the reality of one’s personality. Lord Brain can say, “What I have been giving you is a scientific account of what goes on in the nervous system when we see something” (Science and Man; italics mine). The intrusion is not simply verbal but logical; indeed, the sense would vanish without the reality of the self. A. J. Ayer, who is a destructive critic of Christian faith, and who makes the personal subject literally identical with that to which we also attribute physical properties, nevertheless almost wonderingly concedes that the only way to describe this subject that unifies things separated in time is to call it a person. He adds, “These particular experiences can then be identified as the experiences of the person whose body it is” (The Concept of the Person; italics mine).

Second, the term “subject” is sometimes used in more than one way. For example, when Lord Brain speaks of the “cerebral cortex of the subject,” by “subject” he means the creature of scientific study; but when he says “perceived by the subject,” he means perceived by the conscious person or discrete personal reality. A seldom noticed comment of his is apropos: Personality comprises a pattern like other energy patterns in nature, but in some mysterious way it possesses a life of its own.

Artificial electric stimulation of certain cortical areas, which produces experiences of the appropriate sense-data and motor responses, has been said to show that mind and personality can be accounted for solely on the basis of electro-chemical discharges in the brain. However, Wilder Penfield, neurosurgeon in Montreal, has gathered important qualifying data. While it is true that the surgeon can stimulate arm movement, during an experiment Penfield’s patient remarked, “I didn’t do it. You made me do it.” The patient attempted to hold his moving hand with his other hand. Thus behind the two brain hemispheres were two controls: the electrode and the patient’s mind.

Intelligent Self

Rationalism is obviously not the basis of the biblical revelation, but this must not obscure the truth that the biblical message is everywhere a rational appeal to intelligent beings who are capable of grasping its message. Such is the biblical indictment of idolatry (1 Ki. 18:27; Isa. 44:14–20). Important parallel appeals to understanding occur commonly in Scripture (Prov. 1:2–5; Isa. 1:3; Luke 5:23; 12:56, 57; Acts 24:25; Heb. 3:4). Paul’s attack upon the wisdom of the world (1 Cor. 1–2) is in no sense an attack upon intelligence; its subject is the abuse of reason.

Behaviorists vigorously oppose philosophical rationalism, but this attitude spills over into a denigration of intelligence that is expressed in highly rationalistic ways. Nevertheless, most naturalists hold to the primary role of intelligence for man’s life today and in the future, and thereby concede a creative role to mind and will.

Since intelligence is the power of rational thought, all our definitions of it are inevitably circular. Also, we are becoming increasingly aware of how complicated the thinking process is. Intelligence is not solely cold deductive reasoning but a highly fluid and imaginative activity. Insights often occur like flashes, or breakthroughs of habitual forms of thought. Creative imagination is not flight into fantasy but rationally guided exploration.

To speak of intelligence as man’s crown does not deify reason. As a thinking being, man is concerned not only with the power of rational thought, or with new discovery, but also with morally controlled insights into how to use what he discovers. Scientific progress depends upon moral commitment to truth. Social progress depends upon moral commitment to righteousness.

Moral Self

Today man is viewed ethologically in terms of mores, not morals. But a condition of personal life is awareness of the difference between right and wrong and some commitment to righteousness. There is a moral basis to life beyond mores (Rom. 1:18, 19).

Modern man has lost faith in God partly because he has lost faith in conscience. We have learned how to manipulate conscience by conditioning, but we have lost sight of the truth that the ultimate sanction for conduct is a righteousness unto the Lord. If all standards of conduct are relative, can anything anyone ever does be wrong? Is justice, as Thrasymachus said, the interest of the stronger? Is a society conceivable in which it is always better to do wrong than right? Can we not draw a moral inference from such ostensibly a-moral modern language as “a-social” or “anti-social,” which often really mean “wrong”? If intelligence and valuation are simply tools for satisfying creaturely needs, can love and altruistic behavior ever arise?

No modern redefinition of “good” and “evil” can take away the fundamental realities they stand for. A sense of right and wrong is indispensable to being human and to maintaining order in society. The moral law, without which human spiritual life is impossible, is God’s law, not man’s (Rom. 3:19, 20; 7:7–12).

Purposing Self

As an individual personal reality, man is capable of conscious, free, purposeful action. This action makes use of both the dependability and the contingency we observe in the world order. Man’s actions register the use of qualified freedom, but for the Christian they point to perfect freedom when man’s acts will be under the control of a redeemed intelligence that is morally and spiritually oriented (John 8:34–36; Heb. 10:7).

In his novel Walden Two, B. F. Skinner develops the theme of a behaviorist utopia. The mythical community, set in the American Northeast, furnishes for its inhabitants a completely controlled environment. Thoughts, habits, needs—everything is determined and provided for them. Individual initiative is regarded as harmful. Skinner looks forward to the creation of a society where the idea of freedom will be only a bad dream. He aims to control and predict all human behavior just as we concontrol and predict natural phenomena.

