Page 6298 – Christianity Today (2024)

Some 50 radio stations linked with the Mutual Broadcasting System added a 30-minute weekly broadcast this month featuring the voice of Dr. Billy James Hargis, founder-director of Christian Crusade, “largest anti-communist ministry in America.” Hargis was already being heard on 15-minute daily broadcasts carried by some 76 stations and on 30-minute weekly broadcasts heard over 66 stations. He also has a 15-minute weekly telecast seen in 12 U. S. cities and in the Virgin Islands. The added outreach for the 14-year-old Hargis organization takes advantage of a rightist revival now sweeping the United States. Assorted new organizations, all thriving on bad publicity, are springing up almost daily.

The right-wing renascence is basically a political phenomenon, but some of the motivations are religious, as are some of the repercussions.

The Hargis organization and the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade of Dr. Fred C. Schwarz both have a large following among fundamentalists, but their scope long ago transcended theological lines. Schwarz was catapulted to national prominence this fall through widely-telecast public rallies in Southern California. Retraction of a critical story in Life magazine also helped the cause, inasmuch as Life publisher C. D. Jackson actually took the platform at a Schwarz rally to concede the magazine’s “over-simplified misrepresentation” and to praise the Schwarz enterprise.

Responsible evangelicals applaud the initiative of genuinely sincere anti-Communists. But some observers record their reservations over an excessively negative approach. They agree that the public ought to be more aware of Communist strategy, and that the ideological transition from socialism to communism is well worth publicizing. But they question whether some of the hoop-la rallies provide much ideological orientation. More important, these observers are disturbed at preoccupation with communism to the neglect of positive Christianity. The question is asked: Would we not be more profitably engaged if we indoctrinated the masses in the fundamentals of the Christian world-life view and called for personal commitment and for aggressive cells of workers?

Some anti-Communists and anti-liberals have become so irresponsible in their accusations and blanket denunciations that they hurt their own good cause. They have even leveled accusations at people who share their own convictions but who exercise more restraint. Extremists fail to see that they are being used as decoys by the liberals: smoke swirls about right-wing extremists while left-wingers quietly go about peddling their influence.

The Appeal To Roman Catholics

U. S. Roman Catholicism plays a major role in today’s right-wing renascence. The number of Roman Catholics active in conservative political ranks is believed to exceed their population proportion.

Officially, the U. S. Roman Catholic hierarchy frowns on right-wing extremists. Archbishop William E. Cousins, episcopal chairman of the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, said in an annual report issued last month that “these groups are unwittingly aiding the Communist cause by dividing and confusing Americans.” America and Commonweal, most influential of American Roman Catholic periodicals, have taken similar stands.

Individually, however, it is a different story. Robert Welch, head of the John Birch Society, maintains that 50 per cent of its membership is Roman Catholic. The society’s national council includes several well-known Roman Catholic figures, including a priest. Even Cardinal Cushing was once quoted as having expressed sympathy for the Birchers’ cause.

Many more Roman Catholics espouse the conservative political views of U. S. Senator Barry Goldwater, who avoids the Birch extreme. Goldwater has attracted Roman Catholic support by cautious pronouncements, as on federal aid to education. He says that if there is going to be such aid (he is against it), then parochial schools should be given a share.

Acknowledged leader of Catholics-for-Goldwater is William F. Buckley, Jr., editor of the National Review, who stirred considerable controversy with a criticism of socialistic overtones in the latest encyclical of Pope John XXIII.

The aggressive liberal attack on right-wingers gives the liberals the initiative, keeps the right on the defensive; it raises questions about the right, while making the left seem respectable and normative; it enables the liberals to achieve their ends while discrediting those who would call them to account.

Many right-wingers are highly sensitive to the conspiratorial facets of contemporary Communist strategy, a fact which causes some to trace all socialistic trends back to the Kremlin. Thus the socialistic overtones in liberal church pronouncements are interpreted as continuing evidence of the presence of “Communist clergymen” in the United States.

Anti-Communist extremists who saw a Red in every other committee went into virtual hibernation at the demise of Mc-Carthyism. They came to life again when the National Council of Churches made a big affair out of an obscure Air Force Reserve manual which warned of clergy subversion. Some Protestant anti-Communist extremists also came to new life in the wake of the Roman Catholic issue in Kennedy’s election campaign because they happened also to share a genuine concern for church-state separation. Almost to a man they supported the candidacy of Vice President Richard M. Nixon, and Nixon’s narrow-margin loss was a batter blow.

Kennedy’s initial approach to the Soviets was decidedly more conciliatory than that of his predecessor in the presidency, and this stirred the feelings of the extremists still more. Following the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting in Vienna, however, U. S.-Soviet relations deteriorated sharply. As he had done any number of times, Khrushchev feinted in East Germany, and Kennedy took the opportunity for a military buildup that some sources say he had wanted all along. But criticisms arose similar to those directed at Eisenhower by liberals and conservatives alike, that U. S. policy seemed to be shaped more by reaction than by initiative. By this time, many ultra-conservatives were vocal in calling for a policy of strength and stability, and their influence was spreading rapidly.

Political discontent in America today largely follows one of two general courses. To the left are pacifistic critics of nuclear testing. To the right lie a myriad of complainers ranging from George Lincoln Rockwell and his self-styled Nazism to the arms-carrying Minute Men of Southern California.

Liberally-oriented news analysts continually do the public a disservice by lumping all together under the right-wing forces under the same umbrella and assigning them a common identification. Washington correspondents largely regard the right-wing bloc as a laughingstock, and their bias is readily discernible in news stories. Thus far, however, this adverse treatment (even President Kennedy’s denunciation) has worked to the advantage of the extremists. It seems to win them friends, and most certainly spreads the word to persons of like convictions eager to line up behind a cause.

Two tactics currently used to discredit right-wingers are the same as those long decried by liberals: guilt by association (lumping together of superficially-similar representations) and arbitrary labeling on the basis of isolated quotations removed from context.

The year 1962 promises political developments which are bound to have one kind of bearing or another upon theological conservatives. The show will begin with Congressional hearings next month over the alleged muzzling of Major General Edwin A. Walker.

Missions Debate

What priorities ought to characterize evangelical missions strategy?

The question was tossed about with determined vigor in the fall issues of His magazine, a monthly published by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship primarily for college students. The literary debate was designed as a prelude to the IVCF’s sixth International Student Missionary Convention at the University of Illinois, December 27–31.

Chief figures in the debate were Dr. Kenneth Pike, linguistics professor at the University of Michigan, and Dr. Arthur Glasser, home director of China Inland Mission-Overseas Missionary Fellowship.

Pike, affiliated with Wycliffe Bible Translators, asserted that contemporary missionaries “should tackle those specialized tasks which the indigenous local church cannot, or will not … handle … in this decade.”

Glasser, who was a missionary to the Nosu tribal people of China, cited Kenneth Scott Latourette’s concept of “the ongoing Christian community” as the great tool. He declared that too much emphasis is being placed on “subsidiary” specialization.

‘Ferocious’ Objections

A national women’s magazine with a circulation of 7,000,000 cancelled a drug company’s $120,000 series of full-page advertisem*nts on birth control and planned parenthood because of “readers’ objections,” Religious News Service reported last month.

Karyl Van, advertising director of Every woman’s Family Circle, a 10-cent magazine sold mainly in supermarkets, said the publication had received numerous complaints about the first advertisem*nt of a six-part series for the Ortho Pharmaceutical Corporation, the nation’s largest manufacturer of contraceptives.

“The objections from readers was ferocious,” said Van. “We no longer are carrying the ads. This subject is too hot to handle.”

However, a spokesman for the drug company said the decision to withdraw the advertisem*nts had been made by the firm itself after an article denouncing such advertising appeared in America, the Jesuit weekly.

The first advertisem*nt, as it appeared in Everywoman’s Family Circle and True Story, a romantic fiction magazine, showed a young woman talking over a picket fence with an older woman. Large type over the advertisem*nt read: “Don’t plan your family over the back fence.”

Smaller type in the advertisem*nt urged young mothers to consult their doctors about spacing babies. It said: “He can recommend a method that is dependable, simple, inexpensive and best suited to the needs of you and your husband.”

Although contraceptives are not mentioned in the advertisem*nt, the last line says: “This message is sponsored by Ortho Pharmaceutical Corp., to whom medical methods of family planning are a particular concern.”

The Bookies Of Boston

Richard Cardinal Cushing, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston, says his city has been “betrayed” by a CBS television documentary which spotlighted bookmaking.

“Gambling exists everywhere,” the prelate told a policemen’s ball in the Boston Garden. “And no one can deny it. The United States Army wouldn’t be a sufficient law enforcement body to stop people from gambling.

“In my theology, gambling itself is not a sin any more than to take a glass of beer or of hard liquor is a sin. It’s the abuse that makes gambling evil or drinking intoxicating liquors an evil.”

He said that whoever was behind the program “owes an apology to the City of Boston.”

In New York, meanwhile, a state government commission investigating operations was told that bingo games were more profitable to bingo hall operators than to the charities they were intended to benefit. A commission counsel estimated that one lessor had made an annual net profit of more than 600 per cent on a $6,000 investment in a bingo hall.

Embarrassed Baptist

“In the 24 years I’ve lived in Louisiana,” said Dr. J. D. Grey, “we’ve had Baptists in the governorship for 16 years. They’ve been the sorriest years that our state law enforcement has ever seen.”

The pastor of the First Baptist Church of New Orleans was addressing some 2,000 men attending the annual Louisiana Baptist Brotherhood Convention last month.

“I’m not mad,” added Grey, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, “I’m embarrassed.”

Grey singled out Jimmie H. Davis, ballad-singing governor of Louisiana, as “the shame of Louisiana Baptists” for failing to act against “organized and commercialized gambling and corruption.”

Davis is a Baptist and once taught school in a Baptist college in Shreveport. He has written a number of songs, such as “You Are My Sunshine,” and has made recordings of Gospel songs.

Education And Religion

Gordon College won full academic accreditation this month.

The Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, school was approved for membership by the New England Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools as a senior, four-year college of the arts and sciences.

Dr. James Forrester, president, announced that the Gordon Divinity School will move at once for full membership in the American Association of Theological Schools, recognized accrediting agency for seminaries, in which it now holds an associate membership.

Both the college and the divinity school are known for their evangelical orientation, but neither have official ties with a church body.

Other developments in church-related education:

—Dr. Ralph Phelps announced he had withdrawn his resignation as president of Ouachita Baptist College.

—The new half-million dollar campus of Grace Bible College, Wyoming, Michigan, was dedicated.

Religious Review

Here is a brief resumé of significant religious developments during 1961:

EVANGELISM: Billy Graham conducted major crusades in Florida; Manchester, England; Minneapolis; and Philadelphia. Telecasts of the meetings took on new importance.… Bob Pierce held a month-long campaign in Tokyo. Overall impact was unprecedented, despite public controversy.

THEOLOGY: Theological activity by scholars on the conservative side of the theological spectrum gained momentum.… To the left, neo-orthodoxy and waning classic liberalism continued their ideological struggle.… “Neo-evangelicalism” apparently has established itself as a term describing some conservative scholars avoiding the fundamentalist label.

MISSIONS: Violence hindered missionary effort in such lands as Laos, Vietnam, Congo, and Angola.… A Church of Christ in Israel was stoned repeatedly before being granted police protection.

ECUMENICITY: The World Council of Churches received into membership Orthodox churches from Iron Curtain countries. The action weakens the numerical domination of the WCC by Protestants.… The International Missionary Council was absorbed into the World Council.… Roman Catholic and Orthodox leaders planned separate ecumenical councils.… Many denominational mergers were brewing.

SCHISM: Congregational Christian churches which rejected denominational ties with the Evangelical and Reformed Church formed fellowships of their own.… The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod suspended relations with the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.… A Conservative Baptist faction formed its own mission society.… A group of Negro Baptists split off from the National Baptist Convention, U. S. A., Inc., to form a convention of their own.

EDUCATION: A new liberal arts college is planned at Sarasota, Florida, with the help of the Congregational Board of Home Missions.… The Conwell School of Theology, successor to the Temple School of Theology, opened its doors in Philadelphia.… The Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, a pioneering Negro ecumenical institution, was dedicated. It embraces four theological schools in a cooperative program.

MORALITY: If the cinema and television are indicative of public moral standards, the trend continued downhill.

SOCIAL ACTION: The propriety of fallout shelters raised many an argument among churchmen, but a number of liberals who claim to be on the front lines of social action were caught napping.… A papal encyclical dealing with social problems won unprecedented publicity.… Christian-oriented crusades against communism mushroomed.

PUBLISHING:The New English Bible New Testament made a big hit among clergy and laity alike. More than 3,000,000 copies are already in print.

CHURCH-STATE: Roman Catholic pressure for federal school funds gave President Kennedy the biggest controversy of his first year in office.… Demands grew for restrictions upon tax-free church-related business.… The U. S. Supreme Court handed down a record number of decisions touching upon religious issues.… A Peace Corps program began operation, prompting concern as to whether cooperation with missionary organizations would violate the church-state principle.… Communist leaders were reported trying to split German Lutheranism.… Burma adopted Buddhism as a state religion but proclaimed religious liberty for all citizens. Effect upon missionary activity is still uncertain.… Dutch Reformed churches in South Africa, supportive of the government’s apartheid policy, severed relations with the World Council of Churches.

Protestant Panorama

• Dr. Karl Barth is planning to make his first visit to the United States next spring, according to Religious News Service. He is scheduled to arrive sometime around Easter (April 22) and to give a five-day series of lectures at the University of Chicago Divinity School. The world-famous Swiss theologian is also said to have accepted an invitation to lecture at Princeton Seminary’s 150th anniversary observance.

• A Christian Herald poll shows that “The Old Rugged Cross” is still America’s favorite hymn. “How Great Thou Art” was a close second, followed by “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” “In the Garden,” “Amazing Grace,” and “Rock of Ages.”

• A commemorative four-cent postage stamp was issued last month to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Presbyterian clergyman who invented the game of basketball in 1891. The stamp honoring Dr. James Naismith was first placed on sale at Springfield (Massachusetts) College, where he taught and where a Basketball Hall of Fame is being erected.

• Texas Christian University plans a 12-year program of development that will include construction of six new buildings at an estimated cost of $5,000,000.

• A year-long evangelistic effort aimed at Guatemala’s 4,000,000 citizens will open next month with a three-day orientation session for pastors. The effort will operate under the framework of the “evangelism-indepth” concept developed by the Latin America Mission. It will include training classes, public rallies, visitation, campus ministries, and local church campaigns.

• Youth for Christ plans to begin a national radio program. It will be developed by Tedd Seelye, a staff announcer for station WMBI, affiliated with Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. Seelye joins Youth for Christ January 1.

• Some 30 journalists representing 15 Protestant church publications in Portugal formed a fellowship group last month. It will be known as the Portuguese Evangelical Press Association. Baptist, Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Nazarene, and Brethren churches are represented.

• The Italian Bible Institute in Rome, project of the Greater Europe Mission, was dedicated last month. It will offer a three-year Protestant course.

• The British Weekly, founded by the late Sir William Robertson Nicoll to represent the so-called “nonconformist conscience,” is observing its 75th anniversary. The journal, published in Edinburgh, achieved a position of considerable influence in the religious and political life of the British Isles. It is now owned by the Church of Scotland but still serves the original purpose of representing Presbyterianism in Scotland and the nonepiscopal churches in the rest of the British Isles.

Regional Reaction

Resolutions criticizing the establishment of a new mission society were adopted at two of the Conservative Baptists’ three regional conferences this fall.

The Eastern and Western conferences labeled as “unfounded” certain allegations given as grounds for the founding of the new society by the Conservative Baptist Fellowship. Leaders of the fellowship, most separatist of Conservative Baptist bodies, charged that the “impact of Neo-Evangelicalism and its twin evil of ecumenical evangelism has had a divisive and deteriorating effect on the schools, societies and churches of our movement.” … Eschatological differences also were cited.

