Page 6072 – Christianity Today (2025)

For entirely too long church leaders ignored the growing unrest within the churches. Often it seemed they were trying to sweep the fact under the rug of frenetic programs and activity. Usually they blamed the unrest on those who protested its causes.

No longer can this unrest be ignored. There are now too many dedicated Christians raising their voices in protest. They see through the pleas for “relevancy” to a subtle change in basic emphases they cannot accept. They know something of what the Church should stand for and what it should do, and have the courage to stand up and speak against what they honestly feel to be a perversion of the Church, both in message and in activity.

This unrest is now noted by secular publications. The March Ladies Home Journal carries a survey of what 1,000 women had to say about the Church under the startling heading, “You Can’t Find God in the Church Anymore!”

To this, however, I should like to be the first to reply that obviously these women, and several million more unfortunates like them, have been going to the wrong churches. There are tens of thousands of churches where God is to be found, where his Son and his Gospel are believed and preached, and where the Written Word of God is given top priority, in matters of faith and of daily living.

But it is tragically true that most of the major denominations are now dominated by men who have shifted the emphasis of the Church and, in so doing, are neglecting the message of belief in Christ as man’s Saviour from sin—the first step toward a right relationship with God.

The scientific approach to problem-solving is to go back and find the source of the problem and then try to remedy it. What is the source of unrest in the Church? Besides the almost inevitable clashes of personalities, what lies at the root of this problem that is tearing the churches apart?

I write as one layman who has been concerned with this matter for many years, not with the feeling that I know all the answers, but with the assurance that the things I am trying to point out have much to do with the problem.

The mainstream of Protestantism has been polluted by theologians who have willfully rejected faith in the complete integrity and authority of the Word of God. This lies at the source of all that has followed.

Part of the problem is “scholarship”—not genuine scholarship with its reverent search for truth, but an arrogant intellectualism against which the Apostle Paul warned Timothy (“Avoid the godless mixture of contradictory notions which is falsely known as ‘knowledge’—some have followed it and lost their faith,” 1 Tim. 6:20, 21, Phillips). This attitude gives the opinions of men precedence over the divine revelation. It has dominated the majority of the theological seminaries of Europe and America until today a new religion has emerged that is humanism, not Christianity.

The evidences of theological laxity are all about us. Christ is portrayed as a good man who did the work of an idealistic humanitarian. As for the Bible, many of its records are regarded as the accounts of overly enthusiastic followers of our Lord. The Old Testament, together with much of the New, is considered outmoded and no longer relevant for our sophisticated age.

Out of this rejection of the Scriptures have grown some devastating theories. One is that there are no longer absolutes; everything is relative. (This statement is itself expressed as an absolute, of course.) How can the holiness of God be relative? He is pure and good. Can his truth be subordinated to man’s sinful outlook?

This does not deter some modern church leaders from making morality relative, to the point where fornication and adultery are judged, not by God’s holy law, but according to the “love” and immediate circumstances of the two persons involved. I am convinced that the new morality, or situation ethics, fits into Paul’s warning, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, through the pretensions of liars whose consciences are seared” (1 Tim. 4:1, 2).

The average person attends church to hear messages that speak to his spirit. He may be frustrated and uncertain, longing for spiritual light. Tragically, he may hear no more than a sociological discourse, an appeal to “go out and do something,” with no reference to the One who came and died and rose again so that men might truly live.

There is unrest in the Church, not only because of the changed view of Jesus Christ, but also because of the new approach to the problems of man. The emphasis is not on man’s sin and his need of a Saviour; it is on his physical, political, and economic environment. Thank God many Christians are refusing to take this lying down.

The social implications of Christianity are very real, and the Christian is to be his brother’s keeper. But the Church, as such, is not an organization for social engineering. Its primary concern is not with the social order but with the individual souls that need Christ.

Unrest in the Church? Thank God for it! When a patient is insensitive to pain he is in a critical condition. The healthy human body will usually reject poison; a sick one may permit it to do its deadly work without reacting. The current discontent is a sign that there are thousands of Christians who know the difference between true Christianity and a deadening substitute.

Perhaps it is natural that many who control the machinery of the Church blame “dissidents” for the situation, and that, where they can, they work to silence these dissenting voices. (And we might add that they are sometimes ruthless in their efforts to suppress and punish.)

What is the solution? Perhaps above all else we need a renewed emphasis on the Holy Spirit, a realization that without his presence and power, all work of the Church is futile. Where he is given his rightful place, there is a spiritual awakening and revival, and a new appreciation of the Word of God as the Sword of the Spirit. When it is acknowledged that, far from being obsolete or irrelevant, the Bible is the most relevant book of all, then the Christ portrayed therein and the Gospel concerning him are preached with conviction and power.

Unrest in the Church? Thank God for this evidence of life! Thank God that people are taking heed to the warning: “Hear, O earth; behold I am bringing evil upon this people, the fruit of their devices, because they have not given heed to my words; and as for my law, they have rejected it” (Jer. 6:19).

L. NELSON BELL

More than sixteen years ago on a January day in Washington the General arose and said, “Since this century’s beginning, a time of tempest has seemed to come upon the continents of the earth.” The General, who had become President of the United States, was Dwight David Eisenhower. Now he has marched from our midst, and the tempest has grown worse. It is well to recall that he never quit smiling. Gloom overtook the spirit of the earth, but the General’s signal to mankind shone like a flame and left a gentle glow in the world.

He himself probably never realized the power of that smile, which was something like a quiet banner flying from a tough garrison. For that matter, he never seemed to understand how much the people cared for him. Ike had faith in the people, for in the truest sense he was always one of them; and they responded by trusting him.

Eisenhower was a soldier in quest of peace, and history will accord him a prominent place among the “men of good will” in the earth. In a strongly critical review of Ike’s book Waging Peace, Henry Kissinger of the Washington Post, after maintaining that the President’s “abstract and excessive moralism” had clouded his world-view, said, “Still, when all is said, one is left with a residue of good will, dedication, efficiency—of an honorable and decent man striving devotedly for peace in the world with only the welfare of mankind, as he saw it, as his aim” (The Washington Post, Oct. 17, 1965). This was one of Ike’s finest qualities, and perhaps the secret of his power over people. He was a great and good man, and even critics had to salute his moral manhood.

The General was downgraded by some for his handling of government affairs. But time may show that character is even more important in the White House than executive ability. Goodness is, as Thoreau observed, an unfailing investment, and this is especially true of goodness in the head of a mighty nation.

Eisenhower’s personal faith in God was the indestructible bastion of his life. Reverence for the Lord was hard-driven into his spirit during his boyhood days in a railroad worker’s home where prayer and Bible reading were a way of life. That faith engirded him when his command launched a thousand ships at Normandy. It sustained him in his climb to the White House. It was reflected in his devoutness as President. His Washington pastor, Edward L. R. Elson, instructed Ike in the meaning of the Cross, before he laid his hands upon the head of the United States President in Christian baptism.

Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton once discovered Eisenhower praying in his office. The President brushed off Seaton’s apologies. He had been asking God for guidance, he explained, in a crucial decision that could mean peace or war in the Far East. Scoffers may doubt that God answered that prayer; but the war did not break out in the Far East while Ike was President. The General’s brother, Milton, once said that the President prayed as naturally as he ate his breakfast. He opened his Cabinet meetings with petitions for God’s direction, and again and again he exhorted the American people to pray and to practice their religion.

Millions have heard about an experience Ike had when he was sixteen. Blood-poisoning developed in his leg, and doctors advised amputation. But Ike refused. (Had he not refused he would not have been commander at Normandy and, later, Commander in Chief in Washington.) The entire Eisenhower family went to prayer. The doctors said nothing short of a miracle could save Ike’s leg. The miracle came, and less than a month later the future President walked on two good legs. In later years Ike felt that he survived severe heart attacks because of the prayers of people around the world.

In the zero hour of the assault on Sicily, a storm threatened both the landing craft and the airborne troops. Saluting the roaring planes, Ike knelt in prayer. And God, Ike believed, “came through.”

The General ever insisted that faith and prayer were necessary for the preservation of democracy. He underscored the fact that the founding fathers dreamed not of a godless liberty but of freedom “under God.” Without personal faith, he said, he himself could never have accomplished his task as chief of state. He accepted the discipline authentic religion imposes on individuals and urged the people to accept it.

Perhaps Eisenhower unwittingly pointed to some of his own finest qualities in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in 1956: “We must have the vision, the fighting spirit, and the deep religious faith in our Creator’s destiny for us … that out of our time there can, with incessant work and with God’s help, emerge a good life, good will, and good hope for all men.” He himself possessed those things: a fighting spirit, a deep faith, a strong belief in the good life, good will, and good hope, and the conviction that it was “with God’s help”—an expression he often used—that men could discover authentic existence.

‘The Manners Of The Christians’

Somewhere around A.D. 130 The Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus was written. The anonymous author, who gave himself the name Mathetes (a disciple), described the manner of life exhibited by Christians who suffered gross persecution in an age that resisted Christianity. Perhaps the Church in our day would display the power of the early Church if Christians lived, acted, and died as did the believers around A.D. 130.

“For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They many, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass then-days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life; they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred.…

“To sum up all in one word—what the soul is in the body, that are Christians in the world.”

A Check Of Czech Theology

The Comenius Faculty in Prague is the theological training school for most of Czechoslovakia’s Protestant churches. In a recent article published by the Department of Theology of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the World Presbyterian Alliance, Professor F. M. Dobias, vice-dean of the faculty, describes the development of the institution in the present century.

The seminary had been closed under Nazi rule and was reopened in 1945. When Czechoslovakia became a socialist country in 1948 the school remained open, but the curriculum was changed to include instruction in the philosophy of Marxism during the first four years of a five-year course.

Christianity in Czechoslovakia suffered a hard blow when the Nazis stopped theological training, but it is highly questionable whether there is really much improvement in a Communist-regulated theological education. Some might contend that the study of Marxism is included to acquaint students with the kind of alien philosophy they will encounter as they seek to minister the Gospel (though most are probably all too familiar with Marxism already). But on the basis of past procedure in Communist-controlled countries this seems highly unlikely. Marxism will be taught in the right way and by the right people, in the eyes of the State. At any rate, political ideology is not a part of theological education.

Instruction in Marxism has no place in a theological education—especially when that instruction extends over four years. Marxism is absolutely antithetical to the Christian faith. There is no possibility of a meaningful synthesis of these ideologies. And there is no justification for forcing the theological student to immerse himself in a philosophy that opposes everything he stands for.

The Gift Of Tongues

Last December our readers deluged us with mail after we published an essay on speaking in tongues. In this issue we present another, this one from the Pentecostal perspective. All this has served to kindle our own interest in tongues, and to send us to the Bible to examine the subject. The resulting information and opinions, summarized below, will no doubt find both agreement and disagreement among readers.

Scripture says, “Do not forbid speaking in tongues,” but it also says that love is “a still more excellent way” (1 Cor. 14:39; 12:30). We think that speaking in tongues is a truly biblical phenomenon supported both by Scripture and by empirical evidence. But love is better than tongues or the other gifts of the Spirit. We find nothing in Scripture to support the notion that every Christian should speak in tongues. It is a “gift” of the Spirit, who “apportions to each one individually as he wills” (1 Cor. 12:11). Like any other gift it can be abused; this happens when its possession produces pride or causes a person to elevate the gift to a place of supreme importance and make it normative.

Tongues can be used personally and devotionally, or congregationally. What believers do in their own homes is one thing; what they do in public worship is quite another. Paul lays down rules for speaking in tongues in public worship: Not more than two or three shall speak, and they shall do so one after another; there must be an interpreter present; women are not to use the gift in the church; the gift is for the edification of the saints; everything is to be done decently and in order (1 Cor. 14:3, 27, 28, 34, 40).

