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For years now the local church and its minister have been victims of an angry flood of criticism in books, magazines, newspapers, sermons, lectures, and addresses the country over. Astonishingly, most of the critics have been Protestant ministers. They write:

“Five out of every six church buildings in America could be sold and dismantled without damage to the Christian mission.”

“The local church is no longer a satisfactory vehicle for doing the work of Christ.”

“The traditional work of the local parish … is hardly likely to survive in an era of religious revolution.”

“The Christian ministry is doomed to disappear with the bourgeois culture that made room for it.”

Influenced by all this, some Protestant leaders are urging that the traditional work of local churches be replaced by new types of ministries. They recommend ministers without churches, special ministries instead of pastoral ministries for clergymen, churches without buildings. Some seminaries are actually planning radically revised curricula to prepare students for these special ministries.

Further, some churches are now actually ceasing to be the Church—by recasting the Church’s mission, by becoming political agencies for a particular partisan viewpoint, by reducing their outlook to embrace only humanitarian concerns divorced from the dynamism of a redemptive Gospel. Radical judgments on the biblical Church are often uttered in these circles by those who fail to see that it is they themselves who are making the Church seem irrelevant and unnecessary.

Unquestionably, the churches have their weaknesses and failures. They are often oblivious to evil and lacking in vision; the great majority of their members and leaders would readily admit this. But it simply is not true that the Church is a decadent, irrelevant institution. The universal Church is the custodian of Christianity in our day. And the local church is the focal point of Christian fellowship and the force behind the Church’s mission. Much of the criticism now going the rounds is indiscriminate and misleading, grossly unfair to the facts of the Church’s history, and dangerous when placed before immature minds. It is surely not the way to attract future ministers or to prepare them for constructive ministries.

What is perhaps most disturbing about this criticism is its spirit. Often it is expressed with what seems to be “savage joy,” as though the critics were finding peculiar psychic satisfaction in lambasting the local church. Coming from the official leaders of our churches, it is not so much self-criticism, which is desirable and even necessary, as self-loathing, which is always of dubious worth and propriety. This mood greatly weakens Protestantism. Give the Church a bad reputation, convince its members and its future leaders that it is unimportant and decadent, and you are well on the way to killing it.

This process is actually farther along than most of us realize. For evidence, look at what is now happening in our theological seminaries. Many young theological students are hypercritical of the Church, even openly hostile to it. A professor in a leading Eastern seminary said recently that the most consistent characteristic of the theological student today is the degree to which he hates the Church and its institutional apparatus.

Students are turning away from the parish ministry in droves. A survey of the graduates of one seminary during the last twenty-five years reveals that only 20 per cent are in parish work of any kind. A considerable number of students now arrive at the seminaries with an open aversion for the parish ministry. Without firsthand experience or knowledge of the inside workings of a local pastorate, they complain of its drawbacks: small salary, long working hours, poor housing, outworn educational methods, ineffective pastoral work and preaching. That is, they enter the institution designed to train them for their calling not with enthusiasm and fascination but with a censorious, angry attitude. To find this cynical criticism of an institution among those preparing to serve it and to be its representatives and spokesmen is alarming.

Like all other social institutions, the Church must undergo changes, possibly radical changes, in our revolutionary century; all responsible church leaders accept this as inevitable and desirable. But if changes are to increase, rather than diminish, the effectiveness and health of the Church, they must be undertaken by leaders qualified for that specific purpose.

To begin with, these change-bringers must be fair-minded, well informed, courageous, dedicated men who have chosen the ministry as a lifework because they feel divinely called to do so, because they love the Church and believe it to be instituted by God and essential for the propagation of the Gospel and the building of the Kingdom of God on earth.

They must also resolve that the problems of helping the Church to correct its imperfections, face its difficulties, and realize its divine purpose and potential shall only act as challenges to their best insights and abilities. They must reject the temptation to pity themselves, to become discouraged and weary, to despair of ultimate success. With a prayer for the divine resources promised to the followers of Christ, they must take up their task with enthusiasm and hope, determined not only to do a good job but to enjoy doing it.

Someone once asked William James, the Harvard philosopher, “Are you a pessimist or an optimist?” He replied, “Neither. I’m a meliorist. I believe the world can be improved and I believe that man can aid its betterment and should try to do so.” A true minister of Christ must always believe that by the grace of God and the working of the Holy Spirit the Church should and can be improved, and that to share in this is part of his obligation.

To one of his assistants, Timothy, the Apostle Paul wrote two letters that are now part of our Christian Scriptures. In each of these letters he reminds Timothy of his significant trusteeship, charging him to “guard what has been entrusted” to him. That charge, in these or equivalent terms, must be given to every new generation of ordinands and taken seriously by them.

In the foreword to his book Crisis of Piety, Professor Donald G. Bloesch of Dubuque Theological Seminary tells us that the widening concern for a renewal of personal devotion to Jesus Christ—shared by John Mackay, Adolf Köberle, Bernard Häring, Emile Cailliet, Elton Trueblood, and others—finds little echo in much of the Sunday-school literature of our day.

He writes:

The church has not been silent in the face of social evils, and yet its word seems to lack power and discriminating judgment. The churches are immersed not so much in the real issues of our time, whether they be doctrinal or moral, as in peripheral concerns, most of which pertain to the maintaining of their organizational machinery. Little if any consideration is given to the life of devotion and prayer. Sunday School curricula for the most part seek to acquaint people with the biblical and ecclesiastical traditions of the church, but the themes of justification, prayer, piety, and conversion are practically ignored. Some of the radical theologians today are rightly calling the attention of the church to social ills and injustices that need to be corrected. Yet can there be a genuine social reformation apart from personal transformation?

Professor Bloesch’s remarks are aimed at the theological scene in general, and not at denominational church-school literature in particular. But if what he says aptly describes Sunday-school lessons to which church youth and adults are being continually exposed, the trend does not bode well for American Christianity.

With Dr. Bloesch’s passing comment at hand, we decided recently to make a test case of the first unit of “Foundation Studies in Christian Faith,” the new Methodist adult church-school literature. Of the eight parts (I. Man’s Search for a Meaningful Faith; II. God With Us; III. We Have This Heritage; IV. Faith in Search of Understanding; V. Dimensions of Decision; VI. In Faith and Love; VII. The Inner Life; and VIII. The Christian in Today’s World), the first two were issued in 1967. The rest are to be made available between March, 1968, and June, 1969. We confine our comments here to Unit I.

Each unit consists of two paperback books, identical for class leaders and members: a study book and one of selected readings. The 155 readings for Unit I are by almost that many different writers; Rollo May, Malcolm Boyd, Tillich, Reuel Howe, Brunner, Joshua Liebman, Hammarskjöld, William James, Dylan Thomas, Martin Buber, Bonhoeffer, PaulTournier, Fosdick, Havighurst—these are but a random sample. In addition, study leaders have a packet of suggested teaching helps. Each chapter in the study book lists two or three Bible readings for study at home. Then follow fifteen pages of copy, dotted with references to selections in the companion book of readings and with suggestions for initiating or furthering thought, discussion, and action.

Author Robert G. Leslie of Pacific School of Religion says in his preface to the unit: “… I take the position in this book that any search for meaning in life is a search for God—even though God may never be mentioned.” Before this search is possible, he says, we need to know something about ourselves, and so he draws heavily on psychology. In fact, he organizes the book around the stages of life with their peculiar needs and strengths. These strengths—hope, will power, purpose, competence, fidelity, love, care, and wisdom—are the emphases of the various chapters.

To express man’s search for meaning and also to provide continuity, Leslie introduces a fictional married couple, Archibald and Imogene. Chapter 1 begins, for example:

Most of the time Archibald was a happy man. Now and then, however, he felt pretty discouraged. This had been one of those days. Nothing had gone right all day. The boss had been upset. The office staff had been restless. The job had seemed pretty dull. The traffic had been extra heavy.… The children had fought at the table. Even Imogene, his wife, had been worried about repairs for their house. He hadn’t had a moment’s peace. And now it was bedtime.

In other words, what is the scramble all about? What’s it all for? Through Archibald and Imogene the reader is led to examine relationships with himself, family, community, the church, the world. How is he to face personal insecurity, guilt feelings, job restlessness, marital problems, inherited traditional patterns of thinking? How can he develop trust, independence, confidence, competence, conscience, individuality, and responsibility? The author gleans answers from such sources as the tenets of men like Freud, Frankl, and Erik Erikson and the lives of fictional characters like Willy in Death of a Salesman and David and Lisa in the film of that name.

There are suggested Bible readings and applications, yes. For example, of the rich young ruler’s query—he is described as not very good at asking the right question”—Leslie says:

If he were to ask his question today it would more likely be, ‘What must I do to find meaning in daily life? How can I get out of the rut in which nothing really seems to satisfy me? How can I live the kind of life that would be worth living forever?’ [p. 16].

We are told that “for the rich young ruler the drastic change from a thing-oriented world to a person-oriented world was more than he was willing to attempt.”

For the Samaritan woman’s request, “Give me this water, that I may not thirst nor come here to draw,” Leslie offers the paraphrase: “Give me water that I need not keep coming in this dreary drudgery, day after day, to draw water in the meaningless routine of everyday existence.”

The story of the boy Jesus in the temple is used to illustrate self-discovery, “the change that takes place in the adolescent’s life”:

For Jesus a new and greater loyalty had taken the place of loyalty to his parents. His parents were not aware of his growing up. They hadn’t realized that he was interested in adult concerns. To their rebuke … Jesus simply replied: ‘How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ [pp. 100, 101].

Jesus’ visit with Mary and Martha is said to illustrate “the loneliness of leadership; the need to confide in someone.”

These are but samples and examples of 191 pages aimed at searching out a meaningful faith.

In this unit, we find, among other deficiencies: no scriptural delineation of man’s true nature and need; no suggestion of Christ, God’s incarnate Son, and his atoning and reconciling work on Calvary; no suggestion of eschatological purpose and destiny for life. Although church-school literature is not usually intended to be a course in systematic theology, it should, surely, manifest a doctrinal norm and foundation derived from the Bible. One is tempted to ask: If the adults who are to study this unit are as bumbling and groveling about faith and its meaning as the materials seem to imply, how and why did they get this way? Was there no exposure to the sure Word of God in years past? Where is that exposure now?

The National Council of Churches is encouraging its participating communions to set aside their regular adult Christian-education material for the April–June quarter and use instead special NCC materials on the racial crisis. Cooperating adult classes will consider: (1) issues raised by the Report of the President’s Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, (2) guidelines for gathering information for study and action in each locality, (3) the ghetto viewpoint with white churchmen “listening (for a change)” to black churchmen, and (4) reference materials from sources such as Newsweek and Esquire. Certainly church people need to be better informed about the racial crisis; but it surely is inappropriate and unwise to replace the study of the Bible with the study of sociopolitical materials that may or may not reflect a sound Christian viewpoint. Furthermore, the NCC has no business pressuring churches to adopt its secular Sunday-school materials, even for a limited period.

If we project the next generation of Christian adults in terms of such material—the NCC’s or the Methodists’—American Christianity a few decades from now will have some disconcerting features. Its lay leaders—not to say ministers and other professional religious leaders, who are largely responsible for such literature—will be indoctrinated in full-fledged humanism but woefully ignorant of such matters as the fact and place of special revelation, the personality, and work of the triune God, the nature, need, and responsibility of man, the meaning, development, and culmination of history. For Christian movements like Methodism, rooted originally in the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, in the realities of the Apostles’ Creed, and in the emphases of the Protestant Reformation, this is less than heartening.

Episcopal Bishop Anson Phelps Stokes, Jr., urges church people to make “required reading” of the report of the President’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. “This Lent,” says Bishop Stokes, “our spiritual reading need not be out of the Bible, for a spiritual and moral crisis has been presented to us all by an arm of government.”

If anyone still doubts that a crisis exists, he ought to take the bishop’s advice immediately, Lent or no Lent. The riot report is a disturbing, almost despairing, document. It finds that despite all the marches and all the violence and all the legislation of the last fifteen years, the plight of America’s 22 million Negroes grows progressively worse. And the rioting of last summer, indeed the whole “explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II,” is traced to a basic single source. Says the commission: “White racism is essentially responsible.”

This is a severe moral judgment—one that ought not to be lightly offered or hurriedly credited. It is a somewhat surprising finding, too, since the report as a whole reflects a secular sociological tone. The makeup and methodology of the commission allowed for little in the way of a theological dimension. The role of the churches in urban crisis gets no study in the 250,000-word report.

But what of the charge? Is it really “white racism” that is behind our ghetto problem?

Careful analysis suggests another answer. The underlying evil is not so much prejudice as avarice. The inordinate desire for “more, more, more” is at the heart of the matter. Blame must be shared by Negro and white.

The white man relegates the Negro to the ghetto, not because of his skin color, but because by and large he appears to be a threat to what the white man thinks are his own best interests. The Negro represents a lower standard of living, and the white man sees the granting of equal rights to the Negro as a lowering of the white standard. This is so in housing, in employment, and in education—the three major frontiers of the Negro struggle.

