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L. Nelson Bell

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In seeking to be “relevant” to and “involved” with a confused generation, the Church is in danger of joining the forces of Babel. In that day men said, “Come, let us make …,” “Come, let us build …,” “Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (Gen. 11:3, 4).

Feeling insecure, fearful of another flood, confident that they had within themselves the solution to their problems, the men of Babel started to make a “brave new world.” What was the result? Confusion!

God had given the people of that time a revelation of his love, power, and provision. He had promised that the world would never again be destroyed by a flood. But these men rejected his love, discounted his power, ignored his provision, and disbelieved his promise. And, as always, God had the last word. He brought their plans to nought, confused their tongues, and scattered them over the face of all the earth.

There is grave danger that the Church of our day may be accepting the philosophy of Babel. By failing to fulfill its God-given mission, it is adding to the confusion of the world.

How different was Babel from Pentecost. At Pentecost, a small group of ordinary men, united in faith, hope, and prayer and obedient to the Lord’s command to “wait for the promise of the Father,” were suddenly transformed into flaming evangels, filled with the Holy Spirit, bearing a burning message—God’s message—of redemption for a sinning world.

This event, which some saw as a confusion of tongues and others as an alcoholic binge, was actually God’s empowering of man to preach the Gospel in a needy but hostile world. These men went out, not to reform the world, but to lead individual souls to redemption through faith in Jesus Christ. There was no compromise in their preaching; they knew men were lost sinners who needed to repent and believe in Christ for salvation. At the center of their message was Christ, the incarnate Son of God, who died on the Cross for sinners. This Christ arose from the dead, and the disciples bore witness to his resurrection as something of which they were certain, because they had been with him after it happened.

They showed how the truths to which they bore witness, the Christ whom they preached, were a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, and they repeatedly testified to the accuracy and authority of the Scriptures.

These early witnesses preached that men needed to be saved from their sins. They called for repentance and offered forgiveness in the name of their risen Lord. Their preaching was filled with deep conviction because of their own experience with Jesus Christ. They called men to make a decision, and on one occasion three thousand souls responded. At other times only a few believed, always those ordained of God unto salvation.

Their offer was universal: “And it shall be that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21). It was the offer of an exclusive Christ: “There is salvation in no one else.” It was a Gospel that divided men: some believed it, others rejected it.

These men were fully aware of the wickedness, the injustice, the evils of the social order in which they lived. They knew about the slavery, prostitution, oppression, dishonesty, and other signs of the depravity of man. And they did something about it! They knew that society would never be changed until men’s hearts were changed. They knew they had the only message that could bring about that change, the message of the new birth through faith in the Risen Lord. And they gave their hearts and even their lives to the proclamation of this supernatural message of a supernatural Christ who would change men in a supernatural way.

This was the result of Pentecost. Is the organized church today following the same road? Or is it following the course of Babel?

In our world, all the basest passions of mankind seem to be coming to the fore in an orgy of lewdness, lawlessness, and strife. Many are saying that our society is “sick.” But it is folly to emphasize the “corporate sins of society” without recognizing that it is the sins of individuals that find expression in society. From the desperately wicked hearts of men come “evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander” (Matt. 15:19). These are the things that defile a man, and they are the things that defile a society.

But what is the organized church doing about this desperate situation? Is it playing the part of the medical quack who offers various nostrums and panaceas, or the medical hack who tries to relieve symptoms without concern for the underlying disease, instead of offering a clear diagnosis and cure based on God’s word? Is it slighting Pentecost, with all its attendant power and blessing, in favor of Babel, with its confusion, frustration, and defeat?

I am greatly concerned about the Church. I am heartsick over a widespread shift in emphasis, a shift from proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the one cure for sin to “involvement” in any and every activity designed for social change, with seemingly little concern for the basic change of heart that is the product of the Gospel.

Has the Church lost faith in the power of the Gospel? Does it think it can redeem society without touching the hearts of individuals? Does it think it can join forces with the world to build a city and make a name while it ignores the biblical truth that believers are strangers and exiles on the earth, looking to “the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Heb. 11:10)?

A study of the convocations of most of the major denominations reveals that their main concerns are becoming secular and materialistic rather than spiritual. The Gospel is at best taken for granted and not emphasized, and at worst denied.

Can the situation be reversed? The answer is an emphatic yes. But to do so we must turn away from Babel, with its call to merely human achievement, and turn back to Pentecost, where the power of the God of eternity was manifested in the presence and person of his Spirit. This will happen when men bow their minds, wills, and hearts to him in humble faith and obedience. If they do this, the Church will be revived and will go out into this sinning, lost world with the one and only message that will work—that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3, 4). This message, the Apostle Paul says, is of “first importance”!

Babel or Pentecost—which will the Church choose?

- More fromL. Nelson Bell

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Dear Ministerial Superstars and Lesser Lights:

As much as we love evangelical pastors, honesty compels us to admit that their roosts contain a certain number of co*cksure bumblers who love to crow. Baptist minister Richard Milham holds a funhouse magnifying mirror up to this fowl breed in a new satirical work, Brother Fred Chicken, Superpastor (Broadman, $1.75). His book may ruffle the feathers of a few co*cks of the walk, but it will delight all who have to laugh so they won’t cry over the foibles of some pastors.

Brother Fred Chicken (and it’s always Brother Fred) is long on palaver and short on sensitivity, square in his pietism but a corner-cutter in his personal ethics. When a young man seeks him out one night to learn how he can become a Christian, the Superpastor bombards him with a pamphlet against evolution but overlooks his real need. At a ministerial meeting the next day, Brother Chicken eagerly tries to tell of the midnight dialogue but is repeatedly thwarted. Finally, he closes in prayer: “Bless that young man that called me in the middle of the night and got me out of my warm bed. You know how I sought to.…”

Fred is a man with forceful convictions. He’s a master of dispensational charts for bold eschatological preaching; he campaigns vigorously against tobacco (until an acre of it is planted for him as a love gift); he strenuously opposes dancing at his church’s college. In his witness to a Jewish merchant, the Superpastor implores him to “cling to that cross—that same cross that you and your people murdered our Saviour on,” finally leaves him with the reminder not to forget “my preacher’s discount” on a pair of shoes, and then wonders, “Why is it so hard to reach some people with the good news about our riches in Jesus?” He is not averse to receiving kickbacks for funerals referred to a particular mortuary, customarily leaves a miserly tip accompanied by a tract entitled, “Here’s a Tip for You,” and uses a system of telephone signals to avoid long-distance charges.

Brother Chicken yearns to fly high in his denomination. He lands a large pastorate after a carefully planned service to impress the pulpit committee at which two young children, previously pressured by the Superpastor, respond to his baptism invitation. He thinks God one day will make him denominational president.

Milham’s amusing book lays only one egg. In his epilogue he feels constrained to warn readers that his book is satire and that thousands of ministers are not of the Brother Fred Chicken variety. If such an explicit explanation is really necessary, I fear there are more Brother Freds than we realize.

Your friendly chicken-plucker,

EUTYCHUS III

A DISTINGUISHED DOZEN YEARS

Dr. Carl F. H. Henry’s farewell note (Editor’s note, July 5) leads to comment upon the great contribution to religious journalism and Christian thought that he has made during his twelve years as editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. As one of his friends since the beginning of his career and as his coeditor from 1963 to 1966, I know something of the devotion to Christ with which he has used his brilliant ability, editorial skill, and exceptional knowledge of theology and related fields to further the cause of evangelical Christianity throughout the world. The position of CHRISTIANITY TODAY as one of the foremost religious journals of these times is a measure of Dr. Henry’s distinguished leadership. As he enters upon his year of study and reflection at Cambridge, he deserves the gratitude and prayerful good wishes not only of the evangelical community but also of other Christian men of good will everywhere.

FRANK E. GAEBELEIN

Arlington, Va.

I wish to congratulate Dr. Henry for producing consistently one of the most readable religious periodicals.…

I have recently assumed the job of religion editor here. Our paper is the largest daily in Alabama.

WALLACE HENLEY

The Birmingham News

Birmingham, Ala.

PANEL APPLAUSE

I appreciated … “Technology, Modern Man, and the Gospel” (July 5). I applaud Dr. Henry’s excellent biblical answers to what appears to be a very modern, universalistic theology.… If we can tell men today that they are forgiven through God’s act, without emphasizing their personal awareness of sin and the need for forgiveness, then there is no need for evangelism today.

BENNIE H. CLAYTON

First Southern Baptist Church

Willows, Calif.

On clinical grounds, I disagree with Harvey Cox that “the first news of the Gospel is not that you’re a sinner but that God has acted and forgiven you.” In the mental-hospital setting, we know that until a person fully accepts his illness and his helplessness in the face of it, there is no way to healing.…

And yet, I would argue against Dr. Henry’s view that the terms sin and sinner are meaningful in helping broken people today. The modern moralistic connotations make the words almost unusable.… Modern man is concerned primarily with the pain he himself is suffering.… Most people today go to God because they are desperate rather than because they feel guilt.… As long as the prodigal comes home, who cares what drives him?

EARL JABAY

Chaplain

New Jersey Neuro-Psychiatric Institute

Princeton, N. J.

COGENT BREVITY

To the “Plight of the Evangelicals” (July 5)—Amen! This is penetrating analysis; its brevity is defied by the depth and cogency of its message. Every point should be carried home to our hearts if we who rest our all in Christ are not to betray his cause at this turning point.

ROBERT M. METCALF, JR.

Memphis, Tenn.

I think that I can suggest at least two basic reasons for the “plight”.… We Mennonites find ourselves in a somewhat peculiar position. In doctrine we are generally with the evangelicals … [but] we are much more comfortable with more liberal groups in the areas of social action.… The tendency to identify America with Christianity … to many of us seems to border on idolatry.… To us the Church, the people of God, come from all nations, kindred, and tribes. The large part that hate … plays in fundamentalist messages and speeches … we cannot accept. We believe that the Bible teaches love for the brethren, for those in need, and for all men and even our enemies. We readily admit that we do not fully practice this, being human, but we certainly try not to make hate a part of our faith.

RALPH NOFZIGER

Archbold, Ohio

NOT SO RED, WHITE, AND BLUE

Please do not write any more editorials about Viet Nam until you have thoroughly investigated the sorry history of our involvement there.…

To say (“Spock, Coffin, and Viet Nam,” July 5) that we must remain to stand for “freedom” is to show ignorance of the peasant’s life under the aristocratic land-lord government that has been in power in the absence of the Viet Cong. The present Saigon government is not a study in moral, conscientious government.…

The picture in Viet Nam is not the simple portrait in red, white, and blue that the evangelical pulpit would like to paint.…

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is the greatest, until it wanders into unfamiliar territory.

LEWIS W. FLAGG III

Cambridge, Mass.

INCOME ATTENTION

“A Guaranteed Income” (A Layman and His Faith, July 5) deserves a lot of attention.… I see no essential injustice in a guaranteed income. There is intrinsic injustice in the old welfare idea.… Guaranteed care for the poor … is a part of the fundamental Hebrew-Christian Ethic.…

Sound ethics will put an economic base under a person because he is a person.… Sound ethics will also call for political integrity which does not use money to exploit the poor.…

The will to work definitely deserves serious consideration. Public support is not the Christian way of life.…

The New Testament pictures a labor pool (Matt. 28:1–16) where those who are willing to work stood all day waiting to be employed. “Why stand ye here idle?” was answered honestly: “No man hath hired me.” The man who says, “If any one will not work, let him not eat,” must have a job to offer. And the New Testament just income is full pay for the fellows who stood in the labor market all day indicating that they were willing to work all day if the employment service would provide the kind of work they could do.… The fact is, if we all knew how to live by every word … of God, these nagging problems would be well on their way to solution.

FRED RUDDER

Knoxville, Tenn.

I have recognized for some time that I am something of a … schizophrenic bird—a religious conservative and a political liberal.…

I just don’t think enough time went into research on the realities of the situation, the workings of various solutions.… The idea of churches and individual Christians meeting today’s social and economic problems on their own sounds great. But the record is one of dismal failure. Let’s put aside the notion that government is something strange and evil. It can be whatever we choose to make it. Let’s borrow a page from the strategy of our Communist foes and start boring from within.

HARRY M. DURNING, JR.

Editorial Writer

WBZ-TV 4

Boston, Mass.

DID NOT—WAS NOT

I covered the Ninety-fourth General Assembly of The Presbyterian Church in Canada.… It was with dismay that I read [your] erroneous report (July 5).

The assembly did not vote to modernize rules, simply to experiment with the form of the 1969 General Assembly.… Coles was not named to head a panel of three, in fact no panel or committee has been set up yet.

DECOURCY H. RAYNER

Editor

The Presbyterian Record

Don Mills, Ont.

FRY AND PRESBYTERY

The issue of the Rev. John R. Fry versus the McClellan Committee (“Gun Cache at First Church,” July 19) was supposedly resolved at the last meeting of Chicago Presbytery. Yet it is still very much a live issue.…

Presbytery rightly acted in support of Mr. Fry in the face of a committee whose proceedings under any normal laws of jurisprudence are extra-legal at best and gratingly abusive at worst. To any reasonable person, Presbyterians included, John Fry remains innocent until proven guilty.…

By the same logic, any reasonable person, Presbyterians included, cannot conclude the Senate committee, the Mayor of Chicago, the police force, and its individual members guilty as charged by Mr. Fry until similarly proven guilty.

