Page 6122 – Christianity Today (2024)

“If the Church descends to promoting socialism, it will become as short-lived as our secular organizations.”

There is little about poverty that I do not understand from personal experience, and my sympathies are with suffering people. Indeed, I have spent a good part of my life trying to help the unfortunate.

There are those who would have the Church make pronouncements and take positions on social, political, and economic questions. They cannot possibly be more interested than I am in relieving poverty and lifting the burden of misery from the backs of men. We agree on goals. We divide sharply on the best way of making progress toward them.

Church bodies should not make pronouncements in these areas. Nor should they assume that all people who are really Christians must take a certain view of current problems. To do so will divide the Church.

It is a great mistake for the minister, speaking from his pulpit, to take a position on controversial economic, social, and political problems. Of course, he should discharge his duty as a citizen in these matters, and he has the same secular means that are available to the rest of us.

Equally honest and devoted Christian men and women will disagree about tariffs, monetary policy, agricultural problems, federal subsidies to schools, housing, relief, foreign aid, and many other problems. Consecrated Christians just do not agree as to the will of God in the solution of these problems. If the Church undertakes to speak ex cathedra concerning them, it will divide its membership.

Jesus commanded us to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He did not command us to go into the world and organize a peace corps or civil-disobedience demonstrations. He did not resort to law or coercion as a means of improving society.

I am not saying that these social, economic, and political questions are not important. They are important, and every Christian should be concerned; but our concern and action should be expressed through secular organizations and not through the churches.

We need to get our hearts right through the worship of God and then mobilize our secular organizations to take the required action for the improvement of society. The Church is not the proper instrument. If we attempt to use it for that purpose, we shall destroy it.

When spiritual rebirth takes place through repentance, forgiveness of one’s sins and growth in grace is continued through persistent worship of God. The high ethical standards we find in Christ become the ruling principles of our lives. Reborn men and women go out and remake society.

I am just as much interested in meeting social needs and solving economic problems as the socialists, but I insist that we must not try to do it by changing our churches into social-action agencies. They must not climb down from the spiritual plane to take sides on controversial questions of economics and politics.

Jesus said if he were lifted up, he would draw all men unto him. He did not say that he would draw a majority and then coerce the others. When the rich young ruler was not ready to surrender his life and possessions to the will of Christ, Jesus might have said to his disciples, “The young man does not know what is good for him, so draw up a law that will dispossess him of the greater part of his wealth and we will use it properly.”

If the Church descends to promoting socialism, it will become as short-lived as our secular organizations. To remain permanent, it must be a divine institution proclaiming eternal spiritual principles.

A company of people were listening to Jesus and one said to him, “Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me.” Jesus replied, “Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?” Then Jesus said to the people, “Take heed, and beware of covetousness” (Luke 12:13–15a).

Naturally this does not mean that we should not be good trustees for God both with our time and with our means. It is the duty of our ministers and church leaders to inculcate in all of us a sense of trusteeship. On the other hand, if Jesus refused to be a “judge or a divider over you,” it would seem altogether out of place for the Church to assume those roles.

The proponents of the so-called social gospel say, “How can a Christian ignore the great need?” He can’t. He will do his utmost to bring about improvement, but he will do this as a Christian citizen and not by seeking to make a wrongful use of a sacred divine institution established by Jesus Christ for the purpose of operating permanently in the spiritual world.

Our liberal friends often speak contemptuously of pious people. They say individual piety counts for little and has no bearing on great sociological issues. They are wrong. If the Church had fulfilled its mission, had taught the people to worship God and respect his moral law summarized in the Ten Commandments, our present seemingly insoluble problems would not exist. The only cure is to improve the character of individuals, to regenerate people one by one; that is, to promulgate the personal piety which the welfare staters ridicule.

When John Calvin went to Geneva, it was one of the most depraved cities in Europe. He constantly reminded his ministers to concentrate on proclaiming the spiritual message of the Church. This was done, and within a few years Geneva became one of the most wholesome and best-governed cities in Europe. Today the Church has taken the opposite direction, and we hear little about personal piety.

Recently I heard a liberal Christian leader speak of the “dedicated, high-principled young men who surrounded Castro in his move for social justice in Cuba.” Shocking! But this is what happens when religious leaders place their faith in material movements and reforms.

Nothing but faith in God can cause a man to overcome his temptation and to be honest, truthful, and just in all his dealings. When the Church places its faith in coercive governmental action, it is bound to be defeated. Government can control people and drive them, but it cannot regenerate their hearts. Without the latter, there is no internal, redeeming self-help through the renewal of a right spirit within man. Until this change takes place, the best we will have is a coercive society and discipline through police action. In the end, it means a master-and-slave relationship.

