Page 5888 – Christianity Today (2025)

A recent news report told of the discovery of the world’s third largest diamond. It was about the size of a hen’s egg and worth eight to nine million dollars. Imagine the excitement and the joy of the finder!

Similarly, there are times when the implications of one of God’s promises to his children suddenly strike the mind as though with a blinding light, when a truth revealed becomes a precious assurance that can be put to practical use and will bring both joy and comfort.

For some weeks now the admonitions and promises of Philippians 4:4–7 have been on my mind. Accepted at face value and acted upon, they can bring untold blessing.

The passage reads, “Delight yourselves in the Lord; yes, find your joy in him at all times. Have a reputation for gentleness, and never forget the nearness of your Lord. Don’t worry over anything whatever; tell God every detail of your needs in earnest and thankful prayer, and the peace of God, which transcends human understanding, will keep constant guard over your hearts and minds as they rest in Christ Jesus” (Phillips).

Human existence involves anxiety, worry, burdens, care, concern. Problems, problems, problems—there seems to be no end to matters that interfere with tranquility and peace of mind. Yet though anxiety is an inevitable part of the drama of human life, there is a supernatural remedy offered to those who will accept it.

The underlying cause of much of our apprehension is a distorted sense of values on the one hand and on the other our foolish attempts to be our own burden-bearer. We permit the cares of this world, the false glamour of money and material things, worldly ambitions, and a host of other things to crowd in on our conscious and subconscious lives until we feel ready to explode.

When the Apostle Peter wrote, “You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, for you are his personal concern” (1 Pet. 5:7, Phillips), he meant exactly the same thing the psalmist did when he said, “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you” (Ps. 55:22).

This promise of relief from worry is also found in Jesus’ words, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–30).

The way to freedom from anxiety can be called transference: we simply turn the problem and its solution over to our Lord and rest in him.

There are apt to arise within us worries about health, and about having enough money to pay our bills (we forget Jesus’ promise in Matthew 6:33 that all the necessities of life will be provided if we put him and his Kingdom first). Hard decisions, dangers to ourselves and loved ones, matters of occupation and obligations, concern over the world situation and over the seeming triumph of sin—all these matters crowd in upon us. They are worrisome and frightening for us, but not for the One who waits for us to confide in him and leave the outcome in his hands!

Does not our trouble lie in the fact that our conception of God is too small? Do we not forget that he is all-loving, infinite in his wisdom, knowledge, and power, and that for him no problem exists other than our lack of understanding and faith, and our limiting him by our own human limitations?

We are not spiritual orphans left to our own devices. Our Father is always interested in us, and he is nearer than hands or feet.

This passage of Philippians (4:4–7) tells us that the ultimate source of our joy and delight should be the Lord Jesus. This relationship is not fitful, transient, or subject to change. It is as constant as the Rock of Gibralter.

A complete surrender to the Lord and joy in him even changes our personalities, producing gentleness, forbearance, moderation, and magnanimity. Our Lord’s gentleness and lowliness of spirit blossom in our own lives.

For years, when I read this passage in the King James Version I thought of the nearness of the Lord in terms of his return. But the thought here actually is that he is near us all the time and that we should constantly lean on his presence.

This transference of anxiety involves telling all the details to him—not because he doesn’t already know, but because he wants us to talk to him about our troubles for our own good. He is simply waiting for this expression of our faith in him in order to take over the problem and handle it in his own way, for his own glory.

And because we have turned the matter over to the sovereign ruler of the universe, as he has directed, we can praise and thank him for the solution to our anxiety even before we see how he will answer. It becomes a matter of resting in his loving hands, just because we know he is able and willing to be our burden-bearer.

There is a certain and precious result: anxiety vanishes and his peace fills our hearts—a peace beyond human explanation but real, a peace born of his presence that fills and keeps our hearts and minds (our thoughts) with a sense of resting in and on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Is this too simplistic? Is the Apostle Paul’s injunction to the Philippian Christians irrelevant to the pressures and anxieties of life today?

With all my heart I believe we have in these four verses the key to living as the Christian should. How could we more clearly demonstrate the relevance of our faith than by meeting the difficulties and anxieties of life by turning them all over to the Lord? For by so doing we prove not only that our delight and joy is in him but also that he is both able and willing to provide us with the solution.

In the midst of writing this article I received a letter from a business executive, only thirty-eight, who is recovering from a coronary occlusion. His doctor says the chances are good that he will have another within five years.

This man is an active Christian, willing to know and do God’s will for his life, but in this letter he suggests that “anxieties about my job and my insufficient faith to trust my problems to the Lord were contributing factors to my having a heart attack.” The promises in this passage of Scripture would seem to hold the answer to his problem.

The words of the old hymn—“O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer!”—are still wonderfully applicable in our day.

The psalmist says, “Thou dost keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee” (Ps. 26:3). Every Christian needs to learn the extent of his own ineffectiveness and God’s complete ability to fulfill his promises.

IN MY MERRY OLDSMOBILE

After church each Sunday I have to maneuver my car around the gleaming late-model sedans in the church parking lot. On my way home I pass the Wood-ville Primitive Baptist Church. Parked outside are older-model vehicles with pickup trucks and station wagons predominating.

This situation was brought into even sharper focus by a conversation with a carpenter friend. When he found out that I needed the services of a plumber he said, “Oh, you need a plumber? I know a good one. He’s a member of our church.”

As it turned out, just about every trade is represented in the congregation of his church, but few professions are. The opposite is true of my church.

This difference is not news to anyone. Numerous treatises have been written analyzing the sociological factors involved in denominationalism.

I even knew one clergyman who seemed to find some merit in the situation. The caste system that seems to obtain between denominations, he pointed out, is the result of the Protestant recognition of the church as the communion of the saints.

In the Roman Catholic Church, he asserted, the church derives from the priesthood, and each believer more or less celebrates the communion between himself and God, eliminating social involvement. It’s this social involvement that naturally causes people to divide along lines of income and education.

May be But I can’t help feeling that my faith as a white-collar worker is somewhat impoverished by lack of contact with Christians who have a different social setting and different problems.

When the charismatic movement began to move into the “establishment” churches, it did break down some of the more artificial distinctions between Christian communions. However, even it has left the real divisions intact. Upper-middle-class Episcopal Pentecostals fellowship with upper-middle-class Presbyterian or Roman Catholic Pentecostals—not with poor black Pentecostals.

We might have hoped a movement that began in the black churches and moved through the poorer white churches into the more affluent ones would bring black and white, poor and affluent, together. But it doesn’t seem to have happened that way.

In other words, we might have hoped they would do better than we did.

Apparently these cross-cultural relationships don’t just happen, even with Christians; they require work. Perhaps a starting point would be to stop some Sunday at the church with the pickup trucks.

CHEERS FOR IRRELEVANCE

Hats off to Kenneth Hamilton (“The Irrelevance of Relevance,” March 31)! He certainly destroyed the fetish of “relevance” and echoed many of my own sentiments. The most “relevant” thing any minister can ever do is to faithfully expound the abiding Word of God.

Associate Professor of Semitics and Old Testament

Dallas Theological Seminary

Dallas, Tex.

100 PER CENT

The article by Paul Szto entitled “The Chinese Communist Mind” (April 14) is the finest thing I have ever read on the subject, and I have to agree with him 100 per cent that “non-Chinese Christians and Chinese Christians outside China should unite in a Christian united front to map out a sound and consistent missionary strategy for reopening China to the preaching of the Gospel” … Thank you for printing the article.

General Director

Overseas Crusades, Inc.

Palo Alto, Calif.

The article left me less than satisfied. He made a noble effort in an attempt to write a historical survey of the development of Chinese Communism, and he made some enlightening observations. However, I don’t feel that he has really interacted with the Chinese Communist mind. I am especially disappointed by the last two paragraphs, which are only empty rhetorics. They appeal to the emotions, but not sound reasoning.

I speak as one who has experienced life in Communist China. I don’t feel that he has grappled with the real mind of a Chinese Communist, especially in the area of religious attitudes. I hope that in the near future, you will have some articles that really reveal the gutlevel feelings of a Chinese Communist. After all, we can not begin to think about how to reach them unless we know how they really think.

Pasadena, Calif.

THE PROPER FOCUS

I am a regular reader of your periodical; it is one of the organs that keep me abreast of contemporary thought, monographs, and reference books—evaluated from an orthodox, evangelical perspective. This service is of value to me in teaching religious literature and reference work in a “humanities reference” course.

As I glanced through the May 12 issue to see if any articles interested me, George M. Marsden’s “Evangelical Social Concern—Dusting Off the Heritage” struck a responsive chord.… Last year I served on a ministerial selection committee in a United Presbyterian church in Illinois. We were seeking a man, described as director of lay ministries, whose responsibilities would include both working with a day-care program for mentally retarded children, advising a service project for the senior citizens, and also the encouragement of Bible-study and prayer groups, evangelistic outreach by visiting in the community, and organizing special retreats for spiritual growth and fellowship. The point was to try to get the people in the church who focused on either activism or pietism to see the full-orbed scope of the Gospel. We had a very difficult time finding a candidate.… The committee seemed surprised, though it need not have been, that the one recent seminary graduate who appeared most capable of relating the two areas was a graduate of an interdenominational theological school with Reformed leanings. In short, both aspects of the Christian faith and practice are essential. But we need ministers who can encourage their charges in both piety and social concern and who can show them that each requires the other.

Assistant Professor

The University of Texas

Austin

I would have been so pleased if Marsden [had] mentioned the early history of the YMCA. There are many of us in the YMCA who are prayerfully trying to keep the social and evangelical Gospel in proper perspective.

Executive Director

YMCA of Metropolitan Washington

Gaithersburg, Md.

SIGNIFICANT OMISSION

I have appreciated your series, “A Bibliography For Christians.” However, in the recent article by James R. Moore, your writer has omitted a significant book on the counterculture scene. It is written by Dr. Robert A. Evans and is entitled Belief and the Counter Culture (Westminster, 1971). I simply pass this on because serious students of the counterculture movement should not miss this book.

Thank you for your efforts in doing an intelligent analysis of the counterculture phenomenon.

First Presbyterian Church

Tulsa, Okla.

I am surprised by James Moore’s limitation upon the mysterious power of God and his ongoing revelation. In an attempt to discredit a non-churchly religion, he is likely to miss the possibility of God’s revelation from the pen of a modern prophet. To close the “canon” of inspired literature on God’s action in the lives of persons is naïve and short-sighted. Not to mention putting God into some kind of historical response.

Persons committed to biblical Christianity know their foundation. They do not attempt to downplay its importance nor its inspiration. Biblical Christianity gives us the only possibility for understanding our faith. Therefore, I say “right on” to the writer who attempts to interpret our historic faith in light of our experience. For me, it gives me real hope and insight into our biblical Word.

Campus Minister

McPherson College

McPherson, Kans.

A METHOD FOR UNITY

Most interesting to read in “Where Paths Converge” (Current Religious Thought, April 28) that after all these centuries some Roman Catholics are taking a look at “the real Luther.” How? Not by accepting what some council or interpreter said about him but by reading what Luther himself wrote.

What would result if Protestants and Catholics alike used this method on the Bible? Letting it speak for itself minus creeds, dogma, manmade traditions, and so on, just might bring about the unity Christ prayed for.

Klagenfurt, Austria

WHAT ABOUT BANKRUPTCY?

Your good sense in staying out of the argument raised by the Reader’s Digest articles of October and November concerning the World Council of Churches has been commendable. The editors of the Digest have acknowledged in writing that they printed errors, and have published one article by J. Irwin Miller in reply.… However, your comment on Mr. Miller’s reply brought in at the end of your editorial of May 12 on “The Church’s Distinctive” itself needs correction.… Your editorial states that “the World Council consistently refuses to speak out against injustice, when to do so would entail a major ecumenical risk.” The facts are quite to the contrary. In 1950, the Central Committee of the council spoke in such clear criticism of the North Korean attack upon South Korea that one of its presidents—of China—resigned in protest. In 1968, the officers of the World Council of Churches issued a statement so critical of the military intervention in Czechoslovakia by Communist nations that the statement was severely criticized in Russia. You further state “that the World Council of Churches calls for ‘social action’ only where it will not jeopardize inclusivist goals.” Again, the facts do not support the charge. The World Council spoke so clearly on the evils of apartheid in South Africa that the three Dutch Reformed churches of that republic withdrew from membership in the World Council of Churches.… Much of the most effective work done by the World Council for religious liberty in Communist countries is that kind of work which would be weakened if it were given publicity. The decisive question is not whether the council protects itself from criticism, but whether it serves the cause of religious liberty in those countries. We believe that it does.

Your further charge of “the ecumenical movement’s theological bankruptcy” is understandable only if you believe that “theological disagreement” equals “theological bankruptcy.” Any person tempted to take your charge seriously ought to read the January, 1972, issue of the International Review of Mission—to take just one of many possible illustrations. That study of some of the theological issues related to the meaning of “Salvation Today” reflects a theological vitality for which every Christian ought to be grateful.

President, U. S. A.

World Council of Churches

New York, New York

• We agree with the recommendation to read the January (LXI:241) IRM. In it, as in so many other WCC publications, one will find theologically bankrupt opinions. For example, consider these statements by the dean of one of North America’s “leading” theological faculties: “Saving my soul does not interest me as a man in 1972” (p. 48), and, “The idea of a Second Coming of Jesus as Lord Christ and Royal Judge is wholly unbelievable except as a myth that may not wisely conserve a truth that is worth conserving” (p. 50).—ED.

MISPRINTED ALLEGIANCE?

In your editorial “Plain Talk on Viet Nam” (May 26), was “… especially Christians, should stand by the President, even if they think his policy is mistaken” a misprint? While I am all for supporting our nation’s leaders in every way possible, I am unable to accept a blind obedience such as you advocate. Instead of, as you say, “Every Christian should pray that what is being done will lead to peace and justice,” would it not be better to pray that we will do that which will lead to peace and justice?

(MRS.) MARIE K. WIENS

Hillsboro, Kans.