The insatiable quest for material goods is in itself a social problem. A study might well show, for example, that a major reason for unemployment and underemployment among Negro males in the big cities is the large number of white working mothers who pour in from the suburbs every morning. These women rarely work out of necessity. Many find jobs because they want to raise the yearly family income from $10,000 to $15,000, some because they lack the fortitude to cope with their own children. Then they hire Negro women from the ghettos to care for the children and the house at $2,500 a year.

Greed is common to all races. Many Negroes rioted, not because they hated the white man per se, but because rioting gave them the opportunity to get things they might not otherwise get. The commission contends that the rioter made targets out of white power symbols. Had that been true, the objects of destruction would have been schools, police stations, courthouses, banks and loan companies, and employment agencies. But these escaped almost unscathed. The commission itself noted that rioters aimed primarily at stores selling liquor, clothing, and furniture. An estimated 80 per cent of the loss in the Newark riot was in inventory.

Let it be plainly said that if greed were ever justified, the American Negro would be among the first to qualify. The squalor of the slums—seen, for example, in the estimate of 14,000 cases of ratbite each year, most of them in the inner cities—is a condition for which the smug suburbanite, both Christian and non-Christian, must share the blame. God will surely judge every contribution to this degradation—whether by acts of commission or of omission.

Where does all this bring us? Should we try to buy our way out by vast new commitments to public spending, as the commission recommends? Such spending will help to treat the symptoms and may be a necessary stopgap. But history shows that it is not a permanent solution: public housing and urban-renewal programs have actually contributed to, rather than alleviated, racial segregation.

The commission did well to complete and publish its report four months before its deadline so as to give time for remedial action before another long, hot summer begins. The rest is up to the citizenry.

The urban crisis offers evangelicals an unprecedented opportunity for legitimate and responsible social action. What is needed is a grass-roots movement in which both whites and Negroes reach across the bounds of avarice and prejudice. Let the evangelical Negroes make constructive proposals for what their white Christian brethren should do, and let biblically oriented congregations respond with an unprecedented wave of compassion. Lent might well be observed with the riot report in one hand and an open Bible in the other.

MILESTONES ON THE ROAD TO UNION

Last fall the Journal of Ecumenical Studies carried an article by ecumenist Paul A. Crow, Jr. on the progress of the Consultation on Church Union, which meets again this week in Dayton. The article points out three critical decisions that have shaped the consultation: to tackle the problem of Scripture versus tradition, to restructure the Church’s mission, and to postpone some negotiations until after formal merger. The article views these developments favorably and looks forward to high adventure on the ever-broadening road to union.

A more realistic appraisal might point to another set of milestones that cannot be viewed so favorably. The first was the choice of platform from which Eugene Carson Blake made the initial proposals for reunion and the context in which they were given. The Blake-Pike proposal was unveiled in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral shortly after Bishop Pike had denied the Virgin Birth; this raised the image of a church at variance with the creeds and with small concern for its more conservative members. The image was carried forward in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by the selection of Colin Williams as strategist for mission policy not long after his well-publicized denouncement of Billy Graham-style evangelism.

A second decision was to proceed without a creed, recognizing all the creeds of the participating churches but subscribing to none, and to affirm only a loose allegiance to Scripture. By this maneuver COCU retained the non-creedal Disciples of Christ and the United Church of Christ at the expense of attracting the Lutheran bodies. The third decision was to push for union before agreeing on a constitution. Crow views this course with approval. But, given this working basis, no one can predict what the new church will become, and many, such as William P. Thompson, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church, justifiably dislike it. Last year Thompson said he would have preferred “a detailed constitution to be voted on by each denomination” before union.

Unless COCU becomes firmly committed to the authority of Scripture and a sound doctrinal standard, its leaders may succeed in hurrying denominations down the ecumenical road only to find that its constituency has forgotten it and that many have taken a more promising path.

THE EVOLUTIONARY BIAS

New echoes of the 1925 “Monkey Trial” at Dayton, Tennessee, will be heard when the United States Supreme Court reviews a case challenging an Arkansas statute that forbids teaching “the doctrine of ascent or descent of man from a lower order of animals.” Miss Susan Epperson, a Little Rock biology teacher enjoined from teaching from a book containing the Darwin theory, is challenging the Arkansas Supreme Court’s finding that proscriptions against the teaching of evolution do not violate constitutional guarantees. She argues that the law prevents her from carrying out her duty to teach the various aspects of being, which include the theory of evolution.

It is likely that the U. S. Supreme Court will strike down the 1928 Arkansas “anti-evolutionary law” on the grounds that it violates freedom of speech, thereby leaving Mississippi the only state with such a statute. A court decision that upholds academic freedom on this matter should not, however, obscure the fact that our teachers are also obliged to uphold academic responsibility. In far too many schools, the study of man’s origin is discussed only in terms of naturalistic evolvement, which for all practical purposes is treated as fact. Virtually no consideration is given to biblical documents that record man’s creation as a special act of God. Such an omission is a violation of academic responsibility, and parents who share this view ought to register it in Parent-Teacher Associations. If, as Miss Epperson claims, it is a teacher’s duty to teach the various aspects of being, then our schools must honestly consider biblical creationism as well as evolutionary theory, which is far from being proved. Teachers have a responsibility to consider the full range of views on this topic and to take care not to confuse subjective interpretation with scientific data. The biblical view of creation is far too influential and logical to be omitted from any curriculum seriously committed to the pursuit of truth.

Biblical creationism may be out of favor, but it has not gone out of date.

Board Names New Editor

On my Washington desk for some years now has stood an old ink-stand (bargain-hunted in London’s Portobello). Two long featherpens—one red and one black—have served as silent sentries of editorial lifelines and deadlines. When an issue had gone to press, the black featherpen took over; and when a new issue called for editorial lifeblood, the red quill took charge.

Soon my policing of the pens yields to a changing of the guard.

The Board of Directors has named Dr. Harold Lindsell as editor, and the well-known evangelical historian and author will come in September for production of the October anniversary issue (see News, page 40).

Passengers should feel comfortable with a pilot who functioned well for three years on emergency stand-by basis (Dr. Lindsell was associate editor from September 1964 to September 1967) since he says he will keep the venture on course, and not allow any hijacking.

Dr. Lindsell’s decision to return to editorial routines was not lightly reached, especially in view of his current opportunities for teaching, research, and writing. I hope his fortnightly engagement at evangelical frontiers will have a wide and deep influence for evangelical verities. His first major task will be on-the-spot coverage of the Uppsala Assembly of the World Council of Churches.

Page 6042 – Christianity Today (12)

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Dear Iconoclastic but True Believers:

In this issue on rebirth, we gladly note that Britain’s Malcolm Muggeridge, the satirist we previously cited for his protest against students’ demands for pot and the pill, is moving closer to orthodox Christianity. Muggeridge, who was raised in a family of Fabian Society socialists, has come a long way in his search for the authentic in life. As a young socialist teaching in India, he urged his students to revolt against British rule. Later, after a trip to Russia, he discarded left-wing views and became a foe of Communism.

As a journalist, he has consistently raised his impudent voice against the high and mighty (even the British monarchy and the Anglican church) or anything slightly malodorous. He lampooned the sending of Bonny Prince Charles to a private boarding school. He described Churchill’s writings as “gaseous and overwritten.” He recently began an article, “Next to showing Jesus Christ around the Vatican, I should most like to be conducting officer to William Shakespeare returned to earth for his quatercentenary celebration.”

Last year MM poked fun at the way the social and political pace-setters, like writers of a Western, divide the scene into good guys and bad guys. According to them, observes MM, current good guys include strikers, homosexuals, JFK, Martin Luther King, Senator Fulbright, Bishop Pike, abortions, contraceptives, abstract art, psychiatry, ecumenism, and priests who leave the church and marry. Among bad guys are the Pentagon, Ian Smith, Billy Graham, LBJ, and traditional Christian beliefs. The bad guys, however, appeal to the common people and have a way of outlasting the good guys.

In May, 1966, Muggeridge stated: “I have never wanted a God, or feared a God, or felt under any necessity to invent one. Unfortunately I am driven to the conclusion that God wants me. God comes padding after me like a Hound of Heaven.” In March, 1967, he wrote, “As for the Gospels and Epistles I find them (especially St. John) irresistibly wonderful as they reduce the jostling egos of now—my own included—to the feeble crackling flicker of burning sticks against a majestic sunset.” This year he said, “I am more convinced than I am in my own existence that the view of life Christ came into the world to preach, and died to sanctify, remains as true and as valid as ever, and that all who care to … may live thereby, finding … an enlightenment and a serenity not otherwise attainable.”

EUTYCHUS III

Welcome to the Kingdom, Malcolm.

HITTING A COMING PROBLEM

I believe your article, “Where Is Modern Theology Going?” (March 1), is going to be most helpful to all of us here at the Board of Evangelism, and I shall certainly call it to the attention of … my staff. You have said it well, and have said it concisely.…

I like the way your “conclusion” hits and hits hard at a problem confronting all of us; namely, the problem of God. I agree that “the problem of God” does stand before us as the critical problem of the next decade, and it is fundamental for all mankind. This is why I believe so definitely that we must all work together rather than as a fragmented people. We are one in the family of God, and it is essential that we recognize our oneness.

KERMIT LONG

General Secretary

General Board of Evangelism

The Methodist Church

Nashville, Tenn.

Modern theology would not exist in any of its various emphases, were it not that traditional theology is basically and fundamentally missing the truth of life and from God, and actually obscuring the truth while professing to proclaim it. Do I accept any of the modern theological positions or digressions from traditional theology? The answer is a definite No, and just as definitely, I do not accept the traditions of purported theology that obscure and displace the Gospel.…

“Theology is now in a state of confusion” only for those who are obsessed with myopic views of their own understanding of traditionalism. Those whose minds are set on the truth of life from God, and responsive to the Spirit of God, are able to see the clarity of the issues.

THOMAS D. HERSEY

The Methodist Churches

Fairview, Wesley Chapel,

and Moravia, Iowa

I would like to tell you how enthused and delighted my classes and I have been with … “Where Is Modern Theology Going?” Dr. Henry has compressed so much reading and so much keen analysis into such a small compass, and graced it all with a clever journalistic style!… I congratulate you on wearing such heavy scholarship gracefully.…

The article stimulated so much interest that the copies you send here each issue were immediately snapped up, and a dozen students are looking for copies.

PAUL B. DENLINGER

Visiting Professor

The Episcopal Theological Seminary

Lexington, Ky.

PICTURE FROM VIET NAM

I want to express my appreciation for the excellent article, “Viet Nam: The Vulnerable Ones” (March 1). I have had a keen interest in Viet Nam since 1920, when two of my cousins went there as missionaries of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. One of them is now retired; the other, the Rev. Herbert A. Jackson, was stationed at Dalat, and went to Di Linh just before the missionaries at Dalat were evacuated. He was evacuated later by helicopter and is now at Nha Trang.

I felt that you gave an excellent picture of the situation, and trust that you will be able to keep Viet Nam before the attention of the Christian world.

MERRILL C. TENNEY

Dean

Graduate School

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

I have just read your editorial “Putting First Things Second” (March 1). I am deeply disturbed. Let me say first of all that I speak as a Christian, not as a “social activist”.…

CHRISTIANITY TODAY praises the martyrs at Ban Me Thuot—Mr. Ziemer, the Thompsons, the Griswolds, and Miss Wilting. And rightly so. Thank God for them. But will CHRISTIANITY TODAY dare to thank God for the martyrs at Boston—Rev. Coffin, Dr. Spock, et al.?

A loud, firm evangelical Christian voice is needed to speak out against this insane and dishonest war in Viet Nam. Will CHRISTIANITY TODAY dare to be that voice? Or will the editors of CHRISTIANITY TODAY continue to hide behind the myth that Communism is of the devil and endorse the slogan on the hippie button—“Kill a Commie for Christ?”

JAMES W. CROCKER

Urbana, Ill.

TRUTH THROUGH LAUGHTER

Agreed: Evangelicals ought to learn to laugh at themselves, as Calvin Seerveld suggests (“Comic Relief to Christian Art,” March 1). But they ought also to develop in serious art the now unhappily all but lost ability to satirize sin and sinner.…

In the warm climate of ecumenism and ethical theology, it may seem disturbing—and perhaps logically unfair—to reduce sin and sinners ad absurdum. However, true compassion is not exhibited by an encouraging pat on the back, a sympathetic chuckle, when forceful denunciation and a sardonic laugh are indicated. The Christian artist may, in fact, be able to suggest truth more effectively than the philosopher or Bible scholar through comic distortions and inversions.

ROBERT DUNN

Madison, Wis.

A SAMSONLIKE PIKE?

As one who is always happy to read or listen to what Dr. John Sutherland Bonnell has to say, I read “The Resurgence of Spiritism” (March 1) with great interest.” What surprises me is the rippling human alarm that has been activated among Christians by … Bishop James A. Pike’s … observations of his spiritual walk through this world.…

It should not frighten us that he openly questions old and cherished doctrines and traditions.… Are we so shaky of structure as to feel threatened by the observations, freely shared, of another Pilgrim’s walk?… Is it not possible that men such as our brother Bishop Pike are used … by our Lord to test our personal faith by shaking, Samsonlike, its structuring for evidence of spiritual smugness, spiritual slothfulness?… We shall by its shaking and swaying learn only where it is weak and in need of re-examination and repair. The chance to be made more weather-fast is blessing indeed. It is cause for praising God, not fearing.