Salvation for society awaits the rebirth of its individual components. We shall never overcome the woes of mankind until we pray with the Psalmist, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Ps. 51:10).

Faith in God puts courage, compassion, and determination into the hearts of men. These are the qualities that conquer poverty and solve other social problems. It is the business of the Church to mobilize spiritual power. By doing so, it can solve our perplexing social and economic ills; but if it deserts its true function, the Church will meet with tragic failure.

When secular organizations advocate measures that are proved wrong, no great damage is done, for they are of a temporary nature and may be supplanted by others that are able more accurately to interpret the will of the people. But when our one permanent divine institution deserts its commission to preach the Gospel, it and the world suffer irreparable damage.

The Church now advocates many of the measures of the welfare state. In so doing, it violates and tears down the very moral laws of God it is supposed to champion, teach, and proclaim.

We have in this country divided ourselves into a vast number of pressure groups with lobbies in every statehouse as well as the Capitol. We want the wealth of others and strive to see how much of it we can obtain for ourselves. We have become a nation of coveters.

The Church has too often failed in its mission of proclaiming the Gospel and devoted its time to the impossible task of trying to divide the wealth and redistribute it among the people. A Church which continues to do that cannot prosper and cannot for long retain the confidence, respect, and love of its people.

Much of our church leadership is advocating socialism for our country. The appeasem*nt and wasteful foreign-aid program it urges for friend and foe alike are recognized by a large part of our church membership as threatening the solvency and even the very life of our country. If our church leadership continues to pontificate in this realm, it will greatly injure the Church. Even though it might give the right advice, it would still divide the Church, for there are many who do not agree that this is the proper function of the Church.

The Church must recover its mighty influence over individual lives. It must point the way to salvation from sin and thus achieve a happy, prosperous, and self-governing free society. The alternative leads us only deeper into socialism with its accumulating misery and despair.—HOWARD E. KERSHNER, in Christian Economics.

Background study for the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin

Looking toward the World Congress on Evangelism, to be held in Berlin next fall, CHRISTIANITY TODAY presents representative reading lists on the subject of evangelism prepared by three men in different areas of evangelical ministry. The first list comes from Kenneth L. Chafin, professor of evangelism at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. The second list was prepared by the Reverend Stacey E. Woods, general secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students; works already mentioned by Professor Chafin are not repeated. The third list is from President David A. Hubbard of Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, and likewise excludes books already mentioned by Professor Chafin.

I

GENERAL

GREEN, BRYAN S.: The Practice of Evangelism. Hodder and Stoughton, 1951.

JOWETT, JOHN HENRY: The Passion for Souls. Revell, 1905.

STEWART, JAMES S.: Thine Is the Kingdom. Saint Andrew Press, 1956.

SWEAZEY, GEORGE E.: Effective Evangelism. Harper and Brothers, 1953.

WALKER, ALAN: The Whole Gospel for the Whole World. Abingdon, 1957.

PARISH PROGRAM

ALLAN, TOM: The Face of My Parish. Harper and Brothers, and SCM, 1957.

BLACKWOOD, ANDREW W.: Evangelism in the Home Church. Abingdon-co*kesbury, 1942.

SHORT, ROY HUNTER: Evangelism Through the Local Church. Abingdon, 1956.

PASTORAL COUNSELING

CALKINS, RAYMOND: How Jesus Dealt with Men. Abingdon-co*kesbury, 1942.

DALLOFF, EUGENE D.: The Romance of Doorbells. Judson, 1951.

JEFFERSON, CHARLES EDWARD: The Minister as Shepherd. Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1912.

MACARTNEY, CLARENCE: Great Interviews of Jesus. Abingdon-co*kesbury, 1944.

SOUTHARD, SAMUEL: Pastoral Evangelism. Broadman, 1962.

PERSONAL

EVANS, WILLIAM: Personal Soul Winning. Bible Institute Colportage Association, 1910.

STONE, JOHN TIMOTHY: Winning Men. Revell, 1946.

TORREY, R. A.: How to Bring Men to Christ. Revell, 1893.

TRUMBULL, CHARLES G.: Taking Men Alive. YMCA Press, 1907.

PREACHING

JEFFERSON, CHARLES EDWARD: The Minister as Prophet. Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1905.