But do not all sane men assume that they can control or modify their actions by choosing to do so? We have, as Percy W. Bridgman says, “a feeling in our bones that we know what we are doing.” “We disregard determinism when dealing with ourselves; we have to disregard it also, within reason, in our everyday contacts with our fellows (The Way Things Are). Personal life spiritually qualified has the capacity for purposeful, creative activity, which goes beyond sheer intellectual brilliance to include a feeling for fife.

To spiritual men, the world becomes increasingly transparent. In our Lord’s fife we note his conscious purpose, to do the Father’s will: “Neither came I of myself, but he sent me” (John 8:42; 7:28, 29). This purpose issued from an inner core of righteousness, where knowledge of the will of God and positive response to that will united: “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work” (John 4:34). Our thoroughly and thus mystify and impress the committee. Use this word frequently.

Dialogue. Another must word. Anyone who does not use it often is openly admitting a fondness for mere monologue. Two Greek words originally made it up, but all that etymological business is out. Today it generally seems to mean two or more people voicing opinions about things that none of them understands, exploring vague concepts and confusing words, and then going away feeling they have really come to grips with the issues. For variation, try “dialogical involvement” or “dialogical listening.”

Renewal. You must say a lot about the “renewal of the Church” if you are going to make any headway in ecclesiastical circles today. Other generations talked about “revival,” but that word is out; be sure not to use it. The two words are similar, except that “revival” demanded some personal change and “renewal” does not. “Renewal” generally means changing the things in the life of the Church that I do not like in the way I think they should be changed.

Institutional Church. This is what always needs renewing. The term refers to the “they” in the life of the church, those people way over there or way up there who somehow run things without asking the rest of us.

Grass Roots. This very useful term contrasts with “institutional church.” It refers to that place or position where I am now, which no one but those who agree with me can possibly understand.

Involvement and Concern. When you have nothing to say you can bring the committee to attention with a firm assertion that “what we really need is concern,” or “there is a great need today for honest involvement.” No one can disagree. Use these words so as to imply that you yourself are already “concerned” or “involved.” Those on the other side of the question will quickly understand that they are not: this is a good beginning toward building at least a hump on the camel.

Ecumenical and Ecumenism. (Be sure to pronounce the latter word to rhyme with “humanism.” Practice saying it before the committee meets so that it will roll off your tongue as though you used it many times each day.) These words have many meanings, but generally they refer to anything that has to do with all the other churches; this takes away the need for local action or immediate responsibility. These are highly pragmatic terms.

Existential. This has to do, simply enough, with the philosophy of the importance of existing right now without worrying about the future or the past. Now the philosophers who talked about the “existential moment” may have had a little more in mind than this, but who understands existential philosophy? Since no one really reads Kierkegaard, you are on perfectly safe ground in using this impressive word.

Relevant. Everyone needs to be “relevant.” What this means is being interested only in things that are important. These are the things that are relevant. You can easily imply that the other person’s ideas are simply not; indeed, you can bat down all sorts of things by calling them “not relevant” in a committee meeting.

Awareness. Others gain “awareness” when they finally see things as I see them; if they don’t, then they simply cannot “relate” (another very useful word).

In Depth. At some point suggest that the committee turn to studying the matter “in depth.” This implies that all that has been said up until then is quite shallow, and that what you are about to say has about it the wisdom of Solomon.

Theologize. This is the religious equivalent of philosophize. It simply means to talk about religious things in a pleasant and theoretical way. It is quite all right to be irrelevant as long as you call your irrelevancy “theologizing.”

Affluent. Use “we” with this word to show that you are part of the group. We who are affluent should, as a group, do a little for the others to show them that we are aware that they do not have as much as we do.

Authentic Person. Use this phrase to imply that you are one, and that anyone who questions you is not. This is in a way the old “emperor’s clothes” technique, in that you suggest that all who do not see the point, or who disagree, are really not worthy of their office, or of a place on the committee, and are not authentic persons.

There is one alternative to all this. That is the very drastic one of allowing Jesus Christ to possess our hearts and lives in such a way that we will be his own and he will be the Lord of life. From such a revolutionary basis as this, we can then attack the problems of our age. But who wants to try such a radical step? It would involve dialogue with God, and who really listens to him? He isn’t even on the committee.—JACK and KARIN RAMSAY, Covenant Presbyterian Church, Carrollton, Texas.

When we read the story of the phenomenal expansion of the early Church, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, we are tempted to assume that somehow conditions were easier then than now. This is a comfortable assumption, for it helps to excuse our complacency and failure, but it will not stand up to historical scrutiny. The world of the first and second centuries was as full of rivals to Christianity as is the world of the twentieth century; this we can prove, both from the pages of the New Testament and from the writings of contemporary historians. Not only so, but many of the rivals were surprisingly similar to their modern counterparts, especially in Asia today. This disposes of a second error—the error of thinking that, though conditions may not have been easier in the first century, they were so different from ours that any comparison is useless. Differences there certainly are, especially in communication and travel; but in both these areas the changes greatly facilitate the spread of the Gospel in our day.

