Page 6244 – Christianity Today (2024)

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Calvin on the papacy—Daniel and Paul foretold that Antichrist would sit in the temple of God (Dan. 9:27; 2 Thess. 2:4); we regard the Roman Pontiff as the leader and standard-bearer of that wicked and abominable kingdom. By placing his seat in the temple of God, it is intimated that his kingdom would not be such as to destroy the name either of Christ or of his Church. Hence, then, it is obvious that we do not at all deny that churches remain under his tyranny; churches, however, which by sacrilegious impiety he has profaned, by cruel domination has oppressed, by evil and deadly doctrines like poisoned potions has corrupted and almost slain; churches where Christ lies half-buried, the gospel is suppressed, piety is put to flight, and the worship of God almost abolished; where, in short, all things are in such disorder as to present the appearance of Babylon rather than the holy city of God (Institutes, II, IV, ii, 12).

LUTHER ON THE POPE—We regard and condemn both the pope and the Turk as the very Antichrist … (Vol. II, p. 181). It is impossible for the tyranny of the popes to continue any longer, for Rome is so tainted with every kind of wickedness that it cannot be any worse unless it becomes hell itself … (II, 220).… His Most Execrable Lordship, the pope … (II, 151). Our doctrine frees all nations from the torture and tyranny of Satan, from sin, from eternal death, from the countless monstrosities of the pope, and from the notoriously heavy burden of conscience (III, 342).—Luther’s Works, ed. by Jaroslav Pelikan, Concordia, 1960.

WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES—We beg your eminence to accept the expression of our deeply felt sympathy on the decease of Pope John XXIII, who has contributed so greatly to the new brotherly relationships of the Churches believing in the one Lord. May he rest in peace and his works be fulfilled.—Cable to Cardinal Bea, president of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, by Dr. FRANKLIN CLARK FRY, chairman of the Council’s Central Committee; Dr. ERNEST A. PAYNE, vice-chairman; and Dr. W. A. VISSER ’T HOOFT, WCC general secretary.

LUTHERAN WORLD FEDERATION—The hearts of Christians of every confession are united to a degree that is unique for many centuries at the death of the universally esteemed and beloved John XXIII, the Pope of Unity. Thanks to God who gave him to our generation. All of us would have wished for him to live on, throwing open doors of understanding and thawing the antagonisms that have separated Christian brethren. Our prayer is that the warmth of his spirit will not he chilled and the height of his vision will not shrink.—Franklin Clark Fry, president, Lutheran World Federation, the world’s largest Protestant grouping.

A MAN OF WIDE VISION—I feel that Pope John XXIII was a very aggressive and effective leader of his people. He was sincerely interested in the whole matter of world peace. He was a man of wide vision who demonstrated his insight to the critical condition of a world in need.—K. OWEN WHITE, president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

THE DIVINE SPARK—He was the chosen leader of world Catholicism, but his concern for the human spirit transcended all boundaries of belief or geography.… To him the divine spark which unites men would ultimately prove more enduring than the forces which divide.—President JOHN F. KENNEDY.

OUT OF THE KREMLIN—We retain good memories of John XXIII, whose fruitful activities for the maintenance and strengthening of peace earned him wide recognition and won him the respect of peace-loving peoples.—Premier NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV.

MAN OF THE YEAR—He has demonstrated such warmth, simplicity and charm that he has won the hearts of Catholics, Protestants and non-Christians alike.—Time magazine, saluting Pope John as “Man of the Year” in 1962, and as the most popular pontiff of modern times and perhaps ever.

A WORLD SPIRIT—Of all the leaders in the world at this moment, I know of none who so radiates a sense of paternal regard for all God’s children as Pope John XXIII.—ADLAI E. STEVENSON, United States ambassador to the United Nations, in a talk at Notre Dame University.

ABLE ARBITER—The death of Pope John is a loss not only to the Roman Catholic Church, but to a fragmented and anxious world needing meaning and unity in the midst of chaos. Pope John’s churchmanship and diplomacy made it possible for him to be an arbiter among the most divergent points of view.—EUGENE CARSON BLAKE, stated clerk of The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.

A RESURRECTION OF LOVE—The Pope seemed to be struggling to resurrect the message of Christian love from the grave of institutional absolutism where it has long been buried. I hope that the new pope will continue in this wise course. Pope John was more interested in people than in ritual, forms, and ceremonies. He was a kindly and earthy human being who had entered the door of friendship with other churches. I hope this will eventually lead to full religious freedom for those who have differing emphases.—GLENN ARCHER, Protestants and Other Americans United.

DIFFERENCES REMAIN—Although our beliefs differ sharply the Bible teaches us to mourn with those who mourn, so we share the sorrow of our Roman Catholic friends in the loss of their dedicated leader, Pope John XXIII.—ROBERT COOK, president, National Association of Evangelicals.

MORE THAN CHARITY—Pope John’s reform movement within his own church has confronted evangelicals with the prime necessity of reaffirming basic Reformation principles in the context of our modern, scientific-secular age. His vision of amity via conformity to Roman Catholic dogma, however, served only to reinforce the wall of separation between Roman Catholic tradition and classic evangelical Christianity. It will certainly take much more than his admirable spirit of charity to break down that wall.—STUART GARVER, Christ’s Mission.

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Not For The Faint Of Heart

Overkill and Megalove, by Norman Corwin (World, 1963, 114 pp., $3.50), and Hostage America, by Robert A. Dentler and Phillips Cutright (Beacon Press, 1963, 167 pp., $3.95), are reviewed by Earle E. Cairns, chairman of the Department of History and Political Science, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

These books are for those who do not panic easily but want to consider the horrors of nuclear war and the possible alternatives. Neither pessimistic negativism nor optimistic positivism appeals to these authors. They face the possibility of civilization’s disappearing in a nuclear holocaust but suggest a possibility of constructive action to meet the challenge by means other than unilateral or total disarmament, or a mad rush to find the ultimate weapon first. Corwin’s vision is less practical than that of Dentler and Cutright, but both books give evidence of thorough research. Both reduce nuclear warfare to its impact upon particular economic, religious, and political groups, and especially upon the individual.

Corwin’s skills in communications media are used negatively to pillory defenders of nuclear war in savage, satirical, and at times crude, at other times basically religious (pp. 12, 18, 36), poetry. He then develops his positive vision in “Could Be,” originally written for the United Nations, which is a picture of the peaceful constructive use of nuclear power by international cooperative effort. This could become the moral equivalent of war.

The two sociologists, Dentler and Cutright, consider America a hostage to war since the Russian explosion of a hydrogen bomb in August, 1953. This thesis leads them to consider the results, in social and individual terms, of a probable nuclear attack upon seventy urban areas.

After considering five ways in which our theory of deterrence might lead to thermonuclear war, they point out the enormous loss of life and the religious, economic, and political maladjustments that a nuclear strike would bring. They close the first chapter with a statement on the impracticality of civil defense and shelters: an enemy would merely increase the megatonnage needed for destruction of his foe. The necessary 20,000 megatons are already available even if we exclude land- or submarine-based missiles. In the second chapter the authors conclude that panic, anxieties in shelter life, and physical difficulties (with chemical gases, high humidity, and temperatures), as well as the breakdown of leadership, might make life intolerable in the necessary six-month period in the shelter. The third chapter demonstrates poor chances for long-term recovery of the nation in terms of health, the economy, and democracy within five to fifteen years of the attack.

This gloomy picture is offset in the final chapter by their hope for a possible Nuclear Neutralization Pact (pp. 102, 103) to ban production, testing, and use of nuclear weapons or delivery systems. Nations could instead use conventional forces to carry on limited warfare. Pressure by individual citizens could well achieve this.

Dentler and Cutright provide the practical data pointing up the problem of nuclear war; Corwin provides the dynamic and the vision. The former are more realistic in their approach to a possible solution which citizen pressure might bring in the policies of the two nuclear giants. The evangelical, who cannot have a lasting pessimism concerning the future since it is in God’s sovereign control, can yet realistically support the limited goals which Dentler and Cutright suggest. It is more realistic than total or unilateral disarmament or the escalation of nuclear weapons.

EARLE E. CAIRNS

Christian Writers

Books with Men Behind Them, by Edmund Fuller (Random House, 1962, 240 pp., $3.95), is reviewed by D. Bruce Lockerbie, chairman of the English Department, The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York.

In Books with Men Behind Them critic Edmund Fuller has written a companion volume to his Man in Modern Fiction, published in 1958. The earlier work established as Fuller’s fundamental premise the Christian view of man “as a created being, with an actual or potential relationship to his Creator,” as “inherently imperfect, but with immense possibilities for redemption and reconciliation with his Creator.”

Books with Men Behind Them differs from its predecessor, although it shares the same vision of man. In his new hook Fuller writes of authors he admires, and except for an unnecessary chapter, “The Post-Chatterley Deluge,” which he hoped would link his two books, he has produced an exceptionally solid and readable study of significant modern writers. Fuller concentrates on seven contemporaries, the latter four of whom have special interest to Christian readers: Thornton Wilder, Gladys Schmitt, C. P. Snow, Alan Paton, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams.

Fuller shares the view generally accepted among evangelicals, that Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country is the paramount Christian novel of our time. However most of the chapter on Paton considers his lesser-known novel, Too Late the Phalerope, which Fuller compares with The Scarlet Letter and Crime and Punishment. In his dealings with sin and justification through grace, Paton’s commitment to Christian beliefs is evident throughout both books.

C. S. Lewis is “the Christian spaceman,” and it is the Lewis trilogy of Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength that Fuller analyzes. Lewis has suggested, as have other writers before him, that the man in space will not find that God has changed. He will find, in Fuller’s words, that “if, elsewhere, there are other beings who have fallen, before or since man’s fall, it is likely that God will have devised the appropriate means for their redemption, though not necessarily the same as the means for ours.”

J. R. R. Tolkien, to whom Lewis dedicated The Screwtape Letters, and Charles Williams have never acquired the popular reception given to Lewis. Tolkien’s writings are not unrecognized, but that recognition has been held almost clandestinely by his admirers. The Hobbit and the other volumes of his four-part cycle, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, remind Fuller of Wagner’s Ring music drama. Williams, like Lewis, has a mixed audience: he is known as scholar (for his Dante studies), as popular theologian (The Descent of the Dove), and as novelist. These varied skills he combines in fiction such as Shadows of Ecstasy, War in Heaven, and All Hallows’ Eve—works strange enough to evoke from Fuller this oddity: “If you can imagine grafting a Dorothy Sayers detective story onto the Apocalypse of St. John, the resulting fruit might be like a Charles Williams novel.”

Books with Men Behind Them possesses its own merit as criticism, to be sure, but its value is heightened by the fact that the books and the men it spotlights are worthy of consideration.

D. BRUCE LOCKERBIE

For The Long Hike

Hurdles to Heaven, by Brian Whitlow (Harper & Row, 1963, 155 pp., $3), is reviewed by Karl A. Olsson, president, North Park College, Chicago, Illinois.

Dean Whitlow’s book on the seven capital sins uses a trope from the running track or perhaps from a journey to suggest its character. Life is like a race or a pilgrimage, and only he who finishes the course keeps the faith. In a day of what might be called equestrian theology, this is refreshing. We are not given any mad flights to the thunder of hooves or any leaps into the abyss. With Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress we walk or lope. And the temptations we encounter are stiles we climb over on our way.

This pedestrian ethic, and I use the term as a commendation, is directed toward everyman in the Church. It is not without significance that Dean Whitlow has already written a book in which the worship needs of everyman are met. He now faces the persistent problems in our common moral life. No one who reads the book can fail to be impressed by the good gray quality of its diagnosis and its cure.

The author’s procedure is thorough and helpful. After a brief historical account of the origins of the seven sins in the Church, he proceeds to an analysis of each in terms of its proliferations. The assumption is that the seven capital sins are mothers with whole broods of dismal progeny. Dean Whitlow leaves none unaccounted for. He then deals with the Christian foil for the sins, showing how the corresponding virtues stem from the New Testament and particularly from the teaching of our Lord.

In working out the pattern of the sins the author not only ranges widely and perceptively in the world of books (Dostoyevsky, Eliot, Tolstoy, Marlowe, Gregory, Wouk), but also constructs his own parables in which the capital transgressions are given arms and legs and a face and are shown walking about in the world we know. At the end of each chapter are appropriate quotations from Scriptures and sensitively chosen prayers to accompany the Christian sojourner on his way to heaven.

KARL A. OLSSON

Twin Cities?

The Hemlock and the Cross, by Geddes MacGregor (J. B. Lippincott, 1963, 255 pp., $5.50), is reviewed by C. Gregg Singer, professor of history, Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.

Reading for Perspective

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S REVIEW EDITORS CALL ATTENTION TO THESE NEW TITLES:

★ Man in the Struggle for Peace, by Charles Malik (Harper & Row, $5). Prominent Christian statesman lays strategy for a distinctively Western revolution which will prepare the world for peace as well as for war.

★ The Christian Mind, by Harry Blamires (Seabury, $3.50). The author urges that there is no longer a Christian mind, but only Christians saturated with secularism.

★ Things Most Surely Believed, edited by Clarence S. Roddy (Revell, $3.95). The faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary in a fifteen-voice symposium declares its understanding of and commitment to the great affirmations of the Christian faith.

In this book Geddes MacGregor, dean of the Graduate School of Religion in the University of Southern California, raises once more the great question which Tertullian posed for the Church of his day: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” MacGregor offers to the Church of the twentieth century a very different answer from that which Tertullian gave. In place of the insistence that the Academy and Jerusalem have nothing in common, he insists that they are mutually dependent; and the very name of this book signifies the close relationship which he finds existing between Christianity and humanism. The hemlock signifies the manner in which Socrates, the real founder of humanism, died; the Cross, of course, signifies the death of Jesus Christ. His conclusion is that the humanism which had its origin in the method and teachings of Socrates and the teachings of Christ are virtually wedded to one another and have much in common. “The Cross, in its march through the Mediterranean, could not help picking up bits of the hemlock on its travels” (pp. 131, 132). The result of this process has been an indissoluble wedding between Christianity and humanism, and “indeed there is no reason for wishing to dissolve it.” Such statements are indicative of the spirit of the work.

While MacGregor does not deny the supernatural claims of Christianity, it is quite clear that in his thinking supernaturalism is not that of the Scriptures. There is no recognition of the uniqueness of the Christian faith, or of the authority of the Scriptures. There seems to be no awareness of the fact that even in the ancient Church Augustine set forth a third approach to the problem of classical culture quite different from both that of the school at Alexandria and that of Tertullian, in which he insisted that all human learning must be brought into captivity to Jesus Christ and the Word of God. It is unfortunate, and quite misleading, when MacGregor claims Augustine for his own position.

There is value in this book, but it fails to sharpen our appreciation for historic Christianity and it paints humanism in terms of which it is hardly deserving. In order to achieve a synthesis between the two, Professor MacGregor does justice to neither the Cross nor the hemlock.

C. GREGG SINGER

Bits And Gems

The Place of Understanding, and other papers, by Nathaniel Micklem (Geoffrey Bles, 1963, 177 pp., 16s.), is reviewed by Martin H. Cressey, minister, St. Columba’s Presbyterian Church, Coventry, England.

“The Gospel is not at all indefinite, but it is to be spiritually apprehended and never conclusively defined” (p. 12); “An undogmatic faith is sure to be invertebrate, and certainly it is not historic Christianity” (p. 45); “the ideals and principles of politics, as I suppose, point to the transcendent, the ultimate, the Being whom we call God” (p. 82).

These three quotations may serve as clues to the many-sided writings of the former principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, represented in this volume by lectures, articles, and portions of earlier books. Here is comment on the religion of Shelley, some plain speaking on the centrality of the figure of the historic Jesus, and some wise discussion of international law and “Politics and Religion.” On this last Dr. Micklem says some things highly relevant to current controversies about the state’s recognition of God, about the difference between “the religion of the religious” (in the West, organized Christianity) and what he calls “the religion of the people.”

The more philosophical writing, including the piece which gives the book its title, are more in the manner of idealism than will appeal to present-day Oxford—but this may not be a bad thing!

MARTIN H. CRESSEY

A Two-Edged Method

Karl Barth’s Theological Method, by Gordon Clark (Presbyterian & Reformed, 1963, $5), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, professor of the philosophy of religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

Evangelicals have not found it easy to survey the works of Basel’s famous theologian with objectivity. Dr. Gordon Clark has in this carefully reasoned volume avoided the tendency to dismiss Barth with a facile: “He is Kantian; he is not Reformed; the truth is not in him.” The work seeks to investigate the method of Barth, rather than his treatment of specific doctrines of the Christian creed. On the positive side, Professor Clark finds Barth to be systematic and logical, although he feels that in the Kircheliche Dogmatik the Swiss theologian restricts unduly the field of the norm of logic (p. 59). He applauds his criticisms of “the immanentism, the optimism, and the humanism” of nineteenth-century “liberal” Protestantism (p. 4). He likes Barth’s rejection of mysticism upon the ground of its irrationality (p. 117) and welcomes his attempt to maintain the integrity of reason as an instrument for the exploration and elaboration of theological truth.