SHORT, ROY H.: Evangelistic Preaching. The Methodist Church, General Board of Evangelism, 1946.

WHITESELL, FARIS D.: Sixty-five Ways to Give Evangelistic Invitations. Zondervan, 1945.

SPIRITUAL LIFE AND EVANGELISM

BONAR, HORATIUS: Words to Winners of Souls. American Tract Society, n.d.

BOUNDS, E. M.: Power Through Prayer. Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1960.

FREER, H. W., and HALL, FRANCIS B.: Two or Three Together. Harper and Brothers, 1954.

VISITATION EVANGELISM

ARCHIBALD, ARTHUR C.: New Testament Evangelism. Judson, 1947.

BRYAN, DAWSON CHARLES: A Workable Plan of Evangelism. Abingdon-co*kesbury, 1945.

HILTNER, SEWARD: How to Make an Evangelistic Call. Department of Evangelism, Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, 1946.

II

ALLEN, ROLAND: Missionary Methods—St. Paul’s or Ours? Eerdmans, 1962.

ALLEN, ROLAND: The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church. Eerdmans, 1962.

CHAFER, LOUIS SPERRY: True Evangelism. Zondervan, 1964.

COLQUHOUN, FRANK: Christ’s Ambassadors. Hodder and Stoughton, 1965.

GREEN, MICHAEL: The Meaning of Salvation. Hodder and Stoughton, 1965.

KUIPER, R. B.: God-Centered Evangelism. Baker, 1961.

STOTT, JOHN R. W.: Motives and Methods in Evangelism. Inter-Varsity Press, 1962.

WINTER, DAVID: The Old Faith in a New World. Hodder and Stoughton, 1965.

WOOD, MAURICE: Like a Mighty Army. Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1955.

III

BARCLAY, WILLIAM: Turning to God: A Study of Conversion in the Book of Acts and Today. Westminster, 1964.

BARLOW, WALTER: God So Loved. Revell, 1952.

BATES, SEARLE M., and PAUCK, WILHELM: The Prospects of Christianity Throughout the World. Scribners, 1964.

BAYLY, JOSEPH: The Gospel Blimp. Windward Press, 1960.

BROWN, STANLEY C.: Evangelism in the Early Church. Eerdmans, 1963.

COLEMAN, ROBERT E.: The Master Plan of Evangelism. Christian Outreach, 1963.

GRAHAM, BILLY: World Aflame. Doubleday, 1965.

MCGAVRAN, DONALD A., et al.: Church Growth and Christian Mission. Harper and Row, 1965. MARSHALL, PETER: John Doe Disciple. McGraw-Hill, 1963.

NEILL, STEPHEN: A History of Christian Missions. Eerdmans, 1964.

NEWBIGIN, LESSLIE, et al.: Decisive Hour for the Christian Mission. SCM Press, 1960.

PACKER, J. I.: Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. Inter-Varsity Press, 1961.

RAINES, ROBERT A.: New Life in the Church. Harper and Row, 1961.

RINKER, ROSALIND: You Can Witness with Confidence. Zondervan, 1962.

SEAMANDS, JOHN T.: The Supreme Task of the Church. Eerdmans, 1964.

SHIPPEY, FREDERICK A.: Protestantism in Suburban Life. Abingdon, 1964.

SHOEMAKER, SAMUEL M.: Beginning Your Ministry. Harper and Row, 1963.

STRACHAN, KENNETH: Evangelism in Depth. Moody, 1961. TRUEBLOOD, ELTON: The Company of the Committed. Harper and Row, 1961.

WEBBER, GEORGE W.: God’s Colony in Man’s World. Abingdon, 1960.

WINTER, GIBSON: The Suburban Captivity of the Churches. Macmillan, 1962.

Is Dr. Blake moving from the most powerful post in American Presbyterianism to an influential role in what may fast become a Protestant-Orthodox curia?

The election of Dr. Eugene Carson Blake as head of the World Council of Churches, following Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft’s eighteen-year term, is highly significant.

To the most powerful ecumenical post outside the Roman Catholic realm, the WCC has elevated not only a prominent American churchman but one skilled in the use of ecclesiastical power for advancing ecumenical aims. After accepting his election as “a call from God,” Dr. Blake directed his first words in his new office to the World Council’s unity moves toward the Roman Catholic Church. His responsible role will confer on him much of the same public visibility for his words and deeds as the Pope possesses, although his personal authority is interpreted quite differently from the Pope’s.

