Page 6320 – Christianity Today (2024)

The Doctrine Of Christian Holiness

Christian Holiness, by Stephen Neill (Harper, 1960, 130 pp., $3), is reviewed by Paul S. Rees, Vice-President at large, World Vision, Inc.

The mood of this book is right. The author’s conclusions here and there may be open to question by one or another among us, but the spirit in which everything is written is that of a man deeply concerned because of the vast neglect from which the subject of holiness suffers in contemporary Christianity. Aware that “any doctrine of Christian holiness which tries to do justice to all aspects of the problem is bound to be marked by paradox and antithesis” (p. 9), our Anglican author makes no attempt to employ ridicule or caricature in dealing with viewpoints that are at variance with his own. He himself would learn—and has indeed learned—from those who would be called his dissenters.

The holiness of God is the root of all. It is indeed the mysterium tremendum. But even the Old Testament, stressing as it does the character of God as self-revealing, has little place for a holiness that is not ethical righteousness. In Jesus we see both the disclosure of this religious-ethical holiness and the offer of a relationship between sinful men and Himself in which, through total self-commitment on their part, they are taken up into His likeness.

At this point two principal errors are to be observed and, of course, avoided. The one is called “perfectionist,” the other “conformist.” Most of the perfectionist perversions or deviations singled out for objection would be as readily rejected by, let us say, such a perfectionist as John Wesley as they are by Bishop Neill. The defect in Wesley’s teaching, Neill feels, lies in its faulty concept of sin: “that sin is a thing which has to be taken out of a man like a cancer or a rotten tooth.” (The quotation is taken approvingly from British Methodist Sugden.) One doubts, however, if Mr. Wesley intended any such wooden or materialistic mode of thought. Does not St. Paul lay himself open to the same criticism when he uses such language as, “It is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within in me” (Rom. 7:17)?

It is interesting to note that with equal firmness the Bishop faults the “two nature” theory, which is stoutly maintained by many evangelical thinkers who are quick to disavow perfectionism. In this view the “old nature,” which is altogether bad, and the “new nature,” which is altogether good, co-exist in the Christian until death breaks the bond within which they have been held in opposition to each other.

Bishop Neill, in this reviewer’s judgment, would have rendered a distinguished service if he had given us a treatment of the “perfectionist elements in the New Testament” which he says are in fact found there, in the light of all those insights which have come to us through “depth psychology.” We are so committed to “schools” of sanctificationist thought that we are failing to grapple seriously with the paradox of perfection and imperfection, total surrender and unrecognized un-Christlikeness, astonishing victory and penitent abasem*nt, as we find it in the New Testament. Our author’s criticisms are not pointless, but they lack an adequate counterpart and correction.

The other error discussed is “the conformist.” It is described as “the making of minimum demands which are out of relation to the real exigencies of the Gospel, and so of eliminating that dimension of ultimate demand and ultimate self-commitment which is the realm in which Christian holiness moves” (p. 44). “State religion” and “state churches” are particularly open to this danger. A kind of holiness is here produced which consists of “outward conformity” and which rests, therefore, on a basis of regulation and of law. In this scheme it is not too difficult to bring in multitudes of unconverted, uncommitted people and simply train them in “good churchmanship.” Thus by-passed is that grace which is forever God’s gift to the bankrupt and is forever bearing fruit in that genuine Christlikeness which is the opposite of self-righteousness.

The link between holiness and love is recognized in a chapter called “The Place of Holiness.” “Never a fugitive and cloistered virtue,” New Testament holiness must be experienced and expressed within the fellowship of the Church and, through that fellowship, within the alien context of the world. Penetration into the world, not withdrawal from it, is the order of grace under the Lordship of Christ. And to this end the Holy Spirit, who has been given to the Church, must be allowed in fact to govern the Church—again, of course, under Christ’s Lordship.

Timely and trenchant are Neill’s remarks in a concluding chapter titled, “What, Then, Do We Preach?” If we tell Christians, as we do in a well-known Catechism, that they “sin daily in words and deeds, by commission and omission,” what is to prevent their coming to adopt a defeatist attitude toward Christian living? Rightly, our author deplores this: “The idea of justification by faith is brought into the center of the Christian picture, sometimes almost to the exclusion of any doctrine of the living Christ and of the work of the Holy Spirit” (p. 114).

What then is the positive word the Church should proclaim? Christ as Lord—he must be given no lesser place. What else? The role of discipline, as the counterbalance and the confirmation of all spontaneity and immediacy in Christian experience. What else? The rejection, for good and all, of “the unbiblical division of life between the sacred and the secular; if we do not meet God in the most ordinary and banal of daily occupations we shall not meet Him anywhere.”

Criticisms by the reviewer are inescapable here and there. Although he is no authority on Bultmann, the latter’s radically defective view of the relation between revelation and history aborts any fruitful effort to link his name with an understanding of the Holy Spirit’s place in the Christian concept of time. Surely Bultmann is by no means unique in his insistence, along with Kierkegaard, that Jesus Christ is in some profound sense “our contemporary.”

And clearly there is little helpfulness in the statement that “Of course we are all bad,” with the “we” so employed as to apply indiscriminately to St. Francis and Al Capone, unless we bring such an observation into juxtaposition with the New Testament declaration that Barnabas, for example, “was a good man.” Admittedly, his estimate of himself would not have been cast in those terms, but this, more importantly, is God’s estimate of him as a man who was “full of the Holy Spirit.”

Let nothing adversely said detract from the fact that Stephen Neill has made, in firm yet irenic fashion, a probing contribution to the literature of Christian sanctity.

PAUL S. REES

Expository Preaching

Follow Me: Discipleship According to Saint Matthew, by Martin H. Franzmann (Concordia, 1961, 216 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Faris Daniel Whitesell, Professor of Practical Theology, Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Here’s a splendid example of the type of expository preaching needed in our churches. Around the general theme of discipleship, the author opens up the whole book of Matthew in seven chapters, with material in each chapter for about four expository sermons. In dealing with everything in the Gospel of Matthew, he naturally has to pass over some sections lightly, but when he strikes an idea of major significance, he stops long enough to explain it and gather together all the other biblical material bearing on it, for example, Spirit, repentance, baptism of John, ransom, and so forth.

The exposition is loose and synthetic rather than close and exegetical, but the reader or hearer receives a graphic overall impression of where Matthew is taking him. Here and there are keen insights. “The disciples preserved the record of Jesus’ words and deeds, of course. But they do not appear in history as expositors of Jesus’ words; it is remarkable how rarely Jesus’ words are cited in the apostolic writings. They are His witnesses, witnesses to his Person and his history, his words and works in indissoluble unity.”

The book lacks illustrations from modern life, but the material is so suggestive that adequate illustrations will occur to the average expositor.

FARIS DANIEL WHITESELL

Toward Church Education

Church Education for Tomorrow, by Wesner Fallaw (Westminster, 1960, 219 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by Cornelius Jaarsma, Professor of Education, Calvin College.

That the church has a teaching function is generally accepted, and clearly taught in Scripture. What the nature of the teaching function of the church should be and how it is to be carried out is nebulous and ill-defined in the minds of many church leaders, not to speak of the church membership in general. The author of this book addresses himself to this problem with clarity and purpose.

What should the church teach and how should she organize her instructional program to meet the needs of the youth of the church in our time? How can the church recruit competent personnel and educate them to assume the responsibility of teaching in the church school with effectiveness? Why is the Sunday school unequal to the responsibility? Why is the released-time program inadequate? These are the questions that this book tries to answer.

The church school must take the place of the Sunday school. It must be staffed with personnel under the leadership of a teacher-pastor, professionally educated as a teacher and theologically educated as a preacher. The preaching, teaching, and pastoral function should be brought into working relationship. A curriculum and methodology should be organized and made operative that meets readiness levels of learning in the development of youth.

Many fine things can be said about this timely volume. It is psychologically and sociologically oriented. Its theological message is Bible-centered and evangelical. The religious education ideas and ideals of theological liberalism are discarded on theological grounds while much of the educational theory of this movement soundly rooted in experimental education is retained. This is a book for today to prepare leaders for tomorrow.

There are some weaknesses in the book that a critical reader discovers. The discussion of person and personality is more in line with the doctrine of man implied in secular psychologies than in keeping with the teaching of Scripture. The author dismisses too easily the parochial and Christian day school solution to the educational problem. Here, as elsewhere, he gives evidence of a dualism of religion and culture rather than recognizing the Lordship of Christ for all of life.

Every pastor and seminary professor should read this work. The author has many pertinent suggestions on counseling, curriculum revision in church education, seminary curricula, and the like.

CORNELIUS JAARSMA

Source Book

Basic Writings in Christian Education, edited by Kindig Brubaker Cully (Westminster, 1960, 350 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Harold C. Mason, Professor of Christian Education, Asbury Theological Seminary.

This anthology makes a handy and unique source book for use in courses in Christian education. It consists of 31 writings dating from the time of Clement of Alexandria about A.D. 200 to that of Luther, Calvin, Milton, Locke, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Herbart, Coe, and Dewey. One may read of baptismal regeneration, the age of accountability, discipline, rapport, memorization, authority and sources, revelation, individual differences, methods, nature of man, content and experience centered curricula.

The editor sees in all the writings a “continuity of Christian concern,” and in his introduction he seems to espouse “neo-supernaturalism” and “a newer biblical theology.”

HAROLD C. MASON

Changed Lives

They Have Found the Secret, by V. Raymond Edman (Zondervan, 1960, 159 pp., $2.50), is reviewed by Alan Redpath, Pastor, Moody Church, Chicago.

There is a mark of reality about the experiences of these saints which is sadly lacking in Christian circles today. I verily believe that if Christian people could grasp the secret which they have discovered, there would be a mighty revival in the land.

The emphasis of this book upon the experience of the indwelling life of Christ transforming the child of God is one which is widely needed. It drives home the truth that an unholy life is simply the evidence of an unchanged heart, and an unchanged heart is a clear indication of an unsaved soul. The grace of God which does not make men different from what they were before they received Christ is a worthless counterfeit of reality. I was profoundly impressed by the message of this book. It should have a very wide circulation and bring blessing to thousands of lives.

ALAN REDPATH

Linguistic Analysis

Language, Logic and God, by Frederick Ferré (Harper, 1961, 184 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by William Young, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Rhode Island.

Contemporary English philosophy, influenced by Wittgenstein’s methods of linguistic analysis, approaches theism and Christianity by employing subtle logical techniques, at first sight trivial, but productive of far-reaching consequences. At last a book has appeared summarizing and evaluating the philosophy of religion that has been developed during the last decade at Oxford and by analytical philosophers elsewhere. The author distinguishes carefully between the verificational analysis of the logical positivists and the less restricted functional analysis in vogue at the present time. Cogent criticism of accounts of theological language in terms of analogy, obedience, and encounter is followed by discussions of “improper,” familiar, and unique functions of theological discourse and by a concluding chapter on the manifold logic of theism. The author’s theological position is unequivocally theistic, though it betrays influences of Scottish “neo-orthodoxy.” While critical of the linguistic nonsense uttered by Barthians, which he aptly brands as “logical docetism” (p. 89), Ferré infelicitously calls Calvin “a fountainhead of the logic of obedience” (p. 82), that is, the Word of God as espoused by Barth, Torrance, and Hendry.

More detailed replies to the arguments of Findlay (pp. 30–32, 48–50), of Wisdom (pp. 131–135), but most of all of Flew on Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom (pp. 116–120) are needed if the complexity of the issues discussed and the delicacy of the anlysis involved are to receive due justice. Flew has launched a devastating attack on the “free-will defence,” while Ferré ignores the Pelagian errors consequent on the denial that a free human action may be determined by God.

WILLIAM YOUNG

When a tanned but tired Billy Graham looked out over the broad Atlantic expanse from his temporary oceanfront home in Vero Beach, Florida, this week, his posture was symbolic. Behind him stretched the Sunshine State peninsula, where he had just experienced one of the stiffest challenges in his evangelistic career. Across the sea lay the British Isles, where in a few weeks he would begin another crusade. This time his objective would be the city of Manchester, focal point of a 50-mile area with a population higher than London.

Reflecting on his three-month Florida crusade, Graham again had reason for optimism. Particularly gratifying were the climactic three weeks of meetings in the cavernous, green-walled Miami Beach Convention Hall, said to be the largest in the South. An aggregate of some 250,000 persons attended, and 7,962 of these recorded decisions.

The makeup of the Miami area does not readily lend itself to a successful evangelistic crusade. It is Florida’s so-called Gold Coast, which claims to be the most truly tropical area on the U. S. mainland and America’s most popular winter resort. An estimated 5,000,000 Americans flock in each year, some willing to pay as high as $250 a day for a swank hotel room. They come to bask in the sun, bathe in the surf, and bet in the shade (viz. jai alai and racing).

Resort activity seems to breed spiritual indifference, even among permanent residents, about 25 per cent of whom are retired. According to a survey made last fall, 39 per cent of Greater Miami’s 917,000 inhabitants have no relationship of any kind with any church or synagogue. Another 24 per cent, says the survey, still retain church or synagogue membership “back home.” Thus 63 per cent of the population have no local church affiliation, a figure which is the exact opposite of the national average, wherein 63 per cent claim membership.

While Miami Beach Convention Hall provided a spacious, comfortably air-conditioned meeting place, it was “out-of-the-way” for a large majority of area residents. The city of Miami Beach has a total population of only 63,000, 50 per cent of whom are Jewish, and even adjacent Miami has fewer than 300,000 residents. Some Graham team members blamed this geographic factor for the failure of the crowds to build up during the crusade, as is usually the case. Had the attendance increased, a climactic service probably would have been held in the Orange Bowl.

How Jews Responded To Evangelism

“We are very encouraged at the response of Jews,” said a Billy Graham team member at the close of the evangelist’s Miami Beach crusade.

Confronting the Jew with the Gospel was one of the special aspects of the crusade because of the high concentration of Jewish inhabitants in south Florida. The city of Miami Beach is 50 per cent Jewish. In all, some 100,000 Jews are said to live in the Miami metropolitan area.

Accurate figures as to the number of Jews who made decisions for Christ during the crusade was difficult to determine because of their tendency to conceal their identity. But crusade workers were pleased at what they said was a high percentage. A special counselling department for Jews was in operation for the entire duration of the crusade.

Graham efforts in Miami even got an official public endorsem*nt from Rabbi Irving Lehrman of Temple Emanu-El.

Rabbi Lehrman attended one of the crusade meetings in Convention Hall and stepped to the rostrum to encourage the evangelist.

“May God crown your efforts with success,” said the rabbi. “May God bless you, and we thank you.”

He added that the Jewish community of Miami Beach was “grateful to Dr. Graham and those who have come with him to lift our thoughts to nobler things.”

Notwithstanding, team members were heartened with the extent of church participation and the enthusiasm of the Floridian Christians to support the crusade with time, talent, and tithe. An initial call for counsellors gave crusade officials some 4,700 names, the highest such figure for any city campaign, excepting only New York and San Francisco. Another 6,000 volunteers were counted for tasks relating to prayer, music, ushering, and youth counselling. Every major denominational group gave official sanction to the crusade except the Episcopal (many Episcopal churches participated nevertheless).

Much of the crusade impact is attributable to the untiring efforts of the crusade’s local leaders headed by Dr. J. Calvin Rose, pastor of Miami Shores Presbyterian Church, who served as chairman of the executive committee. Fund-raising was under direction of noted realtor Kenneth S. Keyes, who was to be named this week as “Evangelical Layman of the Year” by the National Association of Evangelicals, which he has aided in a similar role.

Despite other obstacles, team members were encouraged at the very outset of the crusade when some 6,000 University of Miami students turned out to hear Graham at a campus rally.