When the first Christians finally grasped the fact of Jesus’ intended Second Coming, that knowledge resolved all sorts of perplexities. Basically, it enabled them to see how God could keep his word in the Old Testament about the Messiah’s role. Bible students had previously assumed that the prophets were speaking of one triumphant advent of the Messiah. The prophets had not distinguished what the Christians were now told: that the advent would be in two distinct parts, the first in humility, to make sacrifice for the sins of the world, the second in glory, with judgment for unrepentant sinners.

Paradoxically, the revelation of a Second Advent that solved interpretative difficulties for the first Christians has led to continuing difficulties among their successors. Of the four main elements in the message about Christ, his Lordship, his atonement, and his resurrection find nearly universal agreement in all chief particulars among evangelicals today. But beyond the bare affirmation that Christ will indeed return, there is a wide range of disagreement on the Second Coming.

This lack of common understanding is evident in the New Testament itself. The Thessalonian correspondence was written in large part to attempt to clear up misunderstandings. For examples and discussion of the current diversity, see the review of several 1971 books on prophecy in our May 26 issue, page 14, and in our June 9 issue see L. Nelson Bell’s column, page 25, and the review of George Ladd’s Commentary on the Revelation of John, page 33.

While every writer on prophecy naturally thinks that his is the correct picture, the very diversity of interpretation even among men who accept the entire truthfulness of Scripture should (but all too often does not) lead to modesty in anyone’s claims to know how it’s going to be. Not only are there differences between those who tend to believe God means certain passages to be taken figuratively and those who think he means them literally; there are also significant differences even among those who agree that literalness is to be favored whenever there is an option.

May we suggest that the reason we are not able to agree is that God has not given us all the information we need to arrange a systematic presentation of all the events surrounding the Lord’s return? On the other hand, a close study of the various passages in the apostolic writings that convey what we know of the Second Coming shows that they almost invariably present this glorious truth in the context of what it should mean for our lives here and now. God has given us all the information necessary to do his will. He is not honored when we seek to fill in the gaps or strain to harmonize the various passages, especially when in doing so we neglect the stress in the original context upon holy, non-materialistic living. There are many commandments to do good works and to show the results of lives changed by acceptance of the living Christ as Saviour and Lord. But are there any commands to prepare charts and memorize details about the Lord’s return? And are we called to censure our brethren who don’t see the Scriptures as we do on this issue?

The Lord is coming again, but many Christians act as if it is important to know and debate the signs that point to his return in their own generation. Does this mean that previous generations in which the Lord did not return had less incentive for holy living? Even if the Lord does not return for ten thousand or ten million years, our obligations remain the same. Some teach that the Lord may come at any moment, while others say certain events must take place first. What is clear, especially to those of us who have occasion to ride in automobiles, is that at any moment we may go to be with the Lord.

There are three worthwhile correctives to keep us from getting off the course in the study of prophecy and making it something other than what God intended. First, read books by men who, while agreeing on the authority of Scripture, disagree in their interpretations of the of the key eschatological passages. Those who read or recommend only books with which they agree are implying that their minds are made up and they don’t want to be confronted with different interpretations.

Second, read books on the history of prophetic interpretation. They will show how godly men of the past often misread the signs of their own times and used precious time and energy to convince men that certain things were undoubtedly going to happen which, as the passage of time has shown, did not. Two examples of such books are: (1) The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930, by Ernest Sandeen (University of Chicago, 1970, 328 pp., $12). The subtitle might better have been the main title, for early twentieth-century fundamentalism, contrary to Sandeen’s assertions, was only partially and incidentally an eschatological movement. However, Sandeen’s work is fairly reliable when read as a history of the prophetic teaching initially spread by certain of the Plymouth Brethren, later popularized in the Scofield Reference Bible, and currently represented in such best-sellers as Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth and the works of Salem Kirban; (2) The Puritan Hope, by Iain Murray (Puritan Publications, 1971, 301 pp., $4.50). Murray describes the eschatology that probably predominated among English-speaking evangelicals from the Reformation until the close of the nineteenth century, a view commonly known as post-millennialism. Allowances must be made for the author’s own desires to see this teaching revived.

Finally, always keep in mind the scriptural context of the key prophetic passages. Some informal systematizing is inevitable, and it is natural to lean one way or the other on various disputed points; but this should always be subordinate to the emphasis that the Bible itself gives. For example, when Peter mentions the “day of the Lord,” which will come unexpectedly “like a thief” and in which “the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up,” he immediately concludes, “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be in the lives of holiness and godliness …” (2 Pet. 3:10, 11).

The Lord is coming again. Let us stress that central fact rather than our differences over details. And far above precision in prophetic detail let us value obedience to the clear commands of the One who has told us to be faithful servants while we wait for his return.

Cocu Alternative

The withdrawal of the United Presbyterian Church from COCU does not necessarily mean the end of COCU, and it certainly will not curtail the efforts of those who are committed to the organic union of the churches. Princeton Seminary’s president James I. McCord called the General Assembly’s action an “aberration” that “will have to be corrected” since “there is no alternative to it [COCU] on the boards.” We would like to suggest an alternative.

We believe in religious liberty and freedom of association. We think that no church members should be forced into a union they disapprove, and also that those who desire transdenominational union should not be kept from attaining it. How can these two points be reconciled?

We propose that each local congregation be free to decide whether or not it wishes to become part of the united church toward which COCU is aiming. Let every congregation that votes affirmatively be set free to join the uniting church, taking with it all its property and other assets.

Then, when all the congregations have made their decisions, let each denomination’s properties and resources, such as endowments and seminaries, be divided proportionately. If half of the members go and half stay, let everything be divided evenly. Each minister would have the privilege of joining or staying out of the united church.

In most congregations, some members would favor merger and some would oppose it. It is also likely that some churches in every sizable community would enter the union and others would not. This would mean that a church member who was on the losing side of his own congregation’s vote could probably transfer to another church whose majority voted as he did.

The new united church would have full freedom to show the world what it could do. It would have the advantage of starting off truly united, without discontented minorities who entered only because they feared losing their properties and their share of the common assets. Of course, its doors could be kept open for any congregation to enter later.

The denominations still participating in COCU as well as the departing United Presbyterians are quite divided over the Plan of Union for the Church of Christ Uniting. These tensions are not good for them. If after ten years of effort there is still not a consensus, the time has come either to scrap COCU completely or to go forward with a plan that would give both the proponents and the opponents what they want. If such a plan is adopted, the air will be cleared, harmony can come, and everyone can get to the important business of fulfilling the mission of the Church.

Gay Ground-Gaining

The Gay Liberation Front is gaining ground in both state and church. Recently legislatures in five states—Connecticut, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, and Oregon—repealed laws prohibiting homosexual acts between consenting adults. In the District of Columbia, under an agreement between the city government and the American Civil Liberties Union, private homosexual acts between consenting adults will not be subject to criminal prosecution. A U. S. District Court ruled that the city’s sodomy statute “cannot be applied to private consensual sexual acts involving adults.” The ruling defined adults as those sixteen and over. There are at least two problems with the ruling: its definition of adulthood, and its lack of definition of privacy.

In the District of Columbia the legal age is 18; until that age all lawbreakers are referred to juvenile court. Why should the homosexuality ruling be based on a lowered adult age? An impressionable sixteen-year-old who was seduced by an older homosexual could be left with deep psychological scars and perhaps a lifetime of homosexual practice; yet such seduction could be considered “consenting.” The court overlooked the statutes against corruption of minors and disregarded its responsibility at this point. The city’s homosexuals, of course, called the agreement a “major victory in the struggle for homosexual rights.” One society even held a victory dance.

The question of privacy is ambiguous. A “house” in which homosexual activities take place for pay—or a gay bar or club run for this purpose—could be ruled private. Such prostitution is not uncommon; the New York Police Department recently uncovered a large homosexual ring run by “respectable” adults. It included boys from ages seven to seventeen.

A 49-year-old father and successful businessman, an English professor, and a married couple were implicated. The couple, parents of a teen-age son, had encouraged him to join the ring. The group’s “bill of rights” included this assertion: “Every boy has a right to a loving relationship with at least one responsible male adult after whom he can pattern his life.” Apparently these homosexuals do not consider 16- and 17-year-old boys adults. Even though organized, the encouraged homosexual relations took place privately. Fortunately no district court in New York has ruled as did the one in the nation’s capital.

Our justice system should protect minors from “consenting” but perhaps innocent or unknowing participation in immorality. Christians must assume responsibility for being informed and active in this social and political field.

Recently the United Church of Christ in San Carlos, California, approved ordination of a homosexual. The central ruling body of the church, however, has refused to categorically endorse homosexual ordination. Instead, the council has requested that the church’s local ordaining bodies judge each case individually. A United Methodist minister, an acknowledged practicing homosexual, has asked his bishop, Thomas Pryor of Chicago, to assign him to a “gay community.” These are just two examples of the burgeoning homosexual situation within churches.

We do not condemn the homosexual, but we do oppose the practice of homosexuality as contrary to God’s commands. Certainly Christ’s treatment of the woman taken in adultery is apt in the homosexual’s situation. In working with him or her, in or out of the church, Christians should follow Christ’s example.

Neither Right Nor Left

Generally speaking, evangelicals fare no better under rightist governments than under leftist ones. Evidence repeatedly appears of religious persecution and restraint in the leftist countries of the world, notably the Communist nations, which are usually anti-religious. But the recent conviction of a native evangelical in Greece on charges brought by the “established” Orthodox Church (see our June 9 issue, page 47) is a reminder that right-wing governments, though like Greece they often profess an acceptance of religious values, are in practice as intolerant of the kind of spiritual “deviation” represented by evangelicalism as are militantly secularist states.

A case can be made that much of the persecution of Protestants in certain countries with predominantly Catholic populations, such as Spain, has rightist political more than religious roots. This is evidenced on the one hand by the relative freedom evangelicals have in largely Catholic countries with centrist governments, such as Belgium and West Germany, and on the other hand by persecution meted out to Roman Catholics in rightist countries by their co-religionists when they deviate from the political line, as is now happening in Spain.

Centrist governments are not easy to achieve or to maintain. Faced with the problems that inevitably result when sinful human beings live together in society, people tend to lean toward the “easy” solutions offered by the far right or left. But the lessons of the past and present make it clear that the work of evangelism is most readily done when the secular ship of state is kept from veering into the channels carved by either extreme.

Servant Or Master?

The decision of the United Presbyterian General Assembly to withdraw from COCU produced an unexpected turn of events. The stated clerk (chief executive officer) of the General Assembly, William P. Thompson, delivered what the New York Times called (and others who were present agreed with the description) a “stinging rebuke” to the General Assembly for its decision to withdraw. What Mr. Thompson did was both unfortunate and instructive.

The stated clerk is the servant of the General Assembly, not its master; his title makes it clear that he is neither bishop nor pope. It is not his business to lambast his employer.

There is also a deeper spiritual question. Modern ecumenists have been quick to see the Holy Spirit at work in strange ways—in violent revolutionary movements, in Marxist arenas, and in the Angela Davis defense fund, for instance. Now, Thompson expressed no regret at the assembly’s decision not to cooperate in Key 73, the twentieth century’s most promising trans-denominational evangelistic effort. If he thought that this decision was correct and that the Holy Spirit was in it, why should he not accept the decision on COCU as being the mind of the Spirit as well? And since Presbyterians are to be in subjection to their brethren, why did he not show a willingness to be in subjection to them at this point?

If the General Assembly had decided the other way and the Presbyterian Lay Committee had responded in Thompson’s manner, the fur would fly and charges of divisiveness would abound. Indeed, it was Thompson who only a year ago wanted the General Assembly to discipline the Presbyterian Lay Committee for printing material critical of the assembly and the boards and agencies of the denomination.

What is instructive is this: If a stated clerk can presume to judge and chastise his church’s elected representatives in this way, what sort of attitude toward grassroots opinion could be expected from the leaders of the united church Thompson favors? The COCU Plan of Union provides for consolidated authority with plenty of clout. Would we not see then a monolithic and authoritarian structure that would put even the papacy to shame?

Justice American Style

The acquittal of Angela Davis is further evidence that the American judicial system is not as hopelessly bankrupt as many of its critics, including Miss Davis, have been alleging these past few years. Miss Davis is an advocate of one-party Communist rule, besides being at once in three categories supposedly repressed in our country: female, young, and black. Yet she was acquitted. We wonder in how many one-party states an advocate of multi-party democratic government would get a fair trial?

Miss Davis expressed her intention to work for the release of political prisoners not only in America but everywhere in the world. We aren’t in favor of holding political prisoners either. We would only recommend that Miss Davis alternate between East and West in her commendable aim. Since she considered herself a political prisoner and has been set free in the Western world, let her start by gaining the release of some political prisoner in a Communist country. The extraordinary attention, leading to adulation, that she has gained in the Communist world should enable her better than anyone else we know to make some headway.

America is far from perfect, but when someone who is as disdainful of this country as Angela Davis is able to get a fair trial, it reinforces our conviction that, owing in no small part to the biblical heritage that has influenced so much of our national life, America is probably as safe a place for a dissenter as any other major nation on earth.

The Burundi Tragedy

Burundi is a small country on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in central Africa, little known by the outside world. But in God’s eyes, its 3.5 million people are as precious as those living elsewhere. The media have kept us fully informed of the deaths in the hundreds over the past few years in Northern Ireland, but Burundi, with about twice the area and population, has suffered incomprehensibly more deaths (numbering in the tens of thousands) in just the past two months of civil war (see News, page 38). Who knows? Who cares, besides God?

The prime difficulty in Burundi is like that which afflicts most of southern Africa: a small minority of the population, ethnically quite distinct from the vast majority, holds all effective power. There is one distinction: the Burundi rulers, unlike their counterparts in southern Africa, are black. But should this make any difference? Because of military weakness, the other African states are not able to do much besides verbally complain about the white dominion in the south. Over the years, there has not been much evidence of even verbal protest about the situation in Burundi! One cannot justifiably be for democracy when different races are involved without also supporting it when the adversaries are of the same race.