The selection of Dr. Blake gives American ecumenical Christianity special distinction (last year’s effort to name Dr. Patrick Rodger, a Scottish Anglican of evangelical sympathies, was suddenly set aside) and also honors a churchman whose patterns of procedure are well known. For Dr. Blake made the office of stated clerk in the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. one of the most directive agencies in that denomination, and exerted decisive influence upon the leadership and emphasis of its seminaries and other institutions. His leadership has created serious denominational tensions, and some Presbyterians even hoped that his gifts might be deployed elsewhere. The move raises speculations about what kind of successor Presbyterians will name, and whether the office of stated clerk can once again be dissociated from all directive authority. In that post Dr. Blake was associated with two bold ecumenical moves that currently appear abortive. One was the 1960 Blake-Pike plan for merger of American Protestant churches, most recently bypassed by leaders of the American Baptist Convention. The other was the proposed “Confession of 1967,” which is running into increasing demands for revision or abandonment within the United Presbyterian Church. (In relation to this document, however, Dr. Blake remained in the background, and it is not fully certain to what extent he approved it.)

Dr. Blake believes in repentance and evangelical conversion. Although his theological views are considered broadly Reformed, in ecumenical planning they seem not to be determinative. He has actively promoted direct ecclesiastical involvement in political pressures and has encouraged clerical participation in political demonstrations. Shortly after assuming his new post, he released a provocative statement declaring that United States military victory in Viet Nam would create more problems than it would solve. He contended that “the bombing of a less developed nation of colored people by a large, rich, white one” carries a racial stigma. What special sources of military information Dr. Blake has that are not available to those in high government circles we do not know, but we suspect that the failure of a nation—white or black, large or small, rich or poor—to take a firm stand against Communist aggression would carry not only a racial stigma but an ideological one.

Dr. Blake has stepped from what he made the most powerful post in American Presbyterianism to an influential role in what may fast become a Protestant-Orthodox curia. It is an office that could make the man, but could also unmake the Church because of the high perils of ecclesiastical and theological adventurism. Dr. Blake needs the earnest and continuing prayers of all God’s people, for institutional Christianity has already made too many mistakes in our century to take the future for granted.

A Prayer For Moral Courage

“It is my prayer today,” said Evangelist Billy Graham at the fourteenth annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast in Washington, sponsored by International Christian Leadership, “that we will recover moral courage in this country.… A spiritual awakening must sweep our country from coast to coast like a prairie fire.”

Seldom have lines from the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (“He is sifting out the hearts of men …”) seemed as fitting as they did when the 1,500 participants united in prayer with President Johnson and other political dignitaries. They asked for divine guidance and courage in a time when, as Graham put it, “history is about to reach an impasse and men are on a collision course.”

The evangelist warned against a superficial view of human nature that seeks a new humanity through merely external changes. “The people of Jesus’ day did not know, as he did, the deep-seated evil within human nature. They did not know how deeply fixed were the roots of pride, greed, selfishness, and lust in human society.… Their understanding of evil in the world was shallow and superficial.… It is the same tragic mistake being made by many well-meaning people today who have only a superficial knowledge of the Bible.… We will only delude ourselves if we try to be more optimistic than Christ. The basic problem facing our world is not just social inequity, lack of education, or even physical hunger. We are finding that highly educated and well-fed people have greeds, hate, passions, and lust that are not eliminated by any known process of education. The roots of sin in our hearts are extremely deep … and only the fire of the Lord can burn them out.”

Petal Plucking

The beauty of a rose is destroyed as one plucks away its petals to see the source of its fragrance. Similarly, the Church, if it continues its introspective analyses, may soon impair its usefulness.

Not for a moment do we imply that the Church should remain static. Although its message must not change, methods and organization may call for repeated revision. During recent years, however, churchmen have become so involved in endless reappraisals that much valuable time needed for the real work of the Church has been spent in talking about what might be done. One major denomination is making a study of the nature and message of evangelism. Another is seeking to centralize power in the church.

If soldiers do not know until they are engaged in battle what their goals are and what tactics they are to use, they are in danger of losing the war.

Surely the Church should know its calling. If a church does not know what evangelism is, there is something radically wrong. If it does not know the imperativeness of home and world missions, it is twenty centuries behind the times.

What is needed is a return to those convictions that have been the mainspring of the Church in the past, convictions about its nature and mission, the full integrity and authority of the Scriptures, life and death, and, above all, the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Re-examinations have their place, but they are useless unless built on the sure Foundation.