The crusade itself drew an average of 12,400 per service to Convention Hall.

Graham spoke nightly and on Sunday afternoons from a platform adorned with yellow and bronze chrysanthemums. The only breaks were a pair of Monday evenings, one of which was turned over to boxing promoters for the heavyweight championship bout between Floyd Patterson and Ingemar Johansson. Patterson, incidentally, attended one of the crusade meetings.

As are all Graham crusades, this one was integrated. However, never more than 200 or 300 Negroes were to be found at a service.

A much larger response came from Jews (see box) and those of Spanish descent, including Cuban refugees. Graham held a special meeting for Spanish-speaking people, preaching through an interpreter. Still another rally was scheduled at Clewiston, Florida, primarily for Seminole Indians, but was rained out.

Graham team members pointed out that despite the preponderance of senior citizens in south Florida, unusual interest was evident among young people. There appeared to be larger inquirer response in the 20-to-30 age bracket, compared with previous crusades. Youth services drew the largest week-night crowds and the highest number of decisions, most of them by teen-agers. Those who made commitments to Christ included several members of a teen-age narcotics ring, one of whom subsequently led his father and mother to make decisions.

Perhaps the most remarkable conversion made in connection with the crusade came two months before the Miami meetings began. A former state trooper who is now a professional investigator made a public confession of faith following a showing of “Souls in Conflict” and the testimony from Joan Winmill, who stars in the evangelistic film. The trooper then brought some 40 people to Convention Hall, including his wife and several in-laws. One of the inquirers with whom he counselled was a man he had arrested as a murder suspect several years ago!

Team members reported many decision cards with Northern addresses, indicating a strong impact among tourists.

Additional national influence was provided by the crusade with the showing by 163 television stations of a film taken at one of the Sunday services during which Graham spoke on “The Conflict between Christianity and Communism.” It may have been the most widely-viewed religious program in television history. Cost: $110,000.

The closing service of the Miami crusade, held on Palm Sunday afternoon, drew an overflow crowd of 18,500. Among platform guests was U. S. Senator George Smathers, Democrat of Florida, who had just flown in from the Key West conference between President Kennedy and Prime Minister MacMillan.

Smathers told the crowd that when he advised Kennedy of his intention to be at Graham’s meeting that afternoon, the President replied:

“Tell Billy to pray for us.”

At the final service, 711 persons made decisions for Christ.

From Miami Graham travelled to the vicinity of Cape Canaveral for a day of meetings (a public service at Patrick Air Force Base drew 9,000), then on to West Palm Beach, where a crowd of 15,000 was on hand. He finished out the week with a rally at Vero Beach.

Easter Sunday found Graham preaching at a sunrise service in Peace River Park in Bartow. In the afternoon he spoke at the dedication of a new 2,500-seat auditorium at the Boca Raton Bible Conference Grounds.

The evangelist hopes to take a few weeks rest before going on to England for the Manchester crusade, scheduled to begin in a 40,000-seat football stadium May 27, continuing through June. Graham says planning for the Manchester meetings has been the most extensive of any crusade he has ever conducted.

Protestant Panorama

• A move to change the name of the Southern Baptist Convention is picking up steam. Initiated by Editor Erwin L. McDonald of the Arkansas Baptist, who prefers “Baptist Convention, U.S.A.,” the proposed name change now is expected to come before next month’s convention sessions in St. Louis, according to SBC President Ramsey Pollard.

• Churches in the Cape Canaveral area plan to conduct continuous worship services when the first astronaut goes into space. The Rev. Joseph E. Boatwright, president of the North Brevard County Ministerial Association, says constituent churches will hold services from launching time until the man sent into space returns or is officially given up for lost.

• Seven Amish families who reside near Canton, Ohio, are reported ready to move to Canada because of high priced land and conflict with state school laws, social security, and draft requirements. The families want to join an Amish settlement of 19 families at Owen Sound, Ontario.

• “How Great Thou Art” was the favored hymn in a church-wide religious song survey conducted recently in the Church of the Nazarene. “The Old Rugged Cross” was second, and “Amazing Grace,” third.

• A 16-page monthly published by the Israel Baptist Convention is the country’s first official Christian church journal in the Hebrew language. Named Hayahad (Togetherness), the paper complained in one of its first editorials that governmental “red tape” is delaying construction of Baptist buildings in Israel.

• Churchmen, seamen, and officials in English ports throughout the world are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Rev. Charles Hopkins, an Anglican priest who founded the Friendly Society of the Order of St. Paul to aid British seamen.

• The Church of the Nazarene is building a new religious center in Nazareth, Israel. The building will house a chapel, offices, classrooms, and living quarters.

• The National Methodist Theological Seminary, which began classes in Kansas City in 1959, plans to relocate because it has already outgrown present quarters. New facilities have been rented adjacent to the University of Kansas City in the same general area that a permanent campus is eventually planned.

• The African Methodist Episcopal Church is establishing a $70,000 fund to guarantee minimum salaries of assigned ministers.

• Historic People’s Church in Toronto is up for sale. The congregation plans to build a new church in a suburban area.

• A trio of publishing houses in Scandinavian countries are conducting a competition for the best novel which, “based on a Christian outlook on life, combines a high standard of art and contents with a vivid description of environment and period.”

• A 59-year-old grandmother will have the distinction of becoming Norway’s first woman pastor. Mrs. Ingrid Bjerkas won government permission to be ordained as a substitute pastor in the state Lutheran church’s diocese of Hamar after she had been passed over in nominations for five other vacancies there. Although Norwegian law has permitted women to enter the ministry for several years, Mrs. Bjerkas’ application for ordination was the first. A widow, she graduated from a theological seminary in Oslo several years ago.

• The Episcopalian announced on its first anniversary last month that it has the largest circulation of any publication in Protestant Episcopal Church history. Circulation has jumped almost 150 per cent to a total of 99,000 in the magazine’s 12 months, says Editor H. L. McCorkle.

• Protestant churches in New Mexico are sponsoring establishment of the state’s first Protestant child placement organization.

• Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary plans to establish a microfilm research center for evangelism.

Presbyterian Realignment

A realignment of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern) to form two new churches—one ecumenical and the other evangelical—is proposed by The Presbyterian Journal in its April 5 issue.

The plan is suggested by the conservative Southern Presbyterian weekly in an editorial as an alternative to the four-way church union urged by Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, United Presbyterian Stated Clerk.

Implementation of the Blake proposal, the paper said, “would cause Presbyterianism to vanish from America in favor of an ecumenical Church where doctrinal integrity would be subordinated to organizational bigness.”

Under the alternative plan, the Journal said, one Presbyterian church would be committed to the historic Reformed faith while the other would be openly receptive to a merger such as the one suggested by Blake.

Last December Blake proposed a union of the United Presbyterian Church, The Methodist Church, and United Church of Christ as a first step toward eventual unification of all Christians. He said the name of the new church body could be the Reformed and Catholic Church in the U.S.A.

The Presbyterian Journal said its realignment proposal was being made “in the interest of the unimpeded fulfillment of the Blake plan for those who want it, on one hand; and, on the other hand, in the interest of a union of all evangelical Presbyterians who prefer to abide by the historic Reformed faith.”

“We do not propose,” the editorial stated, “to surrender the Presbyterian and Reformed faith to the one-world Church. This proposal is intended to recover and preserve the Presbyterian and Reformed faith from the one-world Church.

“It is a plan which we believe will allow those within Presbyterian denominations who desire the wider fellowship of an ecumenical Church to have their wish. And it is a plan which will permit those who pray for a Presbyterian Church of increased vigor and purer testimony also to have their wish.”

The weekly said that under its proposal Southern Presbyterian congregations desiring the “larger fellowship” of the United Presbyterian group would be allowed to change their affiliation, while United Presbyterian churches of more “conservative bent” would be free to join the Southern denomination. Congregations would be permitted to keep their property when transferring.

“Those of us joining in this proposal,” the editorial concluded, “believe that the proportion of Presbyterians preferring an Ecumenical Church to a Presbyterian Church is relatively small.”

Ecumenical(?) Council

Religious News Service is dispatching to Rome Dr. Claud D. Nelson as a special correspondent to report on the much-publicized Second Vatican Council from the viewpoint of Protestant leaders. Prior to his going, he conducted a preliminary survey, results of which were incorporated into a copyright RNS article.

Nelson is a consultant on interreligious relations to the National Conference of Christians and Jews and former executive director of the Department of Religious Liberty of the National Council of Churches.

Here are excerpts from his report:

“Will the Second Vatican Council sustain the evident hopes and dramatic efforts of Pope John XXIII to forward the cause of Christian unity? That question gives tone and direction to a large majority of the responses to an inquiry which this reporter addressed to a hundred friends, Protestant and Catholic, as to what they desire or expect from this Council, the 21st in the long series beginning with Nicaea.…

“From 70 or more replies received—by letter and telephone and from face to face conversations—three things stand out as worthy of note in the phrasing of the question above.

“First, this is not a continuation of the First Vatican Council of 1870. Second it is not now called ‘ecumenical’ in the publicity being given to it. The Council is, of course, officially a General or Ecumenical Council. But use of the word ‘ecumenical’ might be regarded by non-Catholics as presumptuous, since it means universal and since only Roman Catholics will deliberate in the forthcoming assembly.

To Moscow Via Tv

Film taken during a service at the First Baptist Church in Moscow will be shown on network television by the National Broadcasting Company and affiliate stations on Sunday, April 30.

The film will be featured as part of NBC’s weekly religious series, “Frontiers of Faith.”

Long delayed, partly because of Soviet “red tape,” the film was taken by special arrangement with Russian officials. It was a cooperative effort of the Southern Baptist Convention and NBC.

“Thirdly, the term ‘unity’ has replaced ‘union.’ This is to be noted especially in the title of the Secretariat for Christian Unity headed by Augustin Cardinal Bea, for liaison with non-Catholics. This body is distinct from the preparatory commissions set up for the Council.…

“The place of the Bible in the Council’s agenda is of interest to a number of responders [to the survey]. Versions or translations acceptable to all Christians would be welcomed. Even more, Protestants would welcome indications that the Bible takes precedence over tradition—but they are not optimistic when it comes to such matters as Papal infallibility and the theological and liturgical status of the Virgin Mary. These two causes of division are cited several times as insurmountable barriers that the Council is not likely to remove. It remains true however that many would consider them a less formidable barrier to unity than to union.

“If, therefore, the shift of emphasis which a few think they detect in recent years from ‘separated brethren’ to ‘separated brethren’ should be continued or encouraged by the Council, it would encourage those non-Catholics whose proximate hope, rather than the organic reunion of the churches, is their coming together in an inclusive ecumenical council (perhaps informal at an early and tentative stage).”

Among those whom Nelson polled for comments was Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, who submitted the following statement:

“The Protestant Reformers viewed the papacy as the height of human pretension. Against Roman Catholicism they championed the authority of supernatural knowledge (the inspired Scriptures) and the reality of supernatural salvation (justification by faith in Christ’s mediation alone). In the twentieth century, Protestant ecumenism has made unity its prime interest, while Roman Catholicism emphasizes creeds and the authority of church tradition. Protestant liberalism meanwhile has blurred both scriptural authority and the doctrine of justification. Pope John XXIII’s Second Vatican Council may be expected to express the desirability of Christian unity and the role of the creeds and church tradition, while avoiding the question that troubled the Protestant Reformers.”

Methodists versus Teamsters

A year-long effort by two unions to organize employees of the Methodist Publishing House in San Francisco was defeated last month. The employees voted 42 to 16 against representation by either the Teamsters Union or the Office and Professional Workers Union.

Law of the Land

Religious classes conducted by the Rural Bible Mission in public schools of 31 Michigan counties was ruled unconstitutional last month.

The Rev. Elmer Deal, mission director, had described the monthly classes held at lunch hour or during regular school periods as “chapel services” and emphasized that they were conducted only at the invitation of, or with the approval of, local school boards. Twenty-three mission teachers were engaged in the program involving more than 60,000 public school pupils.

Paul L. Adams, attorney general of Michigan, said he “strongly believed that religion and morality must forever be encouraged” but that his concern was with the legality of the mission’s activities in public schools.

“A program of this nature does not conform to the law of the land,” said Adams. “Local school boards should take immediate steps to end such programs within their jurisdiction.”

A controversy had been touched off when parents of two elementary school pupils objected to the religious classes and said their children were “a captive audience.” They took their complaint to the attorney general and were joined in the protest by spokesmen for the Society of Friends in East Lansing, the Universalist-Unitarian church in Lansing, and the Congregation Shaarey Zedek, a Lansing synagogue.

Religion and Education

Wide concern over proposed federal aid to education is prompting intensive study by U. S. religious leaders, particularly those in Protestant groups which heretofore have never had well-defined official positions. The chart below summarizes latest conclusions of those closest to the current controversy. (See also editorial on page 20.—ED.)

Meanwhile in Washington, House and Senate committees wound up hearings on proposed aid-to-education legislation and public debate tapered off. But the first big waves of mailing were pouring into Congressmen’s offices. Lawmakers also got many an earful from constituents when they went home for the Easter recess. Citizens were being urged anew to spell out their views, and opponents of federal aid to education were particularly eager to stimulate mail reaction, believing that there is little grass roots enthusiasm for such school subsidies.

SUMMARY OF POSITIONS ON FEDERAL AID TO NONPUBLIC SCHOOLS

Some observers felt that no further action would be taken on the proposed legislation until very late in the session. This would result in a hurried move, or no action at all this year.

Late in March, Welfare Secretary Abraham Ribicoff declared that his department believed long-term, low-interest loans to parochial schools would be unconstitutional. Ribicoff submitted a 63-page memorandum on the subject to Senator Wayne Morse, Democrat of Oregon, who had requested that a study be made of legal precedents. The memorandum says that across-the-board tax grants to sectarian schools cannot be made and that a program of tuition grants would be invalid “since they accomplish by indirection what grants do directly.” The study was prepared in consultation with Justice Department attorneys.

Trial of Strength

As a preface to general elections scheduled for April 16, a trial of strength developed in Poland between the Roman Catholic church and the Communist government, according to Religious News Service.

Top protagonists are Wladyslaw Gomulka, first secretary of the United Workers (Communist) Party, who wants a big turnout of voters, and Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski, Primate of Poland, whose attitude toward the elections was a matter of serious concern to the government.

The Cardinal reacted to Gomulka’s opening campaign speech, which scored the Vatican, by openly defying the Red regime. He denounced the Communist rulers as “Caesars.”

In the 1957 elections, the Polish episcopate advised Roman Catholics to vote in great numbers, in the hope that the then good relations with the Gomulka government would continue.

In the present campaign, however, the hierarchy—concerned over the gradual worsening of church-state relations, especially during the past few years—delayed making its stand clear. This has been interpreted as a sign of hostility by government circles who are worried over the possibility of a low percentage of voters at the polls.

Polish emigre circles in London said they had received reports that the bishops had issued secret instructions to advise parishioners to ignore the elections. In cases where this would be too risky, Roman Catholics were told they should go to the polls but cross out all the names on the official and only list of candidates.

According to reports, the government learned of the alleged instructions and decided to recruit groups of so-called patriotic priests to persuade the church people against boycotting the elections.

The same reports stated, however, that Cardinal Wyszynski countered by warning leaders of patriotic priests, mostly members of Caritas, a social welfare organization, that any collaboration with the Communists would result in their being suspended from their priestly functions.

It was learned, meanwhile, that about 300 priests belonging to Caritas had voted to disband the organization.

Faced with this development, the government was reported to have offered the priests “protection” and even to have suggested that they break away from the church altogether.