HELEN E. BECKER

Union, N. J.

What do you think of a prayer crusade for the conversion or restoration of Bishop Pike? I know the Episcopalians are so straight-laced that they would never accept the idea of praying for the restoration of an unrepentant sinner, but I personally believe that the Baptists are more open to God and would pray for the conversion of an unrepentant sinner such as Bishop Pike.

J. D. STALLINGS

Grand Prairie, Tex.

IN THE BAG

Your recent editorial, “Is Ecumenism Running Out of Fuel?” (March 1), captured my thoughts along this line.

This movement never had any fuel (fire) in the first place. You could place a puppy dog, a snake, and a bunny rabbit in a sack, leave them for a few days, and get the same results.

God’s evangelistic body will shoulder this load of keeping the true Church intact; these ones will eat the Word, and be sincere in many prayers toward a living God, not a social leader in some far-off place.

TRAVIS ARMSTRONG

Dallas, Tex.

NOT SO FINGER-LICKIN’ GOOD

I am disappointed in you. By any standards the current Eutychus is not only third in succession but definitely third rate in quality. I haven’t the foggiest notion who this most regrettable Eutychus may be—but I wish he weren’t.…

I’ve read your publication regularly.… Never, until Eutychus III shambled sloppily onto the scene, thumbs hooked into his suspenders and toothpick hanging from his lips, have I felt that something or somebody was slipping badly.…

Certainly everyone with taste and some measure of regard for the dignity and sacredness of God’s Word must have felt very unhappy with the March 1 column on Dr. Jordan’s The Cotton Patch Version of Paul’s Epistles.…

I love and cherish the Word of God, and I don’t think any purported version, translation, or paraphrase of any portion of that sacred book is good (fingerlickin’ or otherwise) that uses vulgarity and profanity and that attempts to superimpose the writer’s own particular social and political biases on the work of the Holy Spirit. There is no excuse for condoning such writing.

BETTY WILSON

Paradise, Calif.

AFTER THE END

Your excellent editorial, “Are Heart Transplants Moral?” (Feb. 16), … raised the most interesting and thought-provoking question, “Who survives in a brain transplant, the donor or the recipient?” I do not think that in actual practice this is a question which we shall ever have to answer, as in my opinion transplantation of the whole human brain will never be possible.…

As you state correctly, the human body of fallen man cannot last forever, and at the very most the discoveries of modern medicine, including the techniques of organ transplantation, can only postpone physical death for a relatively short time. It remains true that the most important thing is not for man to hanker after a few more years of physical life on earth but to possess eternal life through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and … to be able to look forward confidently to the resurrection of the body.

WALTER C. JOHNSON, M.D.

Hanover, Mass.

MISPLACED BETHEL

It appears that a mistake was made (Miscellany, News, Dec. 8, 1967). The training which has been arranged between Bethel College and Youth for Christ International was between our Bethel College in Mishawaka rather than the Bethel College in Minneapolis.

RAY P. PANNABECKER

President

Bethel College

Mishawaka, Ind.

RARE AND WELCOME

A bombshell! Critics we always have with us. But such penetrating observations balanced with specific, sensible, and positive suggestions (“What’s Wrong with Campus Ministries?,” Feb. 16) are as rare as they are welcome.…

Who knows? Mr. Troutman’s bold suggestions might spawn a concrete, superior alternative to the status quo. Here’s hoping they do!

RAYMOND R. NEAL

Denver, Col.

HARSH AND HELPFUL

Orville S. Walter’s article, “Emotional Conflicts of University Students” (Feb. 16), speaks harshly but helpfully to the Church. It is an article which I would like very much to make available to students from our church.

JERRY BREAZEALE

First Baptist Church

Bogalusa, La.

Charles Habib Malik

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Every leader today labors under a profound sense of guilt. The demands are so incessant and the uncertainties ahead so imponderable that he lives all the time with the crushing feeling that he is leaving many things undone and frittering away his energy in trivialities.

Parents are not sure how their children will turn out; university administrators cannot guarantee that a dark spirit will not suddenly sweep across the ranks of faculty and students alike; business leaders plan with confidence, but always with the debilitating feeling that something uncanny could suddenly turn up and upset all their planning; thinkers are bombarded from every side by a babel of tongues; scientists cannot keep up with what is happening in their narrowest fields, let alone in adjacent domains; statesmen, in a world shrunk into the closest neighborhood, can hardly adjust to the multiplicity of events and the suddenness with which they pop up everywhere. The result is the feeling that—as the psalmist put it—“all the foundations of the earth are out of course” (Ps. 82:5). There is a sense of helplessness, of inadequacy, of fatalism, of giving up.

The challenge is simply too great. Man was not made to face so much. There is no correspondence between man’s capacity and the magnitude of the challenge. We simply cannot do justice to everything. Man is weighed today and found utterly wanting. And when we make a selection, or when a selection is forced upon us, we smart at what we left out. It haunts us the rest of our lives. Since injustice is inevitable, since we cannot help disregarding many, many things, our conscience becomes stricken, and the soul wilts under the consciousness of guilt. We appear to assume responsibility for the entire world. But since this is impossible, we either become callous, closing our eyes and just forgetting, and using certain manipulations of our body and mind to help us forget and not see, looking upon our anxiety as something pathological and treating it accordingly; or we reach out for God.

Blessed is the man, then, who listens to this: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–30). I say, blessed is he who not only listens to this but who listens and acts and believes—and indeed persists in acting and believing, despite the devil and despite his sins.

There is a real living being above man. This is what Paul told the smug Athenians. This being oversees all. I can communicate with him on my knees. He deigns to listen to me and restore me and help me stand on my feet. He deigns to give meaning and certainty to my life in my utter loneliness and despair. When I go wrong—which, alas, I often do—there is such a thing as real repentance, even unto seven times a day. And so I often find myself shouting: “Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies; who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (Ps. 103:1–5). What I cannot attend to because of my limitations I trustingly leave in his care. This is his world, not mine. Let him worry about it, then. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. I will do my best, but my very best taken ten times over is still miserably deficient.

Where is this God? Just there, so that all I have to do to tap him is to use the trick of praying on my knees? No, he is in the fellowship of his saints. He is in the Church. From within the Church, the suffering and struggling Church, the praying Church, the Church which is “earnestly [contending] for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3), the Church of our fathers and ancestors, the Church on the basis of whose hope our fathers slept in the Lord—from within the fellowship of the living, existing, struggling Church, with all that this fellowship entails in responsibility and discipline and participation and identification and hard work and perpetual persecution by the world, I obtain the necessary illumination and strength. Just as only from within the community of the faithful was David able to say what he said, so from within the Church I can repeat what David said with perfect understanding, and can say even more. God does not mock us, nor can we mock him. This given, struggling, hoping, continuing Church, out there in the world, right here in our midst, cannot be a joke. How much everything clears up in our confused minds as soon as we see this simple point.

This overseeing, forgiving, upholding, strengthening God would be a necessity today even if he had never revealed himself in the past. How can miserable man today cope with the immense complexities and burdens of his life without him? Impossible. We only deceive ourselves when we proudly think we can carry on alone. There are far worse wildernesses today than the wilderness of old. What about the wilderness of politics? What about the jungle of the international situation? What about the maze of the sciences? What about the infinite abundance of goods—all luring, beckoning, stimulating, exciting? What about those devastating forces unleashed of late in the dark recesses of the human heart? No, there is no dearth of jungles and wildernesses in the world today. The terror of them far exceeds the terror of the wilderness of old.

Therefore thank God that he exists! Thank God we are told: “I am the LORD thy God.… Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exod. 20:2, 3). Thank God we are assured: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27). Thank God we are promised: “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20). We are delivered these things, we do not invent them; we are told them from the outside, we do not whisper them to ourselves in the dark. The living, independent church believes and confesses them, and those across the ages who heard them and believes them and understood them and therefore became themselves the people of God not only were granted victory over the devil and all his works, but were made to partake, each in his own way and each according to his own measure, of the creative life of God himself.

Shall He Find Faith?

The ultimate battle today is not in any worldly sphere—not economic and social justice, or political stability, or the progress of mankind, or international peace and concord or helping the underdeveloped to stand on their feet, or the vitalization of education, or the coordination of the sciences, or the proper guidance of youth. These are all highly important areas, but the ultimate battleground is in none of them. “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (John 18:8). This is the ultimate question, today and always.

God works through those who have real living faith in him—he uses them mightily. People grumble and complain; scratch the surface and you will find it is because they have no faith. They are then afraid, dead scared, and that is why they grumble and complain. It is one thing to be dissatisfied with yourself or with the state of the world in faith; it is totally another to be dissatisfied without faith. He who knows Jesus Christ is dissatisfied with the world and with himself because he is profoundly satisfied in Christ. He knows why he is dissatisfied; the others don’t. From his satisfaction he obtains the living means, in humility, of understanding and overcoming—if such be the will of God—all dissatisfaction. And if he does not succeed, that is not going to ruin his faith; he will try to see in his failure some hidden wisdom that may be withheld from him for the time being. He knows that underneath the failure there is a higher justice. And so he will praise God all the same; he will continue to love him and trust him.

There is fear and there is a sense of shame. People are intimidated—they are simply afraid to witness. The climate, they say, is not “congenial.” But, pray tell me, when was it more “congenial”? Then people either are not sure of what they believe or for some reason are ashamed of it. One is afraid that in the end people really believe nothing, not even themselves—and here again we see that it is at bottom a question of faith. The unconvinced will never convince. This is the sad, sad tragedy today. There is no greater spiritual certainty than what is in fact available, and yet people have weakened their hold on it. It is one thing not to wait to offend, and another to have nothing to offend with. It is one thing not to want to cast your pearls before swine; it is another thing to have no pearls to cast. We need men who know, men who believe, men who love, men who are not afraid.

You in this country can provide such men. But you must rise above two besetting temptations—your political complexes and your creature comforts. Politics, in all its forms, is noble and necessary, but it could kill the soul, and if you win the whole world and lose your soul, you know you have won nothing. The lure of power and control that politics holds out could kill the soul. Rise up, then, to the level of the independent, free, creative, joyful, certain spirit. If need be, sacrifice everything for that. And as for these creature comforts, I beg you to use them without becoming their slaves. Teach us all how to use them without becoming their slaves. America must mean—America can mean—much more than the highest standard of material well-being.

There is no effective leadership without God, the real God, the living God, the non-sentimental God, the God of our fathers. Can we, bewildered and overwhelmed by the challenges facing us, achieve the ecstatic position of God? Can we see things—all things: ourselves, others, and the world—from that perspective? And, having seen them, can we then gain the power, according to our office and according to our capacity, to do the will of God for ourselves and the world? I believe we can, provided we believe and provided we repent. “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:14, 15). Without repentance, nothing is possible; with repentance, nothing is impossible. Without repentance, we shall only move, in both our personal and our national lives, from one mess to another; with repentance, we shall advance towards a goal, both in our personal lives and in the lives of the nations. It is never too late to repent, even if we have fallen a million times, even if we have been captive to the evil one all our lives. And whatever repentance means, it does not mean that we have become angels, never again to be tempted, never again to fall—in fact, angels themselves are tempted and some have fallen. Repentance means that we are genuinely sorry for our sins, that we hate ourselves on account of them, that we acknowledge our utter dependence on God, and that we realize there is no health in us save what he graciously imparts. Repentance is the cry of Paul in Romans 7: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Man’s victory is only God’s victory; he can do nothing more than, in absolute fear and trembling, thank him for it.

Leaders want to make sure that everything is perfect. That is a form of pride. To be sure, we should always do our best; but having done that, we should still say, “We are unprofitable servants” (Luke 17:10). Leaders must therefore relax. If we are never happy until we have made sure the world is perfect, then I am afraid we shall never we happy. What a snare it is for leaders to want to go down in history as having achieved this and having achieved that! Leave all that to God. The whole point of true religion is to proclaim the possibility of happiness even amidst imperfection, to insist on the possibility of victory even in the teeth of defeat, to prove that where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, to impart real freedom even under the most impossible conditions, to teach men to take the world after all with a certain sense of humor; and having done that, to demonstrate that it is only from the point of view of this happiness, this victory, this grace, this freedom, this sense of humor, that real change can be brought about—change not just from one state to another, both states being more or less on the same plane, but change from one order of being to another. But, this is a happiness and a victory and a grace and a freedom and a sense of humor quite different from what the world knows or seeks or expects. It is under this mandate that the Church carries on its work in the world, quietly and unobtrusively.

Leaders need the quiet and certainty of God; they need his distance and his detachment. We are not going to live twice. We have only one chance—but what a chance to know and be in God! I doubt not that others have their own way of making sure of God, of securing his distance and detachment, his stillness, his victory, his truth. But to me the way is Jesus Christ, whom I see everywhere in history, before he came, when he came, and after he came, whom I know very well in the Church and in my own life, and who said of himself, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

It is presumptuous to tell a man in a position of responsibility what to do; he alone is responsible. And yet we are always advising our leaders what to do and what not to do. Often advisers change their minds completely when they become responsible leaders themselves; this is most instructive. History is the product of responsible decision and not of advice, and when we become deciders ourselves we see what we never saw and feel what we never felt when we only advised. Advice could well be at times the expression of envy—our secret craving to be leaders ourselves. It is clear, then, that a primary virtue in this whole question of leadership is to have the utmost respect for those in position of responsibility—not to judge them too severely, but to sympathize with and pray for them. This is the meaning of the apostolic maxim that all-authority ultimately derives from God.