The W.C.C. And Viet Nam

Diplomats will soon gather in Geneva for disarmament conferences. There the World Council of Churches maintains its headquarters, and there the council’s 100-member Central Committee has just adopted a strong ten-point resolution on the Viet Nam war in the name of its member churches.

Irrespective of its position, the resolution itself continues the WCC practice of making controversial pronouncements on specific political and military policies. Dr. Paul Ramsey, Princeton University professor of Christian ethics, has noted that unlike American Protestant ecumenism, the Roman Catholic pope holds that “judgment of political questions and temporal interests” lies outside his competence, and that he has consistently distinguished his appeals for peace from “pacifism, which ignores relative rights and duties in the conflict in question.”

In its latest pronouncement, the WCC “advises” the United States not only to stop bombing North Viet Nam and to announce a future withdrawal of its troops under international peacekeeping machinery but also to “modify its policy of containment of Communism.” The council called on North Viet Nam to stop infiltrating South Viet Nam, and said both sides should recognize the futility of military action as a solution to the problems.

Let it be said, to the credit of President Johnson, and almost everyone else, that no person of good will really wants war. America wants peace and is forced to use war to secure it. It is precisely at this point that the WCC pronouncement is simplistic and naive. The council fails to see that American intervention in World War II and in Viet Nam occurred after war had begun, and that America’s aim in each instance was to bring peace and freedom to enslaved people. Had there been no Communist aggression in Viet Nam, America would not be involved in the present conflict. And America can get out of that country the minute those who really started the war stop it.

Money Can Ruin

The prevailing assumption that the lavish use of money can cure the world’s ills is a delusion. A wag has said of money, “… but it helps.” And this is true. But the world’s problems go far deeper than the economic level; money alone may injure as much as help. Unless money is used in a way that protects the obligation of the individual to work for himself and to practice thrift, it becomes a curse for all concerned.

With some happy exceptions, the history of the United States government’s economic aid to needy nations is not encouraging. Not only have billions of dollars been used for political purposes: great sums have also been diverted into private coffers in the absence of necessary supervision.

The Church has been called to witness to the One who spoke of himself as the “Bread of Life,” and who said, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give shall never thirst.” Material aid alone cannot solve the world’s problems. The Church must proclaim to all men the unsearchable riches found only in Jesus Christ.

New Ethical Frontiers

This season the NCC’s television series on “Frontiers of Faith” (NBC) is devoted to Christian ethics. It may be hoped that this Sunday program will give viewers an authentic scriptural perspective on the wilderness of contemporary life.

The new morality is having an erosive effect on inherited Christian values. It is high tragedy that some churchmen sympathize not only with the removers of all objective ethical restraints but also with those who would destroy the supernatural God of the Bible. We hope “Frontiers of Faith” viewers will find in ecumenical Protestantism’s privileged television programming an illuminating exposition of the Christian alternative.

The introductory sketch by Donald Grey Barnhouse, Jr., son of the late Bible expositor, indicated that subsequent programs would deal less in generalities. As for the introduction, it seemed to us rather timid and somewhat repetitious, and neither spiritually exciting nor logically compelling.

Mr. Barnhouse offered three observations: (1) Christian ethics is not a set of rules or a series of commands but rather a declaration of news and an invitation. (But since the New Testament affirms the commandments of God, traditional evangelical ethics has held that the whole counsel of God includes both the Law and the Gospel.) (2) Christian ethics is not the attempt to substitute one Book for another but a glimpse of the living God—a good Father. (But the Protestant Reformers did insist on a uniquely inspired, authoritative Bible.) (3) The answer to the question of what God is like was supremely given by the life of Jesus Christ, particularly in suffering love as illustrated by his death. (Since Mr. Barnhouse earlier dismissed any God who “threatens to burn us, if we don’t do what he wants,” we were disappointed that at this point he spoke of the death of Christ only as exemplary and not as substitutionary as well.)

Drinking Is Not For The Skies

Among several proposals being pressed by the American Council on Alcohol Problems, two are especially significant. Pointing to figures from the Federal Aviation Agency that show drinking involved in one-third of all deaths from crashes of private aircraft, the council urges the FAA to require that breath-testing devices be installed in all airports, and that before flying all private aircraft pilots use such a device; any person registering over 0.03 per cent of alcohol in his blood would then be prohibited from flying, on penalty of losing his license for a reasonable time. This procedure, it is claimed would reduce by 80 to 95 per cent the fatalities caused by crashes in which drinking is involved.

