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Eutychus

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BIG SMOKE

Americans spend 3 billion annually for their churches and 6 billion for cigarettes. To the cigarette industry it may seem that the churches have done well, considering their modest advertising budget and extremely soft sell.

Suppose Madison Avenue were to be given some ecclesiastical accounts. Imagine national magazines featuring color cover ads with a rugged fullback emerging from church: Join the men who know; get that big clean feeling!

Or perhaps in the church news column we might read, “First Church has reduced theological irritants to the lowest level among all leading pulpits. First Church preaching is smooth. It’s First for filtered truth!”

Television spots could feature the new preacher in his pulpit at Central Church: It’s what’s up front that counts! Such proven slogans as There’s no substitute for quality! would need no revision. The spring freshness theme would be another natural; it should apply to religion almost as well as to tobacco.

The super-science of the cigarette ads might be harder to adapt. “Important break-through in biblical research. Get that extra Dead Sea flavor in every sermon.” Church architecture suggests other scientific areas: “High porosity in our acoustical vault air-softens every choir note.”

The better the makin’s, the better the sermon. This could caption an oil painting of a craggy-browed clergyman among his books. Of course he would have his sleeves rolled up to show an anchor tattoo. “If you’re thinking of changing churches, tattoo this in your mind.… Deepwell’s exclusive preaching formula gives you religion you can get hold of.”

The competitive claim might not prove attractive to church advertisers. A new campaign could be developed: “Remember, the brand makes no difference! Wherever church bells ring you get the real thing.”

Is this sufficiently absurd? We have almost stopped laughing at those serious cigarette ads; when we do, we are not far from the king-sized pitch in religion—enjoyed in all the 50 states!

EUTYCHUS

SATAN’S POWER

Dr. Piper’s article (The Power of Evil, Sept. 28 issue) troubles me greatly. I looked for a clear, direct discourse.… Instead I found only terms and phrases suggestive of biblical truth, terms and phrases which could be filled in and defined according to the knowledge and faith of the individual reader.

A fuzzy-minded evangelical might be satisfied that the truth was presented; and no liberal or neo-orthodox would find anything in this article to compel him to question his own convictions.…

I read the Prophets and Apostles, and I know what evil is as to its nature, origin, effects and remedy. I read Piper and I find that I know only some of its baneful temporal effects. I learn nothing as to its nature, origin, or remedy—terms and phrases notwithstanding. Piper says, “The question is not how we should therefore represent the devil and the forces of evil, but rather, how we are to react to their activity in this world.” How can we properly “react to their activity” unless we have ascertained “their” nature, power, and program? Hitler was not defeated until the allies faced up to his nature and his potential; and neither will Satan be put down until we accept the Bible’s definition of his personality and power. Piper gives no such definition of the devil and evil; and his definition of “world” has no similarity to that given in the New Testament.

THEOPHILUS J. HERTER

St. Matthew’s Reformed Episcopal

Havertown, Pa.

SHIFT TO THE RIGHT

I would like to answer the letter of the Rev. Henry Smith Leiper (August 3 issue). I would first answer the question in Rev. Leiper’s last paragraph. Yes, those who now think as John Foster Dulles did nine years ago are still “leftish.” Because only Mr. Dulles changed when he tried to stop the National Council of Churches Cleveland Conference from voting for recognition of Red China and admission of Red China to the U.N. Then Mr. Dulles strongly fought Communism and died of cancer still fighting and a hero!

To further substantiate my answer that previously Mr. Dulles and those who nine years before thought the same, I suggest that Mr. Leiper read “Collectivism in the Churches” by Edgar C. Bundy (published by Church League of America, Wheaton, Illinois, 1958). On pages 164 and 165 [are] the eight shocking points drafted in March, 1942, by the Federal Council of Churches at a national study conference at Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware, Ohio, (chairman: John Foster Dulles) for a just and durable peace (?) after World War II. All one-world ideas.…

On page 177 of the same book Mr. Dulles says, “The free enterprise system has yet to prove that it can assure steady production and employment.” Leftist!

Page 179: “We know, from testimony given during the hearing on Alger Hiss by the Committee on Un-American Activities that John Foster Dulles and Alger Hiss were friends of long standing.” (Both were chairmen of important committees of the Federal Council of Churches.)

In November, 1950, the Federal Council of Churches changed to the National Council of Churches. Thus the same leftist, socialist, one-world, procommunist ideas were continued.

Mr. Leiper ought to know. He was an official of the Federal Council of Churches from 1930 through 1948.

FRANK P. STELLING

Oakland, Calif.

Most religious organizations, whatever the name, have come to be in America commercial and social with a degree of religious tincture.

O. L. HUFFMAN

Hot Springs, Ark.

I would like to comment concerning your attitude, and also that of some of your correspondents, towards the report of the NCC Conference at Cleveland regarding the recognition of Red China. Is not your attitude that of worldly wisdom which you reject? Jesus, our Divine Lord and Saviour said, “Ye have heard it said of old time love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you love your enemies, do good to them that hate you”.… The acid test of our religion is not how well we get along with our friends but what we do about our enemies.

MELVIN ABSON

Geneva, N. Y.

I venture to share a brief quotation from a letter received recently. The writer is a young Chinese, teaching in the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Hong Kong. He has been in many parts of the Far East.

In one of the articles I read in an official Buddhist magazine displayed in a train in Taiwan, the Buddhists urged the government to drive all the American missionaries and their enterprises out of Taiwan as a protest to the statement made a few months ago by a World Order Study Conference sponsored by the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. concerning the recognition of Communist China. Knowing that I had just come back from the U.S., a number of young Christians asked me a lot of questions, such as, “How could the American Christian leaders do such a thing?” “Is it an expression of their Christian faith or of their political interests?” “Is it the voice of all American Christians or just that of a few so-called leaders?” etc. I feel really sorry—I am not to pass any judgment on this matter—that this statement, whether it he right or wrong, has brought so many problems to our work, caused so much trouble among our people, and given such an unnecessary excuse to the heathen religions for attacking our church.

It is to be hoped that the Conference weighed all the issues before their pronouncement was made.

PAUL F. BARACKMAN

Fair Lawn, N. J.

[In regard to] “The Problem of Power” (Eutychus, Aug. 31 issue) …, the concern of Christians is not primarily the balance of political and military power in the world. It is rather the sad fact that peoples are being overrun with tyranny and cannot be free. What happened in Hungary, Poland, Tibet, Laos and other satellite countries is the great wickedness that we resent. It is that peoples are being robbed of their countries, of liberty, their families and of life. The issue is democracy or tyranny—“God or Mammon.”

ALVIN J. LEE

Salem, Va.

Only nominal Christians or … hypocrites or cowards are afraid of the present communism.… It is not Russia or communists who are preparing for the third war, but the West—particularly our religionists and militarists in Washington who spend billions … for … war weapons.

A. J. MONCOL

Cleveland, Ohio

Please accept the thanks of the American Council of Christian Churches … for the … factual and unbiased … [news story] “Red Atrocities” (June 22 issue). We believe that when the public is given the facts of Red China’s activities, that people by the millions will arise to repudiate the recommendation of the NCC Fifth World Order Study Conference.…

RALPH I. YARNELL

General Secretary

The American Council of Christian Churches

New York, N. Y.

ON THINGS GREEK

The Rev. Leslie Chard’s (Eutychus, July 6 issue) taking exception to a Jesuit-expressed view of the Greek Church is ill-founded. I fear he is giving expression to a phenomenon characteristic of many Episcopal priests—an excessive admiration for things Greek, founded more on zeal than on right information. For the Greek Church’s view of tradition, I suggest he read any authoritative work on the Orthodox Church—Frank Gavin’s (an Anglican) Some Aspects of Contemporary Greek Thought would be suitable (and Fr. Gavin had really studied the subject). In all important particulars, the Greek Church’s view of tradition may be said to be identical with the Roman Catholic view (except wherein the latter involves the Papacy). Right or wrong this may be, but the attempt to make the Orthodox out to be an exotic sort of Protestant or Anglican is doomed to failure—it simply is not the case.

His expression of the Greek teaching on Our Lady is as inaccurate. The Immaculate Conception of Mary was a common teaching in the Orthodox Church prior to its definition by Pius IX, especially. Indeed, Gregory Palamas, probably the most important Greek theologian of the late Middle Ages, upheld the doctrine. Herein is simply another example of an unfortunate Greek propensity of opposing Rome at all costs—one of its most ridiculous instances in history being the accusation that the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist was heretical! (And I challenge him to find any representative Greek theologian who attributes actual sin to Mary.)

I cannot write as much on the “Filioque” as it deserves; but I think Mr. Chard will find that while it had long been commonly recited in the West, the Easterns did not make an issue of it till they entered into a controversy with Rome on other matters—it was something more to throw at the Pope! Many Greek doctors had taught that the Holy Ghost proceeds from both the Father and the Son, as from one principle—and the Western Church has never asserted that there were two principles involved. If the Holy Ghost is the bond of love between the Father and Son, if he did not proceed from both it would imply that the Son loves the Father less than he is loved by the Father. Also, if the Spirit is called in the Scripture the Spirit of the Son, and the Son is said to “send” him, to deny that he proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father involves a plain contradiction. All this apart from the very questionable morality of “mental reservation.”

D. L. IRISH

Saint Paul’s Church

Brooklyn, N. Y.

APPRAISING BARTH

I wish that every reader of Van Til’s article (June 8 issue) might also read G. C. Berkouwer’s appendix to his recent book, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth. Although by no means a Barthian himself, Berkouwer here takes the subjectivity weapon out of Van Til’s hand and turns it back upon Van Til himself in a most unexpected and telling fashion.… He plainly states, “Van Til’s analysis does not correspond to the deepest intents of Barth’s theology.” And again, “At issue in this is the matter of a truly responsible analysis, for it is only on the basis of a penetrating and thoroughgoing analysis of a person’s intents and bearings that solid criticism can be based.”

It is evident that Van Til’s appraisal of Barth is vastly different from Bromiley’s. Their basic attitudes toward the Swiss theologian are so well-nigh incompatible that the thoughtful reader is obliged to choose between them. If it is indeed true, as Van Til asserts it is, that Barth doesn’t have any gospel at all in the evangelical sense, that he is just as much a modernist as is Bultmann, then we can hardly at the same time agree with Bromiley when he says, “It will be seen at once that he stands in line with three of the great emphases of evangelicalism: the historicity of God’s saving action; the supremacy of the Bible; and the objectivity of God’s work, particularly in atonement.” If Barth is really the apostle of a new modernism, as Van Til takes him to be, then no condemnation is too great for him; then we all should join Brother Van Til in his vehement forbidding of the man because he follows not us. But if on the other hand Bromiley’s appraisal of Barth is more nearly correct, as I personally believe it to be, then we can earnestly hope that someday Van Til may see and acknowledge that in this particular matter he may have been as sadly mistaken as were the ardent disciples of our Lord on that occasion.

DAVID DUFFIE

Seventh-day Adventist Mission Hospital

Mayaguez, Puerto Rico

SINCE LUX MUNDI

Mr. Geffen (Eutychus, Jan. 5 issue), while correctly noting a certain area of agreement between Anglo-Catholics and evangelicals in matters of doctrine, is misleading in his wider implication that evangelicals can look for convinced support from that quarter.… I will not elaborate at length on the difference in attitude to Scripture—sufficient of itself to put a different construction on the matter from Mr. Geffen’s—except to say that while the early Tractarians were conservatives on Scripture, since the publication of Lux Mundi the Anglo-Catholic movement has defected to the liberal camp, with only a few stragglers standing firm on Gladstone’s ‘Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture.’

Granted, Scripture apart, that Anglo-Catholics have a sounder grasp of certain doctrines than the ‘liberal humanists’ because of their deference to the creeds. They are in fact credal dogmatists. But so too are the Holy Orthodox and the Roman Catholics: yet who would argue from this that they are upholders of evangelical Christianity? We have to think in terms not merely of the content, but of the nature of belief: not merely of fides but of fiducia. This indeed is the distinctive principle of evangelicalism—faith both understood and experienced as a supernaturally originating and supernaturally-imparted divine gift.

Evangelicals believe that this principle lies behind the word “must” in Jesus’ words to Nicodemus in John 3:7, “Ye must be born again”.… This, then, is the distinctive proclamation of evangelicals to all the world—not ‘Believe the creeds,’ or ‘Take the conservative view of salvation, grace and Scripture’ (though we do both), but “Ye must be born again.” Thus the real question is whether Anglo-Catholics are allied to and identified with evangelicals in this proclamation and in this determinative principle. I think that your correspondent and your readers will find that it is not so. How near and yet so far. But let them once adopt this principle whole-heartedly, making known their position to all the world, and there will be no end to the blessing that will be released. Only this evangelical principle makes certain that the husks of the ‘liberal humanists’ have been finally abandoned either by the Anglo-Catholics or by their ‘High Church’ Methodist counterparts; and only on this high supernatural principle will our prodigal age ever be led back to the Father’s house in reconciliation and peace.

C. A. F. WARNER

Chingola, N. Rhodesia

ON A LIMB

I wish to commend Mr. L. Nelson Bell for his wonderful article “The Bible and Sex Education” (June 8 issue). I will “place myself on a limb” … by adding: We as ministers have failed by failing to teach from our church class rooms and from the pulpit the evils of immoral dress and adorning of the body, as these tend to induce wrong sexual desires, as well as allowing these evils to become “one of us” by allowing membership in our assemblies.

FRED HENDRICKSON

First Assembly of God Church

Paris, Ill.

- More fromEutychus

Robert James St. Clair

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It is surprising that we have come so far in applying the vital insights of psychology to counseling, and yet have neglected their application to urgent, day-to-day problems of church administration. In McCormick Speaking (Oct. 1958), Dr. Leonard J. Trinterud aptly describes the strain under which pastors break as they undertake too many tasks and feel the whiplash of an expectant membership. Dr. Richard K. Morton, in “Our Demanding Laity” (CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Sept. 15, 1958), noted the mounting demands made upon the pastor and the criticism that follows every failure.

Protestantism’s strength is the doctrine of the priesthood of believers. The Church is the body of Christ. Her strength is equal to the layman’s submission to the Holy Spirit indwelling his soul, and his obedience to the Spirit’s directives revealed through the ministry of the Word and His word through the corporate body. The Church in His name prophesies, teaches, evangelizes, heals, and shows compassion to all mankind.

The Church, however, is also an organization of churches as well as a living organism. The same laymen who direct the church’s affairs also pay the minister’s salary and must sanction his program. The pastor and board members are engulfed in a sea of complex relationships while through it all, or despite it all, the unity of the Holy Spirit in the bond of peace must be preserved so that the Church can evangelize the world, and so that His body with one heart may confront the evil of this day.

