Page 6242 – Christianity Today (2024)

Additional meetings between Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras are very likely. No one was talking yet about time and place, but prospects seemed good following the two meetings between the supreme Roman Catholic and Orthodox leaders on the Mount of Olives this month. What they talked about has not been disclosed, but there is every indication that the talks were cordial and that they paved the way for further contacts. An ecumenical “hot line” is now operating between Rome and Istanbul.

Before returning home, Patriarch Athenagoras told newsmen that Pope Paul wishes to have another meeting with him. “I am in favor of personal contacts,” the Patriarch said in commenting on the Pope’s proposal.

Asked whether such meetings might bring about a union of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, the Patriarch said “a merger is impossible because the churches have never been unified at any time in the past.”

“But,” he added, “we aim at creating a unified Christian front to face our common problems.”

Vatican observers were quoted as saying that a visit to Rome by the 77-year-old Patriarch Athenagoras is now likely. There was no official confirmation, however, of any such plans.

Back at his residence in Istanbul, Patriarch Athenagoras told newsmen that he planned to visit North America in the fall. He specifically mentioned a trip to the United States. In Toronto, the Very Rev. George Dimopoulos, 34-year-old nephew of the Patriarch, said his itinerary would include Canada. Father Dimopoulos said no enthroned patriarch of Constantinople has ever visited North America before. Patriarch Athenagoras, however, is a former U. S. citizen who spent eighteen years in New York as archbishop of North and South America, until his election as ecumenical patriarch.

Meanwhile, there was speculation that Pope Paul would also visit North America this year, although probably not at the same time as the Patriarch. One high Vatican source was reported as saying that the Pope would definitely travel to India for a eucharistic congress in the fall and that some feelers had already been extended to the U. S. government about an American visit. The source indicated no final decision had been made about the possibility of travel to the United States.

The Dutch Radio broadcast a report that Pope Paul intends to visit President Johnson in Washington and that he would like to address the United Nations in New York. The broadcast said the report came from an “unofficial source,” but claimed it was “very reliable.”

Johnson suggested a meeting with the Pope in an handwritten postscript to a letter delivered to the Pontiff at Nazareth by Sargent Shriver, director of the U. S. Peace Corps.

One prospect, perhaps somewhat remote, is that the Pope would come to the United States for the opening of the New York World’s Fair in April. The Vatican is building an impressive pavilion that would provide an appropriate entree. As a special dispensation to the fair, the Vatican is loaning for display Michelangelo’s “Pietà.”

The Papacy As An Obstacle

Archbishop Iakovos, head of the Greek Orthodox Diocese of North and South America, considers Pope Paul’s VI’s view that the Bishop of Rome is the earthly head of the Church of Christ, an obstacle to reunion of the Christian churches.

In an interview in Athens, after conferences with Archbishop Chrysostomos, leading prelate of Greece, Iakovos told CHRISTIANITY TODAY:

“I understand very well the Roman Catholic ecclesiology. If we differ with Catholics we differ in the understanding of our Lord’s statement that there will be ‘one flock, one shepherd.’ Bishops are heads of local churches but there is only one head of the whole Church and this is Christ.”

Archbishop Iakovos insisted that the doctrine of the papacy “can and must be discussed—first in the light of the Gospel, and second in the light of the anxiety to reach one another in quest of unity. If the desire for rapprochement is genuine and sincere, no dogmatic and doctrinal technicalities should be raised as a new wall of partition.”

Archbishop Iakovos traveled with Pope Paul’s entourage to the Holy Land. While he was in Athens to call on Archbishop Chrysostomos, Greek newspapers carried Paul VI’s indication, upon returning to Rome, that the Pope is committed still to the vision of a single Christian church with the Bishop of Rome as its head, although for the present he is reconciled to a period of cooperation in “co-existence.”

Asked if the Vatican’s view of the role of the pope in relation to the church is a barrier to church unity, Archbishop Iakovos replied: “Definitely.”

After his return to the Vatican, Paul VI also affirmed that the Roman Catholic Church is the one church to which others must return if perfect communion is to be achieved. Emphasizing that truth is basic to unity, he added that there can be no compromise of Roman Catholic doctrine.

Archbishop Iakovos disclosed that in Jerusalem he urged Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras, who met with Pope Paul, to seek the appointment of three commissions for the study of doctrinal, liturgical, and canonical differences between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. There is some hope that the commissions will be designated before the Vatican Council’s resumption in September.

In Greece, Orthodox spokesmen divided sharply over the propriety and desirability of the Holy Land meeting of the Pope and the Patriarch. The Greek primate Chrysostomos opposed the confrontation.

Common Prayer

Use of a common prayer marked this year’s observance in Montreal of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, sponsored by the World Council of Churches. The prayer was drafted jointly by a Roman Catholic priest and a Reformed minister.

Montreal has been a center of the ecumenical dialogue, and the use of the prayer by Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Protestants, and Orthodox is another milestone in interfaith relations.

The WCC’s Week of Prayer coincides with the Roman Catholic Chair of Unity Octave, which originated in the United States. The prayer used in Montreal was drawn by Father Pierre Michalon, head of the Catholic Christian Unity Center in Lyons, France, and Dr. Lukas Vischer, a WCC staff member.

Ecumenism achieved visible form in Montreal with the establishment there of an Ecumenical Centre having a library, meeting rooms, and a full-time director. The center in the predominantly French-speaking city is bi-lingual (French and English) and is directed toward the advance of ecumenism through discussion among Protestants, and between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Establishment of the center resulted from the growth of ecumenical ideas in the world at large, but more particularly as the result of a changing climate of opinion among the French Roman Catholic clergy of the Archdiocese of Montreal. The man primarily responsible for the change is the archbishop, Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger, who issued a pastoral letter two years ago summoning all the faithful to pray for unity in order that the “separated brethren” might be reunited to the “Mother Church.” To facilitate the movement the cardinal appointed a diocesan ecumenical commission which in turn established the center last June, shortly before the opening of the Faith and Order Conference in the Canadian city.

The director of the center, the Rev. Irenee Beaubien, S. J., stresses that Christian unity can be only in Christ, a fact which obliged him to admit that he has much more in common with evangelicals than with so-called liberals who deny Christ’s deity and so cast doubt on their Christianity. His program includes a series of evening lectures during which various denominations may set forth their views on the nature of the Church. Once a month groups of ministers and priests meet for Bible study and prayer.

One observer notes that the center significantly reflects “the radical change which has taken place in Roman Catholic thinking. No longer do the Roman Catholics stand apart, interested only in their own monologue and in Protestant submission. They have shown themselves very willing to talk and discuss.”

“This may present to evangelicals,” he added, “a God-given opportunity to bear witness, that God’s grace in Jesus Christ may be made even clearer.”

Southern Presbyterians Seen In Context

Presbyterians in the South, Vol. I, by Ernest Trice Thompson (John Knox, 1963, 629 pp., $9.75), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, chairman, Department of History, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

In many ways this first volume of a projected two-volume history of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. is a superior piece of historical writing; it offers an excellent account of the development of Presbyterianism in the South for all who are interested in the religious development of the American people, regardless of their own religious outlook. This volume is obviously the fruit of a tremendous amount of research and solid documentation. The accompanying bibliography is one of the finest on the subject to have come to the attention of this reviewer.

Professor Thompson is to be congratulated on the breadth and scope of this work, for he has not lost sight of the fact that Presbyterianism in the South was part of the South. The relation between Presbyterianism and the South, in its social, cultural, and political development, is especially well treated during discussion of the colonial era, and, although the idea recedes somewhat toward the last of the book, it is never forgotten. For this reason, if for no other, this work is unique. It is denominational history, and rightly so; but the history is presented in a most meaningful way. It is unfortunate that so few denominational histories attain this high standard.

This work never becomes a dull recitation of what presbyteries and general assemblies said or did; rather, it gives a real and valuable place to their pronouncements in the light of the issues involved. Professor Thompson is always alert to the impact that Presbyterians had on Southern history to 1861; he is very careful to present their influence on education (this might be called one of the major themes of Volume I) and on the development of religious liberty. In fact, his treatment of the role of Presbyterians in the struggle for church-state separation is one of the highlights of this volume and is a needed corrective to the prevailing view that the struggle in Virginia was carried to a successful conflict by the Jeffersonian Deists and the Baptists.

There is so much of value in this book that this reviewer wishes he could conclude at this point; but this is not possible. Although Professor Thompson treats his sources and his many quotations with fairness and accuracy, he fails to present the doctrinal side of Presbyterianism in the South in all of its majesty and strength. He is careful to state the disagreements between the Old and New Light parties in the 1740s and 1750s. He is equally careful to set forth the differences between Presbyterianism and Deism. At no time, however, does the reader gain the impression that these differences are vital and that Deism was a distinct threat to the evangelical faith.

This doctrinal obscurity gains a greater influence in Professor Thompson’s writing as he considers the revivalist movements of the early years of the nineteenth century and the rise of abolitionism. At no place does he show an awareness of the close relation that existed between transcendentalism and unitarianism and the abolitionists in the North, and his attempt to convey the impression that it was largely an evangelistic movement is not supported by the facts. Again, he is accurate in his presentation of the facts concerning the split between the Old and New School groups. But he fails to set forth the relation between the theology of the New School, on the one hand, and the religious and philosophical radicalism which was coming to the North as a result of Hegelian philosophy. The basic issues of this controversy are glossed over, and the threat posed by the New School to historic Presbyterianism is never set forth. On the other hand, the author tends to minimize such controversies, and to find one of the major causes for the split of 1837 in the growing rivalry between the mission boards directly under the General Assembly and those boards that were the result of the Plan of 1801.

This tendency to reduce the importance of doctrinal issues comes to its height on the discussion of the issues that brought the final break between Presbyterians of the South and the Old School General Assembly and the formation of the Southern Presbyterian church. He admits that slavery was not the only cause, but his general treatment of the split is not satisfactory. He fails to explain why Plumer, Thornwell, Palmer, and Dabney finally took such a strong stand against abolitionism, when at one time they had been in favor of some kind of manumission of the slaves. The insights of Thornwell and Palmer into the real meaning of abolition and its connection with radicalism in the North are slighted, and Thompson is something less than fair when he says that Thornwell was guilty of inducing a new concept of Presbyterianism into the thinking of the South. He later admits that the root of this jure divino Presbyterianism can be found in English Puritanism. Because the author slights the doctrinal strength of Presbyterianism, he never is able to show the close relation of this doctrinal vigor to the amazing influence that Presbyterianism was able to achieve in the cultural life of the South. In the opinion of this reviewer, the failure to appreciate the biblical foundations of what he calls jure divino Presbyterianism is a weakness of what would otherwise be a great denominational history.

For the Presbyterian layman as well as the minister this book fills a real need; but it should be read with the above comments in mind.

C. GREGG SINGER

Is It What It Does?

The Minister in the Reformed Tradition, by Harry G. Goodykoontz (John Knox, 1963, 176 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Elton M. Eenigenburg, professor of church history. Western Theological Seminary, Holland, Michigan.

This volume is a welcome addition to a growing body of literature on the nature of the ministry. Much of it has been written in behalf of communions other than the Reformed—all the more reason for rejoicing in a contribution that tries to be of specific help in grasping and defining the Reformed understanding of the ministry of the Gospel.

Dr. Goodykoontz has produced a useful book, one which reflects a careful selection from largely contemporary sources. The author is concerned to be contemporary, and places us in dialogue with advocates of similar and dissimilar points of view. The involvement of the author himself in the dialogue is not very vigorous, though he does not leave doubt as to where he stands on disputed matters. He often leans too heavily on his authorities, quoting them rather than incorporating their wisdom into conclusions of his own.

On the more practical side, concern is expressed for the tendency in our times to drive a wedge between the clergy and laity, largely because of the minister’s inability to understand his own image and role and the layman’s inability to accept the minister for what God intends him to be. But Dr. Goodykoontz does not believe the difficulty finds solution through a depreciation of the minister’s office. He is especially opposed to Dr. Arnold Come’s program (in his book, Agents of Reconciliation) of dissolving office into function so thoroughly that there no longer is a clergy in distinction from laity.

A more technical problem is related intimately to the one just indicated. Should the minister be regarded as holding an office in the technical sense of that term, or does he merely exercise an important function? The author attempts to show, both on the basis of the biblical evidence and from the history of the Reformed churches, that the minister definitely holds an office (and thus exercises the functions that are implied in the office). Contemporary authors. he finds, and this includes some in the Reformed-Presbyterian tradition (like Come), have been so determined to describe the ministry exclusively in terms of function that we are in great danger of reducing the ministry in our time to an amorphous activity incapable of careful definition.

This study of the problem would have been considerably benefited by an analysis of the semantic difficulties created by juxtaposing the terms “office” and “function.” Too often in contemporary discussion they are looked upon as antithetical terms, and are put in an either-or relationship to one another. Goodykoontz’s study implies, but does not say clearly enough, that this does not have to be the case. Obviously “office” indicates a function or functions of some kind. A “function” persisted in over a period of time by the same person, who has been set apart for that function by some form of initiation to his duties, attains the character and structure of an office. Thus properly conceived, office and function have the inalienable relation to one another of form and content.

There are many good things in this book. We have singled out only a few. A large part of the effort is devoted to a summary treatment of attitudes towards the ministry up and down the history of the Church, especially in the Presbyterian and Reformed churches. Another substantial section is given over to practical questions relating to ministerial calls, ordination, and related matters. Ministers. Reformed and otherwise, will gain new perspective on their high calling by a study of this book.

ELTON M. EENIGENBURG

Who Should Be Initiated?