The Need for Fellowship

And yet the leaders need fellowship; they need not be altogether lonely. Surely they alone finally come to a decision and take full responsibility for it, but it makes all the difference in the world for them whether they took their decisions from within the warmth of a loving and loyal and trusting fellowship. The confidence of friends is most important to a leader. The endless electronic and other devices are wonderful and necessary—to order the data, to master the profusion of factors and things, to save labor, to save time so one can keep abreast of the breathless acceleration of events. But they alone can never decide. There is nothing that replaces the quiet moment of loving fellowship in which the whole in its essential features is surveyed and considered and taken in. We are absolutely meant to be living members of one another. But there must be a transcendent principle of unity or else the fellowship will sooner or later break up: the fellows will develop such hardened egoisms that they will cease to be living and sustaining members of one another.

Leaders can lead magnificently through fellowship under a transcendent principle. Because the transcendent principle in this case of non-Christian fellowship is not itself living, that is, because it is always some idea—the interest of the nation, the interest of the party, the interest of the revolution, the interest of this or that leader—and because the essence of this idea, as Augustine would say, is self-love, non-Christian fellowship, and therefore non-Christian leadership, will always sooner or later disintegrate. And Christian leadership itself will disintegrate to the extent it has been dechristianized and is living away from living closeness to Jesus Christ and his living body, the Church. When that happens, there is no difference between Christian and non-Christian leadership.

In real Christian fellowship, the transcendent principle of the ecclesia is Jesus Christ, “which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive” (Acts 25:19), and the very essence of this principle is love. It is this living love, having overcome both death and self, that cements the Christian ecclesia into the most creative and enduring fellowship. For “charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away” (1 Cor. 13:8–10). And of course “that which is perfect” is always, by every count, in every respect, according to every measure, living love.

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

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Billy Graham

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The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been times of great scientific advance. The past thirty years have brought us such marvels as jet power, nuclear power, television, and modern missiles, as well as many hundreds of gadgets that add to the comfort of mankind.

Science gives us all these things, but it does not tell us what to do with them. At this point we must have moral and spiritual resources in order to use properly the things science has created.

Give an immature boy an air rifle and he may shoot out the windows. Give the morally immature human race hydrogen bombs and missiles and they may blow the entire world to bits. Science has led us to the possibility of a Golden Age, but science has also brought us to the possibility of the destruction of the human race. Man stands at the crossroads; he must make a choice.

The word “Christian” is of Latin derivation. Literally it means “partisan of Christ” or “a member of His party.” The one thing you can say about partisans, whatever their politics is that they are never neutral. They never “play it safe,” they never “sit on the fence,” they are never spectators in the struggles of their time. They throw in their lot. They commit themselves. They hear and follow their leader, come what may. So the very word “Christian” implies a commitment of life, a decision, a choice.

Christ told us that we do not have the inner resources to face the problems, frustrations, and crises of life. We need new resources that he alone can provide. He said, “you must be born again” (John 3:7). Jesus taught clearly that unless we experience a new birth or conversion, we cannot enter the Kingdom of God.

The sense of futility in life seems common to many and is understood by almost everyone. Even the young people of today seem to share this feeling of futility. The Johns Hopkins alumni magazine asked 291 graduating seniors to submit essays appraising and defending their own generation. The apathetic result was a single reply that came from a twenty-six-year-old Navy veteran, a history major. Among other things he said, “We are resigned to a position of grayness and indecision. If my generation seems inert, it is not because we do not care; it is because we feel helpless. We are not so much lost as rootless.” The feeling of futility produces an apathy toward the moral issues of our day and unconcern over fraud and dishonesty in high places. This attitude on the part of the public is more frightening than the transgressions against decency and integrity themselves.

Man desperately needs the moral and spiritual certainties that faith in God can bring him. When modern man feels himself to be a cosmic orphan—adrift on a planet precariously balanced in space, without a personal God as his Father, without a future life to which he may aspire—then it is easy for his life to splinter when it encounters the hard problems of the twentieth century.

When Jesus Christ was on earth, he was concerned about bringing wholeness into the lives of those he met. He taught that man can be born again. He made this statement to a scholar by the name of Nicodemus. If Jesus had said, “Except you, Nicodemus, be born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God,” we would have written it off as a statement to one particular person with no general application. But Jesus used a generic term: “Except a man he born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Immediately Nicodemus raised a question: “How can a man be born when he is old?” (John 3:4). He was not so much interested in the new birth itself as in the way it worked. He wanted to view the matter objectively. He asked, “How can a man …?,” rather than, “How can I …?” He had a tendency to argue himself out of the new birth rather than to believe himself into it.

Dr. Carl Jung, the great psychologist, once said, “All the old, primitive sins are not dead but are crouching in the dark corners of our modern hearts.” Jesus indicated that something is wrong with the human heart when he said, “Those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man” (Matt. 15:18).

Psychologists realize that something is wrong with the human race. Some call it a constitutional weakness; the Bible calls it sin. The Bible describes it as the free act of an intelligent, moral, responsible being asserting himself against the will of his Maker. It has affected every part of our lives, even our minds.

Jesus says, “Nicodemus, you are scholarly, you are religious, you have position and power; but unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

All through the Scriptures runs the truth that a change is needed. Ezekiel said, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you” (36:26). In Romans, Paul speaks of it as being “alive from the dead” (6:13). In Second Corinthians he calls it being “a new creature: old things are passed away … all things are become new” (5:17). To the Ephesians he said that they had been “quickened,” or made alive from the dead (2:1). In Titus it is called “the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit” (3:5). Peter calls it being made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). In the Church of England Catechism it is called “a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness.”

The new birth brings about a change in disposition, in affection, in design. New aims, new principles, new dimensions of life can be yours if you put your faith and confidence in Jesus Christ.

The new birth is a mystery accomplished by the Spirit of God. When the children of Israel had been bitten by snakes in the wilderness as a judgment, thousands of them were suffering and dying. God told Moses that he should make a serpent of brass and hold it up to the people and that those who would look at the serpent would be healed. Moses held up the brass serpent. Many looked and were healed. But many refused to look. It was an insult to their intelligence; there was no healing quality in the brass. But God had said it. They did not have to rub ointment on their sores. They did not have to minister to others who had been bitten. They did not have to fight the serpent, or make an offering to the serpent. They did not have to look to Moses. They just had to look to the brass serpent in faith and beyond the serpent to God (Num. 21:8, 9).

So Jesus said, “I am going to be lifted up. Look unto me, and be saved” (cf. Isa. 45:22). Our generation could be saved by a look of faith to Jesus Christ. Science and medicine can help. Psychiatry can help. But our ultimate salvation is at the Cross of Christ, where he died for our sins and where all the possibilities of a new dimension of life exist. If we will look, we will live.

Miracle

A muddy corm

(encouraged by

a south wall and a warm

wet silver shower)

will glow

topaz, in a crocus flower!

Let April show

more wonder—

out of those soft dull clouds

lightning spears thunder;

living storm

dissolves death shrouds

of snow;

brown blankets of shaggy sod turn emerald!

Why doubt?

The sullen reprobate,

the sodden clod,

the heart of hate,

the dark of face,

the old,

watered and warmed by grace

may sprout

and grow up green and gold

for God!

LUCI SHAW

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

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Calvin D. Linton

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“The sun knoweth his going down”—PSALM 104:19

“Time, that takes a survey of all the world,” wrote Shakespeare, “must have a stop.” No one has ever doubted that the pendulum of each individual life must some day fail to hit its full arc, and fall motionless. But today there is an astonishingly widespread feeling that in a larger sense the corporate life of all men, human history, is reaching some kind of culmination or cataclysm. The dizzying acceleration of events, coupled with the incalculable growth of power and no balancing growth of wisdom, has created a feeling that man’s influence on his destiny is cracking or already shattered. The belief is growing that the Bible’s view of human history as linear, with a beginning, middle, and end, may have some truth in it.

The voices of the complacent (“since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning …”) have little conviction, and the faces of the prophets of automatic human progress wear strained smiles. True, the old mottoes are still sometimes heard, chiefly those predicting the elimination or reduction of the human problem through technology, or computers, or drugs, and to doubt this is still to open oneself to the charge of pessimism. But beneath the surface one finds in most people a profound disquiet. Perhaps the following statement is too strong, but one rather sympathizes with its mood: “We confront several problems,” it was recently asserted, “which are absolutely predictable, absolutely unavoidable, and absolutely disastrous.” (Mentioned were the population explosion, pollution of the planet, proliferation of atomic weapons, and depletion of natural resources. Not mentioned: sin.)

When, in Housman’s phrase, to think is to lay one’s hand upon his heart, it is natural to try to block off the troublesome message of reason, and to live viscerally, unthinkingly, emotionally, passionately. “O for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts!” cried Keats, though he had no conception of the aid in this direction man would find in the electric guitar and the weird realm of psychedelia.

So to live, however, requires that one put his entire trust in this flesh and this world, both demonstrably slaves of time—and it is sometimes hard to hear the music over the ticking of the clock. It is, indeed, difficult to comply merrily with the injunction to “love that well which thou must leave ere long.” Worse yet, it requires that one retreat into himself, the smallest prison possible, and the loneliest. And worst of all, it requires that death be embraced as the only ultimate reality, for such a life must, if the inescapable fact is faced, be defined as death. Only that which is not born is not subject to death. The first moment of biological life is a movement toward biological death, with only a quantitative element, time, intervening, an element that, no matter how prolonged, is incapable of altering one whit the qualitative fact of death.

It may be objected that this is needlessly melancholy talk, probably the product of poor metabolism, lack of vitamins, or some other condition easily alleviated by diet and exercise. But the facts remain, and they have haunted man from the beginning of his existence on this earth. The most enduring monuments of his literature, those in which he most deeply expressed himself, are composed in a minor key. Indeed, it has often been pointed out that the greatest literary works of the greatest writers from the ancients to the moderns have expressed a tragic (a term not synonymous with despairing) view of man. This is also the Bible’s view, for at the heart of tragedy is the theme of the fall of a great one owing to a basic moral flaw. Investing the mood with hope and grandeur is the possibility of victory, of redemption, even if the glimpse, in secular works, be so faint as that in the cry the dying Lear utters, with Cordelia in his arms, thinking he sees life: “Look on her! look! her lips! Look there, look there!” A corrective to Kent’s “All’s cheerless, dark, and deadly.”

The foregoing lines have had a single purpose: to provide a frame of reference in which to assert the total and unique relevance of the Bible to man in his every dimension, and to plead in these dangerous and perhaps climactic days that all hear and obey the word of God graciously commanding, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else” (Isa. 45:22).

It is a cause of continuing astonishment to the Christian that the words and works of God are so seemingly invisible and inaudible to the world. And yet he knows the reason for that, too: sin, the common lot of all men, hardens the heart and makes rigid the mind in stubborn refusal even to look to God, much less to turn in obedience to him, willing to receive his mercy and love. How hard it was for the prodigal son, even in his hunger, enslavement, and misery, finally to say, “I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee.…” Yet how untiring and persistent is the invitation to return—“I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts” (Isa. 65:2). “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” (Ezek. 33:11).

The most poignant and futile question a person asks himself is usually an echo of that query, “Why?”—“Why did I do this?” or “Why did I not do that?” In retrospect one sees that the moment came when one could have taken the action, made the decision, that would have altered a timeless future. And one sees, in retrospect, with what folly that moment was dismissed in the hope that another, more propitious, moment would come. But none did, and “What might have been is an abstraction/Remaining a perpetual possibility/Only in a world of speculation,” as Eliot expresses it in “Burnt Norton.” There is no record that those at Athens who told the Apostle Paul, “We will hear thee again of this matter,” ever did.

There is only one “accepted time” mentioned in the Bible: Now (2 Cor. 6:2). “Choose ye this day …” exhorted Joshua; and Jesus’ command was, “Follow me,” not “Join me next week.” Time, God’s great and mysterious gift to man, is not to be wasted, much less killed. It is to be redeemed (Eph. 5:16).

Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

—PSALM 22:1

Perhaps the Socrates he had never read,

The Socrates that Socrates poorly understood,

Had the answer. From opposites, opposites

Are generated. Cold to heat, heat to cold,

Life to death, and death to life.

Perhaps the grave’s Obscenity is the womb, the only one

For the glorified body. It may be

Darkness alone, darkness, black and mute,

Void of God and a human smile, filled

With hateful laughter, dirty jokes, rattling dice,

Can empty the living room of all color

So that the chromatic slide of salvation

Fully possesses the bright screen of vision.

Or perhaps, being Man, it was simply

He must first go wherever man had been,

To whatever caves of loneliness, whatever

Caverns of no light, deep damp darkness,

Dripping walls of the spirit, man has known.

I have called to God and heard no answer,

I have seen the thick curtain drop, and sunlight die;

My voice has echoed back, a foolish voice,

The prayer restored intact to its silly source.