Highlights Of Wcc Assembly

Here is a summary of actions taken at the 18-day assembly of the World Council of Churches in New Delhi, India:

—Admission of the Russian Orthodox Church to membership in the WCC. The Russian church is the largest single religious body in the WCC, and its admission made Eastern Orthodoxy the largest “confessional family” in the World Council.

—Integration of the International Missionary Council into the WCC.

—Adoption of an appeal to all governments to make every effort to take “reasonable risks for peace” in order to dispel the climate of suspicion that leads to war. The assembly also endorsed a report warning that years of living under the threat of nuclear war will reduce mankind’s sense of human worth and dignity.

—Endorsem*nt of a report on Christian witness which urged creation of cells of Christian laymen and women in areas where the church has lost contact with the masses.

—Election of six new presidents and a 100-member (formerly 90 member) central committee.

—Participation in the first official WCC communion service celebrated according to the Anglican rite. Although the service was open to all, Orthodox and some Lutheran churchmen, in accordance with their doctrines, did not participate.

—Expression of solidarity with those in South Africa who oppose the government’s racial policies.

—Adoption of a report from the WCC’s Division of Inter-Church Aid and Service to Refugees which said that churches should encourage governments in programs of relief and rehabilitation and should establish their own pilot projects where governments are uninterested.

—Adoption of a resolution submitted by Dr. Frederick Donald Coggan, Archbishop of York, that provided for a message of Christian unity to be sent to the East German church leaders who were refused visas to attend the assembly.

—Revocation of a report condemning Portugal for repressive acts in Angola. The assembly had endorsed the report by a margin of 179 to 177, but because of the closeness of one vote, the report was declared “meaningless” and was referred back to the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs.

—Approval of the first detailed plan for Christian unity ever acted on by a WCC assembly. The plan calls for interlocking communities of churches which recognize another’s members and ministers and allow joint participation in communion. Another unity report which the assembly endorsed calls for removal of barriers which keep members of different churches from taking communion together.

—Adoption of a new Basis for WCC membership which specifically mentions the Trinity and the Scriptures instead of requiring only recognition of Jesus Christ as Lord, as in the original Basis which was adopted back in 1948.

—Condemnations of violations of religious liberty through “legal enactments or the pressure of social customs.”

—Denunciation of anti-Semitism as a “sin against God and man.”

The Central conference adopted a resolution which affirmed the right of Conservative Baptists “to start new C. B. schools, C. B. Mission Societies, homes for the aged and other agencies to help in the further spread of the Gospel.” However, the resolution made no specific reference to the new mission society or to issues in its establishment.

Dr. Albert G. Johnson, president of Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, has resigned his position as a director of the Conservative Baptist Fellowship in protest of the fellowship’s action in creating a new mission society.

German Misgivings

Misgivings were voiced in many German Protestant and Roman Catholic quarters over the World Council of Churches action in admitting the Russian Orthodox Church to membership and electing Dr. Martin Niemöeller, controversial figure in the Evangelical Church in Germany, as one of its six presidents.

Der Tag, West Berlin organ of the Christian Democratic Union, whose membership includes both Protestants and Roman Catholics, said the first obvious result of accepting the Russian church in the World Council seemed to be a tendency to keep out of discussions “all problems which might anger the Eastern churches.”

Der Tag said New Delhi delegates must have been aware of the fact that Niemöeller “uses, or rather, misuses the pulpit and the Church to propagate his politically misty and often abstruse ideas.”

It added that Niemöeller’s election “may be regarded as a signal for a new WCC course.”

The Soviet Zone press hailed Niemödeller’s election as a serious warning for advocates of “the West German Military Church traveling in the wake of NATO.”

A Blow To Liberty

Even while the World Council of Churches in New Delhi was calling for religious liberty, a Seventh-day Adventist minister in Greece was found guilty of proselytizing by a Court of Appeals and given a 40-day suspended sentence.

The Rev. George Kotsasaridis, 47, had been acquitted last September by a lower court, but the local Greek Orthodox priest who instigated the charge appealed the case. The Orthodox clergyman maintained that Kotsasaridis had visited a number of families in his parish “to change their religion” and therefore was guilty of proselytizing, which is outlawed in Greece.

Still another appeal is expected.

Heresy Trial

A theologian’s trial on charges of heresy before a Dutch Reformed Church of Africa commission will be resumed January 30.

Professor A. S. Geyser won an adjournment to allow him time to prepare his defense. He is charged with heresy in interpreting the New Testament for his students and in criticising the church’s ban against nonwhite members.

Target: Adventists

Seventh-day Adventist missionaries in the Congo accused United Nations troops last month of firing shells that wrecked the church mission’s office building and damaged several villas in a compound at Elizabethville.

The mission buildings are a cluster of villas about 30 yards from U. N. headquarters. They were shelled as fighting erupted between U. N. and Katangan forces.

“We are everybody’s friend,” said a Seventh-day Adventist official. “We are here for our spiritual and medical work. Why should the U. N. shoot at us?”

The Rev. Chester L. Torrey, treasurer of the World Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, who was on a deputational tour, was hit on the head with a small shell splinter.

Official news dispatches said the missionaries had been caught in crossfire between U. N. and Katangan troops, who had taken up positions in flower beds at the compound. Mission buildings were badly damaged.

Crusade ’61

In the Australian CRUSADE ’61, covering 23 cities in four states, the Rev. Leighton Ford and Dr. Joseph Blinco of the Billy Graham evangelistic team rode the crest of a wave of spiritual enthusiasm that started with the 1959 Graham crusade. A major aim this year was to reach small communities untouched two years ago, and that half of Australia’s population which is under 21 years of age.

Police estimated that 10,500 attended a welcome rally in Sydney Stadium, where the platform party included Anglican Archbishop H. R. Gough, Primate of Australia, and other church leaders. Three days later CRUSADE ’61 was officially launched, with Mr. Ford in Brisbane, and Dr. Blinco in Wollongong, an industrial city of about 125,000 some 50 miles from Sydney. The Brisbane attendance was about 56,000, with 1,046 decisions; in Wollongong, more than 30,000 came, and more than 600 decided for Christ. Every Protestant church in the greater Wollongong area cooperated. In one boys’ college more than half the students made public commitment to Christ. Both evangelists conducted services in other provincial areas, and addressed also industrial groups and ministers’ meetings.

Mr. Ford assured reporters: “We have not come with some strange North American brand of Christianity, or a religious sideshow … but Christ means so much to us that we want to share him with others.”

In Sydney, whose population now exceeds 1,500,000, attendance at nine crusade services totaled 97,000, with 2,832 recorded decisions for Christ, including scores of teenagers.

Dr. Blinco in an interview had spoken hopefully of the World Council of Churches meeting in New Delhi, observing that though sound historic and often spiritual reasons lie behind divisions in the Church, these reasons must gradually fade. He rejoiced that Christians are “finding one another again in fellowship, in opportunities to serve together.”

In many places during the crusade, which closed December 10, the evangelists were given civic receptions.

J. D. D.

Sunday Versus Sobriety

As a result of local elections held under a new licensing act, drinking is now permissible on Sundays in nine of the 17 “areas” in Wales. In an electorate of some 1,804,000 (not including some 80,000 young people between 18 and 21, who are permitted to drink but not to vote) 47 per cent voted. “As expected,” commented one influential British newspaper, “industrial and Anglicised areas chose the Sunday open door.”

The president of the Methodist Conference, after pointing to the election percentage as evidence of no large demand for Sunday opening, added: “One would like to know why the government considers Sunday closing good for Scotland and not for Wales.” This was a reference to a government decision which brought surprise and dismay in certain quarters by decreeing that Scottish public houses should remain closed on Sunday.

J. D. D.

Church Union In Ceylon

The Church of England’s attitude toward the proposed United Church of Lanka (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY editorial, June 5, 1961) presents bewildering features. Not, however, to Principal M. A. P. Wood of Oak Hill Theological College, London, who has compared Anglican objections to the project with the situation in the early Church when Christians had “cold feet” about the admission of Gentiles into fellowship.

Recent efforts of an actively vocal group of Anglicans have contrived virtually to reverse a previous decision on the plan by pushing the “apostolic succession” issue to the forefront. What emerges now is a Canterbury Convocation decision stating that Anglicans would establish intercommunion with the Lanka Church “provided that ambiguity in the rite of unification is removed so as to make it clear that episcopal ordination has been conferred on those who have not already received it.” Basically this is the same rock on which foundered negotiations with the Church of Scotland in 1958.

A significant note was nevertheless struck by the Archbishop of Canterbury in a speech to the autumn Convocation of York. “In all our thoughts of unity,” said Dr. Ramsey, “we ought, I feel sure, to submit ourselves to justification by faith alone. That means in practice that in our attitude to other Christian bodies, we let ourselves as far as we can, be stripped of any boastfulness about our own possessions and our own standing.” The Archbishop then approvingly quoted William Temple, who had said: “Those who by God’s election have received His ministry will neither surrender it, nor so hold it as to make difficult the access of others to it.”

Many feel that the intercommunion problem is only a part of a more fundamental issue facing the Church of England today: Is she to adhere to the basic Reformation formularies of her Prayer Book and the Thirty-Nine Articles which are her legal charter, or is she to follow the Tractarian innovations of the last century? The whole subject had caused great controversy in England. Much interest was aroused by an open letter addressed to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York by 32 Anglicans, mostly professors and college principals, in which they urged immediate intercommunion, and added that nonepiscopal ministries were not to be considered in any way inferior to episcopal ones.

J. D. D.

Disputed Motivations

Four American Methodist missionaries, jailed for three months by the Portuguese government for alleged “conniving with terrorists” in Angola, were released this month and deported from Lisbon.

Three of the four returned to the United States and promptly became involved in a dispute over the cause of the terror in Angola. The fourth, the Rev. Wendell Lee Golden, 39, proceeded to Southern Rhodesia.

In New York, charges of “conniving with terrorists” were denied by the Rev. Edwin LeMaster, 39, and his lay colleagues, Fred Brancel, 35, and Marion Way, Jr., 30.

All labelled as false the Portuguese accusations that the missionaries had aided Angola rebels by permitting them to hold political meetings in Methodist churches or mission grounds.

They expressed disagreement with reports by other first-hand observers that Communists had instigated and led the Angola revolt.

“We can’t say that the Communists aren’t trying to capitalize on the revolt,” said Way, “but they neither started the war nor lead it. The Africans are rebelling against the deplorable conditions that have existed in Angola for almost 500 years.”

Other informed sources tended to place more blame on the Communists and to attribute the violence to tribalism and fetishism rather than to nationalism.

The Pittsburgh Choice

Dr. Donald G. Miller was chosen last month to assume the presidency of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Miller, now professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia, will succeed the retiring Dr. Clifford E. Barbour next May 31.

Selection of the 52-year-old Miller climaxed 18 months of work by a seminary-nominating committee. Theological considerations played a chief role in the selection process, inasmuch as there are sharp differences between conservative and liberal factions at the seminary. The Pittsburgh seminary came out of a merger between the old Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary of the former United Presbyterian Church and Western Theological Seminary of the former Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. prior to denominational merger. The seminary is the oldest and second largest among the seven theological seminaries of the United Presbyterian Church, U. S. A.

Miller is a member of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (Southern), which operates the Richmond seminary and which is generally considered to be more theologically conservative than the United Presbyterian.

Miller, a native of the Pittsburgh area, was graduated in 1930 from Greenville (Illinois) College, and won advanced degrees at the Biblical Seminary of New York and New York University. He took post-doctorate study at Faculte de Theologie Protestante in Montpellier, France, and at Basel, Switzerland.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: The Rev. Mordecai F. Flam, 84, Baptist evangelist under whose ministry Billy Graham was converted; in Louisville, Kentucky … Canon T. C. Hammond, 84, world-renowned authority on Anglican affairs; in Sydney, Australia … Dr. William A. Curtis, 85, former principal of New College, Edinburgh; in Melrose, Scotland … the Rev. Percy E. Warrington, 72, founder of Bristol (England) Theological College … Bishop Theodore Russell Ludlow, 78, retired suffragan bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Newark, New Jersey; in Newark … Dr. Charles Ernest Scott, 85, for 33 years a Presbyterian missionary in China; in Philadelphia … Dr. John Raymond Chadwick, 65, president of Iowa Wesleyan College; in New York … theRev. David Schmidt, 39, professor at Concordia Lutheran Seminary in Villa Ballester, Argentina.

Appointments: As executive secretary of the General Commission on Chaplains and Armed Forces Personnel, the Rev. A. Ray Applequist … as treasurer of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, Norris H. Koopmann … as moderator-designate of the Free Church of Scotland General Assembly, Professor W. J. Cameron … as vicar of St. Mary’s, Islington, London, the Rev. R. P. Johnston … as pastor of the Baptist Tabernacle in Atlanta, Georgia, the Rev. William F. Doverspike … As an associate pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church in Towson, Maryland, Dr. T. Roland Philips, pastor emeritus of the Arlington Presbyterian Church of Baltimore … as bishop of the Krishna-Godavari diocese of the Church of South India, the Rev. N. D. Anandarao Samuel … as president of the National Council of Churches in Germany, Dr. Hans Luckey, director of the Baptist seminary in Hamburg … as chairman of the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America, the Rev. James A. Cross, general overseer of the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) … as executive director of the Unitarian Fellowship for Social Justice, Richard Wilson … as president of the Scripture Press Foundation, Vincent C. Hogren … as editor-in-chief of Youth for Christ Magazine, Ron Wilson.

Elections: As chairman of Christian Business Men’s Committee International, Andrew W. Hughes … as president of the Christian Writers Association of Canada, the Rev. Bernard T. Parkinson.

Installation: As “Ecumenical Minister” of the Missouri Council of Churches, Dr. Stanley l. Stuber.

Citation: As “Chaplain of the Year” of the Reserve Officers Association, Air Force Colonel Samuel M. Bays.

Resignations: As executive director of the Greater Oakland (California) Council of Churches, Salvation Army Colonel Bertram Rodda … as director of the Lutheran Immigration Service, Vernon E. Bergstrom … as executive vice president of World Vision, Ellsworth Culver.

Retirement: As president of Pacific Lutheran College, Dr. S. C. Eastvoid … as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Pontiac, Michigan, Dr. H. H. Savage.

Quote: “Every human ideology comes to an end sometime, and communism, too, will be a thing of the past, maybe much sooner than anyone presently thinks. There already are traces of crumbling and falling down.”—Bishop Otto Dibelius, at a Reformation rally in the First Methodist Church of Los Angeles.

The Pittsburgh seminary announced this month the receipt of a $1,350,000 grant, largest in the school’s history, for construction of a new library. The gift is a joint grant of the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation and the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

By approving the expanded Basis of membership proposed last summer at St. Andrews, the New Delhi Assembly gave greater ecumenical centrality to the doctrine of the Trinity and to the role of the Bible. Hailed both by Evangelical and by Eastern Orthodox leaders, the step avoided reduction of the ecumenical witness to “a dull and uninteresting gray.” It gave promise of new virility in matching a theological counterattack to “the acceleration of history” in a revolutionary age, to the resurgence of non-Christian religions, to the aggression of evolutionary atheism, to the dazzling spell of scientific technology, and to the grip of secular materialism.

Although almost one in ten of the delegates voting on the issue opposed approval of the trinitarian basis, including some liberal leaders who thought the action would launch the World Council along the pathway of creed-making, the St. Andrews proposal swept through the General Assembly by a 383–36 vote. Its immediate effect was to disqualify Unitarians from WCC membership.