Christian missionaries become involved in the political conflicts of their lands only when they are ready to be evicted. But national Christians have greater responsibilities to speak for justice. And now that the Burundi tragedy has been given some space in the media, black Americans who protest minority rule in southern Africa have the opportunity to show that it is minority rule that is the issue, even when the minority is black rather than white.

Southern Baptist Watershed?

Messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Philadelphia reversed their former decision about the “Broadman Bible Commentary.” Previously the convention forced the Sunday School Board to withdraw Volume 1 on Genesis-Exodus and have it rewritten so as to be more representative of traditional Baptist convictions. The recent decision gives the board the green light to publish differing viewpoints, which in the plainest English means de facto endorsement and promotion of destructive higher critical views within the denomination.

Already the Broadman series has adduced the documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch and has included such assertions as: the Book of Esther may be fictional; Daniel was written around 165 B.C., years after the predicted events occurred; the Messianic psalms do not refer to the coming Messiah; there were two Isaiahs, not one; Jesus did not walk on the water; the Gospel of John was not written by John the beloved. These are not simply matters of interpretation. No one is arguing against presenting differing viewpoints, such as Arminianism versus Calvinism, or discussing varying baptismal practices, or debating whether church government should take the congregational, presbyterian, or episcopal form. What is at stake here is the trustworthiness of the Bible.

In 1925 and again in 1963 the Southern Baptist Convention approved the statement that the Bible “has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.” The action of the 1972 convention compromises this controlling principle and opens the floodgates to all kinds of serious theological error.

The pages of church history abound with examples of what happens when the full fruit of such a viewpoint is harvested—theologically liberal seminaries, defective churches, a declining interest in evangelism, and at last apostasy. This will ultimately be the unhappy course of the Southern Baptist Convention if the present action is not in turn reversed at the next convention.

The Inadequacy Of Naturalistic Evolution

Darwin Retried, by Norman Macbeth (Gambit, 1971, 178 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Rachel H. King, who until her retirement was professor of Bible and theology at Northfield School, Northfield, Massachusetts.

Norman Macbeth says there are two aspects of evolution. The easy aspect about which there is general agreement is that change has taken place and species have appeared and disappeared. Some species have multiplied while others have remained stable and still others have dwindled and died out. His book, Darwin Retried, is a carefully documented attempt to show that biological specialists are now by no means certain that they have all the answers to the more difficult aspect of the problem: why and how evolution took place. The current evolutionary view is in fact a synthetic theory that has drawn its materials from a variety of sources, says Macbeth. His thesis is simply that the mechanism of evolution suggested by Charles Darwin has been found inadequate by the professionals and that the American public needs to be informed of this important news.

Darwin’s famous theory held that, granted that inheritable random biological changes occur, the individuals more likely to survive would be those whose changes had better fitted them to obtain food and to cope with the rigors of the environment. Although the biological changes are small, their cumulative effect, over the vast reaches of prehistoric time, has produced the great variety of species in the world today, according to Darwin. In other words, he thought that natural selection was nature’s method of selective breeding.

The difficulty is that Darwin’s thesis is not fully substantiated. As Macbeth says, there are great gaps in the paleontological record. The transition specimens between known species have not been found. The family trees of modern species cannot be traced. The species known from paleontology are specialized, non-developing forms; but it is the unspecialized forms that evolve.

Darwin’s theory is based chiefly on comparative anatomy, embryology, and the experience of breeders. But embryology and comparative anatomy only show resemblances; they do not give family trees, i.e., they do not tell us where plants and animals came from. We are not shown the steps by which natural selection works.

Darwin noted that selective breeding had brought about inheritable changes in domestic animals. But it is questionable whether this fact can be pushed to the conclusion that the minor changes will accumulate to become the major variations required by evolutionary theory. Actually the breeders have brought about only very minor changes; no one has seen a major change take place.

In addition to the breeders’ inability to produce more than minor changes, they have met with practical obstacles that tell against Darwin’s theory. For plants and animals have been found to balk at being bred too far in any direction. “The most frequent correlated response to one-sided selection is a drop in general fitness. This plagues virtually every breeding experiment.” Besides, in experiments highly bred varieties will sometimes inexplicably revert to normal. But if minor changes do not increase the animal’s fitness, and if they do not aggregate to major changes, one of Darwin’s main props has collapsed, Macbeth says.

There are other data difficult to hormonize with Darwin’s theory. According to his belief, the tiny evolutionary changes that persist and develop into major ones are those that increase the individual’s chance for long life. But if this were the case, the gaudy peacock should never have come into existence. There is also no explanation for the reverse problem of why any given species having come into existence, should disappear altogether, not merely its less fit members.

Darwin’s theory dispenses with any idea of a God to assist the evolutionary process, which as mindless cannot plan ahead because it has no goals and no mind with which to conceive goals. Therefore, says Macbeth, every evolutionary advance must be justified by its own immediate advantages, not as leading to some desirable future end. This means that each tiny improvement must pay immediate survival dividends, and that no evolutionary development will go farther than is immediately useful for survival. It is hard to see how artistic, mathematical, and musical abilities can be accounted for on these terms, or why the brain of a savage should in fact be “very little inferior to that of the average member of our learned societies.” Again, it is hard to account for the eye on evolutionary terms, because an eye is a complex mechanism that needs its full development to function usefully.

It is part of the strength of Darwin Retried that the author avoids presenting any constructive theory of his own and contents himself with turning the skill of his legal training to the task of finding weaknesses in the Darwinian theory. Attacking piecemeal as he does, he has produced a book that presents valuable data for those who take issue with the idea of unaided evolution.

Macbeth devotes much space and skill to showing that the great Darwinian slogans—“natural selection,” “struggle for existence,” and “survival of the fittest”—have become something of an embarrassment to biologists. For example, “struggle for existence” sounds distressingly Teutonic; not only do many modern biologists tone it down by emphasizing the cooperative aspects of living creatures, but Sir Julian Huxley also goes further and denatures the phrase entirely by saying, “The struggle for existence merely signifies that a portion of each generation is bound to die before it can reproduce itself.” Then too, Macbeth points out that biologists early raised the question of how we determine who are the “fittest” and decided that from the evolutionary standpoint “fittest” must be defined in terms of survival potential. Thus the phrase “survival of the fittest” means only “the survival of those who survive,” which is a tautology and explains nothing.

The explanation of how natural selection works has been shifted by biologists from Darwin’s idea of differential mortality to the idea of differential reproduction; that is, the more prolific are the more likely to disseminate their characteristics.

Thus we have as a Question: Why do some multiply, while others remain stable, dwindle, or die out? To which [according to differential reproduction] is offered as Answer: Because some multiply, while others remain stable, dwindle, or die out. The two sides of the equation are the same. We have a tautology. The definition is meaningless [p. 47].

This looks like the hair-splitting of the legal mind. But such difficulties which Macbeth analyzes are a pinpointing of the problem of the philosophical implications of evolution when biology is seen within the larger intellectual framework. Biology, to be thoroughly scientific, tries to explain living things on the basis of the accumulation of chance variations, without assigning any role to such anthropomorphic concepts as God, value, consciousness, and purpose or goal-seeking. But “fittest” is a value word, and “struggle” and “selection” both imply purpose or goal-seeking. Macbeth has put his finger on the predicament in which scientists find themselves when biology, now grown self-conscious, tries to account for evolution in consciousless, goal-less, and valueless terms.

Although Macbeth has performed an important service in making it clear that science is not a monolithic structure impervious to criticism, one should not assume that because some revision of Darwin’s theory may be necessary, the widespread naturalistic view of human life and its origins has therefore been refuted. Darwin is only one key figure in a large intellectual movement.

Christianity needs to meet the challenge posed by the inadequacy of naturalistic science with more than the negative verdict of Macbeth on Darwin. We need to fit the data of science into the comprehensive picture revealed in the Bible. One must begin with the biblical God who thought the universe into existence out of nothing. My own book, The Creation of Death and Life (Philosophical Library, 1970), is an attempt to situate the biblical doctrine of God and creation in the contemporary landscape, so dominated by the complex of facts, interpretations, and speculations associated with the concept of evolution. To do so, however, requires considerable rethinking of evolutionary assumptions and conclusions. Even granting that species, including man, have slowly reached their present state by preserving and “stockpiling” age-long small changes for the better, we are still in a position to show, on the basis of the scientific evidence, that naturalistic evolution cannot be true. For naturalistic evolution always assumes that it is “natural” for complicated conscious organisms to evolve from inanimate matter. But one of the basic laws of physics, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, makes it clear that the over-all tendency of all matter is to disintegrate into randomness, with energy irreversibly passing to the non-available state. The increasing organization that characterizes evolution involves only an infinitesimal per cent of all matter, and even so organisms soon succumb in death to the stranglehold of the over-all tendency to cosmic decay.

As Christians we can conceive that matter’s steady loss of power, after it was cast free from the divine Mind at creation, is as the withering of the branch cut off from the parent vine, God being the only self-sustaining source of power. Evolution would then result from God’s active desire to bring into existence creatures potentially companionable to himself. This would mean creatures characterized by intelligent, righteous love, which is the steering quality of the many-faceted unity of God’s nature. Love must be free, because charity is a free gift. Human freedom involves some control of power, i.e., of the dying but real power in nature. (If God were the only now-existing power, to the extent to which men controlled power they would be controlling God, which would be sinful.)

There are two ways by which God might conceivably bring evolution about. It may be that the merely statistical regularity of matter at the subatomic level gives God leeway for an occasional miraculous manipulation of matter, which, from within the creation, would seem to science to be only that slight irregularity which appears as a kind of normal “bunching” of activity within nature’s over-all statistical regularity.

The other suggestion is that the supernatural God always intimately “environments” his creation, and so by brooding appreciation may have loved matter into an increasing, unforced response to himself. We know that in undemanding aesthetic appreciation, where a man lays himself open to the influence of the beauty of an inanimate object, his receptivity becomes the channel through which the object is enabled to give him more of its beauty. Appreciation then can be a kind of semi-interpersonal relation in which only one of the parties needs to be conscious.

What we call life in its terrestrial evolution would then be simply the increasing ability of matter to reflect the complex divine characteristics. The higher animals can reflect consciousness, but only man can reflect the steering quality of God’s nature, which is intelligent, righteous love. When the reflection included intelligent, righteous love, man existed on earth, made in the image of God. But in creating life God always works against a previously existing cosmic tendency toward decay (original sin).

As I have tried to show in my own book, we can now propose a consistent answer to the age-old question of why, if the Creator is good, there should be death, pain, and sin. Death is due to our involvement with the dying universe. Pain is the creature’s felt lack of conformity to the pattern of existence appropriate to its degree of reflection of characteristics of God. Culpable sin is willful, responsible deviation from supreme loyalty to God and his characteristic of intelligent, righteous love. By abandoning the attempt to hold to God and to the appropriate pattern of reflection of the divine characteristics, a man clutches the creation for safety, and so is spiritually trapped in the cosmos’s over-all pattern of decay. As the Bible says, “The wages of sin is death.”

Christ not only perfectly reflects the divine characteristics but also himself partakes of the indestructible, deathless divine nature. Besides ransoming sinful men by his death, he was also able to break decay’s stranglehold upon men, when as Jesus Christ he carried back his full humanity to the Father after Calvary.

Newly Published

Tongues of Men and Angels, by William Samarin (Macmillan, 277 pp., $7.95), and Speaking in Tongues, by Felicitas Goodman (University of Chicago, 175 pp., $7.50). Samarin, an evangelical who is a linguistics professor, offers the results of lengthy, widespread study in this major contribution that should be of interest to a widely varying readership. He combines respect for “tongues-speakers” as people and as Christians with linguistic analysis of the claims made for these “tongues” and constructive suggestions for understanding what they really are. Goodman approaches the same subject from the neighboring discipline of ethnography and without the same Christian orientation. Her work is useful for the reports of her cross-cultural field studies. Advocates of glossolalia need to be as vigorous in their concern for documentation and accuracy as these two scholars have been.

Evolution or Degeneration: Which?, by Hilbert Siegler (Northwestern [3616 W. North Ave., Milwaukee, Wis. 53208], 128 pp., $3 pb), The Early Earth, by John Whitcomb (Baker, 144 pp., $1.50 pb), and A Biblical Manual on Science and Creation, by Henry Morris (Institute for Creation Research [2716 Madison Ave., San Diego, Calif. 92116], 80 pp., n.p., pb). Those who say the Bible requires us to believe our planet came into being in 144 hours a few thousand years ago will welcome these books, which staunchly advocate that position and attempt to show how the scientific data, rightly understood, support their view.

Protestant-Catholic Relations in America, by Lerond Curry (University Press of Kentucky [Lexington, Ky. 40506], 124 pp., $7.25). Well-documented survey of major trends from 1917 to 1967. Good background reading for the current parochaid debate.

Issues of Theological Warfare: Evangelicals and Liberals, by Richard J. Coleman (Eerdmans, 206 pp., $3.45 pb). A discussion guide to the controversy on Jesus Christ, revelation, inspiration, prayer, and social action. Representative readings are chosen from the more irenic conservatives and less radical liberals in an effort to avoid arriving at J. Gresham Machen’s denunciation of liberalism as “another [non-Christian] religion.”

So Now You Are A Christian, by Stephen Brown (Revell, 127 pp., $4.50). An outstanding book for its purpose. In ordinary language (not Christian jargon or hip youth-talk) Brown gives practical, balanced, advice to new Christians.

Why Conservative Churches Are Growing, by Dean M. Kelley (Harper & Row, 184 pp., $6.95). Amazing book. Kelley is a United Methodist serving on the staff of the National Council of Churches. But he approaches the subject sociologically, “telling it like it is.” His title could just as well be “Why Liberal Churches Are Dying.” His key point: denominations and sects wax and wane to the extent that they primarily serve distinctively “religious” purposes. (By “conservative” the author does not mean only “orthodox”; his book also covers the innovative “sects and cults.”)

Jesus and His Teachings, by Fred L. Fisher (Broadman, 157 pp., $4.95). The New Testament professor at Golden Gate Baptist ably defends the reliability of the Synoptics against their critics and summarizes what they report of our Lord’s teachings.