At the same time, Dr. Clark calls many of Barth’s procedures and conclusions into question. He thinks that Barth goes too far in denouncing philosophy as “a game of wits” (p. 84), and that he dismisses unbelief too easily. He feels that Barth’s system does in essence deny the imago dei, and that his method, while asserting logic and rationalism, degenerates into irrationalism as it faces certain vital problems.

Perhaps his strongest objection to Barth’s Dogmatik as a whole concerns Barth’s view of revelation. Allowing that Barth’s theology may rightfully be termed a “theology of the Word,” he yet finds Barth equivocal in his definition of revelation. That is, in his downgrading of all language and verbalization (done in the name of faith) (p. 120), he elaborates an unbiblical form of epistemology (p. 127) and undercuts the factuality of Scripture, rendering it essentially wordless (p. 173).

It seems clear that Dr. Clark is dissatisfied with Barth’s attempts to evade certain questions which ought to be controversial. For example, he dislikes the tendency of the Swiss theologian to substitute the formula “capacity for error” for “fallibility” (pp. 195 f.) and his attempt to substitute the term “saga” for “myth.” Barth seems to him to embed two basic errors in his theology: that of a “wordless religion” and that of an implicit universalism (pp. 220 ff.).

This volume is a wholesome contribution to the literature relating to Karl Barth and his theology. It is somewhat less sanguine than Professor Berkouwer’s The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth. One cannot characterize it as easy reading; but the thoroughness of its conclusions will reward the careful reader. Its appeal to Calvin’s Institutes as normative for theology may seem to some readers too frequent and too thoroughgoing. But many will applaud the author’s loyalty to the historic Christian faith.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Recognizing Revelation

Twentieth Century Religious Thought: The Frontiers of Philosophy and Theology, 1900–1960, by John Macquarrie (Harper & Row, 1963, 415 pp., $5) is reviewed by James Daane, editorial associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This book traverses that corridor where the theology and philosophy of 1900–1960 met, touched, and influenced each other. The number of thinkers treated is almost legion, and the number of conflicting answers given life’s deepest problems recalls Tennyson’s “our little systems have their day, they have their day and cease to be.” Though the point is not made, the book is a warning against the folly of becoming a passionate disciple of some latest school of thought. What is modern in thought is not long thought of as modern.

Considering the mass of material to be shaped into manageable limits and within them the difficulty of being both adequate and lucid, Macquarrie, professor of systematic theology at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, has done admirably well. The book is fine for quick reference; but it is more, for it shows movements and alterations of religious and philosophical thinking, particularly as the latter influenced the former in the twentieth century.

The book’s one real weakness stems not from lack of competence but from its accepted canon of evaluation. Macquarrie’s concern is to retain—against encroachments in recent theology—a place for reason in religious understanding. This means for Macquarrie not, as in Brunner, Barth, and their like, the right of reason to exercise itself within a by-faith-accepted divine revelation. Macquarrie insists that this is all too little, and he contends for the right of reason to sift, test, question, and judge the knowledge content of revelation. This rational critique of revelation, according to Macquarrie, must “always” take place “before what is given [in revelation] can be known.”

The current popularity of Barth, Brunner, Cullman, and even Bultmann, is said to stem from their acceptance of an “absolute divine revelation” at the center of theology, which Macquarrie scores as a “returning to a more dogmatic type of theology” and an appeal “to those traditionalist and obscurantist elements in the Church who are only too glad to escape the philosophical problems which contemporary thought poses for the Christian religion.” This reinstatement of an absolute, exclusive, and unique divine revelation at the heart of theology, Macquarrie describes with some passion as an act of “arrogance.”

The author urges that “we must submit it [revelation] to the scrutiny of reason, both theoretical and practical,” and he criticizes Barth and Brunner because, although they “do indeed give a place to reason and philosophy in theology,” they give it “a lowly place which is entirely subordinate to the sovereign word of God.” “In the last resort,” claims Macquarrie, “one is bound to say that the revelation is accepted, after it has been tested in every way, it wins the allegiance of reason and conscience.”

Macquarrie asserts, “We do not think that there is anything in the least impious in our demand that our critical faculties should be directed upon the revelation itself.” Perhaps not. But there is something logically irrational in the attempt to combine his view of the function of critical reason upon revelation with his other views that the knowledge given in revelation is “a gift rather than something that we have gained by our own efforts,” and that “in any revelatory experience, man cannot be other than submissive before the numinous presence.” The experience of knowing God in revelation cannot be both a submissive act of accepting such knowledge as a gift and an experience in which revelation must be sifted, tested, and questioned “before what is given can be known.” This is simply confusion of thought, one which does not lend credence to his insistence that we “must question the revelation itself” to determine whether it really was a “revelation or only an illusion” and that “this questioning must be done by the light of reason and such human wisdom as the man may possess.”

If Macquarrie’s otherwise excellent book demonstrates anything, it is that the theological and philosophical thinking of the last sixty years does anything but suggest that “the light of reason and such human wisdom as (the) man may possess” are equal to the task of finding the truth in a divine revelation which is less than absolute. We may agree with Macquarrie when he resolutely opposes the tendency to undervalue reason (p. 333), but his own book shows the folly of entertaining any hope for a Reason which is not “entirely subordinate to the sovereign word of God.” The only alternatives are either “that the divine revelation puts us in question, so that our attitude must be one of unquestioning acceptance and obedience [which Macquarrie rejects],” or a reason that autonomously behaves in the contradictory, ambiguous fashion his book so clearly portrays as having in fact occurred during the last sixty years.

JAMES DAANE

Meet The Doer

What Jesus Did, by Theodore Parker Ferris (Oxford, 1963, 131 pp., $3.25), is reviewed by John T. Sandlund, minister, River Road United Presbyterian Church, Washington, D. C.

This book is to be commended for the gracious way in which it introduces Jesus as a person one would want to know. The author seeks to do this through the actions of Jesus, rather than His words. As an introduction, however, it leaves conclusions that parts of Scripture are more imaginative than accurate reporting and comment. The author believes that Jesus was God incarnate, but his “exercise in devotion” suggests a Christology below the standards of Anglican doctrine. In spite of this serious deficiency, however, we recognize the practical insights and helps, even from unorthodox observations, of this famed preacher whose gifts and graces are so attractive.

JOHN T. SANDLUND

Not By Drill

Teaching Our Faith in God: Methods and Meaning of Christian Education, by L. Harold DeWolf (Abingdon, 1963, 188 pp., $3.75), is reviewed by D. G. Stewart, professor of Christian education, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, California.

This book is a compilation of several papers and lectures of L. Harold DeWolf, professor of theology at Boston University School of Theology. An introductory chapter defines Christian education as the nurture of the Christian life, of which the central point or “magnetic pole” is God. The goal is “relating the pupil to God in glad, obedient faith” (p. 23)—a departure from contemporary content-centered, group-centered, and church-centered emphases.

The Christian life, DeWolf insists, “cannot be taught by any human teacher” (p. 38) or imposed by drill in characteristic habits and attitudes; it is rather “characterized by faith, that is, the total commitment of self to God” (p. 39). Chapter three contains the sequence of instruction by which this is accomplished, with an insistence on presentation of “the whole faith” at every age level. How the author proposes to accomplish this (pp. 47–54) may seem inadequately demonstrated in the relatively short space he devotes to it.

In chapters four through seven one detects a major aspect of the author’s total thesis, namely, that the doctrine of the triune God is the clue to Christian education. It comprises a corrective for doctrinal distortions on the one hand and an adequate summary of the Bible’s message on the other. The chapter on the Holy Spirit is fresh and contributes a much-needed emphasis in Christian education.

The remaining section of the book is concerned with sin, the Church, the world, and the centrality of Christian education. The closing chapter is interesting to the educational reader as a theologian’s point of view. However, the devotion of only a page and a half to “evangelism” as a subject to which Christian education is related seems emblematic of the confusion in which theological scholars find themselves, notwithstanding the fact that Christian education’s primary concern is interpreted as “relating the pupil to God in glad, obedient faith.”

D. G. STEWART

Two Spades

Archaeology and the Old Testament World, by John Gray (Thomas Nelson, 1962, 256 pp., $6.50; 30s.), and Archaeology and the New Testament, by Merrill F. Unger (Zondervan, 1962, 350 pp., $4.95), are reviewed by Bastiaan Van Elderen, associate professor of New Testament, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The two books under review present the reader with the contributions of archaeology to a greater understanding of the Bible and its background. However, they diverge considerably in approach to and achievement of this aim. Not only do these two authors deal with two different parts of the Bible, but they proceed from two distinct and opposing attitudes and stances toward the Bible.

John Gray, lecturer at Aberdeen University, is the author of Archaeology and the Old Testament World. His familiarity with the Ancient Near East and scholarly research in Old Testament well qualify him to attempt this reconstruction of Israel’s historical and cultural environment. Through a study of ancient monuments and texts he describes the institutions and social conventions of the Ancient Near East. Gray has a vast knowledge of the field and penetrating insights, and provides a valuable sourcebook for these areas.

Merrill F. Unger, professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, has written Archaeology and the New Testament, a companion volume to his earlier Archaeology and the Old Testament. This volume gives the archaeological, historical, and geographical setting of the narrative portions of the New Testament. Unger begins his presentation with a brief but lucid description of the complicated political situation in Palestine from the time of Alexander the Great to the New Testament period. The succeeding chapters follow the New Testament narrative and amplify these accounts with relevant historical and archaeological data. An amazing amount of material has been marshaled in this way, and the documentation in the footnotes shows extensive reading on the part of the author. On the other hand, this work has somewhat of an eclectic nature and shows a heavy reliance on secondary sources. Actually, some chapters are more up to date than others, but usually the latest sources quoted or evidence cited is dated about 1957—the one major exception being the section on the Gospel of Thomas (pp. 92–94), which appears to be a later addition. However, the bibliography lists books as late as 1961, many of which are not cited in the text.

In his opening chapter Unger sets forth the orthodox opinion on biblical inspiration and expresses his agreement with it: “… the New Testament (as well as the Old) is God-breathed and without error or mistake in the original autographa.… Thus Scripture … is inspired in a unique way. The product itself is accordingly unique and on a different plane from any other writing, sacred or secular” (p. 16). No such statement of presupposition is found in Gray’s work, but one soon becomes aware that Scripture for him is neither unique nor on a different plane from other literature, but must be treated and controlled in the same way as any other body of literature. The exact nature of the authority of Scripture is neither explicit nor implicit in Gray’s work. Consequently, he has no difficulty accepting questionable critical hypotheses, such as the Kenite origin of Yahweh worship (pp. 14 f.), Canaanite prototype of the Feast of Tabernacles (p. 18), eclectic nature of Hebrew ritual, thought, and literature (pp. 42 ff., 82 ff.), unique role of Amos in the political and religious consciousness of Israel (pp. 120, 179). Admittedly, there are progression and development to be noted in the Old Testament, but throughout the account the word and act of God are unique, authoritative, and revelatory.

The presupposition with which Unger begins is commendable. However, the problem arises as to the role of archaeology in terms of this presupposition. Unger answers this as follows: “The role which archaeology is performing in New Testament research (as well as that of Old Testament) in expediting scientific study, balancing critical theory, illustrating, elucidating, supplementing and authenticating historical and cultural backgrounds, constitutes the one bright spot in the future of criticism of the Sacred Oracles” (p. 25). An application of this is seen in the preceding paragraph, where Unger writes: “While difficulties still persist, archaeology has in numerous cases vindicated the New Testament, particularly Luke.” The use of the terms “authentication,” “vindication,” or “confirmation” is questionable. At best, this should be considered a secondary role of archaeology, since Scripture does not require such vindication. Confidence in the trustworthiness and faith in the truth of Scripture do not depend upon or await the results of archaeological and historical research. As a result, sometimes Unger seems to overstate his case—e.g., in connection with the identification of the scene of the demoniac’s healing, he writes: “The Revised Standard Version in Matthew 8:28 correctly connects the ministry of Christ to the demoniac with Gadara, but also anomalously and certainly incorrectly connects it with Gerasa (Jerash) in Mark 5:1 and Luke 8:26 (‘the country of the Gerasenes’)” (p. 141). The RSV is simply reflecting the situation existing in the best manuscripts and surely does not deserve to be impugned in this way, and the evidence hardly warrants Unger’s dogmatic conclusion. The encyclopedic nature of Unger’s work sometimes results in unevenness and mild inconsistency—e.g., on page 22 he refers to the phenomenal discovery of the Bodmer papyri, but in the section beginning on page 331 in which he discusses “more recent New Testament papyri discoveries” he fails to mention these. On page 19 he mentions that there are 63 papyri witnesses to the New Testament text. The first of the biblical papyri in the Bodmer collection (published in 1956) brought this total to 66, and in 1961 P75 appeared in this series (bringing the number to 75). In 1962 the number reached 78 papyri.

In format and quality, Nelson’s publication of Gray’s work is much more attractive than Zondervan’s publication of Unger’s work. The photographic plates which accompany Gray’s text are sharp and clear. The pictures in Unger’s work are usually fuzzy and blurred and perhaps not very helpful. The line drawings, rather well executed, have doubtful value in a work of this nature. However, the end-maps are more useful than the black-and-white maps in Gray’s work. All in all, the quality of workmanship in Unger’s work leaves much to be desired. Typographical errors are rather limited in Gray’s work, but Unger’s is often marred by errors and inconsistent style, especially in the footnotes.

In conclusion, these two works on archaeology and the Bible have limitations which should be recognized—Gray’s as to viewpoint and approach and Unger’s as to workmanship and a tendency to dogmatic finality. In spite of these limitations, these works contain much valuable material and constitute significant contributions to the field.

BASTIAAN VAN ELDEREN

A Case Of Identity

The True Face of the Kirk, by Stuart Louden (Oxford, 1963, 148 pp., $3.40), is reviewed by J. D. Douglas, British editorial director, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Based on the 1961 Cunningham Lectures at New College, Edinburgh, this book by the minister of historic Greyfriars sets out to examine “the ethos and traditions of the Church of Scotland.” Every aspect is covered thoroughly, and some strikingly relevant facts emerge. In the chapter on church, state, and community, we learn that “the Church of Scotland can give no countenance to the view that education is a self-sufficient and autonomous sphere of life; for when the State seeks to become completely secular and neutral, it is already in danger of becoming a monster, as in the totalitarian state of the twentieth century.” Discussing worship, Dr. Louden reminds us that “preaching is not a human art but God’s power unto salvation in Jesus Christ, the Living Word. Preaching is not for the glorification of the preacher or listeners, but for the edification of the flock.” Attacks are launched upon the personality cult among ministers, Roman Catholics (whose intrusion into Scotland has helped to “obscure the face of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church in the land”), subjective hymns, and the “historic episcopate” as popularly misunderstood. Dr. Louden calls for reexamination of the place of confession and absolution.

Is it an authentic picture of the Kirk? There are some theologically confusing statements here, such as: “The Scottish view is that the society of the baptized is the Church of God in the land.” (Is it even legitimate to speak about “the Scottish view”?) Elsewhere Dr. Louden laments the infrequence of the Apostles’ Creed, as “token of a prevalently inadequate sense of the congregation in worship.” Is this necessarily so? His use of the word “Eucharist” with its suspect associations will raise some Scottish eyebrows. There is also something unreal in his resorting to the Westminster Confession to support particular points: no one who heard the 1962 General Assembly debates or noted its moderator’s pre-assembly utterances will deny that confession’s fading authority in Kirk circles today.

The chief impression left by this work is of an inordinate repetitiveness in parts and a didactic style which make vast demands on the reader’s concentration. In the opening fifteen lines, for example, the words “Ecclesia Scoticana” appear five times; on page 37 “Presbyterian(ism)” occurs fourteen times; and other words or phrases are conspicuously overworked. A surprising number of misspellings and grammatical inaccuracies have crept in, and it should be noted that the space given to appendixes, gathered footnotes, and the index reduces the actual text to 102 pages. The determined reader will nevertheless find this an authoritative and generally reliable volume.