Baptism: Conscience and Clue for the Church, by Warren Carr (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964,224 pp., $4.50), is reviewed by Paul K. Jewett, associate professor of systematic theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Some people find a key to the meaning of the Church in the role of the laity; others, in a return to expository preaching or in a conscience awakened to social and economic injustice. The present volume, as its title suggests, elaborates the thesis that if the Church will fulfill its mission in the world today, it must seek to close the gap between its doctrine of baptism and its practice of baptism. According to the author this is not a task that can be achieved by one group in the Church seeking to make the whole Church conform to its particular view. The author, a Baptist minister, has read widely, for a non-practicing scholar, in the literature on both sides of the issue of infant baptism as well as in ecumenical sources, some of which try to play down all questions about baptism in the interest of harmony and unity. Seeking to steer a middle course, he definitely feels that our attention must focus (as it has recently in Continental theology) on the question of baptism, yet in a spirit of humility that is willing to learn, to whichever tradition one may belong. The unfortunate thing is that too often those who have been concerned with baptism have given their energies to a defense either of infant baptism or of believers’ baptism. Having examined the case for these alternatives, the author concludes that both sides are culpable of “private distortions” of the true meaning of the rite. Christian baptism is neither believers’ baptism nor infant baptism. The bulk of the book is concerned to set forth both traditions with accuracy and some fullness, and then by analysis to show their respective weaknesses. For readers who, like the reviewer, are members of American Baptist churches practicing open membership, some of the illustrations of Baptist failure will appear the unfortunate result more of Southern Baptist usage than of flaws in the theology of believers’ baptism as such. This, however, does not altogether nullify the author’s strictures against his Baptist brethren.

On this score the author has some enlightening things to say about Christian education, specifically Baptist Sunday school literature, which suffers from a paucity of materials and methods. The drum is beaten rather consistently for evangelizing the lost, and the Sunday school scholar is pressed into a decision for Christ before he is old enough to say no. On the other hand, pedobaptist educators are weak on the evangelistic element. They cannot escape the shadow of Bushnell, who taught that children of believers should be so nurtured as to grow up Christian from childhood, never knowing themselves to be otherwise.

But whatever defects we may see in the way others practice baptism, we should all agree that baptism is the symbol of Christian initiation. This leaves the old question of the proper subject of baptism unresolved. “Direct appeal to the New Testament does not promise an early end to the reigning uncertainty. It is conclusive that the theology of the New Testament disfavors infant baptism with considerable inflexibility. On the other hand, the New Testament evidence for the practice of infant baptism cannot be summarily dismissed as an ‘argument from silence.’ The assumption that persons born of Christian parents, were not baptized until they had reached the age of discretion or accountability must also be argued from silence. A second complication is the assured impossibility of recapturing the New Testament Church without abolishing the form and institution of the Church as it now is. The only workable option is to find the proper subjects of baptism for the contemporary Church within a grace-faith context while looking to the New Testament as the most resourceful guide” (p. 176). Each tradition, concludes the author, must look to what its baptism does to the world mission of the Church as well as what damage is wrought to the act of Christian baptism in its own right. The writer’s serious attempt to do this as a Baptist gives the book a unique ministry.

PAUL K. JEWETT

A Rich Novel

Holy Masquerade, by Olov Hartman, translated by Karl A. Olsson (Eerdmans, 1963, 142 pp., $3), is reviewed by Clyde S. Kilby, chairman, Department of English, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

Let those who doubt that a “Christian” novel is possible read this one. They will be happy to discover in it none of the patent situations and contrived procedures that have too often marred the religious story. It is one of those books that do not exhaust themselves in one reading. On the contrary, as it proceeds the novel takes on a far-reaching symbolism that reminds one of Ibsen and Mauriac.

The story is in the form of a journal written by the worldly and doubting wife of Pastor Albert Svensson. Realizing not long after their marriage that they inhabit different worlds, Klara Svensson attempts to bring a crystal-clear common sense to bear upon Albert’s religious pretentions. She finds her husband totally enveloped in the “apparatus of piety” and a man who “stuffs all his problems into his theological system,” even, eventually, his clandestine meetings with another woman. Klara notes how Albert unconsciously accommodates both his theology and preaching to circumstances, chiefly his unspoken desire for ecclesiastical advancement.

But primarily the novel is about Klara Svensson’s unsuccessful bout with God. Convinced that atheism is the only reasonable view, Klara attempts to establish her whole life on that platform. In focusing her keen eye on Christianity she discovers that logic itself plays unexpected tricks and that even so sharply outlined a doubt as her own may also be as complete a masquerade as that of her husband’s well-packaged piety.

Examining a madonna statue in the church tower, Klara at first sees only vacancy in the eye of Mary, but later the far view of Calvary. In spite of her abiding hostility to the supernatural, Klara experiences the mystery of Christ and, still struggling against belief, finds that Christ is in process of gestation in her. Thus the picture is reversed and Klara’s husband appears as the unbeliever, the man of an overriding “common sense” who interprets Klara’s conversion as the oncoming of insanity.

Let me mention only one of the many symbols in the novel. Klara and her husband are barren both of children and of spiritual life. In time Klara grows envious of the Virgin with her Christ-child and longs, even while she fights against the idea, to “bear” Christ also. But she realizes that it must be a virginal birth, since Albert Svensson is himself incapable of taking part in any spiritual begetting. While Christ is born in Klara, her husband ends as barren as in the beginning, for he is incapable of any participation in the supernatural.

No summary can suggest the rich contents of this novel. For me the book has been a grand discovery, and I have urged the publisher to arrange for the translation of other works by Olov Hartman.

CLYDE S. KILBY

The Best

Chapters in the History of New Testament Textual Criticism (from the “New Testament Tools and Studies” series), by Bruce M. Metzger (Eerdmans, 1963, 163 pp., $4), is reviewed by Herman C. Waetjen, assistant professor of New Testament, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, California.

The study of the transmission of the biblical text is an extremely technical and complex science. At the same time it is also an indispensable tool. Professor Metzger’s book is like the subject he deals with: technical and indispensable. It is a series of essays examining some of the more important as well as some of the more irregular problems of New Testament textual study. The chapter titles themselves provide a good survey of the contents: The Lucianic Recension of the Greek Bible, The Caesarean Text of the Gospels, The Old Slavonic Version, Tatian’s Diatessaron and a Persian Harmony of the Gospels, Recent Spanish Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, Trends in the Textual Criticism of the Iliad and the Mahabharata, and finally an appendix, William Bowyer’s Contribution to New Testament Textual Criticism.

Each chapter outlines the history and development of the subject under examination and leads up to the present-day discussion. Sometimes the “tasks and problems” awaiting or demanding investigation are summarized. In each case the reader knows where the debate is presently focused and where the exploratory work of the future lies and needs to be undertaken.

For example, Metzger reviews a chain of scholars since the time of Westcott and Hort who, through their research on the Lucianic Recension, have forced a re-evaluation of the generally dismissed Syrian text. The debate on Streeter’s Caesarean text is sketched, with the conclusion that this recension probably had its origin in Egypt and not Caesarea, but at the same time that it was revised at a later date “into the true Caesarean.” Metzger’s examination of the scholarship which has been devoted to the Old Slavonic version results in a call for renewed efforts to include the significant readings of this text in the critical apparatus of the Novum Testamentum Graece.

Here is scholarship at its painstaking best moving beyond the general beaten paths of textual criticism. Footnotes are extensive and valuable. The book supplies ample testimony that Professor Metzger is one of the world’s leading authorities in textual criticism. In the light of the prevailing emphasis on maximum capital gains in printing and selling books, Eerdmans is to be congratulated for undertaking the publication of the present volume and of the entire series.

HERMAN C. WAETJEN

As Seen From The Jordan

Where the Jordan Flows, by Richard H. Sanger (Middle East Institute, 1963, 397 pp., $5.75), is reviewed by Anton T. Pearson, professor of Old Testament literature, Bethel Theological Seminary, St. Paul Minnesota.

Where the Jordan Flows is free from the xenophobia so often observed in writings on the Arab world and from the chauvinism so frequent in Zionist apologies. The author, Richard H. Sanger, long familiar with the Near East, has served on the American Embassy staff both in Beirut and in Amman, and is now a member of the faculty of the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute.

The book surveys in twenty-two chapters the history of Palestine from Abraham to the year 1963. The volume contains a selected bibliography, an index, and sixteen representative photographs, but regrettably lacks maps. Sanger uses the standard works, but does not mention G. Lankester Harding’s definitive The Antiquities of Jordan.

After a sketch of the biblical epoch from Abraham to Solomon, in which the scene of the wilderness wanderings is very graphically portrayed, the author leaps to the Maccabean era, with an intervening chapter on Petra. Ensuing chapters treat the periods from the Herods to the modern times, but there is no reference to the Mamluk rule (1250–1517).

The discussions on Petra, Jerusalem, Jerash, and Qumran employ careful research and reveal the author’s personal familiarity with these places. Here, too, outline maps would be a desideratum! The story of the Crusaders is fascinatingly told, and the chapter relating Lynch’s trip down the Jordan River, the visits of Mark Twain, Chinese Gordon, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Allenby’s entry, and Bertha Spafford Vester’s long sojourn, is delightful reading.

Moderate appreciation is expressed for the enigmatic Lawrence of Arabia, while high tribute is paid to Abdulla, King Hussein, and the Englishman Glubb. Glubb befriended the Bedouin, organized the Desert Patrol, maintained calm in Jordan during the tensions of 1936–38, overcame Nazi and Vichy French movements—only to be expelled after twenty-six years of faithful service! The tribal structure of the Bedouin, “who spend most of their life hungry” (p. 322), is detailed with insight. The conflicts with the Jewish settlers and the Suez crisis are summarized in the last chapter. The author neither passes judgment on nor suggests a solution for the thorny Arab-Jewish problem.

Scholars would dispute the accuracy of Sanger on a number of points of biblical history (see pp. 3, 12, 17, 49, 50, 117, 120). Among the jarring misprints are Arets IV (for Aretas), p. 54; D. (for R.) de Vaux, p. 140; and Mars (instead of Mar) Saba, p. 190. Antiochus appears as Antigonus (pp. 70, 72, etc.), and Herod’s Hasmonean wife Mariamne is always designated Marianne (pp. 77–81, etc.).

However, the book can be profitably read by Christian, Moslem, and Jew!

ANTON T. PEARSON

The Best Four-In-One

The Four Major Cults, by Anthony Hoekema (Eerdmans, 1963, 447 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Harold Lindsell, professor of missions, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.

Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventism, and Christian Science are treated in this volume by Professor Hoekema, who is associate professor of systematic theology at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The book revolves around the general historical background of each cult. The doctrinal treatment follows the normal approach to the study of theology by considering the subjects of God, man. Christ, salvation, the Church, and the sacraments, and then eschatology. Each chapter has an appendix in which further material is provided for special subjects peculiar to the cult in question. Thus in the case of Seventh-day Adventism the Investigative Judgment, the Scapegoat Doctrine, and the Sabbath receive further treatment. The concluding chapters of the book provide insights into the distinctive traits of each cult and the task of approaching the cultist from a Christian standpoint.

Mr. Hoekema has produced a splendid piece of work. He has included excellent bibliographies for each cult and has carefully footnoted his material. He has leaned heavily on primary source material and has checked his material with leaders of the cults. The presentation is fair and accurate. His conclusions will not be accepted by the cultists, but there can be no doubt that given the usual evangelical presuppositions his conclusions are quite correct. He has not indulged in name-calling, but at the same time he has made it clear that these cults do not stand up under the light of the biblical revelation. The book is one that can be used in the classroom and is an excellent source of information for anyone interested in this subject. It can be recommended highly and without reservation.

There are one or two observations on the other side of the ledger, but they are not serious. Mr. Hoekema, coming out of the Reformed tradition, discusses the cults in relation to predestination as though that were a controlling principle. Anyone in the Arminian tradition would be somewhat annoyed by this. He obviously leans strongly in the direction of pedobaptism and is a sacramentalist. The other observation pertains to Seventh-day Adventism and points in another direction. Mr. Hoekema is apparently not familiar with the Brinsmead brothers and the Sanctuary Awakening Fellowship among the Adventists. These movements are of great significance, for they condemn the leadership of the cult and argue that the views of Mrs. White are being revised and reinterpreted. They claim that Mrs. White is being repudiated. To an outsider looking in on the cult it would appear that the Brinsmead group and the Sanctuary Awakening Fellowship have the better of the argument. If words convey meaning, it is obvious that Questions on Doctrine (published by the Adventists and the subject of much discussion because of the statements of the late Dr. Barnhouse and of Dr. Martin) marks a departure from the teachings of Mrs. White. It is to be hoped that Mr. Hoekema will enlarge his work to include this aspect of Adventism, for it is the expectation of the reviewer that there will be a large demand for the book, which is far and away the best one-volume treatment of these four cults.

HAROLD LINDSELL

Fruit Of The Spade

The Bible and Archaeology, by J. A. Thompson (Paternoster Press, 1963, 468 pp., 30s.; also Eerdmans, $5.95), is reviewed by A. R. Millard, librarian, Tyndale House, Cambridge, England.

Archaeological discoveries relating to the Scriptures have become one of the most popular topics among Bible students. Their importance for background information and for clarifying specific points is now gaining its proper recognition. Dr. Thompson, qualified for his task by experience of excavations in Palestine, by research at Cambridge, and by several years of teaching in Australia, has written a book presenting and interpreting current knowledge with simplicity and with caution. Both spectacular and routine finds are placed in perspective against the Bible. Clarity of presentation and the breaking up of each chapter into shorter sections with subheadings increase the volume’s readability.