A History of Israel, by John Bright (Westminster, 519 pp., $9.95). A thoroughly revised second edition of one of the best scholarly works on the subject.

The Spirituals and the Blues, by James H. Cone (Seabury, 152 pp., $4.95). A survey of Negro spirituals and blues music. Their history is the history of the black people; spirituals helped to provide racial identity.

The Fruit of the Spirit, by John Sanderson (Zondervan, 128 pp., $1.50 pb). We need less talk about some once-for-all experience with the Spirit and more, much more, about practical ways to exhibit day-after-day love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and the rest of the fruit of the Spirit. This excellent book is especially suitable for group discussion.

It’s Happening With Youth, by Janice Corbett and Curtis Johnson (Harper & Row, 176 pp., $4.95). Descriptions of fifteen local, innovative, nonevangelistic ministries among the young that “old-line” congregations have helped to launch.

Letters and Papers from Prison, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Macmillan, 240 pp., $4.95). A more accurate translation of Bonhoeffer’s best-known book, Prisoner For God, edited by his friend and biographer Eberhard Bethge.

Crises of the Republic, by Hannah Arendt (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 240 pp., $6.95). A Jewish philosopher offers some hard thinking on the problems of our and other republics; a bitter-tasting but healthy antidote to political propaganda from both the left and the right.

Call to the Streets, by Don Williams (Augsburg, 93 pp., $2.50 pb), Spaced Out and Gathered In, by Jerry Halliday (Revell, 126 pp., $.95 pb), and The Jesus People Speak Out, compiled by Ruben Ortega (David C. Cook, 128 pp., $.95 pb). Testimonies from those involved with the Jesus movement. Williams has a Ph.D. and his ministry is based at “establishmentarian” Hollywood First Pres. Halliday is an authentic former drug addict who takes pains to make clear that though he’s now born again he’s still uncomfortable with “church people.” Ortega tape-recorded brief comments from scores of Jesus people across the country; his book at least serves to show the diversity of the movement.

Solving Problems in Marriage, by Robert Bower (Eerdmans, 148 pp., $2.45 pb). Designed to be read by couples with problems or with the possibility of them. By an evangelical psychologist.

Be a Star Witness, by Evelyn Cuttle (Christian Literature Crusade, 87 pp., $1.25 pb). A chatty book on personal evangelism that may be helpful to some readers.

White House Sermons, edited by Ben Hibbs (Harper & Row, 216 pp., $5.95). The sermons from 1969 and 1970. Preachers included Billy Graham, Cardinal Cooke, and Rabbi Finkelstein.

The Glory of Galatians, by Fred Wood (Broadman, 147 pp., $2.95 pb), The Epistle to the Hebrews, by William MacDonald (Loizeaux, 245 pp., $3.95), James, by Harold Fickett, Jr. (Regal, 167 pp., $.95), and Highlights of the Book of Revelation, by George Beasley-Murray (Broadman, 86 pp., $2.95). Worthwhile short commentaries for laymen. Beasley-Murray accepts a premillennial view of Revelation.

Holy Spirit Baptism, by Anthony Hoekema (Eerdmans, 101 pp., $1.95 pb). The theology professor at Calvin Seminary irenically compares neo-Pentecostal teaching on Spirit baptism with what the Bible teaches. An important contribution, deserving of wide circulation among all sides on this topic.

Handbook of Happiness, by Charles Solomon (Grace Fellowship [200 S. Sheridan Blvd., Denver, Colo. 80226], 126 pp., $2.95 pb). Introduces “spirituotherapy” in place of even Christian psychotherapy. This approach doubtless helps many, and Christians do need to be discriminating about psychiatry and psychology. However, the sweeping claims for spirituotherapy need more dispassionate scrutiny.

Communicating Good News, by David W. Augsburger (Mennonite Publishing House, 110 pp., $1.75 pb). A good study guide on evangelism.

The Savage God: A Study of Suicide, by A. Alvarez (Random House, 299 pp., $7.95). To the study of suicide, this poet and critic contributes both a literary perspective, tracing the “black thread” to its prominence in contemporary writing, and a personal perspective, baring the feelings and circumstances that led to his own suicide attempt.

The Plain Truth About Armstrongism, by Roger R. Chambers (Baker, 146 pp., $1.25 pb). The Worldwide Church of God with its Ambassador Colleges, Plain Truth magazine, and “World Tomorrow” broadcast has gained a wide following. It professes to be simply biblical, but despite a number of partial truths its key doctrines, such as those regarding God and salvation, are in sharp opposition to any normal interpretation of apostolic teaching. Chambers focuses on disproving the movement’s erroneous base in British-Israelism. It is to be hoped that his book will dissuade many from ensnarement.

Masters of Deception: An Expose of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, With Clear-Cut Suggestions For Refuting Their Teachings, by F. W. Thomas (Baker, 162 pp., $2.45 pb), and The Inside Story of Jehovah’s Witness, by W. C. Stevenson (Hart, 211 pp., $1.95 pb). These books complement each other. The former is stronger on positive biblically-based refutation. The latter, a reissue, is by a Britisher who was with the sect for fourteen years and gives helpful insights.

White Robe, Black Robe, by Charles Mee, Jr. (Putnam’s, 316 pp., $7.95). An account in journalistic style of the beginnings of the Reformation. It is portrayed as inevitable because of the differences in background and outlook of the chief adversaries, revolutionary Martin Luther and establishmentarian Leo X, whom the Catholics had the misfortune (from their viewpoint) to have as pope. Those who wanted to bring the church into close conformity with the New Testament would wince at the portrayal of Luther as revolutionary.

Where to Go For Help, by Wayne E. Oates and Kirk H. Neeley (Westminster, 224 pp., $3.25 pb). A revised edition of a useful guide to six helping professions and nineteen special problems. Includes many addresses and brief bibliographies.

The Family First, by Kenneth Gangel (His International Service [1515 E. 66th St., Minneapolis, Minn. 55423], 139 pp., $1.95 pb). A very good attempt to relate biblical teachings on marriage and childraising to the contemporary scene. Gangel is head of Trinity seminary’s Christian-education program.

When Two Become One, by William Hulme (Augsburg, 96 pp., $2.50). A book of short devotional readings especially suitable to give to the newly married.

Machen’s Notes on Galatians, by J. Gresham Machen (Presbyterian and Reformed, 225 pp., $3.95 pb). Chiefly reprints notes on Galatians 1:1–3:14 that were first published two decades ago as a series in a periodical.

Bird Walk Through the Bible, by Virginia C. Holmgren (Seabury, 216 pp., $6.95). Probably the definitive study of the 250 Bible passages that deal with birds. A serious bird-watcher’s delight. Gives North American counterparts.

The Changing Values on Campus: Political and Personal Attitudes of Today’s College Students, by Daniel Yankelovich (Washington Square, 246 pp., $2.95 pb). Those committed to reaching today’s collegians for Christ will find this a helpful guide to many of the variations among them.

Voices From the Drug Culture, by Harrison Pope, Jr. (Beacon, 147 pp., $2.45 pb). Written from a sociological aspect, this is one of the best discussions of why middle- and upper-middle-class people turn to drugs. Some of the reasons: boredom, fear, depression, loneliness.

Counter-Revolution and Revolt, by Herbert Marcuse (Beacon, 138 pp., $7.50). Beacon Press always reminds us that it is “proud to have published” several works by America’s old Germanic Gnostic Marxist, Herbert Marcuse. Here it gives us more of his original and very dogmatic views of our “repressive” social order, as well as some of his misgivings about anti-intellectualism in the New Left.

The Other Dimension: A Search For the Meaning of Religious Attitudes, by Louis Dupre (Doubleday, 565 pp., $10). A monumental effort to lay ground rules and to come to some conclusions about the phenomenology of religious life in all its variety. A massive work of scholarship so inclusive that it comes to no real conclusions, despite the author’s expressed commitment to Christianity. Very valuable for background but not for conviction.

Contemporary New Testament Interpretation, by William Doty (Prentice-Hall, 176 pp., $7.95, $3.95 pb). Intended as an advanced-level introduction to what selected New Testament professors in the more prestigious universities say to one another. Of questionable value to those concerned with what the New Testament writers have to say to us.

The Politics of God and the Politics of Man, by Jacques Ellul (Eerdmans, 199 pp., $3.45 pb). Reflections on our political predicament derived from the author’s study and meditation in Second Kings. Ellul, a legal scholar and former deputy mayor of a major French city, is very conservative in his faith and radical in the way in which he brings biblical truth into play against both the comfortable platitudes of the political right and muddle-headed cliches of the political left.

The Beginning of the End, by Tim LaHaye (Tyndale, 173 pp., $3.95, $1.95 pb), and Orbit of Ashes: Jesus Is Coming!, by Bill McKee (Tyndale, 142 pp., $1.25 pb). In view of the sales success of The Late Great Planet Earth, it’s not surprising that more books like it will appear. All three of these express the views of Christ’s return popularized by Scofield.

Samuel Willard: Preacher of Orthodoxy in an Era of Change, by Seymour Van Dyken (Eerdmans, 224 pp., $5.95). A long overdue study of one of the most important preachers of the second generation of New England Puritans.

Theological Investigations: Volumes VII and VIII, by Karl Rahner (Herder and Herder, 302 and 273 pp., $9.75 each). Collected essays from a variety of sources by the leading liberal Roman Catholic theologian of the fifties and early sixties, who now qualifies as more conservative than many Catholics in the news. Devoted to questions of discipleship, attitudes, and practice.

The Christian Reader’s Guide to the Old Testament, by David Waite Yohn (Eerdmans, 200 pp., $3.45 pb). Thirty-three brief sermons stressing the covenant theme by the dean of student counseling at MIT, who was formerly Dartmouth College pastor.

Manifestations of Discontent in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation, edited and translated by Gerald Strauss (Indiana University, 247 pp., $3.50 pb). Thirty-five carefully selected and annotated late medieval documents reflecting political, economic, social, and religious grievances.

Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Attitudes of Southern Baptists, by John Eighmy (University of Tennessee, 249 pp., $11.50). A major contribution. From its origins in slavery controversies of the 1840’s down to the present, Eighmy reports the extensive involvement with social issues of the country’s second largest religious body. The book is documented primarily from what leaders have said, but Eighmy explains why such sources are largely representative of the whole denomination.

Ways of Understanding Religion, edited by Walter Capps (Macmillan, 399 pp., $5.25 pb), and Reader in Comparative Religion, edited by William Lessa and Evon Vogt (Harper & Row, 570 pp., $9.95 pb). Two collections of previously published writings. The latter, now in its third edition, is primarily by anthropologists. The former includes many philosophers of religion as well.

The Yogi, the Commissar, and the Third-World Church, by Paul D. Clasper (Judson, 95 pp., $1.95 pb). Tries to bring all religions under Christianity’s banner, regardless of their beliefs.

An Introduction to the Holy Land, by J. H. Winn Hoswell (St. Martin’s, 140 pp., $4.95), Jerusalem, by G. Frederick Owen (Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 180 pp., $4.95), and O Jerusalem!, by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre (Simon and Schuster, 637 pp., $10). Haswell offers a tour guide for the Holy Land; he includes some brief historical comments about the places mentioned. Owen does the same for Jerusalem. The third volume, written in journalistic style (short paragraphs and short words), narrates the birth of modern Israel. Each book has pictures.

Cardinal Contarini at Regensburg, by Peter Matheson (Oxford, 193 pp., n.p.). An important contribution to the study of early Catholic-Protestant conflict, focusing on a complex and prominent figure at a 1541 colloquy.

Medieval Church and Society, by Christopher Brooke (New York University, 256 pp., n.p.), and A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages, by Walter Ullman (Barnes and Noble, 389 pp., n.p.). Brooke collects a dozen of his essays written over the past fifteen years, half of them previously published. Hildebrand, Thomas Becket, Francis, Dominic, and Innocent III are among the luminaries studied. Like Brooke, Ullmann is a foremost British medievalist; he gives us as thorough a survey as most of us would want.

In The Journals

Bible and Spade made its appearance last winter as a journal planning to familiarize the non-specialist with the findings of Near Eastern archaeologists, especially when these contribute “to the authentication and illumination of the Holy Scriptures.” The editors display a good awareness of the reliable sources in the field and also a reasonably balanced approach to a topic often marred by sensationalism from divergent quarters. (5 Woodsvale Rd., Madison, Conn. 06443; quarterly, $3/year.)

Studia Biblica et Theologica, edited by Eric Behrens (Fuller Seminary [135 N. Oakland, Pasadena, Calif. 91101], 62 pp., $2 pb). The second annual edition includes papers by four seminarians on Finney, the Atonement, Colossians, and recent interpretations of Mark.

Four years ago in the May, 1968, issue, Church Growth Bulletin asked: “Will Uppsala Betray the Two Billion?” The circumstances were as follows. The World Council of Churches was about to convene its Fourth Assembly at Uppsala, Sweden. Early that year the WCC’s Commission on World Mission and Evangelism had published a document on mission, titled Renewal in Mission, which, at the Uppsala meeting was to be discussed, possibly revised, and issued as the council’s plan for mission and evangelism in the seventies. The faculty at Fuller Seminary’s School of Mission studied Renewal in Mission with care and were alarmed to see that it contained no plans for evangelism and interpreted “mission” solely as horizontal reconciliation of man with man.

The document called for a radical diversion of mission away from the Great Commission, away from the proclamation of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, and particularly away from church-planting evangelism. Renewal in Mission was not calling Christians to renewed zeal in making the Saviour known and persuading men to believe in him, repent of their sins, be baptized and incorporated in his church, and then venture forth in the power of the Holy Spirit as salt and light in the world, full of righteousness, justice, and brotherhood, thus bringing about substantial changes for good in the social order. Renewal in Mission, while freely using the great words of mission, was using them in radically new ways. For example, changing the social order through revolution (apparently regardless of what the revolutionaries believed about Jesus Christ) was called reconciling men to God. Instead of affirming that mission takes place at points of unbelief, the document says that “mission takes place at the points of tension.” Mission’s “places of opportunity” are “the unresolved religious, social and political problems, the situations which deprive men of the hope of renewal and cry out for the good news of the new humanity.”