What remains is the substantive issue of conflicting testimony.… Senator McClellan’s railings have no more right to shape the church than a group of ecclesiastics wearing “Fry’s My Guy” pins have the right to dictate federal legislative procedure.

What is needed, now that the dust has begun to settle, is for the Presbytery of Chicago to seek to determine, as the court of Jesus Christ which it is, the propriety of the Rev. Mr. Fry’s conduct as a member of that ecclesiastical body.… The emotional whitewash given at our last Presbytery meeting just will not do.

What Is Science?

Science in its myriad parts is both conceptual and functional—conceptual in its effort to map the physical and natural world and more recently the psychological world; functional in its perennial enlistment to fight disease, lengthen life, and serve the public good, to say nothing of its capacity to intensify the war effort.

Science is a much misunderstood enterprise. Some say it has a methodology: it gathers data, sends up trial-ballon concepts called hypotheses, tests their validity, makes corrections, modifies the map of reality, makes further tests, and so on. But is this not the basic method of nearly every field of knowledge-seeking, including theology?

Even the gathering of facts is not so simple as it sounds. If you looked east on a clear morning, what would you see? A moving ball of fire rising above a fixed horizon? Look again. Wasn’t it rather a moving horizon dipping below the ball of fire? Which was it? Or were both in motion? Whatever your answer, a structure is implied, a perspective and its related understanding assumed. That is why Goethe said that we see what we know.

Generating hypotheses to fit data is both work and play; either way it is demanding. In physics, which holds a strategic place as a natural science and serves as model for most would-be sciences, the attempt to discover or invent hypotheses to explain data has been the most mind-wrenching experience of all. As Herbert Butterfield observes:

Change is brought about, not by new observations or additional evidence … but by transpositions that were taking place inside the minds of the scientists themselves.… Of all forms of mental activity, the most difficult to induce, even in the minds of the young who may be presumed not to have lost their flexibility, is the art of handling the same bundle of data as before, but placing them in a new system of relations with one another by giving them a different framework, all of which virtually means putting on a different kind of thinking-cap for the moment [The Origins of Modern Science, Bell, 1951, p. 1].

To speak of “the” scientific method in relation to all sciences is quite misleading, for such a method simply does not exist. Science has many methods, each characteristic of the particular science served. A distinguished physiologist once remarked, “It is astonishing how few people realize that the methods of science are in the main ad hoc in nature.”

But what, then, of the logical step-by-step development we learn from textbooks? Honest scientists will tell you that it is an ideal, an afterthought, a way of explaining your work to someone who hasn’t the time to hear about all your mistakes and false starts and zany hypotheses that ultimately (and usually painfully and slowly) became the “shavings from the carpenter’s bench.” The niceties of formal deductive logic are not nearly so important for natural science qua quest as are the freedom and power and fecundity of human imagination.

For this reason Alfred North Whitehead was very frank to characterize science as the outworking of a man’s hunch, of his hope, of his guess:

Science is an enterprise in which reason is based on a faith, rather than one which has faith based on reason.… It is essentially an antirationalist movement, based upon an instinctive conviction and a naïve faith.… This faith cannot be justified by an inductive generalization; … it is impervious to the demand for a consistent rationality [Science and the Modern World].

The colorful comment of the late Professor P. W. Bridgman of Harvard is often quoted:

The scientific method, as far as it is a method, is nothing more than doing one’s damnedest with one’s mind, no holds barred. What primarily distinguishes science from other intellectual enterprises in which the right answer has to be obtained is not method but the subject matter [The Logic of Modern Physics].

All this suggests, then, that scientific research is quite honestly not itself a science; rather, it is still an art. Indeed, science is much richer than most laymen dream and can be viewed from different angles: as a collected precipitate from the stirrings of past minds it is a body of organized knowledge; regarded as a mathematical skeleton (as in physics, notably), it is simply an array of equations; when seen as a formal a posteriori account, the stricter science (with mathematics as the prototype) exhibits a structure of axioms and theorems; seen as a growing edge of understanding, science is a disciplined insight; under the rubric of a bold intellectual adventure, it is experimental theorizing; under the figure of fidelity, it is a “second wife”; and seen as a particular way of life, it is indeed an exhilarating one.

Most scientists, it seems, consider their aim to be constructing at one level or another a world symbolic of the actual world, that is, a model of reality. The success of the model, as Mach observed, is its own justification. What better recommendation is there than the fact that “it works”? But the use of models also has inherent dangers. Nineteenth-century physicists fell into the trap of nearly completely identifying the current theory with their model for it. This led them to think that gases were “really” made up of minute billiard balls, that space was “really” filled with a perfectly elastic solid, rigid but penetrable. These dangers underscore the fact that to have a map of reality is not enough; we need also to know how to use the map. We have relief maps, road maps, contour maps of the same terrain, but each is used in a different way. And those little black circular blobs marking towns do not mean that towns are circular, or that they are black; nor is the State of Rhode Island all purple, as some maps show.

Where Are the Frontiers?

If these considerations point in any specific direction, it is, I believe, toward the fact that the frontier of science as a human effort is simply in the mind of man. This mind is still the most important element in all scientifically conducted research. It is there that facts are observed, hypotheses formed, critical judgments built up, revisions made, and so on.

Now, to the scientist who is also a Christian, it is of incalculable importance that what he seeks to map is God’s universe, for this means he is contributing to an understanding of the work of God’s hands. This difference will not necessarily make him a better or more thorough scientist, but it will qualify his attitude toward his work. In the nature of things and persons, the pristine joy of creating is beyond our power; but the exhilaration of being on the growing edge of deeper and deeper awareness of how it all is put together and how it actually functions is surely a joy, whether the poets celebrate it or not. In the words of George Macdonald, “human science is but the backward undoing of the tapestry-web of God’s science, works with its back to Him, and is always leaving Him—His intent, that is, His perfected work—behind it, always going farther and farther away from the point where His work culminates in revelation.” Note the connection between science and revelation via creation.

The scientist can hardly avoid placing himself somewhere in the scheme of things; to do this is a human thing and has nothing whatever to do with science. And where we place ourselves in our reading of life is crucial. We are all cut from the same bolt of cloth in our basic concerns; these are the classical, personal, perennial matters of security, freedom, order, and meaning. The answers we give to these questions involve our faith or lack of it, our concepts of history, of self, and of the future.

God is always a “problem” to a man, including an educated man, until He becomes the center of that man’s own little universe. Our egocentricity is our damnation; God’s egocentricity is our salvation. It was the same with Mitya in Dostoevsky’s story of the four Brothers Karamazov:

It’s God that’s worrying me. That’s the only thing that’s worrying me. What if He doesn’t exist? What if Rakitin’s right—that it’s an idea made up by men? Then if He doesn’t exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God? That’s the question. I always come back to that [Great Books of the Western World, p. 314].

Because science qualifies how we construe the world, and construction is both of mind and of heart, the mind of modern man—and particularly that of the educated, because it is more susceptible to science—is justifiably identified as the frontier of both science and Christianity.

What Is the Conflict?

Although the more acrimonious debate between science and traditional views of the Christian Church is past, the fires of controversy have left embers that are still warm. The tension of incompatible attitudes is still with us and will probably exist for a long time. No doubt new aspects of the conflict are yet to emerge. This surely testifies to the vitality of both sides in a world of men who are supposed to see things for themselves. Each with a growing edge of understanding tends to eye the other with conspicuous aloofness. But much of the time they ignore each other.

THE PROPHET’S CHILD

He dreamed his dreams—

Some were roaring nightmares;

He saw his visions

And tiptoed skyscraped heights;

His prophetic mouth has sprung

And closed with clacking teeth

And with thin, smacking lips.

A pop-eyed, naked nuisance!

Spirit dripping on this stone,

They charged, would not wear

Away its final, immutable presence.

But as they left, at their feet

Children sang and carved

Their dream-born castles

From the white, sea-washed sand.

WILLIAM J. SCHMIDT

The story of the conflict has been one of faults on both sides. On the whole, it has been an account of shrinking faith in the relevance of Christian faith. The Church bitterly opposed the Copernican idea of heliocentricity; yet how much grander is our concept of the universe as a result of it! It is a sad fact that scientists, even unbelieving scientists, are swifter to confess error in science once it is discovered than are the leaders of the Church. Would not confession by the Church of its ancient errors, even at this late date, be a wholesome act? Has the Church forgotten how to confess?

But there is yet another angle for viewing the scene, one that can be very revealing. Sometimes the distinction between science and religion is compared to that between a diagram and a picture—two different but complementary methods by which man grasps reality. Up to a point this is true.

The error, from the Christian point of view, that has colored many well-meaning scholarly attempts to treat the problem of theology and natural science is conceiving them to be on the same level. Novel though the thought might appear to some, truth is not all on one level. There is truth that is higher because it is more important and because it includes other truth and depends upon it for its validity. The difference lies in the matter of man’s involvement of himself in the viewing process. For this reason, the one-level treatment of theology and science is academically impossible. James Denney called attention to this involvement when he criticized Ritschl in 1895:

Christian theology is not a separate department of intelligence, having no connection with others; just because it is a doctrine of God, it must have a place and recognition for all those impressions and convictions about God which have exerted their power in man’s mind, even apart from the perfect historical revelation [Studies in Theology].

But what is the picture today? Half the human race is dominated by a philosophy that dogmatically asserts that science has superseded Christian theology and then sets out to prove to the world that Christian faith is obsolete.

It has been popular to think of the science-religion conflict as a running series of battles between particular dogmas of religion and particular discoveries of science. But this is a superficial approach, as W. T. Stace observes. The real trouble is deeper; it extends to the private laboratory of the heart and mind, where presuppositions are formulated. The antagonism, Stace says, “is rather that certain very general assumptions which are implicit in the scientific view of the world conflict with basic assumptions of the religious view—any religious view, not merely the Christian view—of the world” (Religion and the Modern Mind, Lippincott, 1952, p. 53).

It is in the heart that man first and most importantly either affirms or denies the existence of God. Here is the watershed of character. In his assumptions a man determines what he really is before God. For me, this is a basic biblical insight. My experience as a mathematician has only served to rub it in, as it were, because it is also a basic mathematical insight that the axioms of a system determine completely the structure reared upon them. The Apostle Paul makes this order clear when he first argues a correct doctrine of God and self and then sets down exhortations on conduct. The picture in the Book of James is that of a spring from which sweet or bitter waters flow.

If man does not recognize God as Creator and Lord of all life, and of his own in particular, then God forces him to take an idol as his “god.” If he will not believe the truth, there is nothing left but to accept a lie. There are many ways to tell a lie, but there is only one way to tell the truth. God implicitly gives the possible meanings of life when he puts man in the context of the rest of his earthly creation. We do not manufacture meanings for life: we choose from those available before we arrived on the scene. Thus when man realizes his alienation from God, he finds himself continually driven to seek provisional meanings from the broken cistern of his own existence in order to nullify the sense of guilt and to satisfy his deep yearning for meaning. His guilt and hostility will inevitably rise to the surface and work themselves out in his every pursuit. The testimony of conscience in time emerges to the surface like the periscope of a submarine, to be seen by all. Either we are living epistles for God and exhibit faith that others see, or else we reflect to the world an emptiness of soul and an absence of faith.

Both in college years and later, educated persons are influenced by the mainstreams of thought. Many continually make progress in a lively intellectual pilgrimage. We need to see how the educated often parry the thrust of the Gospel. Let us examine the structure of reasoning. If strong emphasis is given to the status of hypotheses and presuppositions, it is because they appear as both necessary and sufficient to carry out a line of reasoning.

The basic move in discursive thought is the syllogism, the logical move whose very simple form is: All A’s are B’s; all B’s are C’s; so all A’s are C’s. The conclusion follows from the two premises. Any logical argument is ideally a chain of reasoning involving such syllogistic links. Argument is logical to the degree that it shares this pattern. We are constantly making assumptions in all areas of life and under all sorts of conditions, because we cannot apprehend reality in any other way. In the sciences it is important to recognize our assumptions and often to call specific attention to them. Sometimes whole nations are in such basic agreement on a presupposition—for example, that war is terribly wrong—that it becomes an unconscious axiom, as prevalent as the air we breathe. Often in the history of ideas a whole culture has bought stock in some popular idea or concept that all or nearly all people accepted without question. A mind set, an automatic frame of reference, develops, to which other questions are referred for consideration.

Historians tell us that the modern mind, including the educated mind, is the product of seventeenth-century science. Herbert Butterfield sees the “scientific revolution” of that period as truly volcanic in its mental upheaval:

Since that revolution overturned the authority in science not only of the middle ages but of the ancient world—since it ended not only in the eclipse of scholastic philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian physics—it outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom. Since it changed the character of men’s habitual mental operations even in the conduct of the non-material sciences, while transforming the whole diagram of the physical universe and the very texture of human life itself, it looms so large as the real origin both of the modern world and of the modern mentality that our customary periodisation of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance [The Origins of Modern Science, Bell, 1951, p. viii].