THE WAVES OF GOSSIP

The simple truth is that our pastors must expend so much time and energy in the heartbreaking game of “playing house” with local church members that their prophetic role based upon submission to the authority of Christ and profound study of the Word of God is rapidly being neglected. Their call originally led to the field of preaching and ministering. But they have come to discover that the path has detours through a jungle of administrative demands, church politics, and the very struggle for survival against waves of gossip and entrenched vested interests. It may well be that the success of Protestant Christianity in America will not be determined in the field of theology but in the courageous handling of church administration.

Part of the problem arises from the lack of spiritual growth and vitality in Protestantism in the past 10 years. Basic factors, however, involve the psychic dynamics in certain critical interpersonal relationships. The one crying out for urgent attention is that of the righteous-vindictive personality who is a key factor in church administration.

THE PASTOR AND PHARISEES

One of the strangest phenomena of modern religious life is that so little study is granted to the interpersonal cancer that rears its symptoms on almost every page of the New Testament and in relation to the crucified Christ. The friction between pastor and vindictive pharisaism is at work in almost every church I know of and has been responsible for the catastrophic breakdown of pastors and the division of congregations. Its essence is this friction which is tending to bleed Protestant effectiveness and which has broken the spirit of many ministers.

It is unusual historically that these dynamics were structuralized in an entire sect—the Pharisees. In an age of anxiety, frustration, and spiritual decline the “separated ones” gained pseudo-security through an idealized image of themselves as examples of perfection and saviours of the Law. They lived in a false little world of their own making, and Jesus of Nazareth pierced through it, calling them to the real world of God and demanding they renounce by repentance the false world of idolatry and pride. The hostility of the Pharisees knew no bounds. The compulsive nature of their vindictiveness was all too evident. Nothing less than crucifixion could restore their position. Many a young minister today wonders whether he should be crucified in silence like Jesus, or, like Paul, make his appeal to denominational caesars and defend himself every inch of the way.

It seems to the writer that no modern psychologist has analyzed the character neurosis of this personality “type” with the perspicacity of Dr. Karen Horney. Her major works Our Inner Conflicts, and Neurosis and Human Growth should be required reading for everyone involved in the work of church administration.

Dr. Horney speaks of a “trend” in personality called the striving for superiority through power and prestige. One facet is the leaning toward neurotic self-righteousness, perfection, and vindictiveness. Consider the small church with its self-righteous, proud, extremely religious woman. She rules the church with the iron hand of a benevolent monarch. She remains in the smaller church with a limited number of capable leaders where she reigns as a grand frog in a smaller pond.

Consider the most prominent businessman and leading elder in our churches. Churches attract the “expansive” (Horney) and vindictive personality as honey attracts bees. Through the psychic guise of self-righteousness and spirituality this type works himself to death achieving an exalted position in church life. His world revolves on an axis of defensive pride. This pride is like a band holding together a whole system of ideas and attitudes which constitute the self-image of superior intellect, superior spirituality, and so forth. There are fears of retaliation and this expansive person tends to dictate in “humility,” and thinks of himself as the true power behind the lesser powers. Should the pastor contravene any opinion of his or run counter to his directives, then the matter becomes one of life and death to restore the false self-image through assaulting the work and character of the minister. But because he is ostensibly “guided by the Spirit” he hopes to avoid the retribution of the targets of his vindictiveness. He can, therefore, do all for “love” without being loved or loving. He can appear to be selfless while hating the true self, and can be outwardly humble and inwardly sad*stic in supposed defense of some time-honored doctrine or church procedure. The church offers a suitable environment for the flourishing of these contradictory trends.

It is only through an understanding of the compulsive nature of this psychic structure that we see why its punitive labor continues for years. Preaching from the Sermon on the Mount apparently does not thrust through the defensive core, and the vindictive personality has no intention of forgetting an insult, real or imagined. Dr. Horney puts it this way in her Neurosis and Human Growth (p. 201):

Partly he justifies his claims by his superior qualities, which in his mind are his better knowledge, “wisdom,” and foresight. More specifically, his claims are demands for retribution for injury done. In order to solidify this basis for claims he must, as it were, treasure and keep alive injuries received, whether ancient or recent. He may compare himself to the elephant who never forgets. What he does not realize is his vital interest in not forgetting slights, since in his imagination they are the bill to present to the world. Both the need to justify his claims and his responses to their frustration work like vicious circles, supplying constant fuel to his vindictiveness.

This malignant spirit passes from one or two of the most influential persons through the ranks of friends and associates. If the pastor has iron nerves, and if the church manages to prosper despite this sniping, the vengeful persons may fade as righteous martyrs. If the work is small and static, the sniping continues and woe to the shepherd who makes the slightest slip in conduct or judgment. It is at this point that the subconscious trends in the pastor will either cause him to resign his church or explode in defensive retribution.

In the chapter entitled “The Second Year Is the Hardest” of A Man Called Peter, a beautiful account is portrayed of a very human but deeply spiritual man who weathered the storm while his church grew in spirit and numbers. If the pastor does not bring neurotic trends to conflagration by his own desires to domineer, and if the church is growing, opportunities are afforded through counseling, group prayer, cell meetings, and church activities for the Spirit of God to stimulate self-acceptance and joyful rapport among the membership. This necessitates work, patience, and some anxiety on the pastor’s part, but this is part of his labor for Christ. He can expect this. The scars on Paul’s soul and body attested to his artificial compassion for the wayward saints and those of his churches who rebelled against his ministry. He said that “… in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church” (Col. 1:24 RSV).

Dealing with neurotic vindictiveness, however, is a more subtle and complex problem because it usually is the real key in understanding the rigid behavior, gossipy and vengeful criticisms evidenced by otherwise highly moral and important pillars of the church. It must be dealt with because it accounts for the storm that inevitably engulfs many courageous, progressive, and forward-looking pastors. And it most often issues from the very persons who have it in their power to jeopardize a Christ-directed ministry by wielding their wide personal influence and their ecclesiastical authority against the minister himself.

A further tragedy is that unseasoned young men fresh from seminary sometimes find their first church an inner-city work wherein young married couples move to the suburbs while the hard core of older members remain a hotbed of rigid and defensive self-satisfaction.

This situation places a great strain on seminary curriculums for better testing and counseling of students. “The Advancement of Theological Education,” 1957, Niebuhr, Williams and Gustafson, reviews work accomplished in this field within the seminaries. It is important that the student know himself and be confronted with his self-image as determined by projective techniques, as opposed to paper and pencil questionnaires. Moreover, psychodrama and lectures by ministers trained in psychology are aiding students to analyze objectively the factors inherent in the give and take of board meetings, personal antagonisms, and factions.

THE PASTOR’S MINISTER

After the pastor is installed, to whom can he turn if this vindictive storm should back the effectiveness of his ministry against the wall?

Our ministers need pastors of their own. Every denominational area encompassing 50 to 100 ministers should be able to support one ordained executive, trained in psychology, whose task it would be to shepherd the shepherds of the flock. I fear many ministers do not feel they can go to executives who are weighted down with the responsibilities of administering a smooth functioning convention, diocese, or presbytery. In some cases the smug and political coarseness of some denominational executives in dealing with pastors of stormy churches is nothing short of disgraceful. This in itself contributes largely to the disillusionment that motivates many harassed men to leave the ministry and seek secular employment.

Just as important as individual counselling would be the recommendations which district pastors could provide the clerical authorities based on an accurate comprehension of church discord. In some cases pastors need abundant grace from Christ himself to lead a church to strength and unity. Where neurotic personalities destroy the effectiveness of a church and endanger its ministry, then the pastor has every right to expect the authority of a larger church to exercise discipline under the Holy Spirit.

TRAINING OF THE LAITY

We ministers have ourselves to blame if we have not trained our membership in respect for the Word, prepared them for churchmanship, and integrated new members into the life and fellowship of the church. The vindictive-expansive personality works himself to death to achieve a position of superiority and prestige. Pastors and newcomers are only too glad to let the old reliables do the work. New members can take odd jobs but must not be allowed to think they can displace the pillars and run the church. Were laymen better trained in their responsibilities, it would be more difficult for the vindictive-expansive personality to gather allies in his attempt to thwart the onward march of Christ’s body and to place a distorted interpretation upon the minister’s work.

Now is the time to come to grips with this problem in a more positive and realistic manner. We must view the sense of frustration within many Protestant churches alongside the determined strides and autocratic efficiency of the Roman Catholic church. Protestantism must preserve the prophetic authority of the Word of God and the free response of the Spirit-filled priesthood of believers. When either this authority or this response is hindered by sin in any form or disguise, Protestantism must exercise its discipline and apply its insights in order to redeem persons and strengthen its true resources. One crucifixion was sufficient. The Church must experience enough redemptive suffering facing the world without adding its own internal strife, especially when this strife is an abuse of Christian freedom.

Robert James St. Clair is Minister of the North Hill United Presbyterian Church, Akron, Ohio. He holds the A.B. degree from Brooklyn College and the M.A. from the University of Cincinnati. He has written numerous articles on the relationship between religion and clinical psychology and the implications of therapeutic counseling for theology.

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Cover Story

Norvell L. Peterson

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I have never sensed any conflict between my practice of psychiatry and belief in God. My chosen topic is “Christianity and Psychiatry” because it is far easier to correlate psychiatry with Christianity than with religion in general. Religion has so many meanings. There is the biblical one: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their afflictions, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (Jas. 1:27). There are of course dictionary definitions as well as others. But Christianity “is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth” (Rom. 1:16). It is a dynamic, forceful, constructive power that comes into our lives as the result of a contract between us and God. The terms of this contract include the understanding that we are powerless over sin … that our lives have become unmanageable and that in simple childlike faith in God we come to believe in the power of an infinite God bringing us salvation, eternal life—life after death.

This is a reality principle, a principle which recognizes the need for modification according to the requirements of external reality. For example, instinctual strivings may be modified in their expression according to the reality principle (The Neuroses in Clinical Practice, Henry P. Laughlin, M.D., p. 735). As such, this principle takes us out of the realm of psychiatry and out of conflict with it. It is, therefore, all the more necessary that we correlate the two.

PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACTS

Psychiatry is the art and science of dealing with man’s emotions, feelings, and the things that have a psychological impact. A Psychiatric Glossary defines it this way: Psychiatry is “the medical science which deals with the origin, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of emotional illness and a social behavior.”

When a man’s feelings and fantasies depart from reality and he does not know it, we have an emotionally sick person known as a psychotic. If, on the other hand, emotional conflicts are internalized, they may be expressed in physical symptoms such as colitis, peptic ulcer, asthma, hypertension (high blood pressure), fatigue states, allergies, and so on. Where the etiology is not clear and there is a strong emotional component, such conditions often indicate a psychophysiologic or psychosomatic illness. The word psychosomatic is an adjective denoting the constant and inseparable interaction of the psyche (mind) and the soma (body). It is most commonly used to refer to illnesses in which the manifestations are primarily physical with at least a partial emotional etiology.

Such symptoms, although purely functional, may imitate almost any type of illness or may be combined with a real one. (I do not say that these symptoms could not also be organic in origin or have a large organic component.) A psychiatrist must be a medical doctor in order to understand and treat the basic underlying cause of an illness and not just the symptom. The psychiatrically-oriented general practitioner, internist, or other specialist will refer his patients to the psychiatrist for treatment of the emotional component. The psychiatrist, in turn, calls in the appropriate specialist or family doctor to handle the organic aspect of an emotional illness.

There is a third type of emotional illness that should be mentioned and that is the intrapsychic conflict, the intrapersonal one. (The psychotic’s conflicts are external or interpersonal in his relation to the real world about him.) This type of illness is exhibited by anxieties, phobias, hysteria, asthenic states and the like, and is known as a neurosis or psychoneurosis. This may be defined as an emotional maladaptation due to unresolved unconscious conflicts.… A neurotic illness represents the attempted resolution of unconscious emotional conflicts in a manner that handicaps the effectiveness of a person in living” (A Psychiatric Glossary, p. 29). Such an illness should be treated as real, just as one treats tuberculosis, diabetes, cancer, or measles, and is as much in need of care as a broken leg. There are other categories of emotional illnesses which we may call the so-called disorders of personality, character disorders, situational and organic brain disorders.

INTRAPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

A definite relationship exists between the physical and emotional. Should one ask what this had to do with Christianity, I would say that if we consider interpersonal relations as a beam of light broken up into a broad spectrum, we find the emotional aspects in one sector and the spiritual in another.

There is the soma—the organic, biological part which is man in relation to his physical environment. And there is the spiritual—man in relation to his Creator and eternity (through the Logos, Christ, God’s Word to us in terms of one who was both God and man). Then there is the psyche or the ego which is that part of a person that says “I will,” “I do,” “I did.” It serves to make peace between the soma and the spirit, between the I want and the you can’t. The Apostle Paul expressed it very aptly: “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do … when I would do good, evil is present with me” (Rom. 7:19, 21). If we really get any place in life, the ego must speak up and say, “you must, you will,” in terms of his values and the steps leading to his goals.

That we have a physical body which relates to a physical world is certainly a reality, and this part of us is the province of the physician. But that there is a corresponding component, the spirit, which must relate to God, is also reality. This is the minister’s province. The sector of spectrum between these two realities, the physical and spiritual, is the sphere of the psychiatrist. There is so much to be done by these three professions that there should never be any conflict or competition.

CHRISTIAN AID TO PSYCHIATRY

Now let us look at some of the similarities between the philosophy of psychiatry and the message of Christ in Christianity.

THE INTERPERSONAL WORLD

Today the world is looking for new experiences. Men seek horror movies, supersonic speeds, and make interplanetary plans and phantasies; and on every hand we note an increasing crime rate, alcohol consumption, highway carnage, and a tendency to marry in haste and repent at leisure. Yet this is my experience, that there is still nothing so rewarding as the basic relationship of the garden of Eden—the I-Thou relation of man to woman, and man to God. What emotional investments pay greater dividends than a sharing of mutual experiences, feelings, hopes, ambitions, and desires between two personalities? I find John 1:12 (“As many as received him, to them gave he power to become children of God”) the threshold to the most wonderful experience of all—fellowship with the living God.

One may ask, Is this psychiatry or theology? Of course this is theology, but the realization of implications can be greatly enhanced by psychiatry because of the relationship between two personalities. It is the province of psychiatry to increase the understanding and enjoyment of healthy interpersonal relationships, and it is by the same principle that we accept God into similar relationship.

Our ability to make an emotional investment in other personalities is one of the best indications of emotional growth. To do this we must have self-knowledge, self-control, and the ability to accept the possibility of being hurt.

Another of the important points of interpersonal relationships is that of meeting another person’s need. This does not mean treating everybody alike, as parents sometimes do with their children. Parents may feel they have done their duty by doing or buying the same thing for each child. But they fail in their efforts because each child’s needs are different. The needs must be met equally, and this is a much harder requirement.

In our interpersonal relationships, we can greatly increase our own reward if we stop to think, “What is this person saying? What does he really mean? What is his need?” Could we not say that Christianity obliges believers in the Lord Jesus to help meet the needs of men, materially, socially, and emotionally, and where possible to prove a genuine interest in a neighbor’s spiritual needs, the most important of all?