This survey includes all the familiar and outstanding material, and much that is less known. It is unusual that, whereas the Old Testament seizes the lion’s share of most books of this sort, here more space is devoted to the Inter-Testamental and New Testament periods (Parts Two and Three) than to the Old (Part One). The first two parts follow the historical sequence from Abraham to the Exodus, the Exile. Ezra, the Essenes, and the Herods. After a historical summary commencing each chapter, particular subjects are discussed, such as Solomon’s trading enterprises or the court at Susa. In this way the position of Israel among the nations of the ancient world is well conveyed. The author, a well-known evangelical, has confined his book to the material remains bearing directly upon the Bible, and little space is devoted to the ancient literary compositions of the same genre as Proverbs and the Song of Songs, or relevant to the early chapters of Genesis. These demand another volume.

A work of this nature cannot escape errors. The merit of this one is that those observed are of minor import. Some have resulted from the amalgamation into one of the three Pathway Books published by the author a few years ago. Not everybody will agree with all of Dr. Thompson’s conclusions; in one or two instances these are superseded by recent discoveries. Yet he has not been afraid to indicate alternative views or to suggest that some questions cannot yet be answered. He has, moreover, a firm persuasion that the Bible is the Word of God written for our learning. So his brief remarks applying a lesson or drawing an example for the present make this book of the past a seed-bed for meditation as well as a reliable presentation of the fruits of archaeological scholarship.

A. R. MILLARD

Book Briefs

The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands (in two volumes), by Yigael Yadin, translated by M. Pearlman (McGraw-Hill, 1963, 484 pp., 525). The story of how war was conducted in all biblical lands: from Anatolia to Egypt, from Palestine to Mesopotamia. The text is accompanied by line drawings, color plates, and explanatory captions. Not a history, but a discussion of implements, techniques, and strategies. Beautiful color photography. An extraordinary treatment of an extraordinary subject; done with excellence.

Ministers of Christ, by Walter Lowrie, edited by Theodore O. Wedel (Seabury, 1964, 186 pp., $3.95). Four men of four different traditions respond to Episcopalian Walter Lowrie’s original monograph: “Ministers of Christ.” A discussion of the ministry in terms of church unity.

The Military Establishment, by John M. Swomley, Jr. (Beacon Press, 1964, 266 pp., $6). An opponent of universal military training warns against the growth of a military establishment in the United States.

A Relevant Salvation, by Reginald E. O. White (Eerdmans, 1963, 132 pp., $2.25). Biblical sermons that analyze humanity’s broken life in sin and proclaim the healing and saving power of the Christian Gospel. Substance and style combine to make excellent reading.

Reprints

The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology, by Charles P. Krauth (Augsburg 1963, 840 pp., $7.50). One of the theological classics that came out of American Lutheranism. Published in 1871 to recall Lutheranism to its confessional basis.

Immortality, by Loraine Boettner (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1963, 161 pp., $2.50). An informative treatment of the many faces of death and immortality. First published in 1956.

Cults and Isms: Ancient and Modern, by J. Oswald Sanders (Zondervan, 1962, 167 pp., $2.50). Fifteen essays on as many cults, giving critiques of their basic errors. The book makes no distinction between heresy and cult, and includes treatment of Roman Catholicism and Seventh-day Adventism. Revised and enlarged. First printed in 1948. Formerly issued under Heresies Ancient and Modern.

Bolshevism: An Introduction to Soviet Communism, by Waldemar Gurian (University of Notre Dame, 1963, 189 pp., $3.25). A valuable study of Communism as a secular religion and a world power. First printed in 1952.

The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, by Loraine Boettner (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1963, 435 pp., $4.50). The book’s announced purpose is to state the Reformed Calvinistic faith and “to show that this is beyond all doubt the teaching of the Bible and of reason.” The book’s rationalistic method and presuppositions distort the Reformed view. First printed in 1932.

The Parables of Jesus, by Joachim Jeremias (Scribners, 1963, 248 pp., $4.50). A book that ought to be read by every preacher making sermons on the parables. This translation is based on the sixth German edition, and compared with the first English edition of 1954 is considerably enlarged and revised. Read discriminatingly, its rewards are great.

The Mother of Jesus: Her Problems and Her Glory, by A. T. Robertson (Baker, 1963, 71 pp., $1.75). Written in the belief that Roman Catholics make too much and Protestants too little of Mary. Not a polemical but a biblical expository writing by a former great Southern Baptist. First printed in 1925. A book not to be forgotten.

With the five-day work week, most Americans enjoy an amount of free time unknown to former generations. While the number of hours worked during the year fell rapidly between 1940 and 1960, the decline, although slowed since the advent of the forty-hour week, continues. But working less and less for more and more leisure is not making us a happier or a better people. Leisure time is a potential rather than an inherent good. Its beneficial employment demands the exercise of personal responsibility, for few things are so demoralizing as the abuse of leisure. What we do with our free time is a matter of Christian concern.

Underneath the misuse of leisure is the lack of those inner resources that make possible the right use of solitude. As Pascal put it in a flash of insight, “All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber” (Pensées, II, 139).

The emptiness of soul that makes solitude unbearable for so many leads to the restless search that so marks our times—the search for satisfaction through new and more exciting ways of being entertained. This is not to say that the shared pleasures of the group are necessarily inferior; man is a social being, and his nature requires fellowship. But what he brings to this fellowship reflects what he is within himself. Participating in wholesome sport and outdoor recreation, attending a concert of great music or a fine play, or (incomparably the most elevating of all) joining in the public worship of God—these experiences not only strengthen the individual in shared enjoyment of what is good but also show something of the kind of person he is within himself. By the same token, group participation in what is morally reprehensible openly degrades the individual and reveals him for what he really is. But still the paradox remains that those who are best able to entertain themselves through good reading, music, art, the personal enjoyment of nature, and other worthy avocations derive most from group recreation.

Christians today live in a state of tension with the world and its culture. Nowhere is this tension more acute than in the realm of leisure. The answer to the problem is not to list the multitudinous varieties of leisure-time pursuits, and then to declare some good and some bad. That way lies legalism. Obviously there are in the light of the Word of God things that are clearly wrong and others that are clearly right. The difficulty resides in the ambiguities about which committed Christians disagree.

Moreover, the binding obligation of witnessing for Christ cannot be discharged in a social vacuum. To ask, as did Tertullian, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” and then to retreat into cultural isolationism will not do for us today. Christians must know the culture that surrounds them, if they are to make their witness understood. But there is a difference between knowledge of or about something and identification with it. Our culture contains elements the defiling nature of which we know full well and in which we participate at our soul’s peril.

Here is the real point of tension respecting the Christian use of leisure. As Milton says in a great sentence in his Areopagitica, “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.” So the Christian in an unchristian culture must have the fortitude, as Milton says in the same context, to “see and know and yet abstain.”

The Reformation doctrine of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit reaches beyond its application to the Scriptures. For those who are Christ’s in a spiritually alien culture, it provides the essential safeguard in the inevitable encounter with the world in which they live and to which they are obligated to communicate the Gospel. The Spirit who indwells every Christian can be trusted to show the believer who knows his Bible where in his obligatory contacts with the culture of his time he must draw the line. To say this is not to take refuge in mysticism but simply to state a principle verifiable in daily life.

In an exhaustive study of the problem of leisure in British life by R. Seebohm Rowntree and G. R. Lavers (English Life and Leisure, Longmans, Green and Co., 1951), religion is treated along with the cinema, the stage, broadcasting, dancing, and reading, as a leisuretime pursuit. This strange misconception of the role of religion in life is all too common even among many church members. Whether a Christian uses his leisure for playing a musical instrument, painting pictures, reading adventure stories, gardening, mountain climbing, bowling, or any one of a thousand other things, is an optional matter. God has given us a host of pursuits richly to enjoy. The scriptural criterion of what we may do is unequivocally stated by St. Paul in Colossians 3:17, “And whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.” But religion (using the word in the high sense of the practice of Christianity) is not for the believer an elective, spare-time pursuit like going to football games or bird-watching. It is life itself, and it comprehends everything Christians do and say and hear and think. To be sure, certain practices of religion, such as attendance at church, reading the Bible, visiting the sick, and helping the underprivileged, are done in time apart from the daily job. Yet the claims of Jesus Christ are all-inclusive. Nothing is ever irrelevant to him with whom we have to do.

Christ is the Lord of time—of free time as well as of working time. Those who are his are responsible for the stewardship of the time he gives them. One of the great New Testament phrases is the twice-repeated one of the Apostle, “redeeming the time” (Eph. 5:16; Col. 4:5). Our Lord himself lived under the pressing stewardship of time, as we know from his reiterated “Mine hour is not yet come.”

How Christians use their time in a time-wasting world is crucial to their spiritual outreach. “Eternity—for some who can’t spend one half hour profitably!” President Charles William Eliot of Harvard once exclaimed. God entrusts us with nothing more valuable than time. Without it money is valueless and the stewardship of money meaningless. Literature has few more pathetic passages than the vain plea for time at the end of Marlowe’s Faustus:

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,

That time may cease, and midnight never come;

Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make

Perpetual day; or let this hour be but

A year, a month, a week, a natural day

That Faustus may repent and save his soul!

The very word “leisure” implies responsibility. Its first meaning, according to Webster, includes “freedom to do something.” But in the Christian vocabulary freedom is always conditioned by responsibility. Our liberty is to be used to “glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.” Within this context we are accountable for the stewardship of our leisure as well as of our working time. From the daily work there is indeed leisure, but from the unremitting exercise of Christian responsibility there is no such thing as spare time. No Christian is ever off-duty for God. Leisure and working time are equally to be accounted for to the Lord who said, “Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest” (John 4:35).

Cyprus—The Troubled Island

The island republic of Cyprus, with less than half the area of New Jersey, lies forty miles from Turkey and five hundred miles from Greece. There nineteen centuries ago a magician was worsted, a governor converted, and a church founded by Paul and Barnabas. Such was its growth that it sent three bishops to the Council of Nicea in 325, and later was able to maintain its autonomy despite pressure from Rome. Under Turkish rule from 1571, the archbishop was regarded as ethnarch (governor) of the Greek population, and with his fellow bishops was held responsible to the occupying forces. During Greece’s national war of independence (1821) all the island’s bishops, with other clerics and prominent Greek laymen, were hanged by the Turks. The position of the bishops as national leaders remained unchanged after British occupation in 1878, and the bitter struggle that preceded independence four years ago found the hierarchy actively supporting the majority which sought Enosis (union with Greece).

The republic has just under 600,000 inhabitants, of whom 78 per cent are Greeks, 18 per cent are Turks, and 4 per cent are of other nationalities, including British. After elaborate provisions made in 1959 to ensure a balancing of interests and to safeguard the (Moslem) Turkish minority, Cyprus achieved independence, the Orthodox Church’s position was guaranteed, and Archbishop Makarios became president of the new country.

Things have not run smoothly. Vice-President Fazil Kutchuk complains that the rights of his fellows, the Turkish minority, have not been observed, and he sees partition as the solution. President Makarios, for his part, would like to do away with the treaties under which Britain, Greece, and Turkey undertook to maintain the constitutional and territorial integrity of Cyprus. “Unless we become an independent state without outside intervention,” he declares, “our problems cannot be settled in a satisfactory way.” This sounds ominous. British troops, flown in last month at the request of both sides, succeeded in preventing sporadic bloodshed from developing into overt civil war. Meanwhile, Greece and Turkey are howling offstage, and Russia is indulging in a favorite pastime by fishing in troubled waters—encouraging dissidents abroad while suppressing them at home.

The islanders desperately need a purged memory, the realization that they are neither Greeks nor Turks but Cypriots, and that neither Enosis nor partition will resolve their problems. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that President Makarios’s dual role perpetuates old antagonisms. That one man should officially represent both church and state calls for a Solomonic wisdom and impartiality that the President-Archbishop shows little sign of possessing. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s,” is a word that Paul and Barnabas may well have proclaimed to the Cypriot proconsul Sergius Paulus. Makarios and his troubled island vividly demonstrate the folly of ignoring that divine injunction.

The Panama Problem

American high school students with matches in a tinderbox linked by a fuse of conspiracy to world revolution: the picture is not a comforting one, especially in Panama where sparks are adequate and matches superfluous. You disobediently raise a flag over your Canal Zone high school, then step back and watch in amazement as more than twenty people die and scores are wounded. Yet another chapter is added to the troubled history of the Panama Canal.

The Red network exacerbates and exploits every grievance that promises to bear the bitter fruit of rebellion. And in grievance-ridden Latin America there are sparks aplenty to light dangerous fires. The high school students in this case were reportedly reflecting attitudes of their parents. Any condescension toward Panamanians can be ill afforded where poverty and plenty co-exist in envy-rousing contrast. Although Panama reportedly has a higher per-capita income than fifteen other Latin American countries, the Panamanian gazes upon an affluent strip that bisects his country and believes the northern colossus grows wealthy at his expense—whereas Milton S. Eisenhower points out in his book The Wine Is Bitter that the canal has actually been a financial burden to the United States.

The history of agitation that has been companion to the canal did not really need the flag-raising incident, but the timing was unfortunate for the pursuit of rational negotiation inasmuch as this is election year in both countries. The United States government is to be commended for firmness in the face of Panamanian demands, though certain adjustments in Canal Zone policy have long been required, as Dr. Eisenhower and other informed observers have pointed out. The Panamanians do not want us to leave, and international stability probably requires continuance of United States control of the canal. But Panamanians could, for example, be trained for skilled jobs that command high wages, and this to the benefit of both countries. Protracted negotiation is in prospect, and it is the lot of the powerful country to manifest patience and forbearance.

The Government Report On Cigarettes

None who have followed investigations of the past decade into the explosive epidemic of lung cancer were surprised at the federal advisory committee’s report, Smoking and Health, indicting cigarettes as a chief cause of this dread disease and as a serious factor in other major ailments. The conclusive evidence presented to the nation of the deleterious effects of cigarettes reinforces the position of the lead editorial in our November 8 issue that for Christians smoking is now a moral question inescapably related to the stewardship of the body.