I have walked in darkness, he hung in it.

In all of my mines of night, he was there first;

In whatever dead tunnel I am lost, he finds me.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

From his perfect darkness a voice says, I have not.

CHAD WALSH

From The Psalm of Christ, by Chad Walsh. The Westminster Press Copyright © 1963 by W. L. Jenkins. Used by permission.

Hear again from the Isaiah 45:22 text how gracious the Lord is, how direct, how all sufficient, how simple: “Look unto me, and be ye saved.…” So direct and simple, indeed, as to offend the pseudo-sophisticate, who does not see that the command goes to the depth of man’s need. Every twist of human philosophy, every complexity of history, every confusion of man’s effort to understand himself, producing a tangled mass of theory spinning as large as the world itself, is encompassed, cut through, laid out, and given an utterly authoritative interpretation, based upon an inerrant statement of the cause of man’s need. “Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters. They have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward. Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire …” (Isa. 1:4, 7). “The pastors are become brutish, and have not sought the LORD: therefore they shall not prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered” (Jer. 10:21). “It is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts” (Jer. 2:19). “They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Ps. 14:3).

In short, and quite frighteningly, man is “the enemy of God” (Rom. 5:10), he is “alienated from the life of God” (Eph. 4:18), he is “guilty before God” (Rom. 3:19), he is “under the wrath of God” (John 3:36), and he will be punished by God (2 Thess. 1:8, 9). A fearful and insupportable condition.

But in the midst of the helplessness and the hopelessness of man’s predicament, God’s sovereign invitation remains open, precisely as long as time shall last: “Look unto me, and be ye saved.…”

Now the command to “look” may not be construed (the Bible makes plain) as merely to glance in the direction of. True, the first evidence of man’s compliance is that he gives God his attention, that he pays heed to the Lord. But one cannot look when his back is turned, and to turn about at God’s invitation involves much more—repentance, belief, obedience. Each of these conditions goes counter to the first act of sin, wherein Adam set the course of his natural offspring. Hence, each is “unnatural,” and God must provide the power to enter into them.

One thinks of the occasion described in Numbers 21, when the Israelites wandered in a desert wasteland (as fallen man does, spiritually) and were bitten to death by serpents, typifying sin. First God provided a mediator, Moses (foretype in this role of Christ), who “prayed for the people.” Then God provided what seemed a strange salvation. At his command, Moses made a bronze serpent, symbolizing sin judged, and held it high on a pole, as Christ was made sin for us (though he knew no sin) and was lifted up on the cross; and it came to pass that “if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld [simply, obediently looked] the serpent of brass, he lived” (Num. 21:9).

When a greater than Moses was come, the object of our looking—our repentant, believing, obedient looking—was manifested and authenticated to all men. “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him” (Matt. 17:5). Our hope is in him, or nowhere, for “all flesh is as grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field … but the word of our God shall stand forever” (Isa. 40:6, 8). In the presence of such a One, no one has uttered the true Gospel more clearly than Mary: “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it” (John 2:5). Jesus said, “Come unto me …” (Matt. 11:28), and “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:27, 28). One who knows God and does not believe him makes him a liar, “because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son” (1 John 5:10). “If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established” (Isa. 7:9). “How long will this people provoke me,” the Lord asked Moses, “and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them?” (Num. 14:11). “O my people, what have I done unto thee? And wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me” (Mic. 6:3).

The Lord will not weary the people with his graciousness forever. “He hath appointed a day, in which he will judge the world in righteousness,” “… when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ”; “behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger …” (Acts 17:31; 2 Thess. 1:7, 8; Isa. 13:9). Time must have a stop—but it has not yet; and, as W. H. Auden says in his introduction to the journals of Baudelaire, “Though the spirit needs time, an instant of it is enough.”

Man does so love to modify, adjust, alter the things of God as he thinks they should be! He is offended by the absolute, and tries with much learning and sophistication to convince himself that God means neither his promise of absolute salvation nor his warning of absolute condemnation. The arrogance, the bland superiority, the sheer brassy conceit of man, surrounded on every hand by the mounting mess he has made of the world, must make the angels weep.

How solemn, how applicable are the warnings: “If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, … because ye do not lay it to heart” (Mal. 2:2). “Their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste” (Deut. 32:35). In nature, in history, in sign and wonder, in the words of the Book, in the inner voice of conscience, and supremely in the revelation of God himself in the Son, man has been taught. He is without excuse. But still not without hope, for, most amazingly, he is loved. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love …”; “I have loved you, saith the LORD …”; “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away …” (Jer. 31:3; Mal. 1:2; Hos. 14:4). “Thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee” (Ps. 86:5).

Confirming his divine words with double affirmation, Jesus said: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24). It is not given to man to edit these words, or modify them—only to believe them, or to declare them a lie. He cannot even ignore them, for having once heard them he is judged by his knowledge of them.

The clock ticks, the minutes run. The first moment after time is eternity. “The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox.”

How God Melted C. S. Lewis*

Amiable agnostics who talk cheerfully of “man’s search for God”might as well speak of “the mouse’s search for the cat”

The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. In a sense. I was going up Headington Hill on the top of a bus. Without words and (I think) almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay, or shutting something out. Or, if you like, that I was wearing some stiff clothing, like corsets, or even a suit of armor, as if I were a lobster. I felt myself being, there and then, given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut; I could unbuckle the armor or keep it on. Neither choice was presented as a duty; no threat or promise was attached to either, though I knew that to open the door or to take off the corset meant the incalculable. The choice appeared to be momentous but it was also strangely unemotional. I was moved by no desires or fears. In a sense I was not moved by anything. I chose to open, to unbuckle, to loosen the rein. I say, “I chose,” yet it did not really seem possible to do the opposite. On the other hand, I was aware of no motives. You could argue that I was not a free agent, but I am more inclined to think that this came nearer to being a perfectly free act than most that I have ever done. Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom, and perhaps a man is most free when, instead of producing motives, he could only say, “I am what I do.” Then came the repercussion on the imagination level. I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt. The melting was starting in my back—drip-drip and presently trickle-trickle. I rather disliked the feeling.

The fox had been dislodged from Hegelian Wood and was now running in the open, “with all the wo in the world,” bedraggled and weary, hounds barely a field behind. And nearly everyone was now (one way or another) in the pack: Plato, Dante, MacDonald, Herbert, Barfield, Tolkien, Dyson, Joy itself. Everyone and everything had joined the other side. Even my own pupil Griffiths—now Dom Bede Griffiths—though not yet himself a believer, did his share. Once, when he and Barfield were lunching in my room, I happened to refer to philosophy as “a subject.” “It wasn’t a subject to Plato,” said Barfield, “it was a way.” The quiet but fervent agreement of Griffiths, and the quick glance of understanding between these two, revealed to me my own frivolity. Enough had been thought, and said, and felt, and imagined. It was about time that something should be done.

For of course there had long been an ethic (theoretically) attached to my Idealism. I thought the business of us finite and half-unreal souls was to multiply the consciousness of Spirit by seeing the world from different positions while yet remaining qualitatively the same as Spirit; to be tied to a particular time and place and set of circumstances, yet there to will and think as Spirit itself does. This was hard; for the very act whereby Spirit projected souls and a world gave those souls different and competitive interests, so that there was a temptation to selfishness. But I thought each of us had it in his power to discount the emotional perspective produced by his own particular self-hood, just as we discount the optical perspective produced by our position in space. To prefer my own happiness to my neighbor’s was like thinking that the nearest telegraph post was really the largest. The way to recover, and act upon, this universal and objective vision was daily and hourly to remember our true nature, to reascend or return into that Spirit which, in so far as we really were at all, we still were. Yes; but I now felt I had better try to do it. I faced at last (in MacDonald’s words) “some thing to be neither more nor less nor other than done.” An attempt at complete virtue must be made.

Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side. You must not do, you must not even try to do, the will of the Father unless you are prepared to “know of the doctrine.” All my acts, desires, and thoughts were to be brought into harmony with universal Spirit. For the first time I examined myself with a seriously practical purpose. And there I found what appalled me: a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds. My name was legion.

Of course, I could do nothing—I could not last out one hour—without continual conscious recourse to what I called Spirit. But the fine, philosophical distinction between this and what ordinary people call “prayer to God” breaks down as soon as you start doing it in earnest. Idealism can be talked, and even felt; it cannot be lived. It became patently absurd to go on thinking of “Spirit” as either ignorant of, or passive to, my approaches. Even if my own philosophy were true, how could the initiative lie on my side? My own analogy, as I now first perceived, suggested the opposite; if Shakespeare and Hamlet could ever meet, it must be Shakespeare’s doing. Hamlet could initiate nothing. Perhaps, even now, my Absolute Spirit still differed in some way from the God of religion. The real issue was not, or not yet, there. The real terror was that if you seriously believed in even such a “God” or “Spirit” as I admitted, a wholly new situation developed. As the dry bones shook and came together in that dreadful valley of Ezekiel’s, so now a philosophical theorem, cerebrally entertained, began to stir and heave and throw off its graveclothes, and stood upright and became a living presence. I was to be allowed to play at philosophy no longer. It might, as I say, still be true that my “Spirit” differed in some way from “the God of popular religion.” My Adversary waived the point. It sank into utter unimportance. He would not argue about it. He only said, “I am the Lord”; “I am that I am”; “I am.”

People who are naturally religious find difficulty in understanding the horror of such a revelation. Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about “man’s search for God.” To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat. The best image of my predicament is the meeting of Mime and Wotan in the first act of Siegfried: hier brauch’ ich nicht Spärer noch Späher, Einsam will ich … (I’ve no use for spies and snoopers. I would be private.…)

Remember, I had always wanted, above all things, not to be “interfered with.” I had wanted (mad wish) “to call my soul my own.” I had been far more anxious to avoid suffering than to achieve delight. I had always aimed at limited liabilities. The supernatural itself had been to me, first, an illicit dream, and then, as by a drunkard’s reaction, nauseous. Even my recent attempt to live my philosophy had secretly (I now knew) been hedged round by all sorts of reservations. I had pretty well known that my ideal of virtue would never be allowed to lead me into anything intolerably painful; I would be “reasonable.” But now what had been an ideal became a command; and what might not be expected of one? Doubtless, by definition, God was Reason itself. But would He also be “reasonable” in the other, more comfortable, sense? Not the slightest assurance on that score was offered me. Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded. The reality with which no treaty can be made was upon me. The demand was not even “All or nothing.” I think that stage had been passed, on the bus top when I unbuckled my armor and the snowman started to melt. Now, the demand was simply “All.”

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

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

    • More fromCalvin D. Linton

J. N. D. Anderson

Page 6042 – Christianity Today (20)

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The Harvard-Radcliffe Christian Fellowship and the Harvard-Radcliffe Discussion Group were joint sponsors of a discussion program moderated by psychiatrist Dr. Armand Nicholi, of the University Health Services in Harvard Medical School, and featuring an address by Dr. J. N. D. Anderson, dean of the faculty of law in the University of London and visiting professor last year at Harvard Law School. Dr. Nicholi’s introduction and Dr. Anderson’s address follow.

DR. NICHOLI: As we came in the door Professor Harvey Cox said that many more people are here tonight than were at the conference titled “God is dead”—and he wondered if perhaps more people are interested in His being alive. This afternoon somebody told me he had seen, on one of the subway walls, a sign that said, “God is dead. Nietzsche.” But a student had come along and put a line through that, and had instead written, “Nietzsche is dead. God.” We like to think that our beliefs are based on a careful consideration of the evidence. This of course is seldom the case. What we currently know about the functioning of the mind indicates rather clearly that our belief as well as our behavior is influenced more by how we feel than by what we think. Even within the intellectual community, where a high premium is placed on reason and on the process of distinguishing between assumption and fact, we find that what a man believes is influenced in large measure by emotional bias and prejudgments and less by objective and critical assessment of the evidence. There are few areas in which this is more true than in Christianity, and this accounts for many of the misconcepts that surround it. As with all reality, a little knowledge leads not to a few correct concepts but to many misconcepts. We have recently observed the Christmas season commemorating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, and soon we will be observing the Easter season commemorating his resurrection. Down through the centuries many have considered the Easter season the most profoundly meaningful to their faith. Others, of course, have taken a different view. The topic of our discussion, the evidence for the resurrection, is therefore both timely and provocative. Our speaker is a scholar of international repute and one eminently qualified to deal with the subject of evidence. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on Islamic law, and is now visiting professor at the Harvard Law School. He is dean of the faculty of law in the University of London, chairman of the department of Oriental law at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and director of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in the University of London. It is a pleasure to introduce Dr. Norman Anderson.

Our chairman has reminded us that men’s and women’s faith and beliefs are very often based on prejudice, instinct, upbringing, and feeling, rather than on reason and evidence. But it is with the aspect of evidence for Christianity that we are now concerned. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead has always been regarded as a pivotal point in Christianity. St. Paul wrote long ago, “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching meaningless, and your faith worthless.” “More than that,” he said, “we ourselves, we apostles, are found false witnesses to God.” So I imagine that everyone in this lecture room would agree that it is clearly a matter of great importance to try to make up one’s mind about the Easter story—whether it’s fact or whether it’s fable. But many people would say, “Obviously this is of great importance, but how can it be done? It all happened so long ago. How can we come to any considered conviction about it today?”