The major obstacles that the early Christians faced as they preached the good news were various religions, philosophies, and currents of thought that competed with their message. Some of the following information on these is drawn from non-biblical writers; yet the careful reader of the Bible will be able to see clear evidence for most of them in Scripture itself.

First of the rivals to Christianity was Judaism, a noble monotheism with a high ethical system, a sacred book, a dignified worship, and a long and proud history. Judaism as a religious system had almost everything—except a Saviour, and a faith that justified. Whatever might be said of Judaism in the high flowering of Old Testament days, by New Testament times the Jewish hope of salvation was largely this-worldly and nationalistic, while the Messianic hope was the hope of a holy war on unbelievers. In religious circles (as can be seen from the autobiography of the Pharisee Saul), the Law had become an intolerable, crushing burden. Whatever the experience of Abraham had been, to his descendants the only way to salvation seemed to lie in a careful attention to the minutiae of the Law.

Misunderstood in this way, Judaism could hardly be distinguished as a religious system from many of the non-Christian religions we know today. Individual salvation was won by an accumulation of self-acquired merits. Even alms-giving and prayer thus became means to an end. The beggar presented an opportunity for the rich man to show his charity and so win merit, not an opportunity to demonstrate the love of God. Man was using his fellow man selfishly, as a means to his own salvation; this was no longer the warm faith of Deuteronomy, or the broken heart of Hosea, or the pleading of Jeremiah. Even the passionate prayers of the Psalmist had become the complex anthems of Levitical guilds of temple-singers, beautifully rendered by immaculately robed choirs at great liturgical occasions in the Temple of Jerusalem. Combined with external beauty of worship was an unreality at the heart. Anna and Simeon might worship in the Temple, but so did the greedy Annas and Caiaphas, while the Temple was also the stronghold of the unbelieving Sadducean priestly aristocracy. So strongly did some pietistic Jewish sects (like the Essenes, not mentioned in the Bible) feel this that they no longer worshipped in the Temple, though they were impeccably orthodox in other ways.

The other less lovely aspect of Judaism in the first century was its strongly nationalistic and ethnological flavor. A Jew was to be a Jew not only by blood but also by religion. For a Jew to leave the religion of his fathers was regarded as unpatriotic treachery, as well as folly; where else could they find Law and Temple to compare with Israel’s? If we look at the Epistle to the Hebrews, we see something of subtle pull backwards to which every Hebrew convert was subjected. And if we read the life of Paul, we glimpse the virulence with which the Jews resisted Christian preaching either to their members or to the converts they had gained from non-Jewish people round about. Converts or half-converts Israel had in plenty, principally those attracted by her pure monotheism and noble ethics (though the demand for circumcision and observance of food laws usually kept such converts from entering fully into the family of Israel). Stephen’s speech in Jerusalem and Paul’s sermon at Pisidian Antioch are good examples of the early Christians’ approach to the Jews. Judaism caused many difficulties for the early Church, and Stephen was not the only early martyr who gave his life to win the Jews to Christ.

Besides orthodox Judaism, there were also a swarm of heretical Jewish sects, well known to us from secular history and represented in the Bible by Bar Jesus, the Jew of Cyprus, and Sceva’s sons, the wandering exorcists of Acts. These were exciting but unstable amalgams of Jewish truth and Gentile error, and provide a very close parallel to sub-Christian cults of many lands today (Mormons, Christian Science, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the like). The chief danger to the Church was that such sects confused the issue. The bitterest pill to swallow was that orthodox Judaism classed “the Galileans” or “the Nazarenes” as just another such disreputable sect. Protestants today who find themselves classed by a government with Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons may be comforted to know that the early Church tasted this indignity to the full, and bore it patiently. But these sects that rivaled Christianity did not martyr Christian missionaries; to that extent at least they were harmless foes.

ONE RARE, UNANALTTICAL, AND MERRY DAY

One rare, unanalytical, and merry day,

Untidy wildflower blots, crimson clover, all

Conspire to mask.…

O, do not ask

The typical unsolvable

Cadaverous questions.… One bold day can heal

Awhile, or, well, at least allay.

The graybeards know

It’s fatuous; but go

And let the scorner scorn

From his numb seat—

And go to greet,

Grandly infantile, what now’s new born,

And see the given glow

One rare, unanalytical, and merry day!

HENRY HUBERT HUTTO

If the disciples of John the Baptist are to be numbered among this group (as the Essenes certainly are), then many such “sectaries” later became converts to Christianity, as we see in the New Testament. Perhaps it is not unfair, from the Jewish point of view at least, to class the Samaritan religion among these sects, though the Samaritans would have protested strenuously. This religion became a seed-bed for Christianity, as we can see both from the recorded visit of Christ to a Samaritan village and from the missionary activity of Philip in Samaria, recorded in Acts. Many leaders like Apollos came from such groups; and Justin Martyr, one of the earliest Christian thinkers, was a man of Samaria. These groups were fertile ground for Christian witness.