The response of many smokers reveals the extent to which a physiological and psychological habituation can blind millions to incontrovertible facts. Moreover, one wonders why the Christian community with its growing sensitivity to social problems has in comparison with secular agencies like the American Cancer Society shown so little active concern about so great a problem of human welfare. The effrontery of the Tobacco Institute (subsidized by cigarette manufacturers) in interpreting the report as a call for further research in the hope of dispelling the fears of smokers is matched only by the determination of members of Congress from tobacco-growing states to resist restrictions upon an industry bent at all costs on continuing to promote a habit that brings disease and premature death.

Intensive education of youth against the dangers of cigarettes and curtailment of advertising are needed. The $8 billion a year tobacco industry and the advertising agencies it employs have an unavoidable moral responsibility. An ethically sick industry should cease fighting a delaying action in a battle already lost, cut advertising drastically, and continue diversification into other fields. Economic consequences with the employment of hundreds of thousands at stake are serious. But the public welfare comes first.

Gustave Weigel

The death of the Roman Catholic apologist Gustave Weigel terminated the career of an able scholar interested in ecumenical dialogue and one specially familiar with current Protestant thought.

Dr. Weigel was a participant in our anniversary-issue symposium of twenty-five religious leaders. Behind that invitation lay an interesting series of events. In the late 1940s, when Protestant liberalism was by political means reinforcing its ecclesiastical hold to compensate for crumbling theological supports, a team of American scholars—a Protestant, a Catholic, and a Jew—were lecturing in Germany about religious trends in America. Father Weigel was sufficiently abreast of the times to know that American Protestant tensions could not be oversimplified into the contest between modernism and neoorthodoxy, but that what Time magazine now recognizes somewhat modestly as “the evangelical undertow” was already a formative force. In his lectures abroad Dr. Weigel repeatedly referred to writings of American evangelical scholars whose attacks on liberalism and affirmation of biblical positions he considered noteworthy. The liberal Protestant simply professed ignorance of such views and voiced a tranquil inclusivism.

Father Weigel and this writer attended major ecumenical assemblies and conferences in the role of observer. But one meeting with him stands out, a simple luncheon in a modest Washington restaurant. We had spoken frankly of our own religious pilgrimages and had exchanged theological agreements and differences. Then suddenly, at a point of important dogmatic difference, Dr. Weigel reached a hand across the table and clasped mine. Calling me by name, he said, “I love you.” The editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY has met scores of Protestant theologians and philosophers of many points of view. None ever demonstrated as effectively as Gustave Weigel that the pursuit of truth must never be disengaged from the practice of love.

The christian has everything that counts, and it pays to take stock of these things, for our own comfort and for God’s glory.

Sins forgiven. The root of much of our trouble is a failure to realize the enormity of the sins from which we have been saved. Glossing over the fact of sin, its offense against a holy God, and its ultimate end, tends to make us complacent. “God he merciful to me a sinner” seems irrelevant to our own needs, but it is basic to becoming a Christian.

David wrote: “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputed no iniquity” (Ps. 32:1, 2a, RSV); Paul, speaking of Christ, says: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph. 1:7), and in another place speaks of this continuing forgiveness: “Who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:8).

A continuing work of grace. Christianity is not a flash-in-the-pan religion—it is everlasting life. To this end an asset of the Christian is the cleansing power of the Word, not only the living Christ but the written Word which speaks of him and to our needs.

Regeneration is a work of creation. David knew this when he prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me” (Ps. 51:10). But being a Christian is more than being saved. There is the continuing work of the divine detergent, the blood of Jesus Christ: “… the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.… If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:7b, 9).

A sure foundation. We live in a time when human foundations are being shaken, when the present and the future are uncertain. But none of these things should move the Christian, for he stands on The Foundation that is laid and can never be moved—Christ, the eternal Son of God.

A Christian who hears and does our Lord’s commands is, Christ tells us, like a house built on a solid rock—nothing can cause him to fall. We have God’s word that there will be yet more shaking, “in order that what cannot be shaken may remain” (Heb. 12:27b). It is good to be thus forewarned.

An anchor. For a ship an anchor is an indispensable part of equipment. The Christian, too, has an anchor, one which holds when all else may fail. “We have this [hope in the promises of God] as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf” (Heb. 6:19, 20a).

Because of this assurance Paul could face suffering, trials, difficulties—even death, and say, “None of these things move me” (Acts 20:24a, KJV), his anchor firmly fixed in eternity and his one aim being that others might share this certainty with him.

Roots in the eternal. Because of Christ the Christian’s roots are in the eternal; he is like a tree planted by rivers of water, fruitful regardless of drought on the surface of life. Not only is the Christian’s destiny changed but his perspective is different, enabling him to evaluate rightly that which is temporal and that which lasts forever.

Necessities provided. Once the Kingdom of God and his righteousness come first, material problems are solved by the promise of Christ himself. Anxiety for the necessities of living is exchanged for the assuring word: “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches of glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19).

The acquisitive spirit seems a part of the unregenerate temperament, and conversion does not mean an immediate cure. The “deceitfulness of riches” will continue to be a snare until money becomes servant, not master.

That God gives to the seeking Christian the right attitude, as well as the mastery of material things, is but one of the fruits of growing in grace. The world fights, schemes, and lusts for money; but the Christian knows his needs are always provided for.

A spiritual compass. The Christian can stand on promises beyond the realm of human understanding. God’s promises to David hold good for us: “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you” (Ps. 32:8); and “He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way” (Ps. 25:9).

As a spiritual compass the Holy Spirit reveals divine truth: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:13, 14).

Confronted by problems, uncertain of what to do in emergencies, the Christian can find the answer: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him” (Jas. 1:5).

The Christian’s compass is a sure one, always available and always true.

The City of Hope. The Bible lists the heroes of faith and speaks of Abraham: “He looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” And of the host of them we read: “But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God. for he has prepared for them a city” (Heb. 11:10, 16). Our place is now being prepared by the Lord of glory.

We have mentioned only a few of those things that belong to the Christian. Everything that counts has been provided, now and for eternity. A man once remarked simply, “My ticket has been bought and paid for.” Yes, and all the contingencies along the way are also provided for in the sure promises of God. “What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us?” (Rom. 8:31); this same chapter concludes with the glorious fact that we are more than conquerers through him that loved us—for nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.

These things being true, it seems impossible that any Christian should be discontented, frustrated, or unhappy. The only explanation is that we fail to appropriate what is ours through Christ.

While these assets are basically spiritual in nature, they are at the same time wonderfully practical and real. In fact, Christianity is the most relevant of all things—relevant for each day that we live.

How often we lack the sensitive and listening ear, the obedient heart, the empowering Spirit! As long as we live as paupers we will experience unending frustrations. Walking alone we know neither God’s will for us nor his provision for us to walk in peace and full assurance.

God has provided everything that counts. Try him and see!

SARTOR RESARTUS

Some people are easily pleased, which probably accounts for all my excitement when everyone stands up for the “Star Spangled Banner” at a big-league baseball game. Since those heroes on the diamond represent all my Walter Mitty dreams, it seems just nice all around to watch them standing there on the baseball diamond, in that beautiful grass, with their heads bared. It makes one feel like all kinds of a good American, with what Madison Avenue likes to call “deep down goodness.” As an old Pittsburgh fan, I used to like to watch Dick Groat especially, on account of his bald head. He was the kind of person an old man like me could, as the bright ones say, “identify with.”

Now to make every man my age happy there comes along Mr. Y. A. Tittle, the best and the baldest quarterback in the big time. There are a lot of things Y. A. T. can do that I can’t do, but isn’t it nice to think what a wonderful athlete he is at his age and all. My Walter Mitty flights continue, notwithstanding certain obvious disparities between Y. A. T. and me.

Somebody has been advertising new shirts for men. This season they are showing a man on the left page wearing a shirt made by Omar the Tentmaker and on the right page a football hero wearing a new, trim shirt. Somebody gave me some new, trim shirts only to break my heart because I am not trim the way the shirts are trim. I don’t look like the man in the ad—I go along with Y. A. Tittle for my hairline and Smokey Burgess for my general physical contours.

And what brought all this on? Well, last week I had to teach a Sunday school class to some adults who were just ordinary citizens, bless them, and the material that came out from the New York office was a little too trim. How is it in your church? I am of the opinion that our resource boys have become provincial. They convey the impression that they don’t know what people are wearing this year.

EUTYCHUS II

UNIVERSALISM

I have just read the prize-winning sermon on universalism, by R. Eugene Crow (Dec. 20 issue). Content: good, helpful. To whom? Preachers, theologians, perhaps some laymen.… If this was supposed to be a sermon preached to a local congregation of worshipers, in my opinion it was way over their heads, and did very little to set forth the plain teachings of the Scriptures against universalism. If this was a lecture or treatise on the doctrine and dangers of universalism delivered to theological students or a group of preachers, then it hits the spot.

I have no criticism concerning the article, or its being printed in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. This was good. I was thinking of what is generally known as a sermon, delivered to a local congregation of Sunday worshipers, setting forth God’s truth as declared in his Word, and warning them of the dangers inherent in the doctrine of universalism. This “sermon” just isn’t that. However, it does do one thing. It makes me want to preach a sermon to my people refuting this doctrine. Maybe that was the original intention. If so, good.

VERNON F. CALE

South Side Methodist Church

Huntington, W. Va.

The “sermon” missed the heart of the issue, its central point. The place to begin is with the Cross. Had there not been some everlasting principle at stake there would have been no need of the Cross.… For the Cross says the issue of man is so consequential to himself and to God, that only an invading act of God in his infinite suffering could meet the issue. The fate of man lies in such terrible jeopardy, man is so incurably helpless that only God’s Cross can reverse the impending disaster.…

CHESTER WARREN QUIMBY

Oxford, Ohio

I will leave it to others to criticize the structural and stylistic qualities of Dr. Crow’s sermon-essay. It seems to me that behind this version of personal responsibility lies a theoretical universalism implied in the possibility that all men might be saved if we would but preach the Gospel with sufficient urgency. It should rather be acknowledged that it is the grace of God that alone moves men’s hearts to repentance and faith. The only sure bulwark against the sentimental appeal of universalism is the regrettable circumstance, affirmed by both Scripture and experience, that apparently not all men are recipients of divine grace.

RAYMOND B. WILBUR

First Congregational Church

Brewer, Me.

I would like permission to reprint the article.…

I have shown this article to two of my colleagues. They feel that its message should be as widely disseminated as possible. For that reason, they are anxious that the people in the pews of our churches read it.…

E. N. O. KULBECK

Editor

The Pentecostal Testimony

Toronto, Ont.

Dr. Crow’s text is that illuminative passage in Matthew 25:31–46, but he does not make [a] single attempt to tell us what his text says.…

The motivation, sincere or insincere, for development of a doctrine and the supposed effects of a doctrine cannot be, logically, admitted as evidence either for or against a doctrine. But this is the type of evidence that Dr. Crow is using. If we claim the Scriptures as source of our doctrinal concepts [then] nothing but Scripture can be used in testing doctrine.…

Lynnwood, Wash.

E. A. LARSEN

HAPPY ACCIDENT?

Thank you for the fine editorial comment titled “Our Times Are in His Hand” (Dec. 20 issue). It contains some good Old Year’s-New Year’s sermon “fodder” for a time when the writer claims there is a dearth of it.

I would like to take kindly but serious exception to the contention contained therein that “neither Old Year’s Day nor New Year’s Day is a Christian holiday.” Both are, and New Year’s Day doubly (and more) so. Both are two of the Twelve Days of Christmas, and New Year’s Day is the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus—the Holy Name Day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Since this is true, can you think of many more important days than the latter—especially since it comes on the first day of the year? It is a day which turns our devotional attention to the wondrous Name of Jesus—“for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

JOHN R. CATON

St. Mark’s Episcopal

Anaconda, Mont.

Your good editorial … reminded me of an old hymn seldom heard today with one beautiful verse as follows:

Oh mystery of mysteries

Of life and death, the Tree!

Center of two eternities

Which look with rapt, adoring eyes.

Forward, and back, to thee!

C. M. HATHAWAY

Colorado Springs, Colo.

HEART OF THE LITURGY

It is encouraging to read a sympathetic article on liturgical worship by a Methodist pastor (R. P. Marshall’s “What is Liturgical Worship?,” Dec. 20 issue). Unfortunately the article misses the heart of liturgical renewal, the Holy Eucharist.… Used specifically, liturgy is the efficient means through which the whole body of Christ participates in this Eucharistic sacrifice.

When liturgical principles such as simplicity and congregational involvement, or liturgical details, such as versicles and responses and the historic creeds, are removed from their Eucharistic context and applied to what is essentially a preaching service, the inevitable results are “formalism,” “prettifying,” and “ceremonialism,” which destroy the integrity of both the liturgy and the preaching. It is foolish and dishonest to confuse what is appropriate to the Eucharist or to preaching.…

In a broader sense, liturgy is not a matter of forms, ancient or modern, to be applied indiscriminately. It is a matter of getting what has to be done, done efficiently. If what has to be done is the Eucharistic sacrifice, one type of action will be appropriate; if it is the proclamation of the Gospel through preaching, another will be appropriate. In this basic sense, the term liturgical can be applied to the preaching service. By this criterion many of the classic preaching services of Protestantism were more liturgical than are some of those labeled liturgical today. Some Anglicans of the nineteenth century made the mistake of indiscriminately borrowing from Roman Catholicism practices which distorted the integrity of the Anglican liturgy. Liturgically minded Protestants would be wise to learn from such mistakes on the part of their Anglican brethren. If liturgical worship is to be understood and applied, attention must first be given to the essence of what is done in worship, and then to the means of accomplishing that end.