NEB New Testament

Cambridge and Oxford University presses plan to print a million additional copies of The New English Bible New Testament.

The New Testament was a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic. Some 940,000 copies were reported to have been sold on the publication date.

Only incident to mar publication of the new Scripture portion is a dispute involving Eyre and Spottiswoode, the Queen’s official publisher, which claims it has the right of royal charter to print Bibles and should share in the publication of the new volume with the university presses. The latter have rejected this claim, but a spokesman for Eyre and Spottiswoode said it is hoped to set up a meeting shortly at which the matter will be settled amicably.

Total initial printing was 1,275,000 copies. It is on sale throughout all English-speaking countries in the world.

Vicar’s Ouster

An Anglican Consistory Court removed the Rev. William Bryn Thomas, 62, from his suburban London parish last month after convicting him of repeated adultery. Thomas denied the allegations, claiming the charges merely constituted a plot by his curate to dislodge him and succeed him as vicar.

People: Words And Events

Deaths:Dr. Nathan R. Wood, 86, president emeritus of Gordon College and Divinity School; in Portland, Oregon … Dr. G. Ch. Aalders, 79, professor emeritus of Old Testament at Free University of Amsterdam … Dr. George Johnston Jeffrey, 79, former moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland … the Rev. George Thomas Manley, 88, evangelical student leader in Great Britain and editor-in-chief of the New Bible Commentary … Mikhail Orlov, 74, Russian Baptist church leader; in Moscow … Dr. Alexis G. Maltzeff, 64, former professor at the Russian Orthodox Theological Seminary of New York City; in West Hartford, Connecticut … Julie Olin Chanler, 78, leader of the reform Bahai movement; in New York … Robert D. Higley, 65, retired manager of the Higley religious publishing house; in Butler, Indiana.… Ayatollah Boroujerdi, 89, world Shiites (Muslim) leader.

Resignation: As president of Eastern Pilgrim College, Dr. R. D. Gunsalus (for successor, see “Appointments”).

Retirement: As director of the Missionary Research Library, Dr. Frank Price.

Appointments: As dean of Hamma Divinity School, Dr. Bernhard H. P. Hillila … as president of Maryville (Tennessee) College, Dr. Joseph J. Copeland … as president of Eastern Pilgrim College, the Rev. Melvin Dieter … as president of the Evangelical Teacher Training Association, Dr. Paul E. Loth … as director of the Missionary Research Library, Dr. Herbert C. Jackson … as director of the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary, New York, Dr. Robert S. Baker … as executive secretary of the World Council of Churches Department on Evangelism, Dr. Hans Jochen Margull.

Personal Liaison

A personal liaison is being established between Anglicans and Roman Catholics during preparations for the Vatican’s forthcoming Ecumenical Council.

Canon Bernard Clinton Pawley, treasurer of Ely Cathedral and a proctor in the Convocation of Canterbury, has been appointed as personal liaison for the archbishops of Canterbury and York. He will serve as a link between the Church of England’s Council on Inter-Church Relations and the Roman Catholic Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity headed by Augustin Cardinal Bea.

Canon Pawley, one of the few clergymen in the Church of England who can speak Italian fluently, spent time as a prisoner-of-war in Italy while serving as chaplain in the Fifth India Division of the British Eighth Army in World War II.

He was scheduled to leave England for the Vatican following the Easter season for his first conversations with Cardinal Bea.

The ‘Iliat’ Cult

A new religious cult whose followers must swear to help kill all Australians, Europeans, and Chinese in New Guinea has sprung up in the Australian island of New Britain, according to Radio Australia.

Cult members reportedly venerate Americans but are fanatically bent on assassinating Queen Elizabeth of England in reprisal for the ill treatment they claim to have received from Australian administrators.

The Australian station’s report on the cult, known as “Iliat,” was based on information given by a Roman Catholic missionary stationed in northern New Britain.

WCC Withdrawal

The Federal Council of Dutch Reformed Churches in South Africa is urging two of its constituent churches to withdraw from the World Council of Churches because of the Council’s stand against apartheid.

A resolution adopted in Capetown was addressed to the Dutch Reformed Churches of the Cape Province and of the Transvaal. The Dutch Reformed Church of Africa, a third smaller body, has already terminated its WCC membership, declaring it could not do its duty among nonwhites as a WCC member because of the World Council’s “interference” in South Africa’s racial matters.

Sons of Abraham

Parkchester Baptist Church of New York City now claims to have at least 16 Hebrew Christians worshiping regularly. Latest addition to the congregation’s Hebrew Christian family is a young rabbi, recently converted and baptized after eight years of prayer and counsel by the Rev. Samuel Needleman, Hebrew Christian missionary.

The Christian witness to the Jews, always a difficult endeavor, has been undergoing a re-evaluation in view of sweeping changes in the economic and social life of Jews in America.

In recent years the Jews have been far more thoroughly integrated into American life, according to Martin Rosen of the Los Angeles branch of the American Board of Missions to the Jews. Consequently, the modern Jew’s theology has undergone a change.

“He has become secularized,” says Rosen, “and is more tolerant toward all religions. He no longer has a superstitious fear of reading the New Testament, nor does he regard churches as temples of idolatry. He will at least listen to the claims of the Nazarene.”

Rosen declares that Jewish orthodoxy was earlier adapted to the ghetto type of community, and the modern American Jew has deserted the ghetto.

How does this affect the approach of the missionary to the Jews?

“‘For ye have the poor always with you,’ and an important part of our work will always be in the cities,” says Rosen. “But we are no longer ministering to an oppressed and impoverished people and we must adapt ourselves accordingly.

“Today most Jews are not acquainted with the Old Testament, and proof texts from the prophets mean little to them.”

Is Jewish mission work any easier?

“It is easier in that there is little hostility. But now we meet with indifference which in a sense is harder.”

Among missionary approaches now being used effectively, Rosen lists home fellowship meetings, especially those sponsored by churches. Other methods include discussion groups or seminars, telephone evangelism, and “inter-faith Sunday schools.”

Press and Sex

Early this year a discussion on newspaper handling of sex stories appeared concurrently in CHRISTIANITY TODAY and in The Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. A sequel to the discussion, which originally featured four CHRISTIANITY TODAY editors, was published in The Bulletin last month. The sequel consisted of a series of comments from newspaper editors. Here are some highlights:

Rebecca Gross, editor of the Lock Haven Express: “Some of the newspapers which still play up the sex angle out of proportion, are among the largest in the nation. They dominate the newsstands in some big cities. They do not represent the entire American press, however.… The newspapers should report life as it is, and not as the editor or some critic of the press would prefer it to be.… Newspapers which ignore the sex side of the news are distorting it just as much as those which try to spread the patina of sex over all the news.”

Richard Clarke, executive editor of The News of New York: “After reading the panel discussion of the press and sex morality in the February Bulletin, I had a little checkup made on our paper.… During the months of November, 1960, and January, 1961, the nearest thing to a sexy front page line was ‘MM and Miller Call It Quits’ … I wonder what newspapers the panelists have been reading.”

James O. Powell, editorial page editor of The Arkansas Gazette: “Congratulations are due The Bulletin for last issue’s symposium on Sex Morality and The Role of the Press.… The panel discussion by the CHRISTIANITY TODAY editors presented a rather brilliant interplay of views on how the newspapers are performing in treating sex stories.… The most practicable single suggestion may lie in the point made by Panelist Kucharsky that each newspaper should have its own full set of rules, reached not casually but purposefully and deliberately.”

Milburn P. Akers, editor of the Chicago Sun-Times: “I chance to agree with some of that which Dr. Farrell had to say. But I object to his generalization as to tabloids as unfounded, unmerited, and as being about 98 per cent in error.”

“As I read Dr. Farrell’s remarks I thought of the preachers I know. The same as editors, some speak out, some don’t. The faults he labors in the newspaper profession are likewise the faults of the ministry. Perhaps preachers, the same as editors, are human and, as humans, they make errors. My father, grandfather and great-grandfather were ministers. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that I am an editor, and the editor of a tabloid newspaper, at that.”

John D. Pennekamp, associate editor of The Miami Herald: “If we are all going to the dogs for want of guidance, certainly [the moralists] head the list of those responsible.… The obligation to report their failures to restrain—or even to destroy—sex rests with us as does the duty to report their successes in meeting their challenge when and if they go into action.”

Leslie Moore, Worcester (Massachusetts) Telegram and Gazette: “Man for man, the press in this country is just as concerned for the public welfare as is the clergy. But it is not going to run all its news through a laundromat, nor will it undertake a homiletic crusade, to abolish sex.”

Hal Nelson, Rockford (Illinois) Morning Star: “Most of us happen to be pretty moral guys … even though we don’t think there’s anything wrong with enjoying a picture of a pretty girl.”

Murch Resigns

Dr. James DeForest Murch has resigned as Managing Editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. He will devote his time to writing, lecturing, and preaching. His comprehensive history of the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ, Christians Only, will soon be published by the Standard Publishing Company. A volume on Christian Education is in preparation. Dr. Murch’s first speaking engagement is with the Appalachian Preaching Mission, sponsored by the Protestant churches of Bristol, Tennessee area, April 16–23. He will continue to reside in Washington.

It seemed to many that Dr. Billy Graham’s crusades in 1954 and 1955 would lift Britain to spiritual awakening, but these hopes did not materialize. God greatly blessed the ministry of his servant; many still stand firm who professed faith in Jesus Christ in the crusades. Indeed, a number are now in the ministry, and others on the mission field.

But the nation as a whole remains indifferent to spiritual things. Nearly 99 per cent of London’s teen-agers and more than 90 per cent of all British people do not regularly attend any place of worship. In many areas there is virtually no effective evangelical witness. It is not uncommon to see places of worship shut or used for other purposes. One can enter churches with a seating capacity of 1,000 and find a dozen in attendance.

During the past few years there have been a number of large-scale evangelistic campaigns. A year or so ago Tom Rees conducted his “Mission to Britain” in which he held an evangelistic rally in every county in the British Isles. Eric Hutchings has had a number of citywide campaigns, culminating in the Midlands Crusade last summer. While considerable blessing has attended such evangelistic enterprises, the non-churchgoer remains virtually untouched. In many churches a spirit of apathy accompanies the work of the Gospel, while in others worldliness cripples their spiritual impact. One is conscious of growing disregard of the Lord’s Day. Excursions and special outings more and more commonly are arranged on Sunday, and parents tend to motor their families to the coast week after week during the summer. To meet this situation many churches have transferred Sunday schools from afternoon to morning hours.

There are points on the other side. Probably the most encouraging feature of the post-war era has been the growth of Christian youth movements in various churches. The number of young people who spend their summer holidays in camps and houseparties where they receive not only physical and mental relaxation but real spiritual blessing is phenomenal. Christian Unions at the major universities have grown numerically in the post-war years. Furthermore, there has been a remarkable increase in the number of Christian Unions attached to factories and offices, and in schools.

The Unreached Labor Movement

Probably, however, the most tragic factor of all is that the churches of Britain have lost touch for the most part with the industrial classes. Those who do go to church are largely drawn from the professional classes. There is a noticeable preponderance of womenfolk in most churches. It is not difficult to find packed congregations here and there, but almost invariably these are in better-class residential neighborhoods. Churches in the industrial areas are for the most part virtually empty. Probably the only religious group really in touch with the working classes, apart from the Roman Catholics, is the Pentecostal movement. Even the Salvation Army is drawing adherents from a different constituency than that which was previously associated with the Army.

Surveying Denominational Strength

Now, what of the various denominations? Let us consider first the Church of England. Church leaders often boast of the comprehensive nature of the Anglican church, and this communion certainly shelters great contrasts. In recent years both the extreme Anglo-Catholics and the conservative evangelicals have gained in strength. It would be true to say that the evangelical witness in England is very largely found within the national church. Scholarly evangelicals as well as some of the most effective evangelists are in the Church of England. Men are coming forward for the Anglican ministry from half a dozen theological colleges which are committed to the evangelical point of view. Several Church of England missionary societies are solidly evangelical in outlook. Moreover, home missionary societies, such as the Church Pastoral Aid Society and the Church Society, hold the right of appointment to a number of influential parishes in the Church of England. One of the largest congregations in London is found in an evangelical Anglican church, All Souls, Langham Place, whose Rector is the Reverend J. R. W. Stott.

At the annual Keswick Convention, Anglican speakers are much to the fore. In many Christian youth movements Anglican influence is extremely strong. From evangelical Anglicanism a growing number of scholars have risen vigorously to defend the evangelical position. A research center at Oxford has been set up recently to further this objective.

Generally speaking, the more colorless churches of the Anglican communion are the least attended. Many Anglo-Catholic churches have extremely large congregations, as have a number of the evangelical churches. While the old liberalism has largely disappeared in many areas, it has been widely replaced by extreme sacerdotalism.

Now what of the Free Churches? Let us consider first the recognized Free Churches linked in the Free Church Federal Council. The general picture here is far from encouraging. For the most part, Free Church leaders reserve their greatest enthusiasm for the ecumenical movement, and continue to incline towards theological liberalism. By and large, conservative evangelicals in the Free Churches are somewhat frowned upon. At annual congresses and assemblies, lip-service is paid to evangelism but much more time is devoted to discussing the social implications of the Gospel. Even on the social question, the Free Churches find it difficult to speak with one voice. Free Churches on the whole tell of decreasing memberships. The nonconformist conscience, so potent an influence in national life in the nineteenth century, now rarely exerts itself. Almost all the nonconformist colleges are affected in greater or lesser degree by theological liberalism, there being no counterpart among the Free Churches to the conservative evangelical Anglican theological colleges. Despite considerable discussion over the years on the issue of Free Church Union, no real progress has been made, although there is general agreement not to multiply Free Churches on new housing estates.

One encouraging feature in the post-war years has been the emergence of “revival fellowships” in the Baptist, Congregational, and Methodist denominations. Both ministers and laymen in these groups represent not only the solid core of conservative evangelicals within the different denominations, but are pledged to pray regularly for spiritual revival. Recently a similar group has been formed within the Church of England. The different groups unite from time to time for prayer and witness.

A comparatively modern phenomenon is the emergence of the Independent Evangelical Churches, many of which are now linked together in the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches. These are consistently evangelical in outlook, although many of them are numerically weak. The situation is improving somewhat, as a more highly trained ministry finds its way into their ranks. A number of men now serving such churches have had training at the London Bible College. Many of these Free Churches have displaced the “mission halls” of an earlier generation. One might say that the mission hall mentality has largely disappeared in the face of a growing “church consciousness.”

One of the most interesting features of recent years has been the growth of the Pentecostal movement. While still very largely an unknown quantity, it is gradually establishing itself in the country at large. Evangelicals as a whole have been chary of extending the hand of fellowship to Pentecostals, but this situation is now rapidly changing. The largest regular congregation in the Manchester area is a Pentecostal assembly. In some cases, Pentecostalists have reopened Free Churches discarded by the major denominations. The two main groups are known as Elim and Assemblies of God, the difference between them being largely in church government. These two groups with others are linked together in the British Pentecostal Fellowship.

The Society of Friends, popularly known as Quakers, is a very small body these days, and concerns itself almost exclusively with social questions in relation to the Gospel.

It is almost impossible to assess the strength of the Christian (Plymouth) Brethren as no facts and figures are obtainable. But without doubt, upwards of 80,000 people are to be found in Brethren assemblies. All such groups are fundamentalist in doctrine but there are two main divisions, usually termed “open” and “exclusives.” The “open” Brethren are usually very cooperative in local evangelistic efforts, but the “exclusives” maintain a position of isolation. Among the “exclusives” there have been several different “parties,” differing on certain doctrinal matters.