We learned recently of a splendid church that has been split wide open over the issue of tongues. This is lamentable. Surely the gifts of the Spirit are intended to heal division and promote spiritual health. When division occurs over tongues, it cannot be the Spirit’s doing.

This leaves unanswered the touchy question whether those who possess the gift of tongues should insist upon its public use in a church where tongues have not been used, or whether they should use the gift only personally and devotionally, at home. If disruption takes place because of tongues, perhaps the best rule of thumb would be for those who have introduced divisively what was not common to the church’s practice to withdraw; likewise, if a tongues church has a group in it who want to stop what has been a common practice, that group should withdraw. But the best solution would be a baptism of Holy Spirit love that would bring together those who hold varying views of a matter that is not part of the central core of the Gospel.

An Example Of Lay Power

The verdict on RCA-PCUS merger is now in: the proposed union has been rejected by the Reformed Church (see News, page 48). Was this defeat of the Plan of Union good or bad? This will, no doubt, be the topic of many a theological bull session.

Some had predicted that merger would bring about a denomination more biblically oriented and more firmly committed to the traditional creeds of the Church than either denomination standing alone. If this were true, defeat of the merger is unfortunate. Others had foretold that the new church would be subject to greater liberal control and would quickly depart from historic Reformed theology. If these prophecies were accurate, evangelicals can breathe a sigh of relief at the failure to unite.

But these predictions are purely speculative. Now that the plan has been defeated, any attempt to evaluate the probable outcome of merger is fruitless.

Perhaps the most interesting phenomenon in the RCA vote was the substantial lay opposition to the plan. Motivated by a deep concern that union would weaken the church both in doctrine and in polity, laymen were far more active in this issue than in any other in modern times. Apparently it was through their efforts, particularly in the western wing of the church, that the measure failed.

Whether or not one is happy with the results, it is encouraging to realize that laymen can still have an effective voice in church affairs. Not only is there room but there is also a need for active lay involvement in the critical decisions now facing the Church. Laymen who are concerned that the Church remain true to historic biblical Christianity can have a convincing voice as they speak out and act in a loving, informed, and responsible manner.

Now that the RCA laymen have accomplished their goal in the defeat of merger, we encourage them (and others with them) to involve themselves just as deeply and enthusiastically both in strengthening the Church and in spreading the Gospel of Christ in word and deed.

The A.B.M. Decision

The burdens of the presidency, fell heavily upon Richard Nixon when he was obliged to decide whether the United States should go ahead with an anti-ballistic-missile system. Newsweek said the decision could prove to be the most crucial one of his presidency. Should the nation take a “risk for peace” by curtailing the ABM program or phasing it out altogether? Or does the security of the free world require the expenditure of vast sums for such a defense system?

The irony of the decision lay in the fact that virtually everyone agreed in theory. They were agreed that it would be well if the whole idea could be scrapped. Why then carry it out?

The answer seems to hinge largely on one’s view of the enemy. In an ideal world there would be no need for an ABM defense system, and the billions it costs could be saved. But we do not live in an ideal world. The ABM program is senseless to those who trust Moscow and Peking and who are convinced that these two great powers pose no present or future danger. But to those who take the Sino-Soviet threat seriously, the ABM system represents an effective deterrent and a hope for survival in the event of nuclear attack.

President Nixon’s choice was to modify the program so that it protects not the American population but its nuclear striking force. This suggests that we are willing to pay dearly in blood to forestall, hopefully, a continued arms race. But it also says that we reserve the capacity to come back, to avoid being wiped out altogether.

Surely that is as much of a concession as a realist could be expected to make. Mr. Nixon seems to be saying that, as yet, he is not convinced that the leaders of the Soviet Union and Red China are to be trusted. He does seem to have history on his side; Communists have a notably bad reputation for keeping treaties and agreements.

If the ABM shield is not tested because no one fires any missiles in our direction, it will be easy to argue that the system was wasted money. But if there is an attack and the system saves the lives of millions of Americans, its value will far exceed the cost.

On this issue we are neither dovish or hawkish—we are awed by the realities of the problem and uncertain as to the outcome. We will have to live with a decision we wish could have been made differently, but we can fully understand why Mr. Nixon chose as he did.

Youth Speaks Out—For Decency

American young people have repeatedly been exploited by a minority of headline-hunting radicals. In the midst of reports of violence, nudity, and obscenity on the campus, it is refreshing to hear a word in behalf of the thoughtful majority of American youth.

This came recently in reports of a gathering of 30,000 people in Miami’s Orange Bowl stadium in support of a teen-agers’ crusade for decency in entertainment. A group of young people were fed up with the indecent performance of Jim Morrison, lead singer of a musical group known as the Doors, during a Miami concert, and they decided to make their feelings known in this unusual, dramatic way.

The rally was not so much a negative protest as it was a positive declaration of belief in God and his love, love of planet and country, love of family, reverence of one’s sexuality, and equality of all men. The generation gap proved no problem as young people and an equal number of adults, some waving signs saying “Down with Obscenity,” gathered to hear teen-age speakers affirm these virtues between performances by professional entertainers, who donated their services.

This was not a specifically Christian undertaking, and such an approach is no substitute for the Christian’s responsibility to proclaim the Gospel of Christ. However, we heartily commend these young people for their initiative and courage in speaking out for concepts held dear not only by adults but also by the mainstream of responsible American youth. At a time when even some in the Church are advocating obscenity (see editorial, January 31 issue, page 27), it is gratifying to see young people taking a stand in behalf of decency.

Vandalism In The Name Of Peace

Nine persons smashed into the Washington offices of the Dow Chemical Company last month. They broke glass, rifled file cabinets, threw records out a fourth-floor window, and poured what they said was human blood over furnishings. Police arrested and jailed the group on charges of burglary and destroying property.

The incredible aspect of this incident is that six of the group identified themselves as Roman Catholic priests, and all claimed to be motivated by a hatred for war. They said they acted to protest Dow’s “refusal to accept responsibility for … programmed destruction of human life.” They accused the company of “seeking profit in the production of napalm, defoliants, nerve gas.”

By what strange line of reasoning does one commit vandalism to promote peace? We grant the sincerity of the now imprisoned priests, but to what extent can one ethically trample upon another’s private rights in the presumed interests of universal tranquillity?

The irony in the case is that Dow also produces chemicals that help science fight disease and save lives. But the basic principle is that the Viet Nam struggle necessitates a choice between two evils. The reason for napalm is not profit. Certainly Dow would rather produce more anti-cancer chemicals. The justification for napalm, and for all implements of war, is the survival of a free world, and the continued existence of a society in which dissidents can engage in legitimate protest. One can object that Viet Nam is not the most strategic frontier against Communism, but he cannot say that it is not such a frontier at all.

To suggest that Americans are killing themselves and the Vietnamese to make a profit is an outrageous judgment. Men who have worked at Dow—and sons of Dow employees—have lost their lives in Viet Nam along with all the others.

Cocu In The Days Ahead

The Consultation on Church Union is well on the road to fulfillment. The merger it is working for will probably become a reality in less than ten years. Many signs point to a giant church comprising twenty-five million people who seek to manifest a visible unity so that the world will believe. No one can fault the search for unity based on a truly biblical foundation. But the question must be asked: What will the world see in this new church when it emerges? Even now some things seem rather clear.

The new church will have a theological base that is weak and unsteady when compared with that of confessional churches that sprang from the Reformation. It will be a church in which the Hegelian dialectic flourishes, where opposites have been brought together to form a synthesis that defies logic and opens the door wide to theological vagary. Anybody will be able to find what he wants, since the unsystematic basis of the merger is inclusive and allows plenty of room for everyone from evangelicals to existentialists, so long as they all operate on a basis of “live and let live.”

The ecclesiology of COCU, though somewhat disguised, can be seen to lean toward episcopacy and insure that the ministers of the future will be ordained by the laying on of the hands of a bishop. One cannot help thinking that perhaps this will ultimately lead to reunion with the Roman Catholic Church and the acceptance of papal primacy.

It is easy to predict that when the merger occurs small groups of people from all the denominations involved will refuse to become part of the new church, and continuing churches will exist. In this sense the quest for unity will be partly defeated.

Whatever the merits of merger, there are possible undesirable consequences that the merging churches would do well to ponder. The record of history suggests that the new church will quickly suffer from a decline in missionary outreach overseas; also, that biblical evangelism at home will not be pressed and membership will decrease. The theology of the new church will become increasingly syncretistic and eclectic. This will be reflected in declining seminary enrollments.

We foresee that large numbers of evangelicals will remain in the new church, desiring to witness to their own convictions and hoping God will send a great awakening that will turn the church toward historic orthodoxy. If this happens, it will mark a new day in history and will be a cause for great rejoicing.

Anguish In Anguilla

We all suffer from fiasco and failure. In recent years the United States has smarted over some of its shortcomings, and the nations of the world have not hesitated to rub salt in the wounds. Perhaps we will be forgiven if we suggest that Great Britain, a longtime friend and critic, has painted itself into a corner with its invasion of Anguilla, an island most people never heard of, located in a place few people could pinpoint on a map. There must have been a better way.

Western Culture is in retroactive decline, like an unsure rocket yawing in orbit before plummeting to disaster. Whether this scientific civilization can yet be salvaged for meaningful survival is an open question.

According to some observers, Western society is doomed to nihilism (perhaps after a period of pragmatism), unless modern man heeds a fresh summons to the truth of revelation and thus recovers Christian perspective.

Others emphasize, and I think rightly, that the recovery of vital religion would not necessarily mean the rescue of the Western way of life as we now know it. Christianity is something more than the inner spirit of any culture, transcending even the noblest socio-historical features it inspires. In a discerning if over-due warning against the dangers of cultural Christianity, a Roman Catholic priest calls the conversion of Constantine the greatest single disaster that ever overtook the Christian Church. Western civilization is now so infused by the spirit of secularism, and so lacking in genuine Christian conviction and commitment, that no ultimate reason remains for linking the fortunes of Christianity to the survival of Euro-American culture.

Also an open question, however, is whether the death of Western culture would bring about a rebirth of true faith or global enslavement by totalitarianism. These alternatives, of course, are not decisive for the survival of the Christian Church; we have Christ’s Word that not even the gates of hell shall prevail against it, however sad may be the condition of twentieth-century Christianity in Germany, Great Britain, and America, let alone in Russia and China. But the accelerating secularism of the free world is so increasingly approximating the self-conscious materialism of the Communist world that the role of the Church in the next generation becomes more and more problematical.

The most tragic fact during this decade that has ushered in the last third of the twentieth century is that institutional Christianity has forfeited the truth of revelation. It is therefore impotent to expound the Christian mind in a decisive intellectual confrontation of today’s humanist-materialist spirit.

The evangelical vanguard, concentrating mainly on evangelism and personal morality, is often woefully weak at the frontiers of public affairs and cultural influence. By such compartmentalization and isolation, it unwittingly but voluntarily often approximates the situation in Communist lands (freedom to evangelize excepted) where Christian commitment is of necessity a matter of private spirituality and morals, and socio-cultural affairs are shaped by alien forces.

The ecumenical mainguard, on the other hand, ventures a sharp critique of Western civilization with its problems of nuclear war, race prejudices, class differences, mechanization of human life, and cynical materialism—and earnestly pursues dialogue with contemporary man. But for all that, the World Church merger-mentality is uniting ever-dwindling congregations because of the virtual loss of biblical evangelism and missionary momentum.