J. D. DOUGLAS

On Saving History

Salvation History, by Eric C. Rust (John Knox, 1963, 325 pp., $6), is reviewed by Merrill C. Tenney, dean of the Graduate School, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

The continuity of divine self-revelation in history through the acts of God is the main theme of Dr. Rust’s exposition of Heilsgeschichte for English readers. Beginning with a discussion of the relation of revelation, interpretation, and history, the professor of Christian philosophy at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary formulates a statement of the plan of salvation in cosmic terms: “The incarnation of the Word in Jesus of Nazareth constitutes the center point of a stream of events in which history is being redirected toward the divine purpose and in which man’s misuse of his God-given freedom is being corrected.” He does not accept a literal interpretation of either the Old or the New Testament; he does not, however, dismiss the historical reality of the person of Christ, although he states that the external facts do not disclose the real meaning of Christ. “The historian … cannot unlock the inner secret of Jesus. As historian he will not find the inner side of the life, death and resurrection of the Lord, even though the enigmatic elements will disturb him. A painstaking historical investigation will not bring us nearer to the heart of Heilsgeschichte.”

Although this approach might easily lead to a skeptical abandonment of all historical verity in the statements of Scripture, or to an unrestrained flight into mysticism, Dr. Rust takes neither of these alternatives. He recognizes that “without some emphasis on the historicity of Jesus, our faith lapses into docetism and the gospel becomes an abstract form of universal truths.” Consequently he adheres to the historicity and uniqueness of the Resurrection, and states that Heilsgeschichte is grounded in actual historical events.

In developing the theme of salvation history Dr. Rust lays great emphasis upon the eschatological element in revelation. “In dying, Christ defeated death, for death was robbed of its prey in the resurrection.” In the person of Christ the eschaton, the end, has centered history.

Unlike some expositors Dr. Rust does not dismiss the parousia of Christ as an apocalyptic dream nor dissolve it completely in “realized eschatology.” He indicates that Jesus did not quote directly from the apocalypticists who had written in the inter-Testamental period, but that He uttered independent prophecies. The author recognizes the elements of eschatological expectation: the future return of Christ, the “man of sin,” catastrophic judgment, and a final consummation in which “the redeemed community will be consummated in a redeemed universe.”

Fluid is the best word to describe this book. It does not adopt the extreme of rationalism which would logically follow from its premises of biblical criticism, nor does it accept fully the implications of a grammatico-historical exegesis of inscripturated revelation. It is an attempt to dispense with literalness, and at the same time to conserve the values of an evangelical theology. It is consequently a compromise in which must remain an unstable equilibrium. The rearrangement of the Old Testament narrative and the treatment of much of it as “mythical” (however that term be defined) alters the entire foundation of revelation and the understanding of the plan of God. If the basic facts are uncertain, the conclusions will be equally uncertain.

This book is aimed for scholars, who will enjoy its breadth and its representative treatment of modern New Testament theology, but it is not satisfactorily definitive of the evangelical position.

MERRILL C. TENNEY

Book Briefs

Flames from the Altar, by R. R. Williams (Calvinistic Methodist Book Agency [Caernarvon, England], 1962, 99 pp., 9s. 6d.). The author’s main objective is to refute the common tendency among both American and British writers to regard the Presbyterian Church of Wales as an offshoot of the movement inaugurated by Wesley.

The Empirical Theology of Henry Nelson Wieman, edited by Robert W. Bretall (Macmillan, 1963, 423 pp., $8.50). Nineteen essays by as many authors examine nineteen aspects of the theology of Wieman, who replies to each and supplies his intellectual autobiography. Writers include E. J. Carnell, G. Florovsky, G. Weigel, D. D. Williams, M. Barth. Excellent for the student of Wieman.

Best-Loved Hymn Stories, by Robert Harvey (Zondervan, 1963, 160 pp., $2.50). The stories behind favorite hymns.

God’s Heirs, by Donald Grey Barnhouse (Eerdmans, 1963, 244 pp., $4.50). Expositions of Bible doctrines by the late Dr. Barnhouse, based on Romans 8:1–39. Biblical, solid, instructive.

52 Seed Thoughts for Christian Living, by R. E. O. White (Eerdmans, 1963, 146 pp., $3). These seed thoughts planted in a good mind might bring forth ten- or even twentyfold.

John Calvin’s Teachings on Human Reason, by Leroy Nixon (Exposition, 1963, 276 pp., $6). A historical and philosophical analysis of the role that reason played in the thought of Calvin for the sake of discovering the function it should play in Christian education.

Fundamental Pastoral Counseling, by John R. Cavanagh (Bruce, 1962, 326 pp., $6). Competent and sane; Christian-orientated discussion by a Roman Catholic.

Preaching Week by Week, by David A. MacLennan (Revell, 1963, 158 pp., $3). Ideas for sermon-starters, many without dimension because they are vague and flabby on those cardinal truths which alone give Christianity transcendent character.

The Seasons of Life, by Paul Tournier (Knox, 1963, 63 pp., $2). Sensitive Christian reflections on man’s passage through the seasons of his years, anon imparting refreshment for the one-way journey.

Wooden Chalices, by Kenneth Kuntz (Bethany Press, 1963, 192 pp., $3.50). Short essays on Christian stewardship and its potential for filling life with rich content.

The Word Became Flesh, by E. Stanley Jones (Abingdon, 1963, 382 pp., $2.50). Although the book is devotional in format and content, one theme runs through the whole: why the Word became flesh and not just a word or idea. A reiteration of the basic idea of Jones’s earlier book, The Way.

The Power of Paul, by W. McFerrin Stowe (Abingdon, 1963, 128 pp., $2.50). Haunted by the idea that we ought not to limit the power of God, the author shows how this power transformed Paul’s life. His treatment, however, does not exclude the ideas of giving God a chance, and of a God who waits for us “on tiptoes”—a vein which perhaps accounts for the title.

Preaching to the Contemporary Mind, by Merrill R. Abbey (Abingdon, 1963, 192 pp., $4). An interesting and perceptive discussion about the task of making the sermon meaningful to the hearer.

If I Knew Then, by Debbie Reynolds (Bernard Geis, 1962, 192 pp., $3.95). Debbie is donating her proceeds from this book to charity. Most readers will feel the need for charity as they read this tossed salad of biographical bits, advice to teen-agers on dates and kisses, reflections on morals and religion—all garnished with a bit of sex and pictures of pretty Debbie. Religion apart, her advice is more often sound than profound.

The Pastor and His People, by Edgar N. Jackson (Channel, 1963, 224 pp., $3.50). A “tool” hook to help the congregational pastor deal pastorally with the young, the aged, the bereaved, the child, the shut-in—individually, in groups, and from the pulpit.

Paperbacks

Darwin and the Modern World View, by John C. Greene (New American Library, 1963, 126 pp., $.60). An Iowa State University professor shows how Darwinism gradually changed Protestants and Roman Catholics from a literal view of biblical revelation to a lower view, and argues (contra Darwin) that “scientific truth cannot be meaningful when it denies the reality of the spirit—human or divine.”

Faith Is the Victory, by Buell H. Kazee (Eerdmans, 1963, 181 pp., $1.50; cloth, $2.75). Devotional essays. Sequence follows the experiences of Israel from Egypt to Canaan. Overpriced. First issued in 1951.

Race: Challenge to Religion, symposium edited by Mathew Ahmann (Regnery, 1963, 178 pp., $1.65). Papers delivered at the First National Conference on Religion and Race (Jan., 1963), by Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews. Eminently worth reading.

Soul-winning Made Easy, by C. S. Lovett (Personal Christianity [Baldwin Park, Calif.], 1959, 79 pp., $1). A rather naïve, superficial prescription for soul-winning which begins by undercutting the value of preaching, and continues by being intermittently sub-biblical.

The Power of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale (Fawcett, 1963, 224 pp., $.60). A first-time appearance in paperback of a book that needs no introduction.

Tell Them in the East (Salvation Army International Headquarters, 1962, 64 pp., 2s.). A very informative book, not only about the extensive work carried on by the Salvation Army, but also about the social, economic, political, and spiritual conditions in which Christians labor in the Orient.

Proclaiming the Parables, by Martin H. Scharlemann (Concordia, 1963, 94 pp. $1.75). Author contends that the parables of Jesus describe the kingdom of God in action, and then interprets five selected parables by this principle.

Christ or Mary?, by Roland H. Seboldt (Concordia, 1963, 60 pp., $.50). A study of the co-redemption of Mary in modern Roman Catholic theology.

The Faith of a Heretic, by Walter Kaufmann (Doubleday, 1963, 414 pp., $1.45). As the title suggests, the book reflects the inversion of both faith and heresy. Under the mandate of honesty the author mercilessly exposes the foibles of modern life and the failures of Christianity in practice. But if beauty is only skin-deep in an anemic, sniveling Christianity, it becomes in the hands of Kaufmann a matter of raw human existence with its entrails hanging out: the tragic becomes great, eternal life unwanted, and death a desirable thing. But even so, the book is exhilarating and rewarding reading. First printed in 1959.

The Lifetime Reading Plan, by Clifton Fadiman (World, 1963, 318 pp., $1.55). A guide to more than 100 books by the great writers of Western civilization, from Homer to Hemingway—one which omits Paul, Calvin, Luther, and many other extremely influential Christian writers. First published in 1960.

Money and the Church, by Luther P. Powell (Association, 1963, 252 pp., $1.50). A fine history of how the Church gets its monies. First published in 1962.

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Is gambling a sin? Is it immoral? The definition of sin, from a theological position, this essay leaves to the theologians, and the ultimate value of gambling it leaves to the conscience of the individual. It examines, rather, the nature and result of gambling from the economic viewpoint. This we feel can be of practical help to both theologian and layman in clarifying their personal concepts.

Gambling is a timely topic. Not only is its influence growing on a commercialized scale in our economy, but some political leaders are even proposing a national lottery. Such a lottery, they say, would provide people an opportunity to exercise their “natural” proclivity for gambling. The argument is supposedly strengthened by their advocating that the proceeds be used to reduce the national debt. This is indeed a captivating “package deal,” one that combines legalizing “natural” human inclination with a desired national objective. It almost tempts one to lump G. B. Shaw’s explanation of the popularity of marriage with the adage that two can live as cheaply as one.

Like most other package deals, this one requires careful study. Actually we need to examine only one component, however. We need not debate the desirability of retiring the national debt. If it is a bad thing to retire the debt, then, of course, there is no point in discussing methods. If it is a good thing, then we need to examine carefully the method under consideration. After all, if we were not concerned about means and their short- and long-run effects, we could well justify war, infanticide, or genocide as solutions for overpopulation. This brings us to the issue at hand.

What is gambling? The proponents of legalized or commercialized gambling often say that life itself is a gamble, with its unknowns of birth, marriage, career, and so on. Such an approval, of course, is absurd and arises from inability or unwillingness to conceptualize the idea or define the nature of the process or action. It is here that the economist can be of greatest assistance, for long ago economists differentiated between gambling and other forms of risk-taking. Those who define the natural risks of life as gambles are guilty of “fuzzy” thinking at best, careless or deceptive thinking at worst.

Mindszenty’S Status

The necessity of a meeting of Roman Catholic cardinals to elect a new pope raises new speculation over the possible release of Jozsef Cardinal Mindszenty, who has been in asylum in the U. S. legation at Budapest nearly seven years.

Vienna Radio reported that talks were scheduled to begin early this month between “Roman Catholic authorities” and Hungarian officials in Budapest on the cardinal’s status. Observers said that a “face-saving” transaction might be discussed, one in which the need for the prelate’s presence in Rome would be stressed, thus allowing the Communist regime to permit his departure without an application from him and without committing the regime on his status as a Hungarian prelate.

It is generally believed that Mindszenty could leave if he wanted to. His purpose in staying apparently is to pressure the Hungarian Communist authorities into recognizing his spiritual role over Hungarian Catholics.

In Washington, meanwhile, diplomatic sources were quoted as saying that the Vatican’s search for an accommodation with the Communist governments of East Europe was postponed. Such sources were also credited with the view that reestablishment of normal U. S.-Hungarian relations might be closely dependent on the outcome of Vatican moves. One report said U. S. officials believe that the policy of hostility toward the Hungarian regime has outlived its usefulness.

Until several weeks ago, when Pope John became seriously ill, it is known the Vatican had been conferring with Communist government representatives.

Religious Riots

Catholic-Buddhist tensions came to a boil this month in South Viet Nam. Religious riots also broke out in Iran and Pakistan involving the Shiite Moslem sect.

Rioting in Teheran resulted in the declaration of martial law there after some twenty persons were reported killed or injured. Initial press reports indicated that supporters of the religious leader Rouhollah Khomoini were protesting the Shah’s programs for land reform and equal status for women. Shouting rioters invaded office buildings and set fire to government property. Armed troops dispersed the demonstrators.

It was reported that Khomoini had been arrested with a number of his supporters and that all would be tried.

In neighboring Pakistan, police reported 120 persons killed in strife between the Shiite Moslems and a group which interfered with one of their processions. The procession at Thari, 250 miles north of Karachi, was in observance of the beginning of an annual month of mourning. Police said that when the procession was upset, an enraged mob of Shiites set fire to the village.

In a similar clash at Lahore, two persons were killed and several injured. Some 180 persons were said to have been arrested.

In South Viet Nam, martial law was declared and public demonstrations banned at the former imperial capital of Hue after sixty-seven persons were reported injured and thirty-five arrested in clashes between Vietnamese army troops and Buddhists. Hundreds of normally peace-loving Buddhists, most of them students, staged a demonstration to protest religious discrimination by the predominantly Roman Catholic government of South Viet Nam.

The U. S. government got into the act by ferrying Vietnamese troops to Hue in Air Force C–123s and C–47s.

Similar anti-government demonstrations have been staged by Buddhists in various cities, including Saigon, Quangtri, Nhatrang, and Danang. They contend that they are persecuted because of their religious beliefs by the government of Roman Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem. Many U. S. Protestant missionaries in Viet Nam are known to feel the same way. They have been silent, however, because of fear of reprisal.

(The Roman Catholic Register of Denver reported in a dispatch from Colombo that “alleged discrimination against Buddhists in Viet Nam … was seized upon by extremists among the Buddhist majority in this country to step up their campaign against the [Roman] church here.”)

Buddhists in South Viet Nam make up about three-fourths of the population, but Roman Catholics hold control of the government as a carry-over from former French rule.

Last month government troops fired on a group of Buddhist demonstrators in Hue, killing nine persons. They were protesting the government’s refusal to permit Buddhists to fly religious banners on Buddha’s birthday.

Some observers in Viet Nam feel that Diem is worried more about the Buddhist revolt than about the war against pro-Communist Viet Cong guerrillas. Roman Catholic Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc of Hue is a brother of Diem.

Blasphemous Trio

Londoners take their football seriously, and when Tottenham Hotspur last month became the first British soccer team to win a major All-Europe trophy, the traditional brass band inevitably headed a homecoming procession. Immediately following, however, were a group of three paraders who prompted an immediate protest from local clergy. Declared the Rev. Clifford Hill, Congregationalist pastor: “One supporter was dressed as Christ and others as angels. This is blasphemy and an outrage to Christians.” Lending substance to the protest were the placards carried by the three, which said respectively: “They Shall Reign for Ever”; “Hallowed Be Their Names”, and “Adore Them for They Are Glorious.”

The Bishop of London, Dr. Robert Stopford, expressed himself “deeply shocked,” and Dr. Aubrey Vine, general secretary of the Free Church Federal Council, commenting that this was something that could not be tolerated in a country that still regarded Christ as sacred, said he proposed to write to the Home Secretary and to the club.

A Spurs official abruptly denied any official connection with the angels, one of whom said: “We had no idea that anyone would be offended.”

J.D.D.

An Island Occasion

The tiny island of Iona, wind-swept and difficult of access, has always had a special place in Scottish hearts as the spot where Columba landed fourteen centuries ago. This event was commemorated on June 2 by an open-air service followed by Holy Communion inside the now restored abbey. It was conducted after the rite of the South India Church by Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, a former missionary of the Church of Scotland. Assisting him were Dr. J. S. Stewart, moderator of the General Assembly; Dr. M. H. Harland, Bishop of Durham; the Rt. Rev. Kenneth Carey, Bishop of Edinburgh; and Dr. Nevile Davidson, minister of Glasgow Cathedral. Serving the congregation (which represented five continents) were thirty ministers and elders of all the major non-Roman denominations in Britain. A priest of the Eastern Orthodox Church read one of the lessons.

In his sermon Dr. Stewart spoke of the Celtic Church’s concern for the total life of man. Here, he suggested, was “no irrelevant introverted piety, insulated from the social, political and industrial problems of the day. What we call foolishly the ‘secular’ was redeemed, was understood in its true spiritual light, when Columba went on pilgrimage for Christ.”