Amsterdam to Delhi

When WCC came into being in Amsterdam in 1948, it adopted the bare Basis that: “The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches who accept Jesus Christ as God and Saviour.” (This statement was stronger than that of the National Council of Churches.) Norwegian evangelicals sought in Evanston in 1954 to amend the Basis to read … who, according to Holy Scriptures, confess Jesus as God and Saviour,” but their proposal was sidetracked. Eastern Orthodox theologians later reinforced this move, urging additional reference to the Trinity and to church tradition. At St. Andrews last summer, the WCC Central Committee agreed to submit the altered form adopted by the Delhi Assembly after nearly two hours of debate: “The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of Churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour, according to the Scriptures, and therefore seek to fulfill their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Some liberal Protestant churchmen, both in the United States and Europe, had sharply opposed the expansion. Friends Journal (Sept. 15 issue) deplored it as “restrictive and exclusive” and added that “the assurance formerly given that we could interpret the membership formula as liberally as we saw fit can hardly apply any longer to this much more rigid test.… We can only regret that a sizeable group among our church leaders still insists on considering Christian beliefs to be primarily a system of thought.” But some conservatives, like Dr. L. D. McBain (American Baptist) opposed the expansion as a risky precedent. Russian Orthodox Archbishop Nikodim in his first speech to the Assembly urged expansion, as did Dr. C. G. Baeta of Ghana, former secretary of the old IMC.

At the same time it was clear that the Delhi Assembly’s theological pronouncements had little in common with affirmations of the great ecumenical councils of the first centuries. The early ecumenical councils defined and condemned the heresies to which they opposed their theological affirmations. But Delhi, like Amsterdam and Evanston, was preoccupied with unity and had little interest in combatting heresy. As a result the “victory” for trinitarianism and the Bible is far from precise and may, in fact, accommodate views of the divine Trinity and of the Scriptures which would have been abhorrent to Christian faith in earlier Christian centuries. While the move from the older liberal emphasis on theocentrism to trinitarianism is widely hailed as an evangelical victory, the fact remains that Christocentrism has also sheltered liberal theories, and that the Delhi affirmations are not inconsistent with grossly objectionable views both of divine trinity and scriptural authority.

The Role of Theology

Yet Delhi witnessed some pointed pleas for greater theological earnestness as indispensable to the realization of ecumenical unity. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. A. M. Ramsay, deplored what he called a “hand theology” spirit in the West which says in effect “do not go deep into theology; we need just a few simple facts and principles in order to get unity.” He warned that unity will not be found in such “twentieth century simplifications,” and added that “those who talk thus commonly make large theological assumptions which they do not pause to examine.” “If we will be patient,” he continued, “true theology, good theology, is something which unites. But it will not be true unless it keeps itself and us near to the Cross whence the call to holiness comes.”

Eastern Orthodox churches reinforced the periodic call for more theological depth. In a statement for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abuna Theophilos noted that “a really fruitful line of work towards unity would be a closer study of the traditional doctrines with a view to evolving clearer and less inadequate verbal definitions.”

But the theological thrust had alien interests to contend with also. Among these were the Burma Baptist U Ba Hmyin’s plea for universal synthetic theology unrestricted to biblical structures, and neo-orthodox hostility toward revealed truths and an intellectual faith.

Doctrinal differences among the Delhi delegates limited their full fellowship except as they downgraded the importance of doctrinal truth and fell back on the Basis as the sufficient touchstone of Christian commitment. Despite the dissent of one-tenth of the delegates, spokesmen confidently referred to the Basis as “the fixed stratum of unity” alongside which the ecumenical movement continues its “search for a unity” which does not yet exist. By this “common faith” the member churches were pledged to stand together despite frightfully deep and divisive differences. The Delhi mood was still to “obey Christ’s command” (to find unity) and to work out “details of doctrine” later. Faced by a time of greater challenge to Christianity than that posed by the Renaissance, by an age more demanding than any since apostolic times, they felt oneness more than truth to be their highest calling. Disturbed by the unedifying spectacle of Christian disunity, they cheered the word of WCC General Secretary W. A. Visser’t Hooft that “desire for Christian unity is no longer the concern of the few but the preoccupation of the many,” and they welcomed every evidence of a general ecumenical mobilization.

Dr. Visser’t Hooft noted that the WCC had become with “one very important exception” (Roman Catholicism) a body in which all major Christian confessions are strongly represented, and that it now embraces “a greater variety of expressions of the Christian faith than have ever been brought together in one movement.” The presence of five Roman Catholic observers authorized by the Vatican Secretariat for Christian Unity cheered ecumenical leaders, although Father Edward Duff did not hesitate to indicate in a television interview that Roman Catholicism already has the unity to which non-Roman ecumenism aspires.

Special emphasis fell on a large-scale Communion service arranged by the Anglican Church of India, Pakistan, Burma, and Ceylon, open to “all baptized communicant members of their churches,” as another first step toward unity. An Eastern Orthodox spokesman indicated to the press that Communion is “the summit of unity, and not a way of achieving it,” but said delegates from his church would be present to support the ecumenical movement. In the Orthodox view, said Dr. Nikos Nissiotis, assistant director of the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, Church union is not “a ‘spiritualized,’ sentimental, humanistic expression of good will, but is an absolute reality preestablished by God.… The Church does not move towards unity through the comparison of conceptions of unity, but lives out of the union between God and man realized in the communion of the Church.… We are not here to create but to recapture it.…”

Common Faith, Diverse Theologies

It was clear that a variety of conceptions of unity entered into the ecumenical dialogue, and that the achievement of any carefully-defined unity was still a long way off for WCC affiliates. Dr. Joseph Sittler of Chicago summed up some of the tensions as disagreement over “whether the way to unity is a common faith, or a closer fellowship in confidence that the fellowship itself will lead to a common faith; whether the churches must enter into intercommunion to advance unity or have a larger unity in order to enter into intercommunion; whether unity is to be found in a common faith, or in a common order equally.” Sittler’s view is that the unity of the Church depends not on a common theology but on a common faith (it is noteworthy that nonsupematuralist John Dewey promulgated the thesis a generation ago in the interest of humanism). He deplored “the idolatry of putting theology in the center.” Explaining theologies as intellectual functions of the differences in cultures, he said “there is not and will not be a common theology.” When newspaper reporters asked Sittler whether any movement exists outside the United States similar to the Blake-Pike emphasis on organic unity as the only worthy ecumenical goal, he noted the Union of South India, the Ceylon scheme, and the North India scheme as somewhat similar.

The earlier feeling that the ecumenical world assemblies represent a kairos, a divinely-appointed time at which church unity would be achieved by listening to the voice of the Spirit, seemed at Delhi to have worn somewhat thin. While there was little searching of the biblical doctrine of the Church, representatives of nearly all confessions at Delhi declared their traditional formulation of ecclesiology inadequate to grip today’s ecumenical realities. One or another speaker, in order to deflate the absolute claims of rival ecclesiastical traditions, invoked the thesis that the Church is historically conditioned and exposed to corruption, but the speakers were more hesitant to apply the thesis to their own communions, and seemed wholly reluctant to apply it to the ecumenical development. Delhi championed a “more explicit and definite” position with regard to church unity through its emphasis on mission (integration of IMC into WCC) and through its expanded Basis, and it trusted these developments to hold together in the member churches.

Dr. W. A. Visser’t Hooft acknowledged candidly that “though it is in God’s grace sometimes given to us to render a common witness, we cannot claim that in the important matters of faith, of life, of church order, we speak with one voice.” With death gradually overtaking one after another of the ecumenical movement’s surviving pioneers, Visser’t Hooft’s importance has grown. In two respects he differs somewhat from the earlier men; he is largely alien to their pietistic-evangelistic emphasis, and he is actively interested in the enlistment of Rome. But he reiterates the longstanding ecumenical emphasis that no external reunion will be forced upon member churches “who are not ready for this and do not desire it.… Those who would attempt to create union by force or coercion would meet with the determined opposition of our member churches.” With a look at present ecumenical achievement, Visser’t Hooft added: “Cooperation is not the same as unity, but it can and should be a mighty stimulant to unity.”

A major document of 9,000 words, approved in the closing days of the Delhi Assembly, further delineated the complex WCC notion of unity. Instead of a single ecclesiastical organization of all Christians, WCC pledged itself to work for a system of interlocking church communities on the local, national and international level, with mutual recognition of ministries, members, and joint participation in the Lord’s Supper. The document emphasized that “unity does not imply simple uniformity of organization, rite or expression.” But it affirmed also that it “will involve nothing less than a death and rebirth of many forms of church life as we have known them. We believe that nothing less costly can finally suffice.”

Machinery and the Kingdom

Ecclesiastical machinery functioned actively through all phases of the Delhi Assembly; the mechanism of resolutions and program enjoyed special prominence. This growing preoccupation with organization rather than with mission has periodically troubled leaders distressed over ecumenical programming—the endless series of conferences, consultations, commissions, and committees apparently substitute a passion for dialogue for the passion to witness. And the disposition to limit democratic processes within ecumenical gatherings at times irked the press. In New Delhi no floor debate was permitted, for example, on the question of admission of the Russian Orthodox Church. In the various section meetings the press was prohibited from continuous coverage (even by substitutes or alternates). Whatever the intention of such limitation, it had the effect of concealing from the press what day-to-day sectional emphases were eliminated or revised by the editorial committee in the final sectional draft—a device by which ecumenical leaders have sometimes promoted special objectives.

The cost of the Delhi Assembly, including travel, has been estimated at half a million dollars. Delegates had been informed it would be best not to seek reservations in the city’s best hotels; when they arrived, they found ecumenical staff already ensconced in the Janpath, most modern hostelry in the city, while arrangements for many of the participants were substandard. Yet delegates tend to be awed by the staggering size and complexity of ecumenical institutions, and by the stature of inclusivist leaders heading the movement.

The World Council has developed both a strong central staff and a formidable structure of divisional and departmental committees, whereas the International Missionary Council had neither. The ecumenical movement has been given or assured virtually all of the needed $2,500,000 for a new 250-office headquarters building in Geneva, to be ready for occupancy in mid-1963. The design allows for additional offices if required later. The Ecumenical Church Loan Fund provides funds to assist ecumenically-minded mission-founded churches. At Delhi the leadership proposed a 47 per cent increase of $218,000 in the WCC budget, the $751,200 total to include provision for larger staff salaries. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake emphasized that the principle of support thus far has been to raise funds from member churches on the basis of their ability to give, but that those making larger contributions are not to dictate the program. He noted that some churches already regard the WCC budget as outsize, while others, in view of modern government spending, consider the annual budget ridiculously low. Others are reluctant to approve a greatly-increased budget because of its super-church potential. Yet WCC leaders continually stress how much more could be achieved for the ecumenical cause were additional money and staff available.

The Six and the One Hundred

The 100-member central committee elected at New Delhi gives 17 posts to Orthodox churchmen; 16 to Lutherans; 15 to Presbyterian and Reformed groups; 12 to Anglicans; 11 to Methodists; 10 to United churches; 5 to Baptists; 4 to Congregationalists; and 1 or 2 to other groups. At the helm of the WCC’s 198 church bodies representing more than 350 million members will be the six-man presidium: The Most Rev. Arthur M. Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury; Sir Francis Ibiam, a Presbyterian and Governor General of Eastern Nigeria; Archbishop Iakovos, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in North and South America; the Rev. Dr. David G. Moses, the United Church of Northern India; the Rev. Dr. Martin Niemöeller, a German Lutheran; and Charles Parlin, a Methodist lay leader from New York City.

Ambiguity remained as to whether WCC expresses the world-wide Christian judgment of its members, or whether it determines that judgment. On one hand it is stressed that WCC cannot legislate for member churches, but is merely an instrument for expressing their common witness and service, the Assembly On which all member churches are represented) being viewed as their main voice. Yet the Central Committee often speaks out between assemblies on many issues, sometimes so provocatively that members have withdrawn from WCC.

Faith and order were not the only paths to unity explored at Delhi. Some delegates thought the world would be most impressed by ecumenical agreement on social and political problems. Some Greek Orthodox spokesmen, however, emphasized that agreed social positions are no criterion of unity but rather the result of unity. They challenged the social activism of American churchmen who involve themselves in political affairs more as a secular activity than as a church act. But the American tendency had won a following. Days before Delhi, the East Asia Christian Conference had met in Bangalore to discuss political issues that cause tensions among Asian countries. While Dr. D. T. Niles was thoroughly enthusiastic about its achievements, some European churchmen thought the best thing that could be said about the conference was that it was now over. The Bangalore conference was marked by a concerted drive for United Nations’ recognition of Red China. Korean and Formosan delegates demurred. At Delhi a whole colony of spokesmen pushed the weighty thesis that Christian relationship with government must not be just a private affair, and ended with a plea for a resolution, for direct pressure upon government, for a Christian policy to be implemented by government, as if this procedure were the historic Christian dynamism for transforming the social order. The contemporary alternative to Christianity, which more than any other surging force threatens to sweep our children’s children into the orbit of state absolutism, was seldom confronted and addressed as a foe; many delegates felt that the Christian thesis concerning the axis and goal of history and the ultimate meaning of life had not been expounded at Delhi with the precision and consistency that characterizes Marxian propaganda.

The large press services and news magazines, aware from the history of the ecumenical movement that politico-economic issues would loom as large as the religious, assigned their political editors to cover Delhi as readily as their religion editors. Whenever the world mission of the Church was defined in distinction from evangelism, the secular journalists seemed fully at home in the spirit of Delhi. At Sunday dinner at the home of Rajkumari Amrit Kaur with Time-Life’s Henry Luce and evangelist Billy Graham, I remarked to Mr. Luce: “The Life series superbly exposed the dynamism on which communism relies for world revolution. Why doesn’t Life give us a great series on the dynamic on which Christianity relies?” Mr. Luce replied: “I think that is why I came to Delhi.” It was, in fact, why most actual delegates had come. But many left confused over the manner in which Jesus Christ is the world’s light. Not even ecumenical self-gratification that “seldom had there gathered a greater selection of outstanding Christian leaders and personalities” had removed their indecision. To stress the difference between an ecumenical meeting and a political meeting, Visser’t Hooft urged the press not to judge the Vigyan Bhavan Assembly by the norms and categories of the U.N. He noted the common Christian basis of the delegates, and indicated that their primary obsession is not with the modern East-West tension, but with overcoming the East-West cleavage that divided the Church 1000 years ago. But in the realm of international affairs ecumenical spokesmen took quite another course; they expressed delight that their convictions in international relations are already being applied by some Christian statesmen at the precise moment when grave world decisions are being made.

Dr. O. Frederick Nolde, director of WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, located the Church’s “duty to speak to the nations for peace and justice” in a protest against nuclear weapons testing and arms competition, and in a plea for disarmament. It seemed not to occur to Dr. Nolde, nor to his associates, that a rebuke to the Communist agitation of class hatred and class warfare might equally serve the cause of peace and justice, and that such rebuke might equally fall within the Church’s duty.

“The trouble with the ecumenical movement,” remarked retiring president Franklin Clarke Fry, “is that it is so diverse that it takes a long time for us to agree.” Few observers were likely to question this comment. Delhi made visible to the world what unity—and what diversity and disunity—characterizes Christianity in the twentieth century. Some of this diversity was concealed because many delegates seemed unaware of the preciousness of their own traditions, and were therefore prone to search for the richness of the Christian religion in flat uniformity. But the diversity in the midst of Delhi’s togetherness lent new importance to the comment of an American churchman, Dr. Eugene Carson Blake: “Ecumenism is nothing if it is not local.”

C. F. F. H.

As 1961 slides into the past and we move forward into 1962, it is well for Christians to compare their hopes and fears with those of that other world force which seeks to gain the souls and hopes of men.

The hopes and fears of both Christianity and communism are tied up with the movements of time and history. Both have a dynamic view of human life; both are historical rather than mystical or intellectual. For each, salvation emerges not by “taking thought” but by historical action; for each, total salvation comes at the end of history—and then history itself ends. This end of history is, again for both, a time when all human fears are dissolved and all human hopes fulfilled.