One more important consideration with regard to interpersonal relations is the matter of limits. We tend to think of a limit as something that stops, curtails, or prevents our enjoyment of life. Actually the reverse is true. Would we not easier accept limits if we realized that they were of the category of railings on the stairway, cable at the precipice’s edge, guard rail along the road bank, or warning gates at the railroad crossing—something to keep us out of trouble, from getting hurt, actually for our own best interests?

It is in this area, perhaps, that we become most aware of God’s love and care. God has given us a conscience and moral values and has cautioned us against violating his principles. He does not do this to curtail our enjoyment of life, but rather to prevent us from indulging in indiscretions, pitfalls, and catastrophies which would cripple us or load us up with guilt.

A psychiatrist’s task is to help people understand the meaning and use of limits. This understanding is essential to developing interpersonal relationships that are rewarding, that avoid difficulties, and make progress toward maturity, effective living, and personal satisfaction. Is not this the job that each of us faces in his own personal life?

We may correlate Christianity and psychiatry then in this way: the psychiatrist helps us to know and understand ourselves and better relate to one another, and the minister guides us to better knowledge of almighty God and our relationship to him as heavenly Father.

Norvell Peterson is a psychiatrist in private practice, specializing in group and individual psychotherapy. He is a lecturer in practical theology at the Gordon Divinity School, a Commander in the USN, a Fellow of the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine and American Scientific Affiliation.

- More fromNorvell L. Peterson

Cover Story

Johannes D. Plekker

Christianity TodayNovember 9, 1959

Today the minister is taking a closer look at the potential area of cooperation between pastor and psychiatrist, religion and mental health. Organizations and conferences formed to implement cooperation have greatly benefited the participants.

EXPERIENCE INSPIRES REAPPRAISAL

Demand for working unity arose for several reasons. As the pastor moved among his people, he felt a need to become more conversant with the complexities of human nature. Even as a seminarian, he had had trepidations about the practical features of pastoral duties. Later he surmised that his theological training had not fully prepared him to meet the crises of congregational life. In visiting the sick and sorrowing, he sensed at times that his approach was inappropriate and often less than assuring.

The minister also became uncomfortable about the attitude of mild disdain toward him, occasionally expressed by students of psychology or other scientists. Although he resented this attitude, he suspected that if properly applied and integrated, contributions from the field of psychology might be useful in his own work. Some ministers rejected that idea as so much modern sentimentality, while others, in their enthusiasm for the new look, elevated psychology above theology. The majority, however, were instinctively drawn to new perspectives that would increase the effectiveness of their pastoral work and enlarge their role as ministers of reconciliation.

The need for a wider understanding of human functioning was evident also in other areas of social relationships. At one time child training, formal education, penology, and industrial relations were marked by a flavor of retaliation against obvious, conscious misbehavior, rather than by a realization of complex motivations contributing to it. Today progress has been made in these fields, but there is still room for further investigation and deeper knowledge.

Objections have been raised as to the inroads which psychology has made in the study of religion, and many have expressed fear that the former discipline might displace the principal pastoral prerogatives of authority. Intelligent application of psychology, however, does not minimize the stark reality of sin, nor ascribe all misconduct to “sickness,” nor rule out the importance of personal responsibility, nor supplant scriptural authority. It is no substitute for the work of the ministry, but can be an enriching supplement to it. Any understanding of patterns of action and behavior will make pastoral care more effective.

The pastor does not have to become an expert in human personality or acquire a detailed knowledge of mental and emotional aberration. Neither does a psychologist have to aspire to be a teacher in Christian faith and living. The pastor remains a minister of spiritual reconciliation, and his calling requires him to enter often into the lives of his people, both to share their heartaches and appreciate their deepest needs and aspirations.

‘PERSONALITY’ AND ‘PERSON’

As the pastor encounters mental and emotional disorders, and also patterns of antisocial conduct, he can evaluate them only in the broader perspective of the whole personality. The personality operates as a unit, and a disturbance in one aspect decisively affects all.

A distinction must be made between “person” and “personality.” The person, the unity of body and soul, is a mystery beyond scientific search. However, man’s personality is decidedly an object of philosophical reflection and scientific study. It is a product of constitutional endowments and propensities, and its character structure has developed in and through interpersonal relationships. The interaction of propensities and characteristics causes the personality to be in a constant state of flux, either growing or regressing. Like a prism, its facets determine its brilliance or dullness.

EMOTIONS MOLD THE CHILD

Child psychology is a broad and fruitful field of study because the emotions bear heavily upon the development of personality. The impact of emotions is most evident in the impressionable and pliable infant and child. The child derives his attitudes, feelings, sentiments, desires, and inclinations largely from the atmosphere of the home. Parental friction, anger, disparagement, and rejection (of which “oversmothering” is one form) almost invariably arouse emotional reactions that cripple the growth of his personality. Poisons of fear, distrust, and rebellion infuse his character.

Conversely, the glow of personal warmth, firm and consistent guidance, enduring love and support cultivate a self-dignity that promotes sociality and a life of service. One who receives such loving interest is able to love others because he accepts himself. His inner unity and security stimulate physical well-being, intellectual expansion, moral conviction, social skill, volitional decisiveness, and spiritual strength. Early emotional experiences will have vibrant repercussions in his adult life, even though their effects may be modified and revised by later influences.

The spiritual harmony of the adults about him significantly sets the emotional tone of the child’s personality. Through the eyes of his parents, he sees life and adopts their conception of God. After all, it is his parents who constitute his whole universe. He draws his strength from them to grapple with a strange and often threatening world. His growing love and trust readily appropriate the spiritual dimension of love for God if he sees evidence of this in his parents. On the other hand, resentment and distrust can blind him to the existence and possibility of this spiritual relation. In later life, he may project his rebellion against all figures of authority. While bitterness and fear are dominant in his nature, God will remain to him an object to defy.

The pastor will do well, then, to look behind the scene and note motivations that have arisen from conflicting experiences and meaningful events in a person’s earlier life. Current stresses and strains also have a bearing on one’s attitudes, but they are more likely to act as aggravating factors that tip the balance and bring inner turmoil to the surface. Each problem of alcoholism, marital discord, social deviation, moral delinquency, and spiritual laxity has its own unique background, and any lack of positive response to pastoral ministrations may be rooted in the person’s emotional distortion as well as to willful indifference or antagonism. Such an individual, therefore, cannot be expected to change his ways by means of superficial, meaningless counseling.

ESTRANGEMENT AND DISCIPLINE

There are times when a pastor is required to take official action with a member who shows no outward sign of repentance. In these circ*mstances, let him ask whether the individual has willfully hardened his heart or is being carried downstream by a force beyond his control? In many instances, there is no simple answer. A Christian does well to recognize that the disruptive forces of sin are constantly at work, and they express themselves in conscious defiance and disobedience. But that sin also manifests itself subjectively in inner isolation and estrangement is not so easily recognized.

Any disunity separates man from himself, his neighbor, and God. Fortunately, a state of disorganization in human life can be sufficiently modified for a while by the healing power of human love, and the recipient of such love may enjoy an adequate degree of personal unity. However, any deprivation of this love will revive and intensify the desolation of his former dilemma, and will in turn show up the basic anxiety and disturbance in the social relationships of the individual. Thus, in a sense, every personality breakdown is a sign of distress, a cry for help, an attempt to restore inner unity and safety. In the face of such perplexities, the pastor should proceed with a caution consonant with charity and patience.

NO CURE WITHOUT DEPTH

The apparent paradoxes of human reactions may be clarified by an analysis of specific situations. Marital discord is often a sign of personality imbalance in which one partner or both may possess insufficient resources to establish marital bond. Responsibilities in married life lead to further sapping of strength and result in bickering and recriminations which subsequently become more violent and culminate in threats of divorce. Fear of separation and isolation causes one or the other to grasp feverishly at a tenuous hold on himself, and in so doing he defends himself against the onslaughts of that fear by relating his turmoil to current incidents of money, sexual incompatibility, rivalry for the children’s affections, or the attentions of a third person. These outward disagreements are usually the complaints presented to the pastor who may be able to smooth them over temporarily. But if the deeper ramifications of the family trouble have been left untouched, they are certain to recur in full force.

Similarly, the alcoholic seeks the release of his inhibitions to overcome his feelings of dependence and resentment. He needs desperately to function at a mature level but realizes only his inability to attain to it. He seeks in alcohol a way to conquer the deficiency he cannot define. As the effect of alcohol proves to be only an illusion, he increasingly loses the esteem he set out to find, and any appeal to his will to stop drinking is fruitless because of his inherent inability to exercise it.

By being aware of the vagaries of human motivation, the pastor can lighten the social pressure of stigma and fear of contamination that it so often placed on people in distress. His forthright, calm handling of personal problems will cause parishioners to value his understanding and feel more free to consult him in the earlier phases of their personal or family problems. He may enter his people’s homes whenever it appears necessary; and, if he is alert to incipient forms of trouble, he can possibly nip the serious disturbance in the bud.

A WISE COUNSELOR

In conference the parishioner may be strangely silent, or he may, conversely, engage in extensive circumlocution in order to evade the core of his problem. The careful pastor will respect these sensitivities as protective measures against painful and shameful revelations. Because they also give clues to the direction and extent of the person’s difficulty, he will excel in the art of skillful listening and evaluation, avoiding as much as possible the introduction of premature or extraneous interpretations to the specific situation.

Another conferee may speak volubly of intimate affairs to implicate the pastor personally and gain favor for himself. Still another may touch unwittingly on certain propensities within the pastor, to which the latter may raise his own defenses for maintaining his emotional balance and respond with coolness or excessive sympathy. In cases where the rapport is likely to suffer, the pastor may be called upon to evaluate his own emotional status.

Finally, the pastor may become discouraged when the resolution of a particular problem is delayed or unattained. However, such an outcome must not be regarded as failure on his part, for it usually is an indication that the problem lies outside of his sphere of activities. He is justified, in cases of this nature, in seeking assistance from qualified persons in the community. A working relationship with mental health clinics or other community health organizations is both useful and essential in the discharge of his pastoral duties. In fact, it is good insurance for the preservation of his own sanity, for in his position, he cannot escape the claims people lay on him in almost every contingency.

Johannes D. Plekker, M.D., is a psychiatrist at Pine Rest Sanitarium, Grand Rapids. A graduate of the University of Michigan and the Wayne University Medical School, he has lectured for University of Michigan extension courses.

- More fromJohannes D. Plekker

Cover Story

Otto Dibelius

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To speak on the living Bible is more than a personal privilege; it is a solemn obligation. To witness to God’s living Word is indeed a sacred commitment in these times of testing dominated by global decisions of ultimate bearing. My city of Berlin is today the focus and center of decisions that will determine the future of the whole Western civilization. Already the propagators of a world revolution are raising their voices to proclaim the end of an era, the breakdown of a moral and social order prevalent for nearly two thousand years.

“Christians have failed; Christian concepts of life are doomed to perish”—that is what the rulers of Eastern Germany cry out, re-echoing the slogans diffused all over the Soviet orbit. The more commanding these slogans may sound, the more surprising is the halt which confronts them in that area where I have lived well over 70 years now. Today Berlin is like a lighthouse shining forth into the deadly night, a watchtower where even the roaring waves are bound to break their rage and fury. Rays of light, of comfort and clarification are going out each day from the island city across the Eastern world.

The South-Eastern part of the area surrounding Berlin, today the Soviet zone of Germany, has a special place in history. It is the land of Martin Luther; here the Reformation started and spread from the heart of Germany all over the earth. From its very beginning and throughout the last four centuries, the Reformation has meant the unfolding of infinite treasures for the people of East Germany. For the first time, the Word of God was to be read and heard by each one in his own mother tongue. The voice of the true Shepherd created a movement of joyful thanksgiving, and wherever the Church became by Scripture reformed, whole nations joined in praising God. Wherever nations were in danger of losing their vision toward the realms beyond the sky, there the Bible proved to be a landmark implicit in every issue. In world history, each century is confronted with its own special problems. That historic fact causes me to verify as the first point the statement that in each century, the decisive answer to burning problems was taken from the Bible. Whether abroad in the mission field of Asia and Africa or in the social witness along the lines of Christian men like Thomas Chalmers or the Earl of Shaftesbury, it was a conscience encompassed in the Bible that encouraged a life obedience to the one Creator and Preserver of mankind. Wherever Christian men and women had to struggle severely against converging powers of darkness, there in deep radiance the written Word became a lamp unto their feet and a light unto their paths.

VIOLENT POWERS OF DARKNESS

The powers of darkness, however, have never been so consistent nor violent as they appear to be in this century. Never before has the entire sphere of human relations been so much obscured as we perceive it in our present technical age. From the nineteenth century, stupendous tasks were left over largely unsolved. From spurious seeds implanted with the scientific revolution beginning two centuries ago, a harvest of bitter fruitage is now being reaped in gigantic dimensions. Willful speculations and experiments have added to man’s pride and self-sufficiency. Scientific man pretended to be autonomous and absolute. The result of those experiments has been the waging of two world wars. To the problem of the twentieth century, those wars have offered no solution because war-mongers would never consult the Bible. Nor did the advocates of material exploitation ever look up to the Word of God as a guiding light. Instead of helping the human being to become instrumental in fulfilling God’s design through acts of neighborly concern, the intellectual drive became entirely self-satisfied. Instead of using the material gifts inherent in God’s creation as His committed fellow-laborers, the doctrinaires of emancipation have exalted the autonomy and the gravity of earthly matter to a degree where the inner sphere of man is considered negligible.

An amorphous mass society, anonymous and fearful, is envisaged as a result of dialectical indoctrination. In the nineteenth century dialectical materialism was advertised to be the proper foundation of scientific discernment. In our century, however, dialectical materialism is occupying the place of dogma, a system of belief making demands on the total existence of man. With a kind of religious fervor, this dogma of earthly totality is now being enacted to advance from its Eastern sanctuaries and conquer the inhabited earth. Bent upon ruling mankind in efficiency and rigid uniformity, the new doctrinaires make an absolute claim on the minds of men through shaping their intellects and their value-judgments. In that rigid process of mind and will-shaping, any method is acceptable. Some of the experiments in human deformation, including brain-washing practices, appear to reflect the predicted totality of world revolution.

Since I made it my first point to maintain that in each century the positive answers to the ever-burning problems are taken from the Bible, I might substantiate by pointing out that the very authority of the Bible implicates a “crisis,” dividing the children of light from the children of darkness.

Owing to their indoctrinated hostility to the teachings of the Bible, the prophets of modern dialectical materialism cannot but create an atmosphere of “Eternal Unrest” which I would prefer to call “satanic unrest.” Teaching the dogma of “perpetual tension,” these prophets of atheism formulate a vast number of imaginary life-issues without providing for any intellectual honesty to offer helpful solutions. The dogma of tension is a dogma of hate. The dialectic of antagonizing becomes a habit of liquidation. What we already have in Eastern Europe, and what we may see spreading any day toward other parts of the world, is a totalitarian drive aimed at adapting man’s whole being to the limited requirements of controllable animals completely rationalized. Standards below the norms of that collectivized animal existence may be worked up to reach just that low level of controlled automatic operation.