Televised over Eurovision, the service had a lighter moment when an appeal was made for the congregation not to put paper money in the collection plates, lest the notes be blown into St. Columba’s Bay.

J.D.D.

A State Of Persecution

Protestant parents in Greece who are trying to establish a private elementary school met a roadblock when the Ministry for Cults and National Education rescinded a permit.

The permit was originally issued last summer following a decision by the Supreme State Council, highest court in Greece. A similar decision by the same court was handed down in 1953 but never heeded by the government’s executive branch.

A protest against the ministry’s permit revocation was lodged by a member of Parliament (its lone evangelical), who was told plainly that the action was at the insistence of Metropolitan Barnabas of Katerini. The prelate has been charged by evangelicals with seeking repeatedly to bring government pressure against them, so much so that the evangelicals in Katerini recently declared their church “under persecution.” This was described as the first time that such a declaration has been made by a religious minority in Greece.

In Athens, meanwhile, a 70-year-old man was engaged to a 60-year-old woman. They sought to be married in their Greek Orthodox church, but the local bishop refused to grant the necessary permit. Apparent reason: too old to get married.

The daily newspaper Vima of Athens severely criticized the bishop’s refusal.

The following report was prepared by Dr. Jacques Blocher, co-director of the Nogent Bible Institute near Paris and interpreter for evangelist Billy Graham at crusades in French-speaking countries:

Since 1955 many French Protestants had been looking forward to the return of Dr. Billy Graham. With great zeal they made preparations for a crusade in Paris and in several cities of the provinces, Lyons, Toulouse, Mulhouse, Montauban, Nancy, and Douai.

Paris seems to have no auditorium seating more than 4,000, so the crusade committee rented a tent that would hold 10,000. It came from Hamburg, Germany, and the only site available was in a slum district in the north of Paris.

Some Protestant Christians were enthusiastic, but others kept aloof and even gave the coming crusade the cold shoulder. The main objections were theological: Neo-universalists, believing that all men are reconciled with God in Christ with or without their consent, deemed it wrong to require a personal decision. Sacramentalists (particularly numerous among Lutherans) could not accept to hear that a man can receive the grace of God outside the sacraments. Others thought that Graham’s methods were not adapted to the French mind.

The press was sarcastic, unfair, hostile, or silent. Humanly speaking the prospect was not bright. And when the crusade began, the weather, generally very mild in May, turned cold and wet. Obstacles loomed so large that many supporters of the campaign could not help being faint-hearted.

But the crusade was a victory of the Spirit. Attendance grew every night, and people listened intently to the message of the Gospel, although at least half the audience was believed to be without any church connection.

In Paris Graham spoke to some 25,000 different persons, some of whom came to several meetings. About 1,200 came forward at the invitation of the evangelist, more than half of them unchurched. Others responded to the invitation but refused to divulge their names.

The inquirers included a university student who wanted to check out the sharp criticism of the press. He gave his life to Christ. A policeman on duty at the tent came back the next night in civilian clothes and also accepted Christ. An agnostic schoolteacher opened her heart to the Gospel, then brought her husband.

In Lyons, one of the oldest cities in France, where the Christian church was founded one century after the death of Christ, the beginning of the crusade was conducted by associate evangelist Leighton Ford. Graham was on hand for closing services. The beautiful Olympic Sportpalace was filled with 11,500 persons. Some had come from as far away as Italy and Switzerland.

At Toulouse, ancient capital of the Southwest of France, and in the neighboring city of Montauban, American evangelist Eugene Boyer, speaking very fluent French, conducted the preliminary campaign with his team. The meetings were most encouraging, and when Graham came for the last night, it was an extraordinary climax. Many people came from all over the Southwestern Province to join the Toulousains. The huge hall, holding nearly 7,000, was filled to capacity. As the crowd was blocking the entrances, the doors had to be closed; many latecomers were turned away. Again the Spirit of God broke through, and many people came forward to receive Christ. One of the many who rose and came was a well-known sculptor who had long searched for peace and truth.

The following morning Graham and his team had to take a chartered airplane to reach the industrial city of Mulhouse, near Basle, where the German, Swiss, and French borders meet. Here the crusade had begun with meetings held by Associate Evangelist Grady Wilson. These meetings, well prepared by a very active committee, had already been, before the coming of Billy Graham, a great blessing for the many people who attended. Also present at Mulhouse was Associate Evangelist T. W. Wilson, who had held a crusade in Nancy; there, in spite of many obstacles, he had also witnessed the power of the Spirit at work.

The last Mulhouse meeting was held in a big stadium, which was nearly filled. A vast crowd of over 11,000 was gathered to hear the closing message of the crusade in France. The response to the invitation was like a flood overwhelming the central football field.

Such are some facts about the Billy Graham Crusade in France. What are now the conclusions drawn by the Chritians who supported this wonderful enterprise?

The impact made on the French evangelicals has been very important: they have felt between themselves a wonderful sense of spiritual oneness, and they have been strengthened in their faith in the saving power of the Word of God and encouraged to be witnesses unto Christ.

Those who had been reluctant, before the crusade, because they feared to see American methods used in France (publicity, insistent invitation, psychological or emotional action on the audience, and so forth) have been, to a large extent, convinced that the methods used by Graham and his team are well adapted to this country and cannot shock anybody.

Those who were opposed for theological reasons do not seem to have moved from their initial position, but it has been manifest that this point of view was primarily restricted to ministers and that a large portion of the laity of the Protestant churches were favorably impressed by the crusades.

A few statistical figures will show the relative importance of the Billy Graham evangelistic campaigns in France. The vast majority of the French Protestants are the sons of the Huguenots, so long persecuted, and belong to the Reformed Church (400,000) or, in the East, to the Lutherans (300,000). Unfortunately most of them are only “nominally” Protestant, and 10 per cent at the most ever go to church on Sunday and may be considered as communicant members. This means that no more than 70,000 persons in the whole of France attend a Protestant church on Sunday. The other evangelical churches—Baptist, Methodist, Evangelical Free, Pentecostalist or the Plymouth Brethren and Darbyites—do not gather more than 30,000 people. Thus the total French Protestant “active” community does not reach the 100,000 mark!

The Billy Graham crusade, although it did not touch regions known for their rather high percentage of Protestant population (e.g., around Nimes or Strasburg), has gathered at least 60,000 different persons out of whom 3,000 came forward to dedicate their lives to God. The Roman Catholic Church forbade the meetings to its members, underscoring the truth of the statistics which show that half of the audience had no church affiliation, Catholic or Protestant.

This fact proves that contrary to the affirmations of many experts, there is in the population of France a very large number of people, of all professions and callings, who are concerned with the “oldtime” religious problems such as suffering, evil, sin, death and man’s destiny. For these people the Graham type of evangelism, which is the old-fashioned evangelistic preaching in a modern setting, is wonderfully effective. And what may be stranger still to many “specialists” is the proportionately high sumber of “intellectuals” (students, professors, artists) who came forward.

The crusade has been a tremendous incentive to the few evangelical Christians of France, belonging to all Protestant denominations, who believe that the spiritual awakening their country needs could be the fruit of evangelistic effort of this kind. Most of them are connected with the French Evangelical Alliance, which will be, they hope, the embodiment of a new spirit of evangelism throughout France. They think that the magazine Decision, now published in the French language, and the Billy Graham films will greatly help them to reach their goal.

New Opportunity

An Old Believers group of 225 men, women, and children arrived in New York this month from the Lake Manyas area in Turkey.

Most of the group, a Russian Orthodox sect, made the sign of the cross when they climbed out of the jet that brought them across the Atlantic. Prior to boarding the jet at the Ankara airport they had travelled for two days by ox cart.

They came to the United States under special asylum granted by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and with the sponsorship of the Tolstoy Foundation of New York, headed by Countess Alexandra Tolstoy, daughter of the Russian novelist.

The countess was among leaders on hand to greet the new arrivals. Acknowledging welcoming speeches made by their sponsors, many of the Old Believers bowed low in unison, their heads nearly touching the ground.

The newcomers are believed to be the last descendants of a band of some 5,000 Old Believers who split from the Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union during the seventh century over religious disputes and migrated to Turkey. They have found temporary homes in Valley Cottage, New York, and Seabrook, New Jersey.

A Damper On Gifts?

A current church construction slump may be attributable to President Kennedy’s proposal for tax revision, according to a Washington report from Religious News Service.

Government observers who study the monthly estimates of new construction by churches and religious institutions believe that the unexpected downturn that occurred this spring was due to apprehension among taxpayers concerning possible limitation on tax deductions on charitable contributions.

Church construction amounted to some $80,000,000 in January, when Kennedy urged that all deductions be made subject to a 5 per cent “floor” (that is, the taxpayer would total up his deductions, including contributions, interest payments, and local taxes, and subtract 5 per cent of his adjusted gross income from this total before figuring his tax).

The figure dropped to $75,000,000 in February, and instead of showing the usual spring upturn in March it dropped again—to $71,000,000. Moreover, the decline continued in April, going to $70,000,000.

At the same time, building activity by the non-public schools and private colleges, many of which are church-related, also has shown signs of softness. This was in face of strong demands for new buildings to meet rising enrollments.

These decreases are in marked contrast with building activity in other fields which showed the usual spring upturn.

Washington experts point out that a building campaign must secure a number of large capital gifts at the outset, and these come from individuals or corporations particularly sensitive to tax policies. Fund-raisers have reported privately that donors of capital gifts indicated they will delay until the end of the year commitments as to the size of their gifts.

The result, observers claim, appears to be that several million dollars worth of new building projects have been deferred, since there was a noticeable drop in the number of new building contracts let during the early spring of 1963.

Most Washington observers believe that Congress is reluctant to enact the tax deduction revision. But until Congress takes definite action—to approve, amend, or defeat the proposal—the overall effect seems to be a deterrent one.

J. Howard Pew, president of the United Presbyterian Foundation, described the Kennedy plan as a “frustrating situation” in his report to the General Assembly last month.

“The Church is God’s instrumentality for the spread of the Gospel,” he said. “To classify churches and related institutions with other charitable organizations and with interest, medicine and taxes, is a failure to distinguish between religious and secular affairs. This degrades and violates the dignity of the Church.”

Pew added that “it is intolerable that we should permit political authorities to impose a tax on gifts to spiritual institutions. Yet, by indirection they would accomplish what they know would be impossible to achieve by direct action.”

He called on assembly commissioners to write letters of protest to their congressmen.

Religious Territory

Would a domestic Peace Corps violate the principle of separation of church and state?

The Rev. W. Barry Garrett, associate director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, says that the proposal involves “possible church-state problems.”

Establishment of a domestic Peace Corps, officially referred to as the National Service Corps, is now being considered by Congress. Enabling legislation has been introduced in both houses.

Garrett said a problem arises because the bills provide that the corps shall make its volunteers available to “both governmental and non-goverenmental agencies.”

“Church-state complications can arise in the use of corpsmen and public funds by church agencies in carrying out the purposes and programs of the act,” he said.

Among projects suggested for the corps are service to the mentally ill and mentally retarded, health and education for migratory farm workers, assistance to Indians both on and off reservations, help for residents in depressed regions and slum areas, and care of the elderly, the disabled, and juvenile delinquents.

Church-related agencies are active in all these fields, Garrett pointed out.

Campus Caldron

Presbyterians are lining up on opposite sides as a long-simmering debate over student work comes to a boil at the University of Tennessee. In Knoxville last month the Presbyterian U.S. (Southern) Synod of Appalachia took decisive action that could lead to ending its cooperative program with the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. at the Tennessee campus.

Responding to several strongly worded overtures from Knoxville-area congregations and from Knoxville Presbytery, the synod created a sixteen-man commission with authority to take any “advisable” action. Creation of the strong commission was seen as an indication that the synod wanted immediate and decisive action. Proposals that investigating committees be appointed (to report to a full meeting of the synod) were defeated.

The overtures alleged that there was not a “proper Christian program” at the jointly operated Presbyterian student center and that it had failed to achieve the purposes for which it was created.

Key figure in the controversy is the director of the center, the Rev. Ewell J. Reagin, former Cumberland Presbyterian minister who is now a member of Union Presbytery (UPUSA). In its overture, Knoxville Presbytery (U. S.) asked for an examination of his theology. Also in question was his use in the center program of personnel from the left-leaning Highlander Folk School, which had been closed by the state of Tennessee and which now operates under another name.

Reagin and his program have been endorsed by the United Presbyterian Board of Christian Education (through its general secretary, Dr. William A. Morrison), Union Presbytery, and some Knoxville UPUSA congregations. The Presbyterian U. S. Board of Christian Education has made no public statement so far.

‘House Of Refuge’

The 150,000-member General Association of Regular Baptist Churches went on record last month against “all efforts by ecclesiastical organizations to coerce the state to implement their programs of social reform.”

At its thirty-second annual conference in Omaha, Nebraska, the association also adopted resolutions endorsing capital punishment and warning of an “ever increasing” decline in this country’s moral standards.

Dr. Robert T. Ketcham, who serves the association under the title of “national consultant,” predicted that the GARB’s role in the future will be as a “house of refuge” for groups opposed to the ecumenical movement.

“As modernism gets more bold and rank, more churches will be squeezed out,” he said, adding that his association would be an alternative to church union.

In another resolution, the 900 delegates declared their opposition to development of the United Nations into a world government. They criticized, moreover, Pope John XXIII’s encyclical on world peace on the grounds that the pontiff rested his case “for his dream world upon the nature of man and not upon the nature of God.”

Combatting The Secular

The Baptist Bible Fellowship International bestowed its blessing upon “occasional Bible readings and public prayers in school” last month. A resolution adopted at the group’s four-day annual meeting in Springfield, Missouri, deplored “extreme interpretations of the separation of church and state that would create a completely secular nation.”

In another resolution, some 2,000 messengers opposed government aid to church-related colleges or elementary schools, and the welfare state which gives the “delusion of security.”

The fellowship, founded in 1950, is a “voluntary association of Bible-believing, fundamental Baptist churches.” It claims a membership of some 1,300 congregations with 1,000,000 members in forty-five states and twenty foreign countries.

Missions And Extremism

Conservative Baptists carried their movement past a critical shoal last month onto the broad sea of a renewed missionary thrust.

Delegates to the twentieth annual Conservative Baptist fellowship in Atlantic City took a thankful look at “what God hath wrought” since their movement broke away from the American Baptist Convention in 1943. The foreign mission society appointed thirty new missionaries in the past year, bringing its total force to well over 400. It was noted that American Baptists, with five times the total constituency of the Conservatives, have fewer foreign missionaries.

The Conservative Baptist Home Mission Society issued a financial report labeled “the best ever.” General Director Rufus Jones then asked for $1,000,000 for an immediate thrust into U. S. inner cities, climaxing a week-long emphasis on the church’s urban responsibility.

During the six-day sessions at the Ambassador Hotel, some ministers had been pushing extreme positions in eschatology (pretribulation rapture only), in ecclesiology (near landmarkism), and in separation (opposition to ecumenical evangelism). Eighteen months before this minority had launched a competitive missionary agency, the World Conservative Baptist Mission. It was overwhelmingly rebuffed by the more than 1,000 delegates, who reaffirmed confidence in the Conservative Baptist Foreign and Home Mission Societies. General Chairman W. Theodore Taylor, New York City pastor, summarized the critical struggle by stating that Conservative Baptists indicated their desire “to proceed in the line of their historic convictions.”

The public walkout of one delegate and the absence of the dissident leadership in the closing business sessions heightened speculation that the extremist faction might leave the movement.

Elected to places of leadership were men who in strength and stature reflect the historic, mainstream position. Dr. Robert Carlberg of Hollywood, California, became president of the Conservative Baptist Association of America. Dr. Lester Thompson of Denver and Dr. Charles W. Anderson of New Jersey were reelected presidents of the foreign and home mission societies.

The Conservative Baptists became the first denomination to take a stand on mandatory use of a unified curriculum in the Protestant Sunday schools of the armed forces. They adopted a resolution which charged that the mandatory provision “is a breach of our Constitution in separation of Church and State.” “The mandatory use of the unified curriculum by military chaplains will in some cases commit them to a curriculum contrary to their consciences,” the resolution added.

Recovery Fund

A $100,000 fund for church extension in the next ten years was authorized at the thirty-seventh triennial session of the General Council of the Reformed Episcopal Church. Since 1960, the number of the denomination’s churches has dropped from sixty-four to sixty, primarily because of closings in its southern jurisdictions and a merger in Chicago. The council was held last month in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania.

Refugee Compact

An inter-faith resettlement program worked out between Protestant and Catholic relief agencies promises to surmount religious differences which have hindered relief projects for refugees from Cuba.