One of my philosophy professors was fond of saying that it is the essence of thought to make distinctions. Doubtless this was a “pearl” he was handing down from his own schooling. But I’m not sure that philosophy always makes significant distinctions. If we play detective in trying to locate hidden as well as plain presuppositions, then we find that science makes three basic assumptions: (1) that the world is really there (seldom mentioned but a constant backdrop); (2) that logic applies to science’s description of the world (this cannot be proved a priori but is constantly and in different ways being verified); and (3) that some kind of causal laws apply to nature, though their precise nature is, at least for physics, the subject of hot debate.

In Miracles C. S. Lewis observed that “all possible knowledge … depends on the validity of reasoning.… Unless human reasoning is valid, no science can be true.… A theory which explained everything else in the universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid … would have destroyed its own credentials.”

While some such basis is common to all scientists, it should be clear that a Christian view of things cannot stop with these three axioms. Indeed, there is nothing religious at all in this characterization of science. But the scientist who is also a Christian goes two steps further by saying that God exists and that Jesus Christ is an adequate revelation of him to man. On both points he is on firm biblical ground. The Bible assumes, without formal proof in any mathematical sense, that God exists. The evidence it offers is, for the believing, quite sufficient. Scripture is full of the evidence that God exists independently and underivedly and eternally. All time is “now” to him; all space is “here” to him; all men are “present” to him; all beings are “creature” to him.

Christian faith puts that described world into its own God-arranged setting. Science has absolutely nothing to do with the way faith regards the cosmos in relation to God. This is for the believer a matter of God’s revelation. The Christian cannot afford to let the scientist tell him the ultimate significance and meaning of the universe, any more than the scientist can let the Church dictate the experiments he will conduct and the investigations he will carry out. Our conviction as Christians is that the Bible’s view of the world, its view of men and things and of all the created order, is the most satisfying and the most consistent with all the facts.

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

- More fromCharles Hatfield

Hudson T. Armerding

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Seven years ago the United States Supreme Court handed down landmark decisions on four cases dealing with the legal regulation of Sunday. At issue was whether Sunday closing laws violated the United States Constitution. In the opinion of the court, the Sunday laws no longer had a religious significance. In fact, the only concern of the justices in this regard was whether the Sunday laws violated religious liberty. The majority view as expressed by Chief Justice Warren was that the present purpose and effect of the various Sunday laws was “to provide a uniform day of rest for all citizens”:

That this day is Sunday, a day of particular significance for the dominant Christian sects, does not bar the state from achieving its secular goals. To say that the states cannot prescribe Sunday as a day of rest for these purposes solely because centuries ago such laws had their genesis in religion would give a constitutional interpretation of hostility to the public welfare rather than one of mere separation of church and state.

This statement points up the difference between present and past practices. The Puritan heritage of many of the early colonists included a strong conviction about observance of the Lord’s Day. In 1595, the doctrine of Sabbatarianism was outlined by Nicholas Bownd in a work called The True Doctrine of the Sabbath. Although he recognized the distinction between the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Lord’s Day, Bownd affirmed that the commandment to sanctify every seventh day was moral and perpetual in its significance. His work apparently had a great influence upon the Puritans of his time.

Another evidence of Puritan thought is seen in an action of the Synod of Dort, which in 1619 agreed upon the following:

(1) In the fourth commandment of the Law of God, there is something ceremonial, and something moral. (2) The resting upon the seventh day after creation, and the strict observation of it, which was particularly imposed upon the Jewish people, was a ceremonial part of that law. (3) But the moral part is, that a certain day be fixed and appropriated to the service of God, and as much rest as is necessary to that service and the holy meditation upon Him. (4) The Jewish Sabbath being abolished, Christians are obliged solemnly to keep holy the Lord’s Day. (5) This day has ever been observed by the ancient Catholic Church, from the time of the apostles. (6) This day ought to be appropriated to religion in such a manner as that we should abstain from all servile work at that time, excepting those of charity and necessity; as likewise in all such diversions that are contrary to religion.

A similar conviction was expressed in the Westminster Confession, drawn up in 1643 by a group of clergymen and laymen, the majority of whom were Presbyterian Puritans, and approved in 1647 by the general assembly of the Church of Scotland. Since the confession became the creed of Scottish and American Presbyterianism, this statement from it is significant:

As it is the law of nature, that, in general, a due proportion of time is set apart for the worship of God; so, in His Word, by a positive, moral and perpetual commandment, binding all men in all ages, He hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath, to be kept Holy unto Him; which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week; and from the resurrection of Christ was changed into the first day of the week, which in Scripture is called the Lord’s Day, and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian Sabbath.

This Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs before Him, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts, about their worldly employment and recreation; but are also taken up the whole time in public and private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.

It was Puritans of this persuasion who brought with them to this country their conception of the Christian Sabbath and established its observance by law as part of the ideal of a Christian commonwealth. Yet as early as 1631 Roger Williams challenged this policy, arguing that it was inappropriate for the civil authority to enforce obedience to the fourth commandment.

Abandonment of the Puritan position on the observance of Sunday, however, did not come until after the wave of immigration from Europe to this country in the latter part of the nineteenth century. These new citizens brought with them the so-called Continental Sunday, characterized more by rest and recreation than by worship and Christian service. This practice was compatible with the growing secularization of Western culture during this era, and it provided the basis for the Supreme Court’s opinion that Sunday laws no longer applied to religious observance but had to do with the secular goals of the state.

The early Puritans insisted that every dimension of personal and social life was to be brought under the authority of the Word of God. The modern evangelical who accepts this principle is faced with a problem that is both cultural and theological. Today’s society, while it may give lip service to the idea of setting aside one day a week as a day of rest, is not in full agreement about what this means, and across the land contradictory practices prevail. In some areas businesses are closed while in others they remain open. Generally those who favor Sunday closing do so on pragmatic grounds: families are able to be together on one day of the week, or business competitors are better circ*mscribed by Sunday laws. The conscientious Christian must decide whether he should change employment if required to work on Sunday in a job not vital to community health or welfare, whether to refrain from recreation engaged in by the overwhelming majority of his contemporaries on that day, perhaps even whether to take his family out to Sunday dinner after church.

Since his decision should be based primarily on biblical rather than cultural or expedient grounds, he is also faced with the important question of just what the Word of God teaches about observance of the Lord’s Day. Historically, Christendom has not been united on this subject, and it still is not. Even the Reformers did not agree whether the Lord’s Day was to be observed on the basis of expediency or in accordance with the commandments of God. Luther’s sermon at the dedication of the Castle Church at Torgau on October 5, 1544, is often cited: “We Christians … have the liberty to turn Monday or some other day of the week into Sunday if the Sabbath or Sunday does not please us.” Yet it could well be that both the early Church and the Reformers felt such an obligation to distinguish between themselves and their Jewish or Roman Catholic antecedents that they tended to over-emphasize the distinction between the old order and the new and between law and grace.

Because this matter has been one of persistent controversy, the tendency has been to avoid the question whether Scripture speaks normatively to today’s Christian about observance of the Lord’s Day. But the question remains.

One common view among evangelicals is that the fourth commandment pertains strictly to the economy of law and thus has no place in the practice of the New Testament Church. Yet it is difficult to think that a set of commandments as basic as the Decalogue could be so fragmented. This is particularly true in light of the reason given for the observance of one day in seven, that is, that it recalls God’s rest after the completion of his creative work. Is it no longer necessary for the Church to mark the completion of God’s creative work in this way?

The conviction and practice of the New Testament Church are instructive at this point. The early Christians set apart the first day of the week to commemorate the resurrection of Christ. This great, central fact of our Christian faith was not divorced from the creative acts of God. The Apostle Paul asserted in the eighth chapter of Romans that a fallen creation waits for the redemption that is yet to be effected through the saving work of Christ. In observing the Lord’s Day, then, the Christian Church can be obedient to the foundational purpose of the fourth commandment in marking God’s rest from his initial creative acts and also be a witness to his re-creative activity, so to speak, through the resurrection ministry and ultimate triumph of the Son of God.

Observance of the Lord’s Day as, among other things, a witness to God’s creative and redemptive work is consistent with other observances having the same objective. For millions of Christians, baptism is a sign or seal of their identification with Jesus Christ in his sacrifical, redemptive ministry. Similarly, each time Christians celebrate the Lord’s supper they announce the Lord’s death until he comes again. In Ephesians, Christian marriage is described as a witness to the world of the union that exists between Christ and the Church. As baptism and the Lord’s supper affirm the relation of the believer to Jesus Christ as Saviour, so Christian marriage bears witness to the relationship of the Christian Church to Christ as head. And God has provided a similar type of witness to the world of his creative acts and the ultimate restoration of creation under his sovereignty—the Lord’s Day. By setting aside of one day for worship and service and release from the tasks that normally occupy them, today’s believers can witness to their contemporaries both of what God has done and of what, in Jesus Christ, he yet will do.

Obedience and witness, moreover, are not without recompense for the Christian. Admittedly there is self-fulfillment or self-realization in obedience to the Word of God and in bearing witness to an unbelieving world. Yet other benefits stem from a proper accommodation to the basic order of God’s universe. Christ said that the Sabbath was made for man rather than man for the Sabbath. Much has been said about what this statement implies, but it seems evident that the setting aside of one day in seven was meant to give man the physical and emotional renewal he greatly needs through rest from labor and in worship and praise. Perhaps the mental and emotional illness that plagues even the Christian community might be lessened if men deliberately set aside the pressures and tensions of demanding schedules and devoted one day in seven to meditation, worship, and fellowship. Like the other nine commandments, the fourth is designed to enable man to serve his Creator better.

Let Christians take seriously their responsibility to observe the Lord’s Day. But let their observance be the product, not of a sterile legalism, but of spiritual vitality. The secular world may not pay much attention to words, but it may well be summoned to give attention to the claims of Christ by the actions of his followers. Observance of the Lord’s Day is one of the most obvious of the Christian practices. Perhaps God will use it to gain the attention of our contemporaries and have them consider his sovereignty both in creation and in redemption through Jesus Christ.

The Self-Testimony of Scripture

There can be no doubt about this self-testimony of Scripture. Take, for example, the attitude of Jesus and his apostles toward the Old Testament. There is no shadow of a doubt that they accepted it reverently and obediently as the Word of God. There is no trace of the idea that it is only a human document of Israel’s spiritual experiences. No, here God himself speaks. In his discussion with the Pharisees, the appeal to the Old Testament is always final. After his resurrection, his disciples follow his example without any hesitancy. Their writings abound with quotations from the Old Testament, and they always appeal to it as the Word of God. At the same time they make a similar claim for their own preaching. The Apostle Paul, for example, writes to the congregation in Thessalonica: “We also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers” (1 Thess. 2:13). The Apostle Peter places the epistles of Paul on the same level with the Scriptures of the Old Testament (2 Pet. 3:16).

It is evident that, according to the witness of Scripture itself, the Bible is the Word of God. It is not, as Barth and his followers suggest, only a human document that can become the Word of God, when and where it pleases God. There is identity, direct identity, between God’s Word and the Bible. Or to put it in another way: The Bible not only contains God’s revelation; it is God’s revelation to us.

God’s Self-Revelation in Christ

The words “in Christ” must immediately be added to the last statement. God’s revelation in the Scriptures is not just a revelation of all kinds of interesting facts about the world beyond this world and the life after death; it is primarily self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. There is also information about other subjects—about heaven and hell, about this world and man in this world. Yet the real heart of the biblical revelation is that God makes himself known as the God who in his Son Jesus Christ saves this world from eternal destruction. All other information is subordinate to this central message. One could here apply Jesus’ own words from the Sermon on the Mount: “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” (Matt. 6:33).

There is therefore only one way to read the Bible properly: we have to read it as the kerygma, the proclamation of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ. This was the way Jesus himself read the Old Testament, as speaking of himself and thus pointing forward to the great redemption (Luke 24:25 ff.; John 5:39). In the same way the New Testament must be read as the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, but this time pointing backward, as it were, for now he has come, in the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4). William Tyndale expressed this purpose of the Bible well:

The Scripture is that wherewith God draweth us unto Him. The Scriptures sprang out of God, and flow unto Christ, and were given to lead us to Christ. Thou must therefore go along by the Scripture as by a line, until thou come at Christ, which is the way’s end and resting-place [Works (Parker Society ed., 1848), I,317].

Inspiration

But how can a book clearly written by men at the same time be the revelation of God? The Bible’s own answer is that it is not a purely human document. These men were inspired by the Holy Spirit. There is no need to elaborate on the testimony of the Bible on this point, but let us look at two key texts. In his second epistle, Peter says of the Old Testament prophets that their message did not come “by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (1:21). In his second epistle to his spiritual son, Timothy, the Apostle Paul declares of the whole Old Testament: “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (3:16, 17).