Neither conciliar nor nonconciliar Christianity, however, is actually confronting modern culture with a coherent, systematic exposition of Christian truth, of a revelationally grounded world-life view, of a Christian mind vis-à-vis the modern alternatives. While the evangelical failure is largely a matter of myopic vision, it is a matter, too, of reticence and of a certain unease in meaningful dialogue. The ecumenical failure is due mainly to the loss by bureaucratic and ecclesiastical leadership of the authority and content of divine revelation and to American-inspired preoccupation with debatable politico-economic pragmatics apart from an authentic theological rationale. Evangelical Christianity tends to mistake the less objectionable aspects of humanism—namely, political democracy and technical achievement—as genuinely Christian, and easily confuses a privileged American way of life with Christian culture; such an alliance dulls the socio-cultural impact and expression of fully Christian values. Ecumenical neo-Protestantism welcomes and echoes the spirited criticism of contemporary society shaped by non-Christian social critics. Without explicit Christian perspectives, however, such criticism cannot effectively retard the secular drift; instead it enhances non-Christian visions of an ideal society, and even plays into the hands of those who would demean both Western culture and Christianity. Even Bertrand Russell, confident that Christianity has no future, insisted that man too will become a cosmic dropout unless a scientific society puts an end to war (Has Man a Future?, Penguin Books, 1961, pp. 20 f.). In Christian circles one might expect to find neither indifference to the false values that grip modern man, nor sympathetic echoes of humanist criticisms indifferent to the truth of revelation. In its calling to judge the world of culture, the Church of Christ, after all, can tolerate no pseudo-lords. Nor dare it nurture the illusion that the Living God is silent.

British educator Harry Blamires has said:

By sheer tactical error Christians in the West may be gradually maneuvered into the position of Christians in Russia, content to say the best that can be said of a social system wholly and professedly committed to godless materialism, and meanwhile sincerely keeping alive the flames of faith and piety and moral virtue among a remnant that is tolerated so long as it holds back from any comprehensive criticism of the established system [The Christian Mind, London, SPCK, 1966, p. 190].

Such a prospect can, in fact, be accelerated both by evangelical indifference to the socio-cultural drift and by ecumenical indifference to the truth of revelation and the evangelistic task. Many churchgoers do not mentally inhabit the ideal world presented by the Christian faith; opening their souls instead to the co-existence of Christian faith and the secular outlook, they forgo an authentically Christian mind. As Blamires puts it:

On the one hand is the assumption that all is over when you die; that after sixty or seventy years, sheltered and cushioned by the Welfare State, you can sign off for good; that eating, sleeping, growing, learning, breeding, and the rest, constitute the total sum of things.… On the other hand is the almost crushing awareness of a spiritual war tearing at the heart of the universe, pushing its ruthless way into the lives of men—stabbing at you now, now, now, in the impulses and choices of every waking moment; the belief that the thoughts and actions of every hour are moulding a soul which is on its way to eternity.… [ibid., pp. 75 f.].

It is high time that the truth of revelation once again overawe the Christian community. Our decade urgently requires the emergence of an authentic and vigorous Christian mind. Without it, neither evangelism nor social energy can win.

CARL F. H. HENRY

The following appraisal was written for CHRISTIANITY TODAY by Dr. Cary N. Weisiger III, minister of Menlo Park (California) Presbyterian Church, who has been a representative to the Consultation on Church Union since its inception.

The first question some will ask is whether a giant restructuring of American Protestants really touches people where they live today. Some renewalists as well as some traditionalists have greeted the Consultation on Church Union with a bored yawn. Both feel that institutional churches with their elaborate structure, ponderous machinery, and official programs have little chance of making a dent upon the world for Christ.

Even Dr. Charles Spivey, currently the secretary of COCU, has asked what the group has to say about poverty, disparity, discrimination, and depersonalization. Yet Spivey supports the consultation because it is “the only creative institution presently existing in the United States where people—Negro, white, Christians all—can come together in terms of their common commitments to Jesus Christ and … come to grips with the real basic, crucial, critical problems that beset us all.”

The major problem in the consultation itself has been to find a new way, if possible, between conflicted positions of the past. At this point I believe that the consultation has done as well as could be expected. I do not see how a dedicated group of eighty or ninety people from different denominations could have done much better. There have been no blowups or walkouts, though there have been dark moments and suppressed anger. This does not mean that strict adherents to past positions will be satisfied. It is manifestly impossible to have a union if two conflicting viewpoints will not budge.

Among those who have been in the consultation from the beginning, I am not alone in feeling that there was a high point of the Holy Spirit’s presence and power in Oberlin in 1963. That was when the consultation worked on authority in Scripture and Tradition. The consultation said then:

The United Church acknowledges that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments have a unique authority. They witness to God’s revelation, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and to man’s response to the divine revelation.… They are the inspired writings which bear witness to the divine deeds in our history.… Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, the living Lord and head of the Church, is the center of the Holy Scriptures.… Because we confess Christ alone (sola Christus), in this way we affirm Scripture alone (sola Scriptura).… The united church recognizes that there is a historic Christian Tradition. Each of the churches in the Consultation inevitably appeals to that Tradition in matters of faith and practice. By Tradition we understand the whole life of the Church ever guided and nourished by the Holy Spirit, and expressed in its worship, witness, way of life, and its order.

This section makes Scripture normative for Tradition. Yet it calls for recognition that God used Apostolic Tradition to form Scripture and that no denomination, however strenuously loyal to sola Scriptura, is without its treasury of ways of stating the faith and practicing it. For example, Presbyterians who regard the Westminster Confession as the summum bonum of theology adhere thereby to Tradition.

Critics will say that the Principles of Church Union, the most important document produced by the consultation so far, contains deliberate ambiguities. This is true, for restraint calls for stopping short of positions pressed hard in the past.

According to the Principles, the united church will “use” the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. It will also recognize cherished confessions of the uniting churches but will not, however, “permit the use of any single confession as an exclusive requirement for all.” The consultation has also determined that no one must use a creed if it is against his conscience to do so. Thus, by way of holding up a standard of the faith once for all committed to the saints, the proposed united church will be creedal. There will be liturgical consensus and in some sense a standard of doctrine. Yet in a binding sense the church will not be creedal.

There will definitely be bishops in the new church. COCU has simply received the episcopate as a gift and as an instrument of God in the Church since early centuries. The powers of bishops will have constitutional checks and balances. The consultation proposes to delay the writing of a full constitution until after union, but a definition of the episcopacy probably will have to be part of the pre-constitutional Plan of Union now being developed. No reordination of those non-episcopally ordained will be required; rather, an initial uniting act is proposed.

The announced goal is a church that is “truly catholic, truly evangelical, and truly reformed.” COCU sees catholicity largely in terms of a restrained version of what Episcopalians call the Lambeth Quadrilateral: the historic episcopate, Scripture, early creeds, and two sacraments. In baptism there will be the options of infant or believers’ baptism.

A church “truly evangelical” is seen to mean a recognition of all members in the uniting churches, a recognition that “presupposes man’s response to God’s gracious call.” The grace-faith way of salvation clearly informs all the chapters of the Principles of Church Union. The word “reformed,” however, is not used descriptively of events in the sixteenth century but philosophically as a principle of church life: a reformed church must always keep on being reformed.

In this very difficult day when there is so much confusion in the churches, one yet must ask whether or not the Spirit of God is leading in the consultation. It is undoubtedly true that God’s Spirit wills that Christians show the oneness God has already given to the body of Christ. The New Testament emphasis upon communion among believers is remarkable.

It is at this point that evangelicals find their rationale for sharing in all responsible ecumenical effort. If they are to be true to the Lord of the Church, they must be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3).

Most people reason pragmatically about a proposed union. Will it work? Will it solve problems? Will it bring renewal? Will it bring black and white Christians closer? Crucial as these questions are, there still remains a New Testament compulsion for Christians to do their best to show that oneness which Christ has given to all who accept him as Saviour and Lord.

Few will deny, moreover, that there is a new urgency toward visible unity today. Dr. Charles Malik has said, “The greatest service that the Church, in being the Church, can render in and for the international order is to try to bring about an effective spiritual unity among all those who have been baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

Some 25,000,000 American Christians, therefore, will probably face this question in 1970: Is the Spirit of God in the COCU Plan of Union? If it seems presumptuous to assert that the Spirit is in the plan, it may also be presumptuous to assert that the Spirit is not in the plan. If the churches participating in the consultation are not ready to accept the plan, they could possibly agree to a reconciling action that will establish mutual recognition of ministers and members, and intercommunion.

If sufficient time is provided—several years—for all church members to study, debate, and decide in the same context of nine-church fellowship that has characterized the consultation, the final decision will be made more responsibly and probably with more sensitivity to the leading of God’s Spirit.

‘Isn’T That So, Dear?’

Some years ago I went to a New England town to further a research project. During my time there I worshiped in a church where the minister was a Welshman and (naturally) a splendid biblical expositor. One bizarre habit he had, however, for recalling the flagging attention of his listeners: he would use some homespun illustration, then make a public appeal for confirmation to his wife, who sat in the middle of the congregation. On such occasions his “Isn’t that so, dear?” never failed to electrify the semi-somnolent, the more so since the lady’s embarrassment showed it to be no preplanned gimmick.

Many a time and oft did I wonder what would have happened if Mrs. Dear had got up just once and retorted, “No, it is not so. Why can’t you ever learn to tell a story properly? Now this [here she would turn to the congregation confidentially] is what really happened.…”

What induced that stroll down memory lane was the re-perusal of a booklet that was sent to me a while ago from Scotland, entitled The Minister’s Wife—Her Life, Work and Problems. It is edited by that doyen of Scottish evangelists, Dr. D. P. Thomson, and within the limits of fifty-two pages the scope is as comprehensive as the title suggests.

Excerpts from the feminine contributions: “One could become spiritually starved in a manse more quickly than anywhere else, if one didn’t stick to a routine.” “Fear of middle-aged women—so kind, really, but so terrifying to the new wife!” “It would be a good idea if ministers’ wives could from time to time attend services at another church.”

The booklet has also a poignant word on manse children, whose resentment at being used as illustrations in father’s sermons is sometimes unbounded. “It wasn’t just when he got you on the raw by saying ‘I’ve got a little boy at home,’ but that every time a little boy or girl, otherwise unnamed and unidentified, figures in a children’s address, all the other youngsters made certain they knew what was meant—and took care to tell you so afterwards.”

Beware then, brethren. Such utterances put in proper perspective the intriguing plea feelingly advanced in court by a young man facing criminal charges: he said he had not had a chance in life, having been a pastor’s son.

Church In The State

Congratulations on your editorial on “Christian Social Action” (March 14). I thought this expressed the viewpoint that many of us hold in the very best possible way and made it very clear and definite. I also thought that the article by Malcolm Nygren on “The Church and Political Action” was very well stated and a very important article. Keep up the good work!

Chairman of the Corporation

Genesco

Nashville, Tenn.

May I express my appreciation to you for your editorial, “Christian Social Action,” and to the Rev. Malcolm Nygren for his article.… Each of you confirms what I have felt ever since various church denominations began getting involved in politico-social affairs.…

What I … cannot fathom is how national, state and local church bodies can presume that they have the authority to take positions on questions affecting the citizenship rights of their members without first giving every member the privilege of voting on whether this, that—or any—stand should be taken by the Church on such subjects.…

I do not imply … that it would be proper for the Church to enter the secular fields of politics, etc., if the membership voted to do so. The basic point is that the Church does not belong in such areas. But I present the situation pertaining to the denial of membership voting as a warning of how much farther some church leaders might go if their assumption of power in the name of the Church is not curbed.

Milwaukee, Wis.