THE SOVIET SOCIETY

However, this minimum level of a command performance in regimented uniformity is propagated as “Life in Progress.” In the half religious phraseology of the world revolution dogma, the collectivized animal existence is called the “New Life.” Here I would wish to uphold a second point:

The doctrinaires who offer the philosophy of materialism as a substitute religion are killing the souls of men. They are doing all they can to prevent the people from reading God’s living Word.

The new process of man’s formation sets in rather early. Before the birth of a human being, the expectant mother is requested to have the infant registered in advance for a name-giving ritual to be administered soon after the delivery. This ritual has been devised to replace the Christian baptism. The main emphasis at this ritual is placed on the “incorporation of the infant in socialist society.” It is made attractive with premium bonds for the mother, and a “Vow of Guidance” is taken by sponsors provided through collective channels. Guidance means control by the collective leadership to insure the child’s growing into the pattern of New Life. The New Life is said to be based on the findings of modern science. In truth, however, the educational pattern of the totalitarian countries is founded on principles of discernment which have long been superseded. In order to suppress all spiritual leanings of the human individual, the prophets of the totalitarian New Life are reducing the sphere of knowledge to the surface material of the earth. In order to keep their iron grip on the victims of their guidance, they claim that nothing is beyond the scope of their planning.

The source of a rigid life-planning is the State Almighty. The material powers which are at the state’s command are proclaimed to our young people as a “Life-giving Power Plant.” A six-year-old girl recently reported home that in her first grade class at school she had to learn this slogan:

Five fingers has the human hand;

The Five-Year-Plan brings New Life to our land.

Part of this New Life planning is our young people’s systematic alienation from home and family life. The family is recognized as what it is in the teaching of the Bible. But with the leading Communists, the family is not only unrecognized, but is also denounced as the basic unit where a child’s eternal dependence on an all-embracing Father in heaven is still a living reality. In order to sever the transcendent bonds, shifting working-hours, including Sunday labor, are pressured on the adult, both father and mother, while the adolescents are worn down by heavy schedules at school and in the pioneer movement. The whole atmosphere of the uniform society is determined by a constant fear of falling short of norms and statistical quotas. In the subtle mind-shaping of the young, no room is left for recalling the creative acts of parental love and protection; no thought is to be given to the natural grace and beauty inherent in a sacramental life. At an early age, at school and in premilitary training, man is taught to be man’s enemy, because it is only through mutual control and competition that the herd can be kept in line. A decree recently signed by the East Zone Minister of Defense states that all members of the Armed Forces are to be called upon by their superiors to hate people of different persuasion, and the hatred has to be nourished by constant reporting on the next of rank. What is accomplished is utter restlessness precluding any real measure of life. With a fanatical fervor, Communist youth leaders pretend that there is a global conspiracy of enemies determined to kill the whole working population of the earth.

Almost every day the danger of a capitalist aggression is projected on the minds of misguided people. Often the enemy is said to be in their own midst, and the system that began with individual spying and reporting becomes a systematic hounding of the people. There have been several cases where parents felt they could no longer fully rely on their own offspring.

This is the kind of life the young generation is supposed to embrace at the age of 14 when they are expected to take the solemn oath of the “Jugendweihe,” the Communist ritual of Youth Dedication. In all outward form and shape, this ritual is an anticipation of the Christian confirmation. It is preceded by a course of so-called cultural instruction lasting from four to six months. As an official outline for these courses of cultural instruction, new Ten Commandments were recently drawn up by Mr. Ulbricht, and these new Ten Commandments were published with the stated purpose of replacing the T en Commandments contained in the Old Testament of the Bible. We are convinced that the living voice of God, speaking through the words of the Bible, will be triumphant in the end. We are the more concerned for the hearts and minds of those who are given no freedom to decide for themselves which of the two sets of Ten Commandments they shall give allegiance. In this context, I wrote to the prime minister of East Germany an open letter containing these words:

Free decision no longer exists when the State employs all its means of propaganda against the institutions of the Church. Teachers, party functionaries, and others have worked over parents and children relentlessly persuading them to submit to the Communist Dedication ritual because only in this way apprenticeship, trade, high school, and university training are open to them. The East German Press which is bound to the directives of the State, is called upon to make propaganda for the Communist ritual by every means; the same is true in the economic order. In the State-sponsored school, the teaching of the Bible is not only prohibited, but children are being herded to the “Jugendweihe” celebration in close ranks. Now even the Post Office is issuing special postage stamps and congratulatory Jugendweihe telegram forms. A totalitarian State is engaged in enforcing acceptance of institutions which are built on the denial of all Christian concepts.

THE MIRACLE OF FAITH

When we consider the enormous amount of pressure that has gone into this restless drive against Christian faith, it is nothing short of a miracle to see how many people in the East are staying away from the enemies of the Cross. It is a miracle indeed and no human accomplishment of ours.

In spite of all the hardship imposed on the families that do not send their children to the Communist dedication, the Christian confirmation is a very notable event, more notable than it was some 20 years ago. It is true that the number of those attending confirmation classes has become smaller, yet it is still big enough to be a source of embarrassment to the men in power. And what is more bewildering to the Communist rulers is the fact that the two initiative functions of the Church, baptism and confirmation, have become real factors in the process of rethinking the whole of man’s life in the light of the Bible. This process of rethinking and relating the perplexities of life to God’s design, as we have it in the Bible, is just as quiet and firm as it is consistent in its loyal approach to the eternal will of God. In a totalitarian climate, the Christian witness is seldom ostentatious. Even the kind of martyrdom which pastors and Christian laymen are suffering is in most cases a quiet one. And yet there prevails in many Christian communities an outlook of patience and serenity, baffling and bewildering to the promoters of total world revolution and yet recalling rather strikingly the “patience and faith of the saints” praised in the Revelation of St. John.

GOD’S LIVING WORD

People looking closely at the totalitarian way of life, see that the life of the “new creation” set forth in the Bible is a very precious gift, utterly unlike what the advocates of World Revolution defined as the new life. The real transformation of human life conditions, the change of the earth to the better, springs from a creative and divine initiative only. However complicated the tensions of a secular society may seem to grow, the Bible reminds us more than once that “the Lord will fight for you, and you shall be quiet in holding your peace!”

He who would have us to consider the lilies of the field, how they grow without toiling, calls us to remember that our abiding strength lies not in competing with the standards and methods of the surrounding world, but in quietness and confidence firmly founded on the given oneness with Him who loved us first and who called us first. He who is love is by no means diverted from his saving intent by the frantic efforts of estranged creatures given to vile affections and, as a consequence of their willful estrangement, abandoned by God himself to revolting practices of dishonouring their lives among themselves. These sayings of the Bible have come to life again in our time of trial and testing. If it is true that we be dead with Christ, we shall also live with him in our times of trial and testing. And here I should like to prove my third point: In the utter darkness of a world estranged from the saving God, his word has become relevant again; the living Bible has become the source of new hope.

The new hope did not originate from our own insight; rather it has emerged from the amount of reality which is the major impact of God’s Holy Writ. Where injustice prevailed, where, for instance, the Communist rulers would demand preferential verdicts on members of the Communist party over against trespassers not belonging to the party, we proclaimed the voice of the righteous Lord who is said in the Bible to be no respecter of persons. Where the new officers of the Communist armed forces made hatred for people of other conviction the main condition of both political and military action, we put on the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is ultimately a spirit of charity and forgiveness. Through the living words of the Bible, we became indeed protected by the shield of faith and enabled to quench the fiery darts of the wicked. This is how we were reassured that it is a mighty weapon that helps us in the fight for life.

The fight begins early: Those who make their decisions for baptism and Christian confirmation are facing the lot of the underprivileged; it is also a revealing fact that many young people are only too glad to get away from the rigid drive of a drab uniform life where there is no possibility of fulfillment, no proper place for the individual, no challenge to the person nor any chance to live up to an inherited standard of decency. Like a hidden treasure, the impact of the Bible has come alive with an enriching power. In a way utterly unknown at a time when I was a junior, the young Christians of East Germany, the members of our “Junge Gemeinde,” are coming together to study the Old and New Testaments through careful exposition, but also in a very practical way. As they sit down to re-evaluate themselves in the light of the Gospel, they feel bound to find new methods for representing the living Christ in their daily lives. Often they begin their evening hours of fellowship with a common reading of the weekly Psalm in the Christian year. They have become greatly aware that the man Jesus Christ, “to whom no affliction, no suffering is alien,” is praying the Psalter through the mouth of his Church. So they pray in Christ’s name; they pray not merely from the natural cravings of their human heart; they pray in the manhood put on by Christ. Even if one verse of a Psalm is not subjectively one’s prayer, it is still the prayer of some other member in the fellowship of the faithful.

As our young Christians act in this corporate way, they act in obedience; they act in the name of Christ, and their prayer falls within the promise that it will be heard. Joining in with the biblical prayer of Christ, their responses are reaching the ears of God, and it is their experience already that the risen Christ has become their intercessor. They are also much aware that in their witness to the outside world, their own words and even their innermost feelings are apt to fail quickly. In an agonized world, they have learned to realize that they can render no effective help to a human being entangled in this dying world if they do not bring from the household of God the treasures new and old, speaking out of the abundance of God’s Word the wealth of directions, admonitions, and consolations placed upon record as landmarks resplendent and reascendent on the road towards freedom and fulfillment. It is here that a new sense of neighborly responsibility is reawakening. In an area where the human mind is involved in a battle of life and death, the Bible is seldom if ever read for private purposes of a merely pious edification. The corporate reader of God’s universal design is able to discern the social implications of that design. The voicing of the Father’s appeal enables the faithful listener to find out his own part in His vast purpose. The vastness and greatness of his purpose becomes evident in a battlefield where the souls of many are perishing, and lives are doomed to disintegrate. It is here that the challenge of God’s saving voice is presented in a life-saving action, an action by men conscious of being fellow-laborers with God, however few in number. Their apprehension of God’s holy writ is a blessing which they no longer fail to appreciate. They can hear the urgency of God’s imperative call, “As I live, says the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that he may turn from the broad way of destruction. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! For why will you die, O House of Israel?”

THE WHIM OF THE USURPER

The multitude of those who belong to the people of God is great, and the responsibility for all those who were baptized into the Church Universal through God’s prevenient grace cannot be taken away at the whim of alien usurpers. In a world raging with death, we cannot afford to shut ourselves up in an ivory tower. When the Communists came out with their recent proposals for an all-German settlement, this in fact was one of their subtle suggestions, that freedom of liturgy and worship should be provided for unthin the limits of some sacred ghetto. It is the kind of assignment which they accorded to the Orthodox church in Russia which has always been a community stressing the inside life rather than her mission to the world. But the Church in East Germany is a Protestant Church, and as a Protestant Church of the Reformation it is a Church existing alone on the Bible as the living Word of the living God. Fortified by his presence alone, a new generation of people living with the Bible is a Protestant generation in the true historic sense of that word; if it is a community suffering from untold hardships, it is yet a Church engaged in the good fight There is no longer a no-man’s land of nominal Christians; the line of division is far too sharp to make allowance for any private religiousness. What we rejoice in is a fellowship of deeply responsible fellow-laborers with a working-relationship based on trust in the life-saving gifts which are latent in the Book of the Old Covenant and even more unfolded in the pages of the New Testament. With this wholesome recommitment to Bible truths and Bible values, we would apply to the present situation in East Germany the saying of one of the early martyrs of the Christian Church: “We are called upon to stand upright amid the ruins of the dying world. We are not to lie down on the ground with those who have no hope!” Our hope is the Creator and Preserver of mankind whose voice is coming alive with a new power. It is not our own plans or accomplishments that will make us free. The God who is the Lord of history is crossing our paths constantly testing and even cancelling our own projects. But then He also shows us that God’s way must be done and God’s way can be done. Within a dying world under a totalitarian climate, the Church of the Reformation already stands out as the only community where man trusts man and one member bears the other one’s burden. This is the good Samaritan’s service rendered by a partnership in obedience. “We must obey God rather than men” was the apostle’s reply to those who had warned him not to preach in the name of Jesus. ‘We must obey God rather than men” was also our reply to the hirelings of Hitler when they arrested us in order to suppress the voice of the Church. Hitler’s power had to collapse just as the authority of the high priests is gone and even the Roman Empire. But the heritage of the apostles has greatly survived, and as their living witness passes through the faithful members of our Christian fellowship, we are raised from this dying world already to proclaim the glorious liberty set aside for His people, the children of Light. It remains of course true what is said in the Gospel that the children of this world are ever more cunning than the children of Light in their generation. It remains the fashion of this world to be impressed with outward strokes of success such as increase of material production achieved by the Communists in certain parts of the world. There continues to be the road favored by the children of this world to be carried away with glaring prophesies of a paradise on earth. It is said to be a paradise made by men alone, and while they proceed on the road of earthly imagery and self-deceit, they become victims of the subtle propaganda made for the Communist idea of “New Life.” But the Lord says: “I know you have a name of being alive, and you are dead!”

Against a life distorted and utterly unreal, against the wavering shadows of a motion unrelated to the source of light, we may rise to show forth the praises of him who has called us out of darkness. And firmly we trust in the promise God gave to his covenant people. It is the Prince of Life in whom we abide, and his own abiding words are these: “He who hears my word, has life. He has passed from death to life everlasting!”

Otto Dibelius is European President of the World Council of Churches; chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany and Bishop of Berlin and Brandenburg. He has often and courageously lifted his voice in behalf of the Protestant community in Germany’s East Zone over against Communist pressures. “A Living Bible in a Dying World” was the British and Foreign Bible Society Lecture for 1959.

- More fromOtto Dibelius

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes

“William Wilberforce believed in the application of the Christian faith to every aspect of life, including politics.”

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Few men in history have demonstrated with greater effectiveness than William Wilberforce the far-reaching influence which Christian laymen may exercise on public life and opinion. We have had many excellent reminders of this during recent weeks as the two-hundredth anniversary of the great abolitionist’s birth has been commemorated. As Lord Hemingford said, at the special service held August 24 in his memory in Westminster Abbey, where he was buried: “William Wilberforce believed in the application of the Christian faith to every aspect of life, including politics; his vision and his impulse were Christian; he took no step without prayer.”

Wilberforce was born in the city of Hull, in the county of Yorkshire. When he was nine years old he lost his father, and shortly afterwards was sent to live with an aunt in London. There he heard the preaching of George Whitefield and began to feel strong religious stirrings within himself. Three years later, however, his mother, fearing that the boy was being swayed by “Methodist” influences, for which she had little sympathy, recalled him to his native city. That a strong social conscience was already emerging in the lad was shown by the publication of a letter from him in 1773, when he was 14, in a York newspaper denouncing “the odious traffic in human flesh” of which the slave-traders were guilty.