We should note that Paul says pasa graphe, all Scripture, is inspired by God. No part is exempted. Everything in Scripture is inspired, that is, written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Reformed theology, in its classical expositors, expressed this by use of the term “verbal inspiration.” This term has often been misunderstood. Many think that to believe in verbal inspiration is to believe that the whole Bible was dictated by the Holy Spirit; one can read this again and again in the books of critical scholars. I can only say that this is a misrepresentation, and I do not mind adding that in the case of scholars it is a deliberate misrepresentation. For they really can and should know better. Have not conservative scholars repeatedly said that they do not hold a mechanical dictation view? As long ago as 1893 Warfield stated: “It ought to be unnecessary to protest against the habit of representing the advocates of ‘verbal inspiration’ as teaching that the mode of inspiration was by dictation.”

What do we mean by “verbal inspiration”? We mean that not only the thoughts but the words as well were written under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit. Speaking of the “words,” we do not mean the words in isolation. We definitely do not mean to say that the Holy Spirit, as it were, whispered into the ear of a prophet or an apostle, “Now you have to use the definite article,” or “Now you have to use the conjunction ‘and.’” Such a conception would indeed be “mechanical.” But this is definitely not the conservative position. When we say that the “words” were inspired by the Holy Spirit, we think of the words in their context: the single word within the context of the verse, the verse within the context of the passage, the passage within the context of the whole book. Because of this emphasis on the context, I personally prefer to speak of “plenary,” rather than “verbal,” inspiration. Yet I mean the same. I believe on the ground of the Bible’s own self-testimony that the whole Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit. Everything in it is according to the will and intention of the Spirit. And this will and intention is: to reveal God’s love in Jesus Christ.

All this has very important and far-reaching implications for our doctrine of Scripture. The first is that Scripture has divine authority. This is a very big claim, but it cannot be avoided. If it is true that the Bible is God’s revelation to us, then we have to bow before its message in obedience. At the same time we must add immediately: The Bible has authority as revelation. In fact, this is the only authority it claims. It does not claim authority in astronomy, for example. As Calvin said, he who wants to learn astronomy should go somewhere else. The Bible is not a scientific textbook. This does not mean it has no significance for the sciences. On the contrary, it supplies the basic presuppositions for all sciences. But it does not deal with scientific problems as such.

The other major consequence is that the Bible is trustworthy and reliable, or, as the fathers used to say, infallible. Again we may not shrink back from this conclusion. It is a “good and necessary consequence,” to use the terminology of the Westminster Confession. But again we must immediately add: It is trustworthy and reliable as revelation. It is not correct to use these words in such a general sense as to imply that the Bible possesses a scientific standard of infallibility. Take, for instance, our modern standards of accuracy. These are foreign to the biblical writers. Often they give no more than approximations. Furthermore, they are very schematic in arranging their material. In his genealogy of Christ, Matthew uses the mnemonic device of three times fourteen generations and for that reason leaves out some of the names mentioned in the Old Testament. He and Luke give the temptations of the Lord in a different order. John places the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of his Gospel, while the other evangelists mention it as part of the final stage of Christ’s ministry. But all this in no way affects the trustworthiness of the Bible. We can really trust it in all that it wants to reveal.

This, in my opinion, is the only correct starting point for all our thinking and speaking about the Bible, for this is the way the Bible presents itself to us. Often this view is called “bibliolatry.” Again and again we hear people say: “You conservatives believe in a book. That is entirely wrong. You should believe in Christ.” My answer is that this is an absolutely false contrast. Of course, we do not believe in the Bible in the same way we believe in Christ himself. Our relationship to Christ is of a different nature; it is a personal relationship. But we also know that there is only one Christ, namely, the Christ who comes to us in the Bible! In other words, they belong inseparably together.

As conservatives we also recognize that God is not locked up in the Bible. We know that we do not “possess” God or his truth. He is and remains the free and sovereign One, also in his revelation. We know that the Bible does not convert a man; this is accomplished by the Holy Spirit, who brings the message of the Bible home to the man. But as conservatives we maintain that it is the message of the Bible that is brought home by the Holy Spirit. Again we say: The Holy Spirit and the Bible belong inseparably together.

God’s Word in the Words of Men

While fully maintaining the identity between the Bible and the Word of God, we do not deny, of course, that this Word of God comes to us through human words. Perhaps we may say that today we know this better than we ever did before. To a large extent, conservatives owe this clearer insight into the human aspect of the Bible to liberal scholars. For a time, in particular the century after the Reformation, the century of the so-called Lutheran and Reformed orthodoxy, conservatives almost seemed to forget this. Some of the orthodox fathers, though formally recognizing the human aspect of the Bible, defended such a rigid theory of inspiration that in actual fact the human aspect was almost completely ignored. We find this view even in one of the Reformed confessions of that century, the 1675 Helvetic Formula of Consensus. Here we read that “the Hebrew Original of the Old Testament, which we have received and to this day do retain as handed down by the Jewish Church … is, not only in its consonants, but in its vowels—either the vowel points themselves, or at least the power of the points—not only in its matter, but in its words, inspired of God.…” In certain respects, liberalism was an understandable reaction to this attitude.

It is very unfortunate that in reaction to the critical approach to Scripture some conservatives of our day again tend to ignore or to minimize the truly human aspect of the Bible. One finds this in particular in some “fundamentalist,” or ultra-conservative, circles. In these groups we find several mistaken notions about the Bible. Some, for example, identify the Word of God with the King James Version! Quite often one hears these people say: “Everything in the Bible is the Word of God and everything is equally the Word of God.” However well meant such a statement may be, it ignores the organic structure of the Bible. Not everything in the Bible is on the same level, nor is every verse equally central—that is, related to the center of all revelation, Jesus Christ.

Indeed, the Bible, the written Word of God, is at the same time a human book through and through. At this point there is a very close parallel between the doctrine of Christ and the doctrine of Scripture. We believe that the Son of God became incarnate. Being truly God, of the same substance with the Father, he really and truly became man. As the Apostle Paul says: “Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:6, 7). Nothing human was alien to him. He shared in all our weaknesses, even in our temptations. There was only one limit: he was sinless. In the same way God’s Word, as it was written down, entered into the “flesh” of human thoughts and words. Again we must say it is really and truly human, and nothing human is alien to it. But here, too, there is one limit: there is no error in it. It does reveal God and his plan of redemption to us, without any distortion or error.

Organic Inspiration

This truly human character of the Bible is also the reason why we reject every mechanical conception of inspiration. Such a conception would be wholly out of keeping with the incarnation, and with God’s ordinary dealings with man. The conservative view of inspiration is not mechanical but rather organic. We believe that the Holy Spirit took into his service men with all their various abilities. This explains the differences in style and language we find in the various books of the Bible. And it also explains the differences in approach. God’s revelation really went into the authors’ minds and hearts and lives and was reproduced with the “colors” of their individual experiences clearly visible in it. In fact, we cannot say beforehand how far the Holy Spirit went in his “accommodation” of the revelation to the level of his organs. We can find this out only by a careful study of Scripture. Calvin once said that in his revelation God acts like a nurse babbling to the baby.

When we study the Scriptures, we do find remarkable things. For instance, God made use of the ancient world picture of those days to express his thoughts to his people. We find this even in the second commandment of the Decalogue: “You shall not make yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth …” (Ex. 20:4, italics added). And we find “accommodation” also in the historical parts of the Bible. There are the many small differences among the three so-called Synoptic Gospels, and there are greater differences between these three Gospels, on the one hand, and the Gospel of John, on the other. There are two versions of the Lord’s Prayer, two of the Sermon on the Mount, and several of the institution of the Lord’s Supper. I do not believe we should try to harmonize them at all cost. They all bring the same message in their own ways, and our task is not to harmonize them but to find out what is the special emphasis of this or that writer.

Furthermore, the Bible writers were definitely children of their own time, and they show it everywhere in their writings. Paul, for example, is a real Jew and clearly shows his rabbinical education in his epistles. We detect it in such things as the way he builds up his argument, the way he argues with his opponents, and the way he quotes the Old Testament. In particular we see it also in his use of Jewish material from the intertestamental period, as when he mentions Jannes and Jambres as the two men who opposed Moses (2 Tim. 3:8), when he writes of the role of the angels in the lawgiving at Sinai (Gal. 3:19; cf. Acts 7:53), and when he speaks of the hierarchy of angels (cf. Eph. 1:21; Col. 2:10, 15).

The same is true of the Old Testament. In fact, we see it even more clearly there, because these books are still further removed from us in time and are even more typically Eastern in their whole structure. The way of writing history in those days was quite different from what we now are used to, and God used this as a medium for his revelation. God wanted to use people of that time in order to speak to people of that time, and this could be done only in a manner that was understandable for both writers and readers.

Problems

From all this foregoing we can draw only one conclusion. The Holy Spirit has used these men with all their peculiarities, both of style and of way of thinking, to reveal himself and his great plan of redemption to his people. I admit that this creates problems for us, some of which we are unable to solve. In some cases we have not studied hard enough, no doubt. But other problems may never be solved, because we do not have enough information for finding a solution.

The fact that there are problems, however, does not mean that our view of Scripture is not basically correct. In fact, in many Christian doctrines we have similar problems that are beyond solution. And in all cases the deepest reason is that we are dealing with the mysteries of God’s ways and works in this world. Here, too, we can point to the parallel with Christology. No one has ever been able to comprehend the mystery of the Incarnation. The Church has spoken of it in the famous dogma of the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451)—two natures, divine and human, united in one divine Person, without division and without admixture—but this dogma was not meant as a “solution” of the mystery. It was only an attempt to describe the mystery by indicating the boundaries beyond which no one is allowed to go. Those who have gone further and claimed to “solve” the mystery have usually lost sight of the mystery itself; all they had left was an empty shell. In the doctrine of Scripture, too, we shall never be able to solve all our problems. Here the mystery of God’s work in and through man will always remain his secret. Yet there can be no doubt that it is his work in and through man. The testimony of Scripture itself at this point is very clear. Every day Scripture proves itself to be the Word of God by its forceful speaking to us. And the fundamental message of Scripture is so clear that even a ten-year-old child can understand it.

Modern Man

The heart of man is full of wrong presuppositions and of rebellion against the God of the Bible, and so the Scriptures may seem quite foreign to him. To say it in Paul’s words: “The unspiritual [or natural] man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). The great miracle is that this same Bible time and again breaks through the rebellion of the natural heart. For it is still the Word of God, which is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).

Where does the Bible stand today? The only correct answer is: It stands where it has always stood. It is still the voice of God, which judges and condemns but also speaks of salvation and redemption. Even these words are misunderstood in our day. Many modern theologians use them to mean something quite different from the biblical meaning. For them, these words are another name for man’s new self-understanding. When they read the parable of the prodigal son, it means virtually that the prodigal arises to return to himself. But in the Bible salvation and redemption refer to what has been done for us in and through Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, who “became man for us and for our salvation.”

Those last words are a quotation from the Nicene Creed. I believe with all my heart that this and the other ancient creeds are still fully true. Thanks be to God, they are true. For only then is there real redemption. I believe in the God revealed in the Bible. I believe in God the Father, who is my Creator and Preserver. I believe in Jesus Christ, his Son, who is my redeemer. I believe in the Holy Spirit, who is God with and in me and who shall bring me to the glory prepared for all God’s saints.

Why do I believe these things? For the simple reason stated in a children’s song: “The Bible tells me so!”

- More fromKlaas Runia

Harold Lindsell

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A Report on the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches

Twenty years ago at Amsterdam the World Council of Churches was launched, using as its symbol a ship named Oikoumene sailing the ocean waves. During these first two decades of voyaging, the hull of the good ship Oikoumene has been expanded theologically to include additional Orthodox bodies and is being readied to take on the Roman Catholic Church. The ship’s chief officer, W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, has been succeeded by Eugene Carson Blake, former stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. Death and retirement have edged out such notable crew members as John R. Mott, Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, Henry Van Dusen, and John Mackay.

The passenger list has grown; more than 230 churches have boarded, and others are on the way. At Uppsala and the Fourth General Assembly, it was discovered that the Greek Orthodox Church (the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece) had jumped ship prior to docking and that the seventeen seats assigned to this church were empty for the time being. But despite this snub, the hope for the one church aboard the one ship is steadily increasing.

A ship must choose a port and map out a course to reach it. Here, perhaps, is the greatest problem facing the Oikoumene crew. Although the present course-setters monotonously assert that there has been no change, the ship’s initial course has been altered dramatically. Those who favor the new course seem to have the ship under firm control.

Evangelicals inside and outside the ecumenical movement must take a hard look at Oikoumene’s progress since it set out from Amsterdam. This is not easy, for the World Council of Churches has become a very complex organization, has extended its outreach deeply into politics, economics, and social affairs, and has committed the churches to programs and activities covering nearly every area of human life. God made the heavens and the earth in seven days and populated the earth with two people. The 702 official delegates at Uppsala were given the tough task of remaking and renewing the earth and its more than three billion people in less than three weeks. Mimeograph machines disgorged incredible piles of releases, and the task of collation and interpretation was enormous. Any survey in depth must await a careful study of the documents over a longer period of time.