Your editorial loses its effectiveness by your insistence on creating what, to my mind, is a false dichotomy between the Church and the Christian. It may be that certain practices have fallen into the province of congregational life. Baptism is administered by the Church; but Philip did not call an emergency meeting of the Jerusalem Christians before he immersed the eunuch. The Lord’s Supper may “belong to the Church” now; but Christ certainly would not deny the right of remembrance to the “two or three” to whom he promised his presence. On the other hand, there are some distinctly personal ministries; but Paul’s “social action” for the Jerusalem saints was a rather corporate venture.

Perhaps your warning that social action not be carried out “in the name of the Church” would not be necessary if we did all things in the name of Christ. What is the Church if not Christians bound by the love of Christ?

Milligan College, Tenn.

Despite this editorial’s merit as a whole, I must take exception to your affirmation that “baptism belongs to the Church.… Individual Christians have no right or biblical basis to go about baptizing people.… So also with the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper”.… Well, it’s really not much of an invitation. After all, this kind of news gets around pretty fast. Especially to hundreds of people searching for a growing fellowship.

And, yet, in thousands of churches numbers on the attendance board tell a much happier story. They tell about Sunday School classes growing-both in attendance and in spiritual maturity. Many of these classes are now using Scripture Press All-Bible Graded lessons to stimulate inquiry into the very problems that trouble class members all week long.

See for yourself why hundreds of churches nationwide are turning to “Youth Illustrated” for high schoolers and “Living Today” for adults. Both are all new, contemporary lesson magazines that motivate faster understanding through the Word, and encourage more lasting decisions for Christ in the lives of your class members.

The Lord’s Supper belongs to Christ, as does baptism, which he has given to us. He said, “Go … baptize,” and, “Do this in remembrance of me.” To me, this means that if a Christian family wish to spread the Lord’s Supper in their home and take it individually or collectively, they have this right as individual Christians. Also, individual Christians in the congregation here take the Lord’s Supper to homes and hospitals and serve it, not in the name of the Church, but in the name of Christ, who ordained it.

Northside Christian Church

Tucson, Ariz.

While agreeing with much of what Malcolm Nygren says in his article, I feel that he dismisses too readily the obligation of the Church to address itself to social evils. I agree that the Gospel is not a political platform and that the Church as a church should beware of proposing specific solutions to the many social problems of our time. Yet the Church is obliged to bring the Law of God to bear upon these social problems and evils, and it must do so from the pulpit as well as in denominational pronouncements. Our ministry as churchmen is not only one of compassion but also one of correction and reproof. The whole counsel means that the social responsibilities of the Church go beyond Good Samaritan service. There were, by the way, Christians who had the courage to speak out against Nazism in Germany, and they did so out of a fidelity to God’s Word. So, too, we need Christians today who will fearlessly denounce the social evils of our time, including racism and militarism. I am acutely aware of the danger of converting the Gospel of Christ into a purely social or secular gospel, but the alternative is not a withdrawal of the Church’s witness from the social scene.

Professor of Theology

Dubuque Theological Seminary

Dubuque, Iowa

It was delightful to read your timely and significant editorial.… Your position that the “Church as Church” is not to engage in socio-political action … needs special emphasis today.

What impressed me particularly was your apparent stress upon corporate Christian action. You mention the right of Christians to band together for such purposes as the organizing of labor, poverty, even political parties. I wholeheartedly agree and look forward to the day when many concerned Christians from a variety of backgrounds do find each other for this type of action.

Already there is a Christian Action Foundation which is experiencing surprising interest and growth across our nation. This organization is strictly committed to the implementation of what your editorial recommends.

President

Dordt College

Sioux Center, Iowa

Medium Of Music

The article on church music (March 14) stated many correct ideas, but so what? Whether religious or not, people today recognize the importance of spontaneity, feeling, and a sense of unity in singing, but this can be achieved either by professional groups or by the uninitiated. Traditional church music has had its professional choirs and organs and its popular hymns and gospel songs; “popular taste” has its professional orchestras and rock groups and its popular folk songs and hootenannies. The real question the Church should be asking, assuming Dr. Beveridge’s conclusion of the uniqueness of Christian worship and the importance of the music to the text, is not professional versus non-professional, but “Are we communicating with either the Christian or the non-Christian (especially the young) with the kind of music we are using today?” I say we are not.

I agree with Dr. Beveridge that in music “it is the words that make worship uniquely Christian.” This, of course, results from the facts (1) that all music is amoral and (2) that there is no kind of music anywhere that is specifically Christian except by connotational associations. Electronic music is no “passing fancy”; it is the wave of the future. The sooner the Church thinks Electric the sooner it will communicate. I know. I am part of that new wave. I cut my teeth on hymns and gospel songs. At first I was frustrated, but now I know why.

Deerfield, Ill.

Reality For Ringing

Your editorial concerning personal holiness (March 14) was well received. With the incessant buzz of the secular and liberal theologians ringing in our ears, godly and righteous life-patterns are vitally needed if the man on the street is to be confronted with Reality in Christ.

First Evangelical Church

Vancouver, Wash.

Of Merger And Mission

Those Presbyterian conservatives who are smacking their lips gleefully over the defeat of the union presbyteries and synods (“Ecumenical Showdown for Southern Presbyterians,” March 14) ought to spend a bit more time in examining what is going to further the mission of the Church and a lot more money toward that end instead of their present devious pursuits.

Those who are involved in the work of the Church in Kentucky and other border areas realize how seriously our work is impaired by continuing separate organizations when we should be united.… To think that such union is going to “set back” the work of evangelism, Christian education, and ministry through our churches is ridiculous.…

Instead of worrying about back-door merger and other supposed detrimental effects, “concerned” Presbyterians should get on the ball and seek for the upbuilding of the Church of Jesus Christ. We in Kentucky are going to demonstrate that we are one, that we can work together for the furthering of the Kingdom of God (regardless of what the Constitution allows), so that the world may believe. Would to God that some others would stop fighting battles they are not called to wage, that do not affect the areas where they live, and get on with the work of Jesus Christ where they are.

Buckhorn Presbyterian Church

Buckhorn, Ky.

‘Tough’: Enough?

I would like to suggest that your simple little get-tough policy for “Ending Campus Chaos” (Editorial, Feb. 28) shows both a lack of knowledge and a lack of sensitivity to the situation. It would seem that a magazine one of whose purposes appears to be to represent the voice of disenfranchised evangelicals could be a little more sympathetic with students and others who face a similar plight with respect to tradition-bound colleges and universities. Has it ever occurred to you that the “processes created to bring about peaceful change” you speak of might not be open to student participation or for that matter to most elements of the community? In such an instance the choice might well be either a passive resignation to the situation or some form of active protest.

Your attitude confirms a suspicion of mine that if evangelicals wish to have an effective voice on social issues, they are going to have to become more informed on the full range of problems and less bound by conservative cultural biases that have little if anything to do with the Gospel. Please make an effort to acquaint yourself with more than one perspective before making grand pronouncements, even if the tactics of the demonstrators aren’t always the most laudable. You may find you have a lot more in common with the hippies and the yippies than you think.

Lexington, Ky.

Airing Accidents

We were particularly grateful for the clear statement in your recent editorial (Feb. 28) that some of us utilize primarily single-engine planes for reasons of principle—not just expediency.

At times like these, pilots like to point to statistics. Like how much safer statistically the missionary is flying over the jungles than his pastor is driving the freeway? Or, now that our twenty-three-year fatality-free flying history has been so dramatically shattered, to point out that the next largest operator, Wycliffe’s JAARS, still has a no-fatal-accident record—also true of our colleagues of the British MAF.

But we’re taking little comfort. We are doing a study among all known missionary pilots to discover, cross-correlate, and weigh (with computer assistance) the multitude of factors contributing to known missionary aviation accidents—and near-misses—to date.… Any past or present missionary pilots who have not received questionnaires from us were not intentionally overlooked. We hope they will write us, stating how many questionnaires they require (one for each accident or near-miss). These may be submitted unsigned if desired.

Director of Flying

Missionary Aviation Fellowship

Fullerton, Calif.

‘Rich’ Silence

Ho, ho! That’s rich! The Salem cigarette coax, “Go-on-take-a-puff,’, at the 8:30 break of the local TV Sunday-night movie, to which CHRISTIANITY TODAY objects in its editorial (“Waging War on the Weed, Feb. 28): “Strange indeed that in this matter of life and death the voice of the Church has been pitifully weak, if not silent,” was immediately followed by another coax: a closeup shows a tray of long-stem cocktail glasses; a hand reaches and takes one.

The subtle, silent ad for booze occurs many times on a wide variety of programs during the TV week, but what do we hear from CHRISTIANITY TODAY? Silence.

Pampa, Tex.

Good News

I greatly appreciate the ministry of CHRISTIANITY TODAY—particularly your news section. Don’t ever let it get “news-less”!

Hartford, Conn.

I do enjoy reading CHRISTIANTY TODAY.… Only wish I could afford to read many other periodicals for their worthwhile content, but with five children and a husband also holding demands on my time, I just do not have all the hours in a day it would take to read them all. I am praying for the outreach you have.

MRS. DUANE G. PIPER

Costa Mesa, Calif.

Conflicts between science and religion are not phenomena confined to the present day; they have been with us for a long time. It was not, however, till the epoch-making work of Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century that the biological assault upon Christian belief really began. Since the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 and his Descent of Man in 1871 this assault seems only to have increased in size and power, and, in the opinion of many scientists and large numbers of informed people, it has discredited entirely the traditional Christian understanding of man’s origin and his dignity and of the character of his environment. Whether any such discrediting has in fact taken place is another matter; suffice it to say that a great many people believe it has.

But the biological assault upon Christian belief is not confined to a conflict over the historic circumstances of man’s appearance on this earth; it has spread to include our analysis and understanding of man as he now is and as he may become in the future. Since Darwin’s day, the biologist, along with other scientists in neighboring areas of specialized knowledge, has been hard at work, and a great many puzzles about the human person have been solved. Our contemporary knowledge has reached such a point that it is conceivable that within the foreseeable future man may exercise an astonishing degree of control over the future development of the human species. “The revelation of the molecular basis of heredity, protein synthesis, enzyme action and even learning and memory,” says one commentator, “is one of the truly remarkable achievements of science, providing us not only with answers to long-debated problems but also holding out the possibility of practical control of many aspects of life.”¹Current Affairs Bulletin, 15 January, 1968, p. 64.

This matter of man’s future and of our increasing ability to affect it in radical and far-reaching ways obviously raises some urgent and very disturbing questions to which answers are sorely needed. It is the intention of this paper to come to terms with this challenge, albeit in a general rather than specific way, and to do so first by seeing what is the biblical understanding of man and his future and then by seeing whether this view needs any modification in the light of biological studies.

The Biblical View Of Man

The biblical understanding of man and his future comes before us in the form of a historic and dramatic record of man’s beginnings, his defection from the path of his intended destiny, and the way by which that mistake with all its consequent misfortunes has been—and will be—rectified. It is a record of astonishing magnitude, and its capacity to excite the imagination, to humble the proud soul, and to revive the disillusioned spirit is almost without limits. It plunges the reader into the depths of despair by confronting him with the awful truth about himself, and it lifts him at the same time to lofty heights of anticipation as he learns of his recovery and of the restitution of all things in Christ.

The biblical view of man is seen, then, at two points: In Adam and in Christ. The Adamic narratives have been the center of considerable discussion and controversy, but their central truths are easily recognized. Firstly, so far as man is concerned, he was made as the summit of the created order to exercise dominion over the environment in which he was placed. Secondly, he was made, and this is uniquely true of him, in the image of God to enjoy his created role in fellowship with God his Maker. Thirdly, he was made in a heterosexual mode not only for the purpose of procreation but also for the purpose of enjoying satisfying companionship.