Earl Redding, director of the Church World Service refugee center in Miami, said an agreement had been reached between CWS and Catholic Relief Services which was expected to break the log-jam on resettlement.

Protestant churches around the nation have had a backlog of unfilled job and family placement opportunities for Cuban refugees, but most of the Cubans are registered with the Catholic center, whose list of Catholic sponsors has been exhausted.

Under the new agreement, Redding said, CWS will provide lists of Protestant sponsors to the Catholic center, whose personnel will carry out explanatory interviews with refugees to find some who would be willing to accept Protestant sponsorship.

Those willing refugees will then be turned over to CWS, which will arrange for relocation with the understanding that the Protestant sponsor will provide jobs and housing without any attempt to intrude on the refugee’s religious life.

Evangelic Notes

An uncle of the Queen and an Edinburgh University professor combined to sound a true evangelic note at the outset of the Church of Scotland General Assembly last month. As Lord High Commissioner, the Duke of Gloucester had congratulated Dr. James S. Stewart on his election as moderator. Then he commended to the assembly some words spoken by Dr. Stewart on another occasion: “I beg you, in this realm of religion, which means in the deepest intimacies of your life and the most secret fastnesses of your soul—make Jesus king! For please God, a day is coming when the same words which they wrote upon the cross of Calvary are going to be sung around the throne, not now in Greek or Latin or Hebrew, but sung by a great multitude of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues, in the language of heaven—‘This is Jesus the King.’”

Listening intently in the Throne Gallery was an unexpected visitor described later by one enthusiastic reporter as “a broad and burly figure who could easily be said to personify the solid worth of the Church of England.” This was Dr. Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was later given a special welcome and invited to address the assembly, after the moderator had referred to one who was a “citadel against the battering ram of theologies which would desupernaturalize the faith.” Acknowledging overwhelming applause which left no doubt as to the cordiality of his reception, Dr. Ramsey conveyed greetings from the Church of England and alluded approvingly to resumption of conversations between the two national churches.

If the archbishop’s visit was significant, no less significant was a decision made across the street, where by its moderator’s casting vote the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland agreed to invite Professor Stewart to address them. Not for many years had the moderator of the larger assembly been received. Many had felt that after Dr. A. C. Craig’s call on Pope John XXIII, some gesture was called for at home, where an equally notable if much less spectacular task of reconciliation was still to be done. Despite the closeness of the vote (and the heated discussion which had preceded it), Dr. Stewart’s reception at the Free Kirk Assembly was most cordial.

In the discussion on recruitment for the ministry it was pointed out that some presbyteries had not produced a minister for forty years. Those congregations which were providing men were generally those of an evangelical sort, said Dr. T. F. Torrance, adding: “If we are not producing ministers, we are not preaching the kind of Gospel that can call forth ministers.”

Seconding a report on temperance and morals, Dr. Joseph Maycock referred to the harm done by a recent series of lectures in Scotland which tried to set up a false distinction between charity and chastity. He commented: “I am quite certain that no psychologist with a reputation to lose would defend license as a cure for neurosis”—perhaps a shrewd dig also against certain crusaders in church circles south of the border. Because it was God acting creatively when a man and woman came together in marriage, suggested Dr. Torrance, “when a man commits adultery he is making God a party to his adultery.” Dr. Torrance, probably Scotland’s best-known theologian today, did not speak in vain: the assembly promptly encouraged him to submit for publication a statement on doctrinal aspects of this matter.

The best-laid schemes of committee men sometimes go awry, and on two issues the assembly confounded officialdom. First, an overture from the Presbytery of Hamilton, at first sight innocuous, proposed that stipends should be appropriate to the needs of the ministry rather than to the resources of the individual congregations. Disparities in stipend, one speaker said, introduced a factor which, when a minister was considering a call, was unnecessary and undesirable, and placed a strain on the spiritual integrity of many. In a quite extraordinary scene, ministers of some of the land’s “plum” parishes leapt to their feet and virtually advocated equal pay for all. The most effective intervention came from Dr. Nevile Davidson, retiring moderator. He said that as “one who has enjoyed a more than adequate stipend” (just under $5,000), he felt constantly ashamed when he thought of others who, working no less devotedly than he, received much smaller remuneration because of the accidental economic situation in the parish. (Current minimum in the Kirk is about $2,600.) A heavy majority carried the vote, and the Maintenance of the Ministry Committee was instructed to draw up details of the suggested new stipend system.

The second setback to the establishment came when the assembly discussed that section of a church and nation report dealing with the Christian use of Sunday. The 1962 assembly had approved the somewhat liberalizing tendencies suggested by this committee, but since then some Highland presbyteries had put their heads together and made a strong appeal against what constituted a radical departure from the Westminster Confession of Faith (the Kirk’s subordinate standard). The situation was not devoid of humor. The subject came up at a time when many of the fathers and brethren had departed to prepare for the Lord High Commissioner’s garden party. Scorning such frivolities, the Highland host sat tight. The somewhat cavalier confidence of the committee’s convener began to wilt in the face of Celtic protests, to be succeeded first by uneasiness after an abortive attempt to have the matter adjourned until a more “representative” occasion, then by angry reaction as the vote went against him and his committee was instructed to think again.

Last year’s general assembly instructed the Inter-Church Relations Committee to “take into earnest consideration the question of Presbyterian reunion in Scotland.” Overtures were made to three of the four smaller Presbyterian denominations (total membership of the four does not exceed 50,000). Left out was the Free Presbyterian Church, from which, implied the 1963 report, it was not thought there was “the slightest prospect of response.” Yet this little church on the western seaboard was at the same time proving that it was not the inflexible and unimaginative body its big sister assumed it to be, for at its annual synod in Inverness it was in process of making history by electing an African minister as its moderator. The committee’s convener further announced that talks had been begun with the Methodists, resumed with the Anglicans, and arranged with the Congregationalists. In some cases, he admitted, the doors were stiff, the walls of partition high.

One depressing feature of the assembly in recent years has been its reluctance to make firm decisions on theological grounds. This kid-gloved approach was especially in evidence this year. Again and again Professor Torrance risked unpopularity by his determined reiteration of biblical and doctrinal principles, yet his own committee’s excellent report on baptism, the outcome of several years’ hard work which would have given the Kirk a uniform approach to the subject, had its chief recommendation rejected on grounds of sentiment and caution (the former a more potent force).

Caution again predominated when for the first time in history the assembly took up a petition for ordination by a woman. Miss Mary Lusk, 40, assistant chaplain of Edinburgh University, licentiate of the church and brilliant scholar, took this revolutionary step as a test case. She argued persuasively, and cited the Pauline words: “There is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

She did not expect her petition to be granted, but professed her gratification afterwards when it was not summarily dismissed but referred to the Panel on Doctrine for a full consideration of all the issues involved.

On an evangelic note the Assembly had begun; on an evangelic note it ended, when Dr. Stewart said in his closing address: “Is there not something disturbing, even nauseating, about the present vogue, which exists in certain quarters, of a continual disparaging of the Church’s witness and all its works?… By all means let us as a Church be down in the dust of penitence and contrition, for we have failed our Master atrociously. But let us also hear the voice that cries from heaven, ‘son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak with thee.’” No other Reformed gathering can muster anything like the newspaper, radio, and television coverage annually accorded to the Kirk for nine days; no moderator’s words have ever been more worthy of study in a land which can never quite forget John Knox.

J. D. D.

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More people have experienced “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in America than anywhere else on earth. On the Fourth of July hardly a village in the United States, hardly a city street, is without some celebration of the Declaration of Independence.

Despite complaints about national decline and about “idea gaps” that still separate the actual social and political situation from the announced principles of our historic documents, the American people nevertheless rank high in good will and generosity, in bold venturesomeness and ingenuity, and in general honesty. This reservoir of virtue is apparent to anyone who has visited other continents.

These qualities are not self-wrought, however; they reflect the nation’s orientation, however tenuous, to those distinctive spiritual realities which once lifted the Western world from paganism to a sense of Christian conviction and conscience. The traits that weld a heterogeneous society into a national family—truth, justice, love of neighbor, and benevolence—originate and mature through revealed religion. There may be an “American character,” but there are really no “American virtues.”

No one would deny that America has scars and blemishes. There is inordinate ambition, for example—the greed for power, for prestige, as well as for plenty. There is corruption—in politics, in business, in labor unions, in sports. And there is race prejudice—that devastating blight to the affirmation that “all men are created equal.”

Americans clash over goals and methods. Those who would socialize the American scene battle those who champion a voluntary rather than coerced society. Those who would rely on Big Government’s legislation to solve all man’s needs resist those who maintain—and quite rightly, we believe—that the best and only guarantee of a bright future depends on individuals enlightened to the imperatives of a just social order.

This turbulence does not mean, however, that America has “gone over the brink.” Rather, this stirring may be—indeed, probably is—its hour of decision. Although America’s natal strength may be far-spent, those who live in Washington constantly face the tragic ambiguity between White House solutions for race problems everywhere else and its inability to rescue the District of Columbia from becoming a moral shambles. It is one thing for photogenic politicians accompanied by an arsenal of news photographers and F.B.I. agents to hike fifty miles along the Potomac; it is quite another for a congressman’s wife, let alone an ordinary citizen, to stay at home alone in the District, or for church people to venture out to evening services, or for anyone to walk at night, even in the shadow of the Capitol or the White House. It is high time to reiterate what the founding fathers knew only too well—something that many of their homelands had forgotten—that not the utmost amount of government compulsion but rather the fullest recovery of human dignity is the answer to human problems.

For those who are first-generation Americans, the thrill of living and reliving the Declaration of Independence still retains its glamour. Often their parents left other lands expressly for larger liberties and opportunities, and for the most part were not disappointed. In this new land their children were born without the bondage of class limitations, were given unprecedented opportunity to rise and progress and even to shape their adopted country’s future. Those who dismiss these characterizations as “built-in patriotic prejudices” need to remember their own more distant past. The American founders gave their very lives to shape a haven for those ideals that should bless oncoming generations and nourish the hopes of multitudes around the globe. Such a heritage is not a matter of verbal heat; it is the index to national and cultural health.

Our hopeful appraisal is not intended to suggest, however, that the biblical ingredient in American culture is currently in full bloom, and that our people automatically absorb some kind of Christian fragrance from their environment. As it does almost everywhere else in the twentieth century, the acrid smog of sin and sham penetrates American society. Not everything about this nation is admirable; much, in fact, is superficial and even shameful. But the real essence of America is still its historic climate of beliefs. It is this essence which nourished a nation of world distinction, a nation whose best traditions still hold the promise that even in these days its citizens will recover needed spiritual and moral resources to lift the weak, furnish new motivation to the listless, and set a fresh example of dedication to durable realities. If we fail here, the American mind, already lapsed into an American mood, is doomed further to becoming merely an American madness.

To desire a Christian nation is always a proper Christian objective. But to desire a Christian government is something else again and is to be regarded with suspicion. A government’s best approximation of Christian ideals comes by its assuring equal justice under the law for all citizens and protection for their God-given freedoms. A government that acknowledges its servant role as a minister of justice and operates in the spirit of the theistic affirmations of the early American political documents will aim to preserve and protect the liberties of all, not simply of some, or even of the many. In such an atmosphere voluntary religion—the only kind worthy of the name—can thrive.

To rely on legislative coercion or upon public institutions to advance and protect the cause of true religion is to misunderstand both the function of the state and the task of the church. Christianity depends ultimately neither upon the state nor upon culture; the Gospel is neither a state-religion nor a culture-religion. The church does not derive its authority and mission from the state, and the state does not derive its authority and mission from the church. Both are “under God,” and each has its divinely appointed task. When both state and church enthusiastically and properly fulfill their respective tasks, then we may expect a secure destiny for “the land of the free,” even in an age of cannibalistic totalitarianism.

Tax Exemption And Church Political Activity

The disallowance of tax exemption to the Fellowship of Reconciliation has stirred sympathizers to threaten an appeal all the way to the Supreme Court unless the Internal Revenue Service corrects this “absurdity.” Letter writers are asking IRS to explain its distorted thinking; they picture the denial of exemption as a trial balloon which, unless punctured, could waft away all religious exemptions.

But what are the facts? The government considers the Fellowship of Reconciliation ineligible because its disarmament objectives can be achieved only by legislative commitments; in other words, the movement is essentially engaged in political activity. This verdict accords with the group’s concentrated efforts toward the congressional vote.

Churches have historically enjoyed tax exemption because they engage not in a political crusade but in a spiritual mission. The reason is clear enough, then, why spokesmen for church institutions which engage increasingly in direct political activity (lobbying, endorsement or disapproval of specific legislative proposals, and so on) consider themselves threatened by the case in point and are ready to file supportive amicus curiae briefs if the matter reaches the courts. Some of their concern is doubtless legitimate. For one thing, should government claim the right to define what is and what is not religious activity, it may imperil religious freedom by imposing an unacceptable view of the function of the Church. By such procedure the state could soon swat any troublesome gadfly out of existence. As we know, the totalitarian powers—both Nazi and Communist—soon came to regard any church that protested government policy as engaging in non-religious affairs. Yet in proclaiming the revealed principles of social justice and civil order, the Church dare not hide the relevance of these imperatives to the contemporary crisis simply because some local tax collector senses that the Church thereby influences the realm of political life.

But is the Fellowship of Reconciliation issue really vital to the churches? Churchmen who defend the movement argue in two different directions. Some contend that “peace” is the fellowship’s main concern, that it is not a lobbying committee, and that its success in no way depends upon congressional action. Others recognize that this kind of plea for immunity might cost the churches the right to “meddle in politics.” They argue that although many problems of social justice can be solved only if the Church promotes legislative solutions (rather than regenerative spiritual dynamisms), yet the Church’s main concern is not on that account achieved through legislation only. But revenue officials are not convinced. Despite FOR’s spiritual or moral motivations, they say, and despite its partial orientation to non-legislative mechanisms, the achievement of its objectives depends nevertheless upon legislative commitments.

Income tax regulations stipulate an organizational and an operational test of eligibility for exemption. No exempt organization is to engage in activities outside its exempt purposes except “as an insubstantial part of its activities.” If “more than an insubstantial part of its activities is not in furtherance of an exempt purpose,” the exemption is to be disallowed. There may be ambiguous elements here, such as the precise definition of “insubstantial,” and whether revenue experts propose to measure either the purposes of an organization or its methodology, or both. The Council for Christian Social Action, for example, which gets 1.9 per cent of the budget of the National Council of Churches, spends its main energies in forms of political action.

Whatever the ambiguities may be, however, the treasury rules are clear enough to warn any church agencies concentrating in political activities that they do not qualify for tax exemption on religious grounds. If such church agencies wish to concentrate in political concerns, they ought to do so by the financial support of interested partisans—as FOR is currently doing (with voluntary gifts that more than offset the loss of exemption); they ought not to deploy church funds to partisan interests nor expect taxpayers indirectly to defray programs which they may not care to promote at all, or at least do not wish to promote through the churches.

To disallow exemption to the Fellowship of Reconciliation does not actually jeopardize all institutions whose social objectives bear on legislation. The Christian religion has a necessary stake in law, and church members have a political duty that includes the criticism of poor laws and the advocacy and support of good legislation. But this participation is quite different from direct involvement in political action by the Church as an institution. Some religious groups have gone so far as to approve or disapprove particular candidates—in fact, have stopped little short of indirectly promoting a religious political party. Were the Catholic Church to sponsor a Catholic candidate, such groups would be first to protest. If the Church is really concerned for its true mission, it will not discourage but will welcome a warning about proper and improper ecclesiastical involvement in politics.

U.S. Government Aid Funds Steeped In Religious Compromise

The foreign aid program seems to be meshing United States policy abroad into religious entanglements that most Americans would consider unconstitutional and imprudent on the domestic scene. Some congressional as well as some church leaders are voicing a growing demand for critical review of these involvements.

The Peace Corps is by no means the worst of the offenders. On the whole its record of achievement and service is remarkably good, even if it reflects the curious confidence that human need is best resolved by a program of governmental response. Where the Corps commits volunteers to service in religious schools and agencies abroad, it defends itself against any compromise of church-state separation on the ground that such assignments are in fact made by foreign governments that are not bound by our conventions. But this flexibility which accommodates American-supported programs to an “in Rome do as the Romans” philosophy is subject to three criticisms. First, the United States is under no obligation to offer its programs where our own traditions are inoperative. Second, such concessions on our part weaken the will and power to resist further and wider commitments. Finally, religious compromises abroad become precedents at home for those who seek to exploit public funds for sectarian purposes.