Another recommendation concerns the serving of liquor to passengers on commercial airlines. Contending that pilots and stewardesses oppose this practice, the council says that in an emergency passengers even mildly under the influence of alcohol could not respond to instructions with adequate speed and efficiency. It also points out the danger posed by passengers who board aircraft after having had a few drinks and, when they have more drinks aloft, become troublesome. The council urges commercial airlines to stop serving alcoholic beverages on flights. And it suggests further that until this is done, airlines treat all first-class passengers alike by giving to those who refuse the drinks offered them on a flight a credit slip for the value of the drinks, to be used in the purchase of plane tickets.

These proposals make sense. Vast as the skies are, they are simply not big enough for even one drinking pilot. The scandal of the highways is the drinking driver, with his potential for snuffing out the lives of several human beings. But how much more grim is the prospect of a drinking private pilot, with his potential for killing scores of persons through collision in the skies or a crash into a populated area? The air is free, but not for drinking pilots or intoxicated passengers.

Half Below Twenty-Six

Humanity—at least in the United States—is younger than ever. Because of the population explosion, half of those who live in the United States are less than twenty-six years old. Business, aware of this, is focusing its attention on where the market is. To appeal to youth, advertising has become youthful. Young people sell cars, furniture, soaps, and shampoos to the young, while oldsters sell remedies for stomach upset, stiff joints, and tired blood to the old.

The challenge and responsibility of a nation half of whose people are under twenty-six is tremendous. The older generation’s task of passing on its cultural values and moral and spiritual ideals must now be done by a minority. There is more to do, and there are fewer to do it. And the task must be performed, moreover, in a national mood more teen-age than mature.

The Church must also read this sign of our times and be alert to the new shape of its responsibilities arising from this radical change in the nation’s composition. The population explosion has vastly increased the number of people to whom the Gospel must be brought and the Church’s spiritual heritage conveyed. The Church must be as wise as modern business in reaching almost a hundred million young people. If stiff joints and tired blood keep it from finding new ways of approach, the Church will fail tragically at a time when most of humanity is in the springtime of life.

Comity And The Evangel

A former American Baptist church has become a morgue. When this church in upstate New York was disbanded, a recently organized Southern Baptist congregation, convinced that evangelism could do what ecumenism could not do, tried to rent, lease, or buy the vacated premises. “Not a chance,” they were told, because ecumenical comity agreements ruled it out.

The building was subsequently rented to a mortuary, which now stores dead bodies there during the winter months, when burials must be postponed.

It may have been progress in the struggle for ecumenical comity. But we wonder what some of the dead—stored in a church where the evangel is excluded—would say if given half a chance. Perhaps they would report that a little less comity and a little more Gospel would bring life to a local church, to the ecumenical cause, and to those who have a destiny in eternity.

A challenge to disciples of modernity to indicate their own criterion of the success or truth of their theories

Of the ancient Athenians it was said that they spent their time in telling or hearing about new things. They “had an obsession for any novelty,” as Phillips puts it, “and would spend their whole time talking about or listening to anything new” (Acts 17:21). In the words of the New English Bible, “the Athenians in general and the foreigners there had no time for anything but talking or hearing about the latest novelty.”

The Apostle Paul dramatically captured this interest by proclaiming “Jesus and the resurrection.” He countered the Athenians’ ignorance of the Living God by unveiling the risen Redeemer who will judge the whole world. By proclaiming the one true God, he served notice of brief survival on their tenuous confidence in the unknown god, the new-fangled speculative divinities, and the popular idols.

Today a cadre of churchmen and seminarians are infected by this pagan passion for novelty. The new theology, the new morality, the new evangelism, new forms and structures—these are becoming bywords in ecumenical circles, while the historic Gospel is demeaned, revised, or largely ignored. The idolatrous fashions of the ancient Athenians stirred Paul to indignation, but these modern Athenians see signs of ecumenical openmindedness in the promotion of the newest fads while the faith given once-for-all is sidetracked or submerged. While Paul’s key word was “repentance,” theirs is “relevance.” They seem blithely unaware that a religion specially styled to the man of the 1960s is likely to be old hat in the 70s. Even bishops espousing a theology as up-to-date as the frug are likely to find it as dated as the square dance before very long.

Bishop Pike’s newest theology is borrowed from the late Paul Tillich, mediated by Bishop John A. T. Robinson (Honest to God—to the new “God,” of course), and tolerated by many ecumenists, particularly those who think American Protestantism’s greatest boon would be denominational restructuring according to the Blake-Pike vision rather than ideological purification.