There is a danger of course, that such converts will introduce into Christianity the thought-patterns and morals of the old cults. The problem is one that is familiar to many missionaries today.

If Judaism was a proud monotheism, the religions of Greece and Rome were proud polytheisms. Polytheism was seen there at its most brilliant point, supported by all the art and literature of the ancient classical culture, where there was nothing that was not also religious. A city like Athens was the supreme expression of the spirit of paganism; but Paul speaks nothing of the faded glories of her art and architecture. To him, Athens was a city full of idols, and his heart burned within him. The numerous temples might indeed show a people interested in religions, but the one thing that gave Paul hope was a little altar in a forgotten corner, dedicated to the Unknown God. This became the focus of his preaching.

This older polytheism was a spent force in the first century. No matter how hard later Roman emperors tried to revive it, it was never a serious rival to Christianity, except in the hands of a few fanatics. A cynical historian has said that, to the populace, all religions were equally true; to the philosopher, all were equally false; to the politician, all were equally useful. Even this attitude has parallels in many of our Asian countries, where the older religions have become simply part of the culture, no longer commanding the spiritual allegiance of the younger generation, especially students. True, the pagan priest, the old-fashioned Greek, and the Roman aristocrat administrator were often bitter enemies of the new Christian faith; but this was mostly because they resented its novelty or its disruptive nature. Like all conservatives, they hated and distrusted anything new and foreign. Many of us today have known the sting of having our evangelists classed with Communist agitators as disturbers of the peace, those who shatter the established order. Paul’s preaching progress across the Mediterranean world was marked by a string of riots that must have been the despair of local police authorities, though no one tried more strenuously than he to avoid such conflict. While we in the East today may suffer for preaching a so-called Western religion, Paul suffered for preaching an Eastern faith in the West. The court case against Paul at Philippi is a good example of this charge.

Even if the official polytheisms were not a dangerous foe, local paganism could be virulent in its opposition, as we can see from the story in Acts of the riots at Ephesus. Artemis of Ephesus was just one manifestation of the great Oriental mother-goddess, who had been worshiped at Ephesus long before the Greeks came and is still worshiped in many parts of Asia. This indeed was a fertility cult, which originally had nothing to do with the worship of the staid Greek goddess whose name was borrowed. But while in many ways the riot at Ephesus was typical of the reactions of an ignorant and fanatical mob, the Bible makes it clear that the root of the opposition was economic; the guild of silversmiths felt their whole livelihood was at stake. Luke’s dry sense of humor is evident in this passage, where religious sentiments are mixed with economic considerations. Vested interests in Ephesus were concerned to keep heathen religions alive, whether as a tourist attraction or as a simple means of livelihood; no man willingly breaks his own rice bowl. As late as the time of Pliny, governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor early in the second century, we learn that the market for sacrificial animal victims, and the fodder to feed them, had dropped alarmingly because of the spread of Christianity. Pliny himself was a Roman noble; if he condescended to punish these Christian upstarts, it is because they stubbornly refused to obey imperial decrees, and because they seemed a potential danger as a virtual secret society. But the numerous anonymous accusations against Christians that Pliny received (and on which he refused to act) probably had an economic basis.

Exactly the same could be said for the persecution at Philippi. As Luke drily observes, when the owners of a demon-possessed girl found they could no longer make any money from her fortune-telling, they opposed Paul bitterly. Naturally they would not admit this as the reason. They attacked him on purely patriotic and nationalistic grounds, which sounded far better in court. This sort of economic motivation, concealed behind high-sounding motives, is only too familiar to us, and we should be encouraged to see how in the early Church, it only contributed to the spread of the Gospel.

More serious was the opposition of the philosophy that was the true religion of the more thoughtful section of the ancient world. If the Jews looked for a sign, the Greeks were forever hunting for wisdom and rational consistency. Face to face with this, Christianity preached a Christ who died on the Cross, which was weakness to the Jew and utter folly to the Greek philosopher. Paul’s brush with the Epicureans and Stoics at Athens is well known, though they were only the tattered remnants of the famous schools of the past, for by Paul’s day most of the old creative philosophical schools were dead.

Pessimism and nihilism were the prevailing tones of the philosophy of the first century, as is true among many young people today. Where philosophy escaped these dangers, it did so because neo-Platonism, with its strange blend of philosophy, religion, and mysticism, had taken over.

But whatever his system, constructive or destructive or mystical, the philosopher despised Christianity as a religion of brainless slaves and women, the uneducated and the unreflecting. To him, the idea of bringing his thought-life into obedience to Christ was a scandal, a stumbling block, an intellectual affront. This attitude we know well in Asian universities today, where young men and women, emancipated from the superstitions and religions of their ancestors, regard Christianity as a new religious bondage to be avoided at all costs. True, as Paul reminds us, there is a wisdom, an intellectual consistency, in the Cross; indeed, to the Christian, Christ is the very personification of God’s wisdom. But this makes sense only to the man who has made the initial surrender of faith; otherwise the Cross remains folly.