Assembly Composition and Attitudes

At the Fourth Assembly there was The Establishment and there were the delegates. The latter were diverse and disorganized. They ranged from evangelical to liberal in theological persuasion, from supporters of evangelism to far-left social-auctioneers, from deeply committed pietists whose language was the language of Scripture to social engineers who spoke the secular lingo of the profane world. It would be difficult to doubt the sincerity and commitment of any, but impossible not to question the validity of many viewpoints and of their theological foundation. Courtesy and concern were the coin of the realm, both toward those who attended the conclave and toward the broken and bleeding world outside. The overarching topics of conversation were race, rich and poor nations, social justice, human rights, restructuring society and the churches, communications, and world community.

The Establishment was often invisible. But it exists, and it understands power structures and how they can be used to implement its ideology. It was this group that determined the agenda for the churches, even though it had, in its turn, let the world determine the agenda for The Establishment. General Secretary Blake, who in his report to the assembly spoke of “us who are official or establishment leaders,” told the delegates he hoped they would approve the revolutionary and risky proposals that would be presented to them.

A deep current of anti-Americanism ran beneath assembly deliberations. It seemed to be based on opposition to the war in Viet Nam and to America’s affluence as well as on a preference for socialism and communism over capitalism. Senator George McGovern, Democrat from South Dakota and a Methodist delegate to the Assembly, told the press: “I have been surprised by the self-righteous and intolerant expressions of opinion I have heard. The delegates from no nation come to this assembly with clean hands. If the United States is as blind and evil as some imply, then surely we are in need of the assembly’s compassion and prayers, and not intolerance.” In a clear reference to the United States, Archbishop Nikodim of Russia told one audience that the WCC should take “a more principled and resolute stand on the obviously intolerant violation of international peace and the sovereign right of people—victims of aggression.” But he had no word of sympathy for the people of East Germany, or Czechoslovakia, or Poland, or Finland. The feeling against America seemed to be an obsession. But attitudes toward Americans as individuals were friendly, and on the whole social intercourse was excellent.

The young people at Uppsala gave the Fourth Assembly its roughest and toughest criticism. Their paper Hot News might well have been named Hot Foot. Far to the left, the youth prodded and bullied their elders by voice but not by vote. They considered themselves the “conscience” of the assembly and were critical of the WCC power structure, of Secretary Blake, of assembly acceptance of anything that resembled conservative or traditional theology, and of the idea of winning men to Christ by preaching the Gospel. They said plainly enough that they had chosen to work through the Church because it was one of the few international institutions. Their statements and resolutions were, said one Swedish journalist, “as unrealistic as they are idealistic.”

Many assembly delegates strongly supported the biblical concept of personal salvation through faith in Christ and the need for the Church to take the Gospel to every creature. The assembly, in plenary sessions, sent back some of the section papers to force the inclusion of this emphasis. And they did so by substantial majorities. During the last week of meetings, the important differences between The Establishment and some of the delegates stood out clearly. To what extent the decisions of those who steer the ship between assemblies will reflect this dissent remains to be seen.

Problem of Communication

Uppsala exuded words. Of the making of documents, even prior to the assembly, there was no end. Delegates were supposed to have studied the preparatory documents before the meetings convened, but it is unlikely that many of them really understood what they found in those documents. Certainly the bulk of the people in the churches would not. What was (and is) needed desperately is a glossary offering clear, succinct definitions of terms that were thrown about recklessly. “Justice,” “the new humanity,” “sholem” “ontology,” “secularism” and “secularization,” “renewal,” “missio Dei,” “the humanum,” “reconciliation”—these and a hundred other terms haunted delegates and reporters alike.

Another great need is a simplifying of expression. Some of the pre-assembly material was written in language that defied understanding. “To change the metaphor from static to dynamic physics, we need to maintain a kinetic polarity between Creation and Redemption, ontology and teleology, as a living and dynamic basis for development”; “holding these three foci in dynamic polarity and unity provides an integration and wholeness of theological perspective”—formidable sentences like these stand in striking contrast to the simple parables of the Man of Galilee, to whom the multitudes flocked because they could understand him.

Emerging Viewpoints

No one speaker could be said to represent all churches, for assembly actions were referred back to the churches for their consideration. Yet the choice of speakers and writers was certainly a sign of the “official” attitude of the WCC.

Former General Secretary W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, a charismatic speaker who drew good applause and was elected honorary president, said in his address on “The Mandate of the Ecumenical Movement” that the movement “has entered into a period of reaping an astonishing rich harvest but that precisely at this moment the movement is more seriously called into question than ever before. And once again the basic issue is that of the relation between church and world.” Later he added, “it must become clear that church members who deny in fact their responsibility for the needy in any part of the world are just as much guilty of heresy as those who deny this or that article of the faith.” For this he was applauded vigorously.

The anxiety of The Establishment to justify the current WCC stance was further seen in Blake’s speech. “There is no time in such a report as this to defend the World Council of Churches from its many and varied critics,” he said. “It is best to let the critics demolish each other and proceed on the ecumenical way.” As the “most widely held criticism” he cited the charge that “the World Council of Churches is by its involvement in social, economic, and political questions leading the churches away from their central task of proclaiming the Gospel, worshiping God, and offering eternal salvation to a dying and sinful humanity.” In answer to this he said he wanted “to be sure this assembly understands” that involvement in social, economic, and political questions “has always been the proper business of the Church.” Blake also looked ahead to further criticism: “The stronger we become, the more criticism we may expect from Christian Churches outside our membership since many of them feel that our open membership policy is a standing criticism of their not being members. It will not do for us to become defensive about such criticisms.”

Blake’s affirmation that social, economic, and political activities have always been the business of the Church was reiterated in the WCC book Line and Plummet, which was distributed to every delegate and referred to again and again. The author, Richard Dickinson, said: “The development concept is fundamentally rationalist, based on an implicit faith in the capacity of reason to unravel the knots which snarl progress.… It implies faith in the physical sciences to help man master nature, faith in the social sciences to help man understand human relationships and to arrange them to promote human welfare, and faith in men to act morally and rationally to build a more just and rational society.” There are, he said, “Christians who believe that concern for development is itself a dangerous emphasis. History is passing away; societal process is ephemeral and unimportant; what really matters is individual men and their salvation, and the churches should not squander their energies on anything else. Charitable concerns have their valid place, but larger questions about the structure and direction of society are no concern of the churches. While this is a minority view, and while we cannot in any way subscribe to this argument, it is firmly held by some Christians.” Dickinson’s analysis of the “opposition viewpoint” was incorrect, but what did emerge clearly from his attack was the fact that he had no use for the idea of the primacy of the Gospel for “individual men and their salvation.”

Miss E. Adler from East Germany, a discussant of Visser’t Hooft’s paper, got close to the heart of the ecumenical dilemma when she said: “Of course the ecumenical movement cannot leave the churches out of account altogether.… Probably the ecumenical movement needs the churches, the churches which have no money. But does it not also need their support and approval? Usually money does not flow in unless this is the case. So the ecumenical movement becomes dependent upon traditional church institutions, whose very structure it wants to challenge.”

Actions of the Assembly

Prior to Uppsala six preliminary section drafts were prepared: (I) The Holy Spirit and the Catholicity of the Church, (II) Renewal in Mission, (III) World Economic and Social Development, (IV) Towards Justice and Peace in International Affairs, (V) The Worship of God in a Secular Age, (VI) Towards a New Style of Living. In general, the drafts grew out of the 1966 Geneva-based World Conference on Church and Society. That conclave leaned to the left, advocating extensive church involvement in social, economic and political affairs. The draft on Renewal in Mission, which followed the Geneva pattern, was hotly criticized before the assembly, and it was obvious from opening day that it would be a battleground.

Evangelicals worked for drastic revision of Renewal in Mission and got it. To no one’s surprise, vigorous debate greeted the new draft when it was presented to the assembly in plenary session. A WCC release said: “Fourteen speakers in a row discussed the missions report, several agreeing in general with the paper’s call for new approaches to a rapidly changing world but virtually all finding it lacking in sufficient reference to the basic Christian task of spreading the Gospel.” John R. W. Stott of London was widely applauded when he called for the inclusion of a statement about the two billion who have never heard the Gospel, and the assembly sent the draft back for further correction. The final statement said: “The Church in mission is for all people everywhere. It has an unchanging responsibility to make known the Gospel of the forgiveness of God in Christ to the hundreds of millions who have not heard it.…”

The youth at the assembly were unhappy about this final Section II draft, and they said so. Whether or not anyone else saw the issue, they did: the revision of the draft made it incompatible with the other section reports. Indeed, the affirmation that the basic Christian task is to proclaim the Gospel to all men ran counter to the program in general and to the speeches in particular, especially those of Visser’t Hooft and Blake. “Clearly, this is a point of real tension in the WCC. In Hot News the youth asked: “Why did so few delegates who do oppose these non-interpreted theological statements really speak up? Why did not the existing tensions within the assembly show themselves? Why did not anyone stress the need for vision and movement in theologizing? Why does anybody see the risk of hindering the movement towards political involvement, development, new style of living, etc., if this draft is not radically rewritten?”

The young people failed to see that a majority of the delegates were interested in the personal salvation of individual men. Whether the bureaucracy, the new presidium, and the new Central Committee got the message flashed by so many of the delegates remains to be seen.

Because of the differences among churches in the council, the report of Section I (The Holy Spirit and the Catholicity of the Church) was a rather thin one containing broad generalizations. It did embrace the idea of the historic episcopate. An apologetic footnote explained that the report was presented “as a basis and instrument for further discussion.… A variety of theological positions were expressed in honest and vigorous interchange, and the convergence of thought convinces us that further substantial progress can be made in the future.” To this no one could take exception.

Section III (World Economic and Social Development) (1) asserted opposition to the status quo, (2) endorsed social justice, (3) endorsed the Report of the World Conference on Church and Society (Geneva, 1966), (4) called rich nations to give at least 1 per cent of their gross national product to underdeveloped nations, (5) approved the idea that revolutionary change may take violent forms, (6) advocated lifting the economic blockade of Cuba, (7) recommended an international taxing system, (8) condemned racism, (9) endorsed family planning and birth control, (10) advocated volunteer service in development work as an alternative to compulsory military training, (11) urged that “in restructuring of the WCC a concerted approach to economic and social development be made a priority consideration,” (12) called for the nations to diminish expenditures on armaments and to put the savings in development, and (13) asked the churches to “make available for development aid such proportion of their regular income as would entail sacrifice” and to explore how “endowments and other church funds may be responsibly invested for development.”

Section IV (Towards Justice and Peace in International Affairs) (1) said “war as a method of settling disputes is incompatible with the teachings and example of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Amsterdam, 1948), (2) opposed nuclear war and weapons as well as the establishment of anti-ballistic missile systems, (3) advocated human rights, (4) condemned racism and called for the churches to “withdraw investments from institutions that perpetuate racism,” (5) called for help for refugees and displaced persons, (6) said “both churches and governments of developed countries must seek to end their economic dominance of the low-income societies” (italics added), (7) claimed “it is imperative” for the churches to “concern themselves with political parties, trade unions, and other groups influencing public opinion,” (8) supported an international development tax, (9) called upon Christians (without using the term “church” or “churches”) to “urge their governments to accept the rulings of the International Court of Justice without reservation,” and (10) urged support of the United Nations and inclusion of the People’s Republic of China in its membership.

Section V (The Worship of God in a Secular Age) (1) said that “since the Word of God is the basis of our worship, proclamation of the Word is essential.… The traditional sermon ought to be supplemented by new means of proclamation” (dialogue, drama, and the visual arts), (2) urged the churches to “consider seriously the desirability of adopting the early Christian tradition of celebrating the Eucharist every Sunday,” and (3) urged the Faith and Order Commission to undertake a study of the “symbols used in worship and in contemporary culture.” This latter recommendation was curious, for Faith and Order is part of the WCC structure, which the assembly controls in theory if not in practice. It might better have ordered this study instead of recommending it.

Section VI (Towards a New Style of Living) (1) affirmed that “young people have a right to participate in discussions in schools and universities as well as in political, business and family life” and proposed that “all ecumenical assemblies set an example by giving voting rights to a fair proportion of young participants,” (2) pointed out that the delegates at Uppsala “are middle class,” (3) called for the “transfer of wealth and knowledge by an international development tax [and] moratorium on church building programmes,” (4) said the WCC “should continue to rebuke member churches which tolerate racism, and make it clear that racist churches cannot be recognized as members in good standing of the council,” and (5) advocated sexual purity and asked that materials “elaborating the problems of polygamy, marriage and celibacy, birth control, divorce, abortion, and hom*osexuality be made available for responsible study and action.”

The assembly strongly supported further rapprochement with the Roman Catholic Church. Both the WCC and the Roman Catholic Church appear eager to bring about the organic union of all churches. But Pope Paul, on the eve of Uppsala, threw cold water in the faces of those who hope that Rome will modify its position about its own primacy. He proclaimed once again that reunion must take place under the headship of the pope even as he reaffirmed the church’s traditional theology. The assembly was equally forthright in its appeal to conservative evangelicals to find their places in the WCC structures. At the moment the WCC has its eyes on the Pentecostals, particularly in Latin America. At a meeting scheduled for 1969 it will once again try to get the ecumenical ship afloat there, under the leadership of Emilio Castro. Previous attempts have failed.