At the very time that great movements toward Christ were developing in scores of countries the basic mission concept of inviting men to become Christ’s followers in his church was notable by its absence. Instead of calling on men to believe on Jesus Christ and persuading them to become responsible members of his church, the Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches was, it seemed, about to place its sole emphasis on exhorting Christians to act justly toward their fellow men.

Since at least two billion have not heard of Christ, the proposed action would condemn these multitudes to live without the power of Christ in their lives and die without even hearing of the way of salvation. This, the Fuller mission faculty believed, would leave the two billion without hope. It would deprive them of that radical renewal which comes through justification by faith and being “in Christ.” It would withhold from nations that Power they need above all powers, that Wisdom they need above all wisdoms, if they are to develop as God wishes them to develop. It would focus their hopes on man instead of on God. It would leave them without the Bible, without the Church, and without the means of grace. It would, in short, betray the two billion.

The School of Mission faculty devoted the May, 1968, issue of Church Growth Bulletin to an extended plea to the Fourth Assembly to see the fatal error of the preparatory document and revise it radically.

That issue created a storm (recounted in The Eye of the Storm, Word, 1972). World Council leaders wrongly considered it an attack on them. Actually it was a plea for them to turn from excessive concern with humanization and to lay at least equal stress on proclaiming Christ as divine and only Saviour and persuading men to become his disciples and responsible members of his church.

At the Fourth Assembly of the World Council, the two-page theological section of Renewal in Mission was, through the efforts of John Stott, David Hubbard, Paul Rees, and a few other evangelical leaders, considerably revised. Unfortunately the outcome was a patchwork in which opposite opinions were written side by side. In the practical section, Douglas Webster, an Anglican, on the third attempt, backed up by Norwegian churchmen and by a resolution passed in the plenary session of the World Council, got inserted mention of the hundreds of millions who have not heard the Gospel and of the duty of the Church to take it to them.

Some took great comfort in these small concessions. But the great question remained: Would the World Council of Churches regard the document as revised and passed at Uppsala its marching orders in mission, or would it disregard the few words on Great Commission mission and divert mission to horizontal reconciliation?

Four years have passed, and that question has been answered. The articles, pamphlets, and books pouring forth from Geneva and the conciliar mission boards are directed very largely (and in many cases exclusively) to carrying on mission conceived as humanization. Some denominations abroad have ceased evangelizing—and growing. Some boards recall missionaries who are active in evangelism. Funds are readily available to establish agricultural centers for distributing new strains of rice or wheat; but for carrying on nation-wide campaigns of evangelism there is nothing. The result of the convenient doctrine that evangelism is the task of the younger church has often been that little evangelism occurs. Publicity, personnel, and cash are given to development, not discipling. The focus remains unswervingly on man.

One scans WCC publications in vain for an expression of concern that men know Jesus Christ, be baptized as he has commanded, and be added to the Lord in the Church of Christ. Conciliar leaders plead constantly that mission must be to “the whole man.” What they mean is that mission must be to bodies, minds, and social organizations. Concern for the immortal souls of men is not only neglected: it is scorned.

The immensity of the change frequently escapes Christians. Two factors camouflage this huge revolution in mission.

First, while the theory, theology, and methodology of missions emanating from the World Council and its subsidiaries are remarkably consistent in their hostility to evangelism, conciliar denominations and missionary societies have many evangelicals in their ranks. These evangelicals go on preaching Christ, actively seeking members, baptizing converts, starting new churches, and obeying all those commands of Christ that the Official Line seldom if ever mentions. The younger churches on the whole are conservative. Although some of their leaders have been taken to Europe and America and “educated” in the new fashion in missions, most of their ministers, bishops, and elders are biblical Christians. The new line does not affect them much—yet. They may even use the “in” words while continuing vigorously to evangelize. If they really understood the heresy they would refuse to go along with it; but in a permissive age, when heresy is no longer recognized, they are inclined to say, “Let them do their thing. The fringe is always doing something peculiar. We shall simply do the right as God gives us to see the right.”

Thus the seriousness of the deviation is masked. It appears as if the conciliar denominations were doing considerable evangelism and church planting. What is being done should not conceal the fact that their evangelistic effort is commensurate neither with their strength nor with the amazing opportunities of the day.

The second aspect of the camouflage is deliberate concealment of the magnitude of the change in theory and theology of mission. The present leaders have learned from the experience in 1933 of William Hocking, who was head of the Laymen’s Commission on Mission. Hocking proposed that the age of church-planting missions was over, and that the age of coexistence with the great religions, each reconceiving itself in the light of the others, had begun. Hocking was an honest man and made his recommendation quite openly. It was rejected unanimously by churches, mission boards, missionary leaders, and churchmen all around the world.

In contrast, the present change has been most carefully camouflaged. Nowhere, for example, do the Uppsala documents say that there should be no more conversion evangelism and church multiplication. Indeed, some escape hatches have been built in. But J. C. Hoekendijk, who is the source from which much of the Geneva Line on missions has sprung, writes openly: “It is impossible to think of the plantatio ecclesiae as the end of evangelism. It is too poor a conception and betrays too clearly a lack of expectant hope” (quoted in Eye of the Storm, p. 49).

The writings on mission that emanate from conciliar sources are full of the old sacred, emotion-laden words—God, salvation, conversion, evangelism, mission, priorities for mission, mobilizing the people of God for mission, proclaiming the Gospel by word and deed, and the like. But these words have been systematically humanized. The biblical meanings held by generations of scholars of all the various branches of the Church have been jettisoned in favor of new meanings, suddenly discovered after 1955 to be the real ones! Thus “conversion” is no longer the turning of individuals and groups from idols to serve the true and living God, but is rather turning to new and better forms of social structure, to new and more just forms of labor-capital relationships, and to forms of land owning that give the masses a fair deal. Thus in a WCC book called Salvation Today, one article is entitled “Saved by Mao.” “Mission” has become, not proclaiming Christ and persuading men to become his disciples and responsible members of his church, but rather “everything God wants done.” For instance, cooperating with a revolution in Brazil or Chile is called mission. There is no end to the reinterpretation.

The plane of missions winging its way to Jerusalem has been hijacked. Most of the passengers are unaware of the event. It is the same plane, the same stewardesses, the same flight crew, but the destination is different. The multi-million dollar income, the headquarters buildings, the property around the world amounting to hundreds of millions, the good will that keeps the dollars and pounds, marks and yen rolling in—all this, given for and dedicated to propagating the Gospel, is now being devoted to mission considered solely as social action.

The plane is heading to Havana, not Jerusalem. The “gospel” being advocated is that of a fair deal in this world—not eternal salvation, good both in this world and the next. Mission is working toward the “new humanity,” not by reconciling sinners to God through Jesus Christ his Son, but by bringing about just and humane structures of society.

All this continues in the face of earnest pleas by evangelicals that Christians emphasize both vertical and horizontal reconciliation. The Frankfurt Declaration says:

We affirm the determined advocacy of justice and peace by all churches, and we affirm that “assistance in development” is a timely realization of the divine demand for mercy and justice as well as of the command of Jesus: “Love thy neighbor.”

We see therein an important accompaniment and verification of mission. We also affirm the humanizing results of conversion as signs of the coming Messianic peace.

We stress, however, that unlike the eternally valid reconciliation with God through faith in the Gospel, all of our social achievements and partial successes in politics are bound by the eschatological “not yet” of the coming kingdom and the not yet annihilated power of sin, death, and the devil, who still is “prince of this world” (quoted in Eye of the Storm, p. 292).

While many conciliar leaders have—as individuals—commended and even taken part in Evangelism in Depth, New Life For All, Billy Graham’s crusades, and the like, the councils as councils have stayed aloof. The only comment on Evangelism in Depth was an attack on it in the WCC’s International Review of Mission. And to combat the concept of church growth, the International Review assembled eight writers from all over the world—Orthodox Syrian, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, and others—who on many counts found unacceptable the idea that the growth and multiplication of Christian churches should be a chief determinant of the policies of missionary societies.

The conciliar forces seem unable to diminish polarization by declaring that, of course, salvation of men through belief in Jesus Christ, reconciliation with God in the Church of Jesus Christ, always has been, is now, and ever will be a major end of Christian mission in which all Christians should engage, while at the same time they work steadily forward “doing good to all men” and changing the structures of society as they are able so that the structures themselves add to humanization. The net result is that the powerful direction from Geneva and offices of the great “missionary” societies veers farther and farther away from the propagation of the Gospel.

Yes, Uppsala has betrayed the two billion at their point of greatest need. We can only pray that leaders of the conciliar churches will reverse Uppsala, and return the hijacked plane of missions to its proper course. In the meantime, may God raise up men and women from every nation who as missionaries of the Good News, in true missionary societies, will liberate these hundreds of millions into the glorious liberty of Christ.

Donald McGavran is dean emeritus of Fuller Seminary’s School of World Mission and Institute of Church Growth. He served as a missionary of the Disciples of Christ for thirty-five years. He holds the B.D. from Yale Divinity School and the Ph.D. from Columbia University.

On a recent furlough journey from Tanzania to the United States I revisited Japan for the first time since 1935, which was two years before Japan invaded China and thereby helped set the stage for the Second World War. How conspicuously it has changed! In earlier days the nation moved on wooden clogs, whose deafening clatter in such places of concentrated hurry as the Tokyo Railway Station formed a kind of national salute to the rising sun. Now all of at least urban Japan moves quietly and resolutely forward in thoroughly modern footgear. For me this was an introductory symbol of the nation’s change.

I was already partly aware of Japan’s progress. In recent years its radios, cameras, cars, and trucks have invaded East Africa, town and bush. Two years ago in Lubumbashi I had come across the preliminary work of the Japanese in exploiting the fabulously rich Central African mineral area on the farther side of the great continent. And in magazines I had read of their unexampled capacity for building ships, notably supertankers, of their being now the third nation of the world in gross national product, and of their surpassing both the United States and Russia in the rate of production increase (Japan’s rate being 10–15 per cent per annum in recent years).

And this is the nation that Hiroshima put flat on its back. It has picked itself up and in a quarter of a century has thrust itself forward to the very first rank of nations. The purposeful, disciplined Japanese do enormous things in much less space than the rest of us. Poor in their own resources, they have become great by using the resources of others.

I am full of admiration for them. And I am led to ask two questions, the one as an American, the other as a missionary.

Looking upon Japan’s phenomenal rise, particularly as one of several impressive power changes on the international scene, I ask myself as an American, Is there rising fast about us the scaffold for taking us down from preeminence among the nations (if indeed we now hold that rank)? Is some nation, or combination of nations, with the eminently Japanese qualities of resolution, drive, and discipline about to remove us from supremacy?

I make no predictions. I merely urge that we soberly consider what it would be like to have someone else at the top. Losing preeminence among the nations means loss of the chief opportunity to give world service as a nation. In view of the role of nations in the purposes of God, this is serious. Nations, no less than individual people, are servants of the Master. His assignment of stewardship, in accordance with the teaching of his own parable, is with an eye to returns, and tenure as steward is based solely on performance; when the Master summons his nation servants for a redistribution of the talents, only a fool will think it a time of merriment.

Is there no honorable retirement from the chief rank among the nations? Conceivably a nation might want to relinquish leadership in mundane matters in order to concentrate on things of the spirit. But this is hardly our case, not with the clamor for higher wages and higher profits so strident that we have been driven to the first peacetime abandonment of a free market in an effort to save the value of the dollar. The overwhelming presumption is that our displacement at the top would be a judgment, a deprivation of opportunity in view of our performance. This is especially so in the light of the Scriptures, with their great attention to the rise and fall of nations and with their emphasis on the justice of God’s reorderings of national power and eminence.

Consider our record. Much in American history is noble, not least in our international relations. Early we required a reputation for justice and for sympathy with the oppressed. When I was growing up in China I was often called yang kwei tzu, “foreign devil.” But when I was asked my nationality and answered “American,” the reaction was, I think, consistently favorable. The rapid recovery of defeated Japan after World War II is in great part due to the victor’s magnanimous help to the vanquished.

But a measure of economic generosity is not enough, particularly from a nation where prosperity is so great that it has almost become a national liability. If, as my denominational headquarters recently reported, for every dollar Americans spend on world missions, they spend $35 on personal care, $42 on tobacco, $58 on alcoholic drinks, $124 on recreation, $208 on clothing, accessories, and jewelry, and $269 on cars and transportation, then we are radically selfish and devoid of the desire to fulfill God’s will in bringing the knowledge of the truth in Jesus Christ to all men.

Now it is probably true that most of our people are unconverted and unregenerate, and lack even the beginning of true fear and love of God. Therefore they cannot be expected to be concerned about fulfilling his will in world missions. On the other hand, God judges a nation to which he has entrusted much by his own expectations, and will not excuse it because most of its members remain ignorant of the source of their blessings and indifferent to the will of the one who gave them. Thus we are provoking judgment on ourselves as a nation. (I am not suggesting that only national sins provoke national judgment, any more than I would suggest that only sins against the body are punished in the body.)

Another somber implication of displacement as top nation is liability—for the first time—to foreign oppression. Between nations, affliction (as well as comfort and help) is reciprocal. But oppression is always from above downward, and therefore only the top is safe from it. The superior is of course not bound to act oppressively, but whether he so acts or not depends solely, under God, on himself.

America’s freedom from foreign oppression is perhaps unique in world history. The explanation is that from the time of our emergence from virtual isolation, in the First World War, we have been the most powerful nation on earth. We can scarcely conceive of being denied the right to dissent (if denied, we would just dissent!)—the right, for example, to caricature our political leaders in openly published cartoons. But many countries as civilized and as liberty-loving as ours have in our own time awakened to the placarding of Verboten! or some similar order straight across their political life. Foreign oppression is standard equipment in God’s work of bringing the nations to their senses; it was his chief instrument in bringing his chosen people to reason and to obedience.

Again, I am making no predictions. I merely urge a sober look at the alternative to our staying at the top—and responsible behavior in accordance with such a look.