This attack of the philosophers the Christian Church could not avoid; it had to be met head-on, since it involved the fundamental nature of the Gospel. In Paul’s speech at Athens we can see how the infant Church grappled with this problem, as in his speech at Lycaonia we see how the churches preached the Gospel in simpler terms understandable to local pagans. But, except for the few people whose hearts the Spirit touched at Athens, it was in vain; at the mention of resurrection and judgment, the philosophers would no longer even give Paul a hearing.

One of the great struggles of the Church in the next few centuries was to meet and beat the pagan philosophers on their own ground. This movement was represented by the apologists (culminating in Origen, the greatest of them all) who attempted to make Christianity intellectually acceptable to the philosophical and educated world of their day. To the degree that this “dialogue” was a clarification of misunderstandings, and an expression of Christian truth in language understood by their opponents, it was doubtless good. When it is seen as an attempt to make Christianity intellectually respectable, however, opinions will differ as to its wisdom and success. A fair summary of the position of the intellectuals is found in one sentence scrawled on a Roman wall. It shows a crude caricature of a figure with an ass’s head, nailed to a cross; underneath is the inscription, “Alexamenes worships his god.” This helps to explain why an emperor who was as great a philosopher as Marcus Aurelius was also a persecutor of the Church. Tolerant in most respects, he was bitterly intolerant of what he considered the intolerance of Christianity, with the exclusive nature of its claims. To him, Christianity was intellectual suicide; to the Christian, it is the death to self that leads to new life in Christ, for the intellect as for every other part of the human personality.

Top ecumenical planners from the Vatican and the World Council of Churches conferred once again at Rome December 1–5 with enough straws in the wind to thatch at least a modest common dwelling. One topic was plans for a WCC-Vatican peace consultation at Bossey, Switzerland, next June. Another possibility: Vatican membership in the WCC.

Just before the meeting opened, a special commission of cardinals called for some strategic rewriting of Holland’s liberal, Protestantized “New Catechism.” And at his general audience on the 4th, Pope Paul VI uttered one of his strongest statements against those within the Roman fold who question church traditions. “When it comes to its own teaching,” he vowed, “the Church is intransigent and dogmatic—at any cost.”

Yet the very ferment that troubles the Vatican’s soul could, in a back-door way, further the ecumenical cause, as Catholicism inches toward the loose authority, doctrinal variety, and secular involvement that have characterized recent Protestant history.

Fueling speculation was the Geneva meeting of leaders from the world’s major Protestant confessional groups¹Lutheran World Federation, Anglican Communion, World Alliance of Reformed Churches, Baptist World Alliance, World Methodist Council, International Congregational Council, World Convention of Churches of Christ (Disciples), Friends World Committee, International Conference of Old Catholic Bishops, Orthodox Patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow, and the Salvation Army. The 1968 meeting also drew observers from the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Reformed Ecumenical Synod, and the Mennonites may be joining. late last month. The loosely-organized Conference of Secretaries of World Confessional Families has met annually since 1957. But guest Father Jerome Hamer of the Vatican Christian-unity secretariat made this year’s session memorable with a strong hint that the Roman Catholic Church may be its next member.

“The Roman Catholic Church is a church, it is a family, it is a people. It can be considered a world confessional family,” he said, and conferees invited Rome to join the conference—with the same status as other communions. The Catholic question was high on the agenda generally, and Hamer offered a thorough review of burgeoning talks with Protestant groups around the world.

Echoing Uppsala, World Council of Churches Faith and Order director Lukas Vischer described current ecumenism as preparation for a “truly ecumenical council of the whole of Christianity,” and urged the confessional officials to work more closely with the WCC. World Council Secretary Eugene Carson Blake—who heads the WCC’s twice-a-year talks with the Vatican unity agency—said the Church needs a “united voice in international affairs.”

WCC staffer Tatiana Athanasiadis said recently in the WCC press service that Catholic membership in the WCC was considered a “premature” question only a matter of months ago, but not since Uppsala. He finds no legal or theological “obstacles” to membership, but says there may be “practical and psychological” ones. The most obvious is the WCC’s proportionate representation based on membership, which would give Catholics half the chairs in administrative offices. Athanasiadis says the WCC view is that “viable solutions can be found only if both sides are willing to exercise considerable imagination.”

In the July issue of the WCC’s Ecumenical Review, Vischer cautiously urged further talks on the matter, and Father Thomas Stransky of the Vatican secretariat said Catholics may feel “uncomfortable” amid the predominant “Protestant thought-patterns” in the World Council.

Meanwhile, the Vatican secretariat has been polling the national hierarchies on ideas for common action with non-Catholics, based on proposals from a meeting with Anglicans earlier this year. Comments were generally favorable except on sharing of churches and seminary education. Officials said several U. S. experiments in the latter direction are permissible as long as they stop short of cross-registration.