A controversy which is currently the talking point among many evangelical leaders is the Arminian-Calvinist debate. In the last six years or so there has been a definite swing to Calvinism and an increasing interest in the writings of the Puritans. Some leaders who supported Dr. Graham’s campaigns in 1954–1955 now seem reluctant to pledge their support. It is doubtful as to how far this discussion has percolated through to the man in the pew, and the general feeling is that when Dr. Graham comes to Manchester, the weight of evangelicals will be solidly behind him. Many who look askance at the “little Billy Grahams” who have come to the fore in recent years, nevertheless recognize that Dr. Graham is “a man sent from God” who enjoys the divine blessing upon his ministry to a unique extent in these days. Britain desperately needs a spiritual revival. There are encouragements here and there, even if the overall picture is far from rosy. The only really encouraging feature is that evangelicals as a whole have long since lost confidence in methods and techniques and have come to see that such a revival is the only real answer to Britain’s need.

GILBERT W. KIRBY

General Secretary

The Evangelical Alliance

London, England

Many Americans resent the Catholic Bishops’ blockbuster technique of grasping for sectarian benefits with no regard for national policy and majority interests. The Bishops’ attitude toward the “federal aid to education” program has had the unfortunate air of a ransom demand (“cut us in, or the baby dies!”). A sectarian demand was obstinately injected into national debate in a manner unsettling to the national welfare. Such pressure tactics are an offense to the American spirit; they are resented both by those who oppose the broad principle of federal aid to education (because they wish to guard against government encroachment rather than to encourage it) and by those who favor such federal aid (whether merely as a concession to the present political drift, or through outright sympathy for big government). There is some reason to believe, in fact, that the Bishops’ ultimatum not only exasperated many Roman Catholic laymen, but also embarrassed even the National Catholic Welfare Conference, which promotes the hierarchy’s ambitions with great subtlety.

This is no mere Protestant versus Roman Catholic squabble. Students of church history do not expect the Roman Catholic hierarchy to abandon its peculiar view that government is the temporal arm of the church, nor do they expect Roman Catholic taxpayers to repress free expression of sectarian convictions in the dialogue between citizens of a free land.

But a flood of American conviction is cresting against pressures for federal aid to nonpublic schools. Citizens are increasingly aware that unless challenged head-on demands of the Roman Catholic hierarchy for government benefits to parochial schools would swiftly transform long-established national patterns. Accordingly, such Roman Catholic pressures are being criticized as hostile to American constitutionality and to sound public policy.

This mounting opposition to federal loans and grants to nonpublic schools is uniting Americans from a variety of backgrounds on a virtually unanimous front. Standing firm against pressures of public funds for nonpublic elementary and secondary schools are the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Evangelicals, Southern Baptists, the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod), Seventh-day Adventists, Protestants and Other Americans United, and other agencies (see News Section for chart of positions, p. 28).

Unfortunately, the Protestants themselves are not untarnished in the use of public funds for nonpublic agencies. The questions that need to be answered in this connection are: Where did the encouragements for such involvement (both by Protestant and Roman Catholic agencies) arise? Can a valid line be drawn between acceptable and unacceptable kinds of federal aid, or must each provision be viewed simply as a precedent for additional expansion of federal help? Is it too late to acknowledge mistakes of policy, to make amends, and to call a halt?

The story of Protestantism’s progressive involvement in “partnership with American government,” whereby denominational welfare executives and college administrators welcomed government aid together with Romanists, needs sometime to be told in detail. (See CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Feb. 2, 1959, issue, for a survey of such involvements in surplus food distribution, Hill-Burton funds for hospital construction, and so on.) Federal partnership in church welfare activities soon led to federal partnership in church higher education.

Guaranteed construction loans for dormitories had already been made available under FHA in 1947, and government grants for medical research have been offered for many years.

In the chaos after World War II pressures arose to provide tuition for veterans pursuing higher education at college and seminary levels. Roman Catholics joined Defense Department spokesmen in favoring the G.I. Bill. Protestants at first had reservations. When the G.I. Bill was approved, Protestant colleges and seminaries participated eagerly with others; not a few administrators, in fact, now recall gratefully that the G.I. Bill “saved our hides in economic trouble and depression.” Although the G.I. Bill was part of an emerging wartime demobilization program, it is nonetheless held aloft today as a public policy precedent for federal aid, and Protestants are frequently reminded of their participation.

The 1958 National Defense Education Act provided loans to students, long-term, low-interest loans to high schools for improved scientific equipment, and graduate fellowships with matching grants to colleges and universities—both public and nonpublic—in view of their contribution to the national defense effort. CHRISTIANITY TODAY then warned that the NDEA “elevates government incursion into American educational life to the status of permanent national principle. Moreover, it enlarges private school participation in government funds” and “virtually … gives advocates of tax funds for parochial schools what they want” (“Government Intrusion Widens in American Education,” Dec. 8, 1958, issue, pp. 21 ff.). In fact, by applying the term “public” to academic institutions that do not “include a school or institution of any agency of the United States, the NDEA skirted the question whether or not private schools are public schools!

The National Council of Churches was already on record as favoring federal aid to states unable to provide adequate public schools. Only where segregation was maintained did it withhold its support from federal aid to education. Despite considerable dissatisfaction in National Council ranks over NDEA, NCC’s Division of Higher Education prevailed to favor acceptance of federal loans to higher education. The pressure to support federal aid came mainly from college administrators who, because their church-related colleges are important denominational structures, therefore have a powerful voice in the general boards. These college presidents were being pressured for bigger and better academic institutions by their denominations which, at the same time, failed to provide adequate support for such goals. Hence Protestant school administrators welcomed public funds to create an “educational empire” even as some welfare administrators before them had welcomed Hill-Burton funds to build a denominational “hospital empire.” They insisted (the arguments remain to be examined) that no precedent was being provided for federal aid at elementary and secondary levels. Their lone anxiety was to avoid government curriculum pressures while accepting government aid. Some gloated that limited government controls gave their campus “better buildings than before.”

NCC’s General Board is on record 87 to 1 in favor of federal aid to education (some spokesmen justify this move as a practical adjustment to the political realities of the time). Under pressure from its Division of Higher Education, NCC, all told, has supported federal loans to higher education for scholarships, for school construction, research grants on a matching basis, and full grants. The position of the National Association of Evangelicals is also compromised. Although the national convention repeatedly has opposed federal aid to education, none of its institutions refused G.I. Bill benefits, and one evangelical college after another has scrambled for federal loans. At its last convention, NAE had to modify its position on federal aid to accommodate the college administrators. But NCC and NAE are committed against federal aid to elementary and secondary nonpublic schools, and NCC prognosticates opposition along with NAE to federal loans to such schools. And while not opposed to viewing tuition as a tax-deductible contribution, NCC definitely opposes tax credit for tuition.

We now face a sequel to the G.I. Bill and to the NDEA. Congress has before it two bills. One sponsored by Congresswoman Edith Green of Oregon is widely regarded as the administration bill, H.R. 5266, and would provide students with federal scholarships, grants up to $350 to accepting institutions, academic construction loans to public and nonpublic institutions of higher education and loans for academic facilities as well. Bill H.R. 4970 introduced by Congressman Thompson of New Jersey would provide $2,298,000,000 to state education agencies for public school construction, teachers’ salaries, and special projects.

Knowing that Protestant no less than Catholic educators have already relied on government power and machinery to advance religion in higher education, the Roman Catholic hierarchy has found its opportune moment to demand “across the board” loans to nonpublic and public schools alike. Romanist spokesmen insist such a program is constitutional and nondiscriminatory. Protestant spokesmen refuse to rest the whole case on constitutionality (since the Constitution may be amended); they oppose such loans equally on the ground of sound public policy. In reply, the hierarchy notes that former Protestant participation in federal benefits to church-related colleges and seminaries strips away any principled objection.

While Romanist spokesmen for the moment are stressing the difference between federal loans and federal grants, with the immediate objective of securing loans as favorable rates for nonpublic schools, they simultaneously ridicule the Protestant differentiation between higher and elementary and secondary education as a legitimate area of federal involvement. It is important, therefore, to survey the distinctions being urged between different levels of possible federal assistance to education. Is there a qualitative difference between these levels, as many Protestants assert? Or is Protestant policy so compromised on federal aid that it now lacks any principle by which it may consistently object to Roman Catholic parochial participation?

Under the category of federal aid to education, one may distinguish such categories as grants, loans, fringe benefits, and welfare services. In successive stages of their drive for federal help, champions of Roman Catholic parochial schools have shrewdly contrasted federal aid with provision of welfare services (medical and dental services; minimum cost school lunches); then with fringe benefits (transportation; textbooks at public expenses); and now with long-term, low-interest construction loans. The Protestant rejoinder is that all these services are but varieties of federal aid to which nonpublic schools are not entitled. This objection may be vulnerable, however true it is that Romanists promptly tend to exploit every exception as a precedent.

Can we really distinguish legitimate and illegitimate areas of public assistance to nonpublic education?

Through the years the principle of church-state separation has restricted welfare benefits such as medical and dental services and token-cost cafeteria lunches only to students in public schools. But as the federal government has intruded more and more into the welfare field, including distribution of surplus food in partnership with church agencies, Roman Catholic educators have increasingly gained these benefits for parochial schools by insisting that welfare implies concern for individuals irrespective of religious distinctions. Such welfare benefits are now widely approved. Had Protestant educators discerningly insisted that welfare benefits should be handled not as an educational consideration but as a community welfare decision, they might have preserved the line between church and state in educational matters and safeguards against subsequent exploitation of welfare services for even larger fringe benefits. As it was, those seeking federal support for parochial schools soon transformed every concession into a precedent by which to gain larger participation in public funds.

Wherever Roman Catholic voters predominate, such community pressures increase and the pattern of state benefits for private education accordingly widens from year to year. In other communities, Roman Catholics systematically aspire to election as public school trustees, and in some cities faculty changes have revolutionized the character of the public schools. For years the Roman Catholic hierarchy has found state resistance to its ambitions greater than federal resistance. But more recently the strength of sectarian demands has increased at state level; the Rockefeller scholarship plan in New York is the latest boon. The flexible emphasis on “federal not state” and “state not federal” is expediently adjusted to gain larger participation.

This is especially apparent in respect to fringe benefits such as public provision of parochial transportation and public subsidy of parochial textbooks. When the transportation debate was carried to the New Jersey courts, the Supreme Court in the Ebersole case approved bus pickup of nonpublic school children only along routes to and from the public schools. But in New York State a statute passed three years later approves bus transportation for nonpublic school children within 10 miles of an established school district’s boundaries, which virtually creates a new mandatory, vastly enlarged school district. Once pressures for parochial transportation are firmly registered—on the ground that it is descriminatory and un-American to allow Roman Catholic children to walk to (parochial) school in the rain and snow while other children are transported to (public) school—the parenthesized words being softened for propaganda purposes—the pressure for public subsidy of parochial textbooks soon follows. While some educators think they can justify transportation under the category of welfare—especially if confined to pickups along existing public school routes—it is difficult to justify textbooks this way.

The decisive entering wedge for Roman Catholic pressure for federal loans, however, was the G.I. Bill and the NDEA, which provided government tuition payments and government graduate fellowships with matching grants to institutions. On the surface, a great gulf might seem to separate huge construction loan proposals with small tuition grants; it would appear that the latter in any case could not justify a transition from fringe benefits to government loans and grants. But the argument now used against opponents of federal loans to nonpublic schools is that Protestant educators, having approved outright federal gifts (in the form of tuition and scholarships) to both public and nonpublic institutions, cannot consistently oppose loans which are repayable and which “cost the government nothing.” Once the argument is stated this way, Protestants defending their previous involvement in government grants are on difficult terrain.

The pressure for federal loans by Roman Catholics (other denominations with a total of 350,000 parochial students are not demanding such funds) can hardly be justified by distinguishing them sharply from grants. Legislative history shows that loans are frequently forgiven once they are approved (distribution of World War II surplus equipment on credit preceded cancellation of the debt). It is far less difficult for government to collect from delinquent individuals than from delinquent institutions identified with a large constituency of voters, so that the likelihood of cancellation is increased. The distinction between loans to individual students and loans to colleges (sometimes compromised by proposals for matching grants to student and school) is really evasive, since nobody can determine where such help assists the student and not the institution. A federal loan (sometimes pictured as “non-cash” support) is actually a form of support requiring administration of credit and depriving the government of tax income from commercial institutions.

If the Catholics are in trouble with logic, so are the Protestants in their grab for federal funds. Aware that the National Council of Churches has no unclouded objection to federal loans (in view of participation in hospital and higher educational programs), Catholics readily join (and with some private amusem*nt) in the sentiment that government controls are more dangerous than government loans. Since Romanists, too, want to shape their institutions their own way, they are quite ready to unite in any effort that makes controls the main issue in accepting federal loans. But when Protestants ask for loans that do not involve the functions of the church, Romanists indicate that Protestant schools already have welcomed such assistance.

Protestants then zealously seek to justify loans and grants to higher education—their only compromise with federal funds to date—while they condemn such federal aid at elementary and secondary levels. The following reasons are usually advanced by Protestant spokesmen to establish a philosophical distinction: 1. Historically the churches have had a greater interest in higher education. 2. Higher education is noncompulsory, whereas elementary education is compulsory. 3. College education centers in the intellectual exercise and extension of learning and development of leadership, whereas elementary and secondary education consists of indoctrination, the transmission of cultural legacy, and the development of mature skills. Since these distinctions are relative and not absolute, Protestants are in trouble.

Objection to federal aid to parochial schools is more likely traceable to the belief that in a democracy education preferably takes place in a community context, and that the public school champions the essentially Protestant principle of the right of individual conscience, while the Roman Catholic parochial school undermines church-state separation.

“Once federal funds go to parochial schools,” one Protestant churchman declares, “the face of America will be quickly changed. There will soon be sectarian candidates and parties at state and local levels. Within a century the American people will be more divided than by the present conflict over the race issue.” Some Protestant educators warn that virtually every Protestant schoolhouse in America will become the nucleus of a Christian day school if Romanists achieve a sectarian breakthrough at the parochial school level. They stress that Catholic intentions to confine federal loans only to “presently existing” schools (presumably to avoid the “fragmentation” of the American school scene) will be promptly countered by other groups. Hundreds of Christian day schools, in fact, have already sprung up throughout the United States, without a sectarian ambition for federal funds, to compensate for the secular tendency of the public schools. This movement is growing.

Are Protestant leaders wholly unready to admit the erosion of conviction and principle that followed their compromises with expediency—in the Hill-Burton Act, the G.I. Bill, the National Defense Education Act? Does the NCC General Board’s 87 to 1 support of federal aid to higher education accurately reflect its own constituency? Is there no desire to acknowledge that Protestants have already “gone too far down the road” of federal involvement, that the time has come for a halt, and even for a reversal insofar as that is possible? Have denominational leaders enough courage to confess that, in cooperating with Roman Catholics to advance welfare and educational causes in partnership with government, they were blind to the dangers of such compromise? Will they admit that they did not realize that, when appealed to later as precedents, such involvements imply a revision of the Constitution of the United States in church-state relationships?

Since the election of President Kennedy, one hears more and more the emphasis that present educational patterns are compromises to Protestantism. The emergence of a pluralistic society in America, it is added, requires that these compromises be balanced by similar contributions to Roman Catholics. Will Protestant spokesmen accept the Romanist verdict: “The precedents are here.… It’s too late to protest!” Having been trapped in their past compromises, will Protestant leaders now engage in still another?