What should our course of action be? While we retain the leadership of nations, we are certainly not to flaunt our position in an orgy of self-indulgence. We are rather to exercise and cherish it in humble dependence on God and scrupulous observance of his revealed principles of national and personal conduct.

And what should we do if we lose that position, if the United States at long last is the victim of foreign oppression and finds its style of life dictated from a foreign capital? That would depend on the finality of the judgment. There are biblical examples of rebellion that have had God’s approval and blessing. There are also biblical examples of divine injunction to smart submissively under an alien yoke. There is God’s amazing requirement of Jeremiah—consider the infamy to which the prophet would be exposed!—that he direct his king and people to capitulate to the enemy and later that he counsel his exiled compatriots to seek to salvage what they could of national fortunes by avowed collaboration with the conqueror and solicitude for his welfare.

The second question I ask myself when I consider the phenomenal progress of contemporary Japan is, What does this say to us about Christian missions, particularly to Japan?

To my mind the most significant feature of contemporary Japan from the missionary point of view is its unprecedented combination of superior well-being with non-Christianity. Of all the great nations of the world, Japan has had the most rapid development, and of all the great nations of the world (excepting perhaps China, about whose Christian community we have little conclusive information), Japan appears to be the least Christianized. I don’t mean to belittle either the work of of the Christian missionaries or the social impact of the Christian Church in Japan; I merely put together the two facts that confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour is essential to Christian discipleship and that more than 99 per cent of the Japanese people make no avowal of Christianity.

Japan’s well-being does not consist only of material and technological advancement. It has also attained a kind of moral eminence. Ages ago the Japanese chose as their cultural mentors the Chinese, whose exposition of the proprieties made their own social order the most long-lived in history. Japan’s astonishing recovery is a prize exhibition of a whole cluster of virtues, notably resilience, quickness to see and seize opportunities, a remarkable loyalty to group enterprises and readiness to subject quick, private advantage to long-term community gain, and a wide-range dependability that is highly honored in the markets of the world. The visitor to Japan comes across surprising evidences of honesty among the people of the land. Then, too, there is the ethical concomitant of a liberal political system. Japan is one of the few non-western countries that can sustain multiparty politics. There is therefore in Japan at least some political group, that in free intercourse with like-minded elements in other lands, continuously presses in the highest governmental quarters for recognition of such enlightened principles as the dignity of the individual.

In attaining this superior ethical status Japan has certainly been moved in part—perhaps even profoundly—by Christian influences—but the significant point is that in it all the nation has rejected the Christian religion.

The Japanese have appropriated all that appealed to them in Western civilization while rejecting Christianity. In so doing they have sharply differentiated between civilization and Christianity, have virtually eliminated from their country the humanitarian work of the missionary, and have given great pertinence to the question, Is the Christianization of any country at all necessary?

In making this distinction between civilization and essential Christianization, the Japanese have shown a perspicacity and religious honesty not always found even in missionary circles, which have often confounded the two. The Japanese have appropriated only what they wanted and have made plain their belief that they did not need Christ.

Their extraordinary advance obviously puts them beyond the need of the humanitarian service of the Christian missionary. Nevertheless, to deplore the passing in Japan—and many other parts of the non-Christian world—of the need for this service is as unjustifiable as for the Good Samaritan to have wished for further muggings on the road to Jericho so that he could again show his Good Samaritanism. Being the Good Samaritan, he would inevitably have shown it in any new situation as well.

The situation in contemporary Japan is a striking throwback to the original missionary situation of the Christian Church.

The economic disparity that today makes it possible for fifty or more orphans in one country to be supported by the per-capita income of another country did not exist throughout most of church history. It dates from the Industrial Revolution, which in general made the West a “have” area and left the rest of the world largely an expanse of “have-nots.” Such a disparity certainly did not exist between Antioch, the first missionary-sending community, and Ephesus, Philippi, and Corinth, representative of the first missionary-receiving communities. The only relief organized by the Apostle Paul of which the Scriptures make any mention was in the opposite direction of the general flow of modern international Christian relief: it was from ex-pagan Christians to the mother church of them all, Jerusalem.

Economic comparability between sending and receiving countries prevailed during the whole course of missionary expansion down to the times approximately of Schwarz and Carey. When St. Francis Xavier landed at Kagoshima in 1549, he found Japan roughly comparable economically to Portugal, from which he had come.

When missionaries come to contemporary Japan, they are back in the situation of the Apostle Paul entering Ephesus and St. Francis entering Kagoshima, but with a difference. Paul met the Ephesians and St. Francis met the Kagoshimans on a level of economy and related factors that was virtually universal. Today the missionary finds the Japanese on a level similar to his own, but only because, though the missionary’s own (Western) level of well-being has soared in the last two centuries, by prodigious effort and in only decades the Japanese have risen to the same level and are, in fact, pushing that level still farther upward. Meanwhile the belated parts of the world are aching to join the club, and many of them are getting there fast.

This means in a very general way that in economics, education, politics, culture, and in a sense even ethics the contemporary Japanese are our peers in the same way that Ephesians, Philippians, and Corinthians were the peers of the Apostle Paul and his missionary colleagues; that, as a group, the hardhat Kobe shipwright and the marketwise matron in the Osaka department store, the girl in the white dress with matching hat and bag who is waiting for the commuter train and surprises us by speaking no English, only Japanese, and the bowing protagonist of the yen at the international monetary conference—all these persons are our peers in the same way that the Philippian jailor, and Lydia, the Thyatiran seller of purple, and the pitiable maid with a spirit of divination were all peers of Paul and Silas. Shorn of all preeminence in education, economic attainments, and educational, medical, and industrial skills, the missionary in contemporary Japan is reduced to the lowly place of Paul among the first-century Greeks! But—and this is the point—Paul engaged his world gloriously with stripped-down sheer evangelism. The great question contemporary Japan poses to the Christian Church is this: Have we the capacity to engage contemporary Japan and the rest of the fast homogenizing world with stripped-down sheer evangelism, or any evangelism?

What is to be our motive for evangelizing the Japanese? It certainly cannot come from any invitation on their part. Having arrived culturally and technologically, the Japanese make it very clear that they feel no need for the missionary. On the basis of a purely naturalistic assessment, we can hardly claim to offer them anything they cannot provide as well or better themselves. Japan’s increasing material prosperity meets most needs; if one’s view of man holds that he has religious and spiritual needs that also must be met, Japan has its own resources there as well. Soka Gakkai, for example, an indigenous Japanese religious movement only forty-two years old, has already gained more adherents in Japan than have all the varieties of Christianity combined in the 400 years since the inception of the missionary movement there. Soka Gakkai—along with many other non-Christian religious groups present in Japan—has both an ethical and religious dimension, demanding morality in daily living and inculcating a measure of religious awe and reverence for the supernatural. From a naturalistic perspective, we might conceivably argue that there is something to be gained by presenting Jesus Christ as a symbol of an untrammeled and authentic humanity that would be valid beyond the borders of Japan and thus hold a promise of bringing all the peoples of the world into some kind of unity. But all such considerations fall far short of supplying an adequate motive for real evangelization in the biblical sense.

The stripped-down sheer evangelism with which Paul engaged his Jewish and Gentile contemporaries was derived from divine commission:

I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me [Acts 26:15–18].

Without this commission, how could Paul have dared to confront his peers in civilization and culture with the charge that they were blind and caught in the power of Satan, alienated from the living God?

Without the same commission extended to us through the infallible Scriptures, how could we possibly dare to confront our contemporaries the Kobe hardhat, the Osaka matron, the white-dressed girl commuter, the bowing economist, with even the faintest suggestion that outside Christ they too are spiritually blind, dead in trespasses and sins, caught in the coils of Satan, and subject to the judgment of God, and that by believing in Christ they will be forgiven, resurrected, and handed a card to the glories of the ages to come? Without such a commission, how dare a missionary proceed to Japan? And with it, how can he keep away?

The contemporary missionary situation in Japan preserves intact the essence of the missionary situation gloriously exploited by the Apostle Paul and his companions, and the population of Japan alone is several times that of the whole classical world known to the first missionaries. Therefore the vista of evangelization possibilities that in Japan are spread before Bible-believing and Spirit-trusting missionaries is stupendous.

There are also in contemporary Japan, because of its advancement and strength, certain immunities for the Christian missionary. He cannot be charged with deculturization. Nor can he be accused of buying converts with the offer of hospital, schools, and orphanages. Nor, certainly, can he be said to be riding into contemporary Japan on the tails of imperialism. You don’t ride into wide-awake, up-and-coming Japan on the tails of anything.

In the evangelization of Japan, the astute Japanese have themselves set us an example by their virtuoso propagation of trade (Jesus himself commended to the children of light the superior wisdom of the children of this world in matters of their own generation). More than any other people, the Japanese seem unanimously committed to capturing every world market. Can Christians be less unanimous? The evangelization of Japan should be a matter of believing, obedient, prayerful, and means-providing concern for every Christian on earth. All of us must get behind the missionaries now in the field, and that unitedly, through the central office of the Holy Ghost.

Not only is Japan the least Christianized (or nearly so) of the great powers of the world; Japan is also in that condition of well-being to which all underdeveloped countries aspire, and which many of them will, unless the Lord hastens his coming, reach in time. Consider what an extraordinary entrée Japanese trade commissioners and tourists and exchange students serving as Christian missionaries would have to the other peoples of Asia and those of Africa—and perhaps to those of Europe and America as well!

H. Daniel Friberg is an ordained missionary of the Lutheran Church in America on furlough from Tanzania. He holds the Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Not long ago a package of books for review arrived from my denominational publishing house. One was by an Anglican, one by a Presbyterian, and one by a Baptist. Though different in several ways, all had one thing in common: they all mentioned John Wesley.

These references lend support to my observation that there has been, particularly in recent evangelical books and magazines, a rediscovery of John Wesley. We are discovering, I think, that his remarkable ministry in eighteenth-century England has much to say to us in the churches of twentieth-century America.

The Wesleyan revival brought perhaps the most thoroughgoing transformation of a society by the Gospel in history. This fact is particularly important for the Church in our chaotic era, for the Wesleyan Revival occurred during the period of upheaval that accompanied the Industrial Revolution in England.

The socio-political effects of the Wesleyan Revival have often been overdrawn. The thesis that Wesley saved England from a French-style political revolution is, at best, highly speculative and ignores important differences between French and English cultures of the day. Yet it is true that England improved considerably during the eighteenth century, and that the Wesleyan Revival was a major agent of this change.

The rediscovery of John Wesley can hardly be cause for pride by any present-day denomination. The Anglicans, by and large, turned their backs on Wesley. Methodists have to remember that Wesley died an Anglican and never officially became a “Methodist,” nor wanted Methodism to become a separate church. And most contemporary groups that consider themselves Methodist or Wesleyan have fallen into a rigidity and narrowness that is distinctly non-Wesleyan.

John Wesley is bigger than any one denomination. He belongs to the whole Christian Church, along with Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and others. All of us, “Wesleyans” and “non-Wesleyans” alike, can learn from his example.

Six elements of Wesley’s success impress me as especially pertinent to our day. Three of these have to do with Wesley’s message and three with his method.

John Wesley’s Message

John Wesley had a message to communicate, and its principal elements were these:

1. Personal salvation through Jesus Christ. Wesley emphasized the basic biblical teachings of man’s sin and lostness, Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection, and the transformation of the new birth. People listened and responded, by the thousands.

Wesley’s proclamation was clear. Though an Oxford scholar, he had no patience with high-sounding phrases that failed to communicate. It is said that Wesley would often preach a newly prepared sermon to his maid, a simple, uneducated girl, and have her stop him whenever she didn’t understand his words. His passion was to communicate with the masses. Preaching at Oxford, however, he might quote from Latin authors or from the Greek New Testament.

2. The Spirit-filled life. Wesley continually spoke of the need for the filling and continuing ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, and thousands of early Methodists found the experience a reality. In nearly every city he visited, Wesley carefully examined the members of the Methodist societies as to their Christian experience. Although he frequently found spiritual counterfeits, he also found much spiritual reality and power. The Holy Spirit was at work.

Wesley advocated much more than merely a crisis experience of the infilling of the Spirit; he stressed the need for ongoing Christian growth, the edification of the Church, the forming of the stature of Christ in each believer.

3. An active and involved social consciousness. Wesley was supremely an evangelist. And yet a list of his sermon titles, or of the pamphlets he published, reveals that his topics included such things as wealth, national sins, war, education, medical ethics, the Stamp Act, trade with North America, responsibility to the king, the liquor industry.

There was no question where Wesley stood on poverty and riches, sea piracy, smuggling, the slave trade, or other crucial issues of his day. And he did not think he was compromising his call as an evangelist when he preached on these issues on Sunday morning. Like the Old Testament prophets, he saw that the biblical faith touches every area of life and makes everyone morally responsible, from king to coal miner.

Wesley’s social concern got results. Why? First, because he awakened a new moral consciousness in the nation. Second, because others followed his example. Third, because his faithful evangelism resulted in thousands of transformed lives. He instilled in many converts this same social concern, thus producing a popular basis for social reform. He proved what church history from other times and places shows: there is no combination more potent than biblical evangelism plus biblical social concern, than Old Testament prophet plus New Testament evangelist.

Wesley did more than just talk about social reform. Among other things, he agitated for prison, liquor, and labor reform; set up loan funds for the poor; campaigned against the slave trade and smuggling; opened a dispensary and gave medicines to the poor; worked to solve unemployment; and personally gave away considerable sums of money to persons in need.

John Wesley’s Method

But his message is only part of the story, Wesley saw—or rather, learned—that the clearest, most biblical proclamation of the Gospel often had little effect if it was locked within the walls (literal or figurative) of the institutional church. Others before and since have preached as clearly and sincerely, but without half the results. Why? In part, because their message was encrusted in rigid, unbiblical ideas about the nature of the Church.

Wesley started out strictly high-church in his ecclesiology, but God didn’t let him stay there. Although to a considerable degree he was still a high-churchman at his death, in many ways he had learned to be remarkably flexible and unconventional.

This is shown by three aspects of Wesley’s ministry.