The United States’ foreign aid program is now so riddled with compromises of our own church-state traditions as to merit thorough review. Under public protest AID at one time publicly withdrew its policy of commitments through church agencies, commitments enthusiastically ventured by an influential complement of Roman Catholic staff officials. But the practice continued nonetheless. Finally a new policy was announced which left so many unresolved problems that AID is widely reported to be “in business (objectionably) as usual”—that is, to be operating overseas on a policy of religious involvement that would incur forthright criticism at home.

In matters of education, the Senate subcommittee on education was told recently that the United States now pours more funds into educational institutions abroad—religious schools included—than at home. Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, accordingly, wants a full administrative disclosure of such expenditures abroad to religious schools, a disclosure that some congressmen state privately would lead to explosive congressional debate. In one instance $500,000 was reportedly given to rebuild a Jesuit school destroyed by fire in Ecuador, while in nearby Colombia (where foreign aid funds are committed to government schools) Romanist pressures consider the Protestant schools illegal and at times close them down.

Another complication is that numerous Protestant groups abroad which champion church-state separation for the United States willingly accept money from foreign governments. In the Congo, for instance, virtually all Protestant as well as Roman Catholic mission schools receive subsidies from the Congolese government.

Religious involvement, in other words, is not exclusively a compromise involving the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Many Protestant foreign mission boards and agencies are compromised, and not all of these are “ecumenically minded”; independent evangelical enterprises are involved also. There are Protestants who criticize Peace Corps workers in Roman Catholic enterprises but consider it special divine providence when these workers help in Protestant pursuits. One disturbing factor is that national church leaders abroad often stress that church-state involvement has long been their own heritage under past British or some other rule, or that the Christian movement in their countries has been reared under a church-state philosophy that permits and encourages government subsidy of religious and non-religious schools alike. Missions leaders in the United States often insist that it is proper to take cooperative account of these traditions. Hence they would not limit government commitments in those lands to non-religious schools but instead would encourage distribution on a non-discriminatory intra-religious basis. Sometimes American mission leaders abroad who contend that such religious aid by the United States is a moral-sociological-financial necessity cannot reconcile it, however, with this country’s church-state practices. Further complications arise because treaty-making powers are considered to have legal precedence over domestic church-state policy; accordingly State Department policy often proceeds by rules quite different from the constitutional precedents of our domestic scene. To say that the State Department is encouraged in these matters mainly by a colony of Georgetown University foreign service graduates is an exaggeration; the hard-core influence is more likely a group with little interest whatever in sectarian religion.

One encouraging development is the emergence of a conference of Protestant leaders of various denominational and interdenominational alignments to review this involvement of government aid in religious institutions and agencies. One of its concerns is to prevent compromises abroad from becoming leverage for compromises of church-state separation at home. This group will also scrutinize both the prevalent notion that “the First Amendment doesn’t apply overseas” and the ambivalent application on the domestic scene of the principle of church-state separation. And it will try to propose regulations that guard churches and missions from the compromises and involvements which undermine both American political philosophy and a sound policy of Christian benevolence.

A Pontiff’S Love And A Council’S Anathemas

In his final hours of life, men marveled at the strength of Pope John’s heart. Prior to that they had marveled at its warmth. In a hate-stricken age, men heard gladly from an open Vatican window a heartbeat of compassion. The Pope had spoken his pleas for peace and Christian brotherhood in tones both convincing and compelling. Perhaps history’s most universally beloved pope, he evoked compliments even from Communists. Accessible and tradition-shattering, he embodied for many the deep-rooted longings of men of good will for the unity of mankind.

At the same time, his policies had many critics. His friendly overtures to the Communists gained for him the title “Red Pope” among some conservative Italian Catholics disturbed by the recent Communist election gains in that country.

John XXIII undoubtedly was largely responsible for a fresh spirit of charity which created happier church relationships. Churchmen were surprised to see Protestant observers admitted to the secret deliberations of Vatican Council II, undoubtedly the one great overshadowing event of John’s short pontificate.

Yet for all the good will, the basic theological differences bestriding the road to unity remain. Pope John was not a theologian; his emphases lay elsewhere. But he never spoke of compromising basic Catholic dogma. He did not share the modern, sentimental fallacy that doctrine is a costly irrelevancy which serves to block unity. Even in rejecting birth control, he said, “There cannot be any adoption of erroneous doctrine.…”

The New Testament couples love with truth, and Paul asserts that love rejoices in truth. Here is the challenge to separated Christians. Revealed truths are of eternal consequence. Doctrines Protestants hold to be biblical and basic were anathematized at the Council of Trent. Rome has since reaffirmed the anathemas.

A pontiff’s love and a council’s anathemas.… We hope the former is replaced, but it cannot restore unity of the Church until the latter are displaced.

Bible And Prayer Ruling A Signal To The Churches

Sometime this month the Supreme Court will hand down its ruling on the legality of Bible readings and prayers in the public schools. Religious leaders who view the Church mainly as a weather vane, anticipating the direction of Court decisions and cushioning their communions against outbursts of emotion, need a reminder of the Church’s larger role. The time has come as never before in American life to exhibit the power of voluntary religion and to give vital content to theistic affirmations distinctive of our political documents.

In a recent sermon Dr. Edward L. R. Elson reminded his congregation in Washington’s National Presbyterian Church:

A secular nation is not what we were at the beginning. Then we said it was God who gave us liberty, God who brought forth the nation, God who hath preserved us a nation.… We are a theistic people.

This has been and I trust will continue to be a nation under God. There is an unfinished task. No matter what General Assemblies pronounce or courts adjudge, we must find new and better ways of increasing the depth of the God-conscious reality and creating symbolic actions whereby we teach this truth to our children and witness to the whole world the divine sovereignty over this nation as well as over individual man and the corporate life of the Church.…

If we are to eliminate religious exercises in public schools and prayer in public ceremonies like Congress and civic ceremonies we must find and soon find ways of involving the whole people in public symbolic acts attesting that we are a theistic people even though not a theocratic state. If symbolic acts do not presently have deep meaning, let us invest them with deeper meaning—not abolish the acts.

One fact is sure. When the Supreme Court gives its decision, the Church’s task will only have begun. The burden of the Christian community will be heavier, not lighter, than before.

Ecclesiastical Controls And The Preservation Of Christian Liberty

The freeing of the human conscience from the dictates of an ecclesiastical hierarchy can be considered as one of the most precious fruits of the Reformation. Men learned that God alone is Lord of the human conscience; it is responsible only to his authority. Ecclesiastical authority is to be obeyed only so far as it is conformed to the revelation of God’s law, which is the inspired Scriptures. God set the human conscience free from all obligation to believe or obey any judgments, opinions, or commandments of men which are either contrary to or aside from the teachings of the Word.

The Roman Catholic Church has maintained that the Church, and not the Scriptures, is the true standard and organ of the will of God. The Church has the power to enact laws in God’s name, binding the consciences of men. The Reformation denied that God had given that power to the visible Church, and it freed men from ecclesiastical domination. Unfortunately, church control over the wills of men seems to be returning to Protestant circles. The pressure of small but effective controlling groups has been subtle but nevertheless effective. Policies formulated by a few are forced upon an acquiescent majority, who little realize that they are forfeiting a heritage of liberty.

The Reformers foresaw the possible return to such a deplorable bondage and sought to prevent it by carefully worded creedal statements. One of the best expressions is that found in the Westminster Confession of Faith and incorporated in the Constitution of the United Presbyterian Church:

God alone is lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to His Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship. So that to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commandments out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience; and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also (Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter XX, Section II).

One of the Westminster divines who helped to frame the above statement on freedom of conscience was Samuel Bolton, minister of the Word of God at Southwark, England. He wrote a treatise on the subject entitled: “The True Bounds of Christian Freedom” (London, 1645). His plea to preserve liberty is well worth studying, and we quote it in part:

Certainly, it is the highest piece of slavery and vassalage in the world to yield up our consciences to the will of any, or surrender up our judgments to be wholly disposed by the sentences, determinations of any.

Christian liberty is a precious jewel, suffer not any to rob you of it. Let us never surrender up our judgments to our consciences to be disposed according to the opinions, and to be subjected to the sentences and determinations of men. Let neither power or policy, force or fraud rob you of this precious jewel.

Be not ensnared and overwhelmed by the policies of men. We are warned to take heed none deceive us, Eph. 5:6; Col. 2:8; 2 Thess. 2:3, as if it were in our power to prevent it. And so it is, we cannot be ensnared but by our own default. We often betray away our liberty when we might maintain it, and so become the servants of men. And this ariseth either from weakness of head or from wickedness of heart. It is my exhortation therefore that those who are the freemen of Christ would maintain their Christian freedom, as against the law, so against men. Be not tempted or threatened out of it; be not bribed or frightened from it; let neither force nor fraud rob you of it. We often keep it against force, and lose it by fraud. To what purpose is it to maintain it against those, who are the open oppugners of it, the Papists, and such as would take it from us, and give it up by our own hands, to them perhaps that seek not for it? Nothing is more usual, and therefore beware.

Give not up yourselves to the opinions of other men, though never so learned, never so holy, because it is their opinion (1 Thess. 5:21). It often falls out that a high esteem of others for their learning and piety, make men to take up all upon trust from such, and to subject their judgments to their opinions, and their consciences to their precepts. Men will suspect a truth if a liar affirm it, and therefore Christ would not own the devil’s acknowledgment of him, when he said, Thou art the Son of God; but they are ready to believe an error, to give credit to an untruth, if an honest and faithful man affirm it. Whatever such men say, it comes with a great deal of authority into man’s spirits; and yet it is possible for such men to mistake.

It is a most dangerous thing to have man’s person in too much admiration, as the Apostle saith, Jude 16. Paul tells us that we know in part, 1 Cor. 13:12. The best are imperfect in knowledge. The most learned, and holy Martyrs, every man hath need of his allowance; they are but men, and in that subject to error. Though these things may afford probable conjectures, that what they hold forth is a truth, yet these are not infallible evidences. Indeed, there is much to be given to men of learning and piety; but we must not tie our boat to their ship, we must not, as the phrase is, pin our faith upon their sleeves. We must not subject our judgments, resolve our faith into their authority. This is to make men masters of our faith; this is a thread of that Garment, whereby Babylon is distinguished; a mark of the Roman Anti-Christian Church. To resolve our faith into the authorities of man, and though it be not required of you, yet it is no less done (though more finely done) by many, than by those of whom such implicit faith, and blind obedience is required.

END

Economic Growth And The Gospel Of Christ

Our political leaders speak much to us these days concerning economic growth. One cause for lag which they do not generally mention and thus do not confront is mental illness. Cornell University’s Alexander Leighton, professor of social psychiatry and anthropology, told a United Nations conference in Geneva that economic growth is slowed because perhaps as much as 30 per cent of the world’s population suffers from mental disorders.

When one ponders the awful darkness represented here, he may be staggered. But what of the other 70 per cent? So many of these lack the light of truth which shines from the face of Christ that one trembles for a benighted globe. All our inventive genius notwithstanding, this is not the day for liberal optimism. May the Church rather face up to earth’s desperate straits and cast forth the light of the Gospel as the only answer—even unto the day Christ comes in glory and irresistibly annihilates darkness with a new heaven and a new earth.

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Statistics show conclusively that church membership in the United States is not keeping pace with population growth. Allowing for variations in the methods of ascertaining these figures and agreeing that church membership and the individual Christian’s spiritual health may be separate, still one may say that compared with the past, the rate of spiritual growth is not keeping up with the national birth rate.

That this is true in a country so richly favored by God and with so many churches and church activities should shock all of us into a willingness to take stock of our personal commitment to the Lord and our stewardship of the grace so richly given. Furthermore, it should cause the corporate church to take stock of her own faithfulness and stewardship.

Many causes for this decline will be brought forward. Some will insist that the Church has lost her influence because of her many divisions. They offer as the solution the “reuniting of Christendom,” with church merger after church merger—all with a concentric trend towards one great Church.

One wonders, though, whether the decline in ratio of church members to general population can rightly be blamed on the multiplicity of denominations. The average individual is little concerned about the organization of the church. In fact, he sees the church in terms of the Christians he meets and the personal and church-centered efforts to reach him as an individual.

Is it not axiomatic that the elemental impact and continuing influence of the Church depend, not on her organization, but on the messages from her pulpits and the dedication of those who claim the name of Christian?

Yet it is at this point that there is the greatest evasion today. There are many who for the sake of an outward unity play down the inevitable spiritual unity which exists among those who know and love the Lord and try to serve him. Such persons insist that the Church can present an effective united front without corresponding convictions on the very content of the faith itself.

To this writer there are some discernible reasons for the decline of the Church and some questions which need answers.

For centuries the Church was composed of men with a Book. The full integrity and authority of the Word was questioned only by those on the fringes of the Church and those openly hostile to it. Today a new generation of “priests” has arisen, leaders who in their composite attacks leave little more than the covers of the Book.

Human reason, intellectualism, and unbelief have combined to sit in judgment on the divine revelation with disastrous results. The opinions of men have been substituted for “Thus saith the Lord,” so that from a host of pulpits those in the pews hear the opinions of the latest writers and most popular scholars. One wonders whether the words of Jeremiah do not apply to us today: “An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?” (Jer. 5:30, 31).

Again: “And the Lord said to me: ‘The prophets are prophesying lies in my name; I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds’” (Jer. 14:14).

Again: “Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes; they speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord’” (Jer. 23:16).

But Jeremiah does not content himself with denunciation; he has the answer from the Lord. “Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the Lord. Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer which breaks the rock in pieces? Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who steal my words from one another. Behold, I am against the prophets, says the Lord, who use their tongues and say, ‘says the Lord.’ Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, says the Lord, and who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness, when I did not send them or charge them; so they do not profit this people at all, says the Lord” (Jer. 23:28–32).

The writer would use these words to warn all of us—Christians who live lives utterly inconsistent with their profession, ministers who preach anything other than the Word of God.

The Church losing ground! Surely the fault lies within us. We have permitted the people of God to be infiltrated by the world and its lust. We live in a time of unspeakable moral declension and find these lowered standards seeping into the visible body of Christ, to the point where the worldling cannot distinguish between those who are members of the Church and those who are not.

Ezekiel takes up the warning to those who speak in the name of the Lord: “The word of the Lord came to me: ‘son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel, prophesy and say to those who prophesy out of their own minds: “Hear the word of the Lord!” Thus says the Lord God, Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing!’” (Jer. 13:1–3).

The basic problem of a declining Church is her failure to face up to the sin problem and to God’s cure for sin. Words such as “conviction,” “repentance,” “confession,” “renunciation,” “cleansing,” the “person and work of the Holy Spirit” have almost vanished from many vocabularies. We have become obsessed with humanism and have made it a substitute for Christianity. We have placed reformation ahead of regeneration even to the point where there is no longer a distinction between the redeemed and the lost—just those who are saved and know it and those who are saved and do not know it.

Although church membership is certainly not the ultimate index in God’s sight, it nevertheless is an indicator on which many implications rest.

We are constrained to believe that the Church is losing membership and influence because only too often she is ceasing to be the Church: she is becoming instead a political organization dedicated to world betterment without reference to soul betterment, to political pressures instead of the power of the Holy Spirit, to humanism rather than Christianity itself.

What shall it profit if the Church becomes instrumental in solving every problem of human relationships, every injustice and inequity of society, every material need—only to find that men are still estranged from God and know not his Christ?

L. NELSON BELL

Eutycfius Ii

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Embarrassment At Yale

They tell me that this is a true story: a professor in a seminary started out his chapel invocation, “Oh Lord, you probably noticed in the morning paper.…” Well, He probably did. In like fashion with the late Will Rogers, that’s most of all I know, too.

I saw in the papers that some boys at Yale University “got religion.” They had all kinds of a flurry about it, but no one was more flurried than chaplains, preachers, and the like, because these newcomers to the faith were coming up with such things as “speaking with tongues” and sundry other gifts listed authoritatively by Paul in the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians. I am not too clear now, nor was I too clear even then, about the report that chaplains, preachers, and the like were recommending to these poor fellows who “got religion” that they had varied problems—father images, neuroses, academic pressures, international crises, and so on. Everyone was a little jumpy about these manifestations of the Spirit in spite of the fact that all would doubtless avow that “the Holy Spirits works when and where and how he pleases.”

It reminds me of what happened to George Fox. He was having religious experiences and sought out the direction of his church advisors. They helpfully suggested that he needed physic or chewing tobacco. He ended up by founding the Quaker church instead. John and Charles Wesley and some of their buddies were nicknamed “methodists,” and the only thing wrong with them was that they were acting like Navigators, Young Life, or Inter-Varsity Fellowship. The old-time religions couldn’t stand them.