Money is the oil that keeps the ecumenical machinery running. The assembly adopted a budget, but this was relatively unimportant. What stands out is where the money comes from and what control is exercised by those who provide it. The 1967 financial report showed that the churches of the United States paid roughly two-thirds of the operating expenses, contributing nearly $600,000 toward a budget of almost $1 million. Five American churches contributed more than $450,000 of this $600,000. If and when COCU (the Consultation on Church Union) jells and union takes place, then one church will be contributing approximately half of the WCC’s operating budget. Financially, then, the WCC is an American enterprise. A sharp decrease in American financial support would cripple it. The abundance of American money raises the spectre of the North American colossus and the fear of American control. The Soviet churches contributed about $9,000, but at Uppsala they got their money’s worth in publicity, propaganda, and influence. The Methodist Church in Ceylon, which sent in $180, emerged with a presidency for one of its members, D. T. Niles (whose universalistic tendencies are well known).

Evangelical Appraisal

When the smoke at Uppsala has cleared and the trivia have been forgotten, the question that will remain as the main issue at the Fourth Assembly is, “What is the mission of the Church?” In and out of section meetings this issue appeared again and again. Visser’t Hooft stated it. Blake repeated it. Delegate after delegate made reference to it. Conservative evangelicals huddled in corners at coffee breaks to plan how to work their viewpoint into the official statements. One important delegate said: “In closing I feel bound to return to the main theological issue—the apparent opposition between the Gospel of personal conversion and the Gospel of social responsibility.” One was reminded of the liberal-fundamentalist controversy of fifty years ago. The terminology has changed, the personnel have changed, the setting is different. But the issue remains the same.

There are two opposing views. One tends toward the secular and would make the Church a pressure group of the world and in the world. It sees the Church as the agency of political, economic, and social change and has for its goal the betterment of men and society. Its driving force is benevolence. Its dynamic, in part, evolved from the historic Christian faith, and its apologetic is geared to the defense of social action as the real mission of the church.

The other view sees the mission of the Church as evangelizing the world, that is, preaching the Gospel of Christ to all men. It does not reject social concern, properly understood and used, but it refuses to be satisfied with what Donald McGavran of the Institute of Church Growth labeled “temporal palliatives instead of eternal remedies.” Those who hold this view think that for the Church to abandon its call to evangelize the world would be fatal. They believe that even if the Church succeeded in altering the social and political structures so as to put an end to social injustice, it would have missed all if those whose temporal lives had been improved were left to die in their sins. Evangelicals in and out of the WCC see eye to eye on this.

Evangelicals feel they cannot subscribe to the social-gospel viewpoint and must oppose it vigorously. This leads to another dilemma. When a church in its theological and functional forms departs from the biblical norms, should evangelicals leave it? Or should they remain, bearing their witness, and hoping for a return to biblical standards? Does the cyclical pattern of Israel’s history of apostasy and renewal offer any guidelines for those who wish to remain within such a church and be obedient to Jesus Christ? Evangelicals have not always answered this question the same way. Perhaps this is good, for it leaves the way clear for each man to decide for himself what he should do.

It is always a mistake for the Church to promise more than it can deliver. Somehow Uppsala did not seem to realize that we live in “this present evil world” and that Satan is the “prince of this world.” Even redeemed men are not perfected men. Men should not be led to think there will ever be a warless world or a race of men who are well fed, well educated, and undivided. This dream goes back to the days of Plato but has no support in Scripture. Marxism will ultimately perish precisely because it cannot deliver what it promises. Christ told his people that in the world they would have tribulation, and that there would be “wars and rumors of wars.” The optimism of the Christian springs from his hope, and his hope lies in the return to Jesus Christ, who will establish his kingdom and bring the peace and prosperity men yearn for.

The social engineers are wrong. But this should bring no comfort to evangelicals. Lip service to evangelism and missions is not enough. They must actually proclaim the Gospel to all men and do it now. The best answer to a wrong viewpoint is not caustic criticism. It is demonstration of the rightness of the true viewpoint. Let evangelicals manifest the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives, let them radiate a Christlikeness in all their relationships, and let those who have been converted through their preaching of the Gospel be the evidence to the world of the rightness of their cause.

On Violence

What does the World Council of Churches say about violence?

One document adopted by delegates to the WCC assembly in Uppsala last month reaffirms a pacifist declaration adopted at the council’s initial meeting in Amsterdam twenty years ago. That statement asserts, “War as a method of settling disputes is incompatible with the teachings and example of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

But in another report approved in substance at Uppsala and commended for study to the member churches, the council states that violent revolution is another matter and is “morally ambiguous.” This is what the report on “World Economic and Social Development” says:

“In countries where the ruling groups are oppressive or indifferent to the aspirations of the people, are often supported by foreign interests, and seek to resist all changes by the use of coercive or violent measures, the revolutionary change may take a violent form. Such changes are morally ambiguous.

“The churches have a special contribution towards the development of effective non-violent strategies of revolution and social change. Nevertheless, we are called to participate creatively in the building of political institutions to implement the social changes that are desperately needed.”

At the closing plenary session of the assembly, delegates adopted unanimously a statement that reverts to a peaceful tone. “We shall work for disarmament,” they vowed.

They also pledged to labor “for trade agreements fair to all” and said they were “ready to tax ourselves in furtherance of a system of world taxation.”

- More fromHarold Lindsell

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■ Russell Chandler, CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s religious news fellow from the Washington Journalism Center last fall, has become religious news editor of the Washington Evening Star. He succeeds the gifted Caspar Nannes, who has retired to complete a number of literary projects.

■ Adon Taft, religion editor of the Miami Herald and CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S news correspondent in that city, has won the religious news award of the Southern Presbyterian Church.

■ First staff replacement announced by Editor-elect Harold Lindsell, who is traveling in the Holy Land, is Dr. Richard L. Love, 29, minister of Eastminster Presbyterian Church, Knoxville, Tennessee, and current moderator of Knoxville Presbytery. Love holds a doctorate in New Testament studies from Manchester University, England. He begins duties on September 1.

J. D. Douglas

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Early in 1963, the Church of England/Methodist report on church unity set out to heal a breach now about 230 years old. It suggested a period of “some years” during which there would be intercommunion while each body retained its distinct life and identity, to be followed by an organic union. To embark on stage one, however, would involve an obligation to achieve stage two. The Anglican signatories were unanimous, but a “Dissentient View” was entered by four (of twelve) Methodists: three distinguished university professors and a college principal.

This weighty minority objected: that the report’s section on Scripture and tradition did not recognize adequately the primacy of Scripture; that its understanding of “episcopacy” differed from the scriptural meaning; that the proposed Service of Reconciliation could be interpreted as reordination of Methodist ministers; that the report’s use of “priest” was expressly connected with sacrificial views of the Eucharist and with the power to pronounce absolution; and that full union would strengthen the grip of “the exclusiveness which would bar the Lord’s people from the Lord’s Table.” An open letter from thirty-nine leading Anglican clergy to the archbishops substantially echoed such misgivings.

But the establishment on both sides warmly espoused the scheme, seeing it as an irresistible summons to obey Christ’s will for his Church, and believing that difficulties could be ironed out. A year later came the founding of The Voice of Methodism, a movement implacably opposed to certain aspects of the scheme. Some people spoke loudly about reunion as the will of God, said Dr. Leslie Newman, one of the movement’s influential spokesmen, but “this age was not conspicuous for its concern for God’s will.” Dissent grew, and even the Methodist Recorder, a self-styled “completely independent newspaper,” showed its teeth by refusing to accept advertising from the dissentients.

Meanwhile the (Anglo-Catholic) Church Union, perhaps alarmed at the determination of the big boys to push the project through, pointed out that “some important theological questions are left unresolved.” In March, 1965, the Anglican House of Laity approved in principle the proposed merger, though the “studied ambiguity” of the proposed Service came in for a hammering.

Growing Methodist opposition could be seen that summer, despite Conference’s general approval by 488 to 137 of the report’s main proposals. Among “the inarticulate masses of Methodism” it was a different story: 26,440 in the quarterly meetings in favor, 22,236 against. A joint commission was set up to deal with points of difficulty, but by September, 1965, the report had been attacked by Anglican evangelicals, the Voice of Methodism, the Methodist Revival Fellowship, the Church Union, the (Anglo-Roman) Society of the Holy Cross—and by Lord Fisher of Lambeth, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. (A religious columnist later suggested that Lord Fisher “may be the front man of a considerable number of prominent Anglicans whose official positions require them to be favorably disposed toward union.”) By the summer of 1966 one heard more frequently the insistence on a “conscience clause” that would allow clergy of both churches to opt out.

The original report has now been in existence for five and a half years, during which time Methodists, now numbering around 666,000, have decreased by about 55,000 (they will tell you Anglicans have done proportionately no better). In February, 1968, there appeared the first part of the final report of the joint commission. Dealing with “The Ordinal,” it (inter alia) concedes that “presbyter” could be a reconciling word where “priest” would be divisive, but adds that “we neither expect nor desire that ‘priest’ should go out of use in other contexts, at any rate in the Church of England.” On absolution there is apparent withdrawal of the interpretation evangelicals find offensive, coupled with an apparent misinterpretation of Scripture; the former upset the Anglos, the latter the evangelicals.

Part two of the final report then appeared, incorporating discussions of doctrine, proposals for the united church, practical suggestions for stage one of the merger, and details about working toward full communion. This report had one dissentient: Dr. J. I. Packer of Oxford, probably the ablest of modern Anglican evangelical scholars (none of the original Methodist dissentients was on the commission).

Presenting his viewpoint in a symposium that he also edited (Fellowship in the Gospel, Marcham Manor Press, 15s. 6d), Packer says “the report is rooted in a bygone era of thought”; times have changed and “the historic episcopate cannot be defended … as being necessary, in the sense of divinely required and commanded, for either the ‘being’ or the ‘well-being’ or the ‘full being’ of the universal church.” While stage two of the merger will “abolish, once for all, episcopalian exclusiveness at Holy Communion,” it proposes to reach that laudable end by a procedure in stage one that would buttress that very exclusiveness.

Then also, says Packer, after discussing the validity of ambiguity in theological utterances, those statements “which by careful framing leave open the issues between ‘catholic’ and ‘protestant’ on church and ministry, will look very different if riveted into the context of procedures which find their ultimate rationale and defense in the ‘catholic’ principle … of exclusive episcopacy.” The latter Packer sees as “the one systematically distorting feature which threatens” the whole scheme.

The end of the matter is not yet. A decision was due this summer, but back-stage trouble has delayed the curtain-rising on this last act of the preliminaries. The inane reason given was that no printer could produce the final report in time for unhurried consideration to be given it before the summer meetings. As a result, the decision has been shelved for a whole year, tradition reigning so supreme that there must be no coming together before the appointed annual interval has elapsed.

It is clear that an epidemic of cold feet is raging in high places. A referendum is being held among Church of England clergy (which is significant), but has been refused to Methodists (which is even more significant). The certainty that the merger would split Methodism was a factor that body’s leaders were evidently prepared to accept. The rock on which the ship is likely to founder is that “historic episcopate” so beloved by Anglicans of the higher sort. I’m guessing, of course. Maybe that columnist was right; maybe the frontmanship of Lord Fisher has been more effective than we thought.

- More fromJ. D. Douglas

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Ex-convict George (Watusi) Rose told a U. S. Senate subcommittee last month that the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago was a place where Blackstone Rangers, the South Side’s biggest gang, “laid around, goofed around, smoked pot, gambled, drank, and cleaned guns” and planned “armed revolution.” He also testified that the Rev. John R. Fry had once relayed to him an order to “take out” (kill) a dope peddler from Rangers chief Eugene Hairston, who is now awaiting sentencing for murder.

Fry called the charges “outrageous, false, and malicious,” and claimed the Chicago police are using Rose as a “mouthpiece” for their “evil” ideas about the Rangers in return for release after an arrest earlier this year. Fry said the Rangers kicked out Rose for “flirting” with the crime syndicate.

Both sides agree that fifty-eight weapons were stored in the church safe last year. William Griffin, a Negro who commands South Side police, said Fry reneged on a deal to turn in the arsenal within thirty days so police raided the church. Fry replies that police broke their agreement to protect the Rangers against another gang if they turned in their guns to the church.

Presbyterian ties to the Rangers were part of Senate Permanent Investigations Committee hearings on civil disturbances, and on a $927,000 anti-poverty grant to The Woodlawn Organization, under which Rangers were employed for job training.

Mayor Richard Daley’s Chicago government has been trying to break up the gangs, and to get federal antipoverty grants channeled through his office. He is uneasy about strong organizations in the ghetto that rival his Democratic machine. During the past year police have made many arrests in Woodlawn, the slum adjoining the University of Chicago where the church is located. But most charges have been dropped or dismissed.