Early religious impressions seem, however, to have faded when, at the age of 17, Wilberforce went up to St. John’s College, Cambridge. Writes E. M. B. in The English Churchman: “He was a charming young man, with pleasant manners, and was immensely popular … about town. He loved gaiety, and developed a taste for the gaming-table; but when one day he realized that part of his gains was won from some who could not afford it, he was absolutely cured of gambling from that time onward.”

When he entered Parliament he was only 21, and he remained a member of the House of Commons for 45 years. The transforming spiritual crisis of his life came in the year 1784 during a tour of the continent. One member of the party was Isaac Milner, formerly an usher at Hull Grammar School and subsequently to become Dean of Carlisle, who was a man of clear evangelical convictions. As the result of conversations with this godly man, and the reading with him of Philip Doddridge’s book, The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, together with the Greek New Testament, Wilberforce returned to England in a state of great spiritual concern.

Still in a state of religious crisis, he sought out John Newton, rector of St. Mary Woolnoth in the city of London, whom God used to bring him through to a radiant faith in Christ as the Saviour and Lord of his soul. “He owed more to the Rev. John Newton, one-time master of a slave-ship, coarse, loose-living, foul-mouthed beyond belief, than to any other single influence in his life,” says Colin Cuttell in The Church Times. “Yet no two people could have been more dissimilar.”

Nor did the ex-slave-trader’s influence end with Wilberforce’s conversion. It continued during the ensuing years. As Michael Hennell, writing in The Church of England Newspaper, reminds us: “It was John Newton who urged Wilberforce not to become a religious recluse but to return to politics. It was Newton who enabled him to see a vision of a public life given to God.” “Newton,” says Colin Cuttell, “was both wise and holy. Wilberforce must take back the new Christian experience and insights into that milieu to which by birth and intellectual eminence he belonged.”

Of the long years of campaigning for the abolition of slavery, of the disappointments, the determined opposition of powerful vested interests, and the ultimate victory when, in March, 1807, both Houses of Parliament passed the Act of Abolition of the Slave-Trade, there is no need to write here. The story is well known. But, though the iniquitous trade was now forbidden, there were still many slaves already in captivity, and the work would not be complete until they had been set free. To achieve this object required further years of unremitting application, and it was not until 1833, just before his death, that the Act of Liberation was at last passed and 800,000 slaves freed.

Michael Hennell rightly observes that “Wilberforce’s championship of the slaves came directly from his experience of Christ.” It is, indeed, important to point out that Wilberforce’s anti-slavery campaign represented but one aspect, though undoubtedly the most prominent aspect, of his life work, and, moreover, that his concern for the welfare of his fellow human beings was by no means limited to a desire for their liberation in this world. It went far deeper than that: it was for the salvation of their whole beings, souls as well as bodies, through Christ, whether British compatriots or Negro slaves, that he labored.

This fundamental concern informed the whole of his life, public as well as private. It was seen in his emphasis on the importance of Sunday observance and on the duty of providing Christian instruction for the children of the poor. It was seen in his successful antagonism to the lottery sanctioned by the State, and in his denunciation of the exploitation of child labor. It was seen in the publication, in 1797, of his book entitled A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes of this Country Contrasted with Real Christianity (recently re-published). “The title,” as Professor Briggs remarks, “reflects Wilberforce’s main preoccupation—human salvation—and the main obstacle to it: satisfaction with the bogus rather than with the real.”

Most of all, perhaps, this fundamental concern was manifested in the leading part he played in the founding of two great societies: the Church Missionary Society for the sending out of messengers of the Gospel to those, in Africa and other countries, who had never heard of Jesus Christ; and the British and Foreign Bible Society which is making available the Word of God to the peoples of the world in their own languages.

Behind his public achievements and his perseverance in the face of frequent ill health and numerous antipathies and frustrations lay a serene spiritual life of faith and devotion and prayer. “All may be done through prayer,” this man who was known as “the nightingale of the House of Commons” used to say.

“When the history of our own era is brought into proper perspective,” says Colin Cuttell, “there will be startling points of comparison with the age of Pitt. Shall we be able to point to a Wilberforce? There is no substitute in public life for lay leadership of that calibre and consistency.”

- More fromPhilip Edgcumbe Hughes

William Wilberforce

Frank E. Gaebelein, Paul Erb, Eric Edwin Paulson, and others

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Fulfillment Of Educational Needs

The American High School Today, by James Bryant Conant (McGraw-Hill, paper, 96 pages with appendixes, $1), is reviewed by Frank E. Gaebelein, Headmaster of The Stony Brook School.

Here is an important and refreshing study of a subject of great concern to the nation. The current debate about the adequacy of public education emphasizes the timeliness of Dr. Conant’s report. The fact that the book, clearly the product of a first-rate mind, is written in language free from the pretentious phraseology that obscures so much educational literature makes it refreshing reading.

Dr. Conant’s ready acceptance of the assignment of the Carnegie Corporation to study the American high school bespeaks his high sense of public service. The report, though coming from a former president of Harvard University and a United States ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, shows not the least condescension toward what some lesser intellectuals might consider a humdrum inquiry, but rather reveals the author’s sincere respect for his subject. The recommendations and conclusions are marked by strong commitment to intellectual standards and a great deal of good sense that cuts through the tangle of suggestions for improving our schools.

According to Dr. Conant, the comprehensive American high school is potentially an adequate instrument for meeting the varied educational needs of our youth. His first-hand investigation of a wide sampling of schools in 18 states shows that even now certain public secondary schools are fulfilling with conspicuous success their function of training young people in accordance with individual abilities. And it is his considered and urgently advocated conclusion that, with a single major shift in national educational policy and with the application of certain specific recommendations, many more schools will provide effective training for the youth of their communities.

But what is a comprehensive high school? Dr. Conant defines it as one “whose programs correspond to the educational needs of all the youth of the community.” Because the generality of American children are expected to have a secondary education—an expectation for which this nation is unique—our public high schools are, with few exceptions, comprehensive in nature. That is to say, they undertake to combine within the limits of single schools, programs of college preparation, business education, and different kinds of vocational training. To be sure, in some of the larger cities, special academic (college preparatory) or special vocational schools exist. But in general the American high school must exercise a diversified function.

It is Dr. Conant’s conviction that no high school graduating less than one hundred students a year can operate effectively on a comprehensive basis. Financially and administratively, he insists, the small high school is not in a position to cope with the realities of a comprehensive program. Requirements for teachers to man the various courses, to say nothing of the need for equipment, prevent small high schools from meeting needs that range from stimulation of the academically gifted to training the equally worthy but nonacademic pupils. The result is that in many schools gifted pupils are faced with meager offerings in science, mathematics, and foreign languages, while those with special vocational interests suffer under courses for which they have neither aptitude nor interest. Yet of the 21,000 public high schools in the nation, there are only 4,000 with graduating classes of more than one hundred. As for the majority of 17,000 high schools, they are simply too small for effective comprehensiveness.

In the light of such facts, Dr. Conant proposes widespread consolidation of school districts to cut down the total number of high schools to 9,000, thus greatly increasing their size. To do this would entail nothing less than a major change in educational policy, a change that will not be readily made. Dr. Conant admits, “geography may sometimes be legitimate justification for a small high school, but too often it is merely an excuse. Human nature—not geography—offers the real explanation.” And, it should be added, human nature, occasionally manifest with the fierce intensity of community pride in the local school, will not easily bow to enforced consolidation.

A large part of this report consists of 21 definite recommendations for improving the comprehensive high school, providing it is of adequate size. Dr. Conant’s conclusion is that we need no radical renovation of the high school of five hundred or more students but simply its strengthening within the present “basic framework.”

These 21 recommendations range from the suggestion of a full-time counselor for each 250–300 pupils to the provision of developmental reading programs. Of particular significance are the recommendations of courses for academically gifted pupils—the top 15 or 20 per cent as determined by standardized testing. Here the author prescribes a program consisting of four years of mathematics, four years of science, four years of English, four years of a single foreign language, and three years of social studies—plus electives. He believes that able students should be taught in separate classes (with the exception of senior social studies which, for the sake of democracy, should be a cross section of the varied abilities in the school). He insists that gifted pupils need to work harder than they commonly do, and that they are capable of handling 18 courses in four years, 15 hours of homework a week. For the highly gifted (the top 3 per cent) he would prescribe advisers of a tutorial kind, and would demand the taking of Advanced Placement Tests for college credit in upper-class subjects. As for the bulk of the school population, the requirement for graduation regardless of the program chosen would include four years of English, three to four years of social studies, one year of mathematics, and one year of science.

When it comes to the thorny question of marking pupils, Dr. Conant urges strict grading of able academic students. He would have teachers insist on high standards of achievement for gifted pupils, and would not have them hesitate to give failing marks for poor work. On the other hand, he would have passing in the general education courses determined on the basis of effort as related to ability. A realistic touch is the recommendation that high school diplomas be accompanied by a durable transcript of courses taken and grades earned, and that diplomas of honor pupils contain a special notation.

It is obviously beyond the scope of this review to discuss all of Dr. Conant’s recommendations. Educators will have questions about some of them. For example, the classification of music and art as elective courses requiring no outside preparation is unrealistic. It was one of Dr. Conant’s most distinguished predecessors, Dr. Charles William Eliot, who said that music is the best, mind-trainer in the curriculum aside from geometry. But no pupil ever gained any degree of mastery of a musical instrument in a few class sessions a week. Nor can proficiency in drawing or painting be attained without long practice.

Regardless of different opinions about details, Dr. Conant’s recommendations as a whole are notable for their common sense. He suggests nothing that is impossible of application within the context of the American secondary school today.

In considering the broader implications of this report, we become impressed with the fact that an author’s silences are often eloquent. Two of Dr. Conant’s silences speak volumes. For one thing, this candid and practical study of the American public high school completely bypasses the whole life-adjustment theory of the curriculum. The author takes no notice of views of education that subjugates intellectual discipline and mastery of content to socialization of the curriculum. While in no place does he tilt at progressive education, it is plain that he is on the side of schooling that demands learning in depth and particularity. In his proposals he shows his awareness of individual differences among pupils. The rigorous academic program is only for the scholastically gifted, but he also asks for general education and vocational subjects a degree of achievement compatible with the ability of those who take them.

A second eloquent silence relates to the field of moral and religious values in education. Here Dr. Conant has nothing to say. For him—at least in this study—public secondary education is exclusively a matter of the head. Apparently he sees high school education as wholly secular. At a time when America needs to be deeply concerned for the recovery of the moral and spiritual power that made this country great, he has no word about the education of the heart. To be sure, his study is primarily academic; yet the omission remains significant.

What, finally, may be said of the bearing of this report on Christian education? The obvious assumption is that a high school with a graduating class of at least one hundred and with a renovated curriculum is actually comprehensive in meeting pupil needs, when the fact of the matter is it gives little or no place to spiritual values. With all our admiration for Dr. Conant’s clear thinking and high-minded devotion to intellectual standards, those who are committed to Christian education can grant to the high school, as he defines it, no more than a truncated comprehensiveness. Along with sympathetic recognition of the unresolved tension between religion and secularism in public education, we must insist that, if man is more than an intellectual animal, then truly comprehensive education cannot continue to ignore eternal verities.

Yet having said this, let us also acknowledge that Christian education has much to learn from Dr. Conant. Responsible Christian educators must consider the fact that most Christian high schools are small—so small, indeed, that few of them are of sufficient size to provide a variety of programs qualifying them as effectively comprehensive in Dr. Conant’s use of the term. Yet the Christian community is no different from the secular community when it comes to the diverse abilities of its youth. “God sends rain upon the just and the unjust,” and the proportion of academically gifted and nonscholastic minds in Christian communities is not noticeably unlike that in secular communities. A school may be small and do one thing extremely well. Some of the most distinguished academic work in the country is being done in certain independent college preparatory schools, very few of which meet Dr. Conant’s criterion of a graduating class of one hundred. But these schools make no claim to comprehensiveness; they are also selective in admission policy and specialized in program.

Small as it is, however, the Christian school must face with great seriousness the implications of comprehensive secondary education. It may elect, as some have done, to be a good college preparatory school to the glory of God. That is a worthy aim. But it can only be effectively accomplished by selective admissions, thus ruling out the large number of pupils who are not academically gifted. The unavoidable fact is that Christian secondary education must find ways of broadening its base. If gifted students from the Christian community are to be given a God-centered academic training, then non-academic pupils should have the opportunity of a God-centered vocational or business training. What is urgently needed, therefore, is additional Christian vocational schools together with many more Christian high schools large enough to serve adequately all of our youth. Honesty compels us to admit that secondary schools today are the poor relations in the family of Christian education. One would not subtract a dollar from the support of Christian colleges, Bible institutes, Bible colleges, and theological seminaries, all of which are doing indispensable work. Yet Christian education will never reach maturity, let alone meet its obligation of comprehensiveness, unless it develops more secondary schools capable of meeting the needs of all of its pupils.

FRANK E. GAEBELEIN

Education And Service

A Pillar of Cloud, by Mary Miller (Mennonite Board of Education, 1959, 260 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Paul Erb, Editor of the Gospel Herald.

Hesston College is a small junior college operated since 1909 by the Mennonite Board of Education at Hesston, Kansas. A Pillar of Cloud is the detailed account of the struggles and triumphs of this school during its first fifty years. It is a story of vision, of divine guidance, of courage and accomplishment, which probably could be written about many another such a denominational school. To the non-Mennonite this can be an enlightening picture of the evangelical faith, the conservative cultural traditions, the passion for learning and service of the Mennonite people. It shows that the positive convictions, the martyr consecration, the evangelical fervor of their Anabaptist fathers is still alive. A good example of educational pioneering.

PAUL ERB

Communication With God

They Teach Us to Pray, by Reginald E. O. White (Harper, 1958, 204 pp., $3), is reviewed by Eric Edwin Paulson, Minister of Lutheran Free Church.

A reviewer must exercise constant restraint lest he exhaust his supply of superlatives on books of only moderate value. However, here is a volume about which even the more discriminating reader will find little to criticize. At first glance the arrangement of topics in an alphabetical order may seem a bit strained. Yet as each discourse develops a phase of prayer exemplified in the life and experience of an individual, this apparent artificiality is forgotten.

In this book we see great personalities of the Bible in reliance upon God under strange and trying circ*mstances, and we learn about the nature and purpose of prayer as the writer reconstructs the scenes and circ*mstances of the scriptural narratives. These sketches abundantly demonstrate that truth expressed through the medium of human personality is far more readily grasped than that clothed in the abstract terminology of the essayist or theologian.

The chapters are of such uniformly high quality that it is difficult to single out one or two for special mention. Those dealing with Jabez and Hezekiah seem to be particularly notable examples, however, of original and imaginative interpretations of otherwise obscure characters in the Scriptures. Preachers who find biographical sermons a good medium for teaching spiritual truth should find this volume of considerable value.