The passing of 1961 fills neither the true Christian nor the authentic Communist with deep sadness and melancholy, for it is by the passing of time that each is thrust toward his desired destiny. Neither will feel the need of drowning sorrow by such means as are available. Each will let the year go in the joyous belief that his redemption draweth nigh. Neither wish to hold back the clock; neither regard Old Year’s or New Year’s Day as a kind of holy day, a time to build tabernacles, a place to remain. Destiny lies ahead; the best is yet to be.

But right about here comparisons cease and only contrasts remain.

Communism believes that the engine which thrusts history forward to its goal is fueled by the restless, dialectical character of materialism. There is something about materialism which accounts for man’s desire to acquire, for the have-nots’ struggle against those who have. It is even required that it explain the rise of the idea of communism in the mind of Karl Marx! When this forward driving power of materialism achieves its predestined goal, then, so goes the Communist faith, the heaven of the proletariat will cover the earth, history will be at rest, and man will enjoy every good thing. Hence, says the Communist, Let 1961 go!

Since communism believes neither in the immortality of the soul nor the resurrection of the body, those only who are alive at its coming can enter into the joy of the Communist heaven on earth. The rest are left to sorrow as those who have no hope.

Khrushchev recently postponed the proletarian heaven for at least another 30 years. Perhaps this is why 71-year-old Molotov seems not to be deeply grieved at being read out of the Communist Party. He must know that few men live to be a hundred and those who do are hardly in such shape as to make much of a materialist paradise. Communists have derided Christianity for duping people into accepting “pie in the sky.” Yet the Communist philosophy of time and history does not promise even that for most, since the past is past, death is final; the present must be buried (hence the assurance that the democratic West shall be ploughed under) and only those fortunate enough to be alive at the end-time will find peace, or “pie” at the last. This leaves those who have died, and those of Molotov’s age, with no chance for pie at all.

Christianity, in contrast, believes that what thrusts history forward is the gracious and redemptive God. History is an arrow moving toward a goal, for God himself is active in history working his purpose and will that there be a new world and redeemed humanity. Time is the medium through which God works redemptively. Therefore, says the Christian, Let 1961 go, for God is marching on.

Christians will also find comfort in the fact that time as an arrow moving toward a goal is an idea taken from the Bible. Though the Communist denies it with vigor, he lives on borrowed capital. Karl Marx (ultimately) obtained the idea that history is an arrow from the Christian Scriptures. It was nowhere else to be found.

Christians will also find comfort amidst the passing years in the belief that the best place to discover the meaning of time as an arrow is in those Scriptures which are themselves the source of the idea. A son is best known by his father, a word by its coiner. Similarly, the nature of the driving power and of the goal of the historical process is better known through the Scriptures who presented the idea, than from the Communists who borrowed it.

Since Christianity has a God working within time and the movements of history, it has brighter and better-founded promises for men. The God who works in history is Lord of history, and therefore overcomes man’s past, triumphs over the finality of time, bestows upon man immortality, the resurrection of the body, and eternal life even amid the devouring years. Those who die in the Lord can die in hope and in the assurance of entering into that total peace and rest which God will attain at the last. For the Communist, history is lord, but itself has no lord. For Christianity, not the impersonal, restless dialectic of materialism but God himself is the energy that moves history toward his chosen goal, thus revealing God as history’s Lord.

God was in Christ in our time and history, in Jesus of Nazareth. The Son of God died on the Cross and rose again as the living Lord. By these acts, Christ so decisively divided the times that even the Russian Communists pay tribute by numbering the years in terms of B.C. and A.D. By these decisive acts, Christ brought the Old to an end—so that even the Old Testament becomes old—and ushers in the New. The former things are passed away—behold I make all things new, says the Christ. The Christian therefore sees in Good Friday the true old year and sees in the Resurrection the true new year—the year of the Lord. Hence the Christian has no great fears as he looks to the dying year, and no great hopes affixed to the coming of a new year. For long ago, in the days of the Cross and Resurrection, the Old met its end and the New came as the truly fresh start.

The Christian knows that through his Lord he triumphs over past and future, over last year and the next. What is the forgiveness of sins but a cancellation of the past, an undoing of an earlier deed? He also knows that he has been baptized into Christ and thus shares in a death which occurred almost 2000 years ago; that he bridges the years and shares in the Resurrection of Christ. He knows he is in Christ, not in a mystical or poetical sense but in the profound Pauline sense of one who has been “created in Christ Jesus.” Christ is his life, the place where he lives, his true address; in Christ, he is now in the heavenly places. A thousand may fall at his side and ten thousand at his right hand, but he will not fear. The Christian points not to his everyday experiences, or those which newsman or biographer might tell, but to his history of death and resurrection in Christ and declares: This is my most significant history. This my true life.

He faces the future therefore with calm confidence and assurance. Though the seas may roar, the nuclear bomb explode, and the mountains be cast into the midst of the sea in 1962, he will not fear, for nothing can undo his life in Christ, nothing separate him from the love of God. The die has been cast; nothing can occur in any of the days of his years that can undo the true and decisive story of his life as it has occurred in the death, resurrection, and in the continuing life of Jesus Christ. With Paul he now sees no man “after the flesh,” no year or day or experience except in terms of his own participation in the cross and resurrection of Christ.

Trouble may indeed come. The seas may roar, the earth be moved. Evil men may threaten cosmic destruction, threaten his burial, but he will not be moved for his life is grounded in the God who in Christ had time for him, and room for him in his grace. He is, therefore, not filled with melancholy by the dying of 1961, nor with trembling high hopes for 1962. He knows his life is hid with God in Christ, in whom God is working redemptively.

His eyes have seen the glory of the Lord, and come what may, he knows God’s truth shall go marching on.

At a time when many doubt whether the world has a future, Communists confidently claim it as their inevitable inheritance. As Christians, however, we know the Lord of history and we remember the words, “All things are yours.” The future belongs to us!

Was The Wcc Blackmailed Into Admitting Russian Churchmen?

Not for a long time to come, if ever, will all the facts having to do with the admission of the Russian Orthodox Church into the World Council be known, nor will they be made public.

At the moment there is strong evidence that many who voted for the resolution did so contrary to their own convictions and only because they feared repercussions against Christian brethren behind the Iron Curtain.

The sudden change in foreign relations leadership from the aged Metropolitan Nicolai to the young Archbishop Nikodim had immense political overtones, for Nicolai had adopted a conciliatory attitude toward Western churches which disturbed Red leaders.

Furthermore, the World Council, we are informed, was indirectly warned not to make a formal statement attacking communism lest churches under the Kremlin suffer as a consequence.

Good men found themselves in a dilemma. We believe they should have acted upon their convictions, but informed observers say Russian Orthodoxy was admitted not because of conviction but for fear of blackmail.

Papal Secretary Makes News: The Pope Is The Pope

Few situations offer as direct a pipeline to the news media as a speaking engagement at the National Press Club in Washington. Such an opportunity came this month to Amleto Cardinal Cicognani, Vatican Secretary of State. It was regrettable, therefore, that on an occasion so well-suited to a Christian exposition of world affairs, Cardinal Cicognani delivered a 25-minute exaltation of Pope John XXIII, whom he blatantly re-identified as “vicar of Christ and successor of St. Peter.” The Cardinal thus emphasized basic religious differences and dealt a blow to Protestant-Catholic understanding. His obstinacy was underscored in response to a question whether the Vatican would ever engage in theological compromise in the interests of Christian unity. Said the papal promoter: “Ideologically, never!”

The intercessory work of Christ presupposes that the predicament of man is not an alleged flaw in his existence but the enmity which separates the creature from the Creator. “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life” (Rom. 5:10). Furthermore, just as no mere analysis of human existence in psychological or philosophical categories will provide an adequate anthropology, so likewise no definition of Christ in terms of substance or nature will properly describe his intercessory action. Much modern Protestant theology, however, exhibits such a protest against the merely physical conception of the Lord’s state in heaven that the reality of Christ’s work has been volatilized into a gaseous vacuity. A true biblical understanding will appreciate the power of Christ’s personal pleading as God’s Word in action, God in Jesus giving his life at the right time for the ungodly.

Old Testament Priestly Sacrifice. The concept of intercession has its roots in the priestly sacrifice of the Old Testament. God was at work in the family of Israel providing sacrifices which were acceptable for atonement before the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus. Aaron was instructed to come once a year to the holy place with a bull, a ram, and a goat, sacrificing them with the laying on of hands and sprinkling the blood of the bull and the goat on the mercy seat and offering the ram as a burnt offering (Lev. 16:5–19). A second goat was driven into the wilderness with the laying on of hands and the confession of the sins of the people (Lev. 16:20–22). This system of sacrifices hearkened back to the experience of Abraham in which God provided a ram as a substitute for Isaac, and it projected forward to Christ in the anticipation of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah on whom was laid the iniquity of us all (Gen. 22:8; Isa. 53:6).

The significant thrust throughout the history of sacrifice is therefore the intercession of God in providing the sacrifice from the ram of Abraham to Jesus, the lamb of God, who was also caught on the branches of a tree. Precisely here is the difference between the biblical understanding of sacrifice on the one hand and both pagan and perverted Jewish notions on the other. In pagan sacrifice a gift is offered by man in hope of gaining favor from the god. Thus man works a change upon the god through his offering. In the practice of Judaism a work is done by man in the hope of changing the heart of man, cleansing him so as to render him acceptable to God. But the Christian revelation in both testaments teaches that God intercedes providing a sacrifice which changes the wrath of God into mercy and the sinner into a saint.

Sören Kierkegaard’s references in Fear and Trembling to the sacrifices of Iphigenia, Jephthah’s daughter, and Abraham’s son serve well to illustrate these three conceptions of sacrifice (Oxford, 1943, pp. 127 ff.). Agamemnon and Jephthah make their sacrifices for a reason: Agamemnon vows to offer his daughter to gain a favorable wind; Jephthah vows to provide a thank offering of whoever comes to meet him from his door after he has defeated the Ammonites. Abraham has no reason that might be justified ethically. He simply prepares to sacrifice Isaac in obedience to the Lord. What was done by Agamemnon was a supreme human effort to control the gods; what was done by Jephthah was a valiant human attempt to preserve the integrity of the heart. Abraham alone accepted the intercessory work of God by offering whatever God provided whether it be his only beloved son or a ram caught in a bush.

Christ’s Reconciling Sacrifice. When, according to the history of salvation, the right time (kata kairon) had come, God’s Messiah interceded by means of his sacrifice in order to reconcile helpless and rebellious sinners with the Father (Rom. 5:6). Thus as in the Old Testament the priest represented man and offered a sacrifice to God, so now Christ Jesus as man offers himself as a “fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2). “For our sake he [God] made him [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).

Since God in his gracious favor toward man was concerned to free us from our bondage to sin, flesh, and the power of the devil, he sent his Son “in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3). “Therefore he had to be made like his brethren in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make expiation for the sins of the people” (Heb. 2:17). The Greek verb hilaskesthai and its substantive form to hilasterion in Romans 3:21 are both used in the Septuagint to render the propitiation offered to God at the mercy seat in the holy of holies (Exod. 25:17; 31:7; 35:12; 37:6; Lev. 16:2, 13). The meaning is that God in the person of Christ acts mercifully on behalf of sinners by sacrificing his life. This suffering, which is accepted that all righteousness may be fulfilled, is well pleasing to God because it is God’s glory that he spends himself for his creature (Matt. 3:15–17).

Intercession must be made by a mediator who can successfully represent both sides. A priest is such a mediator because he represents his own people as he offers their spotless gift which is received by the holy God. But here the ineffectualness of every human intercession is manifest: the gift is never spotless and hence it is not well pleasing to God. In Christ’s intercession a pure gift is offered since he who is sinless gives himself.

Christ’s Continuing Work. Christ’s work is not ended with his death on the cross in the sense of finis, although it is certainly complete in the sense of tetelestai, but he continues to plead for sinners in heaven. Sacrifice we found to be the basic meaning of Christ’s intercession since through it God is glorified magnificently over his enemies and his rebellious creatures are reconciled. But in the Old Testament the central moment of sacrifice was not in the slaying of the victim but in what was done with the blood when it was released. Blood was understood to mean the life of the victim. When blood was shed it signified the pouring out of the victim’s life. On the Day of Atonement the ritual sacrifice brought the priest into the holy of holies behind the veil of the temple where he sprinkled the mercy seat with the lifeblood of the sacrificial animal. Hence the moment of the ephapax of Christ’s sacrifice is not the death on Golgotha alone but also and especially the heavenly moment of presentation of his sacrifice to the Father at his ascension. Paul gives this emphasis to the heavenly intercession when he says: “Is it Christ Jesus who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us?” (Rom. 8:34). And the author of Hebrews, who is so careful to guard the once-for-all character of the sacrificial death on Golgotha, is no less concerned to declare the continuing intercession in heaven: “Consequently he is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25).

Christ does not offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest offered his sacrifices each year, but he appeared once for all in the world to be seen by all in the scandal of the cross (Heb. 9:25). But inasmuch as he lives now throughout all eternity in the true holy of holies in the presence of God, he continually intercedes on our behalf. Thus the Cross, which was an unrepeatable historical event, becomes an effective sacrifice for every generation in history both before it by proleptic promise in the word of prophets and after it by fulfilled faith in the word of apostles. Our salvation is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone” (Eph. 2:20).

Through this intercession of the ascended Christ, his priestly office is coupled with his kingly office. “But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, then to wait until his enemies should be made a stool for his feet” (Heb. 10:12, 13).

It is just this paradox of Christ’s sacrificial humiliation and his triumphant exaltation that Jesus reveals in his high priestly prayer of John 17. The theme of the whole prayer is doxa, the glory of God. He begins with the petition: “Glorify thy Son that the Son may glorify thee.” Yet he has just referred to the hour for which he came into this world, the hour of his death. The violence of the godly scandal is manifest in that God is glorified by the obscene and hateful execution of his Son. Jesus glorified God on earth through his lowly birth, through his coming in our sinful flesh, through his rejection and death. Now he comes to the moment when he will glorify God in heaven. He has been exalted in the Resurrection from the dead, and he sits at the right hand of the Father and rules over heaven and earth, bringing all things into subjection under him (1 Cor. 15:25). But his work as he rules in kingly power is just this continuous intercession before God. God’s glory is none other than Christ’s intercessory work.

The rest of the prayer is the petition that God’s glory may be given to the elect ones whose names are written in heaven so that they may be one as Christ and the Father are one. In effect this amounts to an invocation of the Holy Spirit who is the guide to truth (John 16:13), and truth is revealed not as the wisdom of this world, whether abstract or operational, but the personal, active, unifying love of God suffering for his creatures and drawing them into the same active passion. It is interesting to note here the relation between the intercession of Christ and the Spirit. Paul in Romans 8 speaks of the intercessory work of the Spirit in such a way that one could almost substitute for it the continuing work of Christ without change of meaning. This is not surprising when we consider that God is one and any separating distinction would improperly divide the Godhead; but it is clear from the teaching in John that since the Ascension, the intercessory work of Christ is God’s love as seen from within the veil of the heavenly temple, whereas the intercessory work of the Spirit is the same gracious love as seen working in this world to draw all men to Christ. It is not that Christ is absent from this world but that only through the Spirit can men confess him to be Lord (1 Cor. 12:3).

Our Share in Christ’s Intercession. The concluding application of Christ’s intercessory work concerns our share in this intercession. The suffering of Christ is proclaimed as God’s glory. Inasmuch as this work is done on our behalf the Spirit calls and gathers us into the worshiping community which we call the Church. Thus the author of Hebrews says: “Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus … let us draw near with a true heart … and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together …” (Heb. 10:19–24). The shape of our response to Christ’s intercessory work is the sacrifice of thanksgiving in which we offer ourselves as living sacrifices. Thus Paul says to the Colossians: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s affliction for the sake of his body, that is the church …” (Col. 1:24).