1. He did not restrict himself to the institutional church. John Wesley’s effectiveness dates from the time he began carrying the Gospel outside the four walls of the church.

It happened like this: Wesley’s friend the evangelist George Whitefield preached regularly to a large congregation of colliers (coal miners) at Kingswood, near Bristol. Whitefield’s method was “field preaching”—assembling a large crowd in an open field and there opening the Word. Wesley frowned on this at first, for he had been, in his words, “so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order that I should have thought the saving of souls a sin if it had not been done in church” (Journal, Epworth, II, 167).

Whitefield requested—practically insisted—that Wesley take over his congregation so he could return to America. Wesley did not want to accept, but after seeing Whitefield’s ministry he felt the call was from God. Says Wesley, “At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from an eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people” (ibid., p. 172).

The crowds grew. Soon there were congregations in other places, and within a few years throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland. Wesley had discovered that when people do not come to the church, it’s time for the church to go to the people.

Wesley, his brother Charles, and Whitefield did not win ecclesiastical praise for their efforts. As Bishop Leslie R. Marston notes, “These three men were called mad enthusiasts because they would free the gospel from the confining gothic arches of established religion and release it to the masses in street and field, to the sick and unclean in hovel and gutter, to the wretched and condemned in Bedlam and prison” (From Age to Age a Living Witness, p. 66).

Wesley was a devout churchman. He had no intention of founding a new dissenting group; he urged his hearers and new converts to attend the regular Anglican services. He never preached in field or marketplace during times of stated worship services. But he was also a realist. He saw that many simply would not attend the traditional church services, and that those who did failed to receive all the spiritual help they needed. And this leads to the second aspect of Wesley’s method.

2. He created new and workable structures for “koinonia.” One of the first things Wesley did with his converts was to divide them into groups of a dozen, each group with its own leader. These were the famous Wesleyan “class meetings.” Wesley soon discovered the spiritual dynamic of this small group structure. He said in 1742:

I appointed several earnest and sensible men to meet me, to whom I showed the great difficulty I had long found of knowing the people who desired to be under my care. After much discourse, they all agreed there could be no better way to come to a sure, thorough knowledge of each person than to divide them into classes, like those at Bristol, under the inspection of those in whom I could most confide. This was the origin of our classes in London, for which I can never sufficiently praise God, the unspeakable usefulness of the institution having ever since been more and more manifest [quoted by John Stott in One People, p. 72].

What was the result? Wesley later wrote,

Many now happily experienced that Christian fellowship of which they had not so much as an idea before. They began to “bear one another’s burdens” and naturally to “care for each other” [“Plain Account of the People Called Methodists,” Works, Zondervan Edition, VIII, 254].

Wesley introduced other new ideas of church practice also, such as lay ministers and simple, unpretentious “preaching houses.” He felt free to make such innovations because he conceived of Methodism, not as a new denomination, but merely as a “society” within the Anglican church.

Wesley’s efforts along this line say much to the churches of today, many of which are trapped in rigid institutional patterns. Few of today’s traditional churches really experience that “fellowship of the Holy Spirit” of which the New Testament speaks. The same was true of eighteenth-century Anglicanism, and Wesley did something about it.

3. He preached the Gospel to the poor. One of the crucial signs of the Kingdom is to whom the Gospel is being ministered. John Wesley, like Jesus, preached to the poor. He sought out those whom no one else was seeking.

Reading his Journal, one is impressed with how many times Wesley preached early in the morning, at five o’clock, or in the marketplace at ten. Why was he so often preaching at five A.M.? Certainly not for his convenience, but for the convenience of the men and women who went to work in mine or factory at daybreak. Wesley assembled the colliers in the fields before they started work, or the crowds in the marketplace at midday. His passion was to preach the Gospel to the poor, and among them he had his greatest response.

John Wesley had a message, and he didn’t muffle it behind stained glass. He went outside the church, preaching the Gospel to the poor. He refused to allow newborn babes to die of spiritual malnutrition, but provided spiritual homes and foster parents for them. He created new church forms—new wineskins—for those who responded. He matched a biblical message with methods in harmony with a biblical ecclesiology.

John Wesley’s Secret

How did Wesley “happen” to find this happy marriage of message and method? We face here, of course, the mystery of the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit. But we can see at least some of the ways the Spirit worked in Wesley’s life.

Wesley was not primarily a theologian, though he was theologically competent. He “theologized” sufficiently to find biblical answers to the basic questions of Christian experience and to confront social issues with biblical revelation. But he never worked out a consistent theological system. His theology was a mixture of high-church traditionalism, believer’s church pietism, and evangelistic pragmatism. On some questions, such as infant baptism, he never developed a firm position but held seemingly contradictory opinions.

There is not even unanimous agreement about whether Wesley was at heart an Arminian or a Calvinist! While he has generally been considered an Arminian, he was careful not to fall into antinomianism, and some have argued that his theology was basically Calvinistic.

So John Wesley’s secret was not essentially theological. But it was essentially biblical. Wesley, the scholar, the author and editor of many books, was a man of one book—the Bible. He accepted it implicitly and practiced it resolutely. This was his secret: the Word of God.

Wesley held the common-sense view that if the Bible was true, it would show itself true in human experience. So his points of reference were first the Bible and secondly experience—not church tradition, contemporary philosophy, or the opinions of others. What was said in the Bible and proved true in human experience was true, regardless of what others thought.

Wesley had his faults. He was something of an anti-Catholic bigot (although his personal relations with individual Catholics were above reproach). Some will choke on the fact that he was a pro-monarchy political conservative with little patience for upstart American revolutionary radicals.

He also had other things going for him than what we have mentioned here. He was a gifted administrator and chooser of men (even though some of the leaders he chose later betrayed him). His editing, condensing, and publishing of books—a complete library from history to medicine—was a ministry in itself. And he received immeasurable help from his brother Charles, who wrote hundreds of hymns that were sung to popular tunes of the day. (The early Methodists held an intelligible faith partly because they memorized much of it in the hymns of Charles Wesley.)

John Wesley was born June 17, 1703; was converted in Aldersgate Street on May 24, 1738; and died on March 2, 1791. Because he was biblical, because he walked where Christ walked, John Wesley was a man for our times.

the new propriety

There is a spirit growing among young Americans, the spirit of the new propriety. Theological radicals tend to fawn over it, trying to nurse it into its “full stature,” that of a new morality or situation ethic. Evangelicals try to crush it among their youth, before contributions to their schools wither or the name of Christ comes into disrepute.

Both the gleeful and the fearful miss the point. Myopically self-centered, they dwell on appearances and interpret them as fundamental changes, either good or bad.

Young Christians have accepted cultural manifestations ranging from dress to dance. The cinema has come into its own as an art form, and young believers, no longer suspecting celluloid to be demon-possessed, freely choose which films to attend. Bad cinema can be more boring or nauseating than pernicious.

In an age of coed dorms and off-campus apartments, young Christians at secular schools watch television, study, play games, and talk together in the once forbidden privacy of their rooms. Most committed Christian students have a sense of spiritual responsibility both to Christ and to others. They know that their lives are constantly on display before the non-Christians who are their roommates and neighbors. Segregated-by-sex dorms do not stymie students bent on immorality, even on Christian campuses (fraudulent sign-out destinations and other subterfuges provide alternatives).

Coed dorms and long hair are manifestations of a new propriety, not a new morality. This change has come about slowly and naturally, by circumstance rather than by design. Away at school and free of the usual restrictions, the younger generation has formed a new culture, and young Christians are a part of it. It is not that they have departed from the faith. Rather, they are living it out amid new social patterns.

As C. S. Lewis pointed out in Christian Behavior, “a girl in the Pacific Islands wearing hardly any clothes and a Victorian lady completely covered in clothes might be equally ‘modest,’ proper, or decent, according to the standards of their own societies.…” Young Christians may accept the cultural phenomena of shortened skirts, lengthened hair, and twenty-four-hour visitation privileges without changing their moral standards. Few Christian girls venture out in public conspicuously braless. But while Christians do not succumb to the prevailing morality, neither do they recoil in horror and set up a monastic counter-counter-culture.

No one should impose a guilt complex on the young. As long as they use their discretion and do not act to excite passion or give occasion to sin, they are guiltless. Those who are older need not lose sleep or agonize in prayer over long hair and coed dorms. The young need (and grudgingly appreciate) the prayers of mature Christians for their real problems, but accusation, innuendo, and morbidly probing curiosity serve only to aid the devil. Each generation should ignore trivial differences and pray for the real spiritual needs of the other, for both sides of the “propriety gap” face basically the same temptations, albeit in different surroundings.

Young and old, we are brothers and sisters in Christ. Let us make a testimony to a world beset by schism and close the generation gap in the ranks of the redeemed. The first step together is gaining an understanding of differences in propriety and a mutual tolerance bred of the Holy Spirit.—ROGER WILLIAM BENNETT, student, Bradley University, and orderly, Methodist Hospital of Central Illinois, Peoria.

Howard A. Snyder is dean of the Free Methodist Theological Seminary in São Paulo, Brazil. He has the B.A. (Greenville College) and the B.D. (Asbury Seminary).

The revelation of God in history, as Christians understand it, was originally recorded in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek by Jewish writers who represent a variety of cultures quite different from our own. We nonetheless understand God’s message of redemption in Christ through an English translation of the Bible, often the archaic King James translation, though we may not fully appreciate the nuances of the original documents. Problems of communication are compounded when Western missionaries bring the biblical message to primitive tribes.

In his book entitled Customs and Culture, Eugene Nida of the American Bible Society relates how a literal translation of biblical passages can convey misleading connotations to certain African tribes. The Kpelle of Liberia view the placing of palm branches in Jesus’ path (Matt. 21:8) as an insult, since their culture requires that all leaves be cleared from the path of any dignitary. The Zanaki of Tanganyika would regard Jesus’ knocking at a door (Rev. 3:20) as strange, since in their culture honest men call aloud at the door and the only ones who knock are thieves.

Cultures as well as languages differ, and these differences pose problems for understanding, communicating, and applying the Christian message.

What Is Culture?

Modern anthropologists use the term “culture” to designate the distinctive way of life of a given society, including such things as their values, manners, morals, and artifacts. According to Kluckhohn:

Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior, acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other as conditioning influences upon further action [C. Kluckhohn, Culture and Behavior, ed. R. Kluckhohn, 1962, p. 73].

Margaret Mead defines culture as:

An abstraction from the body of learned behaviour which a group of people who share the same tradition transmit entire to their children, and, in part, to adult immigrants who become members of the society. It covers not only the arts and sciences, religions and philosophies … but also the system of technology, the political practices, the small intimate habits of daily life, such as the way of preparing or eating food, or of hushing a child to sleep … [Cultural Patterns and Technical Change, 1955, p. 12].

Hershkovits has succinctly defined “culture” as “the man-made part of the environment.”

We seldom think consciously about our own culture. Our own ways of thinking, feeling, and acting seem so natural that we assume they must be correct. Only when we have been exposed to or plunged into a non-Western culture do we realize how different the ways of other people can be. Loss of familiar cues may even produce the uneasy feeling known as “culture shock.”

How Cultures Vary

Anthropologists have been struck by the fact that though there are certain basic needs common to all men, the responses in meeting these needs are almost infinitely diverse. Within the community, murder, incest, lying, and stealing are universally condemned. But how people regard property, family relations, time, and work, how they eat, drink, clothe themselves—such attitudes and activities vary from society to society. For example, Eskimos eat rotten walrus meat. The Chinese eat fermented duck eggs but cannot comprehend how Westerners can eat fermented milk (cheese).

Almost all people clothe themselves, however scantily; complete nudity is quite exceptional. But the ways in which people clothe their bodies are quite diverse. What is sexually provocative in one society may not be so in another. The Yapese in Micronesia consider uncovered breasts of women quite proper while bare legs are a sign of immodesty. When missionaries urged that women in the Ngbaka church in northern Congo wear blouses, an elder protested that in their area only prostitutes dressed in such a manner—only they could afford such garments.

How people relate to others is another matter that differs considerably from culture to culture. North Americans pride themselves on their frankness. Latin Americans may be quite reserved about telling someone else what they are thinking. An Oriental is more prone to tell someone what he thinks the other wishes to hear; missionaries in post-war Japan were thus misled by the seemingly positive responses their audiences gave to invitations to accept Christ.

In many societies it is important that gifts be given and received with both hands. A missionary in India insulted his congregation by passing the communion plate with his left hand. In Korea under the influence of Buddhism a person who receives a gift does not express thanks for the gift, on the principle that the giver, who obtains merit through giving, should be the one who should be thankful. Many societies seem callous to the needs of others outside their group. Yet these same people will impoverish themselves to provide for relatives. Americans’ impersonal giving to strangers may arouse suspicion rather than gratitude.

Among the Indians of North and South America, attitudes are often quite different from those of white men. A Hopi Indian child is taught that she should never strive to get ahead of others. If an Indian becomes exceptionally rich, he is expected to share his wealth with his kinsmen. Indians of Mexico are primarily interested in the present. If they have a surplus from their crops, they prefer to spend it all in a fiesta rather than save it for the future.

Many societies resist change except in peripheral items that make life easier without drastically changing the old patterns. Americans, on the other hand, welcome change and novelty. We are oriented toward the future. “Time with us is handled much like a material; we earn it, spend it, save it, waste it,” commented Edward T. Hall in The Silent Language. We value promptness. A North American kept waiting forty-five minutes for an appointment in a Latin American office would be furiously impatient. In our society a last-minute invitation may be considered insulting. In the Middle East and elsewhere, however, it is pointless to send out an invitation far in advance.

Western missionaries are accustomed to a systematic universe that rules out “logical” contradictions. They too often facilely assume that their converts will draw the same “logical” conclusions from the Scriptures, unaware that many peoples live with the conception of an unsystematic universe.

Biblical Cultures

To better appreciate the import of the biblical revelation we need to know something of the cultures of those who received that revelation—the Hebrews of the Old Testament period in the midst of pagan Near Eastern neighbors and the Jews of the New Testament period in their Greco-Roman world.