This description of man in creation is, however, significantly qualified. The intended pattern of existence has not, in fact, been realized. Man, from the beginning, has chosen to ignore the true character of his existence and has asserted his autonomy. The results of this original moment of madness have been catastrophic. The central relationship with God has suffered a breach, and consequent upon this, tensions have arisen both within the human fellowship and between man and his environment. Opting for a mode of existence other than that of being consciously dependent upon God, man alienated himself from the one context which rendered life meaningful and made it fully satisfying, and he has become enmeshed in a world of egocentric tensions located within a natural environment which accepts him reluctantly and which will ultimately reclaim him with decisive finality (Gen. 3:16–19). Creation, with man at its center, is a disfigured ideal. It is not to be thought of, as Leibniz would have it, as “the best of all possible worlds,” nor is it to be idealized as Hegel’s Absolute Spirit-in-otherness standing in dialectical tension over against its eternal Thesis. It is not even simply “just what’s there,” free from all attempts at interpretation; it is a disfigured and restless reality sharing in and contributing to the misfortune of its appointed lord but, at the same time, awaiting its deliverance and reconstitution (Isa. 11:1–10; Rom. 8:18–23).

In so far as the created order exists at all, albeit in its distorted and penultimate form, it testifies to the eternal power and godhead of its Author. In so far as it has its present character (by which it contributes decisively to the frustration of man’s autonomous existence), it testifies to man’s alienation from the ground of his being and that God is not only Creator but also Judge.

Our human condition in Adam is full of pathos. Augustine’s description could hardly be improved upon:

For we all were in that one man, since we all were that one man who fell into sin by the woman who was made from him before the sin. For not yet was the particular form created and distributed to us, in which we as individuals were to live, but already the seminal nature was there from which we were to be propagated; and this being vitiated by sin, and bound by the chain of death, and justly condemned, man could not be born of man in any other state. And thus, from the bad use of free will, there originated the whole train of evil, which, with its concatenation of miseries, convoys the human race from its depraved origin, as from a corrupt root, on to the destruction of the second death, which has no end, those only being excepted who are freed by the grace of God.²The City of God xiii 14 (tr. M. Dods, New York: Random House).

But the biblical view, as was just hinted, must also include the difference made by Christ. “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ” (1 Cor. 15:21–23). In these verses there is the great theme of the recovery of what was lost—a looking back to the inauguration of man’s salvation and a looking forward to its consummation.

About this dramatic reversal of fortune we will say only three things: Firstly, it was not an after-thought! The restitution of all things in Christ was a divine intention which antedated creation (Eph. 1:3–10; 3:8–11; 2 Tim. 1:9, 10; Rom. 16:25; 1 Pet. 1:19, 20). Karl Barth is right when he says that God’s covenant with man in Christ was the ground of creation itself and not a consequence.³Church Dogmatics III i, ch. 9, 41 (Eng. tr., London: T. and T. Clark). Secondly, the recovery of our fallen world was achieved historically, within and through the conditions of the fall. God in Christ through the incarnation bound himself into the conditions of our human frailty and vulnerability. He took upon himself, by being born “outside Eden,” the form of judgment under which all mankind lives and dies. Despite his own capacity for dominion (to which his miracles bear witness), he moved obediently along the path of human alienation and felt within himself that final consequence of divine disapproval as he slipped into the jaws of death. Without ever desiring man’s sinful autonomy (Phil. 2:5–8) he ultimately underwent God’s judgment upon that sin. But, and this is the cry of joy from the New Testament, in this great act of “identification”—he with us—there is an even profounder “substitution”—he instead of us (Mark 10:45). In a way that passes our understanding he has carried our alienation and condemnation into his own grave with him, and in his resurrection he has broken through the sphere of estrangement and judgment and leads creation back to its original and ultimate destiny. Thirdly, this recovery has two historic phases or “moments,” one in the past, one in the future; and they coincide with his resurrection, upon which we look back, and the open manifestation of his person and power, towards which we still look. Hence the tension of which St. Paul speaks in Romans 8:18 ff. We who believe yearn for the culmination, knowing that its timing, and certainly its content, lie not in the hands of men but in the hands of God. Hence also our present need of the Spirit’s ministry within our lives as we await this event (Rom. 8:1–30).

Biological Evolution

Now this is an analysis of the message about the human situation which is at once coherent and expansive; we must now ask whether it should be modified, or perhaps dismissed altogether, in the light of scientific and especially biological researches. This is a big question, but we will confine ourselves to examining those achievements which are associated with the problem of the origin of the human species and those current researches in molecular biology and biochemistry which affect our understanding of mental activity, the origin of life itself, and the prospects for the evolutionary future of man.

The first of these topics we have already alluded to in the earlier references to Charles Darwin. Professor I. G. Barbour has suggested four problems which the hypothesis of biological evolution has raised for the Christian faith: It has challenged design, human dignity, the basis of ethics, and the relevance of the Bible.⁴Issues in Science and Religion, London: SCM, 1968, pp. 80–114.

There have been two main kinds of reaction to this hypothesis and the challenges which it offers, neither of which can be studied now in any detail. The first reaction has been to discredit the validity of the hypothesis altogether. It would be a mistake to think that this response has come only from a narrow-minded and obscurantist element within the Christian Church or that it is to be found only among unthinking “fundamentalists.” We have only to compare Arnold Lunn’s Revolt Against Reason (1950)⁵London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, chs. 11, 12. with B. Ramm’s The Christian View of Science and Scripture (1955)⁶London: Paternoster, ch. 7. or Professor de Wit’s A New Critique of the Transformist Principle in Evolutionary Biology (1965)⁷Kampen (Netherlands): J. H. Kok N.V. Professor de Wit held the chair of zoology at the Free University of Amsterdam. or to examine the critique of Professor A. Fleischmann in K. Heim’s The World, Its Creation and Consummation 1962, Eng. ed.)⁸London: Oliver and Boyd, pp. 38–48. to realize that this is far from the case. In the opinion of these writers, the thesis of macro-evolution or monophylactic evolution has just never been proven and is not likely to be. In the view of Arnold Lunn, the noted Catholic apologist, the only explanation for its wide acceptance is that the hearts of men are gripped by a “theophobia”!

This line of reply is far from typical, however, for there are many biblical scholars who would insist that there is no real tension between Darwinianism and the biblical narratives rightly understood. The evolutionary route to human existence leaves untouched, according to this point of view, the biblical estimate of man and the fact of “design” in man’s environment. Once again there is no one single type or pattern of Christian experience characteristic of these writers. Professor J. Lever’s Creation and Evolution (1958),⁹Grand Rapids (Michigan): Grand Rapids International Publications. Professor J. Lever held the chair of zoology at the Free University of Amsterdam. coming from a Dutch Calvinist background, may be compared with the Roman Catholic P. G. Fothergill’s Evolution and Christians (1958)¹⁰London: Longmans. Dr. P. G. Fothergill writes as senior lecturer in botany at Newcastle upon Tyne. or with the Anglo-Catholic Professor E. Mascall’s Christian Theology and Natural Science (1956)¹¹London: Longmans, ch. 7. or, on the other hand, with the Cambridge ornithologist D. Lack’s Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief (1957)¹²London: Methuen. David Lack’s enthusiasm for evolutionary theory has within it an important qualification: “the Christian view is compatible with the theory of evolution, but only provided that the attributes regarded as peculiarly human … are considered to be spiritual, and hence outside biology” (p. 90). and W. R. Matthew’s sustained treatment of the teleological argument in his The Purpose of God (1935).

The particular problem of the evolutionary basis of ethical judgments can, perhaps, be treated separately, for it has not necessitated a specific reply from Christian thinkers and moralists. Evolutionary ethics has been widely attacked since the days of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), and not least by G. E. Moore in his Principia Ethica (1903). The debate still continues, however, and amongst modern writers G. G. Simpson in his Meaning of Evolution (1949) and C. H. Waddington’s The Ethical Animal (1960) both affirm a connection while E. Mascall’s The Secularization of Christianity (1965)¹³London: Nisbet, pp. 205–11. and I. T. Ramsey’s Biology and Personality (1965)¹⁴Oxford: Blackwell, ch. 8. both offer important critiques.

This enumeration of positions and names could continue almost indefinitely, but there is one aspect of the debate which has not always received the attention which it deserves: namely, the significance of the nature of the evolutionary process itself. To argue that creation through evolution is like getting oaks from acorns is surely to oversimplify the matter. Charles Kingsley said, for instance:

Of old it was said by Him, without whom nothing is made, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” Shall we quarrel with Science if she should show these words are true? What, in one word, should we have to say but this: “We know of old that God was so wise that He could make all things; but, behold, He is so much wiser than even that, that He can make all things make themselves.”¹⁵Quoted from Asa Gray’s Darwiniana (1876) in J. Dillenberger’s Protestant Thought and Natural Science, London: Collins, 1960, p. 235.

But is it so simple? The actual evolutionary history appears to be one of repeated efforts, frequent failures, random variations, and occasional movements of progress! It is this fact which led Julian Huxley to insist that:

Nowhere in all its vast extent is there any trace of purpose, or even of prospective significance. It is impelled from behind by blind physical forces, a gigantic and chaotic jazz dance of particles and radiations, in which the only overall tendency we have so far been able to detect is that summarized in the Second Law of Thermodynamics—the tendency to run down.¹⁶Evolution in Action, London: Penguin, 1953, p. 14.

On the other hand it has stimulated a popular writer like L. C. Birch to interpret the evolutionary data in the light of the process philosophies of Alexander, Whitehead, and Hartshorne. To Birch, God “achieves by persuasion such order as is possible in the occasions of experience that make up the creative advance of the universe.”¹⁷Quoted in J. C. Greene’s Darwin and the Modern World View, New York: Mentor, 1963, p. 75. Cf. L. C. Birch, Nature and God, London: SCM, 1965, pp. 34, 72–3, 91–117. The God of Whitehead and Hartshorne is “on the move.” He is, according to Whitehead, in process of passing from his “primordial nature” to his “consequent nature,” and this latter state, we are informed, is “consequent upon his actualization in the world.”¹⁸Birch, p. 110. The creation of which these writers speak is, in part, the creation of God himself! “His consequent nature,” says Birch, “endlessly acquires richer and newer content with the world’s creative advance.”¹⁹Ibid. “If the divine consciousness,” says Hartshorne,

is conceived not as eternally the same but as perpetually growing in content by virtue of additions from the world, each addition being strictly permanent, once for all, then the ever growing sum of realities and goods can be real and good for someone, for one personal consciousness. From this consciousness, the process version of omniscience, nothing is ever subtracted, but to it all novelties are added.²⁰C. Hartshorne, “Process Philosophy as a Resource for Christian Thought” in P. LeFevre (ed.), Philosophical Resources for Christian Thought, New York: Abingdon, 1968, p. 52.

One is reminded of Hegel’s Absolute coming to self-realization in this description of God’s involvement in the agonizing thrust of creation upwards in the process of actualizing values. But regardless of its Greek or Teutonic antecedents, we must recognize that this theological alternative to a biblical theology of nature has, to a large extent, been prompted by the very nature of the evolutionary process itself. The erratic patterns of development, the pain at its center,²¹Cf. Heim, pp. 105–9, and his The Transformation of the Scientific World View, London: SCM, 1953, pp. 253–6. and the apparent futility which seems so characteristic of individual phenomenal happenings—all these things cry out for explanation, and, in the opinion of Hartshorne, constitute “fatal objections” to a traditional Christian theism.²²Hartshorne, p. 65. They convinced Huxley of “blind chance”; they persuade these theistic process philosophers that “God is the great companion—the fellow sufferer who understands.”²³Quoted from A. N. Whitehead’s Process and Reality in Birch, p. 112.

THE WORDS

Littered and spoiled

by a tide of undone things

and memories washed ashore

sand, empty shells, and more

have taken toll

where great waves roll

heave and deposit for me

empty tokens of serenity.