Luther makes the distinction between the sacrifice of atonement and the sacrifice of thanksgiving (J. Pelikan, Luther the Expositor, Concordia, 1959, p. 238). Christ’s sacrifice is ephapax, the all-sufficient sacrifice of atonement. Our share in this intercession is the thankful participation of response, the eucharistic worship commemorating Christ’s atoning sacrifice in which we repeatedly plead his work before the Father and thus provide the context in which the church offers itself in union with Christ’s own sacrifice to God. The offering of the Church is the graceful stewardship of doing the truth, of suffering, sacrificing, serving in the world on behalf of the neighbor. This is the true meaning also of Luther’s doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. The universal priesthood has nothing to do with a polemic on church polity, but it has everything to do with our share in Christ’s intercession. It means that every man in Christ becomes a priest to his neighbor. It is not that every man is his own priest in any sense of religious individualism, but that through eucharistic oblation in the Church every man is able and must be exhorted to become a little Christ (i.e., a Christian) to his neighbor.

It should be clear, in conclusion, that the biblical proclamation of Christ’s intercessory work teaches that the glorious suffering of Christ draws us into a participating fellowship in which peace is made with God and new life is given to his fallen creatures so that they in turn may glorify God through a joyful suffering in this world. As John says in his first letter: “My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; but if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). John uses the same word (parakletos) to designate Christ as he used in his Gospel to define the function of the Holy Spirit. Thus whether the work is seen to be oriented to God in heaven or to man on earth, the gracious love of God is always all sufficient for our needs. We are assured that we have an advocate, one who is called alongside to help us, whether we are strong in our works of love or weak in our failures of sin. Jesus Christ is our interceding, comforting friend whose suffering love is for us and the world.

Bibliography: G. Aulén, Eucharist and Sacrifice; E. Brunner, The Mediator; O. Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament; W. Manson, The Epistle to the Hebrews; V. Taylor, Jesus and His Sacrifice; The Atonement in New Testament Teaching.

Professor of Systematic Theology

Northwestern Lutheran Seminary

Minneapolis, Minn.

A man walked into a doctor’s office and asked for an examination. “Doctor,” he said, “I feel terrible but I do not know where to begin. I just know I am sick.”

The physician, competent, thoroughly-trained and equipped, took a case history, conducted a thorough physical examination and had his laboratory carry through a series of general and selective tests.

After a few days he diagnosed the cause of the patient’s sickness, prescribed the medicines to be taken and the other measures to be carried out, and within a short time the man was well.

The secret of modern medicine is correct diagnosis and appropriate treatment. Symptoms are considered and measures for relief are taken, but no physician is worthy of the name who does not try to find the cause of symptoms and eliminate that cause.

In the realm of the Church the necessity of proper procedures is infinitely more important, for here man’s eternal welfare is at stake. To treat symptoms and ignore man’s basic problem is both foolish and reprehensible. And yet it is obvious that only too often we are more concerned over the results of sin than with sin itself; with reformation than with regeneration; with human measures than the divine remedy; with temporary ease rather than with the eternal cure; and with the body of man rather than with his soul.

First of all man needs to be made aware of his condition. This may come to him as an overwhelming experience whereby he realizes that he is spiritually sick, even unto death. Or, it may be the result of hearing a faithful witness to Christian truth which for the first time explains his condition and its cure.

To catalogue man’s needs in chronological order can be misleading for they exist concurrently. Nevertheless there are basic things with which all of us need to be confronted.

Man needs forgiveness.

We were created for fellowship with God but that fellowship has been broken by sin—sinfulness by inheritance, by practice, and by choice. To minimize or to explain away the fact of sin is folly at its worst, and it does not help to excuse its presence or its effect.

Somewhere along the line man must be confronted with the enormity of sin and with the fact that its wages are death, eternal separation from God.

Nothing is more calculated to impress us with the enormity of sin than a frank realization that its offense against a holy God, and its effect on mankind, is so great that nothing less than the death of the Son of God could make atonement.

If sin is a universal condition of man, and its effect a universal and continuing separation from God, then man desperately needs forgiveness—forgiveness by the One who alone has power to forgive.

Man needs cleansing.

Whether man needs first to be forgiven or cleansed is an academic question from the human standpoint, for in God’s economy the various facets of his redeeming love and grace are operative at one and the same time.

That we need cleansing becomes increasingly obvious as we search our own hearts and minds and realize how filthy we are in the sight of a holy God.

Cleansing means a removal of evil in all of its aspects and a replacement with that which is pure and holy. It means a change of the content of our thoughts and actions. It means a spiritual change and renewal.

God has provided the cleansing agent: “… and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from sin.… If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Sad indeed is the one who belittles the blood of Christ as the divine alchemy, for, mysterious as it may seem, the fact remains that man is cleansed by faith in Christ and his blood, shed on Calvary.

Furthermore, the Word of God has a cleansing effect on those who profit there by. The New English Bible translates John 15:3: “You have already been cleansed by the Word which I have spoken unto you.”

But as long as we remain in the flesh the cleansing must be accompanied by filling. The unclean spirits may depart only to return, unless the Holy Spirit takes up residence.

Man needs empowering.

No matter how high and holy one’s aspirations the fact remains that the spirit may be willing but the flesh weak. There must come upon us a power which we do not already possess, a supernatural Presence who imparts and maintains within us supernatural power.

Too often we neglect the fact that power belongs to God, and that he alone imparts it to men. Man’s efforts at self-reformation have always ended in miserable failure. Weakness is a characteristic of unregenerate human nature. It must look to divine empowering before there can be a change.

Christ made clear to his disciples the source and their need of the power by which alone they could become effective witnesses for him: “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Spirit is come upon you.” Why do we ignore this imperative today? Can it be that the god of this world has so blinded our eyes that we regard ourselves sufficient without the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in our lives?

Man needs a new nature.

He needs to be born again, of the Spirit. He needs to become a new creature in Christ. He needs to be changed by the renewing presence of the living Christ. He needs something that neither he nor any man can do for him, a divine transformation which comes solely as described by an old-fashioned but exceedingly-descriptive word—conversion.

As a result of this work of regeneration, a number of things take place.

First, there is a change of direction, not only of life itself but also of eternal destiny.

Second, there is a change of perspective, old things pass away and all things become new. We now look beyond the things which are seen, and which are temporary, to the things which are not seen and which are eternal.

Next, there is a change in the objects of our love. Where once we loved ourselves we now loved God and our fellow men. Where once we loved the world and the things of the world we discard them in favor of the things which can never perish with the using. Where once selfish desire dominated us an outgoing love for others becomes dominant.

Lastly, there is a new definition of wisdom, for a reverential trust in God enables us to distinguish between the wisdom of this world and that which comes down from above; we realize that true wisdom centers in and comes from God alone.

Yes, man needs so much and all of that need is met in Jesus Christ.

L. NELSON BELL

Christmas Wrapping

Season’s greetings!

Magic month of fantasies—

Candle glow on Christmas trees,

Mouse-gray houses suddenly

Elegant in finery.

Strings of jewel lights they wear,

Earring wreaths; the vacant stare

Of windows blind now winks with cheer,

Enjoying, so it would appear,

The thaw in social atmosphere.

Season’s greetings!

In the stores a fairyland—

Make-believe in earnest, planned

To make a child believe in dreams;

A magic wonder-world that seems

To leave no longing unfulfilled—

A rocket for a boy to build,

A model universe that whirls

The worlds in orbit; and for girls

Sophisticated dolls with pearls.

Season’s greetings!

Furs and velvet to enhance

Glamour, gaiety, romance,

With a bright extravagance.

Gowns of diamonds for the dance,

Worn, without disparity,

At the ball for charity.

Parties are arranged for Causes;

Pennies, as the shopper pauses,

Go to comer Santa Clauses.

Season’s greetings!

Christmas wrapping that conceals

Under tinfoil, ribbon, seals,

The burden of apostasy,

And fabricates a fantasy.

Sweet idolatrous illusion,

Holly hedge against intrusion

Of the dread epiphany,

Or the frightful Christmas tree

Where he hung on Calvary!

Season’s greetings!

Garb the advent mystery

With the season’s witchery;

Tie in glamour your pretense,

Pay tribute with benevolence.

A fantasy so lyrical

Must substitute for miracle.

No swaddling clothes of faith you hold,

But winding sheets of foil you fold

To wrap with make-believe the cold

Dead doll you yet call Christ!

EUTYCHUS

Billy Graham

The estimate or evaluation of Billy Graham (Nov. 10 issue) is the most accurate that I have seen anywhere. There is no eulogy, partisanship, or magnifying of facts; but a clear-cut statement of the truth about the manner, message, and purpose of one of the most remarkable and greatest gifts to Christianity that has appeared on any continent, or in any age. Bristol, Tenn.

J. L. ROSSER

I was keenly interested in the Crusade statistics. It was my privilege to direct the first Graham Crusade in Grand Rapids, Michigan, back in 1947.… This was a one-week Crusade, and the attendance rather than 6,000 as you have indicated, was well over 12,000, with decisions numbering over 800. I am glad to see the report under-estimated rather than over-estimated.

TED W. ENGSTROM

Pres.

Youth for Christ International

Wheaton, Ill.

To wallow in the wacky world of words, and in the wistful wilderness of wit and wisdom, I read CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

A rather disturbing element keeps me from ecstatic enjoyment or even pleasurable agreement with much that I read. Recently, your ameliorating, vacillating neutralism in matters of doctrine and practice have shown definite signs of weakness and wear. In the same issue you castigate WCC for stacking delegates to the New Delhi conclave, but ask that we practice a regimented reaction to Billy Graham. Further your loose assumptions of common mediating grounds for Jewish-Christian understanding completely ignore scriptural premises of the fact that “there is no difference.”

Your agitated, critical readers are still going to “the church of their choice,” after six years in the wonderful wilderness of words!

J. A. PAULSON

Undenominational Church of Byron Center

Byron Center, Mich.

Dissonance On Delhi

I heartily sympathize with that confused New Delhi lay delegate who “doesn’t ‘know enough about theology to tell’ whether he is ‘neo-orthodox, conservative, or whatever else.’” More articles like your “American Delegates at New Delhi” (Nov. 10 issue) can only serve to heighten the confusion further. This pretense of scholarly research and reporting … falls short at the point where any sound research should begin—precise definition of terms.…

I plead for an end to “labels.” Until there can be semantic agreement among us on what they mean, they had best be discarded. Or, would you want to tackle the task of writing a new dictionary, the definitions of which would have the endorsem*nt of both the Rt. Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill and Mr. Carl McIntire?

My prayers are that the delegates at New Delhi will be guided in their deliberations through the quiet workings of the Holy Spirit.…

J. RUSSELL HALE

St. Paul’s Lutheran Church

Collingswood, N. J.

Praise the Lord for your extensive article on New Delhi. I am a member of a denomination belonging to the NCC, but my personal experience is that most delegates to General Assembly, NCC and WCC, and similar gatherings, are not informed on basic issues, or are running for office.… May God have mercy on us.…

GEORGE L. NARAMORE

Washington, D. C.

Preaching To The Times

“Christ is Coming!… Soon!” by Manfred E. Reinke (Nov. 10 issue) is a masterpiece, and is certainly timely for the serious days in which we live. His message is a comfort for the Lord’s people, and should make the unsaved realize their need of accepting Christ as Saviour.…

HOMER STANLEY MORGAN

Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church

Wellborn, Fla.

Dilemma Discerned

I wish to commend the review of The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion, by O. Hobart Mowrer in the October 27 issue by Theodore Jansma. He rightly discerns the dilemma facing evangelicals when our vocabulary is loosely and erroneously appropriated in a field already beset with semantic confusions. I personally was appalled by the ready reception evangelical friends were giving Mowrer and others just because our “words” were being used. In our efforts to be accepted it would seem that we haste to embrace anyone who would conciliate psychiatry and Christianity, disregarding the terms of the rapprochement. Thus we are invidiously led to propositions which are antithetical to a historic biblical position. Jansma clearly is aware of this pitfall as he so clearly delineates in the review.…

E. MANSELL PATTISON

Department of Psychiatry

College of Medicine

University of Cincinnati

Cincinnati, Ohio

To Dam The Tide

With reference to Flood Tide of Obscenity on American Bookstands (Editorial, Oct. 27 issue) …, it is highly encouraging to learn what the Chicago Tribune has done in these days.… The Tribune is making a radical change in its policy of publishing the weekly list of “best selling books in the Midwest.”

The following is certainly not to be misunderstood by any with some degree of reasoning power: “We have come to the conclusion that we can no longer publish this list raw. We have become aware that some of the best sellers that have appeared on our lists were sewer-written by dirty-fingered authors for dirty-minded readers.… We should have instituted the new policy long ago, and apologize to our readers for not having done so.”

Our thanks to the Tribune.

G. HARRY NELSON

First Covenant Church

Bremerton, Wash.

The Saints Be Praised!

In the article (“Tax Churches on Business Profits?” Oct. 13 issue) there were many references to churches operating businesses under the name of the church and paying no federal or state taxes.…

As manager of Zions Securities Corporation, I wish to state that the … Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has carefully planned to have its business properties and profit producing enterprises owned by Zions Securities or by individual corporations organized for the purpose of conducting their specific role and that each of these organizations … pays local, state, and federal taxes.

In 1922 the Church organized Zions Securities for the sole purpose of holding title to income-producing properties so that its activities would not have an unfair advantage over competitive private enterprise and so that the Church-owned businesses would pay their fair share of all taxes.…

GRAHAM H. DOXEY

Manager

Zions Securities Corp.

Salt Lake City, Utah

Church Organization

Mr. Anderson’s recent article on church organization (Oct. 27 issue) was superb from every angle. It should be placed in the hands of every evangelical minister in America. I do hope that our own brotherhood (Church of God, Anderson, Indiana) will read and re-read this timely article dealing with such an acute problem in our ranks.…

H. C. HATHCOAT

Bakersfield, Calif.

Beyond Television

Thank you for the excellent analysis of religious journalism (Sept. 25 issue).… The problems and hopes expressed are the concern of many of us.

Unfortunately, your helpful biography was spoiled somewhat by missing the quality and breadth of Ralph Stoody’s A Handbook of Church Public Relations.

While the bibliography referred only to radio and television, the book actually covers the full range of opportunities in church relations with the public, both within and outside the church membership.

LEE RANCK

General Board of Christian Social Concerns of the Methodist Church

Washington, D.C.

Buchman And Oxford

With amazement I beheld, in the August 28 issue (News) of so erudite a publication as CHRISTIANITY TODAY, the oft-disproved statement that “Buchman started the movement at Oxford University in England.”

Dr. Buchman did not start his movement at Oxford University in England; in fact, it was first introduced into Oxford University by a team from Cambridge University. The name “Oxford Group Movement” has no basis in fact or history and is simply an instance of the “snob-appeal” characteristic of the group. Being thoroughly dishonest, it is a nice commentary on the Group’s preaching of “absolute honesty.” So baseless is the use of this name that Mr. A. P. Herbert raised the matter in the British Parliament in the hope of having this piece of dishonest advertising prohibited by law.…

W. EDWIN COLLIER

Philadelphia, Pa.

Ultimate Weapon Unveiled

For centuries the Church has had meager success in saving the souls of men because it has not used “the secret weapon!” Brave soldiers of the cross in the past, as well as the perspiring evangelists and preachers of today, have had little effect on the unbelieving hordes of the world because they have not used the “right technique!” Article after article in your periodical treating more effective missionary procedures have been so much wasted space. The “ultimate weapon” is here. In fact it has been used for years by its secret band of discoverers!

What is this new “secret weapon” against unbelief? What is this new “short cut” to winning the world for Christ? It is amazingly simple. It is called a “funeral service.”