Persons accustomed to the rather prosaic style found in much evangelical literature today may object to the polished language of the author. Yet anything as beautiful as the Gospel deserves to be expressed in clear and attractive English. When erudition, devout scholarship, and spiritual imagination are combined with fine literary style the result can be extraordinarily effective, as this book proves to be.

ERIC EDWIN PAULSON

Iconoclast

Creative Giving, by Hiley H. Ward Macmillan, 1958, 170 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Faris D. Whitesell, Professor of Practical Theology, Northern Baptist Seminary.

The author is an idol smasher. He tries to smash the great denominational Diana of the Ephesians—tithing. Admitting that tithing has produced vast revenue for the churches and the kingdom of God, Ward still thinks it is a wrong principle by which to implement stewardship. In fact, Ward does not like the whole idea of stewardship, or proportionate giving of time, treasure, and talent. A Christian should not give a portion, no matter how big, and claim the rest as his own; he should give it all to the Lord, and seek the Lord’s guidance and direction in the use of it.

The writer does not believe that tithing was the practice of the Apostolic church or of Christianity generally until some three centuries after Christ. Tithing was pushed hard for a thousand years or more. The practice lapsed after the Reformation and was not revived again on a big scale until about a hundred years ago.

Tithing is legalistic and a Christian is under grace. Ward knocks out the familiar Malachi 3:8–10 as having application today by saying, “If a Christian takes this verse literally, he can be a tither or even a 30 per cent giver and still be a thorough robber of God” (p. 36). Jesus did not endorse tithing in Matthew 23:23: “… for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others” (RSV). But, “Even if Jesus had been a rigorous tither during his ministry, it would not have much bearing on Christian procedure, for Christians are neither Jews nor Jesus” (p. 39). In fact, “there is no directive from Jesus that Christians under grace ought to give tithes,” says Ward (p. 43).

Christians should give creatively, not legalistically or proportionately. Creative giving is spontaneous, responsive, uncoerced, total, empathic. It is the response of love to love and is “the giving most consistent with the unrestricted and unprompted action of the Spirit” (p. 19). Creative giving involves decision, encounter, freedom, and loyalty. “Giving in response to Christ, welling out of the soul of an individual, coming from a sense of joy or urge apart from motive or calculation is spontaneous. It is real giving …” (p. 112). “Creative giving involves sacrifice, a person’s total endeavor, his personal attention, his constant, spontaneous decision” (p. 162).

How will people give creatively? Author Ward makes these suggestions: use the laymen, employ plans that are creative, allow spontaneity, encourage projects, decentralize organization for handling funds, educate the youth, throw out the word “stewardship,” highlight the virtues of creative giving, develop creative worship services, present true stories of sacrifice, do not underestimate the role of emotion in giving, relate church architecture to giving, and of course avoid any kind of unchristian giving which would bring dishonor to the name of God.

Controversial is a mild label for this book. The author writes vigorously, pungently, and evangelically. He completes the argument for his view by raising every conceivable objection, and then demolishing it. Ministers and church officers should read the book. The reviewer doubts that it will cause emphasis on tithing to be lessened or the practice to decrease; but some ministers after reading it may preach on the subject with less dogmatism than previously.

FARIS D. WHITESELL

- More fromFrank E. Gaebelein, Paul Erb, Eric Edwin Paulson, and others

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For aid in commemorating the 100th anniversary of the recovery of Codex Sinaiticus, oldest complete Greek New Testament in existence, CHRISTIANITY TODAYis indebted to Dr. Raymond L. Cox, Hillsboro, Oregon, minister whose graduate thesis in the field of New Testament textual criticism occasioned considerable research into the histories of old manuscripts. Out of this experience Cox reconstructs the events surrounding the Codex Sinaiticus recovery.

This year marks the centennial of the salvaging from scrap of a Bible which when last sold cost its purchasers a half-million dollars!

The story of the saga began in 1844 when a 29-year-old parchment prospector hiked up the Mt. Sinai of Mosaic memory to visit the Monastery of St. Catherine. While browsing in a library there, Constantine Tischendorf stumbled upon a wastebasket crammed with loose leaves from an ancient Greek manuscript.

“This is the oldest Greek writing I’ve ever seen!” he said, recognizing the contents as part of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. He counted 43 sheets.

“What are you going to do with these pages?” he inquired of the librarian.

“They’re bound for the incinerator,” the monk replied casually. “Not long ago we burned two basket loads like them in the furnace.”

“Since you plan to destroy them anyway,” proposed the parchment prospector, “may I have them?”

“You’re welcome to them,” granted the librarian.

Before leaving the Sinaitic monastery with his prize, the visitor learned that scores of other sheets from the same manuscript reposed with the monks. His requests to study them, however, aroused suspicions and his pleas were denied.

Though Tischendorf kept busy in ensuing years, he was constantly haunted by an ambition to study the other manuscripts at the monastery. He returned in 1853, but that visit proved fruitless. In February, 1859, he again appeared in quest of the treasure, but after several days he despaired of finding the documents.

One night the visitor huddled with a monastery steward. “I want to show you a copy of my recently published edition of the Septuagint Old Testament,” Tischendorf said as he handed the volume to the monk.

The steward examined the book with interest, then commented, “I too have a copy of the Septuagint. Would you like to see it?”

To Tischendorf’s surprise the steward produced a heap of loose parchments wrapped in a red cloth. It proved to be the very treasure the visitor had sought. Indeed, it was a greater treasure, for not only did Tischendorf recognize part of the Septuagint Old Testament, but also all of the Greek New Testament plus two apochryphal books, The Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas.

The next morning the visitor asked, “Will you sell me this manuscript?”

“That would require a vote of the monks,” Tischendorf was told. The priests were polled, and Tischendorf lost out by a single vote.

But one ray of hope remained. The superior of the monastery of St. Catherine was in Cairo. Tischendorf looked him up, told him of the treasure, and suggested, “Why do you not send for the manuscript and inspect it yourself?”

The head monk dispatched an Arabian sheik to Sinai to bring back the prize. Tischendorf was permitted to copy its contents, quire by quire. Two other German scholars who happened to be in Cairo then assisted him.

Meanwhile, Tischendorf owed a favor to Tsar Alexander II of Russia who was his patron on this expedition to Egypt. The Tsar was also head of the Greek Orthodox Church to which the monastery on Mount Sinai belonged. “It would be a graceful deed,” Tischendorf suggested to the superior, “to present this manuscript as a gift to Tsar Alexander, the protector of your church.”

The monastery monks wanted the Tsar to exert whatever influence he had in the selection of a new archbishop. Tischendorf’s suggestion came at a strategic moment. “You are commissioned,” announced the head monk, “to take the codex to Russia for presentation to the Tsar.” Tischendorf left Cairo on September 28, 1859.

Alexander II, in turn, gratified the Oriental expectation of baksheesh by presenting a counter-gift of 9,000 rubles (about $6,750) plus several highly prized decorations to the monastery. Not until the Russian ruler was notified that his gift had been accepted by the monks did he place the codex in the Imperial Library.

Since it was found on Mt. Sinai, the manuscript was called Codex Sinaiticus. It is the oldest complete manuscript of the Greek New Testament in existence, having been translated about the middle of the fourth century. Only the slightly earlier, but incomplete Codex Sinaiticus is considered superior by scholars. Codex Sinaiticus consists of 346½ leaves, of which 147½ comprise the New Testament. Its pages originally measured 15 inches by 13½ inches and usually carry four columns per page. Originally the codex contained the complete Greek Bible, but much was lost in the Sinaitic wastebasket. Four scribes cooperated in transcribing the work. Scholars in 1860 hailed Tischendorf’s discovery as one of the greatest prizes of all time in the area of Biblical research.

A century later this estimate persists, although one hundred years ago one voice was raised debunking the find. Constantine Simonides seized upon the publicity accorded the discovery as an occasion to exact revenge upon Tischendorf. Simonides had been discredited, largely through Tischendorf’s efforts, as a fraudulent forger of ancient documents. Now he “confessed” that he had forged the Codex Sinaiticus and boasted that his work was so convincing that it deceived Tischendorf, the man who had exposed his other frauds!

Simonides’ claims created quite a stir for a short season, but scholarship vindicated the authenticity of Tischendorf’s discovery.

Codex Sinaiticus reposed in the Russion library for more than 70 years. But when the Bolsheviks seized power, feelers were extended in search for a purchaser. “We have no use for Bibles and much use for money,” resolved the men of the Kremlin. An American syndicate negotiated for the purchase, but the depression of 1929 precluded a deal. This gave England an opportunity. One hundred thousand pounds sterling, then equal to a half-million American dollars, was offered to the Russians for the codex. At Christmastime, 1933, the celebrated Bible was transferred to the British Museum, where it is still located and on view to visitors.

People: Words And Events

Elections: As president of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Mrs. Fred J. Tooze … as editor of the Mississippi Baptist Record, Joe T. Odle.

Appointments: As Harry Emerson Fosdick Visiting Professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York, Bishop Johannes Lilje, chairman of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany (for one semester beginning in January, 1960) … as general secretary-treasurer of the Baptist Federation of Canada, the Rev. R. F. Bullen … as foreign secretary of World Literature Crusade, Dr. Oswald J. Smith.

Retirement:Dr. Harry L. Turner, president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, effective next May.

Gomorrah Found?

Airplane pilots are reported to have spotted ruins believed to be the site of ancient Gomorrah, according to Religious News Service.

The ruins associated with the biblical city—with Sodom a centuries-old symbol of infamy—are 40 feet below the waters of the Dead Sea at the south end of Jordan’s Lisan peninsula.

Jordanian officials say the area will be dammed off and drained if the site is confirmed as Gomorrah.

One of five “cities of the plain” mentioned often in the Bible, Gomorrah together with the others was destroyed by “brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven” because of the wickedness of their inhabitants (Genesis 13:13 and 19:24–25).

Archaeologists have long held that the cities and the plain were located in the area now inundated south of the spot of land extending from the eastern shore.

Radio to Russia

The city of Monte Carlo, famed European gambling resort, holds promise of becoming a key relay point for radio transmission of the Christian witness to Russia. A 100,000-watt transmitter is being constructed at Monte Carlo as an extension to facilities of the Voice of Tangier, missionary radio station in Morocco. Projected completion date: next May.

The new voice, to be known as Trans World Radio, will aim five 300-foot antennas at Russia and other Iron Curtain countries. Programs will be offered in 28 languages.

More than $500,000 will need to be advanced by the Voice of Tangier, said President Paul E. Freed, to put the new transmitter on the air. Freed said Russia has never attempted to jam Voice of Tangier broadcasts.

The new transmitter will be 40 times more powerful than the one at Tangier and will be nearly 1,000 miles closer to Russia. The transmitter site overlooks the Mediterranean Sea and the entire 375-acre principality of Monaco.

Europe is the last continent to get a missionary radio station. There are some 20 missionary broadcasting outlets in other continents.

TV from Moscow

NBC Television hopes to film two services at the Moscow Baptist Church for American network viewing. The plan is a joint effort of NBC and the Southern Baptist Convention’s Radio and Television Commission.

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Overemphasis on sex and violence in U. S. television and movie productions is prompting demands for countering moves from Protestant ranks.

The mailbag at National Council of Churches headquarters in New York exudes grass-roots ire daily, a council spokesman indicates. NCC officialdom is being subjected to growing demands that it openly challenge deteriorating moral standards in Hollywood drama.

Protestant interests suffered a setback recently when, as the result of a vigorous denunciation of film trends, dissension developed within the NCC’s own Broadcasting and Film Commission.

“The time has come to act,” said George Heimrich, Lutheran layman who heads the commission’s West Coast office. Scoring motion pictures’ “increasing portrayal of sex and violence,” Heimrich declared that “something very definite must be done about this situation, which has been getting worse during the past six months.”

The charges were immediately repudiated by one of Heimrich’s superiors, Dr. Robert W. Spike, commission vice chairman. In a letter to Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (and host for Nikita Khrushchev’s viewing of “Can-Can” scenes which the Russian leader subsequently labeled “immoral”), Spike said Heimrich had not spoken for the commission in “hinting at a possible boycott” of certain films.

“Boycott and censorship are most reprehensible to traditional Protestant thinking,” Spike wrote. “As every moviegoer will tell you, the fact is that the film industry has recently begun to show increased maturity and artistic sensitivity in what it is producing. This is not true of all productions, of course, but the church should be grateful for this new fact and not simply castigate the industry.”

Many Protestant film viewers, in turn, are known to dispute the position attributed to them under Spike’s “every moviegoer” generalization.

Most NCC officials avoided public comment on the Heimrich-Spike episode, preferring instead to cite broader considerations. Some feel that the exchange will spur efforts of a special 35-member study committee appointed by the 1957 NCC General Assembly to look into the influence of mass media and to recommend a representative Protestant view toward these media. Others regretted the “premature airing” and predicted that the committee now must “back up and get a fresh, more objective start.”

The Production Code

GENERAL PRINCIPLES:

1. No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrong-doing, evil or sin.

2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.

3. Law—divine, natural or human—shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

Motion Picture Association of America, Inc.

A report from the committee is expected when the NCC’s 250-member General Board meets in Detroit, December 6. It is not known, however, whether recommendations will be forthcoming at that time.

Key criticism of the film industry argues that Hollywood producers have violated their own “Motion Picture Production Code,” which forbids favorable portrayal of illicit sex and thus holds a far higher standard than even the U. S. Supreme Court. The nation’s highest tribunal ruled several months ago that the First Amendment to the Constitution “protects advocacy of the opinion that adultery may sometimes be proper.”

There is evidence among NCC General Board members of concern not only in offensive theater movies but in risqué television productions. One noted that some “tall thinking” was due about the “real deterioration” in the moral tone of TV programming.

Television industry officials claim to be as eager to stay within bounds of decency as the Christian community expects. One network issued an apology after religious leaders protested an overly realistic portrayal of a love affair. This attitude on the part of industry leaders indicates that perhaps advertising pressures are to blame for distasteful scenes. (The drama which prompted the apology had as one of its sponsors a company whose advertisem*nts repeatedly cite endorsem*nt of a French film star noted for her sexy roles.)

Evangelicals have undergone considerable soul searching in their attitudes toward movie and TV drama. What critics describe as “increased maturity and artistic sensitivity,” many Christians classify as Continental eroticism and decadence whittling away at what is left of this country’s Puritan heritage.

Many evangelicals challenge the notion that boycott and censorship are “reprehensible to traditional Protestant thinking.” Even secularists usually possess a moral conscience which favors a degree of these for the health of society. The question is: How and when are they to be applied and how strict should the norms be?

Some evangelicals practice total boycott of theater movies even while endorsing the same films to the extent of viewing them on the living room TV screen. This paradox often demands reexamination of conscience and raises certain other questions: Is total boycott as effective in influencing the movie industry for good as selectivity? Have boycotts left the issues with those lacking spiritual and proper moral discrimination and, if so, is the present state of affairs a result? Or is the industry depraved beyond recall or beneficial influence? And does one’s spiritual life suffer from even selective forays into the medium?