There are at least two ways one can set about this. The first way—the way we will follow—is examination of the historical evidence, to try to make up one’s mind whether it is early and more or less contemporary and whether it is convincing, or whether it is susceptible to rationalistic interpretation. The other approach would be experimentation—putting the risen Christ to the test in one’s own life and the lives of other people.

I shall try to consider this matter not in the manner of the preacher or the theologian, which I make no pretensions to be, but in the manner of a lawyer, which I do attempt to be. Now, on what evidence does the Easter story rest? It rests primarily on the written testimony of six men whom we commonly call Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, and Paul.

The question is continually asked, Is there no contemporary documentary evidence from non-Christian sources on this subject? And the answer, I think, is that substantially speaking there is none. There is a letter from the younger Pliny to the Emperor Trajan about the year A.D. 110 in which he makes a reference to the origins of Christianity and the early Christian community. There is a very short and passing reference to Jesus of Nazareth and his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate in the writings of Tacitus the Roman historian about the year 115. And there are a number of references, many of them disputed, in the writings of Josephus, who wrote between about 70 and 95. But the references to the origins of Christianity in Josephus, if you accept them as original (as some of them probably are), are meager in the extreme and make no statement on the resurrection. This is not surprising, for if one accepts the gospel records it is perfectly plain that the risen Christ made no attempt whatever to appear to his enemies or his opponents, to put them to confusion, but deliberately showed himself alive after his passion to witnesses chosen by him, and sent them to bear testimony to the rest of humanity. And none of these writers was living in Palestine at that time.

But when we turn to the New Testament documents the matter is very different. There are abundant references both to the empty tomb and the resurrection appearances and to the effect of the resurrection on the primitive Church. It is perhaps not always realized what considerable strides modern scholarship has taken in fixing beyond any reasonable doubt, to my mind at least, the early date of a great many of the New Testament documents; modern scholarship has really excluded, I think, the extravagantly late date attributed to some New Testament documents not so many years ago. I myself am fully convinced that the New Testament writers were not left to their unaided resources but were given divine aid; but naturally, in this attempt to assess the evidence of the resurrection in a more or less legal manner, I’m not taking that for granted in any way. Nor will you expect me to deal with the precise dates and authenticity of the different New Testament documents. It’s not my subject, and I wouldn’t presume to deal with it; anyway, it would take far too long. But as a basis for any research of this subject we must briefly examine some of the witnesses.

For our first witness I will call the Apostle Paul. If you will look sometime at the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, you will find there the most complete list of the resurrection appearances to be found in any one place in the New Testament. As far as I am aware, the vast majority of reputable scholars consider First Corinthians a genuine document of the Apostle Paul. And there seems no real doubt about the date—that it was written within a year or two of A.D. 55, or even earlier.

If you look at that chapter carefully you will see that the Apostle says he had already given an account by word of mouth, to the very people to whom he was writing, of what he was now committing to paper. This probably takes us back to the year 49, when he paid his first visit to Corinth. As a matter of fact, he states in this chapter that he had himself received what he passed on to others. That, I suppose, takes us back to his visit to Jerusalem, about which he tells us in the first chapter of the epistle to the Galatians, when he spent fifteen days with Simon Peter and also saw James, the Lord’s brother. In point of fact, in First Corinthians 15 we have an account of a private interview of the risen Christ with both Peter and James. And that, I suppose, would take us back to about the year 40—to within ten years of the event.

But whether or not you accept that little bit of reasoning, in this list of the resurrection appearances Paul the Apostle specifically tells us that the Risen Christ appeared on one occasion to 500 brethren at once, and he says that, at the time when he wrote, the majority at least of these 500 witnesses were still alive. So there is our first bit of evidence—a document acknowledged by almost everyone to be written by the Apostle Paul, acknowledged to be written about the year 55, and stating positively that, at the time it was written, the majority of 500 witnesses to the resurrection were still living.

For our second witness we’ll call Mark, the writer of the second Gospel. Suggestions have been made that an Aramaic version of the Gospel may have been in circulation at a very early date. Be that as it may, almost everyone accepts Mark as a very early and primitive authority. Most scholars, I believe, accept the statement of one of the earliest Fathers of the Christian Church that Mark was Peter’s interpreter; in other words, that Mark’s Gospel is substantially a written account of the oral testimony of Simon Peter. And in this very primitive document we find another independent reference to the resurrection appearances and—more important—probably the earliest account of the women’s visit to the empty tomb on the first Easter morning.

For our third witness we’ll call the writer of the third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, conceded by the great majority of scholars to be Luke, “the beloved physician,” as St. Paul named him. Sir William Ramsey and others have shown what an accurate historian this writer was in such matters as disputed points in the accounts of the missionary journeys and the titles given to Roman officials whom St. Paul met in the course of those journeys. In these two documents, Luke and Acts, you find another independent account of the resurrection appearances, and of the women’s visit on the first Easter morning to the empty tomb—and also what I think is the earliest account of the apostolic preaching in Jerusalem based on the resurrection, going back, we are told, to the day of Pentecost.

Now, we have considered the credentials of three of the witnesses. I’m not going to deal with the other three, not because I don’t accept them as equally authoritative but because time forbids. I have chosen these three because there is a substantial degree of critical agreement with regard to the points I’ve put before you. How then are we to deal with this testimony? It seems to go right back to the first generation of Christians. In fact, I would say that beyond any reasonable doubt whatever, it goes back to the first generation of Christians. It goes back at the very least to the time of the Pauline epistles, the earlier Pauline epistles. How is one to deal with it?

The most drastic way of dismissing the evidence would be to say that these stories were mere fabrications, that they were pure lies. But, so far as I know, not a single critic today would take such an attitude. In fact, it would really be an impossible position. Think of the number of witnesses, over 500. Think of the character of the witnesses, men and women who gave the world the highest ethical teaching it has ever known, and who even on the testimony of their enemies lived it out in their lives. Think of the psychological absurdity of picturing a little band of defeated cowards cowering in an upper room one day and a few days later transformed into a company that no persecution could silence—and then attempting to attribute this dramatic change to nothing more convincing than a miserable fabrication they were trying to foist upon the world. That simply wouldn’t make sense.

Others might say, No, we wouldn’t call these stories lies, but let’s call them legends; that’s a kinder word. And of course, if it had been possible to date the Gospels two or three hundred years after the event (I hardly need remind you that the attempt to do that has been made by a wealth of scholars and that it has quite definitely failed), then it might have been possible for legends of this sort to develop. But it seems to me almost meaningless to talk about legends when you’re dealing with the eyewitnesses themselves.

Besides, if you examine these stories you find they don’t really look like legends. To a legend-monger it would have been a great temptation to invent some story as to how the resurrection took place, or some incident in which the risen Christ appeared to put his opponents to confusion; but we find no such attempt. What legend-monger would have made the first resurrection appearance to Mary Magdalene, a woman of no great standing in the Christian Church? Wouldn’t any legend-monger have made the first appearance to Simon Peter the leading apostle, or John the beloved disciple, or—still more likely, perhaps—to Mary the mother of our Lord? Why to Mary Magdalene?

And who can read about the appearance to Mary Magdalene, or the incident where the risen Christ joined two disciples on an afternoon walk to Emmaus, or the time when Peter and John raced each other to the tomb—who can read these stories and really think they’re legend? They are far too dignified and restrained; they are far too true to life and psychology. The difference between them and the sort of stories you find in the apocryphal gospels of but two or three centuries later is a difference almost between heaven and earth. No, as far as I know, no one today suggests that these stories are either lies or legends, just like that.

All the attempts to explain the Easter story and the resurrection appearances that I’ve seen are marked by a rather interesting phenomena. The critics first of all isolate the stories of the empty tomb and attempt to explain them on a variety of ingenious hypotheses, and then they turn to the resurrection appearances and dismiss them as some form of psychological or pathological experience—no doubt vivid and convincing on a subjective level to the apostles, who certainly believed in the resurrection, but, according to the critics, with no objective foundation.

Well, let us consider the question of the empty tomb. The earliest attempt to explain away the empty tomb can be found in St. Matthew’s Gospel. There we are told that the Jewish leaders gave money to the guards to say that the apostles had come by night and stolen away the body and had no doubt disposed of it somewhere. But so far as I know, no one today suggests that the apostles did that. I am aware, of course, of a recent book entitled The Passover Plot, which comes back to that particular solution in a rather different way. I’d prefer to deal with that comprehensively a little later. But that the apostles as we know them came and stole the body really would be an impossible view in view of both ethics and psychology. To imagine that they just foisted a miserable deception on the world simply wouldn’t fit in with their life and teaching and all we know of them. And it couldn’t begin to explain this dramatic change of the little band of defeated cowards into witnesses whom no persecution could silence.

No, better than that would be the suggestion that the body was removed by orders of the high priest or by orders of the Roman governor, or conceivably by Joseph of Arimathea, the owner of the sepulcher. Quite apart from anything else that may be said about those three suggestions, which we’ll take together to save time, the crucial point as I see it is this: Within seven short weeks—if the records are to be believed at all, and I cannot see any possible reason for Christian writers to have invented that difficult gap of seven weeks—within seven short weeks Jerusalem was seething with the preaching of the resurrection. The apostles were preaching it up and down the city. The chief priests were very much upset about it. They said that the apostles were trying to bring this man’s blood upon them. They were being accused of having crucified the Lord of glory. And they were prepared to go to almost any lengths to nip this dangerous heresy in the bud. Well, then, if the body had been moved by their orders, then, when the apostles started preaching the resurrection up and down the city, why didn’t they issue an official denial? Why didn’t they say, “That’s nonsense. The body was moved at our orders.” If that wouldn’t have convinced people, why didn’t they call as witnesses those who took the body away? If that wouldn’t have sufficed, why didn’t they point people to its final resting place? And if that wouldn’t have sufficed, why didn’t they produce the body? Surely they could have exploded Christianity once and for all. Why didn’t they do it?

To me there’s only one answer: They couldn’t, because they didn’t know where the body was. The same argument would apply to the Roman governor. He too was upset about this strange teaching. If he had had the body moved, it seems incredible that he wouldn’t have informed the chief priests when they were so upset. And that would bring us back to the question, Why didn’t they explode the whole story?

Well, what about Joseph of Arimathea? I think my answer would be that the critics really can’t have it both ways. They have a choice. On the one hand, they can accept what the New Testament says about Joseph, that he was a secret disciple, in which case it is unlikely that he would remove the body without consulting the apostles first—and incredible that he wouldn’t have told them afterwards, when the preaching of the resurrection was echoing up and down the lanes and alleys of the city. That would bring us back to the idea that the apostles were foisting a miserable deception on the world.

The other view critics can choose to take about Joseph of Arimathea—apart from the suggestion in The Passover Plot—is that he was a pious Jew who put the body in his sepulcher so that it wouldn’t hang on the cross on the sabbath day. In that case it’s unlikely that he would have moved the body without consulting the chief priests first, and it is fantastic to suggest that he wouldn’t have told them afterward, when they were so upset about this heresy. In that case, why didn’t they call Joseph as a witness? Why didn’t they issue an official denial?

Another suggestion about the empty tomb was espoused by one of the theological teachers at Cambridge, England, in the days of my own youth and innocence in that university. It runs somewhat like this: The women were Galileans and strangers in Jerusalem; they didn’t know their way about the city very well. They saw their Master buried in the half-light of the evening, when their eyes were blinded with tears, and they went to the tomb in the half-light of the morning. According to this theory they missed their way and went to the wrong sepulcher. A young man happened to be hanging about and, guessing what they wanted, said to them, “You seek Jesus of Nazareth. He is not here [pointing to the tomb they were looking at]. Behold the place where they laid him [pointing to another tomb].” But the women got frightened and ran away. Subsequently they decided that the young man was an angel proclaiming the resurrection of their Master.

That’s very ingenious, but I don’t think it stands up to investigation. To begin with, it’s based on accepting the beginning and the end of what the young man is recorded to have said and leaving out the most important part, the middle; and for that I can see no scholarly justification whatever. For we are told that what the young man said is, “You seek Jesus of Nazareth. He is not here. He is risen. Behold the place where they laid him”—which changes the whole meaning, of course.

However, even if you think that it’s justifiable to deal with his statement the other way, it’s not really as easy as it might seem—as those who put forward this theory themselves admit. For if the women went straight back to the apostles and told them, why didn’t the apostles do one of two things: either go and check up on the facts for themselves or start preaching the resurrection at once? Unless you ignore the whole tenor of the New Testament documents, they didn’t start preaching for another seven weeks. As I’ve already said, I cannot see any possible motive for Christian writers to have invented that seven-week gap. So we’re asked to believe that the women didn’t tell the apostles this story for quite a long time. Why not? Because the apostles had supposedly run away to Galilee. Why? Well, because Jerusalem was not a very healthful place for Christians just then. But we’re not told why the apostles were so particularly ungallant that they ran away and left their wives and sisters and mothers behind. We’re asked to believe that the men went down to Galilee and left the women in Jerusalem, and that the women stayed in Jerusalem for some weeks for no apparent reason. It was only when the apostles came back from Galilee already convinced by some mystical experience that their Master was still alive—only then, supposedly, that the women told them about the visit to the tomb. Then the apostles put two and two together, made seven or eight out of it, and proclaimed the resurrection.