The immediate threat lies in Romanist demand for federal aid to non-public schools. The long-range threat is posed by federal incursion into public education. Legislative allotment of loans to parochial schools and then of grants would be a decisive blow to American constitutional traditions and to sound public policy. Federal and state intervention in public school affairs—whether in higher education or in elementary and secondary education—sooner or later will also modify the American heritage.

Christian citizens can and must act now. Write your representatives in Congress today—even if only on a postcard—to register your personal convictions while they still count.

In definition of the decree or decrees of God, the Westminster Confession (1647) maintains that “God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of secondary causes taken away, but rather established” (chap. III).

The decree of God is thus equivalent to the effective resolve or purpose, grounded in his free wisdom, by which God eternally controls his creation. It refers not merely to predestination to salvation or perdition, but to all God’s action in creation and direction of the world. As the Shorter Catechism puts it, “the decrees of God are his eternal purpose according to the counsel of his will, whereby, for his own glory, he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass” (ques. 7).

Important details are to be noted. First, the decrees are eternal, and are not therefore subject to temporal conditions nor variable in the light of changing situations. Second, they accord with God’s wisdom, and cannot therefore be dismissed as the capricious decisions of naked sovereignty. Third, they allow for secondary wills and causes, so that they are not a mere fate, nor deterministic nexus, nor Islamic will. Fourth, they serve God’s good pleasure, and therefore are neither meaningless nor discordant with the righteous love which characterizes God and redounds to his glory.

The reference of the decrees is specifically to creation, providence, and election. “God executeth his decrees in the works of creation and providence” (Shorter Catechism, ques. 8). “By the decree of God some angels and men are predestinated unto eternal life, and others foreordained to everlasting death” (Confession, III, 3). In this respect, Westminster follows Calvin’s Institutes, which speak both of the general decrees of God (I, 17–18) and then of his special decree of election (III, 22–24). Within the same understanding, the order of the decrees formed the subject of the great infralapsarian-supralapsarian debate of the seventeenth century, the one party ranging the decree of election after the decrees of creation and the fall (within God’s providential ordering), the other ascribing priority to the decree of predestination. From the order of treatment, both Calvin and Westminster tend to the infralapsarian view, which implies a logical succession of decrees rather than a primary decree subserved by others. This emerges more clearly in the Catechism.

At the same time, there is an obvious hesitation to use the plural even at Westminster. Strictly, indeed, the Confession speaks only of the decree of God, and the real theme of Chapter VI is quickly seen to be predestination. This is more consonant with the earlier Reformation tradition, as may be seen from statements such as the Belgic Confession (1561, Art. XVI), the Thirty-Nine Articles (1563, Art. XVII), and even Dort (1619) with its reference to the one decree of election and reprobation grounded in the divine good pleasure. Obviously this does not mean a negating of the sovereignty of God in creation and providence. It does not imply that the decree of God cannot be multiple and varied in operation. It suggests, however, that there is a higher right in supralapsarianism so long as it is not artificially entangled in temporal conceptions. The purpose or decree of God is ultimately one, namely, the establishment of gracious covenant and fellowship with a chosen people as fulfilled in the saving work of Christ. Necessarily the basic decree carries with it other general or detailed decrees, just as the unity of God includes a wealth of perfections. In itself, however, it is one and supreme. Hence it is perhaps better to keep to the singular of Westminster and the earlier confessions, not ranging creation, providence, and so forth, under a wider genus “decree,” but interpreting them in relation to the “eternal and immutable decree from which all our salvation springs and depends” (Scots Confession, 1560, Art. VII).

But is it right even to use the term “decree” in this context? As in the opening definition, it obviously has to be carefully safeguarded to prevent misunderstanding. In the Bible it is used for the most part of the arbitrary, inflexible, and often vexatious orders of despotic rulers rather than the resolve of God. Perhaps this underlies the sparing use, often in verb form, in the earlier confessions. It is hardly conceivable that, for example, the Helvetic or Gallican Confessions, or the Heidelberg Catechism, should devote a special section to the divine decree or decrees. On the other hand, the term seems in practice to be unavoidable. It turns up in almost every document. Even the Remonstrants refer to God’s “eternal and immutable decree” in their first Article (1610), and more blatantly Arminian statements only limit the range of the divine decree, for example, that “God does not decree all events which he knows will occur” (Free Will Baptist Confession, 1834). Similarly, the Lutheran Formula of Concord (1576) distinguishes between foreknowledge and foreordination (Art. XI, 1), but in relation to predestination or election it states that God “in his eternal counsel has decreed …” (XI, 12). There thus seems to be good reason for the judgment of Karl Barth, no enthusiast for the word, that it “describes something which cannot be denied,” and is not therefore to be erased or abandoned (Church Dogmatics, II, 2, p. 182).

The dangers of the term are easy to see. Even in Scripture it has associations with the arbitrarily rather than the righteously and meaningfully sovereign. In itself it emphasizes sheer power instead of holy, wise, and loving power. It suggests harsh enforcement rather than beneficent overruling. It implies that which is fixed and static, so that man is an automaton and God himself, having made his decree, is unemployed and uninterested, that is, the God of deism who simply leaves things to take their decreed course. Perhaps it is not insignificant that the heaviest casualties to Unitarian deism seemed to be suffered in churches which emphasized the decrees. Perhaps it is not for nothing that Lutherans detected a Turkish or Islamic impulse in Reformed teaching. Perhaps it is with reason that some Reformed apologists are still ill-advised enough to find support in scientific or Mohammedan determinism. There are, in fact, real dangers in the term and its use.

Nevertheless, no single word is so well adapted to express the true sovereignty, constancy, and infallibility of the divine counsel, purpose, and resolve; and therefore biblical and evangelical expositors have little option but to use it. Safeguards are no doubt required. It does not, perhaps, form a genuinely suitable heading as at Westminster. It is best handled in the text where there can be proper qualification. Yet that which God wills and purposes is in a true sense decreed by him. His wise and omnipotent resolve constitutes his free, sovereign, and incontestable decree.

Most of the difficulties derive, perhaps, from a failure to remember that the decree is genuinely eternal, and cannot therefore be a lifeless, deistic fiat. No doubt much of the wonder of eternity is that it is pre-temporal. To this extent an eternal decree is rightly seen to be prior to its fulfillment, belonging to the past before the beginning of all things. But eternal does not mean only pre-temporal. It also means co-temporal and post-temporal. The decree of God is thus present and future as well as past. It is with and after the fulfillment as well as before it. Deistic conceptions can arise only out of an ill-balanced and unhealthy over-concentration on the one aspect of eternity, which is also what gives such unreality to the famous infralapsarian-supralapsarian discussion. The truly eternal decree is just as alive and relevant today and tomorrow as it was yesterday. Made in eternity, it has been made, but is still being made and still to be made. The decree accompanies and follows as well as precedes its fulfillment. It cannot, then, be regarded merely as a lifeless foreordination. It is really the decree of God and therefore an eternal decree in the full and proper sense.

Even if the deistic threat is averted, however, the difficulty of apparent arbitrariness remains. It is, in fact, heightened by some of the confessions with their references to the inscrutability of the decree. Thus the Westminster Confession speaks of the “secret counsel” of God in election, and his “unsearchable counsel” in reprobation (III, 5, 7). Dort warns against inquisitive prying into “the secret and deep things of God” (I, 12). The Gallican Confession (VIII) and the Thirty-Nine Articles (XVII) both refer to secrets or secret counsels, and the Belgic uses the term “incomprehensible” (XIII). Now it is true that according to Scripture the ways of God in nature and history take an astonishing course, so that the detailed decrees of God might well be called unsearchable or inscrutable. It is also true that sinners cannot perceive the things of God, so that even the primary decree which the others serve and express may aptly be termed a mystery. Yet the question arises whether this mystery is not revealed in Jesus Christ. Are not believing eyes opened, in part at least, to the ways of God by the Holy Spirit? Can we really say that the basic decree of God, for all the strangeness of its outworkings, is inscrutable, secret, or incomprehensible in the primary and ultimate sense?

The question is pertinent, for it forces us to ask what we really mean by this decree. In the earlier confessions this seems to be clear. It is God’s “eternal and unchangeable counsel, of mere goodness” to elect certain men to salvation in Jesus Christ (Belgic Confession, XVI). It is his “everlasting purpose … to deliver … those whom he hath chosen in Christ” (Thirty-Nine Articles, XVII). This aspect naturally remains in later statements, as we may see from the Canons of Dort, I, 7 and the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 20. But a new element tends to emerge. The decree of God comes to be identified specifically with the pre-temporal discrimination between the elect and the reprobate which we cannot forsee, which is not based on any good works or foreknown response, and which is therefore necessarily inscrutable and apparently arbitrary. This profound, merciful but just acceptance or rejection of men equally involved in ruin is the real decree of God at the beginning or end of his ways, which we can only accept since we have neither the means to understand nor the right to challenge it.

The question arises whether this is a justifiable equation. Will not a “special prudence and care” (Westminster Confession, III, 8), lead us, not to this sorting of individuals, but to Jesus Christ, in whom God’s grace and wrath are manifested? If Jesus Christ is really the mirror of election, as also, we might add, of reprobation, are we not to seek the basic decree in him, whom to see is to see the Father? When we ask concerning the ultimate decree, surely we are still to concentrate on him in whom the fulness of Godhead dwells rather than looking abroad to other mysteries.

In other words, the decree of God must be strictly related to Jesus Christ. The Formula of Concord puts this well: “This predestination of God is not to be searched out in the hidden counsel of God, but is to be sought in the Word of God … but the Word of God leads us to Christ.… In Christ, therefore, is the eternal election of God to be sought” (XI, 5–12). The Remonstrant Articles also display a fine judgment in their initial definition that “God, by an eternal, unchangeable purpose in Jesus Christ his Son … hath determined … to save in Christ for Christ’s sake, and through Christ, those who, through the grace of the Holy Ghost, shall believe on this his Son Jesus.”

These statements are vitiated, however, by their tendency to make salvation dependent in the last resort on the human decision of faith and their virtual ignoring of the element of reprobation inseparable from the divine decree. We may thus refer again to the fine passage in the Institutes in which Calvin teaches us to seek our election in Christ as the Eternal Wisdom, the Immutable Truth, the Determinate Counsel of the Father (III, 24, 5). And we may close the whole discussion with some noble sentences from the widely adopted Second Helvetic Confession penned in 1576 by the aging Bullinger of Zürich: “We therefore condemn those who seek other-where than in Christ whether they be chosen from all eternity, and what God has decreed of them before all beginning.… Let Christ, therefore, be our looking-glass, in whom we may behold our predestination. We shall have a most evident and sure testimony that we are written in the Book of Life if we communicate with Christ, and he be ours, and we be his, by a true faith. Let this comfort us in the temptation touching predestination, than which there is none more dangerous: that the promises of God are general to the faithful” (X). For the ultimate reality of the decree of God is “that the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, was from all eternity predestinated and foreordained of the Father to be the Saviour of the world” (XI). In sum, Jesus Christ himself is the purpose and decree of God. In him we see God’s righteousness both to condemn and to save. Incorporated into him by faith, we have the assurance that the basic decree to which all others are subject, while it carries with it the condemnation and judgment of sin, is as such a decree of grace and life, of fellowship and glory.

Bibliography: K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/2; III/3. Calvin, Institutes, I, 16–17; III, 21–24; H. Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, pp. 137 ff.; C. Hodge, Systematic Theology, Part I, Chapter 9; P. Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, Vol. III; W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology.

Professor of Church History

Fuller Theological Seminary

Pasadena, California

SOVEREIGN IN CHAOS

To take world chaos as a matter of course is a deadly danger. Those of us who are older remember times when there was a fair degree of stability in governments and in international relationships, but the generation now assuming control in world affairs has never known an era of real peace.

At the opening of the 87th Congress, Speaker Sam Rayburn solemnly told its members as he swore them into office that never since the time of Christ had the world faced dangers so great as now.

After only ten days in office, President Kennedy stated publicly that in that short time he had been staggered by the magnitude of the dangers we face abroad.

We live in the smallest world man has ever known, a world shrunken in size by prodigious feats in the area of communications. In 1916 the writer crossed the Pacific by boat, taking 19 days for the storm-hindered trip. A year ago we made the same trip by jet, high above storm involvement, in ten and one half hours. And we have not yet come to the end of speed potentials.

Other peoples besides ourselves are increasingly aware of the world in which they live, and envy, nationalism, and the insidious prodding of an ever-active communism adds both tension and danger to the situation.

With only few exceptions, we in America are living in a fool’s paradise, and are regarding ease, comfort, entertainment, and the general pursuit of happiness as our rightful heritage and the imperishable American way of life. World unrest is often regarded as merely an annoying phenomena which threatens our state of ease.

One wonders whether it will take a national catastrophe to awaken us. We have permitted the world to hypnotize us by her soul-deadening philosophies We have become indifferent to God’s plan of salvation or amended it to suit our own puny and sin-obsessed minds.

The sovereignty of God is a fact which few of us consider. He has not left himself without a witness and he will hold us responsible for how we receive and use his offer of redemption in Christ.

There are two contending forces in the world—the realm of Satan and the realm of Christ. Strange to say even in the theological world there are those who deny the existence of Satan as a personality, and those who go on to humanize Christ and deify man.

Rightly has Professor Emilé Cailliet said: “One of the neatest tricks Satan has ever perpetrated has been to convince so many that he does not exist.”

But he does exist, and Christ exists, and the sovereign God will prevail. The question then of overwhelming importance is whether we are in the circle of God’s will for us? Have we accepted his Son as our own Saviour and made him the Lord of our lives?

This is not a matter on which we may be casual or neutral, for we can in no way escape our own personal responsibility. We are either for or against Christ, and in one of these two positions rests our niche in eternity.

God, speaking through his servant Isaiah, says: “I am the Lord, and there is no other, beside me there is no God.” Again and again he asserts his sovereign right and power, while his redeeming love is offered to all. Is there greater folly than ignoring or denying him?

We hear much talk today about the mission of the Church. Some of it is so obscured by words that none can understand the meaning; or, the mission and message of the Church is changed to a human concept and a human program.

One wonders why the simple affirmations of holy Scripture are not taken at face value. Paul states the outline of the Gospel in the first four verses of 1 Corinthians 15—the preaching of Christ’s death for man’s sins according to the Scripture, and his resurrection from the dead according to the Scripture. Strange that these two essentials are so often lacking in the preaching of sophisticated theological circles today!

Our Lord gave two commands to his disciples—to love one another, and to go out and preach the Gospel to all creatures. How lacking we are on both counts! How often the “christ” that is preached is not the Christ of the Bible!

But let us never forget this: we are all held accountable by the sovereign God, and he will judge us as surely as he will judge all men in the light of what we have done with his Son.

With one sure foundation already laid, are we not utterly foolish to ignore it in favor of something more appealing to the intellect or flattering to the ego?

God has given us the motive for preaching, teaching, and living the Gospel—this is the uniqueness of Christ as man’s only hope and the certain guidance, power, and blessing of the Holy Spirit in making him known.

God has also given us the methods of witnessing for him, which consist of the preaching of the Gospel by word of mouth and by consecrated daily living. Sometimes we forget that “after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness [the folly of what we preach] of preaching to save them that believe.” Sometimes we apparently think that men can be won by clever words, but it is the “simplemindedness of the Gospel message” (Phillips) which, by the power of the Holy Spirit, brings men to a saving knowledge of Christ.

Furthermore, God has given us the means of making him known. While the Gospel message never changes, the means of making it known change from generation to generation. For the purposes of preaching Christ, science has rendered valuable and effective avenues of communication through press, radio, film and television. How tragic it is that there are increasing pressures to eliminate vital Christianity from these tools of expression.