L. PAUL WOODRUM, 65

The General Theological Seminary

New York, N. Y.

YES AND NO

I enjoyed very, very much … “My Life in Preaching” by Otto Dibelius (Dec. 20 issue). It inspired me to rethink my preaching and to sit and write an article for our local newspaper.

CLYDE CARTER

Church of the Brethren

Midland, Va.

I look forward to the day which will bring me a new issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Especially was I appreciative this week of the splendid, convicting, and moving article by Bishop Otto Dibelius.

I was, however, horrified at the same time. What did I come upon in the perusal of my copy but a piece titled, “The Melody Man of Gospel Music,” treating of Mr. John W. Peterson. I was distressed, not to say dismayed. How can this be? I asked myself, and in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, the journal of respectable and responsible evangelicalism! I now inquire of you, sir: Do you not realize that Mr. Peterson has done as much as anyone in the last decade to degrade church music? What once was our glorious musical heritage has been so prostituted as to give us in its stead a frivolous, worldly, and spiritually corrupting corpus of song, which uplifts no one, certainly entertains many, and is completely incapable of inducing worship.

Let us have no more of this.

JOHN RICHARD DE WITT

Sixth Reformed Church

Paterson, N. J.

• Composer Peterson won entree to these pages as a newsmaker. CHRISTIANITY TODAY aims to apprise its readers of significant religious (rends, whether these be considered favorable or adverse.—ED.

ON CHRISTIAN UNITY

The December 6 issue … is excellent. The feature articles and editorials are all of the highest quality. However, I wish to raise a question, in the name of Christian unity, as distinguished from organic union, concerning the position of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

Dr. Oswald Hoffmann has written a splendid Christmas message, and no listener tan deny the incisive thinking he applies to his radio messages. I find myself in agreement with his thinking in all major points and wish that we could acknowledge each other as brothers in Christ. However, it is just at this point that I must admit to a sense of confusion and genuine sorrow. Confusion because the official position of his denomination does not permit fellowship with other Christians about the Lord’s Table. Sorrow because of their belief that all other members of the body of Christ “eat and drink unworthily” at the Lord’s Table.

The only regrets I have ever had from my military chaplaincy experiences came from the stillness of mind and heart from Missouri Synod chaplains.…

JOSEPH MACCARROLL

Past National Chaplain: The American Legion

Lynnwood, Wash.

GOD’S SWORD THRUSTS

Thank you for giving us an opportunity to express ourselves on some precious Bible text (Nov. 22 issue).

What would we do without the Word of God to carry us through the hard experiences of life?…

VIOLA ZURLINDEN

Gridley, Ill.

VARIETY OF EXPRESSION

On page 28 of the Dec. 6 issue … are the words: “Christ was crucified by Jewish hands.” This is in flat contradiction to John 19:23. The Gospels of course state that he was crucified at Jewish instigation, but the actual execution was by Roman soldiers on the order of the Roman procurator.

J. MERLE RIFE

New Concord, Ohio

• But see also Acts 2:23.—ED.

ANOTHER SLANT

I enjoyed reading the article by Bruce M. Metzger, “Four English Translations of the New Testament” (Nov. 22 issue). I was in complete agreement with almost everything he said. With one small … exception. In his last paragraph he said, “The wide variety of renderings already on the market rightly leads many persons to conclude that the need for additional translations is diminishing.”

In regard to the English language I certainly agree with him, along with his conclusion that what we need here in our country and among our people is “the ‘translation’ of the Word of God into the daily lives of those who profess to be followers of the living Word!”

But as far as the rest of the world is concerned the idea that the “… need for additional translations is diminishing” is far from the truth of the matter.

Today, two thousand years from the time Christ’s followers were told to go forth and evangelize the world, there are still more than 2,000 languages that lack any portion of God’s Word translated into them!

BILL NYMAN, JR.

Regional Secretary

Middle Atlantic Regional Office

Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc.

Charlotte, N. C.

MERCURY WAS A ROMAN GOD

Re: “Paulus ex Machina” (News, Dec. 6 issue): Sooner or later it was bound to happen! But my heart gives out to St. Paul for his having been treated like hamburg through a meat grinder.

Of course a computer is accurate. It cannot be otherwise. It can only put out what it is fed. Any fault comes from the programmer—the human operator. All he needs do is to feed it a “bit” of misinformation or neglect to insert a different “bit” of good datum and the resulting answer is based on the false premise.

Instead of trusting in Mercury and his $2250 toy (good computers by Sperry-Rand, IBM, and GE cost 100 times that price) and an a priori method of reasoning, the Holy Spirit can be trusted to lead and attest by the internal evidences of the Book that he indeed moved that great mind and soul to write.

Another added proof that the Bible is divine and still the all-sufficient authority for faith and practice is the way it withstands the attacks of Satan whether by fire or Mercury’s machine. Of course the latter is more subtle.

R. S. KOMP

Defense Electronics Division

General Electric Company

Syracuse, N. Y.

A DISTANT SOUND

For three years CHRISTIANITY TODAY has come regularly to my study. For many years The Christian Century has done the same. I read them both and find much that is helpful in each. Sometimes as I watch them lying there together on the shelf (to what lengths “togetherness” can go!) I have the feeling, somehow, that there is a lifting of editorial eyebrows and a whispered, “Well, feature meeting you here, in a thoughtful pastor’s study!”

At night I think I hear, sometimes, a distant sound, and it is at times hard to tell whether I am hearing the rejoicing of the saints together or the drawing up of ecclesiastical artillery and the honing of doctrinal differences to the point of deadly sharpness.

There are times when I wonder how The Christian Century manages to keep such a “hot line” connection with the Almighty. It’s wonderful!

But there are times, too, when I wonder about CHRISTIANITY TODAY in the authoritarian way in which it presumes to speak for evangelical Christendom.…

MILLARD REWIS, JR.

Warrenton Methodist Church

Warrenton, Va.

GOD AND CAESAR

Mr. Bruce Y. Dong (Eutychus, Sept. 27 issue) pegged tax-deductible church gifts as subsidies from the state. He said, “I submit that many if not most churches draw their lives from the state through these ‘subsidies’ in the form of tax deductions.” This fences all of one’s income into a tax-priority allegiance to the state.

God had other views when he reserved the tithe holy unto himself (Lev. 27:30). Without stating sums, Jesus commanded certain renditions from man to Caesar and from man to God. I would give “Caesar” credit for acknowledging that the first tenth is not his to tax, nor mine to spend. Jesus was saying that Caesar’s and God’s endeavors were not cross-purposes, but parallels. I give Caesar further credit for conceding that the tithe is not lost to his and God’s common aim, the diminishing of lawlessness, merely because God reserved it for another channel different from his.

First Baptist Church

HURLEY A. LOW

Neodesha, Kan.

T. C. C.

T. C. C. Ever heard of it? The question is not so much what does it mean as what could it mean? It is a contraction for “totally committed Christian.” Much is said about the disunity of the Church, despite the many organizations that are seeking to weld into one the body of Christ. The true unity is spiritual and effortless on our part. It comes like the gentle rain from above. The Holy Spirit comes without a fanfare of trumpets. Many despair of the Church ever being one. It is already one. Are men trying to make something which is already made? The intensification of the unity we have in Christ is surely one of the major needs of our day. This is the reason for T. C. C. In every area and in every denomination there are Christians who are totally committed in as far as they know their own hearts.

But there is no central fellowship in their area to which they can belong. If some districts have this in a truly corporate sense, then I will be happy to have some information. A monthly meeting locally with the aim to intensify what we already have rather than to bewail our “unhappy divisions” would be a potential that would change the course of history. The leader of this group could be called the “Overseer.” It would be best to have a layman in charge of this fellowship. The membership would be strict. This would not be another church in the local scene and any attempt would be discouraged. As things stand, we have no place where all Christians can gather to ascertain what the mind of Christ is in a given situation. The need for this in our explosive age is apparent.

My problem is how to get this “off the ground.” You might have an excellent plane on a runway but if it cannot leave where it stands it could become a museum piece.

Perhaps some of your readers have knowledge of such a type of fellowship and if they have I will be most happy to learn.…

WILLIAM BLACK

St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church

Dresden, Ont.

REJOINDER TO REJOINDER

This is in reply to a [letter] signed by Ernest L. Laycock … in the December 6 issue.… It is fine that he has Negroes in his fellowship, but where does he get the idea that Satan is behind the “one-race-one-world-one-church delusion”?

If Mr. Laycock would study his Bible a little I’m sure he would find as most Christians do that it is God who founded the one world, one human race, and one Christian Church.

ROBERT WILLIAMS

Bathgate, N. Dak.

TENACIOUS TENDENCY

The demands which confront a Salvation Army officer are tremendous, and it seems that the work never draws to a conclusion. The tendency is for one to be so overwhelmed with the multitudinous aspects of work that sometimes it might cause one to sadly neglect the intellectual and scholastic side of one’s life.

The articles in CHRISTIANITY TODAY have been an intellectual stimulant to me as well as being a wonderful spiritual strength.

DOUGLAS J. HILTZ

Kirkland Lake, Ont.

Please accept my sincerest thanks to you for CHRISTIANITY TODAY. It has been coming to my desk for some time now, and I have learned to appreciate the fine journalism in presenting sound theology as well as the news of the Christian world. You certainly have my personal vote of confidence in the periodical.

BILL MORGAN SMITH

District Superintendent Greenville District, North Texas Conference

The Methodist Church

Greenville, Tex.

My only child is a little girl of nine. She is tall for her age and extraordinarily pretty, with large dark eyes that sometimes seem to look right through you. So attractive is she that people have come to me in the supermarket and exclaimed over her—and then they have stopped in mid-sentence, for it suddenly strikes them that she is different. And indeed she is. My little girl is mentally retarded. Her I.Q. is between 50 and 60, classing her with the trainable group of the retarded.

I write therefore as the mother of a retardate, but more than that, as a mother who has put her heart and her life in Christ’s hands. I have read articles by directors of Christian education or by volunteers teaching church classes for the retarded, but I have never seen an article by a parent of a retardate who is willing to speak openly to her fellow Christians about what it is like to mother a defective child.

Three out of every hundred persons are mentally retarded. This means that, in a state such as mine, one out of every eight persons is as closely related to a retardate as mother, father, sister, brother, uncle, or aunt. Here is heartache. Only 3 per cent of the mentally handicapped are institutionalized; the remaining 97 per cent are at home, many of them without adequate schooling, recreation, friendship, and church life. Some may say, “But I honestly don’t know any retardates.” Nevertheless they are with us—perhaps hidden, perhaps mildly retarded and “passing” in the community, but all needing the evangelical church and what it can offer.

There are several stages through which one goes upon learning that one’s child is mentally handicapped. For those who do not know that Christ controls all that happens in their lives, there is usually a harrowing time of guilt and self-examination. Parents ask themselves again and again, “What did I do to give birth to such a grievously handicapped child?”

As a Christian I went through this for a mercifully short period, when it had to be all or nothing. Yet even with the most scripturally grounded believers, the human element of what may be called a built-in psychological mechanism is not wholly canceled. When a mentally handicapped child is born, this mechanism may lead to bewildered questioning. Parents cannot help asking, “Lord, why me? How can I live with this? What shall I do?”

From The One To The Many

Some unfortunate parents never progress beyond this stage. To the great detriment of themselves and their handicapped child, to say nothing of any other children in the family, they remain preoccupied with “I,” “me,” and “us.” Most parents of retardates, however, pass out of this stage to a second, in which their thinking is all directed toward the child involved. Here the normal reaction is to ask, “What can I do to help my child, only mine?” Some parents, unfortunately, remain in this second stage, and are almost as useless to themselves and to the child as those still in the first stage. Hopefully, most parents pass into a third stage, that of asking, “What can I do to help all mentally handicapped children?” Only then, they realize, can they help their own child.

Some parents pass through these stages rapidly, others slowly, and some never through all three. Nor does being a Christian exempt parents from these experiences. But, as my husband and I know, many Christians are able through the grace of God to reach the third stage more rapidly than others. For ourselves, we learned that when parents are told their child is mentally retarded, they suddenly realize that if all they believe and have professed is really true, then it mustbe sufficient now in this moment of soul-searing truth. Christians who have faced with God this hardest of problems understand why their faith is powerful, why it is built on agony and sacrifice instead of upon mere platitudes and kind sayings.

If my faith offered only some practical guides to everyday living, I would not be able to write this. But for Christians who have such inescapable problems, it means everything to know that we have a hereafter to count upon for us and our children. We have a God who is all-powerful, all-loving, and in control. We know that our children are provided for in God’s eternal plan, that not just a great man but the incarnate God himself said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt. 25:40).

Loving The Unlovely

Surely among “the least of these” are the retarded, for who is more lowly than they? Perhaps the most comforting fact of all is that Christ loves the unlovely. Many retarded are unlovely; their features are ugly. Some have crossed eyes, some have heads malformed from birth injuries; others are palsied, and still others are so handicapped that they are living vegetables. What has helped most as I have felt the anguish of knowing that my little girl is retarded is to realize that the retarded are part of the Lord’s plan and that his love encompasses them as much as it encompasses the most gifted children.

All of us (Christians included) have a great deal to learn about the problem of retardation. Every retardate has parents and often brothers and sisters who desperately need Christian friendship, Christian love, a church home, and genuine acceptance. How sad to hear it said in an open meeting about church classes for the retarded, when conservative evangelical churches are mentioned, “Oh, they don’t care. They won’t do anything but sit in their ivory towers and criticize!” How cruel it is to know that, with some exceptions, this is true.