M. G. Kyle said, “We all pray for the Holy Spirit and when the tongues of flame appear we all run for the fire department.” Most college campuses have all kinds of ways for dealing with sinners (they even ignore them) but are greatly confused when a saint appears. There is an interesting phrase: “those who love His appearing.” It is a good one for the testing of a church, a college, or a society.

Durable Dialogue

Your articles are very informing and timely—especially the first two in the May 10 issue, “What I Don’t Understand About the Protestants!” and “What I Don’t Understand About Roman Catholics!” Dr. Geoffrey Bromiley’s article, excellent in itself, contains much that the average layman will not understand. Somehow it is hard for learned men to descend to the level of the common man.

However, aside from that fact, this year is, in my humble opinion, the time to analyze the differences between Romanism and Protestantism.…

Omaha, Neb.

This is what I don’t understand about Catholics. With Cuba in the Communistic camp along with other European Catholic countries and with a real vital threat of Latin American Catholic countries with certain European countries going Communistic: Why the intelligent Catholics do not recognize that their type of religious culture produces the type of mind that is conducive to Communism? And why they do not do something about it?

In spite of all these facts they attempt in America as fast as they can to produce the type of religious mind that is conducive to Communism. And in spite of all their efforts by talk to discredit Communism they do nothing in actual fact.

On the other hand with all these facts staring them in the face, I cannot understand why any responsible Protestant religious leader would even think of talking union with Catholics.

United Presbyterian Church

Campbell, N. Y.

I am distressed to read the two articles. I am an apostle of freedom of speech, but I think this implies responsibility—i.e., the “speaking the truth in love” of which St. Paul speaks. Each of these articles cries to high heaven for the gift of charity.…

For 500 years Protestants have tried to get along without the richness of Catholicism and Catholicism has tried to survive without the dynamic of Protestantism—each needs the other—we have much to give and more to share, and it is high time we talked about these things and not our apparently insuperable differences.

Church of the Nativity

Pittsburgh, Pa.

What does Dr. Bromiley mean, “we don’t understand the Catholics”? We understand Catholics all too well! Anybody who has a smattering of church history should understand Catholics. Luther certainly understood Catholics … Huss understood Catholics, Wycliffe understood Catholics, our missionaries to Catholic countries in South America understand Catholics. Converts to Christ from Catholicism understand Catholics and the Roman church and want no parts of it.… It would be well if the evangelicals of our time would open their eyes to the prophetic significance of the Bible and recognize that all this breathless hunt for some kind of agreement and understanding … is not of God nor of his Christ.

Lockport, N. Y.

I was so appalled by the obvious historical ignorance of Mr. John J. Moran in his article of what he doesn’t understand about Protestants that I would simply reply—he doesn’t understand anything about Protestants or Catholics.

Any college graduate or faithful member of the Roman church who could make such a weird statement as “My church has never decreed to call itself the ‘Roman’ Catholic Church” is actually ignorant of the Council of Trent and of any official documents of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps we should be unhistorical and call the Roman church the Latin or Italian church and then he would not need to think of wearing a toga!

The reference to the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in New York City as a Protestant church is as fantastic as if I were to refer to the Pope of Rome as a Muslim.

I’m sure you will hear from many other Anglicans who do understand the Roman church quite well; we simply pray for her and forgive her for her ignorant laymen who don’t want to understand anyone!

Saint Mark’s Church

South Milwaukee, Wis.

“My Church has never decreed to call itself the ‘Roman Catholic Church,’” Moran writes, and further, he denies that his church teaches “that Protestants wind up in hell.” These two statements can be answered by just one quotation from The New Mission Book, imprimatur John J. Glennon, Archbishop of St. Louis. At page 390: “There can be no salvation for those, who, through their own fault, are out of the Church of Christ, the Holy Roman Catholic Church … as long as he deliberately refuses to obey God to become a child of God’s holy Church he cannot enter into heaven.”

L. H. SAUNDERS

Toronto, Ont.

Protestants and Catholics do not understand each other because they are never permitted to talk to each other officially about their faith. It is only by frank and open discussion—debate if you will—that problems in this realm, as in any realm of life, are to be resolved.

Union Methodist Church

Totowa Borough, N. J.

We Episcopalians do not believe that our fathers left the Catholic Church. Our forefathers severed themselves from Roman jurisdiction and Roman ecclesiasticism, and restored to the Church then existing in England, the independence which it enjoyed as the British Church before the bishops of England submitted to the Pope at the Council of Hertford in A.D. 673. We believe that the Catholic creed and the Catholic tradition in essence, without Roman innovations, continued in an unbroken manner from the “Ecclesia Anglicana” which had an organized hierarchy of bishops as early as A.D. 314 before the Pope sent his emissaries to England. It is for this reason that no member of the official Anglican communion denies the fact that he is a Catholic—Anglican Catholic—not Roman Catholic. If any member of the Anglican communion does deny this fact, he is ignorant of the official teaching of his church and the facts of history substantiating this claim, or he is identifying “Catholic” with “Roman Catholic” to which he does not wish to subscribe.

St. James Church

Batavia, N. Y.

It is absolutely necessary to identify the papacy-dominated brand of Churchianity as Roman Catholic in order to avoid confusion with the more inclusive term “Holy Catholic Church.” The Holy Catholic Church is comprised of individuals, irrespective of racial, religious, or denominational background, who have been made alive spiritually by the marvelous experience of the New Birth.

Also the Holy Catholic Church has such a wonderful Head: “God has appointed Him (Christ) universal and supreme Head of the Church” (Eph. 1:22, Weymouth Translation).

Lancaster, Pa.

I believe, with Mr. Moran, that Cardinal Newman was one of the greater religious thinkers of the nineteenth century. But, as an Anglican, I feel obliged to question his statement that he was “one of the great minds of the Anglican church.” I do not question his intellect, but I do question Newman’s commitment to Anglican doctrines. By his tracts written while he was the vicar of St. Mary’s, Oxford, Newman showed that he had rejected the Reformation which claimed to return to Christ and the apostles for its teaching, and instead was embracing the erroneous doctrines of the Middle Ages.

Wheaton, Ill.

Moran dismisses the whole question of image worship with the words, “We do not, of course.” The Reformers were perfectly well aware of the Roman distinction between “worship” and “veneration.” John Calvin goes into it at some length in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, Chapter xi. They also knew that the arguments used by Romanists to explain that their “veneration” is not intended for the statue, but for the person represented, were used by Celsus to defend paganism and were refuted by Origen in the third century. The point is that for the men of the Reformation, these subtleties were not adequate grounds on which to ignore what seemed to them plain prohibitions of the Word of God.

I think that CHRISTIANITY TODAY should be praised for its attempt to promote inter-confessional understanding. Still in all, Mr. Moran might have been more qualified to write an article entitled, “What I Don’t Understand About Roman Catholicism.”

Boston, Mass.

I have [heard of a Protestant being excommunicated], A bishop in one of the larger denominations was excommunicated in Cleveland back in about 1926. And speaking of my own church, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, if any member would deny any of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion and would refuse to recant and repent, he would, after proper brotherly admonition, be excommunicated.

Immanuel Lutheran Church

Youngstown, Ohio

I think the two articles … were the greatest waste of four pages I have ever seen in a Christian publication. I don’t see why a magazine of this caliber should bother with the elementary, juvenile, and beside-the-point opinions of either of these two men.

Watertown, Mass.

The Episcopal Church is entirely and completely Catholic—as is the Roman.

Priest (ret.)

Episcopal Diocese

Greensboro, N. C.

There are many reasons [that keep high church Episcopalians from taking that one further step back into Roman Catholicism], such as: “allowing one’s baptism to be questioned,” or “denying valid Bishops, Priests, and Deacons”.… As long as the Roman Catholic Church denounces Anglicans it ought to be easy to understand.

Philadelphia, Pa.

American Baptists

We have been asked to communicate the following action which was taken at a joint meeting of the Council of State Secretaries and Council of City Secretaries, held in Detroit, Michigan, on May 12.

These groups represent the administrative areas of the American Baptist Convention. Present and voting were twenty-five of the total of thirty-three state secretaries, and seven of the total of twelve city secretaries.

Here is the excerpt from the minutes of that meeting:

“It was moved by Joseph Heartberg of New Jersey and seconded by Clifford Perron of Minnesota that the State and City Secretaries of the American Baptist Convention, meeting in joint session at Detroit, Michigan on May 12, 1963, go on record as follows:

1. We recognize Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa, Secretary of Evangelism of the American Baptist Home Mission Societies, as a responsible Christian thinker and a conscientious and dedicated American Baptist leader.

2. We hereby protest the publication of a statement in the article “Spring Thaw for Baptists” in the April 12, 1963, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY to the effect that only two of our secretaries favor the retention of Dr. Morikawa as director of Evangelism for the American Baptist Convention; and we further protest the fact that the statement was made without any previous inquiry to the respective state and city secretaries concerning their point of view.

3. We also hereby call upon CHRISTIANITY TODAY to publicly withdraw the above-mentioned statement since that statement was based upon incorrect information.

4. We request the respective secretaries of the State and City Secretaries Councils to send copies of this resolution to

a)The Editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY

b)The General Secretary of the American Baptist Convention

c)The Executive Secretary of the American Baptist Home Mission Societies

d)Dr. Jitsuo Morikawa

This motion was passed unanimously.”

JOHN CRAIG, Sec.

Council of City Secretaries

NICHOLAS TITUS, Sec.

Council of State Secretaries

ANGUS HULL, President

Council of City Secretaries

CARLTON SAYWELL, President

Council of State Secretaries

American Baptist Convention

Valley Forge, Pa.

• CHRISTIANITY TODAY is glad to register this protest, though (1) the protest does not indicate the current measure of support for Dr. Morikawa among the secretaries; (2) the qualities described in section 1 of the motion were never called into question in our story; (3) the report which we recorded spoke only of state secretaries. But other evidence has been discovered which indicates the report was inaccurate as to the number of state secretaries cited.—ED.

Your correspondent correctly reported the substance of my response to a question about Nels Ferré asked at Northern Seminary’s recent Evangelism Conference. However, quite understandably, he could not give the whole context. For the sake of your readers, in deference to those who have written to me, and especially in fairness to Professor Ferré, let me make a distinction which I made on that occasion.

There is a universalism that denies the divine judgment and believes that at death all men go to heaven. There is also a universalism that believes in hell and judgment but refuses to believe that the divine judgment is eternal and believes that God’s will to salvation will not be ultimately and irrevocably frustrated. Professor Ferré belongs in the latter group. I was correctly quoted as saying that fellowship should not be broken over disagreements as to the duration of the divine judgment in the hereafter.

Andover Newton Theological School

Newton Centre, Mass.

Thank you for the articles and other pieces in CHRISTIANITY TODAY which are dealing with the present spread of universalism.

Some of us are concerned at the way it seems to be spreading like a forest fire. Though some of our leaders may sneer at your significant answers to this ungodly doctrine, be assured that there are many who are grateful.

K. AART VAN DAM

President

Baptist Ministers Council of Wisconsin

Of the American Baptist Convention

Neenah, Wis.

A Good Question

I have lingered over the article “Why I Stayed in the Ministry” by Douglas A. Dickey, of Williamsport, Indiana (Mar. 29 issue). I like this kind of talk. I always devour these articles, hoping, I suppose, to find some encouragement for my own hopes of becoming a preacher. I do find a great lesson in these backgrounds, these experiences of men of faith who labor to bring their people closer to God, closer to a realization that this life has more to offer than sticks and stones and toil every day. By strengthening their people, they must strengthen themselves, for they certainly show a great fortitude in staying with it.

Yes, I want to be a minister. It is a feeling I have never been able to shake. And I have tried. I’ve fought against it with deliberation, but I always wind up with the feeling of “someone” standing over in the corner smiling at me with patience and forgiveness. I’ve listened to all the “anti” arguments. I’ve even made up a few myself. The pay is low, often inadequate. I’m piled up to here with debts that haunt me and taunt me. I don’t have the educational background, and the idea of an almost 45-year-old attending a college while he has a growing family to look out for is not—in my present circumstance—an encouragement, or a solution to anything. No higher educational institution is in my background, true, but I’ve always felt that the various extension courses so readily available today can help a body overcome his lack of formal education.

And I haven’t exactly been standing still these years I’ve been living. I’ve made an effort to keep my learning in pace with the times. It has been as “liberal” as any I would have gotten in college. Discussion and application, review and reapplication are constant companions in my radio advertising work. And of all the “hard knock schools” few can equal the radio business for its all-around “curriculum.”

“Your witness as a layman is an effective one many times,” I have been told. There have been many encouraging words spoken about some of my broadcasting. One lady wrote me to say, “I feel as if I’ve been in church after hearing your program.” Another told me that “eleven of our young folk made their decision to join the church last night, and every one of them received their encouragement to do so from your talk to our group last night.…”

These … compliments … are a great blessing to my heart. But the truth is, my lay witness does not satisfy me. Where do I go next? I must sit back and wait for the next invitation. My preparation for the next time is haphazard, general—because I don’t know where it will come from, or what it will be for.…

I would like to pastor a small town church. And it should be one like Pastor Dickey described, where the saints are patient and understanding, encouraging and long suffering flounderings of a beginner. I’ve lived and worked in small towns before, and I have for the most part been comfortable in them. In one small town, I was a teacher in the men’s Bible class in a Methodist church, was a commissioned lay speaker for the conference. I also aided in the organization of a Baptist congregation, became its moderator, and supplied its pulpit until a regular minister was called. They rewarded me with a license when I left the town to take another job.

From these two vantage points, I could see the influence exerted by many of the young people who were going off to college, into the service, or to jobs in the cities nearby and far away. They took something of the solidity of close family and friendship ties with them, and many of these were molded in their church life.

In the small town, too, you have a greater opportunity to become an active member of the community, not just a passive voter. What you do in a small town is important, or perhaps that importance is magnified by proximity. Anyway, I feel, the ministerial influence can be more readily felt in the small town. The church is more central to the life there.

So the question comes up—where do I go from here? I’m frankly looking for some suggestions. Is the shortage of ministers we hear so much about not yet great enough for a denomination to aid and abet the furtherance of a man’s desire to answer the call to serve his God and fellowman? Must every beginning preacher be qualified for a doctorate before he is allowed in a pulpit, to administer the sacraments, baptize, marry the living and bury the dead?

I want to preach. So, where in this great land is the opportunity for a 43-year-old family man? Where is that conference or convention or church that will allow this one to answer the call—that will be patient and understanding of his shortcomings?

Have sermons—will travel!

Warrenton, Va.

Origins

I have become a trifle impatient with colleagues and friends who cast disparaging remarks upon the historic Christian position, while failing to realize that if it were not for this vast and powerful force much of what they now have would be nonexistent. While I do not call myself a fundamentalist—though time was when I did—I strongly suspect that evangelical Christianity is largely responsible for the vast majority of men in the clergy today. May I propose that CHRISTIANITY TODAY make a survey—and not just of its subscribers—to ascertain what per cent of men, even though now “liberal” in theology, had a conservative background. I strongly suspect that even yet it is these local congregations which are largely to be given credit for opening up vistas with conviction, presenting the professional ministry as a vital alternative to choose. I further suspect that the prevalent preaching—and I speak strictly as a layman, knowing something of what laymen really want to hear—of many of our pulpiteers, lacking clarity and force, accounts for the dearth of young men seriously considering the ministry as a life work.

Alma College

Alma, Mich.

- More fromEutycfius Ii

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It was just a little less than thirty years ago, at the time the dollar was devalued, that Franklin D. Roosevelt announced as the objective of government policy a dollar that would over the years purchase the same quantity of goods; that is, a dollar whose value in terms of purchasing power would be stable. The ideal was that you could invest dollars today—in bonds, notes, savings accounts, insurance—and be sure that those dollars would be worth just as much in the market twenty or thirty years hence.

Yet it is obvious to everyone that this objective has not been attained, and is not likely to be attained. In respect of spoilage, or deterioration, a bundle of greenbacks is different only in degree from a head of lettuce.

When coinage was developed by the Greeks about seven hundred years before Christ, the minting appears to have been done by the temple authorities.… The temples, we may assume, had a tradition of pure coinage, since only a pure metal, like an unblemished sacrifice, would be acceptable to the god or goddess. In the case of the Jews, the purity of the metal was elevated into a moral question. The Mosaic law forbade adulterating goods or tampering with weights and measures. Thus the devout Jew was forbidden to wear garments of mingled wool and linen; he was forbidden to sow his field with mixed seed, or to crossbreed, say, an ass with a mare. While concerning metals the prohibition is not explicit, we may assume that alloying metal was likewise forbidden. The Mosaic law also laid down the principle of honest weights—a moral achievement with which the world has not yet caught up. “Just balances, just weights; a just ephah and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the Lord your God”—so ran the Mosaic command (Lev. 19:36).