Wetness and wind

spin hold of me

in this second’s turning

to witness the nations churning

taking turbulence to the shore

depositing with a roar

violence.

What should I say

that no one has said

words whether spoken or dead

issued against an unguarded sea

unfolding demanding of me

salvation

and a reason why

it was left unsaid

as doom shadows spread

to eternity.

D. R. UNRUH

But both these alternatives are mistaken. Seriously mistaken. A godless interpretation and “Panentheism” (Hartshorne) are both unnecessary and misleading.²⁴I. G. Barbour favors a process-type solution but not without criticism, pp. 439–63 (esp. 457–8). Cf. E. Mascall’s review in J. Theol. St. XVIII, 2 (Oct., 1967). The biblical view is that the character of things “outside Eden” is as it is because we are as we are. It is the form of existence appropriate for the sinful man to live and to die within. It is shot through with ambiguity. It is, as we have seen, distorted, and this is because of the action and subsequent state of nature’s overlord! To object and say that its character was set long before man’s appearance²⁵D. Lack, pp. 76–7. is to overlook the earlier truth that salvation is the basis of creation, and that just as the (initial) consequences of Christ’s historic redemption 1,900 years ago stretch from the beginning of human history to its end, so the effects of Adam’s sin are present from the beginning of creation to its end. The size and character of a building’s foundation are determined by the size and character of the building which is to be built upon it. The effects of Adam’s fall, though chronologically prior to, are to be considered as consequent upon the fall itself. We are intimately linked with our environment, as the Bible and biological evolution constantly remind us, and our human defection has had the effect of plunging nature itself into the abyss of our sorrow. But Romans 8:18–23 leaves us in no doubt that the redemption of man will bring its own “release” to nature.²⁶Cf. Heim, Creation and Consummation, pp. 110–21.

Many who speak to the question of biblical tongues assume they are of two kinds: (1) the tongues at Pentecost, which were known languages, and (2) the Corinthian tongues, variously described as “ecstatic utterances,” “babbling,” or “gibberish.” But seldom is exegetical support offered for the second part of this assumption; there is only a superficial psychologizing of the phenomenon.

The description “ecstatic utterance” has the support of some Bible translators. Biblical lexicons describe the phenomenon as “the broken speech of persons in religious ecstasy,” or “strange utterances, rugged, dark, disconnected.” Commentaries variously score tongues as “some outlandish jargon, if not positively gibberish.” And in an article in the December 6, 1968, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Carl G. Tuland characterized the Corinthian tongues as “ecstatic utterance or babbling.”

Such assumptions are not even informed opinions until we ask and seek to answer the question, How did the apostolic community understand the phenomenon?

To those most intimately concerned, tongues represented a dynamic self-manifestation of the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost the disciples spoke in other tongues “as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4). The tongues at Corinth were a “manifestation of the Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:7).

The biblical writers understood these utterances to be bona fide languages. At Pentecost believers spoke the “dialects” of the assembled multitude (Acts 2:6). The Corinthians spoke “families of languages” (1 Cor. 12:10), expressly defined as “the languages of men and of angels” (1 Cor. 13:1). The “other tongues” at Pentecost were unknown to the speakers but intelligible to those who spoke those particular dialects (Acts 2:11). In the assembly at Corinth, the tongues, whether of men or angels, were unintelligible until interpreted by their Divine Author (1 Cor. 14:13, 27).

Tongues produced the same reaction in the skeptics in both Jerusalem and Corinth. At Pentecost all the disciples present spoke in other tongues, and many of the bystanders mocked them for drunkenness (Acts 2:13, 15). Paul reminded the Corinthians that if they all spoke in tongues, the unbelievers would think they were mad (1 Cor. 14:23), which raises the question of ecstasy in relation to tongues.

Ecstasy is not a corollary of tongues either in Scripture or in experience. In fact, the word ecstatic is not used in the Scriptures to qualify tongues. It is used to describe the trance visions of Peter (Acts 10:10; 11:15) and Paul (Acts 22:17). Although the word itself is not used, First Corinthians 12:1 ff. may be an autobiographical description of that experience of Paul’s. What is significant in this for our discussion is that none of these is a tongues passage.

The interpretation that the tongues at Corinth were “ecstatic utterances” assumes that they are the expression of an ecstatic experience. If this assumption were true, then the tongues at Pentecost were also “ecstatic utterances,” inasmuch as the conduct of the disciples was “ecstatic conduct”—indeed, so much so that it was mistaken for drunkenness. However, the fact that they spoke intelligible languages at Pentecost indicates that ecstatic experience does not necessarily result in “ecstatic babbling.” Even if the Corinthian experience were then ecstatic, one cannot on these grounds argue that the tongues were ecstatic utterance or babbling, rather than authentic languages.

Coming back to the evaluation of tongues by the first Pentecostal community, we note that the Pentecost utterances were devotional, extolling “the magnificence of God” (Acts 2:11, Phillips). In the house of Cornelius at Caesarea some ten years later, the Roman centurion and his household “glorified” God in tongues utterances (Acts 10:46). It should be observed in passing that the words rendered here “magnificence” and “glorified” are cognates, suggesting the similarity in nature and content of the tongues on the two occasions. At Corinth prayer in tongues was used devotionally for self-edification (1 Cor. 14:3, 28), while public utterances when interpreted were for the edification of the church (1 Cor. 14:5).

CONSIDER THE LILIES …

At the very roots of the meadow there is a poem.

It is part of the fabric of truth

That binds the fields to the cylinder of years.

It is not seasonal.

It is not tied to the good and bad of annual rings,

Although its evidence may notice such things.

Let me pluck the poem and show it to you—

Its top circled in ivory and crowned in gold.

I do not need to vandalize the petals

One by one, plus by minus by plus,

To know the answer.

There is no possibility of negative with God.

You may take the poem as proof

Although it is not mine to give;

Or you may wait,

For He is prone to walk the meadow through

As in the past,

Writing His poems on each seeking heart,

Where they will last.

CHARLES A. WAUGAMAN

Paul does more than hint at the enriching of his own private devotional life in tongues-worship; for example, “I will pray with the spirit [i.e., in tongues], and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit [i.e., in tongues], and I will sing with the understanding also” (1 Cor. 14:15). To which he added, “I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than you all” (v. 18). It does violence to Paul’s personal integrity to seize upon verse 19 for its polemic value in order to polarize his evaluation of tongues (“Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that I might instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue”). It is more consistent with the context, and a more charitable appraisal of apostolic integrity, to recognize that he was defining thereby his contribution to corporate worship as an apostle and a teacher. At the same time he approved the apostolic pattern of worship in which each individual ministered the Holy Spirit’s gifts and manifestations for the corporate good, including tongues with interpretation (1 Cor. 14:26). Even as he regulated the administration of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:23–34), so Paul established a pattern of divine order for the ministering of all the Spirit’s gifts in corporate worship. He discriminated against no manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

As a matter of fact, one might, on the basis of First Corinthians 14:32 and 33—“The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets; for God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints”—make a case against the confusion caused by undisciplined prophetic extemporizing. Paul’s instructions to the Thessalonians suggests some such state of affairs there: “Stop despising prophesyings” (1 Thess. 5:20). Prophesying despised! Why? Because of confusion in corporate worship?

In the Corinthian assembly, riven by party spirit, it was teachers, not tongues, that divided the church. The manifestations of this party spirit Paul rebuked as carnal and immature (1 Cor. 1:11 ff.; 3:1 ff.). And it may well have been the activity of an anti-charismatic party that Paul further enjoined, saying, “Desire earnestly to prophesy, and stop forbidding tongues utterances.”

The publication of Carl G. Tuland’s article “The Confusion About Tongues” in CHRISTIANITY TODAY raises the question of Corinthian tongues versus Pentecost tongues with fresh urgency. The article is variously interpreted by Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals alike as a polemic against the Pentecostal experience at the point of one of its more obvious distinctives, namely, tongues.

Dr. Tuland’s interpretation of the Corinthian tongues as “ecstatic utterance or babbling” seems to be the crux of his presentation. Every subsequent value judgment relating to tongues rests upon this fundamental presupposition. We applaud his acumen in focusing on this crucial point, for “babbling” is indefensible in any context, whether private devotions or corporate worship. If tongues are merely “ecstatic babbling,” they are totally irrelevant to Christian worship. There can then be no legitimate concern for their regulation and use in the congregation.

Inasmuch as Tuland draws the proof for his view from certain exegetical considerations, the challenge of this exegesis must be faced or the Pentecostal experience surrendered by default. This is not an overstatement. If Tuland’s exegesis is correct, the subsequent strictures against tongues are merely an exercise in overkill. He has disposed of the entire problem by definition.

By contrasting univocally the Hebrew word liṣ, which he says means “to translate” (but it really means “to scorn or deride”), with the Hebrew pātar (Aramaic pešar), “to interpret,” and by contrasting the Greek methermēneuō, “to translate,” with hermēneuō, “to interpret,” he drew the following sweeping conclusion: “This fundamental distinction between translation and interpretation as observed in both Testaments should be a strong enough argument to dismiss ‘tongues’ in the sense of First Corinthians 14 as intelligible speech or as ‘foreign languages’” (p. 8).

The method of argumentation here is wrong both philosophically and linguistically. We do not use words univocally, that is, in one sense only. For example, “ball” may refer to a spherical toy, a formal dance or, colloquially, a good time.

The author’s choice of Genesis 42:23 (“They did not know that Joseph understood them, for there was an interpreter [according to Tuland, “translator”] between them”) to illustrate his thesis is at best the exception that proves the rule; at worst it is a case of special pleading. The same word for interpreter in Job 33:23 stands in apposition with “angel” and means an “angel-mediator.” The Targum translates it with the word “Paraclete.” The Septuagint (Greek) rendering for it in Isaiah 43:27 is “princes.” The context suggests a meaning like “teachers,” or even “intercessors.” In Second Chronicles 32:31 the Septuagint renders it “ambassadors.” The context shows them to be the representatives of the princes of Babylon, hence “envoys” or “ambassadors.” In its broadest connotations, the Hebrew word signifies an intermediary between men, and between God and men.

In none of these examples does the meaning “translator” fit the context; consequently, the selective use of Genesis 42:23 to establish the meaning “translate” is simply special pleading. The Hebrew terminology cited does not sustain a distinction between translation and interpretation.

As for Dr. Tuland’s New Testament exegesis, a comparison of methermēneuō with hermēneuō shows that they are used interchangeably in the same pattern phrases. One example will suffice: Matthew 1:23, “Emmanuel; which is being interpreted [methermēneuō, translated], God with us,” compared with John 1:38, “Rabbi, which is to say, being interpreted [hermēneuō, translated], Teacher.” The author’s gratuitous distinction in meaning between them is non-existent.

Furthermore, in John 1:38, 42; 9:7, and in Hebrews 7:2, the latter verb means “to translate.” Only in a variant reading on Luke 24:27 does it mean “to interpret.” Depending on the context, then, this verb can mean either “to translate” or “to interpret.”

The confusion in Dr. Tuland’s exegesis is further compounded by his statement that “the verb meaning to interpret is what is used in First Corinthians 12:10; 14:13, 26, and 28.” Actually this verb is not used in any of these places. In First Corinthians 14:5, 13, 27 a third verb, diermēneuō, is used, while its cognate noun occurs in 14:28. In Luke 24:27 this verb means “to interpret,” while in Acts 9:36 it means “to translate.” Therefore, in the passages in First Corinthians it can mean either, depending on the bias of the interpreter. In a word, there is no exegetical support for his view that tongues in First Corinthians 14 are “ecstatic utterance or babbling.”