Why is it true, not only concerning retardation, but also in respect to alcoholism, mental illness, and the underprivileged poor? Why are some evangelicals letting their liberal friends do most of the works of compassion, while they argue about immersion versus sprinkling and whether Christ will come before or after the tribulation—and all the time souls in the agony of despair over a mentally retarded child, an alcoholic or mentally sick relative, are perishing all around them? While Christians who have knowledge and understanding of the power that alone can save souls and ease burdens quibble over how separated they are, there is intense spiritual suffering going on in the very blocks where they live. And somehow they are strangely uninterested in helping. If this seems overly severe, let me ask this: Why is it only now becoming the “in” thing to assist the retarded and their parents? Where have we (and I include myself) been?

It is time to come down out of the clouds of theological controversy and spiritual pride and to take our share of responsibility for the unfortunates of society. Our great-grandparents did it for the slaves. We can do it for the “least of these,” Christ’s brethren.

What then should Christians do? Let me offer some suggestions based upon experience. First, they must realize that retarded children and adults need to feel wanted and that church life is important for them. “But,” someone says, “their mentality in most cases limits their understanding of doctrine.” Such a statement overlooks the wonder of the Gospel. Most retardates understand something about death; many can understand, to a limited degree, the concept of an all-powerful Being; many understand wrongdoing; virtually all can understand love—the quality they need more than any other. Thus many mentally retarded persons are able to understand something of the central truth that Jesus is God and that he loved them enough to die for them. And after all, what else is there? This is the magnitude of the Gospel and its magnificent simplicity.

I believe that my little child understands this great truth. Whether she is or ever will be at the age of discernment I may never know; but she loves Jesus, and she knows that he loves her. And if she could not grasp even this, I would still know that he loves her.

A teacher of a primary-level church class for normal children told me recently how a rather severely retarded child entered class the day the Gospel story was told. Instead of being a behavior problem as the teacher feared, the child sat very still. At the end of the lesson, the teacher gave a simple invitation to accept Christ. The retarded child stood up asking over and over, “Can I? Can I?” There were tears in that teacher’s eyes as she said that she knows our Lord is as happy over that little one as over any other.

Not Only For The Child

Secondly, Christians must understand that it is not enough to say, “Let’s have a nice church class or Sunday school class for the retarded,” and then, after doing this, to think that nothing more is needed. Every retardate has a family, and these are often in greater need than the retardate. What about the parents and others in the family? This is what pastors and congregations must ask when they decide to do something for the retarded. What of the teen-aged brother of the little mongoloid in the special class? Is this adolescent made welcome and shown that his church understands? Does the congregation realize that mongolism is not hereditary and is not the result of some hidden sin of the parents?

Churches must do more than begin classes for the retarded; concern must also be shown for their families. Evangelicals might well follow the example set by some of more liberal theology and start group therapy classes for parents, never forgetting that the greatest therapy comes through personal knowledge of Christ as Saviour and Lord.

Only those who have a defective child will ever know the terrible need for acceptance, the deep desire to be treated like other families. The cruel stigma against the retarded has been tolerated far too long. Human beings seem to accept any handicap so long as it does not limit the one thing we need above all else—the mind. The words of Milton’s sonnet, “On His Blindness,” apply also to mental retardation: sight is not the only “talent which is death to hide.” Even more essential is our ability to reason, to express ourselves in spoken and written language, to think.

Today in an inarticulate but eloquent plea the retarded are calling for help. It is to the lasting credit of our late President Kennedy, whose oldest sister is mentally retarded, that he heard that plea and led the movement resulting in the first legislation in our national history designed to help the retarded.

Emotional response is not in itself sufficient. Response must be informed. This means that Christians must lake the trouble to learn the difference between retardation and mental illness. They should know what facilities their communities offer for therapy and schooling for all retarded. They should be aware of the need for greater educational opportunities, more job openings, additional legislation in the field of retardation, and institutional reforms. They should find out what parents’ groups are available where fathers and mothers of retardates can meet others with similar problems. Above all, they should know that retardation can happen to any family, that it is no respecter of education, social position, or economic status. With such knowledge they will have something concrete to recommend when a young couple comes to church in the crisis of having just learned that their child is mentally handicapped.

Progress But No Cure

Parents of retarded children can become victims of the most callous medical quackeries—money-draining schemes that claim miracle cures. The parents must be helped to realize that there is no cure. There can in some cases be great progress for the retarded child. Nevertheless, retardation is a condition, not an illness to be cured. Apparently our Lord meant for the retarded always to be with us, needing our help and understanding.

All children take their cues from their parents and the adults around them. Normal and gifted children must learn compassion for their unfortunate brothers or sisters. They should be told that handicapped children may be coming to church or Sunday school, that this is how God made these children, that they are to be helped and loved. Normal children will surprise parents and teachers with their matter-of-fact acceptance and eager willingness to help. The real hope for the retarded is regrettably not in this generation but in the next. If young people hear about retardation in the community and ask, “What can I do to help?” instead of saying, “Poor things, poor, poor things,” then progress will be made.

Retarded children have emotions. My child loves, she gets angry, she gets upset. She knows when people accept her openly for what she is; she also can tell when they feign sympathy. In addition to those who have already heard the call to help “the least of these,” many more professionally trained persons—teachers, medical researchers, therapists, recreation directors, counselors—are needed. So much can be done for the retarded, many of whom, when trained and supervised, are able to lead useful and happy lives as part of the community.

Here is a call to Christlike service for evangelical youth. Such service entails more than professional skill; it can mean helping parents of retardates to a sure trust in Jesus Christ that will take them through the deepest valleys of despair.

The Newly Open Door

The task of assisting parents who have older retarded children may be especially difficult; they will not always respond happily or even graciously. Perhaps years ago when they needed a church, none was ready to welcome them. They may ask, “Why is the church now opening its doors to us and our children?” The best answer is a positive program. It is important to schedule classes for the retarded at the same times as regular church services. Some churches offer classes for the retarded on Saturday or another weekday. This has two serious flaws. It prevents a group of parents from going to church on Sunday, because there is nothing on that day for their handicapped children; it also means that there are whole congregations of adults and children who will never see these mentally retarded children among them on Sunday as part of the Lord’s flock.

Too long have most Christians lagged in assuming their burden for the unfortunate and the handicapped. We who have mentally retarded children need more than sympathy and tears. We need what committed Christians have to offer us in knowledge of sins forgiven, in courage for living, and in a blessed hope for the future. Let Christians to whom much has been given give of themselves and of their bounty to help the unfortunate. Let them give in love.

To do this is no concession to a social gospel. The second great commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” is part of the faith. Christians can no longer forget the young father and mother in that hospital room who have just been told that their baby is retarded and may always be a child in mind. To these can be given understanding and hope for eternity. While they cannot be offered immediate happiness, they can be shown that there are things more important than mere happiness.

Some of us are crossing our Jordans sooner than others. We parents of the mentally retarded have heavy burdens. But when you free our souls by giving us the joyous knowledge that Christ is God, that he died for us and for our children, that he cares for us, that he loves the unlovely, that he is with us day by day, then there is nothing we will not strive to do for our children and all of “the least of these [Christ’s] brethren.”

Dorothy L. Hampton (A.B., Barnard, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) is the wife of Clyde R. Hampton (A.B., Columbia; LL.B., Colorado), an attorney in the legal department of the Continental Oil Company. Mr. and Mrs. Hampton are active in the work of the Metropolitan Association for Retarded Children of Denver, of which Mr. Hampton was the first chairman.

The Christian, like any other human being, needs recreation. After days and weeks at the desk he finds, like Charles Lamb, that the wood has entered into his soul. And she, even more, needs an out from her seven-day round of meals, beds, dishes, vacuum cleaning, and children.

They both need periodic refreshment, preferably together, and best, as a family. Golf, squash, tennis, a basement hobby, often are escapes for one. Family ski-trips may help in the winter. And the car is always with us.

But for a complete change of scene, a source of happy family memories, and a freshener of the spirit, give me camping trips—properly equipped and planned. And I don’t mean just public-camp stops on a motor tour.

Of course, to sit in a rain-beaten tent with three nothing-to-do children and an I-told-you-so wife—or husband—is not a source of happy memories. But if you have proper rain gear and waterproof minds, a trip through wet woods can be a lovely and rewarding experience. If, in addition, you have cached in a dufflebag a few paperbacks like The Guns of Navarone to read aloud, a game or two, and something special to cook on the emergency two-burner, a rainy day can be something to tell about later. And it builds resilience and an enviable state of mind.

Or, if you are just trying it out, you are doubtless near that lifeline, the car.

Of course, if you have two left hands which are all thumbs, camping is not for you without a guide. But let us suppose that you are resourceful and have a healthy sense of adventure, and have had either experience or the briefing of dyed-in-the-wool campers. Also, that you have borrowed or bought a suitable tent and other equipment, and that you know something of the country you intend to visit.

To illustrate three things that camping can do for a family, let me, as trail man for a Maine girls’ camp for thirty summers and as the father of a started-camping-young family, take you on a few trips.

1. A lean-to at three thousand feet off a trail in the White Mountains, the first flush of day showing through the firs to the northeast. The scent of balsam beds under our sleeping-bags. Firewood ready under a plastic sheet. In a few minutes fire is leaping and water from the spring is heating. An hour and a half later, with sleeping bags airing on a line under the shelter and dishes washed, we are heading up the trail for a trip along the ridges. A bay lynx scuttles off from a spruce partridge he has been tearing and climbs a balsam. After a mutual look-see, we leave him there.

2. A dirt road along a lonely Nova Scotia beach. Driftwood crackling between two rocks. Seagulls sailing by. Air-mattresses ready on the station-wagon floor and under a tentfly beside the car. Canadian T-bone steaks. And then the sunset across the water, and a lighthouse winking.

3. A night under the stars in an open field lent us by a farmer. “Of course you can sleep out there. But wouldn’t you rather come in?” To wake briefly at two in the morning with the winter constellations blazing across the sky. “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man …?”

4. Five miles in from anywhere, beside a mountain stream in a great slanted valley. We have taken two easy days to carry in, and slept one night under a huge slanted rock. Even Cynthia, aged five, has carried her six-pound sleeping bag on her little packboard. Now we are camped for three days by a rocky pool of the cloud-fed stream. The children make a water wheel, gather balsam for their beds, sit around the campfire, help to cook. We take short exploring trips together, go wading and swimming, watch the sparks zig upward, go to sleep with the firelight flickering against the shelter cloth, doze off to the voices of the rapids.

5. Canoes upturned safely back from the river edge. We have paddled and floated ten miles downstream, around bends, under overhanging trees, down sunny reaches—kingfishers flashing across ahead of us and turtles slipping off half-submerged logs as we pass. We have swum whenever we felt like it. Now the river sweeps silently and sleepily by under the stars, and a crescent moon rides halfway up the sky.

6. Colorado—the dirt road along the Rampart Ridge—a beaver pond reflecting aspens turned to gold—great snow patches still in the high pockets of the mountains.

7. Katahdin under a full moon. After a day over the Knife Edge, down Pamola to Basin Pond and back to our camping spot high up Hunt’s Trail, the family decides during supper to go down the several miles to the car by moonlight. After four hours of sleep we break camp and start down. For the first part of the overhung trail we pick our way with flashlights. But as we come out on the open lumber road along the Sourdnahunk, we look back at the moon-silvered slopes above. In a clearing beside the stream we pass a camp of boys asleep. As the first grey of dawn lightens the sky, the mountains flatten to black silhouettes. Then a gleam of gold edges them. We see a fox catching grasshoppers in a grassy meadow.

I could go on to scenes in the Canadian Rockies by glacier-fed streams or lakes, or to small islands along the Maine coast reached by sail or power-boat.

But what about the discomforts, the unnecessary effort, the bugs, the mosquitoes, the snakes, the wet? Is it relaxing or beneficial to leave the comforts that make life easy? Why not be comfortable at home or in a lakeside cottage with screens and beds and electricity? “I can endure hardness for a good cause, but why punish myself for fun?”

The second gift of camping is, I reply, the bracing effect of overcoming difficulties. “Comfort,” says Kahlil Gibran, “is a stealthy thing that enters as a guest and becomes a master.”

Our great-grandparents felled trees for their cabins, cut their own firewood, and warmed themselves at open fires. They carried their water from dug wells or springs, washed clothes and dishes by hand, baked their own bread, plucked their own geese for feather-bedding. The children walked to school. Perhaps it gave them something—iron.

(One word of warning: the iron should not be mostly mother’s. If she is left to plan the meals, buy and pack supplies, do all the cooking away from the gadgets she is used to, roughing it will be roughest on her.)

We need something of the primitive occasionally to counteract our usual dependence on oil burners, deep freezes, and Beautyrest mattresses. Not that we can call modern camping very primitive—what with canned goods, package mixes, air mattresses, and gasoline stoves. Compared with the difficulties our ancestors took for granted, we have it easy.

Finally, besides the back-to-Eden urge that drives some of us to the woods and lakes and mountains, and besides the urge to prove ourselves, to show that we are not tied to our comforts, we have also a feeling that it is good to get away from the works of man to the works of God.

A week or two away from neons and traffic and TV may help us to see with the writer of the Hundred-fourth Psalm the One “who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain: who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind.… He sendeth the springs into the valleys which run among the hills.… He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.… O Lord how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.… The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever.”

Tribute To Baby Bird

How far from what it will be

Is the featherless baby bird.

The open beak

Now larger than its wings,

A tottering head

That awkwardly sustains

Its own wide open jaws.

Raw, new-made need

That gives no forward glimpse

Of radiant plumage,

Or of will-be flights.

For this the mother bird

Flies tirelessly from food to nest,

For this unpretty tribute

Weak and wide-mouthed faith.

Bird patience

In a patterned miniature of God

When needs like these

Unfeathered, wide-beaked birds

Reflect for us

Our groaning emptiness,

Our cries which are no more

Than bird, or child-like

Trustful asking.