Fry is an outspoken opponent of police tactics. Griffin testified that church circulars have accused police of “robbing Negro youth of their manhood.” In one pamphlet this spring Fry allegedly said that “the police have been acting in such a way as to make insurrection obligatory for honorable men.”

First Church has spent $25,000 in youth funds for bail bonds and legal fees since it first tried to befriend the Rangers two years ago, Fry said. Supporters of the church project say violence has decreased in the area and credit the Rangers with keeping things cool on the South Side after the murder of Martin Luther King, while the West Side was in turmoil. They see the hearings as a chance for Chicago officialdom to discredit the Rangers and the antipoverty program without bringing in trial-worthy evidence, since cross-examination and other standard procedures are not followed in congressional investigations.

Besides Fry, the senators heard Charles LaPaglia, $11,000-a-year church social worker who Committee Chairman John McClellan of Arkansas said was fired from a city youth-welfare job. LaPaglia complained that a cooperative living project involving youths and Chicago Theological Seminary (United Church of Christ) students had been raided by police fifteen times, with twenty-six arrests and only one conviction. LaPaglia knows of none of the 4,000 to 5,000 Rangers who belong to First Presbyterian Church and in reply to a question said they “haven’t gotten a conversion yet.”

A Bishop Overruled

Disregarding pleas of the resident bishop, officials of the Episcopal Church’s urban-crisis program refused to hold up a $10,000 grant to the Black Unity League of Kentucky. Bishop C. Gresham Marmion had asked for a delay following the arrest last month of two VISTA workers who had been involved in planning the league. The pair were charged with conspiring to dynamite a Louisville oil refinery. Religious News Service quoted a spokesman as saying the grant “has been authorized … and will be going out.” He declared there seemed to be some misunderstanding about the relation of the accused to the league. The Episcopal Church reports it has issued nearly $1 million in urban and black-power grants this year.

Fry won quick support from United Presbyterian home-mission secretary Kenneth Neigh, General Assembly Moderator John Coventry Smith, National Council of Churches social-justice chairman David Ramage, the Presbytery of Chicago (which had given the project $38,000), and the session of the local church. Editor Robert Cadigan of Presbyterian Life wired the committee that Fry, who was his news editor before taking the pulpit, was telling the truth.

Fry, 44, was decorated for gallantry by the Marines in World War II and later graduated from Union Theological Seminary, New York. Speaking to an evangelism conference at this year’s United Presbyterian General Assembly, Fry charged that white America and the Church are guilty of “monstrous crimes” against blacks and that violent white “law and order” has created the urban crisis.

PERSONALIA

The Rev. James L. Rohrbaugh was found guilty of schism and contumacy by Seattle Presbytery last month because he joined his congregation in seceding from the United Presbyterian Church in protest of the Confession of 1967. A presbytery executive said the church would be allowed to practice under the traditional Westminster Confession alone if it stayed in.

Amid hoots at Hunter College, New York, U. S.-touring Chief Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levin, 74, of Moscow said the Soviet Union severely punishes anti-Semitism and that things are better than under the Czars.

Detroit’s black-nationalist pastor Albert Cleage, Jr., resigned as co-chairman of Operation Connection. He said he was dissatisfied with the slowness of financial support from whites for building political and economic power among the poor. The effort is directed by Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore, Jr.

Police and FBI agents entered a Unitarian church in Wellesley, Massachusetts, to arrest AWOL Private Richard Scott, who had been given “sanctuary” by the pastor.

Catholic Theological Society of America said Texas Archbishop Robert Lucy’s charges of heresy against Father John McKenzie’s book Authority in the Church were “unjustified.” Roman theologians are astir over rumored criticism by the Curia’s doctrinal office of Father Hans Küng for his new book The Church, and a reported halt to publication of new translations.

United Methodist minister Randolph Nugent was promoted to director of MUST, the New York urban training program. Former director George Webber will remain on the staff.

The Rev. Samuel D. Proctor, a former National Council of Churches official, was named by the University of Wisconsin to handle statewide educational aids for disadvantaged citizens.

The Rev. Frederick R. Wilson, planning secretary for United Presbyterian missions, was elected first president of the World Association for Christian Communications, a union of the World Association for Christian Broadcasting and the Coordinating Committee for Christian Broadcasting, formed at a Norway meeting. He defeated the nominating committee choice, the Rev. Everett C. Parker of the United Church of Christ.

The Rev. Dr. Eugene Ransom, Wesley Foundation director at the University of Michigan, was appointed new head of the United Methodist Church campus department.

John Capon, a 29-year-old Baptist, was named editor of the Church of England Newspaper, a weekly that represents the Anglicans’ evangelical wing.

The Rev. Martyn Lloyd-Jones is retiring August 31 after thirty years as noted evangelical preacher at Westminster Chapel (Congregational) in London, so he can do more writing.

CHURCH PANORAMA

Several white ministers in Zoneton, Kentucky, offered use of their facilities to a small Negro congregation, First Corinthian Baptist, whose frame church was dynamited June 23, just ten weeks after the building had been the target of arsonists.

Negroes were turned away from First Baptist Church and Tuskegee Methodist Church in Tuskegee, Alabama, last month but were permitted to worship at previously segregated First Presbyterian Church, which decided to open its doors after the murder of Martin Luther King, the Southern Courier reports.

Missions boards of the United Church of Christ and Christian Churches (Disciples) are combining administration of their Latin America work. The United Presbyterian Church and Reformed Church in America are doing the same with their Africa offices.

A United Church of Christ confirmation course on Christian beliefs related to social issues is being published jointly for use by Roman Catholic churches.

New York’s Interchurch Center, home of major ecumenical offices, decided not to build an annex that had been opposed by a neighborhood group. A similar issue helped spark the Columbia University student strike.

The new United Methodist social-concerns magazine, engage, will be edited by the Rev. Allan Brockway, who edited Concern, published by the same agency until it was terminated last fall. Women’s magazines from the former Methodist and E.U.B. denominations will be merged into response magazine next January.

Facing financial pressures, Baylor University President Abner McCall and heads of six other private colleges issued a major report asking aid from the Texas legislature.

Contributions to the United Church of Canada increased 4.6 per cent last year, but membership was 1,060,335, a loss of 1,771.

The nineteenth centennial of the traditional martyrdom of Saint Mark was marked in Cairo with four days of rites and the opening of a new Coptic cathedral that will contain relics of the apostle. President Nasser of the U.A.R. and Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie joined churchmen in the festivities.

Evangelistic rallies by forty-four congregations in the French Baptist Federation resulted in 325 public decisions for Christ.

Long Weekends

President Johnson last month signed a law likely to cut church attendance. The measure—which won rare unanimous support from the National Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, and the U. S. Commerce Department—moves four federal holidays to Monday. Beginning January 1, 1971, new three-day weekends will result annually from these holidays: Washington’s birthday (third Monday in February), Memorial Day (last Monday in May), Veterans Day (fourth Monday in October), and Columbus Day (second Monday in October). The changes will increase weekend travel and, as a result, church absenteeism.

Meanwhile, Senator Everett M. Dirksen said he intended to raise again his proposed prayer amendment to the Constitution before Congress adjourns for next month’s national party conventions. Dirksen introduced the resolution in January, 1967, and could circumvent the constitutional committee’s opposition by attaching it to an unrelated bill.

Reports say free churches in Czechoslovakia may have to shift from government-paid pastors to full church support. Nearly 4,000 persons attended a memorial Mass at the Prague Cathedral for victims of Stalinism in Czechoslovakia.

A long article in the official Communist paper in Moldavia, Soviet Union, accused dissident Baptists of slandering the state and maintaining contacts with anti-Soviet Russians in the West. Three youths in a leftist Christian group in Britain were arrested in Moscow, then released, after handing out leaflets criticizing imprisonment of writers and Baptists.

Churchmen planning a Pan-Orthodox Conference have refused to put on the agenda an appeal from the conference of eight ethnic American communions that they be permitted to form a single Orthodox Church in the Western Hemisphere.

Miscellany

Reformed, Baptist, and Episcopal bodies in Spain decided not to register by the May 31 deadline under terms of the new “religious liberty” law. But Plymouth Brethren won permission to hold meetings in a public auditorium in La Corona, and Billy Graham associate Fernando Vangioni drew overflow crowds to a church crusade in Barcelona. The Wheaton College Men’s Glee Club recently performed in Spain and at the Sports Palace in Lisbon, Portugal.

A group at non-denominational Church of the Savior, Washington, D. C., is helping establish Dag Hammarskjold College in Columbia, Maryland. Target date for opening the internationally-attuned, non-sectarian school is September, 1970.

The Peabody Conservatory of Music, Baltimore, is holding its first workshop for musicians in non-liturgical churches July 15–19.

Wheaton College, Illinois, recently added 110 original letters and a set of Oxford University lecture notes to its C. S. Lewis Collection, said to be the most complete one in existence.

A poll of most of the unmarried undergraduate women at Oberlin College, Ohio, disclosed that 40 per cent had engaged in sexual relations, one out of thirteen had become pregnant, and more than four-fifths of these pregnancies had been terminated by abortion. Most of those polled wanted the college to supply birth-control information.

Edward E. Plowman

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Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, and a man named Marshall instead of Fry. These figures predominated in key actions by the 3.3-million-member Lutheran Church in America during biennial sessions in Atlanta last month.

As expected (see June 21 issue, page 43), the nearly 700 delegates elected Illinois Synod President Robert J. Marshall, 49, to fill the unexpired term of the late Franklin Clark Fry, renowned LCA president who died June 6.

Obviously swayed by references to Luther’s rationale of “just” wars, they put the LCA on record as the first Lutheran denomination to recognize selective objection to a “particular” war deemed by “conscience” to be unjust.

Delegates also voted, after the Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr.’s first major address since the death of his son, to launch a two-year, $6.5 million “appeal for emergency needs,” and to gear LCA priorities during this period to a “Justice and Social Change—The Urban Crisis” theme. They also handed King a $10,000 check from LCA “undesignated” funds for a “Poor People’s Development Fund” set up in memory of his son.

A vote for Marshall was, in effect, a vote for keeping the LCA Fry-oriented. A former professor at what is now the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, Marshall mirrors Fry in voice and views (see box, next page). He was chosen on the third ballot from a field of sixty-three candidates. His nearest competitor was President Carl Segar-hammar of the Pacific Southwest Synod, who received only seventy-seven votes. Fry’s former assistant, Dr. George F. Harkins, was elected secretary—the number-two LCA post—to replace retiring Malvin H. Lundeen, who chaired the convention.

Fry had correctly predicted that selective conscientious objection would be the meeting’s most controversial issue.

The statement, drafted by the Board of Social Ministry, was guided past opposition and attempts at dilution by Dr. George W. Forell, religion teacher at the University of Iowa.

“This is really an anti-Viet Nam war proposal that allies us with Spock and the draft-card burners,” criticized Executive Council member Bernhard W. LeVander. Others warned that it endorsed anarchy. Not so, argued theologian Martin J. Heinecken of Philadelphia. It was, he said, merely a matter of “being true to our historic Lutheran position.” He and others held that the Luther-heralded validity of “just” wars presupposed the possibility of “unjust” wars, thereby imposing the necessity for individuals to make “ethical decisions” about participation. The document finally passed 426–146.

It affirms, in part, that the selective conscientious objector “is acting in harmony with Lutheran teaching,” and that he “ought to be granted exemption from military duty,” but that—pending a change in laws—he should “willingly” accept legal “penalties” for his decision. It further suggests that all C.O.’s “should be afforded equal treatment before the law, whether the basis of their stand is specifically religious or not.”

Social-ministry officials say the paper was designed to “have a functional purpose with draft boards” when selective C.O.’s register.

Controversy over finances arose when two Philadelphia clerics proposed a one-year campaign to raise $8 million for an LCA urban-crisis fund. Their appeal followed appearances of King and Atlanta Police Chief Herbert T. Jenkins, a member of the Kerner Commission. Delegates, including Marshall, voted 389–250 for a substitute measure that reduced the figure to $6.5 million and tied it more closely to the sagging LCA budget. (Treasurer Carl M. Anderson warned that apportionment receipts for the past few years were running more than 15 per cent behind quotas.) Spokesmen pointed to an additional $3.75 million already budgeted toward 1969 urban-crisis projects, including $200,000 for “community organizations.”

Delegates approved a $31.6 million budget for 1969 and $32.5 million for 1970.

In his speech, King said he would have no comments on his son’s assassination until the “plot” and “big money interests” that “are behind” the deaths of his son and the Kennedy brothers are exposed.

A statement on “The Church and Social Welfare” was adopted after deletion of a sentence that some interpreted as supporting a guaranteed annual income. Delegates also approved a paper on “Religious Liberty in the United States” that affirmed, among other things, the right of a person “to worship in accordance with the faith and ritual of his group, even in ways which appear curious or offensive to others, so long as the methods used are not legally defined as dangerous.…” Berkeley sociologist Charles Y. Glock, an LCA member, was among the architects.

The LCA also:

• Endorsed gun-control legislation minutes before the convention closed.