In announcing this merger plan, Dr. Blake assumed special divine sanction: “Led, I pray, by the Holy Spirit, I propose.…”

But if Dr. Pike’s revised doctrine is right, the divine source of such inspiration remains in doubt—since God is assertedly no longer a person. Harvard Divinity School aimed to revitalize American Protestantism at grass roots, but the theological monstrosity fabricated by Paul Tillich has now overpowered the most outspoken bishop in America. If he accepts Tillich’s dogma, Dr. Pike denies the existence of God as a separate entity distinguishable from the world, and opposes the historic Christian view of a personal Creator. This new theology of God-is-not-quite-dead-yet (but well on the way) atrophies the personal supernatural Creator into “the ground of all being.”

Some will argue that the Blake-Pike plan should be judged not on the basis of the stupidity of theological concessions but on its own merits. Others will point out that, weighed on its own merits, it has already been overhauled by the Consultation on Church Union. Not only biblical theology, however, but much more is offensive to the new look in ecclesiastical merger. Bishop Reuben H. Mueller, the present National Council of Churches president, stresses that he is theologically conservative, and many ecumenical spokesmen rightly insist that the ecumenical constituency should not be caricatured as a group comprised solely by those who reject historic Christian doctrines. While nobody has estimated the number of those in the NCC whose views are theologically conservative, they are doubtless a very sizable group. If they are a majority, as some observers believe, they are not only woefully under-represented but often ignored in the ecumenical power structures. And if they are a minority, they supply a striking contrast to other minorities with which ecumenical leaders urge “identification” and whose cause they champion as a matter of justice.

The intolerant modernists see deeper than the tolerant traditionalists in their show of prejudice, for they are projecting religious theories incompatible with the historic Christian faith. When President Mueller stresses, as he does, that the membership of the NCC represents “a wide theological spectrum,” he is engaging in understatement. But when he emphasizes that an important responsibility in administration is “to hold these wide viewpoints in proper tension so that we can behave ourselves like Christians in all attitudes and circ*mstances,” he mirrors the basic flaws of ecumenical conglomeration—its lack of any sense of indignation in the presence of unbelief and its idolatry of merger.

If the old theology is an evident embarrassment to modern Athenians, so too is the old evangelism (which presupposes the biblical evangel). Colin Williams, an associate secretary of the NCC Division of Christian Life and Mission, told more than 100 American Baptist Convention ministers that evangelist Billy Graham represents “a danger to the Kingdom of God” and “misleads people”; Graham, he said, “misunderstands the Gospel.” A Methodist sympathetic to the Blake-Pike proposal, Williams not only deplored traditional evangelism but also rebuked Baptists for their reluctance to unite with “one large church body with a limited form of episcopacy” that would confer more power on church leaders than does congregational independence.

If the restructured Protestantism anticipated by Bishop Pike would publicly glory in the repudiation of basic Christian doctrine, Dr. Williams envisions a new Protestantism that would repudiate evangelism in the tradition of Wesley and Moody and Graham.

The “new gospel” proclaimed by many vocal church spokesmen today switches from personal salvation to social structures. Despite the fact that the old-style social gospel is intellectually indefensible (Barth’s theological tomes and the perverse course of world history have exposed its shallow utopianism), this secular concoction continues to live under the new mask of “the ministry of reconciliation.” Through a subtle shift, reconciliation is detached from its historic stress on the relation of persons to God. Instead, emphasis now falls on reconciliation of groups, community structures, social configurations. This social view produces a downgrading of personal evangelism, evangelistic preaching and meetings, and foreign missions. “Mission” replaces missions, and the “new and broader” understanding seeks to transform, if not ultimately to displace, evangelism in the traditional Christian sense.

If the new social gospel aims to replace evangelism, the “new morality” proposes to revise the evangelical understanding of the life of purity. By removing all objective restraints, and by detaching spiritual experience from supernatural theology, the new theories propose to invigorate the moral life by the enthronement of unstructured agape (eros?). These modern impuritans tell us it might even be possible to love God and neighbor while violating the commandments of God. For the first time we have churchmen who champion the possibility of enlightened theft or deceit or fornication.

Proponents of a new theology, or a new morality, or a new mission may become so addicted to novelty that they cease to be authentic representatives of the Christian faith. Though such spokesmen be ecumenical leaders, prominent ministers, or even bishops, they are not on that account representative Christians. Not a single denomination has historically embraced the theological novelties of Bishop Pike in a creedal affirmation. He is not a representative voice, however much he would like to restructure contemporary Protestantism to his preferences. Nor are other far-out churchmen. But the indifference and tolerance of those who have a voice and influence for the truth but fail to exercise it encourages these new churchmen in their efforts to impose alien ideas and ideals upon the churches. The church history of twentieth-century Protestantism may in fact be tellingly written not only from the standpoint of the vocal minority but also from that of a silent majority, who “stood by consenting” to the dilution of evangelical faith.