RUTHE T. SPINNANGER

Pierson Curtis, a graduate of Princeton University and a secondary-school teacher of English for over fifty years, is a camper of long experience. He has given talks on camping procedures before the New England Camp Directors Association and the Southern Camp Directors Association and has served as a guide in Maine.

Music is the Christian art par excellence. From that awe-inspiring moment in the past when the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy, to that wondrous time in the future when Christians will join in the song of the redeemed, the Bible is full of references to music. Our Lord himself, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, speaks of joining in praise “in the midst of the congregation.”

With this in mind, it is little short of amazing to me that the art of music should be so lightly esteemed among many evangelical Christians. In many of our churches music is approached and used almost as entertainment, and light entertainment at that. Some may be inclined to deny this statement or to take offense at it. But before you stop reading, consider a moment. What is the ordinary gospel hymn? Is it a noble melody, well harmonized, wedded to a text expressed in words of beauty and power? To ask the question is to answer it, regretfully, in the negative. Worthy hymns are, like everything that is worthy, in the minority. I have the distinct impression that a good many of our popular hymns are written to sell, not to save; for their bounce, not their blessing.

There seems to be a feeling in some evangelical circles that if music is really deep, it is suspect and perhaps subversive and therefore not to be used in church. There are even ministers who feed their congregations with the strong meat of the Word and at the same time surround their preaching with only the skimmed milk of music. My brethren, these things ought not so to be!

Leaving, for the moment, the place and use of music in our church services, what about its place and use in our personal lives? It is my conviction that many Christians are missing much blessing and inspiration by leaving great music out of their scheme of living. The deprivation may well be more significant today than in the past, for most of us have more leisure time than ever before.

Some may have the notion that to appreciate great music one must understand its technicalities. This is simply not true. To appreciate, enjoy, and benefit from music all you have to do is listen to it! A musical friend may give you advice about what to listen for, or you may find a good book on music appreciation that will help you. Yet these aids, while pleasant, are not at all essential. What I say is literally true: all you have to do is listen.

But the word “listen” needs clarification. In these days when our ears are assailed, whether we like it or not, with canned music (usually mediocre) in restaurants, stores, and even airplanes, we tend to push music aside without really paying attention to it. Thus listening has become, for many, a lost art. But when I suggest that you listen to music, I do not mean that, after putting a record on the turntable, you will then begin to read the paper, do the dishes, or converse with a friend. Instead I mean that you will sit quietly, and with every bit of mental energy you possess concentrate entirely on the music. This will not be easy at first. In fact, listening can be just as tiring as any other mental activity. But if you desire the rewards, you must pay the price in honest, intense concentration.

Uphill To The Best

If your musical diet has largely consisted of the light, sugary, sentimental kind of music, typified by certain of the popular gospel-hymn arrangements or by the prevalent secular “mood” music so often heard today, you will find the going, temporarily at least, all uphill. One of the great virtues of the good gospel hymn is the immediacy of its appeal. This is not in itself a bad thing. Straightforward appeal is indeed the virtue of the popular song. And there are also pieces of great music that speak so very simply and directly that their message is at once grasped and enjoyed. Yet unlike lesser music, these pieces are wonderfully durable; repeated hearing year after year does not wear them out.

Let us not, however, deny ourselves the enrichment of much of the greatest music merely on the basis of its seeming obscurity. In general, the music of immediate appeal is somewhat like a handkerchief box: all the beauty is on the surface, and there is no depth. Very often the music that on first hearing seemed strange and uninteresting will become more and more beautiful with each hearing as you further penetrate its beauty. Great and good music is part of God’s truth, and is to be enjoyed among his gracious gifts to us. Without question, music is one of the “things [that] are true … honest … just … pure … lovely … and of good report” of which the Apostle speaks in Philippians 4:8. On repeated hearing, the layman can get a great deal from Bach, Brahms, Mozart, and even from contemporary composers whose idiom may at first seem strange.

After all, what does any artist, musical or otherwise, do? He tries to communicate some aspect of his own experience. If this is a deeply felt experience, sharing it can be helpful and moving to the rest of us. Some men are very great composers because they felt deeply, lived intensely, and had the technical expertise to express in music some of the inmost life of the soul and spirit. Every time I play the Sonata on the 94th Psalm by Reubke (a little-known composer whose principal legacy is this one masterpiece, since he died at the age of twenty-four), I am aware that he is expressing in tone the spiritual state that the old mystics called “the dark night of the soul.” Through music he is saying things that are incredibly deep and moving and that could not be put in words.

What has just been said of Reubke brings us close to the very raison d’être of music. There would be no need for music if it did not go beyond, above, and beneath words in its communication. This applies to vocal as well as to instrumental music, for if a composer chooses to set a text to music, the reason must be that he feels he can intensify its meaning and deepen its significance. Great music, then, is simply the deep thought of the composer expressed in tone. It may be a composition for organ, for piano, or for any other instrument or combination of instruments. It may be a piece for solo voice or for a large chorus. The composer sets his music in the medium he thinks will best serve it. And we as hearers have the privilege and responsibility to listen to what he has to say.

Coming back to the place and use of music in worship, let me observe that we are missing much blessing if we do not seek to use the best, for who can deny that only the best is good enough for God? There is, of course, variety in respect to the best. Granted that there are some “best” gospel hymns that speak with integrity to the heart, do not the profound utterances of, say, a Johann Sebastian Bach, who expressed out of his heart the deep things of God, also have a place? The one is very easily grasped. And nobody should condemn a true but simple hymn because even a child can understand its message. The other is not so easily grasped. Dare we condemn it merely because of this? Are we to deny ourselves the rich experience of entering into the spiritual insights of Bach’s great Christian mind simply because to do this takes time and effort?

Music in evangelical circles is in something of a predicament. We hear third-rate music in church; therefore we tend to enjoy the same music in the home. Our children are raised hearing in church and home only this kind of music, and the cycle perpetuates itself. But this could be changed.

An Ennobling Melody

Stop at a record store today and buy, for example, a good recording of the Brahms First Symphony. If you are timid, do not even listen to it all at once. Try the slow movement first. This is not deep; it is merely heavenly. Oh, it may not seem quite so accessible as “In the Garden” or “Ivory Palaces,” but I promise that after two or three hearings you will be humming bits of it. Or try the last movement. You will find a tune there so vigorous and so ennobling that you will wonder why nobody ever put words to it and made it a hymn, as has indeed been done to tunes of other of the masters. Its very virility may spoil you for some of the lesser stuff that you have been putting up with.

After a few weeks of this, you will be won over. You may even go to your church organist and ask him to play, if not a Brahms symphony (since that requires a large orchestra to do it justice), at least something of comparable musical value. And there is plenty. Bach, Mendelssohn, Franck, and Brahms, to name only a few—all wrote magnificently for organ, and their music is highly appropriate for use in church.

But listening to music is not the only way to enjoy it. Even more rewarding is the experience of making music. Of all the uses of leisure, very few are more enjoyable and worthwhile than the practice of music through singing or playing an instrument. Aside from the example of a consistent Christian life and a sound education, parents can give children few more lasting gifts than the opportunity to learn a musical instrument. And, contrary to American custom, let boys as well as girls have their chance at lessons; significantly enough, all the great composers have been men. Only a tiny minority of children will become professional musicians, and very few indeed will become highly accomplished amateurs. Talent is inevitably selective, and the gifted alone will continue. Yet even limited experience of making music is beneficial.

Moreover, adults should not rule out their participation in music. Many a man or woman finds joy in even very modest competence on an instrument. And membership in church choirs and in some fine choral organizations enables one to take part in bringing alive the glorious pages of such works as Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s Creation, or Mendelssohn’s Elijah.

Let us stop feeding our musical sensibilities on ashes. In our lives and in our worship let us have music that is worthy of the Lord who bought us with his precious blood. He is the Author of life, and he is the Master Composer whose music flows through the men he has inspired. Let us rejoice in the gift of music, and let us learn to use it more fully to the glory of God.

Robert Elmore, organist of the Central Moravian Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, holds the degree of Mus.B. from the University of Pennsylvania (where he served as associate professor and vice-chairman of the Department of Music), L.H.D. from Moravian College, and LL.D. from Alderson-Broaddus College. He is also an Associate of the Royal College of Music and a Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music (England).

I can’t claim to have lived all my life by Bacon’s dictum: “Some books are to be tasted, some swallowed, and some chewed and digested,” for I was in the university before I learned it; but by some Platonic intuition I have been chewing on books since I was six years old. My “taste” in books is hopeless: I simply like all kinds. In the absence of other fare I have read (and reread) the Marine Corps Manual (during a largely bookless hitch in the USMC, Korea, 1950–1952), the backs of cereal boxes, postmarks, and even sign boards. Time and again I have resolved to stop simply reading and begin to concentrate in the area of philosophy and theology, but my resolution has never been strong enough to enable me to walk stolidly by a paperback rack or a second-hand bookstore. Even as I write, the dust of an ancient bookstore’s 50,000 volumes clings to my clothing. I spent a delightful day digging until I found exactly seven treasures, priced at 30ȼ to $1.50 each. I know I must settle down someday, but age thirty seems much too young. Every week, dozens of new books come to my desk, and I can’t resist trying to read them all.

While doing all this “chewing” on books, I have been interested in the reflection of Christianity in literature as well as its influence upon it. Sometimes I’m not quite sure where reflection begins and influence ends and vice versa. After majoring in English as an undergraduate I went on to seminary; there I tried my hand at expounding the religious implications of modern drama, since I also like to read plays. I read my way through the productions of English-speaking playwrights from 1880 to 1958, and finally settled down with Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Eugene O’Neill. I still can’t spell “O’Neill” without looking it up somewhere, so I suppose I didn’t learn much. But I enjoyed it. I tried to analyze W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot along the way, and ended up scribbling poems, “informed by a Christian conscience,” myself. I was surprised that anyone would print them, and upon seeing my creations live on paper I became incurably hooked on writing, on top of reading. It seems natural to me, now, that a person would wish to add to the supply of that which he dearly loves—in my case, words. Work at the Lutheran School of Theology for the S.T.M. under Dr. Arthur Vööbus and my present sentence at the University of Chicago’s graduate program in Christian theology haven’t yet served to quench my appetite for books and writing.

The Literary Diet

In a more serious way let me turn now to the thought that prompted this essay—our “digestion” of books—and, as I am a Christian, some of the significance of our present book diet for the Faith. One does not have to share Marx’s views on the primacy of economic factors to see the glimmer of truth in: “A man is what he eats.” Nor does one need a degree in literary criticism to comprehend the weight of this: “Mentally, we are very largely formed by what we read.” Our literary diet does significantly mold our lives. Those who remain at the comic-book level betray it in every area of their lives. Those who never see through the emotionally biased writings of the editorial pages reflect it in their conversation and in the way they vote. Those who subsist on a diet of sexual looseness and mayhem reveal that, too. God forbid that I be misunderstood at this point. I am not proposing a board of censorship, administered by church or state. I am saying that the Christian community has paid too little attention to the ink-and-paper food its people take in seven days a week. A kind of mystical blessing of all reading matter, effected by hearing the Bible read once a week, is no protection at all against the adulterated view of creation we readers are apt to gain every day.

A few cases in point. I just finished Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. After Thaïs and Penguin Island by Anatole France, I didn’t think anything could shake me by a cracked reflection of the Church’s image. However, the day of serious satire on the Church’s life and teaching has long passed.

Quite frankly, the Church isn’t taken seriously enough by writers today to warrant the kind of counterpropaganda Anatole France and others dished out generations ago. In Lolita Christianity is laughed off, just once, and forgotten. In Chapter 18, Charlotte (after being seduced and proposed to) insisted that she would commit suicide if she ever found out that Humbert didn’t believe in “Our Christian God.” He answered that he believed in “a cosmic spirit”—and she was satisfied. And that, for Christianity, is that. Of course the horrible satire resides in the fact that Humbert was marrying Charlotte only so as to be in a position to seduce twelve-year-old Lolita.

God Bless Everybody

This ignoring of Christianity is exactly what I found in my study of modern drama. The total lack of any relevance of the Church to human problems is clearly summed up in a bit of horseplay in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof when “Reverend Tooker,” who is interested only in a bequest for a stained-glass window from the still-living “Big Daddy,” enters the scene. (It should be noted that there are two versions of Act Three of “Cat,” but my criticism holds true for both.) When the family hatred begins to come plainly to the surface—the fact that neither son ever loved the father—Reverend Tooker “slips away” with a “God bless everybody” aimed shotgun fashion at the suffering group. That neither Gospel, pastor, nor Church has any help to offer for the ills of humanity seems to be the considered opinion of many of the keenest critics of our present-day world. T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr notwithstanding, most of the books and plays we taste, then chew, and finally swallow because of their interest and artistic merits see no help for man coming from the Christian Church.

It would only prolong this essay unnecessarily to do more than mention two other vital works that call in question our modern ethics. These books are On the Beach, by Nevil Shute, and The General, by Alan Sillitoe. Both of these novels point out the agony and ultimate frustration of every creative impulse of civilization by ruthless use of force and nuclear weapons. Neither book is relieved by reference to some pacifying or curative influence of religion-in-general, much less Christianity.

Perhaps my reading has given me spiritual indigestion. Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World, with its chilling sequel, Brave New World Revisited, and all their parallels have also given me a physical chill. But I think the most undigested bit of reading fare, the true source of the ghost in my particular vision, is the Holy Scriptures. I am galled by the ignoring of the biblical message because so much of it is keenly relevant to our day and needs merely good translation (which we have) and a clear proclamation (which we largely lack). Much of the message of social justice and ethical living given by the ancient prophets is applicable to today’s problems without any “demythologizing.” All we need is a clear historical transference to our own times.