Looking back, we can understand to some degree why God chose these people to be the vessels of his revelation. Eugene Nida points out that many of the non-Western societies find it easier than Westerners to understand the Scriptures with their original connotations. He comments:

The selection of the Jewish people can be understood in some measure on the basis that God chose to reveal Himself through a people who, there at the crossroads of so many cultural influences at that point in world history, possessed a culture with greater similarities to a greater number of other cultures than has existed at any other time in the history of mankind [Message and Missions, 1954, p. 49].

God’s revelation in the New Testament shows continuity and also development. More than half the citations from the Old Testament are made from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. The spread of Greek as a common language after the conquests of Alexander the Great aided the dissemination of the Gospel. The first great historian of the Hellenistic Age, Johann Droysen, firmly believed that the rise of Christianity as a world religion would not have been possible without this cultural development.

Even within the confines of the New Testament one can detect cultural factors and differences. Jesus makes no reference to the Greek athletic games that provided the Apostle Paul with so many sermon illustrations. Even Pentecost did not obliterate the cultural differences between the Hebraist and Hellenist Christians (Acts 6:1).

Paul was able to distinguish between the unchanging supra-cultural message of the Gospel and its adaptability to various cultures. In his desire to reach all groups with the Gospel, he said he was ready to be “made all things to all men” (1 Cor. 9:22). Paul gave us the principle of respect for various cultural practices in his exposition of what Christians should do about meat that had been offered in sacrifices to idols (1 Cor. 10:23–33; Rom. 14; Col. 2:16; 1 Tim. 4:3, 4; cf. Acts 15:29).

The Bible and Cultural Relativity

Our culture is so different from that of biblical times that some critics (such as Bultmann) have dismissed much of the Bible as irrelevant, and others (such as Tillich) have rephrased the kerygma in such a way that it is no longer recognizable. At the other pole are some conservative Christians like Carl McIntire who claim biblical justification for capitalism and other facets of the American way of life. Hendrik Kraemer, the great missionary statesman, deplored the unconscious identification of Western culture with Christianity by missionaries who were not aware that Western Christianity was but a relative and imperfect adaptation of the biblical revelation:

It is a truly remarkable and pathetic fact that those who are the champions of the eternal and absolute validity of the Gospel perpetrate so easily the fatal mistake of raising the relative, historical expression, the earthen vessel, to the status of the absolute divine act and gift. It is one of the most subtle forms of idolatry [The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, 1938, p. 316].

I believe it is possible, though not always simple, to steer a middle course by seeking to extract from the Bible supracultural principles that can be applied to various cultural situations. We need to avoid the temptation of identifying any given cultural expression as the only Christian mode possible, and we must recognize the relative values in various cultural patterns. Just as it has been possible for missionaries to translate the Gospel into a multitude of languages, it is certainly possible for the Holy Spirit to work in a variety of cultures.

It is an error simply to take a biblical injunction out of its cultural context and attempt to reproduce it in our society without reflection upon its significance. Orthodox Jews believe it is unlawful to eat meat and milk dishes together on the basis of the biblical commandment, “Thou shalt not seethe [boil] a kid in its mother’s milk” (Exod. 23:19; Deut. 14:21). But the original intent of the injunction is made clear by a Ugaritic text of the fourteenth century B.C. that reveals that the prohibition was directed against a Canaanite ritual.

Among Roman Catholics (until recently) and certain Protestant groups, women are expected to wear a hat or at least some minimal covering on their heads on the basis of Paul’s directive to the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 11:5, 6). When Paul writes that a man should not cover his head in prayer (1 Cor. 11:7), he is referring only to Greek practice, for Jewish and Roman men did cover their heads while praying.

The observation that an unveiled woman would be an object of shame is based upon the very ancient and widespread custom that decent women were to be veiled in public. The Middle Assyrian laws of the twelfth century B.C. had strict rules for the veiling of married women. On the other hand, “A harlot must not veil herself; her head must be uncovered”; in fact, one who saw a veiled harlot had to arrest her or be flogged himself! Jewish women in Jesus’ day went out in public with their faces hidden. Qimhit, the mother of several high priests, would not even uncover her hair before the men of her own family.

Although styles have changed, there still remains the principle that one should not dress in a way that would offend public sensibilities (1 Cor. 11:16). It would be simply impossible, even in our day, for either the congregation or the preacher to concentrate on the message at hand if an attractive girl walked down the church aisle in a bikini.

A more controversial example is the question of the role of women in the Christian community. Are all Paul’s statements normative? Or do some apply specifically to the culture of his day? If so, which ones?

What was the position of women in Jewish society? Among the rabbis it was considered unwise to talk too much with women, including one’s own wife. It was also considered scandalous to talk with a woman alone. The education of women was limited to the domestic arts; they were not expected to study the Scriptures. Women attending the synagogues were separated from the men by a lattice or sat in a special gallery. During the service women were to listen in silence (see J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus, 1969, pp. 359 ff., esp. p. 373). The Mishnah (Kiddushin iv:13) stipulates that women may not be teachers of children. (The same text also bars unmarried men from this occupation.)

Christianity proclaimed the ideal equality of male and female, bond and free (Gal. 3:28). To the surprise of his disciples, Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:27). Christ had a number of devoted women among his disciples. Mary (Luke 1:46 ff.) and Timothy’s mother and grandmother (2 Tim. 3:14) were women who knew the Scriptures. Women played a prominent role in the early churches, as at Philippi; Priscilla even seems to have taken precedence over her husband Aquilla. Nonetheless in First Timothy 2:11–15Paul stresses woman’s pre-eminent role as a mother and denies her a public teaching role, not suffering her “to usurp authority over the man” (v. 12).

Scriptures from the beginning regard marriage and the family as God-given institutions. The Communists tried to abolish all sexual ethics after the revolution of 1917 and advocated the “glass of water” policy whereby one satisfied his sexual urge as freely as he satisfied his thirst. In the 1920s the disastrous consequences of this libertine policy forced them to reverse their stand and officially urge chastity before marriage and fidelity in marriage.

I believe that what Paul taught about a woman’s role as a mother and her subordination to her husband is still quite valid. On the other hand, in our own culture and in other cultures where women have a more equal public role with men than did the women of the first century, permitting a woman to teach in a church situation does not seem to be an usurpation of man’s authority. According to Eugene Nida:

Some missionaries have made the mistake of excluding women from all church responsibilities, thinking that in so doing they were adhering strictly to the rules (though not the principles) laid down by the Apostle Paul. Other missionaries have thrust entirely too much authority upon women, assuming that the role of women in the indigenous culture was roughly equivalent to that which they possess in our own culture. Both extremes are ill-advised, for it is the genius of the Good News of God that by the action of the Holy Spirit it may enter in and sanctify all forms of human institutions [Customs and Culture, p. 286].

The Universal Appeal of Christianity

Given the almost infinite variety of human cultures it is a most remarkable fact that the Christian Good News of God’s redemption in Christ has been preached successfully to so many societies. Here is a message that has burst the bonds of its parochial Palestinian origins and has touched the hearts of sophisticated philosophers and savage Auca Indians. Paul affirmed that in Christ there can be neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all (Col. 3:11). Scythians were nomads from Russia who were the epitome of savagery in the ancient world: they tatooed themselves, took scalps from their captives, and smoked hemp!

In the early second century the Roman governor of northwestern Anatolia, the Younger Pliny, in a letter to the Emperor Trajan complained about the appeal of Christianity to all classes, urban and rural alike. He was alarmed, “… for a great many individuals of every age and class, both men and women, are being brought to trial, and this is likely to continue. It is not only the towns, but villages and rural districts too which are infected through contact with this wretched cult.”

Rightly understood and rightly preached, Christ is the hope of glory for every man (Col. 1:27, 28), whatever his culture, his kindred, people, tongue, or nation (Rev. 5:9).

Edwin M. Yamauchi is an associate professor of history at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. His most recent book is “Gnostic Ethics and Mandaean Origins,” which was published in the “Harvard Theological Studies” series.

When President Nixon went to the summit at the Kremlin, we sent along our managing editor, David E. Kucharsky. His extended report appears in this issue. We think our readers will find in it some information and interpretation not made available by the other newsmen who accompanied the President.

During Billy Graham’s week-long visit to Ireland recently, we had our British representative, J. D. Douglas, cover the scene. We expect to publish his report shortly. The purpose of the trip was to promote healing in that troubled land through the Gospel.

By the time this issue arrives in readers’ homes I will have attended Explo ’72, the vision of Bill Bright, one of my former students. My own daughter Nancy and her husband Dan Sharp have joined the Campus Crusade staff as missionaries. Dan and Nancy are Wheaton College graduates, and Dan has a master’s degree in music from Drake. He hopes to use his musical talents in evangelism, looking forward perhaps to seminary training and the ministry later on.

We rejoice in the reports of large numbers of people who are finding Christ as Saviour; there are evidences of a special moving of the Spirit of God. We may yet see another great awakening in the Americas and around the world before Jesus comes again.

tentative proposals for a new united church in Scotland are outlined in a 30,000-word report just published (Multilateral Church Conversation in Scotland, Saint Andrew Press). Suggestions are made for new enlarged parishes and the pooling of resources in buildings and manpower, as well as for small groups to be formed within these parishes. Ministers and congregations would be in the care of “superintendents” or bishops, since it is felt that some personal pastoral oversight is desirable. The superintendent would deal with an enlarged parish rather than a diocese, and he would be regarded as a pastor of the people, the congregations, and the ministerial team.

The proposals have been drawn up by representatives of six denominations: the Church of Scotland, the United Free Church, the Episcopal Church, the Methodist Synod, the Congregational Union, and the Churches of Christ. Round-table talks have been held over five years. Two years ago the ruling bodies of all six agreed to a list of principles and authorized the hammering out of a plan of union.

On the question of relations with the State, the report notes the United Free Church’s opposition to establishment and says, “A united church would need to stand at a measured distance from State institutions, free to exercise a prophetic criticism of them while falling heir to the responsibilities in both mission and service accruing from establishment.”

If there is to be any possibility of recovering the “lost unity” of the churches in Scotland, declares the report, it must be on the basis of agreement on the fundamental Christian beliefs. The panels have found that such consensus already exists, and the report includes a brief statement of these fundamental convictions.

So much for summary, presented very largely from official sources lest my own selectivity be faulted. This, it is stressed, is an interim report only and goes now for discussion and comment to the ruling bodies of the six. It should be added that non-participants in the conversations were three smaller Scots Presbyterian bodies (including the historic Free Kirk) and the Baptist Union.

It is in the nature of inter-church reports to emphasize points held in common, while insisting that there have been frank exchanges on strongly held differences. Just as predictable, however, is the discovery that such differences are seldom mentioned in anything but the vaguest terms.

For example, I have before me now a Scottish Episcopal Church booklet entitled “The Apostolic Succession,” written by one of its bishops who is currently the executive officer of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Its claims on this single issue would serve to focus inter-church conversations largely on the terms on which the 97 per cent non-episcopal church membership (i.e., membership of the five other churches in the talks) would accept bishops. I have always been appalled in ecumenical discussions that Anglicans should so easily assume they are negotiating from a position of strength when their stance is rejected both by Rome and by Reformed churches. It makes me think of the exasperated parliamentarian who said he did not mind Gladstone’s acting as if he had the ace of trumps up his sleeve, but he did object to his assumption that God had put it there.

But confronted by the present report I would not make the above a major issue. Whatever the merits of the case, to the overwhelming majority of Scots the bishop is an alien concept in which a sense of history is for once utterly unhelpful. Not untypical is the reported protest by one university teacher against the 1956 “Bishops’ Report”: “I may be an atheist, but I’m a Presbyterian atheist.”

What made me groan continually as I read this report was its failure (though we are told it tried) to speak to the intellectual capacity of the people for whose benefit presumably the words were put together. There is something pathetic about high-level talkers of several denominations ascending amid jovial good fellowship into the profounder reaches of church order, polity, and doctrine, fondly imagining that the average church member is following them.

Even if we overlook the tendency to linger lovingly over questions that the man in the pew is not asking, there is a problem of sheer communication when the compilers’ niceties of speech are as incomprehensible as the mumbled Latin Mass, which even traditionalist Rome is superseding. I took this report to my octogenarian farmer friend, a man of generous heart and shining witness. His radio has told him of new church talks; he wants to know what is being said. I open the report: “The Gospel has to be indigenized … Jesus is aut deus aut non bonus … extra ecclesiam nulla salus … The Church will readily consume all the presbyteral man-hours it can get, and is unlikely to spawn unattached practitioners of the Presbyterate” (which would have the makings of humor in any other context). My farmer friend, who left school at twelve, listened with that patient courtesy still found in TV-less households, then told me I’d had a long ride and that I’d better sample some of those scones before a couple of big-eating Methodists arrived for the weekly home Bible study.

I persevered, this time with a Presbyterian landlady who saw me through some tricky student years. I chose an easy sentence: “The witness of the Church as a whole is weakened by the fact of disunity.” She understands. She agrees. But her mind is not on the vision splendid. It turns out that she is thinking of the ancient parish church where the two ministers are not on speaking terms and communicate through a church officer. Happily neither of the ministers is a signatory to the present report. And unhappily (Women’s Lib please recall this remark when the battle is won) the Church of Scotland’s fifteen representatives included not a single woman to obtrude that unity-but-begin-in-me note into the conversations.

I mention the above for no mischievous purpose, and not simply to highlight an extreme example of disunity within my own church. The Church of Scotland (which comprises some 85 per cent of the church membership represented in the six bodies) has in the last decade conducted individual talks with four of the others. All of them began with high hopes; all have quietly foundered. Are we then to evolve a new Parkinson’s Law for ecumenical man—that unity prospects are enhanced as dissident elements increase? That after four discordant duets a sextet of the same fumbling trumpeters will blend in harmony? Moreover, will they choose the right music to play?

It is a pity that ecumenical discussion in Scotland was not put into cold storage for a generation after the bishops-in-presbytery scheme was rejected, for we still have something to learn from an Arab proverb: “Keep your tents separate and bring your hearts together.”

J. D. DOUGLAS