What a labor saver this new technique has proven to be! No longer do you have to waste many hours witnessing to that unregenerate old man down the street from your church. No longer will you have to spend long hours in prayer for him. Just wait until he dies. Then volunteer your services to his survivors. A half-hour funeral service with all the trimmings, a ten minute commital service, and you’ve made an heir of heaven out of what would otherwise have been fuel for the fires of hell.

Don’t laugh—I’ve seen it work! Not long ago a man in my community died. For years he had successfully repulsed the Christian witness of several pastors and a host of mission-minded laymen. A few days after his death a neighboring clergyman performed “the magic rite” over his casket, assuring the mourners that this man was now one of the white-robed saints of heaven. An amazingly simple mission technique, isn’t it?

Thanks to thousands of clergymen throughout our land who are now employing this new “short cut to heaven” ninety per cent of the unbelievers in our communities need no longer fear the eternal wrath of God. They are certain that “someone” will, by his “comforting presence” or even his words, assure the mourners (and also a surprised God) that heaven has another inhabitant. And just think of the successes the Church could have if we employed this method in our mission fields throughout the world!

When are the leaders of our Protestant churches going to put a stop to this abominable practice?

REV. M. K. HARGENS

Zion Lutheran Church

Hardwick, Minn.

Part Two

The most intelligible expression of the doctrine of the Church is found in the symbolic words of the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe … in the holy, catholic Church.…” Such expression in the form of a credo is amply supported by the Holy Scriptures.

1. The Church is a holy fellowship. It is a unique, divinely-created society based on God’s covenant with his people. Israel, chosen in Christ “before the foundation of the world,” is the Old Testament Church. Abraham, “called forth” to be the spiritual leader of the Jews, and all the faithful of Israel are fellow “heirs … of the same promise” (Heb. 11:9). Jesus Christ, Incarnate God, fulfills the New Testament Church. He is the New Covenant. Such fulfillment underscores the significance of favorite phrases and terms from the Old Testament in reference to the New Testament Church.

a. St. Paul calls the Church the (true) “Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16).

b. St. Peter calls Christians “the people of God” (1 Pet. 2:10).

c. St. John teaches the broadest fulfillment in his figure of the true vine with a direct allusion to the Church as the new Israel and the successor of the temple. Jesus’ beautiful vine discourse as recorded by St. John and given in the Upper Room (15:1–16) relates Christians to the Church in Christ as branches of the vine, with the warning that separation from the Church is in reality separation from Christ. The same truth is taught by St. Paul in his allegory of the relationship of the body and its member parts (1 Cor. 12:14–31 and Eph. 4:7–14).

d. The word “ecclesia,” most often used in the New Testament for church, is Septuagint Greek from the Hebrew “kahal,” a word that describes the solemn assembly of the people of Israel. The Christian “ecclesia” is a new spiritual assembly of the people of God; while based on the old covenant, it is now, as St. John notes, a new “temple of his body.” It is baptized Christians “called forth as a new creation in Christ, all “holding fast to the Head, from whom the entire body … grows with a growth that is from God (Col. 2:19, Amplified New Testament).

The credal affirmation of the Church’s holiness repeats an undisputed New Testament doctrine. The Church is “holy” because it is “filled with the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:4). St. Paul describes this “holiness” of the Church as living “in the Spirit”; he wrote to the church in Corinth as “the church of God … sanctified in Jesus Christ, called to be saints [God’s people]” (1 Cor. 1:2). It was Christ who by the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost made the Church a living organism. The Third Person of the Trinity is to be the “paracletos,” “someone called in” (see John 14:16, 17, 26, etc.); he is not to be a substitute for Christ but to be his very Presence. As the only true Vicar of Christ, the Holy Spirit has many functions in the Church. The following are representative:

a. The Holy Spirit is the Church’s indwelling illumination and truth. Our Lord promised “he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26).

b. The Holy Spirit is the Church’s guide and inspiration for its ongoing life. He is the “means of grace” in the process of divine redemption and he is the divine agent of the Sacraments.

c. The Holy Spirit is the ordaining dynamic of the Church’s ministry, a function best illustrated by Christ himself in the first ordination: “He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost” (John 20:22).

d. The Holy Spirit is the Church’s leader in fulfilling the divine mission commanded by Christ: “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you” (John 20:25). Only divine leadership could explain the phenomenal missionary successes of the Christian Church.

e. The Holy Spirit is the Church’s sanctifier whose divine indwelling prompts ever-deepening response to God’s will through the “means of grace” and prompts consecrated, strengthened lives within the new fellowship. “If we live in the Spirit, let us walk by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25). The modern Church cannot ignore the urging of the Revelation of St. John: “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches” (Rev. 2:7).

2. The Church is a catholic community. It is both constituted by God upon the foundation of his mighty act for the redemption of mankind in Christ and sustained by God under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The word “catholic” describes (not defines) that church which maintains apostolic (of or related to the apostles), primitive, New Testament faith, church order, and worship. Such apostolic “marks” are summarized in the Acts of the Apostles: “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42). Another “mark,” although not mentioned in the above passage, is the special place accorded to the written “Word” (the Holy Scriptures) by the early Church. Comprehensively stated, then, catholic Christendom includes several “marks.”

a. First of all, catholicity implies strict adherence to primitive doctrine. Here the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creeds provide the needed stability for the catholic community. Let it be clearly emphasized that these creeds of the Church are not extra-biblical. These two ancient formulas of apostolic faith were developed along with and from the New Testament record; they came into use as the Church attempted to express the initiation confession of faith required of all believers before baptism, a confession acknowledging that “God hath made that same Jesus … both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2). St. Paul advises Roman Christians that “with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom. 10:10). Indeed, “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9).

See also St. Peter’s sermon in Acts 2:14–40 and his testimony announcing the Gospel (“good news”) of “Jesus Christ: he is Lord of all” (Acts 10:36). Note also St. Philip’s instruction and witness leading to the Ethiopian’s confession and conversion, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God …” (Acts 8:27–39); and St. Paul’s creed-like rehearsal of the primitive faith in 1 Corinthians 15:1–11. Confronted by this overwhelming New Testament witness, we must accept the creeds as true expressions of scriptural doctrine and faith. St. Paul counsels us that the purpose of the gospel proclamation is that “now unto the principalities and powers … might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God” (Eph. 3:10).

b. Secondly, catholicity involves church order and discipline based on a continuing missionary ministry within the body of Christ and led by the Holy Spirit. This “mark” again is not extra-biblical but is constituted by Christ himself who called, appointed, and ordained disciples and apostles to serve with him. “And he ordained twelve that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth …” (Mark 3:14) to be apostles (special messengers) or bishops (shepherds). The Church’s sacred ministry (those “called” and “ordained” by Christ’s “holy” Church through the Holy Spirit) is an essential element of the Church. As an account of the life and growth of the early Church, the Acts of the Apostles reveals the apostles to be the center of mission and unity within the Church.

The election of St. Matthias to fill the vacant “bishopric” of Judas among the apostles (“his bishoprick let another take,” Acts 1:20) shows the serious regard of the primitive Church for apostolic order and the office of a bishop. Further, the interesting resolution of the Jew-Gentile initiation requirements by the Council of Jerusalem reveals the first century Christian conviction that apostolic authority is the will of God the Holy Spirit. “The whole church resolved to select men … and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas … with the following letter” (regarding Gentile freedom from Jewish requirements for Christian Initiation): “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to lay on you any greater burden than these indispensable requirements: That you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from [tasting] blood and from [eating the meat of animals] that have been strangled and from sexual impurity …” Acts 15:22–31, ANT).

A careful reading of the Pauline epistles shows that St. Paul considered himself a bishop in the Church. We read that he (with Barnabas) “ordained … elders in every church … (Acts 14:23) and “from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and summoned the elders of the church [to come to him there]” (Acts 20:17, ANT). We note a stern sense of apostolic authority in his firmness with the church at Corinth: “This is my order in all the churches” (1 Cor. 7:17, ANT). To the church at Thessalonica he wrote, “If any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man and have no company with him” (2 Thess. 3:14, 15). And it is a thoughtful bishop (shepherd/pastor) “of all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers [bishops] to feed the church of God” (Acts 20:28), who, after describing his suffering for Christ, wrote “beside those things … that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:28).

c. Thirdly, catholicity involves the centrality within the life and worship of the apostolic Church of that Sacrament simply described as “the breaking of bread.” Instituted and commanded by the Church’s “One Lord,” this sacred rite is to be used by the Church in a special way, accompanied by a ceremony using Christ’s words and the elements he described symbolically as his “body” and “blood.” While the New Testament does not use the word “sacrament” (it appears early, however, in the writings of the Church Fathers as a synonym for “ordinance”), the sacramental nature of the Christian Church is one of its most primitive and catholic elements. The Church’s Sacraments make available to the faithful an inward blessing of “grace” (God’s undeserved favor and blessing) by means of the reception in faith of an outward and very credible sign or symbol. The traditional thanksgiving (Eucharist) feast of the Church, through the common symbols of bread and wine for Christ’s blessed body and blood, celebrates with mystical, divine action his sacrificial death and passion, and offers to penitent members of Christ’s “One Body” the spiritual sustenance of the very presence of our Lord.

d. Fourthly, catholicity acknowledges the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures; they contain “all doctrine required as necessary for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ (Book of Common Prayer, p. 542). The primitive Church unreservedly maintained that the mighty acts of God in Christ, the Christian Gospel related to the entire Holy Spirit-inspired revelation of God, demand top priority in faith and witness. The Kerygma (the “proclamation”) is the “good news” of Christ’s Incarnation, “blessed Passion and precious Death, his mighty Resurrection and glorious Ascension” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 82). St. Paul, the “special messenger” of the Gospel, regarded the Holy Scriptures as bearing inspired witness to the eternal truth. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). The Acts of the Apostles pictures St. Paul dramatically involved in public instructions (and debates) refuting the Jews and “showing by the scriptures that Jesus is the Christ [the Messiah]” (Acts 18:28).

The role of the Spirit-filled Church as teacher, interpreter, and guide in the use and study of the Holy Scriptures is assumed in the New Testament, and the extreme Reformation reaction of private and individual interpretations to Roman Catholic misuse of the Bible is, as John Wesley described it, “rank enthusiasm.” St. Paul’s crackling rebuke to Corinthian enthusiasms was, “Did the Word of the Lord originate with you …?” (1 Cor. 14:36, ANT). St. Peter wrote in support of the same position, “No prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation” (2 Pet. 1:20). The Church continues to teach the written, inspired Word as our Lord commanded: “Search the scriptures, for in them … ye have eternal life: and they … testify of me” (John 5:39).

No single Christian communion may claim exclusive catholicity. The Church of Rome, however, with much collusion from non-Roman Christians, assumes a monopoly on the word “catholic.” And unfortunately, Rome has succeeded in this claim, at least as far as modern mid-twentieth century usage is concerned. Much doubt, however, surrounds the real and vital catholicity of Rome. The late Bishop Charles Brent once described the Roman Catholic church as “wearing a catholic garment to hide a sectarian heart.” Non-Roman Christians must insist that the word “catholic” describes a theological rather than a single ecclesiastical organization or geographical state. For the “holy fellowship,” which is Christ’s body and bride, and which maintains steadfastly catholic faith, order, worship, Sacraments, and unity, modern non-Roman scholars and theologians must find a new and dynamic apologetic.

The Christian Church is not just another religious organization that attempts to answer man’s search for salvation and peace. The Christian Church with its divine atoning gift, “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), is God’s answer to man’s inability to attain new life. The Church thus becomes the corporate expression of faith in and witness to “the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead” (Acts 3:15). The Church Militant is founded upon the “new Covenant” which God accomplished in Jesus Christ and his Church entered by repentance, confession of faith, and baptism into Christ, our divine Master and Lord. Further, the Church corporately expresses a mission “to all the world” to make known to each generation the redemptive ministry of the Church’s Saviour and Redeemer. St. Paul considers the Church’s divine mission and his subsequent commission to evangelize as his inescapable taskmaster. “For Christ sent me … to preach the gospel … for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us who are saved, it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:17, 18). St. Paul counsels that in and through Christ’s Body, the Church, God gives men his peace. “For he is our peace, who hath made [us] one … having abolished in his flesh the enmity … that he might reconcile unto God … one body by the Cross …” (Eph. 2:14–16). Here is strong, overwhelming, world-saving doctrine! Oh that such a doctrine of the Church would capture all true believers when they affirm in the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe … in the holy catholic Church.” With St. Paul, Christians then could fully ascribe all “glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen” (Eph. 3:21).

COMMENTS ON THE SELECT SERMON SERIES¹Andrew W. Blackwood, Professor Emeritus, Princeton Theological Seminary, was professor of homiletics from 1930 to 1935, and head of the practical department 1936–1950. He is author of 22 volumes, 10 of which were book club selections. Among those for ministers 17 are still on the active list.

During the current year CHRISTIANITY TODAY has from month to month published a series of sermons by representatives of various denominations and “newer churches.” These eleven sermons were chosen independently by professors of preaching from different evangelical seminaries. Partly for this reason the successive messages do not conform to any one pattern. As a whole they set forth clearly and strongly what the evangelical movement in America stands for today. The stress falls mainly on use of the Bible in preaching doctrine to meet the spiritual needs of men today.

Each message carries a terse and able comment by the professor who sponsors the sermon. These comments stress mainly what we used to call homiletics. In view of what these professors commend, we as evangelicals ought to expect among their students the right sort of training about what to preach, as well as why, and how. In addition to biblical content and Christian spirit, the professors call special attention to sturdy structure of sermons, and to clarity of style.—ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD.

This discussion will mean more to any reader who works through the 1961 files of CHRISTIANITY TODAY and once more reads the monthly sermons with the comments. At the end of such a second perusal every reader should give thanks to God for the strength of evangelical preaching today. The ministerial reader should dedicate himself anew to these same ideals, and the layman should resolve to pray for the man of God in the home pulpit. What then will the reader find in the second perusal of the 12 sermons?

First of all, note the evangelical stress on the Bible as “the only inspired and infallible rule of faith and practice.” While no one sermon deals with the authority of the Bible today, all of the preachers evidently base everything on the Book. For example, Pastor Alfred M. Engle (Baptist) preaches about “The Glory of God” (Ps. 19) as He reveals himself today in the heavens above, in the pages of the Bible, and in the believing heart through his redeeming grace. So it seems that not all orthodox folk tend to ignore the First Person of the Trinity, as Paul Tillich declares that many of us do.

The one doctrinal truth that stands out most often in the sermons is the person and work of Christ. About his person, General Superintendent Gideon B. Williamson (Church of the Nazarene) preaches winsomely on the subject, “Author of Eternal Salvation” (Heb. 5:9; 13:8). The main headings have to do with him as Sinless—Changeless—and Timeless. And yet the message all seems timely! So does the one by a professor of theology, Wayne H. Ward (Southern Baptist Seminary): “The Gospel of Jesus Christ” (Mark 1:1–3, 14–15). Here the stress falls, successively, on his incarnation, his atonement, and his resurrection. Let us thank God for the theologian and the church leader who preach about the person of Christ, doctrinally, clearly, and effectively!

Under a unique heading, former President Charles W. Roller (Northern Baptist Seminary) preaches about “The Living Plus Sign” (2 Cor. 5:14–20). What a royal text! As for the topic, the import appears in the opening sentence: “We have not really seen the Cross of Christ until we have seen it as a great plus sign by which God and man are drawn together in holy reconciliation.” Would that almost every sermon began directly with its topic. The body of the sermon deals with God’s Plus Sign for the unreconciled, and for the reconciled. As with the others so far, this professor shows how to be simple without seeming shallow.

Vice President Frank B. Stanger (Asbury Seminary, Methodist) deals with “The Way into the Kingdom” (John 3:3). He would agree with Dwight L. Moody that the only way to get into the kingdom of God is to be born into it. In the words of a Presbyterian colleague and the sponsor, James D. Robertson, “This is redemptive preaching of a high order.” It is “intellectually respectable” and “structurally clear.” “Before his final word the preacher takes his truth and, setting it squarely in our times, makes us face up to it.” “It bears a message of eternal relevance.” This comment calls for a Methodist Amen!