A Modern Message

The greater part of the message Jesus brought is so clearly “modern” that most preachers can leave the question of kerygma and mythos to the scholars. But our modern prophets have dragged their critical apparatus into the pulpit and into print and have built a solid wall of “specialization” between themselves and the public. It is not without reason that the lay thinker has turned away unaided, and a little amused. What galls me is not that the secular writer overlooks the biblical message, but that the agents sworn to unfold its meaning have performed so miserably. I remain convinced that there is balm in Gilead, but it is not applied seriously to the sprains of life by ministers or laymen. This neglect of the Gospel is of such long duration now, and is so widespread, that the Gospel message has simply faded out of sight.

George Gordh, in his recent book, Christian Faith and its Cultural Expression, says that Christian faith as a whole exists in three dimensions: First, as a way of looking at the world and its meaning—at man and his significance. Secondly, as a set of attitudes—towards nature, towards oneself, towards others. Thirdly, as a set of expressions, in the way Christian men create art, write books and poetry, engage in actions, associate with one another, and use their minds. Gordh says it is in this last respect that Christianity has served as an element in the forming of Western culture. My own research, in the literary and philosophical areas, bears this out. But my contention is that the mainstream of Christianity has abandoned this Christian self-expression in our time, at least insofar as that expression communicates to the world outside the fellowship. I believe the many dialogues and retreats and publicity blurbs and new church buildings of today are private conversations of the church, by the church, and for the church only. (I would rather say “by churchmen,” etc., for this is nearer the truth. I feel that “churchmanship” is one of the enemies of Gospel-communication, and a distinct mark of Christianity’s “ghetto mentality” in the twentieth century. I doubt if the apostles were “good churchmen.” From my own research, I feel sure that Paul was not!) By and large, the mainstream denominations are closed corporations, not nets designed to catch all kinds of men. And we can hardly help someone we can’t catch hold of long enough to speak to.

That, in my opinion, is why Christianity is being spit out, instead of chewed and swallowed, today.

John C. Cooper, who is assistant professor of philosophy at Newberry College, Newberry, South Carolina, holds the A.B. degree (cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of South Carolina; the B.D. degree from the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Columbia, South Carolina; and the S.T.M. degree from the Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago.

This essay comes out of the experience of a working Christian artist who has for many years admired and enjoyed the great schools of religious painting and the moving and beautiful compositions of the master composers. My earliest recollections go back to my boyhood in a little Nebraska town and to the small Presbyterian church where my mother and father sang soprano and tenor parts in the quartette. Many a night I fell asleep while choir practice was being held downstairs, where a framed print of Millet’s “Angelus” hung over the Estey organ. Toward Easter the quartette was augmented and sang “The Seven Last Words,” In December I was lulled to rest as the choir rehearsed “Silent Night” and “Joy to the World.” Later I pumped the organ in church and thrilled to the organist’s dexterous conquering of the difficulties of Bach on the wheezy old instrument.

As my voice changed, I drifted away from music to graphic art, copying Millet’s “Angelus” and the Charles Dana Gibson drawings in magazines. My voice returned to an unstable tenor; but when I went off to study art at the Chicago Art Institute and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, I tried voice coaching and learned solo parts in The Messiah and Elijah.

During these Chicago days, and as I was later becoming established as a painter in the East, my wife and I lost our way spiritually. I had gone through a phase of Unitarianism, a trial at Christian Science, and even an experiment with crystal-ball séances. But one evening an older artist, a devout Quaker, came to our apartment and quoted that striking supernatural passage from First Thessalonians about the Lord himself descending from heaven with a shout. So arresting was his faith in such an event that we began to attend a little chapel he recommended.

The place was small, but the pastor was so devoted an evangelical with such real Christian faith that soon we were on our way to a true knowledge of the Bible. I heard again the hymns of my youth, sung by dedicated people and played as written by a young lady who had not gone to a class in “how to play for gospel singing” and who refrained from the embellishment of arpeggios up and down the suffering piano. A lady near me sang one of the hymns that took me back over the years; I was a child again, and all the simple truths of the Sunday school, the remembrance of music and worship and faith, swept over me in that chapel. We found the Lord there. So it was that I, a painter, was helped to know Christ through the sister art of music.

A Christian artist of considerable ability said recently that he believed it impossible to create fine Christian painting in this modern age. I do not agree. The low estate of Christian art stems from the fact that very few talented artists undertake to paint Christian subjects and that most of those who work in this field lack the power and dedication to make masterpieces. There is no question that our speed of living, the distractions of our mechanized and science-geared age, do not tend to encourage work in the fine arts. But given the talent, the character to manage and drive that talent, a man of godly integrity and genius could surely respond to the biblical challenge and create his masterpiece even in these times.

The early Christian works, from the great Byzantine mosaics, the frescoes, the astonishing flowering of Italian painting in Duccio, Giotto, Mantegna, Massacio, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and the masters of Flemish and German painting, would seem productions of such towering strength as to discourage men from following them. Let us look, however, with particular admiration at Rembrandt, an artist of gigantic stature despite the lack of papal or baronial sponsor. Here was a man who gave up a career of painting portraits at fat fees and died a pauper, but who was his own master, beholden to no mortal, and a creator of supreme art in three mediums. His biblical drawings, his etchings, his paintings—each of these alone stamps him as a master. To cite only two paintings, his “Supper at Emmaus” in the Louvre, and his “Head of Christ” in the Metropolitan Museum have the sublime light, the character of Christ, his humanity, and his absolute Deity powerfully wrought into living masterpieces.

The painter who has talent and is a Christian will find inspiration and take fire from Rembrandt. He will also say, in the light of the great early masters and in comparison with Rembrandt, “We in our day are pygmies.” But let us not be downhearted. Let the ambitious young Christian painter start the day with a time in Cod’s Word, believing and asking God’s help. Let him spend much time with the masters through the museums, or, if he has no access to the originals, with fine books of reproductions of the masters and with large reprints in color. These will help him toward his goal of painting a work of Christian art.

Virtuosity Without Spirit

Such work as that of Salvador Dali will scarcely benefit the Christian artist. Dali is a realistic draftsman with a cold color sense and a gift for self-advertisement, and is, after Picasso, probably the most publicized artist of our day, greatly praised by a certain kind of art criticism. But to me his technical virtuosity creates a religious painting entirely earthy and totally devoid of the spirit that raises the ordinary into the sublime. He astonishes me, but he neither transports nor deeply moves me.

In contemplating the works of lesser-known contemporary painters, I hesitate to speak of their weaknesses. The sentimental heads and figures of Christ that we find in homes, churches, and Sunday schools, so lacking in strength and depth, make me feel that we do better to know and visualize our Lord only through his Word. But who may say or know what spiritual help these weak productions have been to many people? Shall we criticize the chalk talks, with colored lights imitative of Hollywood illuminating phosphorescent paints, accompanied by a running evangelistic commentary? Souls have been saved through such programs. Yet the level of art there displayed could be raised.

How may the glaring lack of taste in graphic art that so often characterizes the rank and file of Christians be remedied? Let me suggest a couple of answers to the question.

First, Christians should be encouraged to go to art museums to study great pictures on biblical themes. If evangelical churches organize roller-skating parties and picnics, why not sponsor fellowship in the arts? This process of attaining a measure of good taste in the Christian use of art will take time, but God will assuredly be pleased at any use of our leisure devoted to bringing inspiration, dignity, and reverence to the worship of our Saviour Jesus Christ through a better quality of art.

Christ As Seen In Art

A wonderful field of enjoyment is open to the Christian who will seek to gain a fuller appreciation of the art of religious painting. What a wide diversity of ideas great artists have shown in their depiction of our Lord! The Byzantine mosaics and the early Italian painters show him as an archaic, stern person. Their primitive style moves us to a feeling of awe as we look at these rigid presentations of the Saviour with no tenderness or compassion in his nature. However, one must feel in them an impressive majesty, an unapproachable other-worldliness. The sculptured Christs enthroned upon the facades of Gothic cathedrals look down from their ancient niches superb in the magic sense of life given to stone by these unknown craftsmen-sculptors.

Then there are the great painters of Italy—the primitive authority of Cimabue and Duccio, passing into the early Giotto and Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca with the coming of tenderness into Christian art without loss of strength, and moving on through Mantegna, Masaccio, Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, Veronese, who portray the gamut from the Christ of humility to the regal, lordly Christ of the Venetians; the portrayals of the crucified Lord, the depositions, the pietas of early French painting, northward to the superb Flemish Van Eycks, Rubens, and the Germanic Albrecht Dürer. All these almost countless delineations of the Saviour bear the stamp of nationality. The Italian, French, Flemish, and German painters make him one of them. El Greco, despite his Greek origin and Italian training, identifies Christ with a tortured Spanish school.

Strangely, the Bible does not describe in detail the Lord’s physical appearance. Yes, he is “a man of sorrows” and he weeps; his feelings are disclosed, but not his physical features. It is as though God desires that we worship his Son for his Deity and his Saviourhood alone.

Secondly, and perhaps more important, there is the personal practice of art. Those who have even the slightest desire to try their hand at making pictures should not hesitate to do so.

During my years of teaching and lecturing on art in universities and colleges and before women’s clubs across the country, people of all ages have come to me with questions about what they might do, how they could begin to draw or paint and thus satisfy their creative urge. This very urge is an indication of talent. (Somehow the word “urge” has been strangely neglected in definitions of talent.) There are varying degrees of ability; but whether the talent is great or small, there are endless rewards and enjoyments ahead for those who keep trying. Nothing stimulates appreciation so much as realizing just how artists have created their works.

Everyone has pencil and paper; endless subjects are all around us. It is a good plan to begin with objects in the home, to set up a simple still life—an orange on a round plate for study in circles, curves, and ovals, or a small oblong box or book for practice in long and short straight lines, angles, and square corners. If one hesitates to go it alone, all bookstores and art shops have inexpensive beginner’s manuals to start one on his way.

Religious pictures should not be undertaken unless there is a compelling urge in that direction. God’s world is alive with hills and trees in praise of him, with home life, children, cats and dogs and birds. Despite feelings of inadequacy, the courage to persist brings its reward. We learn by our mistakes. Searching for ways to improve by doing the subject over and over spells progress.

Those who find that they lack the industry and vitality to continue toward professional excellence will not have wasted their time. For the rest of their lives they will see nature in a new light; their sense of color will be better, and their enjoyment of museums and prints and books will be much keener and more understanding.

Whether the artist be a professional or a beginning amateur, he must never forget that it is not nature that is put down on paper or canvas. God has created nature in great perfection; we can only draw or paint in symbols that reveal our ideas and feeling about nature. One cannot put a tree down upon paper, but he can learn to draw lines describing its trunk which, through long practice, will enclose something as solid-looking as the tree itself. There are no lines in nature; we invent them. Later one may add tone and color to his tree, a minor miracle if he has genius.

Some years ago at one of my lectures in a Virginia college a farmer’s wife became excited as she watched me do a demonstration of painting. She had never painted anything except kitchen chairs. But she bought some paint and canvas boards and began to paint familiar people, animals, and the scenes she knew so well. On my second visit to Lynchburg I was delighted to see her pictures, finding her style to be that of a pure primitive. I advised her to avoid teachers and continue to do things she loved; later I was able to interest a New York art dealer in handling and selling her work. Here is an unusual and special talent. Few will be like her, but many may have great enjoyment in drawing and painting the subjects that are of interest to them.

Christians will do well to spend more time in raising their level of art appreciation. Art, whether that of the great masters or the humbler efforts of lesser talents, belongs to those things God has given us to enjoy. And in its truest integrity it exists for the glory of God. We need architecture that fittingly houses places of worship, music that worthily praises God the Father and brings men closer to God the Son, pictures on the walls of our homes that, while not necessarily religious, are examples of good art. We need Christian artists of dedicated talent who will extend their horizons in humility and devotion to the true praise of the Giver of talent, who is best honored by the faithful use of his good gifts.

Words For God On The Soviet Stage

During my concert tour of the Soviet Union in 1962, I had two unusual opportunities to carry God’s Word to godless Russia. The first occurred in Leningrad where I sang the Mephistopheles role in Faust. As the curtain came down and I walked off-stage into the wings, the male and female chorus began to applaud and shout the Russian equivalent of “Bravo, comrade!” I stopped, feeling somewhat embarrassed before this palm-pounding praise, and raised my hand to say in full operatic voice: “Thank you, but praise Almighty God, not me.”

The second such incident came at the climax of the tour in Moscow when I sang the title role of Boris Godunov before a Bolshoi Theatre audience that included Premier Khrushchev. At the end of the opera, Boris exclaims, “Forgive me, forgive me”—and falls dead. But suddenly I decided to do a little more. After saying the regular words, I smiled, raised my eyes, and added, “Oh, my God, forgive me.” As I performed it, Boris Godunov finds the peace of God when he dies; in the performance that evening before thirty-five hundred Russian music-lovers the opera ended on a high religious note. That is why, I feel, for the first time in the history of the Bolshoi there was sudden inspired applause even as Boris fell rather than after the final curtain had rung down.

A decade ago, I found the greatest friend in the world. I found Jesus Christ. And the thing I want to tell everybody is that Jesus Christ is not just a philosophy to live by. He is that same living Person who was resurrected nearly two thousand years ago.—JEROME HINES, from the book Faith Is a Star, written and edited by Roland Gammon. Copyright, ©, 1963 by the Southern Baptist Convention Radio and Television Commission. Reprinted by permission of E. P. Dutton.

Grant Reynard is an American artist whose versatile career includes distinguished achievement as painter, etcher, illustrator, lecturer, and museum head. He holds the L.H.D. degree from Baldwin-Wallace College and is represented by works in the Metropolitan and Fogg Museums (New York), the Library of Congress, the Newark Museum, the Addison Museum, and the New York Public Library. He is president of the Montclair (N. J.) Art Museum and is a National Academician.