But then there is an absurdity in the idea of interpreting “ecstatic utterance or babbling” that should be readily apparent. How can “babbling,” which is by definition meaningless, be “interpreted”?

This brings us to the crux of the charismatic dialogue, namely, the rationale of tongues. Why speak in tongues? A clue is given in Paul’s words in First Corinthians 12:7: “To each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal.” How then do tongues qualify as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit?

Speech is the distinctively characteristic manifestation of human personality. In the whole created order, it is a uniquely human faculty. Eduard Thurneysen perceptively underscores this by saying, “The mystery of speech is identical with the mystery of personality, with the image of God in man.”

God, the Holy Spirit, has all the attributes we ascribe to personality. In the Divine Personality, speech is not extrinsic but intrinsic. By the spoken word God created the worlds. That Divine Word Incarnate is Jesus Christ, who “upholds all things by the word of his power.” The apostolic Church recognized the Holy Spirit’s personality, manifested when he said, “Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them” (Acts 13:2).

But why tongues? Why not our own languages? To ask the question is to answer it. When we speak our native tongue, we speak the words that are in our minds, words that in choice, inflection, nuance, and color manifest our personalities. When we speak in “tongues, as the Holy Spirit gives utterance,” we speak those words that are in the mind of the Spirit, words that manifest his personality unfettered by the censorship of the human ego. These words are, therefore, an exquisitely personal self-manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

When two young Olympians raised their black-gloved hands from the victor’s podium in Mexico City last fall, they may have symbolized more than they or we recognized. The varied reactions, official discipline, and their own belated efforts at explanation suggest that this is so.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos had finished first and third in the two hundred meter event. At the time appointed for them to receive recognition, the champions walked forward wearing black socks, no shoes, and black gloves—one each—on opposite hands. When the martial tune of the American anthem was struck, they bowed their heads away from the colors and extended clenched fists in racial salute.

Reaction was immediate—a mixture of sympathy and hostility and, more pronounced, a sense of impropriety. Everett Barnes appeared to speak for the United States Olympic Committee when he stated: “I am embarrassed; all of us are embarrassed. It makes our country look like the devil.” However, no action beyond the reprimand was planned: “The committee does not believe the behavior of two members of the U.S. team warrants any formal action at this time since such behavior is viewed an isolated incident.”

But within twenty-four hours, under a threat that the entire American team might be disqualified if stronger action were not taken, Smith and Carlos were dismissed. Their offense was described as violation of the spirit of the Olympian games, a reduction of world community to partisan politics.

Smith later explained their action as symbolic of black power. The right and left gloves, he said, are a sign of fellowship within the black community.

He was right in calling this a symbolic act, one that does not directly affect the situation it addresses. That is, it was not functional; the uplifted arms were not an attempt to help the black man fly, or the clenched fists preparation for striking a white man.

The question is whether the act was effective symbolism. Smith says it was meant to symbolize fellowship, apparently to be realized through black power. This means we must work from black power to black fellowship in attempting to understand the issue.

What is black power? For some, it means anarchy in the streets. This is an unfortunate connotation. Black power means integrity and vitality for the race. It suggests the kind of advantage implied in one black enthusiast’s comment: “I feel sorry for anyone who is not black in this century.”

Power means potential. In itself it is amoral; whether it is good or bad depends on the use to which it is put. Power does not imply delinquency, whether it is in the hands of black or of white. Neither does it imply rectitude, of the black or of the white.

The black-power movement is both blessed and cursed in the name of Christ. Understandably so, but commendation or criticism should be aimed at the means by which black power is realized and the purpose to which it is put. Blackness is simply a matter of integrity, and power the corollary of vitality.

A day after the controversial incident, Lee Evans, Larry James, and Ron Freeman mounted the victor’s podium. They wore black berets and gave the clenched-hand salute. Then, as the first notes of the “Star-Spangled Banner” were heard, the athletes came to attention, snapping the berets from their heads and lifting their faces respectfully to their flag. Their action was both rigorous and restrained; no doubt they’d been urged to do more and to do less.

No significant reaction resulted. There was no public reprimand, and certainly no dismissal. Their action was considered to lie within the limits of acceptable behavior.

How did this differ from the previous symbolic act, which was judged improper? The answer is not difficult to come by. Symbolic acts are culturally defined. They provide no functional or self-contained meaning. A culture will allow, and perhaps encourage, certain deviations in the name of creativity and progress, so long as this does not unduly threaten the existing order. Especially offensive in the first case was the lowering of gaze from the American flag, a challenge to the existence of the very community by which Olympic success may come and for which it is meant.

That is not to say that if Smith and Carlos had stood with heads unbowed the act would have remained within the safe zone. Symbols are seldom that simply interpreted. Timing, for instance, may be a critical factor. The point is that one act proved unduly threatening (more so to the international officials than to the Americans) and the other did not.

The mysterious entity that determines such matters is the establishment, the awareness of community and the means by which it is perpetuated. The establishment is variously evaluated, depending upon the degree to which it seems to serve invested interest and/or allow adaptation. At worst it is thought to destroy human initiative, and at best to channel it into rewarding avenues.

The establishment is generally alluded to by the collective term “they,” or the more impersonal “it.” For Smith and Carlos, they or it is white and repressive. When pressed by a reporter as to whether he was glad to be an American, Smith hedged: “I am glad to be a black American.” An American—yes; but an advocate of the establishment—no!

Cultural myth is the generally accepted idea of what life is, its nature, priorities, and sanctions. The establishment is the guardian of cultural myth—a legacy and legality that, though it may constrict, is a must if men are to get on with the matters of living. Establishments may be altered or replaced but never eliminated.

An establishment is required because myth is necessary. Immediate evidence can not always satisfy the doubts of individual and groups. There must be at least a qualified trust, such as that illustrated in the observation: “Democracy is a poor style of government but the best we have been able to devise.”

Disenchantment with myth is to be expected. It takes the form of a power minority, protest against the existing order. When the power minority succeeds in gaining ascendancy, it becomes the protector of a new myth.

The current debate may take the high or low road. That is, it may revolve around whether such incidents tend to further a loyal or disloyal (regardless of intention) minority, or it may reduce to simplistic charges and counter-charges concerning the imagined good will of the parties involved. To put it another way, the issue is what constitutes creative criticism of cultural myth.

One may ask; “What is the Christian thing to do?” This approach could be our undoing. The fact is that there is no Christian thing to do. What the believer has is moral principles, concretely applied in Holy Writ; he has neither specific mandates nor the unfailing wisdom necessary to formulate them.

There is no Christian answer, only answers that Christians give. The Church must put its humility forward, in hopes that by admonition and example it can convince others to refrain from deifying their own particular solutions. Non-absolutes must not become absolute, or else man attempts to play God, passing off his imperfect effort as the perfect way.

The clue to success is the avoidance of sweeping generalizations, in regard to the establishment on the one hand and the black-power movement on the other. There are rationalizations and mixed motives and ideals on both sides. The Christian must hold out against a crusade, either in the name of law and order or in the name of equality. He must work to keep lines from consolidating, from reaching the point at which there is no recourse but to a meeting of irresistible force with immovable object.

This service amounts to an attack on idolatry. It is the refusal to let man make his golden calf and require others to worship it. The Christian is a social iconoclast, one who tears down false images.

The result of purging the land of gods is the release of man to a responsible role and potential fulfillment. While the Christian ethic may be more, it is never less than humanistic, measuring action by its anticipated effect on men. In so doing, it shuns both legalism and libertarianism.

Christ charged: “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). That is, the ordinances were meant to benefit man rather than to constrict him needlessly. The prime test would not be how meticulously he observed the detail but how well he profited from the exercise. The Christian repudiates legalism.

Christ likewise disavowed libertarianism. The adulterous woman was forgiven, but not without the charge: “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:11). There is no humanistic fulfillment where either legalism or license is allowed to proceed unchecked. Man must be freed to seek his destiny among his fellows, and to bear the responsibility for his choices.

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul” (Mark 8:36)? Scripture paints the godless life in the most repugnant imagery. It is lostness of the creature made for communion but now alienated. It is death of the creature dependent upon but wrenched from the Source of Life.

The Christian wants to put God back into man’s future, not as one who impinges on man’s responsibilities but as one who elevates them with the possibility of fulfillment. He does not have to compete with men, for the cattle on a thousand hills are his; rather, he constrains them toward moral ends. Service of God and man are not opposing demands; indeed, they are best achieved in consonance with each other.

The result is twofold: the ability to accept approximate means and the encouragement to believe that efforts in God’s grace may lead to more adequate solutions. The Christian develops perseverance, an ability to tolerate the undesirable situation. He is not anxious or driven to frantic activity that may permanently postpone the very purpose for which it it initiated.

This patience is not passive but purposive. It is a perseverance after righteousness that is born out of confidence in God’s sovereign will. Circumstances may seem to deny, but faith entertains the moral course of events and leads one to pledge his full energies to that end. God is still the Lord of history, upon whom man will build or against whom he will be broken.

This has been an effort, not to judge the action of Smith and Carlos, but to understand it as a symbol with cultural and Christian ramifications. There is no specific Biblical mandate to cover it, no proof-text upon which to decide whether it is right or wrong.

There are, however, the moral principles and course of application in Scripture to guide us. In this case they repudiate idolatry—the setting up of absolute claims by either the establishment or the black-power movement; they elevate man—whether through the establishment and/or through black power; and they invite man into God’s future—beyond both establishment and black power.

When a pseudo-intellectual Christian or a supercilious non-Christian wants to parody warm but naïve and superficial piety, he often cites the hymn “Trust and Obey,” which continues, “for there’s no other way, / To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” Merely to recite these time-honored lines is enough to evoke images of the backwoods revival, the rescue mission, and similar phenomena, which, he will admit, may have survived into the twentieth century, but only to become a source of ridicule for the secularist and of embarrassment to the up-to-date, intellectually respectable Christian.

Yet why is this so? Trust and obedience are biblical concepts, and no amount of theological sophistication could make it plausible that happiness in Jesus comes from distrust and disobedience. Nor can either the concept of happiness or that of “in Jesus” be suspect: the one has been canonized even by our secular culture, and the other is firmly embedded in biblical theology. What, then, causes the suspicion?

Its real source is a wrong but common divorce of knowledge from trust. There is a touch of the adept’s conceit in this, just as there is in the similar divorce of knowledge (or science) from faith. Faith is often taken to be the unlearned man’s way of arriving at spiritual truth, which in the more learned or gifted man is obtained by theological science. This opposition, which has plagued Christianity ever since its earliest days, has been brought on to no small degree by the vanity of mediocre theologians who are unwilling to admit that a simple evangelical believer’s faith is as good as their own. In the same way, “trusting God” is disdained as the simple man’s easy substitute for the long hours of toil and intellectual wrestling that the scholar’s “intellectual integrity” demands he go through before he dare trust.

Nothing should ever be said to disparage the hard and honest labor that the theologian puts in, nor to suggest that genuine doubts and real problems should just be painted over from the pot labeled “Trust and Obedience.” But the theologian must guard himself against the illusion that the intellectual wrestling that precedes his trust is more honest, or deeper, than the non-academic but very real struggle that may, for example, go on in the hearts of believing parents when they learn of the tragic and apparently senseless death of a beloved child. Just as faith is not a substitute for knowledge, so trust is not an attitude based on ignorance, an alternative to true knowledge of what to expect. On the contrary, trust is one of the two fundamental means of arriving at knowledge.