As a rule, evangelicals, here as elsewhere, preach about the Gospel for the individual. But they also give a worthy place to the Church. Pastor W. Carter Johnson (Baptist) has a message about “The Church that Triumphs” (Acts 4:1–31). It must have an Irresistible Compulsion—an Irrefutable Evidence—and an Inexhaustible Power. According to the sponsor, Lloyd M. Perry (Gordon Divinity School), “The sermon was selected because of its principles of sermon construction, persuasive appeal, practical application, progressive development, positive emphasis, pertinence to present-day living, and plain presentation of biblical truth.” All this about a man only 31 years young!

Practical Application

Evangelicals today do not neglect the practical application of Christian truth to believers. College President Robert B. Reardon (Church of God, Anderson, Indiana) has a message both inspiring and heart-searching. Toward the end he utters words of wisdom to our seminaries. The comment comes from his predecessor, John A. Morrison, who heard the message before he asked for the manuscript. He commends it for simplicity, sincerity, timeliness, and a heart-warming quality, so that “the hearers respond like flowers in a sunny garden when a shower has fallen.” “The beauty of the Lord our God!”

Do we as evangelicals keep away from preaching Bible ethics? Not all of us! Former President Howard J. Hageman (General Synod, Reformed Church in America) has a searching message on a topic that did not at first appeal to me: “Religious Boom and Moral Bust” (Rom. 1:21). As a leader in a body that has a mighty creed, the Heidelberg Catechism, the interpreter bases his message in part on a question and its answer about why believers should engage in good works. The resulting message has to do with the vast gulf between the professed beliefs and the pagan practices of many church members today. Seldom does one read such an appeal to conscience. As James Stalker used to insist, no man can preach strongly unless he can arouse and move the conscience of the hearer.

Less directly ethical, but likewise heart-searching, is the sermon by Board Secretary Robley J. Johnston (Orthodox Presbyterian Church): “Who Can Stand Christmas?” (Mal. 3:1–3). After a “life situation approach,” the preacher comes to his message: ‘We talk and sing of the coming of the Prince of Peace on earth.… But, I wonder, can we really stand Christmas?” Then the sermon deals with three Bible reasons for such a question: The Coming of Almighty God; The Coming of the Kingdom; The Coming of the King. Toward the end, “Who can stand such an appearance as this?” Then follows a moving appeal to put the Christ of the Bible into all of Christmas. Amen!

The series fitly includes a message about “The Christian Ministry” by Pastor R. G. Riechmann (United Lutheran Church). Here the working pastor of a large congregation addresses 30 young seminary graduates just before they go out into the active ministry. He sets up a lofty ideal for their chosen work: a Glorious Calling—a Holy Calling—a Rewarding Calling—and an Exacting Calling. Note here the order of the four main parts, and figure out the reason. Many Lutherans as evangelicals have excelled as pastors and pastoral preachers. Now these brethren are turning more largely to pastoral evangelism, and to mastery in up-to-date methods of communicating the Gospel. Thank God!

Once again, evangelicals give a worthy place to preaching about eschatology, which fills many a page of Holy Writ. According to William Sanday of Oxford, in the Gospels the center of gravity lies beyond the grave. So if a man’s pulpit work includes little teaching about the Last Things, he ought to think of his total pulpit work as “eccentric.” But here is an eschatological message for the second Sunday in Advent. Pastor Manfred E. Reinke (Missouri Lutheran) preaches about the subject: “Christ is Coming!… Soon!” The warp of the sermon he takes from Holy Scripture, especially from the passage in hand (Luke 21:25–28); the woof from black and bleak facts about our world today. According to the closing words of the sponsor, William G. Guebert (Concordia Seminary), here are “clarion calls to repentance, and a powerful appeal to step [up] to the cradle at Bethlehem and accept Jesus as Saviour.” What a blessed way to preach in Advent!

In addition to matters of content and spirit, the majority of the sponsors commend various sermons for structure and for clarity, as well as for relevance. Somehow the stress does not fall on beauty, though beauty marks more than a few of the Bible passages, and is not lacking in the sermons. Some of the appraisers also speak about having heard the respective messages with abiding satisfaction. The immediate popular effectiveness of a spoken sermon often depends on the delivery more than on anything else (Isa. 50:4, KJV).

With practically everything thus far I personally agree most heartily. If the series could have been planned in advance there might well have been a popular message about the Holy Spirit, as well as a number of other Bible truths, or duties. But still I see in this series of independent sermons all sorts of reasons for thanksgiving. As for what I think about the evangelical pulpit today, pro and con, much of that appears in the early portions of two volumes that I have recently edited: Special-Day Sermons for Evangelicals (1961) and Evangelical Sermons of Our Day (1959).

Here I offer only three suggestions. All have to do with how to preach today among people not biblically literate or theologically minded. First, I suggest that like more than a few liberals we as evangelicals should become more keenly aware that both pulpit and sermon exist for the sake of the hearer. The man in the study does not prepare a message for the satisfaction of the preacher, the salvation of his sermon, or even the explanation of the Bible passage.

Whenever he plans to preach, he should make ready to meet a vital human need today. Like Spurgeon, Jowett, or Truett, as well as more than a few evangelical divines today, the local spokesman for God ought in the study to “see faces.” While speaking from the sacred desk he should never let the hearers feel that he is talking abstractly, or impersonally, with no concern for the souls of the auditors. In order to preach well to human beings, a man needs somehow to have the heart of a pastor.

Furthermore, there is much to be said for a pastor’s giving the preference to specific sermons. One passage each time, with light from other passages, but so as to illuminate this one. One vital truth, or else a commanding duty. Better still, some vital aspect of such a vast truth as the Incarnation. Once as a young pastor I found that our people did not appreciate the wonder and the mystery of the Incarnation. Neither did I! So I began anew to study the Bible teachings, with well-known books of theology by Charles Hodge and W. G. T. Shedd, as well as books about the Incarnation by Charles Gore and Robert L. Ottley. After a while, without announcing any series or course, I began to share with others what I had learned for myself.

Later I did much the same with the still more wondrous and difficult subject of the atonement, or reconciliation. Each time I kept on for a dozen successive sermons, one on each Lord’s Day. Like Robert W. Dale in his sermons about the living Christ, I found that I could keep on preaching about the very same doctrine, each time from a different passage, and from a different point of view, as long as the truth in view caused my own heart to burn. All the while I have felt that we ought to give thanks for a master of theology who in an occasional survey sermon can help laymen to see Christianity in the large, and within their limits to comprehend it as a whole. Still I feel like insisting that such pulpit work is not as a rule the best way for a busy pastor to preach today. I have heard many laymen complain that while they love their dominie, often they do not know what he is talking about, and they wonder if he knows. Only an exceptional man excels in synthesizing power.

The third suggestion has to do with the choice of a text. Unlike some present-day writers about preaching, who scoff at the older labels, I have studied Alexander Maclaren, William M. Taylor, Campbell Morgan, and other master evangelical preachers long enough to know that each of them dealt with a fairly long passage in a way that differed from the same man’s treatment of a text. For many reasons, I believe that once every Lord’s Day, at one of the two public services, a pastor who believes the Bible may well deal with a part of it the way it was written, with the paragraph as the unit, or else the poetic strophe.

Still I question the wisdom of telling the people that the text consists of Psalm 139. In his volume The Way Everlasting (1911), James Denney deals with this most difficult of all the major Psalms. One by one he singles out each of the successive strophes, and handles it superbly, as only a master theologian-preacher could do. But in the beginning he uses as a gateway into the 24 verses only these nine words: “O Lord, thou hast searched me” (v. la). As a consequence, no doubt every hearer went home with another illuminated text forever burning in his heart. So, young pastor, if during the year you prepare 48 or 50 morning expository sermons, be sure each time to single out from each Bible passage a text so short, so strong, so striking that every hearer will remember it with joy and live in its light until traveling days on earth are done.

THE EDITOR

In New Delhi the November narcotic of bougainvillaea and of fragrant roses swiftly gave way to the hustle and stir of an invading ecumenical Assembly. Among the Christian participants of all races from many lands there was little of the relaxed atmosphere of India, little time for its peaceful trees and its floating white clouds. The World Council of Churches’ Third Assembly was a wheels-within-wheels affair, demanding all the energies of its participants, and replete with bright and dull seasons of its very own.

In the Vigyan Bhavan Hall one spectacle or another deeply moved most of the delegates. In view of Christianity’s fragmented witness in the world, the uniting of churches whose fellowship long had been broken warmed many hearts. Since this global ecumenical gathering was the first of its kind in Asia it helped dispel the prejudice that Christianity is simply a Western religion. Participants lauded Bishop Newbigin’s manifesto, moreover, that only the spirit of missions informing and infusing the ecumenical movement can assure its meaningfulness and permanence. Delegates also realized that a dedicated group of evangelicals, however much a minority, were not running away from their privileges, but in dialogue and discussion took repeated opportunity to press their positions across lines. Nor could anyone escape the positive and evangelistic thrust of certain missionary churches, among them young churches like Indonesia no less than older churches like Brazil. Representatives of the evangelical press who covered the event not only traded impressions but implored God on their knees for some great and glorious turn in assembly affairs.

Approval And Anxiety

Anxiety ran as deep as approval. A fluid, ambiguous concept of authority (despite the WCC Basis) overarched the proceedings. The gap between Christianity and non-Christian religions was frequently underesti-mated, despite affirmation of the Gospel’s uniqueness; spokesmen like Dr. Joseph Sittler refused to declare unambiguously that salvation is impossible outside Jesus Christ. The dynamic enthusiasm of Evanston and Amsterdam (where Karl Barth called for renewal of the Church) was largely gone, and even some Council leaders carried a heavy heart. Neo-liberalism and neo-orthodoxy seemed more and more entrenched as a quasi-official theology; the gulf between the American and the more conservative European theologians remained. Nor was depth of concern matched by precise comprehension and formulation of the Gospel; often the Christian message seemed blurred and its dynamic uncertain. Alongside ecumenical inclusivism an incipient universalism rather commonly embraced all mankind in final redemption. Younger churches, surprised and even shocked at times by the drowning of the simple Gospel of saving grace in a welter of complex terminology, experienced their first doubts about ecumenical aspirations. Sometimes the broad concept of unity gave the Assembly the character of an ecclesiastical United Nations, or at least of an ecumenical-Bund. Smug power structures so fatal to spiritual unity also provoked some delegates to complain that “machine politics at this high level” at times gave them a feeling of being associated with a form of ecumenical Tammany Hall. The so-called “super-church” party wanted more churchly functions assigned to the councils. Ecumenism now offered new prestige and status to staff workers, and attracted personnel on this basis more easily than before. At the same time ecumenical leaders seemed more touchy than ever over internal criticisms.

Evangelical Dilemma

Yet some of these same problems plague evangelicals, too, even in interdenominational associations of their own: power blocs, personal aspiration, and, if not the reduction of classic Christianity, at least the shameful neglect of theology and of an adequate exposition of social ethics within the dimensions of the Gospel. Growing identification of the World Council with the quest for unity, moreover, added to the embarrassment of unaffiliated evangelicals; despite their insistence that the doctrinal consensus they possess is essential to spiritual unity, they remain excessively divided among themselves. Delhi stirred an uneasy conscience over evangelical ecumenism and demanded a new posture. Delegates from lands without an effective alternative insisted: “We evangelicals should enter into every discussion without losing freedom of thought and action.” They pointed to scores of men inside WCC who have “no qualms about historic Christianity” and pleaded for a charitable verdict which assumes their motives are good. Others cautioned: “Get in only if you have something to say and have the men with theological precision and evangelistic drive to say it. Their plea was for more evangelicals to press home the biting relevance of the Bible even if infiltration is the only way to do it. Beyond this expression, however, was a desire by some evangelicals to be identified with “the whole body of Christ”; for them evangelical fragmentation offers less than ecumenical inclusivism. The World Council’s appeal had been widened, some thought, by generalizations in certain fundamentalist literature that condemn ecumenism on bias rather than on critical assessment of principle; by the temptation of some conservative groups to rest their appeal more on what they oppose than on what they champion; by the ready tagging as nonevangelical all who are unaffiliated with some specific organization; and above all, by evangelicals’ failure to lead their own constituencies into deep theological renewal, into serious study of the doctrine of the Church, or into soul-searching concern over evangelical disunity.

Turning Point In Ecumenism

At the same time Delhi proceedings marked a turn in ecumenical destinies that more than ever may discourage evangelical identification with WCC. Admission of four additional Orthodox churches (Russian, 50 million members; Rumanian, 13 million; Bulgarian, 6 million; Polish, 400,000) presaged an end to the predominantly Protestant character of the World Council. Previously the WCC’s largest membership was claimed by The Methodist Church (U.S.A., 10 million). The membership of the Orthodox communions now admitted to the World Council in Delhi (exclusive of previously-associated Orthodox churches) is about twice that of the Protestant member bodies of the National Council of Churches, U.S.A. The strength of the sacramental-ritualistic tendency now prominent in the World Council includes also many Anglo-Catholics, and removes most obstacles to approaching the Roman Catholics. President H. “Pitt” Van Dusen of Union Theological Seminary, New York, said at Delhi that there can be no effective world ecumenicity until the Roman Catholics are brought in. In principle, the WCC’s present outreach already sweeps far behind the Reformation and, in fact, points behind the cleft between Eastern and Western Christianity to an ecclesiastical complex evident over 1500 years ago. The Orthodox churches consider themselves the ancient font of ecclesiastical unity and, on the basis of a patriarchal encyclical issued in 1920 “on which the Ecumenical movement of the WCC is based,” credit themselves with giving impetus to modern ecumenism. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church greeted Delhi delegates with this reminder: “Ever since the disagreements with the churches of the Roman Empire at Chalcedon in A.D. 451, the Oriental Orthodox churches—the Armenian, the Coptic, the Ethiopian, the Indian, and the Syrian—have been obliged to tread their own ways to maintain and foster the Orthodox faith in its purity as handed down by the great Fathers.… The question of unity should continue to be studied at the level of the confessional and traditional units.…” After admission to WCC, Patriarch Alexis of Moscow and all Russia said that “the Russian Orthodox Church is prepared to strengthen the Orthodox witness of her Sister-Churches.” The Russian Orthodox are believed to be thinking in terms of influencing and mobilizing the Greek Orthodox.

Eastern Orthodox Churches

ISSUE 7:32

Three Acute Problems

Admission of the Russian Orthodox Church with its 50 million members confronts the WCC with three specific problems: ecclesiastical, political, and evangelistic.

1. Ecclesiastical. The Protestant character of the Anglo-Saxon ecumenical thrust is now influenced or qualified in a major way by the Orthodox sacramen-that Protestant Christianity, with its current lack of a common theology and ecclesiology, will henceforth be increasingly on the defensive within the ecumenical encounter.

2. Political. Admission of the Orthodox churches creates within the WCC an East Zone potential of almost 40 delegates who are directly exposed to Kremlin political pressures. Although Lutheran and Reformed tarian-ritualistic emphasis. This trend has been encouraged by Protestant liberalism, whose disinterest in revealed theology has been accompanied by a yearning for ritual. The great bulk of the Eastern Orthodox churches are now WCC-affiliated, exceptions being the patriarchate of Yugoslavia (Serbia), the Georgian patriarchate in South Russia, and some small churches in scattered lands. The Orthodox churches consider the Third Assembly as their entry into a new period of ecumenical relations, especially in matters of faith and order. Dr. Nikos Nissiotis, assistant director of the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, thinks the era of “ecumenical politeness,” when the Orthodox churches confessed their position only in an apologetic way, is over. He foresees, instead, their aggressive leadership in the exposition of an ideal pattern of ecclesiastical unity. The 17 members of Eastern Orthodox churches (five from the newly admitted Russian Orthodox Church) now comprise the largest single bloc in WCC’s 100-member central committee.