Frankly, I don’t find that convincing. On that basis, I suppose the body of our Lord would still have lain where it had always lain, in Joseph’s tomb. The chief priests must have known where that was, or if not they could have found out very easily. So they could have exploded the whole story by saying, “This is nonsense. If you don’t believe us, come and see.”

There is another explanation of the empty tomb, first put forward by a man named Venturini a couple of centuries or so ago. It has been resuscitated in recent years in a slightly different form by a heterodox group of Muslims called the Ahmadiya, who used to have their main headquarters at a place called Qadian and who have their English headquarters in a part of London called Putney. On two occasions they’ve invited me to go and address them. Their explanation runs like this: Christ was indeed nailed to the cross. He suffered terribly from shock, loss of blood, and pain, and he swooned away; but he didn’t actually die. Medical knowledge was not very great at that time, and the apostles thought he was dead. We are told, are we not, that Pilate was surprised that he was dead already. The explanation assertedly is that he was taken down from the cross in a state of swoon by those who wrongly believed him to be dead, and laid in the sepulcher. And the cool restfulness of the sepulcher so far revived him that he was eventually able to issue forth from the grave. His ignorant disciples couldn’t believe that this was a mere resuscitation. They insisted it was a resurrection from the dead.

Well, again, it’s very ingenious. But it won’t stand up to investigation. To begin with, steps were taken—it seems—to make quite sure that Jesus was dead; that surely is the meaning of the spear-thrust in his side. But suppose for argument’s sake that he was not quite dead. Do you really believe that lying for hour after hour with no medical attention in a rock-hewn tomb in Palestine at Easter, when it’s quite cold at night, would so far have revived him, instead of proving the inevitable end to his flickering life, that he would have been able to loose himself from yards of graveclothes weighted with pounds of spices, roll away a stone that three women felt incapable of tackling, and walk miles on wounded feet? The skeptic Strauss, you know, quite exploded that theory, to my mind, when he wrote that it would have been impossible for a being who had crept sick and faint out of a sepulcher, needing bandaging, sustenance, and attention, to convince his disciples that he was the risen Lord of Life, an impression which lay at the foundation of their future ministry. Such a resuscitation could by no means have changed their reverence into worship.

So much for the empty tomb, except for two quick points. The first is this: Have you noticed that the references to the empty tomb all come in the Gospels, which were written to give the Christian community the facts they wanted to know? In the public preaching to those who were not believers, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, there is an enormous emphasis on the fact of the resurrection but not a single reference to the empty tomb. Now, why? To me there is only one answer: There was no point in arguing about the empty tomb. Everyone, friend and opponent, knew that it was empty. The only questions worth arguing about were why it was empty and what its emptiness proved.

The second point is this: I’ve been talking all this time about the empty tomb, but it seems that it wasn’t really empty. You remember the account in John’s Gospel of how Mary Magdalene ran and called Peter and John and how the two men set out to the tomb. John, the younger, ran on quicker than Peter and came first to the tomb. He stooped down, “peeped” inside (which I believe is the literal meaning of the Greek), and saw the linen clothes and the napkin that had been about the head. And then Simon Peter came along and, characteristically, blundered straight in, followed by John; and they took note of the linen clothes and the napkin, which was not lying with the linen clothes but was apart, wrapped into one place. The Greek there seems to suggest that the linen clothes were lying, not strewn about the tomb, but where the body had been, and that there was a gap where the neck of Christ had lain—and that the napkin which had been about his head was not with the linen clothes but apart and wrapped in its own place, which I suppose means still done up, as though the body had simply withdrawn itself. We are told that when John saw that, he needed no further testimony from man or angel; he saw and believed, and his testimony has come down to us.

So much then for the empty tomb, which seems to me to be an exceedingly important bit of evidence, in fact, a basic piece of evidence. But equally important, I don’t think you can dismiss the resurrection appearances as just some form of hallucination or psychological or pathological experience. Now, I’m no doctor. Our chairman this evening is a psychiatrist, and I’d much rather leave this part of the presentation to him. But let me just say that I understand from medical friends that hallucinary experiences commonly conform to certain rules that simply don’t apply in this case.

To begin with, only certain types of persons have experiences like this—the type we call high-strung people. But I do not see how you can categorize witnesses to the resurrection as any one or two psychological types. Again, I’m told that experiences of this sort are highly individualistic, because they are naturally linked to the subconscious mind and to the past lives of the persons who experience them. So two different people will not have identical hallucinations. But in this case 500 are recorded as having had the same experience on one occasion, eleven on another, ten on another, and seven on another. And there were other groups, too. It doesn’t look purely subjective; it looks as if these experiences had some objective foundation.

Again, I am told that experiences of this sort commonly concern some expected event. A mother whose son runs away to sea always believes that he will come home, and she lights a lamp each evening to welcome him home. One day she imagines she sees him walk in at the door. But here the evidence is overwhelming that the disciples were not expecting any such thing. They ought to have been, but they weren’t.

Again, I am told that experiences of this sort commonly occur in suitable circumstances with suitable surroundings. But analyze the resurrection appearances: one at the tomb in the early morning; one during an afternoon walk into the country; one or two private interviews in the full light of day; one in an upper room in the evening; one at the lakeside in the early morning; and so on.

Finally, I am told that experiences of this sort commonly recur over a very considerable period, either getting more and more frequent until there is some crisis, or less and less frequent until they die away. But in this case 500 people claim to have had at least one such experience. A number claim to have had several such experiences within a period of forty days. And at the end of those forty days these experiences seem to have come to a sudden end. Not one of these men or women claims to have had such an experience again. I am aware that the Apostle Paul some years later claims to have seen a vision of the risen Christ in heaven on the road to Damascus. I have no doubt that he did have it, but I suggest that there was a fundamental difference between this vision and the experiences of the forty days during which the risen Christ came in and went out among the disciples.

Nor do I think you can explain these alleged appearances by the phenomena of modern spiritism. Here I’m certainly no expert, but you certainly can’t find one medium who was present on each occasion, nor can you find the usual little band of earnest seekers after the supernatural. And the One who appeared seems to have been very different from alleged spirit emanations. He could be clearly seen in broad daylight, recognized with some difficulty (it seems), and he could invite a finger to explore the print of the nails.

Nor do I think that these stories are adequately explained by the theory of the mere spiritual survival of Christ. It seems to me that the evidence goes much further than that. The evidence is that his spirit came back to his mutilated human body, which was somehow transformed—transformed into something that I can only call a spiritual body. If you ask me what a spiritual body is like, I must say frankly that I don’t know. But we live in a world of three dimensions, and there are lots of other things we don’t know. The evidence seems to point to the fact that this body could withdraw itself from the grave-clothes, could apparently pass through closed doors, could appear and disappear, and yet could be recognized with some difficulty, could be clearly seen and distinctly heard, and could invite, as I said, a finger to explore the print of the nails.

Now just a word, if I may, about that recent book called The Passover Plot. It’s an ingenious book, but I must say that I find it wholly unconvincing. It is an attempt to explain the whole story of the crucifixion and resurrection, written by a Jew who has great respect for Jesus of Nazareth but who excludes even the possibility of his deity without any examination of this in the book at all. He believes that Christ himself believed he was the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures and that he very largely interpreted his messiahship in terms of the passages about the suffering servant in the latter part of Isaiah. And the author of The Passover Plot believes that Christ deliberately set to work to fulfill those prophecies by suffering an apparent death, and something that might be regarded as a resurrection. Jesus is said to have very carefully kept the secret of what he intended to do from the twelve apostles, who knew nothing about it whatever, and to have confided his plan only to Joseph of Arimathea and to one or two others in Jerusalem—that he plotted it all; that he virtually provoked the betrayal; that it was arranged that one of the people in the plot should put a sponge to a reed, and put it to his lips, containing a substance which would cause him to swoon away; that Joseph would then go and ask for the body, alleging that it was dead when it was not dead; that the body should be nursed and looked after and that Christ should be revived; but that this plan was frustrated by the spear-thrust in his side. The author imagines that the persons in the plot managed to resuscitate Jesus of Nazareth for a period of about half an hour, that he was able to give messages to his disciples, but that he then died and they disposed of his body somewhere. Then they tried to pass on his messages to the apostles, who knew nothing about this, and the apostles made a whole series of mistakes which led them to belief in a resurrection.

Never in my life have I read a book which took some bits of evidence and rejected others on such a subjective basis. Many incidents in the Gospels are accepted just because they fit this theory; others are rejected because they don’t. Occasionally an attempt is made to give an objective basis, but time and again it’s purely subjective. I find the elements in the plot wholly unconvincing—the utter secrecy from the twelve, and the supposed provocation of the betrayal, for example; and I cannot see what would have been the result had the alleged plot succeeded. What would have happened if Christ had apparently come back to life? Would he then have told the disciples? What would he have gained? I cannot believe that this story in any way explains the resurrection appearances, which allegedly refer to an entirely different person. Surely the apostles would not have made so gigantic a mistake as that. And I cannot see how the conspirators would have kept it secret after it had all failed, and would never have shared it with the other apostles.

There’s a phenomenon in the world today called the Christian Church. It can be traced back in history to the region of Palestine in the first century. To what does it owe its origin? The New Testament—its documents of association, as a lawyer would call them—makes the unequivocal statement that the Church owed its origin to the resurrection of its founder from the dead. Is there really any other theory that fits the facts?

Much the same can be said about the phenomenon of the Christian Sunday, which can be traced back in much the same way. We need to remember that almost all the first Christians were convinced Jews who were fanatically attached to the Jewish sabbath. What would have prompted them to change that to the first day of the week? It would have required something pretty significant. In fact, it took the resurrection to make them do it. Much the same argument could be used about the festival of Easter.

What about the success of the early Church? Our Lord himself had had a big following in Galilee but a very small following in Jerusalem. We are told, however, that the apostles made thousands of converts in Jerusalem, many of them from among the circle of the priests. They did it by preaching the resurrection. And they did it within a short walk of Joseph’s tomb. Anyone who listened to them could have walked to the tomb and back between luncheon and what the English call afternoon tea. Do you really believe they would have made all those converts if the tomb hadn’t been empty?

What about the apostles? What was it that changed Peter from one who three times denied his Master before servants to someone who defied the chief priests? We are told that the risen Christ appeared to Peter, and he was never the same man again. What changed James, the unbelieving brother of our Lord during the days of his ministry, so that he became the president or bishop of the Jerusalem church a few years later? We are told that the risen Christ appeared to James, and he then wrote about his human relative as the Lord of glory. Or what about Paul the persecutor, who was in the inner councils of the chief priests? Do you believe he would have become Paul the apostle without checking up on whether the tomb was empty? Why, he must have known the tomb was empty, but he didn’t know until the vision on the road to Damascus why it was empty.

What about the very strong evidence that Christ himself foretold his resurrection, though the disciples simply couldn’t understand it? Not so very long ago there was in England a young man barrister, or what you would call a trial lawyer, by the name of Frank Morrison. He was an unbeliever. For years he promised himself that one day he would write a book to disprove the resurrection finally and forever. At last he got the leisure. He was an honest man and he did the necessary study. Eventually, he wrote a book that you can buy as a paperback, Who Moved the Stone? Starting from the most critical possible approach to the New Testament documents he concludes inter alia that you can explain the trial and the conviction of Jesus only on the basis that he himself had foretold his death and resurrection.

What about that awkward seven weeks’ gap to which I have already referred? How can you really explain it in any other way except by that fact that the apostles were completely absorbed for the first forty days by their intermittent interviews with their risen Lord, and that they then waited for another ten days at his command until the Holy Spirit came?

What about Christian experience all down the ages? And the multitude of men and women—rich and poor, reprobate and respectable, learned and ignorant—who have found in the risen Christ their joy and peace and certainty?

And what about the One who rose? Even if someone were to take the attitude, “I can’t help it; however strong the evidence may be, I will never believe that Tom Smith could be dead for a large number of hours and then come alive again,” would that apply to the One of whom we are speaking? Why, he was unique—unique in his teaching, unique in his miracles, unique in his claims, unique in his personality, unique in his sinlessness. Quite apart from the resurrection there is most excellent evidence, to me at least, that he wasn’t just a man but God incarnate. Is it incredible that such a One should rise again? To me the incredible thing is that such a One as he should die for us men and for our salvation.

I have been dealing with the historical evidence for the resurrection. No doubt you could hire a lawyer to do it very much better than I’ve done it. But I can only say that I wholeheartedly believe in what I’ve been saying. And I suppose that, for the individual, the final evidence of the resurrection—I don’t mean the most important evidence but the concluding evidence—is the evidence of personal experience. I’m not referring to some weird mystical experience of the risen Christ apprehended by the senses. I am saying only that all through the ages, and still today, men and women have come to faith in Christ and through him in God through the evidence for the resurrection, and that their faith has been authenticated in daily life. This experience has been true down the ages; it’s true today. I’ve traveled a good deal and have lived in a number of different countries, and I’ve seen it happen time and again. I can only say that I for one am thoroughly convinced.