CHRISTIAN PEACE CONFERENCE SPLIT

The Prague-based Christian Peace Conference is confronting its most serious crisis because member churches take opposite sides over Soviet interference in Czechoslovak affairs. The rift within CPC is as big as the East-West rift used to be, says President Josef Hromádka.

After the Prague occupation, CPC executives met behind closed doors in Paris and issued a statement that all but covered up differences. But during a recent trip to Geneva, Hromádka admitted CPC’s future is in danger.

The CPC office had protested “the injustice of the invasion” but Russian Patriarch Alexei rebuked the statement, said staffers had no right to issue it, and wants the executive committee to condemn them.

Meanwhile the World Council of Churches is also in hot water for criticizing the Soviet action. East Germany’s Professor Gerhard Bassarak said that Eugene Carson Blake acted “irresponsibly” and that it’s time to face the “problem of anti-Communism” within the WCC.

JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN

Ecclesiastical Espionage?

A designer of “urban church models” on the New York City staff of a major denomination says the “Christological model” has no relevance to today’s church.

The official, wary of being quoted by name because of church reaction, made the comments to a CHRISTIANITY TODAY reporter at a recent black-power meeting. He admits he is working “from the inside for the destruction of the church … in order to resurrect something better. Traditional theological and institutional forms don’t work anymore.”

In response to a question, he said, “A personal relationship with Christ never occurred to me,” but rebounded with, “I’ve heard those terms all my life and they are meaningless to me. I see no relevance of a personal relationship to Christ in a world filled with systems and structures.”

“I never go to church except when I preach,” he said. “Preaching does something to me. I’m pretty good with the spoken word.… I don’t think that’s hypocritical, do you?”

Chastising An Orthodox Critic

A scholarly Greek Orthodox priest was found guilty last month of rocking the ecclesiastical boat. Eusebius Stephanou, 44, was barred from priestly functions for six months after a “spiritual court” determined he had undermined the authority of the archdiocese in a new magazine he edits (See March 1 issue, page 46).

The monthly Logos has criticized Archbishop Iakovos, the top Greek Orthodox prelate for North and South America. Its published aim is to promote “Orthodox re-awakening.” As late as October it carried an advertisem*nt for a book in which the Archbishop called Stephanou “one of the most learned and enlightened ordained theologians of our Church.”

Stephanou’s suspension temporarily removes him from his small parish in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Iakovos could overrule the court and reinstate Stephanou, but the priest said he had no immediate plans to appeal. The court, composed of three bishops, made no attempt to silence Logos, and Stephanou plans to keep it going.

During a hearing with the three bishops, Stephanou was asked to recant uncomplimentary statements directed at Iakovos in Logos, and to plead for forgiveness. He refused to do either.

Stephanou told Religious News Service the quotes in question dealt with decentralizing of the archdiocese; the archbishop‘s “inconsistent” civil-rights marching in Selma when his church needs ethnic integration; the wisdom of holding the archdiocesan congress in Greece last summer; and a charge that archdiocesan subsidies to private U. S. publishers amounted to a plan to “silence the press and criticism.”

‘Beatitudes’ Benefit

Black ties and furs were in abundance as the American Bible Society’s social season occurred November 19 at New York City’s Lincoln Center. Moneyed lovers of both music and Word attended the first U. S. performance of Sir Arthur Bliss’s The Beatitudes, composed for the rededication of Coventry Cathedral after World War II.

Sir Arthur, 77, who holds the title “Master of the Queen’s Musick,” directed members of the New York Philharmonic and the Westminster Choir. He conducted with love and strength, revealing his work as an affirmation of Christian reconciliation.

The Beatitudes is an intermixing of Scripture and poetry set to a triumphant tonal score. He composes in early twentieth-century style: modern enough to be understood by industrialized man, yet tonal enough to be understood at all.

The work is very descriptive. The ravages of war, the hatred of man for fellow man, and the joyous calm of faith in Christ are all expressed with maturity and dignity. But most of all, it is a festival piece, composed for a ceremonial occasion by a man steeped in the history of his church and his homeland.

Those who attended the benefit concert not only contributed to the work of the Bible Society but also helped to encourage the performance of sacred music in the concert hall.

JOHN EVENSON

Missions: The 32 Percenters

Even though the paying/praying man in the pew, that silent partner in missions, had no part on the program, participants in the second triennial assembly of the National Council of Churches Division of Overseas Ministries (DOM) were reminded that he is still important.

The layman stood in the background as new missionary statistics were revealed. David Stowe, the top DOM executive, noted that the just published 1968 Directory of North American Protestant Ministries Overseas reported boards related to DOM and the Canadian Council of Churches barely holding their own in personnel and income, while unaffiliated and evangelical boards showed large gains.