Christian Population Of The World

Main Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica 1960 Book of the Year

Accurate statistics on the present WCC constituency are exasperatingly difficult to get. At the Evanston Assembly that constituency was placed at 170 million. On the eve of the Delhi Assembly the World Council claimed that its “member churches represent approximately 70 per cent of the estimated 315 million Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican Christians in the world,” hence a constituency of 220,500,000. The post-Delhi constituency is sometimes pegged at 300 million, but ecumenical press aides privately concede that a case can be made (on the basis of one authority or another) for a figure ranging between 200 and 315 million. Constituency of the World Evangelical Fellowship is estimated at 25 million. Certainly any charting of the Christian population of the world leaves little doubt churches in Hungary, Poland, and Rumania have been WCC-identified, they have heretofore not been permitted full delegation representation. But at Delhi, where action was taken on the Russian Orthodox Church, all the churches were now permitted to send full delegations. The Orthodox applications by Poland. Rumania, and Hungary came to the World Council after that of Russia. Some leaders in churches that withheld support for admission of the Russian churches insist that more than half of the delegates from East Zone churches are Communist informants. When they left Geneva after their exploratory visit, the Russian delegates took back 1½ tons of WCC literature to duplicate, explaining that they would have to yield one set of materials at the border. In any event, the WCC now includes 16 delegates from Russia, six from Hungary, six from Czechoslovakia, five from Poland, four from Rumania, and one from Bulgaria. Could this development portend a Trojan horse of disaster for WCC? Should the Kremlin seek to embarrass ecumenical Christianity, it could at any time pressure Soviet-zone delegates to withdraw on the edge of a political issue, and thereby presumably split WCC leadership.

The Russian Orthodox delegation had declared in advance that its interest would center primarily in faith and order concerns. Its 32-year-old leader Archbishop Nikodim Rostov heads the office of Foreign Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate; prominence within his church has come so swiftly that many outsiders have questioned Nikodim’s freedom from state influence. The day after the Russian church’s admission, as the Assembly moved to section meetings on unity, service, and witness, Nikodim read a message from Patriarch Alexis of Moscow and All Russia declaring that the preservation and consolidation of world peace “is the basic problem of the times,” that “all Christians must resolutely call upon and induce all leaders of States to agree on universal and complete disarmament, with effective international control.” It was difficult indeed to catalogue this thesis under faith and order. Nor had the Russians given any advance indication that their participation would be wholly limited to doctrinal matters, although historically their church has had little interest in social action. Nikodim took every opportunity to stress publicly the Russian church’s freedom of interference from the state, although he tended to equate religious liberty with confessional freedom.

Of WCC’s 149 churches sending delegates to Delhi, only three voted against admission of the Russian Orthodox; four abstained. Opposition to admitting two Chilean Pentecostal groups was actually stronger than to admitting the Russian Orthodox. The Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America and the Hungarian Reformed Churches in America abstained from supporting the Russian Orthodox application. Although the delegates representing the Hungarian refugees in America first wanted to cast a negative vote, they followed the lead of the Russian exiles, who argued that if among the 16 Russian delegates there was only one real believer it would be nobler to abstain than to oppose because of the sufferings of Christians in the Soviet. No debate of the question was permitted. WCC leaders refused to identify the other dissenters. According to Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, the ballots were impounded as soon as the tellers made their reports and nobody, he told the press, knew who voted against the Russian Orthodox. Speculation was that delegates from Korea, Formosa, and possibly the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. had either opposed or abstained. While the Russian Orthodox probably would not immediately be directly represented on the Central Committee, occasional WCC meetings were now virtually sure to be held in Russia. (See editorial, “Was World Council Blackmailed to Admit Russian Churchmen?” p. 21).

Now that the Russian Orthodox were affiliated, the question promptly arose whether WCC any longer possesses the capacity to condemn the evil of communism in depth. Said Evangelist Billy Graham, a Delhi observer, who had to leave the assembly at its midpoint, “Thus far the Assembly has been almost silent on the problem that militant atheistic communism poses for the Church.” Among the dynamisms threatening to engulf the world, neither the non-Christian religions nor secularism nor scientism holds the terror that communism does as an antichrist philosophy. WCC statements concerning communism will be scanned more critically now than ever.

In closed-door sessions of WCC’s International Affairs Committee, the controversial Czech theologian Josef L. Hromádka successfully plugged for a nongovernmental East-West conference to break the nuclear test ban deadlock in the interest of international disarmament. Hromádka last June chaired the Prague All-Christian Peace Conference exploited by Soviet peace propagandists who are strangely silent about Communist class warfare. In its Delhi turnover of six presidents, staunch anti-communist Bishop Otto Dibelius gave way to pacifist-minded Dr. Martin Niemöller, president of the Evangelical Church of Hesse—Nassau in Germany, on the WCC Presidium.

3. Evangelistic. The third problem now acutely faced by WCC concerns evangelism and proselytism. Throughout the Christian centuries, movements that reject the legitimacy of sacramental regeneration and that insist on the need for personal faith in Christ—both the despised “cults” outside medieval Romanism and post-Reformation churches—have viewed sacramentarian churches as an evangelistic and missionary objective. Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, on the other hand, have harassed and repressed evangelical effort. Soon after his church’s admission to WCC, Patriarch Alexis said, in fact, “The Russian Orthodox Church has always seen her sacred duty … in making [this heritage] widely known.… However, the Russian Orthodox Church has never identified this witness with proselytizing or other such non-Christian acts.”

While the Roman church has scorned Protestant proselytizing, it has maintained its own right to proselytize Protestants on the basis that there is no salvation outside the (Roman) church. Protestants, on the other hand, have never maintained that Roman Catholics cannot be true believers. Deference to Romanist views was evident here and there at Delhi. One delegate, for example, argued that Billy Graham’s upcoming evangelistic campaign in Latin America cannot be considered ecumenically successful unless Roman Catholics participate in it.

It is certainly obvious that churches underwriting Christian unity of the ecumenical movement cannot view other member churches as missionary objectives. Within the ecumenical dialogue, participating churches can still witness to each other (at this stage) in an educational program where evangelism is reduced to enlightenment, but to deny the validity of the Christian experience of affiliated constituencies is quite another matter. This ecumenical tolerance, in fact, is what sharpens resentment toward aggressive fundamentalist and evangelical groups. One bishop privately denounced fundamentalist workers in his part of Asia as divisive. “They say that Mohammedans and Buddhists are not Christians. They say I’m unconverted and a false prophet. They insist on a statement of faith.”

Against this background one can understand the drama that surrounded the Delhi entrance into the World Council of the first Pentecostal agencies, namely, the Iglesia Pentecostal de Chile and Mission Iglesia Pentecostal (Chile). On the one hand, WCC leaders rejoiced over “a Pentecostal breakthrough” (only 20,000 members were involved), especially since in the United States this prong of the so-called “third force” is intimately linked to the National Association of Evangelicals. The Chilean Pentecostals had become interested in WCC through the abundance of Church World Service relief supplies during an earthquake disaster. On the other hand, WCC member churches greeted the Pentecostal applications with as many abstentions and with almost three times as many outright rejections (eight) as the Russian Orthodox application (three). The opposition was said to come from the Orthodox type of church that resents aggressive Pentecostal evangelistic methods. (It was interesting that reporters were given this information about opposition to the Pentecostal churches, but were told that no one knows who opposed the Russian Orthodox entry.) Pentecostalists had now to decide whether in good conscience they could or could not continue to evangelize members of the ecumenical body.

An Evangelical Crossroad

Admission of additional sacramental communions which blurred the earlier Protestant character of WCC could hardly brighten the prospect of enlisting many more of the unaffiliated evangelical bodies. The WCC’s failure to enlist such groups remains particularly conspicuous on the American scene, where 24 million Protestants remain outside the National Council of Churches, including large denominations like the Southern Baptists, as well as constituencies of the National Association of Evangelicals and American Council of Churches. Although in 1961 the term “ecumenical” seemed less esoteric than at Evanston and Amsterdam, it still fell far short of being synonymous with the Church universal. Not only had regular contact been lost with the churches in Red China, but new applications for membership scarcely concealed the fact that the thin Latin American participation in World Council affairs also perpetuates a geographical weakness in the movement’s world-wide representations. Through face-to-face conferences and consultations, ecumenical leaders continue to probe the possibility of larger evangelical identification. The joint committee of WCC-IMC had also explored means of gaining closer touch with bodies espousing evangelical views. Special consultations on evangelism are aimed at “providing a place in the Ecumenical Movement where representatives of ‘evangelical’ church groups can make their contribution.” But the fact is that a considerable segment of world Christianity still does not look to the World Council as a desirable instrument.

At Delhi evangelical participants were being driven to ask more deeply than ever before whether the renewal of the Church is being achieved through the present ecumenical process of ecclesiastical elephantiasis. They were left with the vexing question whether the widening Orthodox ecclesiastical trend already so neutralizes the Protestant orientation that they, no less than unaffiliated evangelicals, may soon find the climate of WCC less compatible than will the Roman Catholics. Not a few were disturbed that ecumenical assimilation in many respects now looks more like a pious version of the U. N. than like a recapturing of the essence of New Testament community. The Statesman in Delhi observed that distinguished speakers were “confounding confusion” in their divergent approaches and proposed solutions to “the schismatic disunity of the One United Church.” As some leaders rebuked those who prize their separate traditions, others asked with fresh awareness whether the glory of particular denominational expressions does not lie in their recovery and preservation of Christian truths and practices neglected by the large groups. Yet the vital churches engaged in the Delhi encounter still seemed confident they would not lose their distinctiveness in the expanding sacramental-ritual atmosphere. They still encouraged unaffiliated Protestants to identify themselves in order to augment evangelical influences within; nowhere was discontent so deep as to breed the desire for detachment. Apprehension was evident, however, over Roman Catholicism’s becoming the next ecumenical target. On the one hand, evangelicals have more in common theologically with Rome than with ecumenical inclusivism; but they would have less in common with ecumenical ecclesiology were Rome to join the stream.

No longer was the question that of a new Protestant Reformation. Actually Protestantism in the Reformation sense is a crippled ecumenical force, since WCC presupposes that all adherents legitimately belong to the Church of Christ. Many Protestants supporting the ecumenical effort had in fact done so as a reflex of their revolt against the Reformation heritage. The real question to be faced was whether in the 1960s the Spirit of God might shape another evangelical revival that finds fresh churchly character, not through the monolithic merger of ailing communions, but in the New Testament revelation. In such a fellowship those who insist that Christ is the Living Head of a body of regenerate believers will find their place, no matter what their present connections may be, with one or another twentieth-century organization. If Delhi presented an enlarging sacramentarian-ritualistic picture, did it also pose the possibility of an evangelical realignment?

In Berlin, where this is being written, there met in July the Tenth German Kirchentag (Protestant Congress). A varied and gifted group of speakers dealt with a wide range of topics, some of which have vital interest to us of the American scene. While many of the sessions were devoted to problems of special concern to the German Church, there were notes struck at points which are crucial for Christians, of whatever land and from whatever denomination.

The most pressing question was that of the meaning of the Holy Scriptures in today’s world. In a setting in which science presents its claims with increasing authority (as it does also with us), devout leaders reminded us that God’s Truth cannot be called into question by the partial truths of scientific knowledge. Further, it was emphasized that there is more than one kind of scientific questioning: there is the reverent variety which acts under God’s mandate in Genesis to rule and subdue the earth—and this will include scientific research into the ways of the created world. There is also, it was pointed out, a type of questioning which arrogantly and foolishly asserts that research may be conducted more effectively in disregard of the Lord of all Truth.

It was recognized that the Bible has for its primary purpose not the giving of directive truth in every minute phase of human knowledge, but the affording of a “key of knowledge” in terms of which all things may be understood. This “key of knowledge” was identified as follows: it is the incarnation of the Eternal Son in human flesh, in Jesus of Nazareth. We were reminded that this was not a timeless event, hut one which is identifiable in history and in geography. This Incarnation was an act of love: it was a deed of God which bears its message above the tumult of history.

But how, men will ask, can men and women rise above the doubts which the modern scientific outlook has raised in their minds? Is there anything which signals this act of love in such a form that it can he grasped by the mind which is cluttered up with so much of the debris with which our age has filled the air? In other words, what is the central drive of the Christian Evangel? One of our speakers put his reply into crisp form: As a visible sign of God’s love, the Cross of Jesus Christ stands above all our doubts.

This is a daring thesis: many present in Berlin had relatives in the East Zone of Germany. A few had braved the threats of the Pankow puppet government and had crossed over from the East into West Berlin (now impossible since the building of The Wall, August 13). These persons raised understandable questions: How can God allow the things to happen which occur in the gray world behind the barriers, and how can we know that God’s love is operating now, that it is at work in such events as today unrolls before us?

At such a time, speakers cannot hedge, cannot evade. These are questions upon which hinge matters of life and death. It was heartening to hear men of undoubted stature declare that in Christ God confronted us with his own unimpaired Image; that at the Cross God made an answer so eloquent to man’s most profound problem that the man who will obey that which the Cross demands will find, in the depth of his soul, an answer-through-faith which will carry him through even the worst times.

It is as the bearer of this Message, of the Tidings of such a Redeemer, that the Bible cannot be called in question by “cheap questions or plump polemics.” The voice of history proclaims that God’s Word will erode and outlast all of man’s doubts concerning it. But the really meaningful problem is, to what kind of listener will God make himself audible? Over and over it was emphasized that obedience is the crucial factor, the decisive element. Over and over we were reminded that our Lord expressed the heart of the matter in the words recorded in John 7:17. It is, therefore, only the listening which is conditioned by a bent-upon-obedience which will lead to effective hearing.

Much attention was given to the relationship between biblical faith and a knowledge which seeks to do justice to facts. It was refreshing to hear men who combined a deep Christian faith with a genuine competence in the so-called secular areas of knowledge declare that a “biblical listening to God” does not render careful thought in scientific areas impossible, but rather includes it and gives to it its real dignity. We were reminded, over and over, of that which both Christians and non-Christian thinkers so easily forget, that we all “prophesy in part.”

Moreover, there was held up for close scrutiny the claim of modern science to be completely objective, to operate without any preconceived notions or principles. To the contrary, it was made clear that all thought operates within a framework of assumed suppositions, although these may be deeply concealed. And science itself is prone to forget that “its net of questions” is too small to include all of the realms of reality in which we must live.

Such declarations as these, if taken seriously, would bring down the pride of intellect which marks so much of the activity of our Western world. It is a strange contradiction that men succeed in their attempts at asserting their own self-sufficiency only in losing their real importance. On the other hand, we were assured, as man recognizes the living God (who in reality surrounds us all), the smallest detail of his life and being take on importance. When His voice becomes audible, through the written Word, as it brings us to the Incarnate Word, all of the features of our life become potential elements in our “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

By this time the reader is no doubt ready with the question, How can the emphases of the Kirchentag be squared with what we hear nowadays of the influence of Rudolf Bultmann upon German theology? The facts are that Bultmann was scarcely mentioned in the major discussions of biblical matters. This does not mean that the speakers were unaware of his work, or unaware that he is one of the great names. It does mean that this gathering was primarily the outgrowth of the spiritual concern of laymen, whose practical wisdom seems to tell them that such movements as the “demythologizing” of Bultmann is a theological fad, subject to the laws which govern most crazes.

There emerges from the Berlin Kirchentag a hopeful indication. It is this: that when the theologians may at times fail to see the forest for the trees, God gives to nonspecialists the unusual insight by which they may help the specialists to regain their perspective. And it is frequently in conferences sponsored by laymen that theologians whose messages are most vital are lifted into prominence.