Be it movies or TV, evangelicals must confess that they write far too few letters of protest. Yet networks and advertisers readily concede that such protests wield great influence.

The Same Pattern

The World Council of Churches made public this month a 3,000-word report on birth control. In the pattern of most ecumenical pronouncements, the report was detached from official WCC policy, though prepared under commission of the WCC by a specially-constituted 21-member committee of theologians, physicians, and social science students, and distributed by the council to more than 171 member church bodies for “study and comment.”

The report was drafted at a three-day meeting of the committee at Mansfield College, Oxford, England, last April.

“Limited or spacing of children is a morally valid thesis,” the report was quoted as asserting. “There appears to be no moral distinction between the means now known and practiced.”

Appended to the report was a minority opinion representing views of the Orthodox Church: “Parents do not have the right to prevent the creative process of matrimonial intercourse.”

Preaching ‘Outlawed’

A Cleveland lay preacher was found guilty this month of violating a city ordinance by preaching the Gospel on Public Square.

The verdict against Fulton Baker of Cedar Hill Baptist Church, which included a suspended five-dollar fine, is being appealed. Baker’s attorney has wide support from even the judiciary in his contention that the pertinent ordinance is unconstitutional.

The ordinance forbids two or more people to congregate on a sidewalk without having business there.

‘Good for You’

Beer advertising, however widespread, has its limitations. U. S. law forbids the alcohol industry from making any curative and therapeutic claims about its products. Thus when the U. S. Brewers Foundation began a “good for you” pitch in magazine advertisem*nts, temperance organizations sprang up in protest. “Misleading,” cried the executive director of the National Temperance League, Clayton M. Wallace.

This month, under government pressure, the brewers cancelled the remainder of its “good for you” series.

In the advertisem*nts in question, a “good for you” in big type pertains in context to a feat being performed by an illustrated figure. But a casual glance at the page could easily create the impression that the phrase referred to beer.

Protestant Panorama

• A memorandum stating its views on 35 agenda items before the United Nations General Assembly has been distributed by the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs to more than 700 U. N. delegates and alternates. The commission is a joint agency of the World Council of Churches and the International Missionary Council.

• “The people could stand no more,” said the Roman Catholic episcopacy of Colombia in commenting on a destructive anti-Protestant demonstration last month. Bishops nevertheless asked Catholics in the town of La Plata to make restitution for damage done in a mob raid on an evangelical chapel construction site.

• Missouri Synod Lutherans in Canada are organizing an autonomous national religious body.

• Singer Pat Boone is turning over all royalties from his best-selling ’Twixt Twelve and Twenty to the Northeastern Institute for Christian Education, new Churches of Christ college in Villanova, Pennsylvania.

• U. S. Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson, a Mormon leader, preached before an overflow audience at the Moscow Baptist Church on Sunday morning, October 4. Only days before, in Washington, Khrushchev’s son-in-law had invited Benson’s son “to come to Russia to do some missionary work for the Mormon church.”

• A Reformation Day dedication service was planned for the reconstructed Reformation Memorial Church in the West German city of Worms, where Martin Luther uttered his famous, “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.”

• The North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Church is sponsoring a year-long evangelistic campaign for 100,000 converts.

• The House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service says p*rnography is a major factor in increasing juvenile delinquency. “Federal legislation,” said a committee report, “will not substitute for parental guidance nor absolve parents from their obligation to guide their children by appealing to their instincts as forcefully and attractively as the ‘dirt peddlers.’” “The American home is the target of the p*rnographic attack,” it added; “the American home must also be the center of the counterattack against p*rnography.”

• A newly-published yearbook of the United Church of Canada, the country’s largest Protestant body, shows a communicant membership of 980,461.

• Southern Baptists plan to spend at least 3 million dollars on a weekly television program to combat juvenile delinquency.

• Mother Elizabeth Anne Seton, who is credited with founding the American Catholic parochial school system and who apparently is destined to be the first U. S. native to be “beatified” by the hierarchy, was a granddaughter of a Protestant Episcopal clergyman.

• Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam received the 1959 Upper Room Award this month for his “contribution to world Christian fellowship.”

• An addition to world-famous Pacific Garden Mission on Chicago’s Skid Row will be dedicated November 8.

• The First Hebrew Christian Church (Presbyterian) of Chicago is marking its 25th anniversary.

• The Ethiopian Orthodox (Coptic) Church plans to establish a U. S. branch. A seminary in America also is projected.

• Two Roman Catholic biblical scholars are proposing that Catholics adapt the Protestant Revised Standard Version of the Bible into a Catholic edition as a means of furthering Christian unity. The RSV, according to Benedictine Fathers Bernard Orchard and Edmund Flood, “is a scholarly rendering of Scripture which is a delight to read and with very little editing could be made entirely acceptable to English-speaking Catholics.”

Wheaton Crusade

Billy Graham’s current crusade in Indianapolis was preceded by a week-long evangelistic series in Wheaton, Illinois, a city which like its college namesake is observing its 100th birthday. Here is a report on the Wheaton meetings:

Biggest event in the city of Wheaton’s centennial celebration, and undoubtedly the most spectacular event in its history, was this fall’s evangelistic campaign with the Billy Graham party.

Pushing 25,000 population, Wheaton is now one of Chicago’s “bed-room suburbs” and one of the most evangelical and Christianized towns in America. It is the home of Wheaton College (enrollment: 1,600), famed for evangelical fervor, and the headquarters of such organizations as the National Association of Evangelicals, Scripture Press, Youth for Christ International, Conservative Baptists, the Sword of the Lord, and Baptista Films. Wheaton pastors sometimes feel that the city has a religious superiority complex, is overrun with evangelical churches, and sated with religious meetings and big-name Christian speakers. What could the Graham team do there?

Graham was a 1943 graduate of the college and a pastor in nearby Western Springs. How would Wheaton respond?

Originally planned as the college’s fall revival meeting, public pressure necessitated including the city and all neighboring towns and surrounding areas.

Despite cool, rainy weather all week (two meetings were held inside and five outdoors) the crusade was amazingly successful. Aggregate attendance totaled 101,000, the largest turnout coming on the opening Sunday when 18,000 heard Graham. On Thursday night, when teen-agers were special guests, 16,500 attended and 652 responded to the invitation. Not counting decisions at morning college chapel services, inquirers numbered 2,812. The 1,000 counsellors represented 130 churches. Delegations accounted for 7,500 people each night.

For the closing service on Sunday afternoon, October 4, rain fell steadily. Six college buildings wired for closed circuit TV were needed to accommodate the 16,000 who attended, and an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 were turned away.

Several of the evening meetings attracted crowds comparable in size to those at nightly services in New York and San Francisco. Graham preached essentially the same messages; although the emphasis was evangelism, many Christians came forward. About 62 percent of inquirers were first-time commitments to Christ—not as high as in Australia but above the U. S. average.

Wheaton churches cooperated fully. Church people forgot their differences and learned to work together as a solid phalanx for the salvation of souls. Even the more ritualistic churches backed the campaign vigorously, and their pastors took leading roles.

The crusade not only lifted the spiritual life of the college and the city, but it revived the churches, set them on the trail of many potential new members, and created spiritual hunger for a great campaign in nearby Chicago.

F.D.W.

Evangelist’s Schedule

Evangelist Billy Graham’s agenda for 1960 calls for mass meetings in Africa, Switzerland, and Germany, plus appearances in both North and South America.

On January 19, Graham plans to leave for a three-month African tour which is to include meetings in Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, the French Cameroons, Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Ruanda-Urundi, Ethiopia, and possibly in Egypt. Before returning home he hopes to visit, as a tourist, the Holy Land.

Protestant clergymen in Washington, D. C., plan a week-long crusade with Graham next June. The evangelist held a month-long crusade in the nation’s capital in 1952.

As of now, this is the way the rest of his schedule lines up:

—July 3, 1960: Closing address before the Baptist World Alliance convention in Rio de Janeiro.

—Mid-August, 1960: Series of brief crusades in cities of Switzerland.

—September–October, 1960: One-week crusades in Berlin, Hamburg, and Essen.

—November, 1960: One-week crusade among Spanish-speaking peoples of New York City.

—Early 1961: Crusade in Miami.

—Fall of 1961: Month-Ions crusade in Philadelphia.

—June, 1962: Crusade in Chicago (still tentative).

THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION

Building Programs

Out in the rolling hills north of Kansas City, Missouri, the Southern Baptist Convention’s sixth seminary is taking shape.

The Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary began operation last fall in temporary quarters downtown. By last month, construction work on the 125-acre suburban campus site was well enough advanced so that the 274 students could move to the new location even while workmen put on finishing touches to four contemporary style buildings: an administrative center, a classroom building, a library, and an auditorium.

More buildings will be added. Enrollment goal: 1,200.

Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, also Southern Baptist, was dedicated this fall at its new Strawberry Point site near San Rafael, California.

Other campus building news:

—Eastern Nazarene College at Quincy, Massachusetts, is launching a $1,500,000 development program extending over the next three years. Two more dormitories and a student union building are planned. A half-million-dollar science building was opened last month.

—Northeastern Bible Institute at Essex Fells, New Jersey, is erecting a $50,000 chapel-library. Estimated completion date: Spring, 1960.

RELIGIOUS ASSEMBLAGES

Biblical Businessmen

Alberta Premier Ernest C. Manning told delegates to this month’s convention of the Christian Business Men’s Committee International that man’s separation from God is the basis of all our problems in personal and public life, “nationally and internationally.”

“The … Bible makes clear to man that there is only one solution,” layman Manning said. “It is not by education, reform or human effort, but only by a personal, spiritual new birth.”

Delegates to the convention, held in Minneapolis, were cautioned that they must “lean over backwards” to “make every business transaction as clean as a hound’s tooth.”

“No area of a Christian businessman’s life is more vulnerable to the attack of the enemy than is his business life,” said James E. Colville, retiring vice chairman of CBMCI who is an official in a New York wholesale produce firm.

“In competition with the world,” he said, “the temptation is great oftentimes to meet competition on its level or resort to worldly practices.”

“Let us desire to be faithful rather than to be successful. Let us desire to be right rather than to be rich. Let us desire to prove the reality of Christ in the crucible of daily experience more than to prove our cleverness as businessmen.”

Colville said he was opposed to suggestions that the CBMCI liberalize its doctrinal statement: “It is my firm conviction that God has signally blessed us as a movement because of our unwavering stand.”

Prohibition Ticket

Dr. Rutherford L. Decker, pastor of Temple Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri, will head the Prohibition Party’s election ticket in 1960.

At a party convention in Winona Lake, Indiana, Decker won nomination for president while E. Harold Munn, assistant dean of Hillsdale (Michigan) College was named the vice presidential candidate.

Schism Threat

An open break between two rival factions disrupted the 44th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Korea, last month, and threatened that church, largest Christian body in the country, with its third major schism in eight years.

Center of the controversy, ostensibly, is the church’s membership in the World Council of Churches. But the breakup of the assembly, begun in Taejon, appeared to some observers as more a power struggle than a clash of principle.

For three days a faction calling itself the “National Association of Evangelicals” party (not affiliated with the American NAE), fearing loss of power, blocked all efforts of the opposing “Ecumenical” party to carry on such business as election of new officers. Major offices of the retiring 43rd assembly had been under control of the NAE party.

The rupture broke into open violence when the retiring moderator postponed elections by adjourning the assembly for two months against the wishes of the majority. NAE commissioners walked out and Ecumenical delegates were evicted.

Denied further use of the host church, the majority group moved to Seoul, elected the Rev. Chang Koo Yi as moderator, and appointed a peace committee with instructions to seek reconcilement with dissidents. The committee reported its willingness to suspend Korean Presbyterian representation at ecumenical conferences for the sake of unity.

Earlier in Taejon, plans were cancelled for assembly ceremonies which would have marked dissolution of the 75-year-old Korea Mission of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. and its integration into the Presbyterian Church in Korea. Cancellation of the integration plans, announced by a three-man deputation from the United Presbyterian Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations, were prompted by the assembly’s failure to recognize a change of name in the American denominational body. Objections were raised to the word “United,” which the church picked up in its name when it merged with the United Presbyterian Church of North America in the spring of 1958. The NAE faction opposes the new name of the American church on grounds that the word “United” implies recognition of the ecumenical movement.

Back in 1951, a split in the Presbyterian Church in Korea prompted organization of the Koryu Presbyterian Church, now numbering 150,000 adherents. The 170,000 Presbyterian, R.O.K., members separated in 1954.

S.H.M.

Reunion Prospect

The National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Inc., largest Negro church group in the world, plans steps toward eventual reunion with the National Baptist Convention of America. The groups split 44 years ago over ownership of a publishing house.

Some 20,000 delegates approved the action at an annual meeting of the 5,000,000-member U. S. A. body, held last month in San Francisco. The NBC of America, also Negro, has more than 2,000,000 communicants.

As a first step toward possible merger, a proposal was advanced which would arrange for annual meetings of the two groups to be held in the same city.

In other action, delegates adopted a resolution advocating a “go slow” national racial integration policy such as that taking place in Little Rock.

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REFORMATION DAY, 1959

With just a bit of hesitation I write requesting information;I find that clergy of my station Are asked to give an explanation Of reasons for the Reformation.I must confess in consternation,Lacunae in my education Create an awkward situation.I’ve heard about predestination,And even consubstantiation,(And Henry’s royal irritation About a papal dispensation Refused without consideration,)And Luther’s themes for disputation That promptly on their publication Electrified the German nation.But I must ask with trepidation,If we may speak with commendation In days of church consolidation Of worthies of the Reformation Who labored in indoctrination Were negative in altercation And horrified their generation By the crime of separation?

EUGENE IVY

LEFT HIM COLD

Dr. Edman’s praise of Youth for Christ (August 31st issue) left me as cold as have the numerous Youth for Christ meetings I have attended. Most YFC leaders seem to be expressive at the drop of a hat in condemning the “formalism” and “worldliness” of the ecumenical denominations; yet I have seen few things within Christendom more “worldly” than the Youth for Christ movement with its plush international conventions, snappy choruses, meaningless ditties, jazz rhythms, and “spectacular” rallies (the latest one in my area featured a magician for the evening’s entertainment). The movement’s general disregard of the importance of the Church was typified in a leader’s remark to me that he didn’t get a chance to go to church much—he was too busy with Youth for Christ rallies.

What is there in this frothy stuff to make the knee bow and the tongue confess? Evangelically, it is without form and void.

DONALD E. WALDEN

The Methodist Church

Deland, Ill.