Education, one of the foundation channels of imparting Christian truth, has in recent years often become an aggressive anti-Christian influence. This phenomenon too stands under the judgment of God, and some day institutions which were once Christian will be asked, “What have you done with the Christ in whom once you had faith and that faith was the very foundation of your learning?”

We see on every hand effect of two worlds in collision. We feel striving within us the urges of Satan and the yearning pleas of the Saviour. Saved by the grace of God we are nevertheless responsible for those acts of the will whereby we accept or reject him.

The sovereignty of God is too frequently brushed aside today in favor of the dominance of man. But this folly on the part of man neither vacates God from his rightful place nor does it change one iota God’s sovereign plan and will.

We cannot be neutral in our attitude. Either we align ourselves with Christ and accept him in simple faith as Saviour and Lord, or we remain aligned with Satan, the enemy of our souls. How much better it is to choose him who is sovereign now and for eternity!

L. NELSON BELL

MOBILE

Dear Eutychus:

Thank you for inviting me to correspond with you during my sabbatical pilgrimage. It would be hard to conceive of a more thrilling travel prospectus. As you know, I am combining a Walrusific Grant as Fellow Traveler with my appointment to the Rocking Foundation Eclectic Chair in Ecuministration which has generous provisions for orientation travel during the first year. There are still open ends in my schedule but I shall be looking in on Europe, Africa, the Near East and Asia, with a brief survey of South America likely. I am frankly disappointed that I shall not be taking an active part in the New Delhi assembly, but I still expect my visit there to be the high point of my tour. My experience will be valuable when it is realized some day that we younger men have leadership potential. In the meantime I shall have enormous resources of lecture and sermon material.

Enough about myself. France is a travel poster in spring. No wonder art blooms here. Today I had the breath-taking experience of visiting the studio of Le Moment. The Le Moment! Delightful, indescribable confusion. One could trace in the strata of clutter his past periods: the vibrant, searing canvases of his red epoch; the looming timbers of his framework hypothesis; the intricate hair collages of his toupé period. Naturally my real interest was his present project, the great magnesium mobile to be suspended in the south transept of the Ecclesiastical Research Library. Of course it was hard to appreciate the ethereal power of the mobile from the unassembled bits and pieces of wire and metal scattered about. And I surely could not understand his working sketches and equations.

He explained to me his architectonic idea, however. The mobile is called Theologia Viatorum and represents the great movement in our time from a theology of pilgrims to a theology in pilgrimage. Everything in the mobile will be in constant motion; it will not even hang from a fixed point in the vault, but will be suspended by compressed air. Radiant particles will express the impetus to travel provided by a theology in movement.

If narrow, rigid theology sent missionaries to the ends of the earth, what will such fluid dynamic drive do, Eutychus?

Most fraternally,

ALBERT IVY

AMERICA AT A CROSSROADS

The United States of America has come to a crossroads: shall we continue to develop the American dream of a “free church,” independent of government control, and of a government “under God,” free of church control or domination? Or shall we take a new turn, go down the European road from which our ancestors were trying to escape, and admit that it is impossible to prevent development of the kind of conglomerate situation where church and government struggle, one using the resources of the other, to accomplish their separate objectives?

These alternatives have been forced upon the country for decision at this time by sudden and massive pressure to provide governmental assistance for denominational schools. The main demands for such assistance come from people who claim they will be satisfied with loans, but in the past have openly favored grants, either direct or indirect, under the same principle which now “forces” them to demand loans.

Will Christian citizens remain silent at such a time of crisis? Will they not favor their congressmen and senators with a considered expression of their judgment, considerately formed?

OSWALD C. J. HOFFMANN

Office of Public Relations Director

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod New York, N. Y.

There is a crisis this spring in church-state relations.

I hope your magazine will remind your constituency of the importance of Protestants involving themselves in the forming of public opinion to bear upon the Congress in its important decisions. I believe nearly all Protestants agree that public funds should be for public schools only even though they may be divided on the desirability of Federal aid to education. We ought to stand for freedom for all to educate according to conscience. We are concerned for all children, their welfare and education, but we ought to be against the increasing tendency to seek public money for sectarian religious programs.

EUGENE CARSON BLAKE

Stated Clerk of the General Assembly

United Presbyterian Church, USA

Philadelphia, Pa.

The announcement of the Roman Catholic hierarchy that it will oppose President Kennedy’s proposal for federal financial assistance for public elementary and secondary schools unless private and parochial schools are included presents a declaration of bias against the American policy of public funds for public schools. It raises the question: What other threats may lie ahead? Already pastors and lay people of The American Lutheran Church have asked me to alert all our pastors of the dangers inherent in this issue. Such a letter is going out the first week in April.

FREDERICK A. SCHIOTZ

President

American Lutheran Church

Minneapolis, Minn.

Religious freedom faces a new crisis. Public funds for parochial schools violates American tradition of separation of church and state. Believers in religions should take a stand. Please urge your readers to write their congressman and senator.

HERBERT S. MEKEEL

First Presbyterian Church

Schenectady, N. Y.

The current discussion of church-state relations is likely to set the American course either forward into an adequate future or backward into the agony and conflicts represented by religious conflicts in the political arena.

The crux of this controversy is whether or not we are to have a completely adequate program of public instruction for the people. Just as people have the right to build their private roads so they should also be free to build their private schools at their own expense, but we must insist on using public funds for public purposes.

We encourage the people of the churches to take their full civic responsibility by keeping in contact with their “representatives,” and with the newspapers and other mass media in support of the high human values and the future of freedom.

C. EMANUEL CARLSON

Executive Director

Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs

Washington, D. C.

The present church-state controversy over aid to parochial schools is but a part of the long battle over separation of church and state. Federal money should be used exclusively for public schools. Strong support for President Kennedy’s stand will come from all religious groups. It would be tragic for the battle lines on this issue to be drawn strictly with regard to denominational affiliation. Kind but straightforward letter writing to editors of newspapers and magazines as well as Congress will help prevent this.

W. MELVIN ADAMS

Associate Secretary

Religious Liberty Department

General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists

Washington, D. C.

PIKE’S PEAKED FAITH

Thanks for exposing the vacillating vagaries of Bishop Pike for what they really are—old heresies dressed up in modern synthetic fabrics.

ERIC EDWIN PAULSON

Minneapolis, Minn.

May I humbly submit to you, sir, and to all who uphold the laurels of neo-fundamentalism with such vigor that there is a higher heresy than that which you have charged Dr. Pike of possessing—what is more damning than the “Heresy of Orthodoxy!”

J. PROCTOR RIGGINS

First Christian Church

Owenton, Ky.

I am wondering whether the much lauded intellectual honesty of Bishop Pike which led him to make public his heresy, will result in a display of moral honesty in the renouncing of his ordination vows and his leaving the ministry. In view of all that is involved in such a move, it will be interesting to observe what happens, if anything.

HOWARD WESLEY KIEFER

The Bible Protestant Church of Inwood Inwood, N. Y.

As for the individual that began as a Romanist, “became” an atheist, “became” an Anglican, and now, it seems, “has become” a Jewish existentialist, the Anglican Church in this country must surely repudiate him. Self-preservation alone demands that.

MANNING MASON PATTILLO

Shell Beach, Calif.

The Rev. John A. Russell has “professed a good profession before many witnesses” (Eutychus, Feb. 27 issue) but when he asks for moderation against heretics he comes into conflict with the Spirit of Christ, who warned, “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump,” and with the inspired admonition of St. Paul: “A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject.”

E. P. SCHULZE

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer

Peekskill, N. Y.

THE OVERSTREETS

I cannot agree with Charles Wesley Lowry in his endorsem*nt of … What We Must Know About Communism, in your Feb. 13 issue (Book Reviews). Doesn’t Mr. Lowry know that the Over-streets are known left-wing writers and this is very cleverly written and very misleading? To the average uninformed reader it tends to leave them “soft on communism.” Certainly we can’t afford to recommend such writings in our church publications.

REBA BOUCHER

Rudyard, Mont.

CORRECT CITATION

I have similar reservations to those of Professor Young regarding the recent book by Brevard S. Childs (Feb. 13 issue). At the same time, he is one of the finest scholars lost to the evangelical church. Don’t you think that his scholarship deserves correct citation of the title, Myth and Reality in the Old Testament?

FRED E. HERSHEY

New Haven, Conn.

SPLINTER GROUPS

Speaking of 34 congregations which applied for membership in the newly-formed Church of the Lutheran Confession, you state: “All but 2 of the 34 formerly belonged to the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod” (News, Feb. 13 issue). This is not an accurate statement. There were indeed a few congregations that left the Wisconsin Ev. Lutheran Synod and are now applying for membership in the CLC. But the overwhelmingly greater part of those 34 congregations did not even exist until very recently. They are, in fact, splinter groups which broke away from congregations of the Wisconsin Ev. Lutheran Synod.

R. H. ZIMMERMANN

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Glendale, Ariz.

The preaching of Divine Election has ever and again dug deep into the life and thinking of the Church. No doctrine has evoked more intense debates. How often the mention of Election has seemed to many of its critics a threat to the assurance of their faith. Has it not often suggested the terror of an arbitrary Deity hiding in the shadows of the Christian faith?

Sharp reactions have been aroused, but not the Christian doctrine of Election so much as caricatures of it are to blame.

THEOLOGICAL REACTION

Reaction is a phenomenon in Christian thought that has played a large role in the history of the Church and its theology. Reaction from some unbiblically one-sided proposition has often landed theology in another unbiblically one-sided proposition. Theologians attacking a caricatured theology have often created their own caricature of Christian thought. Observing that a given aspect of faith was neglected, Christians have often proceeded to accentuate that aspect so much that it became the be-all of faith, with a resulting neglect of other aspects.

Many examples of such reactionary theologies could be given. In times when faith became intellectualized and to that extent impoverished, a reaction set in in the form of experiential theologies that had hardly any place for the knowledge of faith. Then, again in reaction, rationalism set in once more. It is a fact that theologians have seldom responded sanely to theological caricatures. In reaction to the merit system of Roman theology, some Christians devalued the necessity of good works in any form. Indeed, one writer of the sixteenth century wrote that good works were actually dangerous to a person’s salvation. A more contemporary example of reactionary theology is to be seen in the doctrine of the Atonement. Gustaf Aulén has reacted against the idea of Atonement set forth in purely judicial or forensic terms and has himself set forth Atonement as a victorious liberation from the powers of sin and corruption. Aulén felt that the satisfaction theory of Atonement prevailed so exclusively in Anselm’s thought that the dramatic portrayal of Atonement as triumph over the powers of evil was lost. Bolstered by the conviction that he was recapturing the thought of Irenaeus and Luther, Aulén then presented the dramatic theory—or, as he called it, the classic theory—of the Atonement in so exclusive a manner as almost to rule out Christ’s redemption of sinners from their guilt.

CARICATURE OF ELECTION

But reactionary theology has never been as evident as it has been in the case of the doctrine of Divine Election. If one is at all informed concerning the tensions that have prevailed concerning this doctrine, he will know that reaction has usually been aroused by the notion of arbitrariness in the Divine Election of sinners. Reaction was not aroused simply by the notion of Election, but especially by what seemed to be a deterministic element in some constructions of Election. Such reactions are very understandable, for the biblical doctrine of Election has at times been presented as though it were a parallel to the Islamic doctrine of election. The only difference was that in one system Allah was the determiner and in the other system God was the determiner. Election was felt by many, thus, to be a view of the world according to which everything was settled, in which nothing could be changed, and before which a person could only bow his head in resignation. All of life—including the Christian life—was caught in a huge net of divine causality; the only decision that really mattered in life was the arbitrary decision of the Deity made before we were born.

Jesus Christ was still recognized in the system, but the image of Christ was shadowed under the dark cloud of a fatalistic doctrine of Election. One’s personal faith seemed threatened by the thought that we could be sure of Christ’s grace only after we were sure of our favored position within Divine Election. It was made to seem as though we must first secure our faith in Election, outside of Christ, and only then are we given confidence to accept the promise of salvation in Christ for ourselves.

Reaction to this kind of caricature of the doctrine of Election often resulted in theology’s handing over the decision as to his salvation to man himself, and leaving everything to the free will of man. Or, some others sought different grounds than election for assurance. Max Weber characterized Calvinism as being insecure in view of Divine Election (and the arbitrary God) and as thus seeking compensation for its insecurity in rigorous works and in its sense of calling to labor for the Kingdom. (Hence, he explains, the strenuous moralism of Calvinism was a compensation for the insecurity caused by its doctrine of Election.) Without judging Weber’s thesis, we may say that it illustrates a search for assurance and peace somewhere other than in the caricature of Divine Election.

TAKING MAN’S DECISION SERIOUSLY

We must recognize that a more serious error can hardly be conceived than the substitution of fatalism for the biblical portrayal of the electing God. The God of Divine Election of Ephesians 1:4 cannot have anything in common with an arbitrary Deity. Fatalism is infinitely removed from the biblical proclamation of divine sovereign Grace. Fatalism leaves no opportunity for serious preaching, no room for a real offer of Grace, no occasion for taking man and his decision seriously. Fatalism under the guise of Christianity needs Jesus Christ only to work out the arbitrary choice of men by God. In fatalism, we do not really deal with Jesus Christ; we have to get behind him to the arbitrary God, if we are to deal with the real source of salvation. Now, given this picture of Election, we can understand that reaction to it would be forthcoming. Indeed, we suspect that many people have difficulty with the doctrine of Election because they have encountered the doctrine only in its caricatured form.

Reaction played a role in the life of Arminius, too. When he began his controversy with the Reformed doctrine of Election, the sixteenth century lay behind him. He was aroused to intense reaction against various sixteenth century constructions of the doctrine of Election in which Jesus Christ was merely incidental, and the arbitrary choice of some men by God hovered as a shadow over the whole of Christian doctrine. Even if we cannot accept the theology of Arminianism, we must recognize that it was an attempt to counteract a theological determinism of somewhat less than Christian character. If we wish to correct Arminius, we must first be certain that we have overcome any taint of determinism in our own thought and in our preaching of the Gospel.

A CRESCENDO OF PRAISE

There is a tragic aspect in the history of the doctrine of Election. Election has been called the heart of the Church. If this is true, we must by all means be careful what we do with the heart! How often has not Divine Election been talked about as though it were a secret kept from the simple which, if known, would cast a threatening shadow over their faith. In Christ everything seemed sure; but if Election were spoken of we would be cast into doubt and anxiety about our salvation. In the Bible, however, Election is set within a wholly different context than that of perplexity, uncertainty, or resignation. It is always set to the tune of a doxology. In the great Romans 9–11 passage, Paul works up to a crescendo of jubilation over the depths of the riches of divine judgment. This is neither anxiety nor resignation in the face of arbitrary sovereignty. It is amazement at the ways of divine Grace. Paul sees these ways in the light of Election. Salvation is not of works, but of Him that calls. And he who comes to see that his salvation is not of his works but of God’s grace stands before Divine Election and therein finds his peace.

Election is not a labyrinth of dark passages for Paul. It is not a threat to, but a foundation for faith and assurance. It also is one of the most obvious tasks of the Church to make clear in her preaching that Christian faith in Election and the Mohammedan doctrine of determinism have nothing, absolutely nothing, in common. And this is not merely a matter for theologians. It is a matter close to the congregation. For many people have been confused by caricatures of Divine Election, some accepting what is tantamount to fatalism and others, frightened by the caricature, have leaped into the anxiety-laden sphere of human autonomy in salvation.