Ecumenically oriented agencies now send only 32 per cent of the North American Protestant missionaries. In 1960 they sent 38 per cent; four years earlier, 43.5 per cent.

Said Stowe: “There is apparently going to be a rather massive continuation of missionary sending by at least some sectors of the church. Even if ecumenically related denominations dropped their personnel levels, others will almost surely continue or increase theirs.”

United Church of Chirst relief executive Reginald H. Helfferich humorously prophesied that by 1980 the entire overseas-relief operation of the churches will be outside DOM because of the “revolt of the layman” and the success of the Consultation on Church Union.

On the final day of the assembly, a participant suggested from the floor one reason why the laymen are throwing their support to the unaffiliated evangelical agencies: a credibility gap. He begged NCC-related board officials to “tell our churches what we’re doing.”

Evangelical missions are “doing what they say they’re doing,” he said, while most laymen in churches supporting NCC-related boards still think their missionary offerings are going into evangelically oriented work.

A speaker from the floor suggested to the panel that if the man in the pew knew more of the actual work (other than evangelistic) of the ecumenically oriented missionaries, he would support it.

Also in the minds of the more than 300 agency staffers at the New Haven, Connecticut, assembly were missionary support records of such evangelical congregations as Park Street Church, Boston. Harold John Ockenga, Park Street’s pastor, participated in a dialogue on conversion, and presented several cases of individual conversions that resulted in social benefits for the community.

Emphasizing group change in the dialogue, Philip Potter, top executive of the World Council of Churches’ Division of World Mission and Evangelism, held that the biblical appeal “to turn” was addressed to whole communities and not just to individuals. It still applies today, Potter insisted.

Had the man in the pew been there, he might have had something to say about the address of a Jesuit from India. Father Theophane Mathias labeled as “wrong” and “brutal” the theology that sends a missionary to save souls from eternal damnation. He called for mission activity that will identify the “anonymous Christ” and non-Christian religions. Other Roman Catholics had prominent spots on the program, and the DOM approved affiliation of its first Catholic unit, the Medical Mission Sisters.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

SISTER CORITA RESIGNS

America’s best-known Roman Catholic nun, Sister Mary Corita, has joined the rising exodus from the sisterhood.

“My reasons are very personal and very hard to explain,” said the petite, 50-year-old artist whose serigraphs (see a sample in accompanying drawing) have been acclaimed by Christians of all faiths. “It seems to be the right thing for me to do now” after thirty-two years in the Immaculate Heart of Mary order. She has resumed her previous name, Corita Kent.

Acknowledging that she had become a public symbol of the “new nun,” Miss Kent said, “I don’t want my action to stand as an example—only in the sense that each person should do what he thinks he should do.”

She said the dispute last spring between her order and Los Angeles Cardinal McIntyre had little to do with her decision. Despite McIntyre’s opposition, Vatican mediators allowed IHM reformers to separate from traditionalists and modernize their dress and lifestyle.

Miss Kent’s brother, Father Mark L. Kent, has not been active in his order, the Maryknoll Fathers, for five months. He was ordered to leave the Maryknoll house in Los Angeles in June after he was suspended by the New York headquarters for refusing an assignment.

Miss Kent is in Boston on sabbatical leave from her post as chairman of the art department at Immaculate Heart College, Los Angeles. She will return as a faculty member after a leave of uncertain length.

Southern Baptists: Both/And

The both/and approach to evangelism and social action (in contrast to either/or) appears to be gaining ground among Southern Baptists, judging from the twenty-nine annual state conventions held in recent weeks.

Evangelism and social action have rubbed shoulders among Baptists more than ever this year—sparking both heat and light—because of the coincidence of the Crusade of the Americas, a hemisphere—wide Baptist evangelism campaign, and the “Statement Concerning the Crisis in the Nation” adopted by the SBC last June.

Eight conventions adopted the “Crisis” statement, which declared commitment to obtain equal rights for all, refusal to be part of racism, and acceptance of every Christian, regardless of race, in church fellowship.

The Alabama convention, though it didn’t accept the “Crisis” statement, derailed one pastor’s push for an attack on Southern Baptist trends toward “social and political involvements” and substituted a call for “proper balance” between evangelism and missions, and social-political issues.

The Texas convention affirmed a statement that “in reality these challenges are one. Personal redemption and Christian social action belong together.” Virginia Baptists passed the strongest statement on race relations, condemning racism as unchristian and supporting firm open-housing laws.

A big doctrinal debate erupted at the Arkansas convention, where four churches were ejected for practicing “alien immersion” and “open communion.” The Kentucky convention censured Georgetown College trustees for permitting on-campus dancing.

Four state groups pledged prayer for an end to the Viet Nam war. Five took various actions regarding federal aid. And five sent congratulations or assurances of prayer to President—elect Nixon.

Fortunately I picked up an expression from the Spaniards recently: “I am very sorry, but to cry I cannot.” For the first time in my life this gives me a kind of middle ground for sadness between endurance and grief, and it serves beautifully as I try to absorb Jackie Kennedy, Onassis, Cardinal Cushing, and the Roman Catholic Church.