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

    • More fromJ. N. D. Anderson

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God stabbed my conscience that night and pinned me to the ground with a fiery bolt of lightning. He was calling me, but I had never dreamed he would or could call so insistently, nor so inconveniently. All through that sodden Long Island night he pursued me, joining thunder and flaming arrow to unnerve his retreating quarry.

When the fire fell I knew instinctively that the Great Archer had nailed me, as it were, to my own footsteps.

The Bible is not without a theology of thunder and lightning, one that differs notably from the familiar Donner und Blitzen of a gift-laden Saint Nicholas. It speaks, in truth, of God’s judgment. And that night, as I trembled in the storm, I knew unmistakably that the Eternal One was coding an urgent message to my soul.

This harrowing moment, this unexpected meeting with God, was no ordinary, soon-to-be-forgotten rendezvous. To be sure, it had a past as well as a future. But now the fire kindled in my heart refused to die; its light exposed memories that conscience could not deny. Across the years I had sparred often with the Invisible One. All the while I was still a pagan—a neo-Christian pagan, as it were—born into a presumably Christian home where mother was a Roman Catholic and father a Lutheran. At the age of twelve I was confirmed in the Christian faith—in fact, on two successive Sundays, though still very much a stranger to Jesus Christ, I was baptized and confirmed by the local Episcopal priest. I shed the Church in my mid-teens. In the course of my evacuation I had managed to pilfer a Bible from the pew racks, however, and as I opened it now and then upon retiring, one segment of that Book held a special fascination for me: its narratives of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

I did not know then—as I should have known, and as anyone having even the slightest contact with the Church ought not to be able to forget—that the Apostle Paul associates Christ’s crucifixion for sinners and the bodily resurrection as central tenets of the Evangel, or God’s great good news. I was a newspaperman preoccupied with man’s minutiae when God tracked me down; the Word was pursuing a lost purveyor of words. In this encounter, my own semantic skill meant little. When, shortly after the Almighty One had used lightning to pierce my soul, a university graduate prodded me to pray, I found myself at a loss for words. There I was, a Long Island editor and suburban correspondent quite accustomed to interviewing the high and mighty of this world, yet wholly inept at formulating phrases for the King of Glory. Not even the dimly familiar words from the Order of the Holy Communion (some of which I now treasure deeply, e.g., “… Christ’s blood was shed for thee … be thankful”) seemed to fit the sheer spontaneity of that occasion.

So my friend and I settled for the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus had said, “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet.…” My altar rail was the front seat of my automobile; we parked it beside the waters of Great South Bay, locked the doors, and knelt to pray. Phrase by phrase I repeated the words of my friend. My heart owned its abysmal depth of need. “How blest are those who know that they are poor; the kingdom of Heaven is theirs”—so the New English Bible translates Jesus’ opening words in the Sermon on the Mount. My aching spirit cried out to God for the forgiveness of sins and for new life in Christ. Somewhere in the echoes of eternity I heard the pounding of hammers that marked the Saviour’s crucifixion in my stead.

Like a sure wind from the eternal world comes God’s assurance of forgiveness to the redeemed. For me the fearsome lightning now became a fountain of light; the roll of thunder, a surge of confidence. Incomparable peace, the reality of sins forgiven, a sense of destiny and direction, and above all the awareness of a new Presence and Power at the core of life—this is rebirth. I was now on speaking terms with God, a friend of the King, a servant of the Saviour.

The very next day I would have gone to the ends of the earth to do the Divine Redeemer’s bidding. I would, in truth, have gone to China; instead, in his time, and after a time of training, I went to campuses, and then to CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

And now where? After a span of service—whether here or there—to the eternal presence of God. That is the believer’s momentous prospect. For Jesus Christ turns life right-side-up and heaven outside-in.

In our century everything seems to be changing; nothing abides. Only those who know the Living God escape this threat of universal obsolescence. God abides. The Divine Commandments abide. Christ’s Gospel abides. And whoever abides in him now will forever abide with him. The cosmic process offers no enduring place to hide but God’s own abiding place.

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The World Congress on Evangelism was held in Berlin in 1966. From more than 100 nations came onetime strangers to the Living God who had found new life in Christ, to voice to the world the realities of personal salvation. To men and women of all nations and races they echoed the personal prospect of peace and purity, of happiness and hope.

The Berlin meetings brought to light a tremendous imbalance in the Christian community’s witness to the world: although the majority of the world’s inhabitants are not Christian, most of the literature of the Church—in an age of mass-media access—is directed to those who are already committed to Christ. This issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY concentrates on this neglected frontier. Entitled “Rebirth,” it is addressed to the uncommitted, to whom it presents an invitation to personal acceptance of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.

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Episcopal Bishop Anson Phelps Stokes, Jr., urges church people to make “required reading” of the report of the President’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. “This Lent,” says Bishop Stokes, “our spiritual reading need not be out of the Bible, for a spiritual and moral crisis has been presented to us all by an arm of government.”

If anyone still doubts that a crisis exists, he ought to take the bishop’s advice immediately, Lent or no Lent. The riot report is a disturbing, almost despairing, document. It finds that despite all the marches and all the violence and all the legislation of the last fifteen years, the plight of America’s 22 million Negroes grows progressively worse. And the rioting of last summer, indeed the whole “explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II,” is traced to a basic single source. Says the commission: “White racism is essentially responsible.”

This is a severe moral judgment—one that ought not to be lightly offered or hurriedly credited. It is a somewhat surprising finding, too, since the report as a whole reflects a secular sociological tone. The makeup and methodology of the commission allowed for little in the way of a theological dimension. The role of the churches in urban crisis gets no study in the 250,000-word report.

But what of the charge? Is it really “white racism” that is behind our ghetto problem?

Careful analysis suggests another answer. The underlying evil is not so much prejudice as avarice. The inordinate desire for “more, more, more” is at the heart of the matter. Blame must be shared by Negro and white.

The white man relegates the Negro to the ghetto, not because of his skin color, but because by and large he appears to be a threat to what the white man thinks are his own best interests. The Negro represents a lower standard of living, and the white man sees the granting of equal rights to the Negro as a lowering of the white standard. This is so in housing, in employment, and in education—the three major frontiers of the Negro struggle.

The insatiable quest for material goods is in itself a social problem. A study might well show, for example, that a major reason for unemployment and underemployment among Negro males in the big cities is the large number of white working mothers who pour in from the suburbs every morning. These women rarely work out of necessity. Many find jobs because they want to raise the yearly family income from $10,000 to $15,000, some because they lack the fortitude to cope with their own children. Then they hire Negro women from the ghettos to care for the children and the house at $2,500 a year.

Greed is common to all races. Many Negroes rioted, not because they hated the white man per se, but because rioting gave them the opportunity to get things they might not otherwise get. The commission contends that the rioter made targets out of white power symbols. Had that been true, the objects of destruction would have been schools, police stations, courthouses, banks and loan companies, and employment agencies. But these escaped almost unscathed. The commission itself noted that rioters aimed primarily at stores selling liquor, clothing, and furniture. An estimated 80 per cent of the loss in the Newark riot was in inventory.

Let it be plainly said that if greed were ever justified, the American Negro would be among the first to qualify. The squalor of the slums—seen, for example, in the estimate of 14,000 cases of ratbite each year, most of them in the inner cities—is a condition for which the smug suburbanite, both Christian and non-Christian, must share the blame. God will surely judge every contribution to this degradation—whether by acts of commission or of omission.Where does all this bring us? Should we try to buy our way out by vast new commitments to public spending, as the commission recommends? Such spending will help to treat the symptoms and may be a necessary stopgap. But history shows that it is not a permanent solution: public housing and urban-renewal programs have actually contributed to, rather than alleviated, racial segregation.

The commission did well to complete and publish its report four months before its deadline so as to give time for remedial action before another long, hot summer begins. The rest is up to the citizenry.

The urban crisis offers evangelicals an unprecedented opportunity for legitimate and responsible social action. What is needed is a grass-roots movement in which both whites and Negroes reach across the bounds of avarice and prejudice. Let the evangelical Negroes make constructive proposals for what their white Christian brethren should do, and let biblically oriented congregations respond with an unprecedented wave of compassion. Lent might well be observed with the riot report in one hand and an open Bible in the other.

G. C. Berkouwer

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In the history of theology, we find now this and now that dimension of the Gospel suddenly forcing itself into the center of attention. When this happens, it seems to strike no one as being strange; it is always as though this particular aspect is terribly important at this particular time. In our own time, the “theology of hope” is one of the centers of everyone’s concern.

Jürgen Moltmann’s book, The Theology of Hope (see February 16 issue, page 32), is a symptom of the Church’s new concern for eschatology. We could, of course, say that the Church has been busy with the eschatological side of the Bible for a long time. The days are passed, indeed, when theologians assumed that the eschatological problems were all solved or the eschatological structure wholly finished. At any rate, that eschatology looms large on the theological horizon is not a new discovery.

Many works have been devoted to the subject during the past thirty years. Still, Moltmann’s book already published in several translations, has earned unusual response, partly because of its stress on hope as an antidote to many forms of modern theology in which any expectation of a new and future act of God on earth, any reality of fulfillment, has been shoved aside. The “not yet” is not put in opposition to the “already come.” But Moltmann insists that the “realization” of the New Covenant, particularly in the resurrection of Christ, may never be a reason for ignoring the “yet to come.”

The manner in which Moltmann puts his thesis has provoked a great deal of discussion. This was apparent in the publication last year of Diskussion über die “Theologie der Hoffnung.” In this symposium, several writers offered their answer to Moltmann’s book and Moltmann himself responded extensively to his critics. The book sets several acute questions on the agenda, facing one another in tension. We cannot go into an analysis of the book here but can zero in on one point that is unusually important.

The prevailing charge made against Moltmann is that he is one-sided in his stress on the futuristic aspect of eschatology, and that this weakens, if it does not negate, the significance of what has already been realized in Christ. Moltmann denies this; the realized aspect is not whittled down by the fact that there is also a yet-to-be-realized aspect. Precisely in and because of what has been realized in Christ, the attention of the believer is directed toward the future.

Christ’s resurrection is the anticipation of the coming kingdom; but anticipation is not the same as arrival. Surely, Moltmann argues, faith is directed first of all to what has already been given. But on the basis of that, hope rises as the primary Christian disposition. Hope has its fundament in faith.

The Church’s hope is not set on a kind of utopia; rather, it goes its way through this life in productive obedience. This does not mean that we—by our works—can build the Kingdom, in the fashion of a new social gospel. The obedience demanded of us is obedience to the God who promises the Kingdom in his time and his manner. Obedience flows from his promises. But His promises do not offer a vague future expectation; they offer a demand for obedience that is involved with action in today’s world. For the Spirit has in fact already been given for this, in the midst of creaturely need and misery, in the midst of a creation that is groaning for its redemption.

This world is not without perspective, and expectation for it does not leave us merely with dreams of the future. The perspective on the world given by God’s promise for the future summons us to service in the world here and now. The Spirit of the risen Christ grasps this world. And he does this, not as an intervention from above, from outside us, on his own, but through us, through our expectations, and through our readiness, and through our obedience.

One has to read Moltmann’s book in order to understand what all this means in the concrete, in the midst of our complex life in this complex century. Some of his critics have asked for more specific guidelines on obedience. Moltmann is the first to agree that many questions and much reflection must still be asked and given. But what he wants is to press the necessity of such reflection and to warn against defeatism in our world. He wants to summon the Church away from a spirit of hopelessness that sacrifices this real world to the “powers of evil and corruption” and uses eschatology only as an escape from this world, an eschatology that is void of perspective for today.

The discussion of Moltmann’s book is far from over. It would be interesting to consider how much it has in common with Pannenberg’s point of view; both men are captivated by the significance of history for the understanding of redemption. Moltmann himself says that he finds more in Pannenberg’s recent publication to agree with than to differ with.

But in any event, we are confronted anew with the questions of the “already” and the “not yet.” The “already” does not give us title to an “ecclesiology of glory”; rather, it reminds us of the cross and the resurrection, of the Gospel for the world in its need, and of our calling to go into this world with the promise of a new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Pet. 3:13). This promise is not an “escape” from the world; it is a word of promise, of expectation, and of responsibility.

We ought to take note of all this and to be abreast of the discussion. For this is not abstract theology. It has to do with a theology that liberates us from the romanticism and individualism our flesh is tempted to adopt. It tells us that anyone who dreams of the future without accepting the challenges of today is not in tune with the biblical expectations and hope. The New Testament pictures the Church that has received the Spirit and is sent by the Spirit into the world. This does not rule out the reality of comfort, any more than it rules out the “for me” aspect of personal salvation. But it does rule out the notion that the Gospel is directed merely to us personally; it does rule out narrow and provincial individualism. It rules out any perspective that has no room for the wide and deep work of the Spirit in the whole gamut of our perspective of the Kingdom of God.

As a result of Moltmann’s book, we are brought up short and reminded to think and to preach about the future in a biblical perspective. If this happens, all the theological talks have borne good fruit. This is much more than an academic theological matter. It involves the Church, its hopes, and its expectations—and all this, not in tension, but in dynamic unity with its faith and its love.

    • More fromG. C. Berkouwer

Page 6042 – Christianity Today (2024)

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