While others of his theological generation were struggling to achieve an ever greater knowledge of ever smaller questions, Professor Karl Heim of Tübingen (1874–1958) was turning his attention to some of the most fundamental human problems, among them the question of how we can arrive at certainty of knowledge. He finds two basic means of attaining certainty. For certainty about objects, there is the objective means of calculation based on observed evidence. For certainty about other subjects, that is, other persons, calculation is inadequate and must be supplemented or replaced by trust. In Heim’s view, trust is not merely my one-sided, subjective evaluation of another person: it is a relationship that engages us both. It really teaches me about the other person, thus resulting in valid knowledge, because it puts me in contact with his subject, his ego, not merely with his objective appearance, which I can observe by ordinary empirical means.

It was one of Professor Heim’s basic convictions that there is in each person a non-objective (or non-objectifiable) self. This difficult concept may be summarized by the statement that within each of us there is a personal self-awareness that neither I nor an outside observer can analyze objectively. I can look somewhat objectively at certain aspects of my personality—my intelligence, my fears, my skills, my incapacities, and so on; but there is something that I cannot get out into the open: the mystery of the self. This self cannot be observed objectively, but it can communicate and receive communication. It is this real, non-objectifiable self that reaches out in trust and is reached by trusting. Heim devoted several works to proving the reality of this self and of the whole personal world of selves, to showing that the ego is not just a kind of reflection of objective reality (a “secretion” of the brain the way adrenalin is a secretion of the adrenal glands) but is itself real (see his Christian Faith and Natural Science, translated by H. Norton Smith [Harper, 1953; Harper Torchbooks, 1957]). In the last analysis, of course, we cannot prove the reality of the personal world, for proofs exist only in the objective realm. In fact, modern man, that supreme authority for so many “modern” theologians, is supposed to reject any suggestion that there is something more than objectifiable, empirical reality. But aside from the fact that twentieth-century man is capable of believing in anything you can think of, we are constantly confronted with the inescapable importance of the personal.

As Dr. Francis Schaeffer has cogently argued in The God Who Is There, the significance of personality is quite understandable in a world created by a personal God, but would be incomprehensible and absurd in a world that came into being only by chance. Schaeffer argues that no one can live consistently on the assumption that the universe is impersonal; this would mean, in Heim’s terms, that no one can help thinking, acting, and relating to others as though individual personality were significant, whether his official world-view has a place and an explanation for personality or not.

Communication And Trust

Within the realm of persons, knowledge of one person by another depends not on observation but on communication. This communication has a verbal aspect, its content, but it also has a non-verbal aspect, its trustworthiness. One does not learn what another person really is without words: the same behavior may mean two totally different things, depending on the words of explanation that accompany it. But a person’s words alone do not tell you what he is unless you engage yourself with him to the extent of trusting them to be true. Trusting them to be false also constitutes a kind of engagement with the other person and also can produce an experience of what he really is. The act of trusting—or distrusting—establishes contact between the persons; the communication between them takes on a different dimension. They not only inform each other but also begin to influence each other. By trusting another person, I influence his behavior toward me.

In the realm of theology, abstract, detached study of God and his self-revelation is not even as neutral as historical research into the life of an ancient monarch. The state papers of Louis XIV do not address me, threaten me, or make promises to me. I can believe or discredit their contents, but I do not trust or distrust them. The Christian message, however, does address me, and there comes a point at which, voluntarily or involuntarily, consciously or unconsciously, I meet it with trust or with mistrust. By my trust I set up one kind of relationship with its Author, by my mistrust another. How well I come to know him will depend on what kind it is.

The danger of credulous trust must not be overlooked: The advice, “Just have faith,” may even become “faith in faith,” belief in something just because it makes you feel better to believe than not to believe. But a warning against credulity cannot discredit the importance of personal trust for knowing God, any more than the existence of mirages in the desert does away with the need to keep your eyes open in order to find a water-hole. It is not necessary to adopt Professor Heim’s whole, elaborate theory to recognize the crucial importance of personal trust for personal communication.

The kind of message we receive from God through his Word can be understood only in the act of being accepted. This is a basic tenet of biblical faith, and the danger that naïve trust will obscure our vision cannot change the fact that without trust we cannot see or understand at all. We understand that trust in this sense does not mean, for example, signing the Westminster Confession or another full statement on the dotted line: it means setting forth in the direction in which Christ calls us. It means, in other words, engaging ourselves in a kind of dialogue with the Master, but one that goes beyond mere verbal exchange; we are obliged to do things we would not do unless we trusted him, and in so doing we begin to understand why we can trust him. Obedience is a very practical counter to pride, and pride feeds our penchant for self-deception.

Slogans like “Trust and obey!” can stand for a blind faith, but this danger is often exaggerated, especially by contrast with the alternative, which seems to be: “We must demonstrate our theological honesty by distrust and disobedience.” A “naïve believer” who does in fact trust and obey is likely to attain a valid if unsophisticated theology, while the sophisticated theologian, intent chiefly on preserving his reputation for detachment, will wind up with inadequacies in both his faith and his theology.

A Theology Of Trust

While guarding himself against an uncritical (and, incidentally, unbiblical) religious sentimentality, the Christian must never forget that trusting God is not an after-effect of a sound theological method but a necessary part of it. The words for to hear and to obey are closely related (like the English hear and hearken) in both Old and New Testament language, and also in practical life. He who is unwilling to hearken will be unable to hear, and no amount of study will help him over this obstacle.

The challenge to the evangelical theologian, then, is to affirm the integration of knowledge and trust. His personal commitment to a living Lord whom he has to trust and to obey, far from being a handicap that other theological scholars do not have, is the touchstone not merely of his faith but of his theology. There is a place for scientific detachment. There is sometimes a need to entertain an unreal hypothesis in order to make progress in a certain question. But there is no way to get around the fact that, just as we come to know another human person not by calculation but by a relationship of trust, so too we cannot know God apart from trust and the practical obedience it implies. This is more than an article of our Christian faith; it is a fundamental requirement of a truly scientific theology. St. Augustine was expressing not merely his faith but the facts when he wrote, “If you do not believe, you will not understand.”

Second in a Series of Three Articles In the first article of this series (January 17), an effort was made to describe the internal, doctrinal aspect of the current crisis of belief in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Now something needs to be said about the external consequences of this mid-twentieth-century Missouri Compromise: the very real possibility that the July convention of the synod in Denver will declare “pulpit and altar fellowship” with The American Lutheran Church.

“And what could possibly be the matter with that?” interjects the ecumenically minded reader. “Doesn’t the ALC have a similar ethnic background, the same Lutheran confessions, and a tradition of powerful orthodox theology, as represented by the exegetical labor of Lenski and the dogmatic and historical scholarship of Reu? Haven’t joint commissioners of the ALC and the Missouri Synod arrived at common agreements as to fellowship? Didn’t the ALC in its Omaha convention on October 18 declare pulpit and altar fellowship with Missouri? And hasn’t the official resolution of Missouri’s 1967 New York convention stated that ‘the task is not to create or fashion a basis for unity. This Scriptural and confessional basis exists. From this basis the Synod now seeks to move forward with whatever steps are necessary for a full realization of altar and pulpit fellowship’?”

Now it is certainly the case that the ALC has expressed its desire for full fellowship with Missouri. But such an agreement must be bilateral, and Missouri’s final decision in the matter will not be made until its Denver convention. Some feel there are significant reasons why this proposed agreement should not be carried out.

The ALC of today is not the ALC of Lenski or Reu. Can one imagine, for example, Lenski’s participation in the opening communion service of the ALC’s Omaha convention, where the reredos posed the questions, “Whom Shall I Send? Who Will Go for Us?,” accompanied by pictures of four men: Gandhi, who explicitly refused the name of Christian; Schweitzer, who, consistent with his lifelong denial of Jesus’ deity, joined the International Unitarian Association shortly before his death; Martin Luther King, whose Boston University theology was little more than social-gospel humanism; and, inevitably, Martin Luther, who would have felt as uncomfortable there as Lenski, if not more so!

Or take Reu, author of the classic Luther and the Scriptures, which so painstakingly demonstrates from the sources Luther’s conviction that “the Scriptures have never erred” (WA, 15, 1481) and “it is impossible that Scripture should contradict itself; it only appears so to senseless and obstinate hypocrites” (WA, 9, 356)—can one visualize him working happily side by side with religion professor Paul Jersild of the ALC’s Luther College, who writes: “We who teach at Luther College cannot subscribe to scriptural inerrancy” (Luther, Spring, 1967)?

The high doctrinal assertions of the ALC—Missouri Synod joint commissioners do not represent what is actually being taught in ALC religion departments and seminaries. My own roommate at Cornell University chose the ALC’s Luther Seminary for his pastoral training so that he would not be subjected to the demise of doctrine at the schools of his own denomination, and then lost his belief in the inerrant authority of the Bible there—principally because of instruction received from Warren Quanbeck. Quanbeck’s activities in ecumenical Lutheranism have resulted in such productions as the weak and muddy “Study Document on Justification” prepared for the 1963 LWF Assembly in Helsinki. Quanbeck holds a thoroughly neo-orthodox view of the Bible, and incorporates into his thinking on the subject the un-Lutheran idea that the finite is incapable of the infinite: “Since human language is always relative, being conditioned by its historical development and usage, there can be no absolute expression of the truth even in the language of theology” (Theology in the Life of the Church, ed. Robert Bertram [1963], p. 25).

“But,” one may ask, “have you not said there are instances of doctrinal deterioration in the Missouri Synod? Doesn’t this indicate that both bodies are more or less in the same boat and have no reason to remain apart?”

To this, two things need to be said. First, systematic efforts are being made, especially on the lay and congregational level, to do something about Missouri’s theological difficulties; but in the ALC little or nothing is being done to preserve doctrinal integrity. The theological deviants in the ALC are “untouchables”—they can write or preach without any fear of being forced to toe the confessional mark. As Klaas Runia correctly noted in a series of articles for CHRISTIANITY TODAY some years ago, the presence of heresy does not make a denomination heretical, but refusal to do anything about it does. Should Missouri join the ALC when, unlike Missouri, the ALC appears to have lost its concern for the disciplined purity of church teaching?

Secondly, there has been greater deterioration on the parish level in the ALC than in the Missouri Synod. In Missouri, theological weakness is still largely confined to particular schools and publications; the grass roots is still (for the present at least!) very solid.

This is clear from two surveys. Jeffrey Hadden’s study of the beliefs of U. S. Protestant ministers (summarized in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, October 13, 1967) revealed that whereas 95 per cent of Missouri clergy believe that the Virgin Birth was a physical miracle, only 81 per cent of ALC pastors hold this belief. As to the inerrancy of the Bible, 76 per cent of Missouri pastors hold to it, but only 23 per cent—less than a fourth!—of the ALC clergy regard Scripture as entirely trustworthy (and if only ALC pastors under thirty-five years of age are considered, the affirmations of scriptural inerrancy drop to 6 per cent). The 1965 Glock-Stark survey of lay Protestant convictions showed that whereas 86 per cent of Missouri laymen maintain an unqualified belief in original sin, only 49 per cent of ALC laymen—less than half—do so. On the deity of Christ, only 74 per cent of ALC laymen affirmed it, while 93 per cent of lay Missourians said they believed in it. Missouri laymen were 70 per cent willing to express “certainty” as to religious belief; only 48 per cent of ALCers could do so.

Would not pulpit and altar fellowship with the ALC (a member of the LWF and the WCC, which Missouri has consistently regarded as unionistic) greatly accelerate the synod’s doctrinal decline? Might not such a step put it beyond the hope of recovery? Is not this issue a watershed? These are the questions that will be answered one way or the other at Denver.

President Kreiss of the Missouri-affiliated Free Lutheran Church of France and Belgium surely speaks for many when he says: “For my part, 1969 and the outcome of elections in Denver and of certain issues like intercommunion with ALC and LWF membership will be absolutely decisive. If there is no right-about switch then, I’ll step out.”

(The final article in this series will appear June 6.)