Now the devout Jew was also required to pay the temple dues of half a shekel a year. The temple half-shekel was a weight of silver. We have no record of Jewish half-shekel coinage except for a small amount struck during the days of the Jewish Revolt and the final destruction of the Temple by Titus in A.D. 70; but we may gather from the fact that around the temple there were money changers, that the temple authorities did not allow the Jew to pay his temple dues of half a shekel except in coin containing pure metal.

Among the Roman Caesars and secular authorities, such moral prohibitions did not exist, either upon the maintenance of the purity of the coinage or upon its weight. Both were subject to change at the edict or whim of the emperor. The denarius as originated by Julius Caesar was a coin of practically pure silver equivalent to ten pieces of copper; whence its name denarius, meaning ten of copper. The coin had not been long in circulation, however, before succeeding Caesars found it expedient to alloy the coin with an increasing amount of copper while retaining its legal tender value. This, of course, meant a profit to the imperial mint. The emperors, always pressed for revenue, became adept at adulterating the money. By the time of Gallienus Caesar the silver denarius had been so debased with copper that the silver was only a thin wash. Thereafter it was converted to a copper coin pure and simple. No longer subject to debasement by alloy, its value was reduced by reducing the size and weight of the coin. The denarius became so small that it resembled a pebble, which the poor, whose garments apparently were not equipped with pockets, often carried about in their cheeks.

In addition to debasing the coinage, the Roman emperors introduced certain practices which have become familiar in recent years: having variable exchange rates and purchasing powers according to various political purposes. Denarii could legally be tendered at a certain rate in discharge of commercial debt, but at another rate—a lower one, of course—for taxes; while for foreign trade it had a third rate, its bullion value. In imperial payments the same accounting prevailed in reverse order; thus silver denarii were paid to the legion at the rate of one to ten of copper whereas for the public the rate was one to sixteen. Later, when the denarii became little more than copper, pure metal coins were struck for army pay and debased coins for other purposes. The imperial mints deliberately mixed a certain proportion of plated coins among the more honest, and all had to be accepted at the official rate.

The inevitable results of these practices were a continued inflation, a disappearance of good money, and what would be called in these days a balance-of-payments problem. The high-living Roman ladies demanded silk from China which sold literally at its weight in gold, spices from India, ivory and peacocks from Africa. Good gold and silver had to be shipped out in increasing quantities. Meantime, the empire was no longer expanding, and the government was running out of slaves to send to the silver mines of Spain and the gold mines of the Balkans. The government increased the minting of debauched coinage for domestic trade. The ultimate effect was economic disintegration. This went along with social decay and political and military impotence. Speculation in commodities drove prices higher and goods into hoarding. The final stupidity of the Roman emperors was to establish a system of price ceilings. It was in A.D. 301, just before the final collapse of the Roman Empire and its division into two halves, that the Emperor Diocletian issued his famous price-fixing decree as the last measure of a desperate sovereign.

Only portions of this decree have come down to us—fragments here and there turned up by archaeologists—but enough to reveal it as one of the most unusual documents in history. The discovery of parts in the farthest corners of the empire confirms its widespread application, and the language of the preamble reveals in words most explicit both the terrible degree of economic collapse and the basic superficiality of Roman economic philosophy. The decree, by the very completeness of the list of articles whose prices it regulated, must have been felt in every village and countryside in the imperial domain. The prices of all articles of trade, from a measure of beer and a bunch of watercress to a piece of genuine purple silk and bars of pure gold, and of services, from the shaving of a man or the shearing of sheep to the fees of a lawyer for presenting a case, were set out in detail.

The price-fixing decree of Diocletian was a failure and was abandoned within five years. From the economic crisis of the third century, largely induced by a corrupt money, the Western Roman Empire never recovered. By the fourth century money had fallen to the degraded position of “ponderata,” when it was customary to assay and weigh each piece offered in payment. And by the seventh century, the weights themselves had been so frequently degraded that it was no longer possible to make a specific bargain for money. There was no law to define the weight of a pound or an ounce and no power to enforce the law had one existed. Under these circumstances money became extinct. Nor, we are reminded, was it the only institution that perished; all institutions perished. There was no government except the sword; there was no law; there were no certain weights and measures; exchanges were made in kind, or for slaves, or for bags of corn, or for lumps of metal, which men weighed or counted to one another, holding the thing to be sold in one hand and the thing bought in the other.

No more fittingly can we close this comment on the failure of the Romans to cope with money than by quoting the words of one Antoninus Augustus, cited by Del Mar: “Money had more to do with the distemper of the Roman Empire than the Huns or the Vandals.” The paradox of history is that in the eastern half of the Roman Empire after the second capital was established on the Bosporus in the fourth century, a different monetary tradition governed which was marked by a strong moral sense of the responsibility of government toward money. The Eastern Roman Empire came again under Greek influence as it had always been largely Greek. In Athens, nine centuries before, had occurred the first official debasement of money of which history gives record. Solon, the noted lawgiver, had come into power as a compromise candidate during a great commercial crisis resulting from land speculation and an accumulation of mortgage debt. Solon, like Roosevelt in a later period in history, attempted to meet that crisis by a series of monetary manipulations. He solved the farm problem by a decree abrogating all the farm debt; then, to assist the distressed mortgage holders he allowed them to write down their obligaions by paying them off in drachmas of reduced weight. The drachma was officially devalued by 26 per cent. The device seems to have been successful for a time, but evidently it revolted the Greek conscience, for thereafter magistrates were required to include in their oath of office the promise not to tamper with the coinage. From then on a tradition of pure coinage and maintenance of the weights and standards became traditional among the Greeks. When Constantine established his principal capital in Byzantium this Greek influence came to the fore, and among the Constantine reforms was the establishment of a new monetary system based upon the gold coin subsequently known as the bezant. It is a remarkable tribute to the genius of the Byzantine Empire that this coin was never debased in the course of 700 years, and it is to the purity of this coinage that many students of Byzantium attribute the remarkable vitality and vigor of that empire. The German historian Gelzer may be quoted: “By her money, Byzantium ruled the world.”

I have dwelt upon the Roman experience with money because we are inheritors of the Roman tradition: Roman monetary practices continue to infect the monetary system to this day.… When the Federal Reserve System was established in 1913, the law permitted the reserve banks to issue currency and deposit credits roughly to the extent of two and one-half times the amount of actual gold held by the banks. In 1946 the limit was raised to permit the banks to issue money and credit to the extent of four times the amount of gold held, and a bill was introduced in Congress last session, and has already been reintroduced this year, to abolish the requirement entirely and thus permit the reserve banks to issue an unlimited amount of money and credit against the amount of gold held.

The process does not end here. The money or deposit credit which the banks hold at the Federal Reserve banks is reserve to the commercial banks against which they may in turn create deposit credits which, according to the location of the bank or the category of the credit, may range up to as high as twenty times the amount of the reserve carried with the reserve banks. Thus the situation today is that for the banking system as a whole, outstanding monetary claims in the form of currency and demand deposits are of the order of $145 billion, to meet which the Treasury holds a gold stock of less than $16 billion. This is not the end. By what is known as the gold exchange standard, foreign central banks count deposits in United States banks as the same as gold. This is because the Treasury, at least so far, will redeem gold claims presented from abroad at par; that is, it will pay out gold at the rate of one ounce for every $35. This has been an expensive process: it has drained out some $8 billion, or over a third of our gold stock, in the last dozen years. I have not been able to compute the total of monetary claims on the world’s gold stock, but the amount is fantastic.

It takes a keen student and a mathematician to determine just how much the money today is adulterated, for money managers have become adept in developing various devices to conceal the exact status of the currency. Thus, the Treasury figures for official gold stock do not mention that they include $800 million of gold borrowed from the International Monetary Fund from 1956 through 1958. In addition, last year the Federal Reserve and the Treasury entered into a number of so-called swap arrangements by which, in effect, they obtained from various foreign central banks the equivalent of over $1 billion in exchange for a super convertibility guarantee, which means that another billion in gold must be set aside to meet these obligations. These devices are too abstruse for the ordinary citizen to follow, even for some astute bankers.

Without knowing precisely the extent to which it has been hoodwinked and defrauded, the general public is becoming increasingly suspicious of what passes as money and is showing an increasing eagerness to get rid of money in favor of objects of known worth. Among those substances of actual wealth with the greatest certainty and stability of value are the precious metals, gold and silver. It is paradoxical that the two countries of the world which historically stood for personal freedom and the right of individual property, the two wealthiest countries in the world, namely the United States and Great Britain, are the only two countries in the free world whose citizens are forbidden to hold or to own monetary gold. In the United States this prohibition has been recently tightened and extended to include the holding of gold not only at home but abroad, and the Treasury is beginning to look with suspicious eye at objects of art in gold. Before long they may be looking into the mouths of taxpayers for hoarded gold.

I have long urged the view that a principal cause of social and political unrest in Asia and Latin America has been the depreciation of money, which has been accelerated by the action of governments in withdrawing silver money from circulation and substituting flimsy, depreciating paper money. The process began around the turn of the century and was encouraged by American money doctors who went around the world prescribing various forms of managed money to cure all economic ills.… The United States, which invests billions annually to promote stability in underdeveloped lands, could travel further in this direction if it would by precept and by example encourage these governments to abandon managed money and paper currency and to return to good silver coinage, both as a medium of payment and as a standard of value.—Excerpts from an address by Dr. Elgin Groseclose before The Cosmos Club, Washington, D. C.

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In the idiom of the New Frontier, I am called an “ultra conservative.” I accept the nomination—provided the title denotes one who tries humbly to follow the trail leading from tyranny to freedom which was hewed through government oppression by Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, and the other pioneers of our republic. They raised a “standard to which the wise and honest can repair,” a standard which retains its integrity because it is rooted deeply in religious faith and eternal principles.

The elements of this standard are: First, man derives directly from the Creator his rights to life, to liberty, and to the unhampered use of his honestly acquired property, and thus he is not beholden for them to any human agency; second, to protect his rights he joins with others to establish a government, whose powers are carefully limited and clearly defined in order that they may not be used to usurp the rights they are designed to defend; and third, for man to grow in wisdom and worldly possessions, he must have freedom of choice, a free exchange for ideas as well as for material goods. These rights are to be used without hindrance, so long as the possessor does not interfere with the rights of others.

Transcending all is the conviction that for every God-given right there is a collateral responsibility to use that right in strict conformity with the moral law, as revealed in such statements as the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Golden Rule. When man’s appetites are disciplined by such inner restraints, he can establish a society which will require a minimum of external police power to maintain public order, and this, in turn, leads to a maximum of individual freedom.

On this solid foundation, our founding fathers erected the social order which became a haven for the oppressed and down-trodden of the earth and a beacon of hope for those who could not escape to our shores. While there was never a dearth of compassion and material help for the needy in our land, the major emphasis was always on opportunity, rather than on relief.

In this climate of freedom, our nation became the world’s cornucopia of spiritual and material blessings. Over the years it has poured out its abundance for the needy everywhere.

But in recent decades our people have been subjected to an unceasing barrage of allegedly “new” ideas. With increasing frequency, and most recently by our President, we have been told that the ideals of the founding fathers are “out-moded,” that their admonitions are “incantations from the forgotten past, worn out slogans, myths and illusions.” Individual moral responsibility to God and to one’s neighbor has been called a “cliché of our forebears,” and we are instructed that this generation must “disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truism and stereotype.” We are urged to discard the accumulated wisdom of our ancestors and the time-tested traditions of Western civilization as useless impediments because the State now takes full responsibility for its subjects’ welfare.

Unfortunately, many of us have yielded to these seductions. We have surrendered the solid substance of freedom for the illusory promise of security. In doing so, we have permitted the structure of our free society to be weakened and its foundations eroded so that there is grave danger of collapse.

All of us must share the blame for this debacle. Over the past fifty years we have participated in the propagation of a misplaced faith in the ability of government to accomplish any material, economic, social, or moral purpose. Implementing this faith, we have thrust enormous powers on government, or we have stood by meekly while government has seized authority at an ever increasing pace and has centralized it in Washington, far removed from the control of those from whom it was obtained. Such enhancement of political power at the expense of individual rights is correctly labeled “socialism.”

The tendency of citizens in all walks of life is to be complacent about government intrusion that does not encroach upon what each one believes is his own domain. We are apathetic about the general socialist drift. Frequently, we support collectivist measures which, it is claimed, will “promote the general welfare,” or will “stimulate the economy of the community” where we live. But we should now be aware that we are threatened by total State Socialism, an ancient tyranny under a modern disguise. If we are to survive as a nation of free men, we must oppose socialism with all of our vigor wherever it appears. If our sole concern is that aspect of socialism which affects directly our own business, our own industry, or our own community, we will contribute to the advance of State Socialism on other fronts by our neglect, and thus weaken the entire structure of freedom.

It is said that the people never give up their liberties except under some delusion. We have been surrendering our liberties under the delusion that government has some superior competence in the realm of economics, some magic multiplier of wealth, some ready access to a huge store of economic goods which may be had without working for them—merely by voting for them.

None of us is completely immune to these delusions or to the human passions aroused by the four horsemen of our own apocalypse—ignorance, fear, apathy, and greed. Nevertheless, those who see the inevitable end of this progression are duty-bound to sound the alarm.

The great iniquity of our times is that so many are trying to tell others how to live their lives. They ask, plaintively, “How can we do good for the people if we just let them alone?” As for me, “I’m fed up to here” with so-called “master minds,” with statesmen, clergymen, schoolmasters, and politicians who, though frequently unable to administer the affairs of their own small households, have no doubt of their ability to spell out, in detail, the what, when, where, and how that 188 million Americans and countless other millions throughout the world must do to have a more abundant life!

“I’m fed up to here” with pseudo-statesmen, whose wishbones are where their backbones ought to be, who are past masters of surrender, compromise, appeasement, and accommodation, who believe we can buy friends like sacks of potatoes, who fawn upon, cajole, and pamper our enemies and the so-called “unaligned” nations while they kick our time-tested friends in the teeth, who shiver and shake when “world opinion” is mentioned, who would depend upon United Nations mercenaries to protect the security of these United States, who never become surfeited with Soviet lies and deceit, who believe that the next time Khrushchev will surely honor his commitment, and who hold that the Russian Bear will soon change his claws and fangs for olive branches and rose petals!

“I’m fed up to here” with the wiser-than-thou, self-anointed oracles who insist that differences of opinion on foreign policy should stop at the water’s edge and that free Americans must not criticize programs conceived and implemented by our “no win diplomats” who, over the past thirty years, have racked up an almost unbroken string of losses to Communism throughout the world; with those who would trade American lives, limbs, goods, and services for Communist promises; with those who believe that the Castro Communist Cancer has now been excised from the body politic of the Western Hemisphere; with those who are determined to democratize the Katangans even if it is necessary to kill them and destroy their property in the process; and with those who insist that we must subsidize, with massive foreign aid, arrogant socialist and Communist governments all over the world, though while doing so we help their dictators enslave their peoples.

“I’m fed up to here” with Robin Hood government that promises to rob the rich to pay the poor (in return for votes) and, when there are not enough rich left to pay the bills, robs both rich and poor alike to pay Robin Hood; with those who would tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect in the expectation that the day of reckoning will come after they are gone; with candidates who run on a platform of “I can get more from the government for you,” without reminder of what the government must take from you; with officials who use defense contracts as instruments of political advantage; with politicians who think that a relief check means as much to an American as a decent job; with government agencies which harass our industries with anti-trust suits, threaten them with loss of government contracts, dictate their economic decisions on costs and prices, resort to biased interference with their labor relations, burden them with punitive taxation and regulation, or tempt them to conform by promising lucrative contracts. What do you think Khrushchev would give to have General Motors, Dupont, General Electric, U. S. Steel, and Lockheed on his team?

“I’m fed up to here” with businessmen who are so busy making and selling widgets at a steadily decreasing profit that they have no time or energy left to fight for preserving the system that makes their business possible; who do not protest government intimidation and interference; who support socialist projects of short-range advantage to themselves; who finance foundations, schools, churches, cultural activities, news media, and political parties which expound and promote socialist doctrine; or who “play ball” with the political apparatus in power when there is a potential “pay-off” in the form of subsidies, loans, or contracts.…

We can have the kind of government we demand! Let us demand what history has taught us is right for us! Our fighting men and women in legislative halls throughout the land will win, provided we give them the support they must have to regain our lost freedoms!—Admiral BEN MOREELL, CEC, USN (Retired), in an address to the Fifth Human Events Political Action Conference in Washington, D. C.