All kinds of people are passing judgment on Jackie and Onassis, and I don’t care to join the troops. I try to keep reminding myself that nobody really knows enough to pass a judgment on anyone else, especially if he tries to get into the realm of motives. If we know ourselves, we know that we operate constantly from mixed motives; and yet we constantly tend to judge somebody else’s motive sharply and harshly.

Loneliness is a disease for which there are no very good cures and in which time stretches out and life seems to be lived on dead center. In Jackie’s case it was a loneliness subjected constantly to the public gaze. Maybe she now wants to get away from it all. How better than to come under the shadow of one who has the money and therefore the power to protect her? But this is only one man’s guess, and we shall “leave her to God.”

Cardinal Cushing is something else again. He is a man of great heart and broad sympathies. As someone so wisely put it, “Young men know all the rules; old men know all the exceptions.” I think I am old enough to sympathize with the Cardinal. A man does not wear his red hat all the time, and I am sure that in his long interviews with Jackie he was more concerned with his sympathies than with legalism. James Harper once said, on the subject of universalism, something to the effect that “one could entertain a pious hope that all men will be saved.” We all have our “pious hopes,” and it is desperately easy in a sad situation to swing over on the side of a kind of universal redemption for everybody. No one who has listened to some other man’s outcry can find it easy to hold the line on his legalism.

Such things being so, there is still a problem. Society has never figured out what to do about the hangman or the policeman or the judge. All these men are necessarily used by society to do what society requires, and they are in the official position of letting the law take its course and insisting that law does take its course even when their heart is against their head. No man is qualified for public office, especially public office that requires harsh action, unless he sees his duty to the law instead of to his sympathies. It can be argued that the law is not what it should be; but he represents the law just the same, and he either does his job in that position or he moves out. This accounts, I am sure, for Cushing’s statements regarding his early resignation. He cannot stand to the law of his church because he cannot see the law active in at least one case that has come under his pastoral care.

This still leaves the problem of what to do about structure. No life and no organization can hold together without discipline and at least some sort of framework. It was this discipline and this framework that Cushing was called on to represent. If a Cardinal can slip his moorings, what can a weaker man—a parish priest, for example—do? Is there a Roman Catholic Church that has definition, and, if not, is there a “thing” that can be defined or described as the Roman Catholic Church? The Roman church could hardly have endured as it has without a sacrificial loyalty to the definitions and maintenance of its form.

Meanwhile there is a complex and matrix of rules and regulations; even in our society of fluid standards, to allow the position to become indistinguishable is to destroy the structure. The Roman Catholic Church being what it is now, no Cardinal by virtue of his office has any freedom at all in some matters.

It is easy, of course, for a Protestant to point the finger at the Roman church. I don’t care to discuss that matter here and now. Rather I should like to take the finger we point at Rome and point it at ourselves. I have argued for a long time that there is a cast of mind that constantly allows for slippage when issues before us begin to sound a little harsh as applied with discipline and finality. This problem in Protestantism can begin in all kinds of places. One can think of the old disciplines inside the official bounds of the church by which serious-minded men by virtue of their office said that some people could stay in the church and that others were excommunicated. The temptation of session members was to say, “Who are we to pass judgment on our fellow men?” The answer, of course, is that no one has a right to pass judgment on his fellow man, especially in terms of excommunication, if he thinks about himself as only a man; but as an official of the Church he still faces the requirements of his office. He is not passing a judgment on the law. He is really deciding that the law should take its course. If he feels like a hangman when he is doing this, he reminds himself that it is no place for feelings.

In the larger sweep of things, Protestants are casting about in all directions to determine what the structure of the Church is and where they will to hold the line. General attempts in most denominations to recast their confessions and statements of faith simply illustrate the uneasiness generally felt over trying to bring to bear on others what the Church says it is and what the Church requires. I argued one time with another man about what constitutes the essence of Protestantism. “Surely,” I said, “there must be some way of saying that this man is a Presbyterian and that this man is not—even by his own choice if not by our requirements.” My friend argued that the important thing was that we are not supposed to be Presbyterians but Christians. To this I can only answer that the attitude of mind that refuses to draw lines around a denomination will eventually refuse to draw lines around a whole religion. The ecumenical movement is illustrative of this constant chipping away of differences for the sake of a larger wholeness. I simply want to point out that unless lines are drawn somewhere they will not be drawn anywhere, and that it is always painful to take a stand on matters, wherever you take your stand. I am sure it would have hurt Cardinal Cushing grievously to take a stand for Rome against Jackie. Would he argue from this that there is no place for a Roman Catholic or a Presbyterian or even a theist to take a stand with the recognition that the stand, whatever it is, will require hard discipline and will certainly look harsh to those who would try to blur the lines?

So it goes. You can call a man lost when he doesn’t know where he is. Just where are we in defining the Church?

ADDISON H. LEITCH