The Writer’s Guide of the YFC magazine systematically sets forth a destruction of style, grammar, and good usage as being the desideratum of teen-age Christian literature.… There seems to be little stress on the … active participation in a normal church life that should lead the convert beyond his need of “shot-in-the-arm” rallies and entertainments. Naturally the weekly worship of a church is dull beside the Gospel cowboy singers and flamboyant speakers of the rally.… We in southern Ontario have also encountered a long, saddening series of attempts by YFC organizers to create internal dissent in active and effective Christian youth groups in order to establish their own program.

Certainly, the evangelistic efforts of Youth for Christ should continue—but, I feel, with less attention to “Youth” who are rapidly swamping out “Christ” in its programming; with less stress for the believer on the ease of forgiveness, and more on the reducing of our recurrent need for forgiveness by the encouragement of a personal devotional life conducive to ethical Christian living; and with a major effort at working with and supporting the local churches—becoming a feeder rather than a competitor, and hoping eventually as the churches revive, to become an unnecessary appendage that will decrease as they increase.

G. F. ATKINSON

Toronto, Ont.

UNRELATED TO NCC

The Assemblies of God have always been known to be one of “the most strictest sects” of the fundamentalists of today.… If there is any church in America that is distinctly and utterly separate from the National Council of Churches, it is the Assemblies of God. There is not a single Modernist among us anywhere as those who know us can testify. We are not and never have been associate members of the National Council of Churches (Editorials, Aug. 3 issue). As we consider engaging a suite in the so-called ecumenical building in New York, it is with the knowledge that the National Council of Churches does not own such building, and we are not leasing from them. We have contemplated such a move because it would provide us with more commodious and economical accommodations which we are greatly in need of. Surely the tenant is not responsible for the conduct or religion of his landlord, and in this case there is not even such a relationship anticipated.

R. M. RIGGS

General Council of the Assemblies of God

Springfield, Mo.

WORLD AT HIS DOOR

J. Marcellus Kik’s article, “Strengthening the Pulpit” (August 3 issue), points out one of the inherent weaknesses of evangelical preaching today. We need to apply the rule of “all things … decently and in order” to our sermon preparation. I believe the pulpit would have a far greater impact upon its hearers if more of our ministers would pray, study, and sweat over a sermon instead of relying on the shopworn clichés. Too often our evangelical preaching consists of a few stock phrases, some familiar memory verses and illustrations which fail to illustrate. This is followed by an impassioned plea for souls in an invitation that describes in minute detail everything from the furniture of heaven to the temperature of hell.

We could well profit from the statement of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap … though he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

W. NORMAN MACFARLANE

West Falmouth Free Baptist Church

West Falmouth, Me.

THE CHURCH AND THE ARMY

The article on “Why Army Churchgoing Lags” by Tracy Early (July 20 issue) compares Protestant attendance at worship services unfavorably with Roman in the armed services, but overlooks most of the reasons.

First (and most important) everyone who is not a Roman Catholic or a Jew is listed as “Protestant” statistically, whether or not he has any notion of what the word means. One of my buddies (I served three years as an enlisted man in WW II, USNR) thought it meant he had come into the service under protest! The point is, many “Protestants” might more factually be listed “secularists.”

Second, Roman worshippers find something at worship to remind them of home, in the mass, which is a stereotyped procedure that all worshippers are trained to understand. Protestants, on the other hand, come from such a variety of backgrounds that a typical service may be utterly foreign to them. Many Protestant clergy are themselves not too keenly aware of the significance of some of the acts in an “order” of worship, as anyone who has heard invocations that do not invoke and benedictions that do not bless, will readily appreciate. Romans and Protestants simply do not have the same reasons for attendance.

Third, chaplains are commissioned officers and there is a distrust of commissioned officers and their propaganda among the enlisted men, with the result that Protestant men who wish to attend services will, usually, prefer to attend a civilian service off the base, if at all possible. Romans do not have this problem, since the priest loses his human identity as he assumes the office of the Church.

Last, there is little or no connection between the life treated of in the sermons of most Protestant clergymen and the life actually lived by a young man under arms. The problems dealt with by the chaplain are not the problems they must face when celebrating a “liberty,” “shore leave” or “pass” in a city far from home. They get no help in religious services in making the kind of decisions and choices they must actually make. Romans do not face this problem, since they have never been led to expect correspondence between the religious and the secular life.

CHESTER J. HEWITT

First Evangelical United Brethren

Peotone, Ill.

Protestant denominationalism is a manifestation of rigid voluntary segregation, a unique phenomenon in our social life, not to say our religious expression. Two churches may be across the street from each other. To what extent does the one share in the joys and sorrows of the other? They may not glare at each other, but to what extent do they cooperate in promoting the Lord’s work? To what extent does each church leave with its members that feeling that Sunday worship is satisfied best, not to say only, by weekly attendance at their own church?

WALTER H. HARTUNG

Richmond, Va.

I have been a chaplain in a Veterans Hospital for fifteen years. I have noted practically the same things among veterans as he has among those in the armed services now. I went into the room of an honest young man some time ago and noted that his bed-tag had him labelled as a “Protestant.” I began to talk to him about his faith. He said, “When I was admitted they asked me what my religion was, and I told them that I was an agnostic. The clerk looked at me sort of funny and wrote down ‘Protestant’.” I suppose the clerk thought that an “agnostic” was just another of the many varieties of Protestants.

I have often wondered since, how many “Protestants” are not really agnostics, in the sense that they don’t really know what they believe. I have run across a good many such “Protestants” both in and out of the army or veterans hospitals.

Our Protestant churches will continue to have in their ranks many “agnostics” and indifferent members until our ministers and church sessions, or other examining bodies, study and apply the conditions laid down by Christ himself for church membership.

C. REES JENKINS

Fayetteville, N. C.

Our G. I. foreign baby rate is fairly stable. But it is remaining high.… The many G. I. marriages are generally based on prior intercourse. At best they are arranged with girls of completely different culture, and the lowest of backgrounds are the well from which these wives are drawn, in most cases.… When men are not under battle conditions, when they train and wait, wait and train …, there is a toll in morals, and a pull at the very best of men.… In the Armed Forces, at all levels, beer or hard liquors are both cheap and always available. It leaks out into native shops in such great quantities that the supply has to exceed the G. I. demand. Pusan, Korea

A. B. SPOONER

Thanks to Tracy Early for a thoughtful and perceptive article, and my sympathy and prayers for him and other chaplains in this problem, which I know from three and a half years as air force chaplain in WW II. One suggestion: positive encouragement by the home church of regular chapel attendance as normative Christian conduct for a serviceman.

WARD J. FELLOWS

Parkway United

St. Louis, Mo.

Would the chaplain not make mint by self-analysis? A soldier years ago wrote me that his chaplain spoke on the World Series just before going into a battle. Another that he received more spiritual sustenance by reading his church papers than by attending.

The Roman Catholics have the mystery of the mass irrespective of the personality of the priest. We have the mystery of the redemptive love of God in Christ also irrespective of the chaplain. Let each pastor at the home base or in the chaplaincy remember that sacred task of preaching this mystery and then a worship “must” will become a worship privilege.

J. T. HOOGSTRA

Prospect Park Christian Reformed

Holland, Mich.

SCHOLARSHIP WITH PIETY

The article of Dr. Calvin D. Linton entitled “The Service of Worship,” I read and reread. [This] was due to no lack of clarity.… Rather was it due to the fact that in my estimation, with reference to such a topic, here was biblical scholarship and spiritual piety at its best. For me, and I trust for others, the article was dynamically magnetic in its scholarship and piety.

God’s blessings upon your continued efforts to disseminate the historic faith with reference to every aspect of life.

BENJAMIN J. BOERKOEL

Second Christian Reformed Church

Randolph, Wisc.

SCHOOL OF THE PROPHETS

Dr. Safara A. Witmer states, “Because Harvard was suspect of being Unitarian and rationalistic, Yale was founded ‘to be a truer school of the prophets’ ” (May 11 issue). This statement seems to involve some chronological confusion, for the best authorities (e.g. Latourette) give 1750 as the time when Unitarianism began to become powerful in the Massachusetts Colony, while Yale was started in 1702, about half a century earlier. The main reason for its establishment was probably that for young men the journey from Connecticut to Cambridge was too long, too difficult, and too expensive in those days.

As to the main thesis, I believe that the best way to meet the problem of Christian nurture in the colleges today is not more sectarian college education but young, active, well educated and spiritually minded chaplains on every university and college campus.

MONTGOMERY H. THROOP

South Orange, N. J.

It is true that one reason for the establishment of Yale was the distance of Connecticut settlements from Cambridge. The proposal of a college in Connecticut goes back to the earliest settlers, but it is evident that the theological crisis at the turn of the century was a definite factor in crystallizing the desire for a college. James H. Ropes, Harvard professor of history, summed up the situation thus: “In the struggle in the colony between the Congregational clergy and the more liberal elements, the college (Harvard) early tended toward the liberal side, and a crisis occurred about 1700.… It became increasingly evident that the orthodox Calvinistic party could no longer rely upon Harvard College.… The theological development in the direction of liberal views was completed in 1805, when, after a bitter controversy, Rev. Henry Ware, an avowed Unitarian, was elected to the Hollis professorship of divinity.” Twenty years after the founding of Yale, the Rev. Moses Noyes gave this account: “The first Movers from a College in Connecticut alleged this as a Reason, because the College at Cambridge was under the Tutorage of Latitudinarians” (Morison in “Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century”).

It is a fact that powerful conservative leaders in Massachusetts, including Increase Mather following his exclusion from the presidency of Harvard, backed the founding of Yale because of their dissatisfaction with Harvard. When the promoters addressed a letter to Secretary Addington and Judge Sewall of Massachusetts on August 7, 1701, asking their advice and a draft for a charter, they replied, “We shall be very glad to hear of flourishing schools and a college in Connecticut, and it would be some relief to us against the sorrow we have conceived for the decay of them in this province.”

As for the development of Unitarianism, while the middle of the 18th century may well have been the time when Unitarianism became a powerful force in the Massachusetts Colony, it does not follow that it was not present in its earlier incipient forms a half-century earlier. The 17th century, particularly the latter part, saw significant theological developments and crises in England. Locke’s writings in 1689–92 were a powerful influence toward liberalizing doctrine, and “the literature produced by the Age of Enlightenment was not without its effect on American theologians.” The Toleration Act of 1689 excluded those who denied the Trinity. “The Unitarian influence was so strong that Parliament found it necessary (1695) to threaten the obnoxious heresy with cumulative penalties” (Hastings). It would be improbable if Harvard, which was in the forefront of Colonial intellectual life, would not have been influenced by these developments in the mother country. As Morison says, “So it can readily be appreciated that around 1700 or 1701 many conservative church members may have regarded Harvard College as a place where young men were trained up to novel and dangerous principles, in spite of Mr. Mather’s efforts.”

As for chaplains in secular institutions, thank God for every true witness for Christ. They have a wonderful opportunity of influencing students. But what headway can one or several chaplains make against the mass of secularism and prevailing naturalism that characterizes the secular college or university? Why shouldn’t the faith of Christian chaplains find expression in institutions that are avowedly and consistently Christian?

SAFARA A. WITMER

Ft. Wayne, Ind.

FREEDOM AND THE BIBLE

I read your editorial in the April 27 issue.… I am glad to see that you understand that freedom is a gift of God and not a gift of democracy. I am also glad to see that your magazine is devoted to “biblical theology … biblical ethics … biblical evangelism … biblical studies.”

The Bible is and remains for man what it was for Luther, Calvin and the Reform fathers. It was on the strength of the Bible that they were able to attack the secularism of the Roman Catholic Church at that time and overthrow it. And it will be on the strength of the Bible that we will be able to overthrow the secularism of our own time. Totalitarianism is the fruit of man’s attempt to make himself into God. The century in which we live is the one that might well be characterized as “the self-styled sinless generation.” Like Paul it sees nothing against itself, but unlike him it assumes because it sees nothing against itself that there is nothing against itself. This is the greatest sin of all since only God is without sin.…

For the moment … He is permitting secular man to run the whole show, if for no other reason than to prove that he cannot run it. Once we are filled with despair at our own efforts to save ourselves, God will save us. In fact, God has already done so except that this generation is so lost in self-worship that it does not realize it.

Wilkie, Sask.

WALTER BIEBER

CHANGE IN THE WEATHER

There were, no doubt, many flushed Pentecostal faces who read reader Van Winkle’s caustic statement, “I’d rather be a fool on fire than a scholar on ice” (June 22 issue). The fact that Bethany Bible College (a Pentecostal school) had a commendable letter on the same page did little to alleviate the embarrassment. Really, brethren, I’ve met thousands of Pentecostals who would rather be a scholar on fire than a fool on ice.

PAUL E. BILLS

Assembly of God

Barrow, Alaska

I, too, am a Pentecostal and I enjoy your magazine immensely.… It is indeed interesting as well as amusing, to see the Pentecostal doctrines of divine healing, baptism of the Holy Ghost with the miracle of other tongues and certain once-snubbed methods being accepted with reservations by our non-Pentecostal friends. The fact that Pentecostalists are the fastest growing movement in the world has made quite an impact on the religious world.

Ottumwa, Iowa

GILBERT SIMMONS

I am satisfied in my own study of the deeper experiences of our denomination, but I do add, that if the Pentecostal Fire can’t stand the test of sanctified scholarship, we should find it out immediately and secure a position and belief that is tenable according to Scripture. As a denomination we believe, among many other things, in the complete authority of Scripture, redemption through the blood of Christ, purity of heart, and the Spirit-filled life. We have felt, at times, the abuse of these doctrines in a mystical way, just as the other denominations have suffered the abuse of modernistic tendencies. Bible faith is not a mere leap into the dark, but “the entrance of thy word giveth light.” I had rather be a student of truth than a fool in wildfire.

O. TALMADGE SPENCE

Hopewell, Va.

Page 6367 – Christianity Today (2024)

THE WAVES OF GOSSIP

THE PASTOR AND PHARISEES

THE PASTOR’S MINISTER

TRAINING OF THE LAITY

PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACTS

INTRAPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

CHRISTIAN AID TO PSYCHIATRY

THE INTERPERSONAL WORLD

EXPERIENCE INSPIRES REAPPRAISAL

‘PERSONALITY’ AND ‘PERSON’

EMOTIONS MOLD THE CHILD

ESTRANGEMENT AND DISCIPLINE

NO CURE WITHOUT DEPTH

A WISE COUNSELOR

VIOLENT POWERS OF DARKNESS

THE SOVIET SOCIETY

THE MIRACLE OF FAITH

GOD’S LIVING WORD

THE WHIM OF THE USURPER

Fulfillment Of Educational Needs

Education And Service

Communication With God

Iconoclast

People: Words And Events

Gomorrah Found?

Radio to Russia

TV from Moscow

The Production Code

The Same Pattern

Preaching ‘Outlawed’

‘Good for You’

Protestant Panorama

Wheaton Crusade

Evangelist’s Schedule

THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION

Building Programs

RELIGIOUS ASSEMBLAGES

Biblical Businessmen

Prohibition Ticket

Schism Threat

Reunion Prospect

References