A kind of activism, a restless zeal that would compensate for the anxiety created by the mystery of Divine Election, has often arisen as a practical reaction to the doctrine of Election. On the other hand, the caricature of Election as determinism has also led to passivity. If nothing can be done to change God’s will, the best thing to do seemed to be to do nothing. In the latter case, preaching lost its effect, since preaching could lead to no meaningful human decision. The real decision had already been made in eternity by God. The message of salvation through Christ did not seem able to provide foundation for assurance, since there was always the other, the divine decision that really determined everything prior to Christ.

Over against this activism and passivism that are reactions to caricatures of Divine Election, we must make clear what the right response to the message of Divine Election is. It is humility, thankfulness, and joy at the gift of unmerited salvation. Herein lies the touchstone for the right insight into the preaching of election. Christian faith is not a blind self-abnegation before the unknown arbitrary God. In this connection we should remember the conversation between Jesus and Philip. Philip had learned a great deal from Jesus. But he had one problem that still bothered him. “Show us the Father,” he said, “and it sufficeth us.” Jesus’ answer is surprising: “Have I been with you so long, Philip, and yet you do not know me? He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Philip amazed Jesus with his question; he had seen Jesus, but had been looking beyond Jesus for God. Jesus’ words ought to register a protest against all caricatures of God and his electing grace. When a European visits New York he has not seen America. But in the Gospel things are different. Philip thought there was something he had not yet seen. “Show us the Father,” he demanded. But the response of our Lord meant that Philip had seen all there was to see when he had seen the Saviour.

There is, to be sure, also a divine wrath. But this wrath is directed against the unbelief that rejects the revelation of God in Christ. The Spirit shall convict the world of sin, because they did not believe in Jesus (John 16:9). He who hath not “seen” Jesus in faith shall indeed see the wrath of God.

Responsibility in preaching and theologizing is enormous. We are responsible to witness, both in preaching and theologizing, of Him who is the Mirror of our election (Calvin) and the Book of life (Luther). Doing this we shall not obscure the Gospel behind the background of the hidden things of God. In Christ we do not have a dark labyrinth called fate; we have a clear way in which men are called to walk. It is the way along which we see that the Bible never brings Divine Election into a sphere of anxiety and resignation, but rather into an atmosphere of grace with accents of praise.

Preacher In The Red

SCANT COMFORT

In college days a friend and I taught in a small country Sunday School. One of the young ladies in the high school class became quite sick. We decided to send her a get-well card to cheer her up. As a spiritual help we wrote on the card a verse for her to look up, John 5:24.

A few days later at Sunday School her father approached us with fire in his eyes and indignantly asked, “What’s the big idea?” He showed us the card and inadvertently the “five” had become an “eight.” We looked up the verse and it said, “I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins.” Was my face red!—The Rev. TED MAITLAND, Harmony Baptist Church, New Castle, Pennsylvania.

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Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

Acts 4:1–31

The Preacher:

W. Carter Johnson is Pastor of The First Baptist Church, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. Born in West Virginia in 1920, he is still a young man in a young Church. He was ordained by the Baptist General Conference in 1948. He is a graduate of Barrington Bible College, holds the A.B. in Theology from Gordon College, and receives his B.D. this year from Gordon Divinity School. He is married and has two children. His experience in four pastorates, and on the college and seminary campuses, has given him a love for people and a desire to be spiritually helpful. Now and then he dreams of more study and then of teaching in the field of practical theology.

The Text:

And as they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them, and put them in hold unto the next day.… And it came to pass on the morrow, that their rulers, and elders, and scribes, and Annas the high prist, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high pricest … asked, By what power, or by what name, have ye done this? Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them … Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone … set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner.

The man talking with me was a study in despondency. His face, the tone of his voice—his entire attitude—betrayed a sense of frustration. Was he a lost soul needing Christ? No, he was a believer. In fact, he was a minister of the Gospel. Yet he felt completely defeated.

This is no isolated case. In spite of the upsurge of vigor in evangelical theological thought, a sense of defeatism exists in many a local church. The spiritual indifference and the materialistic idolatry of our age at times seems insuperable. Thus there comes over the church a sense of frustration and defeat. There comes a wearying in welldoing.

This defeatism may be understandable, but it is not excusable! The Bible knows nothing of the word “defeat” as applied to the Church of Jesus Christ! Hardship—yes; opposition—yes, but never defeat! Jesus described the Church as a conquering power, against which the very gates of hell shall not prevail. And these words were not merely theoretical because the early Church revealed precisely this character. She was imperfect: she was not without her faults and weaknesses, but she was still a mighty force for God in spite of all the opposition of her day.

What has happened to enable this creeping paralysis of defeatism to overcome us? One fact is certain: the Church today can triumph! She can be a power for God! She can reach men and women for Jesus Christ! But she must learn some lessons from the early Church and apply these to her own life.

One portion of the book of the Acts, chapter 4:1–31, gives us some of these lessons. The scene is Jerusalem. In Acts, chapter 3, we have Peter and John healing a lame man and then preaching the Gospel to the crowd which gathers. Now, in chapter 4, comes the opposition. The apostles are taken, placed in prison, and the next day they are brought before the Sanhedrin. Notice that the opposition came especially from the Sadducees. Briefly, they were a Jewish sect who were rationalists in religion. They denied the supernatural. They scoffed at the idea of miracles and ridiculed the thought of a bodily resurrection. Many of them were wealthy and exercised tremendous political influence. This then was the group which arrayed itself against the apostles: a group which was the embodiment of theological unbelief, cultural snobbery, materialistic indifference, and political high-handedness. Formidable opposition indeed! Yet it was not the Sanhedrin which triumphed, but the Church! We repeat, the Church today can triumph, by applying the lessons set forth in this passage.

AN IRRESISTIBLE COMPULSION

The first lesson is this. The church that triumphs must be gripped by an irresistible compulsion. One is immediately struck by the tremendous motivation of these men. They were told pointedly in verse 18, “not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.” They replied simply in verse 20, “We cannot but speak.…” There was that within them which made it impossible for them to do otherwise!

Notice that this compulsion stemmed first from an intense conviction. “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” These men had walked with Jesus. They had heard his words and marveled at his works. Then they had seen their world collapse around them in the darkness of Calvary. They remembered how they had struggled with their sorrow-benumbed minds to understand that Jesus was really dead!

But something had changed all that! There was first the bewilderment as they had stood staring into the empty tomb and realized that Jesus was not there! Then suddenly, as a meadow-mist is dispelled by the rising sun, their doubts were lifted! Jesus himself, alive, stood before them! Jesus, triumphant over death! Jesus saying, “handle me and see”! Incredible!—but gloriously and wonderfully true! Jesus lives!

“And you tell us to be quiet? One may as easily command the sun to stop shining or all the waves of all the oceans to be still! These things are part of our very lives! We know whereof we speak and we must speak! We have a message of forgiveness and of life!”

How different this is from the way in which so many Christians today face the world! “Speak for Christ?” they say. “We can’t speak!” These men said “We cannot but speak!” This is far more than a difference of a word. It indicates a basic difference in the life! Could it be that we have lost the intensity of conviction? Could it be that we are no longer gripped by the great facts and implications of the Gospel as these are revealed unto us in the Scriptures? Most of us would hasten to say that there has been no lessening of our theological convictions. But this is not the whole of the matter! Are our convictions of the kind that issue in compulsion? When we truly believe, we not only lay hold upon the great truths of the Faith, but they lay hold upon us! Christ becomes a living reality in our experience! Therefore we must speak! We must speak because of the joy of our own salvation: we must speak because the salvation of others depends upon it!

But this compulsion stemmed also from a divine command. Jesus had said to them, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me.…” Now Peter says in verse 19, “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.” Should we obey God? To put the question is to answer it! If God be God, He is our Sovereign Lord! We must obey Him!

In the North Pacific lies the little island of Iwo. Its dry surface of volcanic ash has been likened to a landscape on the moon. For this tiny but vital piece of land we paid the price of some 21,000 casualties in our war with Japan. For the men who took it, it was never a question of a feeling of adequacy or inadequacy, courage or lack of it. They took it in obedience to a command!

How strange that we, as Christians, can so easily cast aside the fact that we are commanded to speak for Jesus Christ! It isn’t merely a question of feeling, but of obedience! The Church that triumphs must be gripped by an irresistible compulsion, so filled with intense conviction and so under the Lordship of Jesus Christ that she must speak for God! And this is not the responsibility of a few, but of every believer!

AN IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE

But there is another lesson. The church that triumphs must present to the world an irrefutable evidence. Come back to our two apostles. They had preached that this Jesus who had been crucified, had also been raised from the dead—that he is the Living Lord through whom there is forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Weighty words indeed!—but what evidence was there for these supernatural claims? The answer was simple—the healed man. Who made this man whole? Jesus of Nazareth! “By him doth this man stand here before you whole”! Then we read in verse 14, “And beholding the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it.” Let the Sadducees deny the supernatural! Let them scoff at the idea of miracles! Before them stood the irrefutable evidence!

The Church that triumphs must not merely proclaim the Gospel, but she must present to the world the evidence of the reality of that which she preaches! Now what is this evidence? It is none other than the “healed man”—not a man healed in body, but a man made whole in his basic nature—a man whose life has been transformed by the power of Jesus Christ.

Every Christian is to stand before the world as a “healed man”—the living evidence of the power of God in the life! Yet how often the Church presents an entirely different spectacle to the world! How often the lines of distinction are so effaced that it is practically impossible to distinguish the professing Christian from the one who makes no such profession! When this is the case, it is no wonder that the world turns a deaf ear to our preaching! If the Church is to triumph we must first of all examine ourselves! There must be confession of sin! There must be a return to godly living! Our own lives must be the irrefutable evidence of the truth we proclaim!

David Brainerd, seriously ill with consumption, labored so intensely among the Indians of the Dela ware River that he died of the disease when only 29 years of age. But his success was not merely because of the intensity of his work. It was because of his godly life. Those to whom he preached saw the evidence of the truth he proclaimed! So must it be with us!

But the Church that triumphs must also be in the work of healing men. That prince of expositors, Dr. G. Campbell Morgan, once said that the Church that is not healing men has no argument. It is time for us to stop judging the spirituality and effectiveness of a church by the number of activities listed in the Sunday bulletin. Activity alone is never an indication of true spiritual life or accomplishment! The vital question is, what is the purpose of those activities and what are the results? Are we reaching men for Jesus Christ? Is our labor directed toward the salvation of souls and the transformation of lives? This is the evidence which we must present to the world and for this there is no substitute!

AN INEXHAUSTIBLE POWER

But there is yet a third lesson. The Church that Triumphs Must Rely Upon an Inexhaustible Power. Notice the rather ludicrous spectacle of this meeting in Jerusalem. Here, sitting cross-legged in a great semicircle, in an attitude of ecclesiastical solemnity, are the religious dignitaries. Before them, in the center, stand these two apostles and the unnamed man who had been healed. The contrast is striking. These three have no wealth. They have no social prominence. No political power stands behind them. They are, as verse 13 tells us, “unlearned and ignorant men.” These words are not used here in the sense in which we often use them today. The term “unlearned” means simply that they had no formal rabbinical training. The word translated “ignorant” was often used merely in the sense of a lay-person or common person as distinguished from one of special training or position. The thought is that the apostles were just common people.

How could they stand against such opposition? There is one answer. They relied upon an inexhaustible power, the power of the Risen Christ realized in their lives through the indwelling Spirit of God! The result was triumph! In verse 31 we read, “they spake the Word of God with boldness.” They spoke freely, clearly, fully. There was no stifling of the message, no hesitation. The power of God rested upon them!

But this is merely stating the result. Let us trace backward briefly and notice the factors which contributed to this result. We notice first that this powerful ministry of the Word was wholly the result of the activity of the Holy Spirit. Verse 31 says, “and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word.…” It was God at work and not men only! We must never forget this! These things cannot be done in the energy of the flesh. God’s power will be evidenced only when the Church is filled with the Spirit of God and is under his guidance and control!

Comment On The Sermon

The sermon “The Church That Triumphs” was nominated forCHRISTIANITY TODAY’s Select Sermon Series by Dr. Lloyd M. Perry, Professor of Practical Theology in Gordon Divinity School. His overcomment follows:

This sermon was selected because of its principles of sermon construction, persuasive appeal, practical application, progressive development, positive emphasis, pertinence to present-day living, and its plain presentation of biblical truth.

Unity of thought characterizes the content. One controlling assertion, phrased in the form of a proposition of ability serves to crystallize the content of the entire message: “The Church today can triumph.”

The introduction has its setting in the community. It makes a realistic appraisal of the Church as she stands in the midst of our present-day life. The sermon then proceeds to lead the reader from the immediate community to the cross of Christ. The language of the introduction stimulates interest since it employs life-situation terminology. It is phrased in terms of the modern American idiom.

The body of the message—consisting of the three lessons stated in alliterative form together with their development—is well proportioned, progressive, and easy to follow. These lessons are drawn directly from one passage of Scripture. This fact may well enhance the teaching value of the sermon. These main points of emphasis in the sermon are not only scripturally undergirded but are stated as pertinent truths applicable to the Church of our day.

The major illustrations represent different areas of interest. These include personal experience, war, missions, biography, evangelism, and biblical life. They are concise and stated in vivid language.

Application of the sermonic truths appears throughout the message. This tends to keep the interest. Although the primary emphasis within the sermon is the edification of the saints there is also material which may be used by the Holy Spirit for the salvation of sinners. The application in the conclusion crystallizes and re-emphasizes that which has permeated the sermon. The conclusion stimulates the reader, and encourages him to think upon his ways and to change them. He is prompted to cry out as did listeners to an earlier sermon, “What shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). The recapitulation of the lessons at the close of the message serves to fix the message in mind.

The biblical foundation, spiritual warmth, and directness of style gives the feeling that the sermon does not originate with the preacher, but that he is being used as a channel for a message which has a higher origin.

L.M.P.

But come back one step more. Here we come to the factor of prayer. In this same verse we read, “And when they had prayed … they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.…” Here are three great inseparables—the power of God, the filling of the Holy Spirit, and the exercise of prayer. “Ah”, we say, “but we do pray!” True, yet it isn’t the form of prayer but the attitude of the heart in prayer that is all-important! Is Jesus Christ everything to that praying heart?

We sense this in the prayer of these disciples. They had now returned to the company of believers. They had been commanded not to speak in Jesus’ name. Then they prayed, and the essence of their prayer was that God would enable them to be faithful and to be used for his glory! How easy to say, “Lord, bless the financial needs of our church, but I can’t tithe!” “Lord, how many children need the Gospel, but I can’t teach!” “Lord, there are so many homes without any contact with the church, but I can’t visit!” How often there is simply an unwillingness to be used of God as an instrument in the answering of the prayers we speak with our lips! No wonder there is often so little evidence of the power of God!

There is a tremendous challenge to us in the prayers of these men, but there is also wonderful encouragement. These who prayed and these who were so mightily filled with the Holy Spirit were just common men! D. L. Moody, who put his arms around two continents and drew them to Jesus Christ was just a common man, but he was a common man in the hands of God! This is at once the marvel of the grace of God and the glory of the Church—that common men can talk with God, and common men can be filled with his Spirit! And after all, are we not all just common men? But herein is our glory and our power, that even we, completely surrendered unto the Lordship of Jesus Christ, can know the inexhaustible power of the living God in our lives!

The Church, the Body of Christ, can triumph today, but we as individual members of the Church must learn anew these lessons and apply them to our own hearts! In recent days, nations have been forced to make “agonizing reappraisals” of their status in the world. May God give us grace to make an “agonizing reappraisal” of our own lives—to face our failures, to repent of our sin, and to surrender our lives wholly to the Lordship of Jesus Christ! May we be gripped by this irresistible compulsion; may we present before the world this irrefutable evidence; may we rely wholly upon the inexhaustible power of God in our lives! This, and this alone, is the means of triumph!