• Scrapped the faltering Luther League, official denomination youth program, in favor of a new Youth Commission;

• Heard pleas for tighter Lutheran unity from: Dr. C. Thomas Spitz, Jr., head of the Lutheran Council in the U. S. A.; Dr. Fredrik A. Schiotz, president of both the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran World Federation; and Dr. Oliver R. Harms, president of the Missouri Synod.

Church of the Nazarene. Delegates to last month’s assembly in Kansas City faced problems of a denomination that, though not old, shows increasing signs of middle age.

One concern for the sixty-year-old church is institutionalism. What was once a simple, evangelistic group now has burgeoning colleges at home and increasing educational and medical work in forty-eight foreign fields.

The Board of General Superintendents wants to keep evangelism in the primary place. In the state-of-the-church message, General Superintendent V. H. Lewis, who with two other incumbents was reelected by a wide margin, warned that colleges should “proceed carefully” and keep close ties with the denomination. Financial commitments, he said, should be held “within manageable limits.”

Two new junior colleges, voted by the 1964 assembly, will open this fall, in Mount Vernon, Ohio, and Olathe, Kansas. A Bible college opened last September in Colorado Springs. With these additions, the church now maintains eight liberal-arts colleges, the Bible school, and a seminary. Financing the colleges within boundaries outlined by the church is an increasingly severe test for college administrators.

While financial needs seem great, the nearly 500,000 Nazarenes contributed $23.7 million during the last four years. During 1967, per-capita giving went over $190, the highest among denominations of 100,000 members or more.

Among the goals not reached was establishment of 500 new churches. The denomination started scarcely half that number, and the mark for the 1968–72 term was reduced to 400. Some leaders think the church is too largely a denomination of small congregations. Of nearly 5,000 churches, about half have fewer than fifty members. New churches should not be organized, said retiring Superintendent H. C. Benner, at the risk of “weakening existing ones.”

The world-missions program is to undergo a serious study during the next year. Here again, institutions will be scrutinized. Dr. Howard Hamlin, a missionary surgeon in charge of a South African hospital, noted that only four applicants were available last year for forty-four requests for preachers on Nazarene mission fields.

Besides electing three new general superintendents (see July 5 issue, page 39), delegates chose a new seminary president. President William Greathouse of Trevecca Nazarene College was named to succeed the Rev. Eugene Stowe—one of the new general superintendents—as head of Nazarene Theological Seminary, Kansas City.

In other action the assembly:

• Supported “the equal opportunity, according to one’s ability, to earn a living free from any job or economic discrimination”;

Successor To Fry

Similarities in speech and ideology link Dr. Robert J. Marshall, new president of the Lutheran Church in America (see page 50), to his late predecessor, Franklin Clark Fry, grand patriarch of the LCA. One notable difference: Marshall, a youngish 40, is more reserved.

In Fry-like nasal tones (like his predecessor he suffers from sinusitis) Marshall announced he would “attempt to tread the path Dr. Fry trod so well.”

Marshall told CHRISTIANITY TODAY his views theologically are “biblical, evangelical, and Lutheran.” Billy Graham’s positions, he affirmed, are “not far from what I accept wholeheartedly.”

As for evangelism: “I agree that our primary task is to reach mankind for Christ, but personal evangelism cannot be divorced from community needs, from social aspects of the Gospel.”

“On no major issue” does he differ from Fry, he says.

Like Fry, he is “happy” over observer-consultant status in the Consultation on Church Union via the Lutheran Council in the U. S. A., but he shares Fry’s frown on full participation in COCU as “confusing, not clarifying, to us.” He is “more interested” in the pursuit of unity with other Lutheran groups, especially the Missouri Synod, with whom Fry-initiated “informal” doctrinal discussions are under way.

Educated at Wittenberg College and Chicago Lutheran Seminary, Marshall was a pastor and an Old Testament professor before his election to the Illinois Synod presidency in 1962.

He sees as priorities for LCA involvement: the nation’s “emergency,” Lutheran unity, youth and education, and the international “crisis.”

“This,” he Fry-fashioned in response to his election, “is no time to trip lightly into the presidency.”

• Set up a fund to “aid existing churches and establish new churches in our cities that are faced with interracial ministries”;

• Voted to dissolve the separate Negro Gulf Central District;

• Voted down a move to make church membership legal for persons who were divorced and remarried persons on other than “scriptural grounds”;

• Rejected the idea of giving ministers a call to a pastorate with an indefinite time limit;

• Decided to join the 100-year-old National Holiness Association.

Christian Reformed Church. In its first official pronouncement on modern racism, the church synod went all the way, Almost. The historic pronouncement instructed the 275,000 members and denominational boards that “full Christian fellowship and privilege” must be granted to any Christian regardless of race or color, on pain of excommunication.

“Fear of persecution or of disadvantage to self or our institutions,” declared the 144 delegates, “does not warrant denial of full Christian fellowship and privilege in the church or in related organizations, such as Christian colleges and schools, institutions of mercy and recreational associations.” The synod warned that members who advocate such denial “must be reckoned as disobedient to Christ” and be dealt with by church discipline, which, if resisted, ends in excommunication.

Although many delegates observed that this was not a full statement on race, it was a hard-hitting one and was adopted with little dissent. The exclusion of Negro Christian children by a CRC school in Chicago was what brought the issue before the synod.

Meeting in Grand Rapids last month under the presidency of the Rev. John C. Verbrugge, delegates also heard vigorous opposition to the 1967 synod’s refusal to issue restrictive theological pronouncements on God’s love in Christ for all men. Many delegates insisted that the dissent was an attempt to reopen a case that indirectly affected Harold Dekker, professor of missions at Calvin Seminary. For three days the case moved back and forth like a weaver’s shuttle, from committee to floor to committee. After declaring that God’s love, and Christ’s death, for all men must not be presented in such a way as to deny other basic Reformed doctrinal tenets, delegates unanimously rejected the attempt to reopen the 1967 case.

In a tense atmosphere, heightened by confusion and contradictory reports, the synod became an official participant in the Theological College of Northern Nigeria. Christian Reformed minister Harry R. Boer has been the principal of the union seminary since its founding. Fear that the Africans would not be “soundly Reformed” had withheld official sanction from CRC’s many years of cooperation with the seminary.

In a historic action, the synod withdrew its endorsem*nt of the Conclusions of Utrecht, formulated in the Netherlands and adopted by the CRC in 1908 to protect its unity by, among other doctrinal matters, granting official toleration to supralapsarians. The endorsem*nt was withdrawn to further the union efforts of the denomination’s Canadian congregations with other churches in Canada.

For the first time within the memory of most delegates, the synod reduced its budget for Calvin College—by one dollar.

Evangelical Free Church of America. President Arnold T. Olson proposed a 1971 Chicago conference on theology, sponsored jointly with the Evangelical Covenant Church, in his report to the annual meeting at Trinity College and Divinity School in Illinois. Olson said the meeting would invite leaders from free churches in seventeen European nations. Olson also proposed a summer study session on race and inner-city problems, to be sponsored by several evangelical denominations.

At the organizational meeting for a Free Church Laymen’s Fellowship, high-school principal John C. Swanson of Rockford, Illinois, said, “Today’s youth feels that the organized church has failed to take a stand and commit its human and material resources in support of many humanitarian movements which are aimed at alleviating the social evils of our day. While we have issued vociferous denouncements of liquor and sex, we have been strangely silent concerning civil rights, poverty, prejudice, materialism, and bigotry.”

Luke Saba, 25, who heads Free Church youth work in the northwest Congo, told delegates of a meeting of 4,000 people at Gemena where 2,000 made professions of faith in Christ.

Olson said Free Church membership now stands at 54,589.

The Wesleyan Church. More than 4,000 Pilgrim Holiness and Wesleyan Methodist members and friends turned out in Anderson, Indiana, June 26 to witness the first major conservative Wesleyan union in decades. And there were signs of further ecumenicity among holiness groups.

Besides creating a new church with a membership of 122,000 and a constituency (based on Sunday-school enrollment) of 300,000, delegates moved far beyond committee recommendations. They resoundingly adopted a floor proposal for preparation of a basis of merger with the Free Methodist Church—if possible, before next summer’s Free Methodist conference. Such a merged church would have a constituency approaching half a million.

If there was doubt about how widespread merger sentiment was, Free Methodist Bishop Myron Boyd dispelled it when he spoke to six thousand of the new Wesleyans on Sunday. “I’m thrilled,” he said. “Now I’ve got to get our people on the move so we’ll be ready for you.”

Officials were quick, however, to disavow any interest in entering America’s more liberal, mainstream ecumenical movement. “This is union among people who already agree on doctrine,” they said.

The conference also approved:

• A world plan with gradual establishment of completely indigenous regional general conferences.

• A quadrennial program of evangelism and—in a spontaneous move from the floor—selection of a full time evangelism director.

• Procedures through which ministers expelled for immorality can be restored, upon repentance, to the ministry. “Let’s not be harder than God is,” urged one international delegate after hours of hot debate. The conference agreed by a 6 to 1 vote.

The conference gave no time to social action. Retiring General Superintendent Harold Sheets did pray once that God would help the new church to “make an impact on the ghettos, on the inner cities, on the ethnic struggles.” But such matters were not mentioned on the conference floor.

American Baptist Association. Representatives of the 731,000-member group, meeting in Hot Springs, Arkansas, passed a resolution against “riotous civil demonstrations, draft card burning, and flag desecrations.” In the same spirit, President Martin Canavan of Dominguez, California, condemned “unqualifiedly” any Baptist participation in picketing or street demonstrations. The proper Christian demonstration, he said, is in “manner of living.” He believes ministers “should either get back to preaching and upholding the doctrine of the plenary verbal inspiration of the Bible or resign.”

Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The stifling of dissent denies “the present activity of the Holy Spirit and seems to make the ideas of some, not the Scriptures, the yardstick of faith,” said the Rev. T. V. Warnick of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He told he General Assembly meeting in Oklahoma City that “real prophets have a poor record of being men-pleasers.” Later a resolution said none of the denomination’s 88,000 members could join “riotous street demonstrations” in the name of the Church. The Rev. Loyce Estes of Austin, Texas, was elected moderator.

Church of the Brethren. Although there was opposition, the church administrative board reaffirmed staff and financial support of the Poor People’s Campaign at the annual conference in Ocean Grove, New Jersey. A statement asked for welfare reform with a “floor of support” for all citizens.

Despite the debut of a Brethren lobby to get the church into the Consultation on Church Union, delegates voted 587–349 not to review a previous decision against COCU. The church voted full support for the National Council of Churches, though a minority report had shown interest in sending observers to the National Association of Evangelicals.

Moderator M. Guy West of York, Pennsylvania, said the denomination faces internal conflict over COCU, church-council membership, the Viet Nam war, and efforts for social justice.

The 190,000-member pacifist church also urged state and national firearms control and cited “the need for ultimate total disarmament of the citizenry and discontinuance of arms-bearing in normal police activity.”

A PATH STILL OVERGROWN

Outside the upper echelons of both churches, the one thing lacking in Church of England and Methodist circles at present is enthusiasm about the merger proposals (see Current Religious Thought, page 56).

No one who travels around England and attends local places of worship on Sundays would suspect that this should have been one of the most exciting years in English church life since the Reformation. The grass that has grown long on the village path between church and chapel has, indeed, been little disturbed in the five and one-half years since publication of the initial Anglican-Methodist report.

Meanwhile, top-level discussers have exercised their wits in controversial divinity and produced answers to questions that people have not been asking, and that in many cases they can as little understand as the scuffle over a diphthong at Nicea in 325.

Until recently, much of the opposition came from Methodist dissentients, whose advertising was refused by the Methodist Recorder, a self-styled “completely independent newspaper” that has all along been on the side of the unionists.

Two recent developments, however, have concerned Anglican groups between whom normally there is a great gulf fixed. In this case both evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics, while far from thinking alike, find themselves united in opposition to the present scheme of union with the Methodists.

Leading what he calls the Catholic wing, Bishop Graham Leonard of Willesden alleged that the project was “splitting the Church of England from top to bottom.” He cited instances of disquiet among bishops and clergy, and severely criticized the Services of Reconciliation. “Many of us,” he said, “cannot see how, with a clean conscience, we can take part in prayers to God which are deliberately disingenuous. This is not a matter of a fine point of theology—it is a matter of common honesty.”

Meanwhile, fifty-two evangelicals sent an open letter to the archbishops and bishops, expressing deep misgivings about the present proposals. Approving the principle of “unity of the visible church,” and welcoming suggested new doctrinal amendments to the scheme, they too see the Services of Reconciliation as a major obstacle. As a means of establishing full communion (“the acceptance of each Church’s ministers as well as communicants by the other”), these are based, say the signatories, on episcopal exclusiveness, which is biblically indefensible.

They point out that the present scheme is bound to divide the ministry in both churches; they “cannot accept that such disunion is a fit price to pay for the union of majorities”; and they feel that episcopal exclusiveness as a basis for full communion cannot be applied to future unions.

J. D. DOUGLAS

- More fromEdward E. Plowman

Page 6029 – Christianity Today (2024)

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