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

To understand the ecumenical situation, one must distinguish between the Ecumenical Movement, which as a mighty current flows through the whole of Christendom, and certain conspicuous organizations it has produced, the most important and ambitious of which is the World Council of Churches. The movement itself, however, is noticeable also in those churches which for doctrinal reasons are and will remain outside the WCC. It is a strong power in the Roman church, and it may well be that the Second “Ecumenical” Council of the Vatican will be more important to the whole of Christendom than many of the “ecumenical” gatherings we have witnessed in our lifetime. At any rate, it would be wise for us Protestants to ask ourselves why it is that the decisions of a Roman Council are of lasting authority and even importance to the non-Roman churches, while the proclamations of our ecumenical assemblies are practically forgotten the day after their publication. Who remembers still the Message of Evanston, 1954, or the Theses of the Lutheran World Federation of Minneapolis, 1955? It could also be that an evangelical church just by staying out of the WCC for doctrinal reasons is showing the greatest concern for the true unity of the Church and is thereby serving true ecumenicity.

BEGINNINGS OF ‘FAITH AND ORDER’

True ecumenicity does not ask for unity as such. Rather it asks for the unity of the Church. The Ecumenical Movement is essentially a longing for the reality of the Church of Christ, the Una Sancta which we all confess. “A process of inestimable consequence has set in. The Church is awakening in the souls.” Thus a great theologian of the Roman Catholic church in Germany, R. Guardini, has described in 1922 the beginning of that movement in his church. What is the Church? We must be able to ask this question in order to understand “the nature of the unity we seek.”

What, then, is the Church? “A seven-year-old child knows what the church is, namely, the holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their shepherd. For the children pray thus: ‘I believe in one holy Christian Church,’” says Luther. But when we theologians are asked to give a definition of the Una Sancta Catholica, our embarrassment is great. At the First World Conference on Faith and Order in Lausanne, 1927, it came as a great surprise to many delegates when Archbishop Germanos declared that the Eastern Orthodox church had no dogma on the Church beyond the words of the Creed, “I believe one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.” The question of the nature of the Church, he added, belongs to those subjects on which the Orthodox theologian is free to formulate an opinion. Even Rome has up to this day no dogma of the Church in a strict sense. There is a definition of the Church in the Catechismus Romanus, but the Catechism is not regarded as dogma. The attempt of the Vatican Council of 1870 to give a definition of the Church failed, and not only for lack of time. The “First Constitution of the Church of Christ” which resulted from the discussions contains only the doctrine of the papacy. It will be supplemented at the forthcoming Council by a “Second Constitution,” for which the material is now being prepared in Rome. Though the encyclical Mystici Corporis of 1943 may hint at what will be the content of the new definition, many questions for the time being are still open, as for example, the relationship of baptized heretics to the Church and the exact meaning of the designation of the Church as Body of Christ.

The first doctrinal statement on the nature of the Church ever made in Christendom was the Seventh Article of the Augsburg Confession, which has influenced the Anglican Article XIX and the corresponding articles of the various Reformed confessions. The Reformers had to show why they regarded themselves as being within the true Church in spite of their excommunication by the papacy. But theirs is not an exhaustive doctrine of the Church. It is certainly not accidental that much of the controversies within the Lutheran churches of the last century center around Article VII of the Augsburg Confession.

Today the great embarrassment with which all churches of Christendom face the problem of the nature of the Church finds expression in Report III of Lausanne, where the most divergent and even contradictory views on the Church, as held by the participating churches, are frankly and carefully listed so that the reader gets the impression that there is more disagreement than agreement. Accordingly, the views on “the unity we seek” were divergent and contradictory, as already the solemn statements show that were made by the Orthodox and the Lutheran delegations. In his biography of Bishop Brent, A. C. Zabriskie gives a vivid picture of how Bishop Brent and Dr. Garvie assured the dissenters, among whom there were also Anglicans, “that no one wanted to override their convictions, and persuaded them of the wisdom of assenting to statements to which they could subscribe even though they seemed not to go far enough” (p. 171). Hence the reports with the exception of one were not “adopted,” but “received.” This was the spirit of Lausanne as it was embodied in Charles Brent who had conceived the plan of a World Conference on Faith and Order at Edinburgh, 1910. Brent’s concluding words, as he neared the end of his “pilgrimage for unity” and stood at the gate of eternity, expressed his personal conviction: “We are looking forward to the day when all these struggles for unity will have been consummated—we cannot say when or how—but we look forward to the day when there will be a great world gathering representing all the churches to consider how they can best in their unified form fulfill their responsibility to God and to man.… I venture to say that we have had glimpses during this conference of such a gathering. His words were received with deep respect.

As I had to translate the speech, I stood beside him. I shall never forget the face of that saintly man who had to overcome the weakness of a failing heart. Eighteen months later he entered, at his beloved Lausanne, the peace and the unity of the Church Triumphant. To all who knew him, he was the embodiment of the Ecumenical Movement at its best just in the way in which he, as a man with strong Anglican convictions, repudiated union by compromise.

THE NEGOTIATORS OF UNIONS

That was “Faith and Order” more than 30 years ago. “This is a Conference about truth, not about reunion.… As we differ greatly about cardinal matters, some of us must be wrong, and all may be to some extent wrong.… We seek God’s truth about the whole of Christendom,” as another Anglican, Bishop Palmer of Bombay, put it at the beginning of his address on the highly controversial subject “The Church’s Ministry” (Faith and Order. Proceedings of the World Conference, Lausanne, Aug. 3–21, 1927, by H. N. Bate, ed., London, Student Christian Movement, 1927).

But the negotiators of unions were, of course, already present at Lausanne. The great problem of the Ecumenical Movement was, who would prevail—the negotiators or the seekers for truth?

THE ‘CONFERENCE’ METHOD

Ten years later, at Oxford and Edinburgh, when “Life and Work” and “Faith and Order” began to grow together into the World Council of Churches, it was clear that the future would belong to the practical work of uniting the churches. The Ecumenical Movement became in the Protestant churches a union movement on an unprecedented scale. The main reason for this was the strong desire to overcome splits and divisions, especially the crying need of some mission fields which were not prepared to wait until the theologians had solved the problems of Faith and Order. Another reason was the inability of the theologians to solve the problems which had not been solved at Lausanne and which, perhaps, are insoluble, at least with the means available. Already Brent had seen that the differences between the churches were much deeper than anybody had anticipated. Shortly before his death he declared that a comprehensive conference like Lausanne could never be repeated and that henceforth the work must concentrate on some very deep questions underlying the obvious dissents.

The problem has proved indeed to be much greater than it was, and still is, assumed to be in ecumenical circles. It will take at least a generation until Anglicans, Lutherans, and Presbyterians have reached in their own churches a new understanding of the Church, the Word of God, and the Sacraments. This is also the reason why the method of a “conference” is insufficient. Conferences are necessary to bring people together for a common work. They can do a lot of good. But no conference has ever produced an idea. In this respect we can learn from Rome. For 50 years since the end of the modernist controversy, the theologians in Rome have worked on the problem of the nature and authority of Holy Scripture. Now they are reaping the fruits of their quiet, patient work. The Church can wait—300 years she waited for the doctrine of Nicaea; the sect cannot wait because it has no future. Only the patient work of many scholars against the background of the apocalyptic terrors of our age will give us a new understanding of what Holy Scripture teaches of the Church of Christ and her unity.

THE SITUATION IN 1961

From here we look to the ecumenical situation of the year 1961 when the WCC will try to formulate anew its aims. The meeting of the Central Committee of St. Andrews has worked out the proposals which are now available in the Ecumenical Review (Oct. 1960). We discuss briefly two of them: (1) the tasks assigned to the Commission on Faith and Order and (2) the Basis of the World Council. Both are closely related.

As to the Commission on Faith and Order, the problem is whether this Commission should define for the WCC “the unity we seek.” Thus far the Council has abstained from giving such a definition, but has left it to each member church to understand the “unity which God wills for His Church” according to her own ecclesiological convictions. The main issue is whether “organic,” “churchly unity” should be aimed at by the World Council, or whether it should be satisfied with federation and cooperation. In other words, should the World Council envisage one united church or not?

The idea of a united church in which the existing churches would be integrated is favored by all the champions of church unions on the mission fields and in America. It corresponds to the “Findings of the Ecumenical Youth Assembly in Europe” which was held at Lausanne in 1960. It would be the logical consequence of the endorsem*nt of so many church unions by the World Council of Churches, especially since the Commission on Faith and Order has already, through “unofficial consultations” which henceforth would become “official,” assisted in the establishment of such unions. While men like Bishop Newbigin would ardently support the new course, Archbishop Fisher and Dr. Fry have expressed themselves more cautiously, the latter having warned against neglect of consensus of faith as precondition of unity, and the former having emphasized in a remarkable way “that God’s first will for His Church is the unity of spirit in the bond of peace, a unity compatible with a good deal of disunity of theological formulation or organizational rules.” One has the impression that here the realistic churchman speaks in view of a possible change of the relationship with Rome. Could it be that the proposal of a “fellowship of the churches” as a common front of Christendom against the antireligious and anti-Christian forces of our age, made by the Ecumenical Patriarch in 1920, will be revived in a form agreeable even to Rome? These are the two possibilities before those who in New Delhi have to decide the future of the World Council of Churches.

Whatever the outcome of the debate at New Delhi will be (the outcome will certainly not be a clear decision, but a compromise), it will not mean a change in the ecumenical policy of the Protestant churches within the WCC. They will go on in their process of unification. And to them the Faith and Order Commission will give both the program and, through consultation, the directives. “The Commission on Faith and Order understands that the unity which is both God’s will and His gift to His Church is one which brings all in each place who confess Christ Jesus as Lord into a fully committed fellowship with one another through one baptism into Him, holding the one apostolic faith, preaching the one Gospel and breaking the one bread … and which at the same time unites them with the whole Christian fellowship in all places and all ages in such ways that ministry and members are acknowledged by all and that all can act and speak together.” This statement in the Report for New Delhi sounds very good. This is indeed the unity of Christ’s Church: One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Gospel, one sacrament of Holy Communion. The question is: What do we mean by that? What does it mean to recognize Christ Jesus as “Lord”? Have we one Lord, if some of us understand “Lord” in the sense of the Creeds and the New Testament as “Kyrios,” God as he reveals himself, God of God, very God of very God, and others, while attributing to Jesus Christ authority, are not prepared to ascribe to him the full divinity? Have we one apostolic faith and one Gospel if we allow so much “reasonable liberty” in the interpretation of Scripture that some deny the atoning sacrifice of Christ and “demythologize” the Gospel of Christmas and Easter to such a degree that they deny the New Testament message of the Virgin Birth and the Empty Sepulchre? Or let us take the example of the “one baptism” which the Nicene Creed confesses on the basis of Ephesians 4:5. How can we overcome the tragic situation that some regard baptism of infants as necessary and others regard it as invalid? that to some baptism is the washing of regeneration in the strict sense of an instrument and to others it is a sign of regeneration? Most certainly we cannot overcome this by that compromise suggested for the Church of North India-Pakistan and other union churches and already practiced in similar churches where both infant and “believer’s” baptism are recognized as alternatives. The thesis on “Baptism in Christ” adopted by the Faith and Order Conference at Oberlin, 1957, also amounts to the same thing. It cannot give a solution but simply claims “our deep unity in baptism” in spite of the existing differences. This “unity” includes obviously those also who do not practice any sacrament. The theses of Oberlin on baptism and the Table of the Lord could be adopted only because the Quakers did not protest against them but frankly stated that they interpreted them in accord with their belief in the non-necessity of outward rites and elements (Report, p. 205). We are obliged to honor any such serious conviction. But we must ask whether we honestly can claim fellowship “through one baptism” with people who refuse to be baptized. Has not the time come when the WCC and its National Councils must declare that this is a state of untruthfulness which must come to an end? Will the Commission on Faith and Order understand that no true unity can ever be attained through its present methods of compromise?

The really tragic situation of the WCC becomes obvious if we consider the proposed alteration of its “Basis.” The present Basis reads: “The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches which accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour.” Nobody was happy about this formula which had been taken over from the old World Conference on Faith and Order and which goes back to the nineteenth century when the term “to accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour” was used against Unitarians and others who denied the full divinity of Christ. It was a carelessly framed formula, meant to imply the historic Trinitarian faith but proving to be Christologically insufficient because it did not do justice to the historic doctrine of the God-Man Jesus Christ. In Evanston it was interpreted as implying the doctrine of the Trinity. A proposal made by the bishops of Norway could not be dealt with at that time for constitutional reasons. They suggested speaking of “churches which, according to the Holy Scriptures, confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.” This has now been incorporated into the text recommended to the Assembly at New Delhi: “The WCC is a fellowship of churches which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” This formula sounds better. But on closer examination it cannot be regarded as a real improvement because it lacks clarity and can be interpreted in various ways. What does “according to the Scriptures” mean? It means neither the sola scriptura of the Reformation nor the recognition of the doctrine held by our Lord and his apostles, by all Catholic churches East and West and by all churches of the Reformation, that Holy Scripture is the Word of God given by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Everybody can understand the phrase according to his pleasure. The same lack of clarity is obvious in its Christology: “God and Saviour,” which can be accepted by all Monophysites and Docetists, does not fully render the orthodox Christology. If the “Basis” were to express the doctrine of the Trinity, “the One God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” could not be mentioned only in a doxological formula, which again anybody can interpret as he pleases, even in the sense of a modalistic or economic trinity. Moreover, if the Trinity were to be referred to as an object of faith, it had to be mentioned together with the Person of Christ as that which the churches “confess.” The formula, as it reads now, is obviously a compromise, theologically quite insufficient and in its ambiguity misleading.

The confusion is not the fault only of the present leadership of the WCC. If this elite of Protestant churchmanship and theology is not able to produce anything better, then the fault cannot be in individuals only. The present writer, who has been active in the World Conference on Faith and Order for ten years, who has translated thousands of pages of ecumenical documents and papers and has himself written repeatedly on these questions, has come to the conviction that the reason for our inability to express doctrinal consensus is to be found in the tragic fact that modern Protestantism has lost, along with the understanding of the dogma of the Church, in her nature, her function, and her content, the ability to think dogmatically, that is, to think in terms of a trans-subjective truth which is given to us in the revelation of God. This is also the reason we are no longer able to reject error and heresy. Our fathers at the time of the Reformation had that ability. In spite of all the divisions and controversies that divided sixteenth century Christendom, there was the common Christian possession of “the sublime articles concerning the divine majesty,” that is, the doctrines of the Trinity and the Person of Christ “concerning which,” as Luther put it, “there is no contention or dispute, since we on either side confess them.” And, despite the various views of the interpretation of Scripture, there was on all sides the conviction that Holy Scripture is God’s Word and that nobody must teach against it. As long as we have not regained that amount of consensus in the recognition of an objective truth that is binding on us all, our endeavors to find agreement on matters of Faith and Order will only increase the doubts of our relativistic theologies and the disorder of present-day Christendom. The World Conference of Lausanne recommended as minimum requirement of unity the common acceptance of the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creeds. That the Nicene Creed should become the basis of the WCC was suggested in a recommendation for Amsterdam, 1948 (“The Universal Church in God’s Design. An Ecumenical Study Prepared under the Auspices of the WCC,” 1948, pp. 196 f.). Modern Protestantism is no longer able to confess this Creed which all great Protestant churches theoretically have in common with all Catholic churches East and West. Should ever the day come when this great ecumenical Creed which is thoroughly biblical, as it establishes the authority of the Scriptures, becomes again a living confession, there will be a basis for a sound ecumenical movement in a federation of Christian churches.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.