The modern apostles of novelty are preoccupied with asking questions; some of them remind us that one day we shall all stand before him who knew how to ask questions. But they forget that he has given answers also—definitive answers. And we ask these disciples of modernity to answer one short question. (Even a bishop is supposed not only to raise questions but to supply some answers.)

We do not ask what scriptural authority the revisionists offer, for they are obviously no longer concerned about biblical credibility. Here is what we ask—of Bishop Pike, Bishop Robinson, Professor Altizer, and all others who conform their views to a secular, empirical age: What criterion will you give us to test the truth and success of your theories?

Surely not special divine revelation? Surely not another “word of God”? Surely not the common consensus of humanity? Surely not unanimity of support by intellectuals? Surely not …?

Or the number of evangelistic converts? Since the faddists rule out interest in a religion of “the remnant,” they apparently want a “popular” theology. If Christianity is not to lose out “to all but a tiny religious remnant,” writes Bishop Robinson, there must be a “radical recasting” of “the most fundamental categories of our theology—of God, of the supernatural, and of religion itself” (Honest to God, p. 7).

In speaking for “those who feel compelled above all to be honest wherever it may lead them” (ibid., p. 9), Bishop Robinson attaches the quality of honesty to those who reject the biblical view of God and implicitly detaches it from “those whose basic recipe is the mixture as before.” Those of us who are honestly reluctant to switch theological loyalties ask for an honest answer: What criterion do the faddists offer by which men in our time can judge the success and truth of their views?

Dr. bulkley’s letter, found on page 22 of this issue, calls for an attempt to clarify certain issues.

The question of “individual conversion and the changing of social structures as appropriate ways by which the Church is called upon to function in her task of serving Christ in the world” is not one of “alternatives” but one of priorities. The social structures of society can never be adequately changed until the hearts of men are changed. It is not the clothes people wear, or the food they eat, or the houses they live in that is of primary concern for the Church. Rather, it is the inner man and his relationship to God.

The Church has a high and holy calling, to proclaim the message of redemption in Christ. If she does not fulfill it, no one will. If she gives priority to social action, she might possibly succeed in eliminating every social, economic, and political injustice; but she would then find that men were still lost sinners without knowledge of the Saviour.

At issue is the nature and mission of the Church. Is she called, as Dr. Bulkley implies, to be God’s instrument “in the development of a world in which freedom and justice, peace and brotherhood, are to be genuinely characteristic of human relationships”? Such a shift in social values and behavior is indeed desirable. Yet the fact remains that the Church is called to witness to redemption of sinners through faith in Christ. The Church is a spiritual organism in the midst of a secular society, and the desired changes can take place only as the Spirit of God changes the hearts of men.

The risen Lord, commissioning the newly converted Paul to service, said: “I send you to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18, RSV). There were desperate social needs in the day of the Apostle Paul, but there were more desperate needs of the heart.

That the redeemed should show evidence of the transforming power of Jesus Christ in social and interpersonal relationships is indisputable; “faith without works is dead.” But Christianity must not be equated with any particular demand for social action. Of late, civil rights has been the main social concern. A few years ago it was pacifism. And there now is emerging a new social concept, the eradication of poverty. These are not the Gospel, nor are they doctrines of the Christian faith.

As for Dr. Bulkley’s rather cavalier description of a conversion experience: unquestionably there are those who equate their own salvation experience with things they “give up.” This kind of negative Christianity is only too common. But it is also a fact that a man may be engaged in numerous activities for making the world a better place in which to live and also “be the same old sinner.” “Giving up drinking or smoking or playing golf on Sunday” no more makes a man a Christian than does the participation in social activities, such as the Selma-Montgomery march. (I have heard participation in such activities described as “redemptive acts.”)

Unless social action shows clearly that it is motivated by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and done in his name, it is secular and not Christian. But compassion for man’s welfare and a Christian witness can and should be combined if the Church is involved. I know, for I was engaged in social work as a medical missionary in China for twenty-five years, and the Gospel had top priority.

The willingness, even urgent desire of some social planners to make use of the power of government to force change in attitudes is not, I believe, the Christian approach to a difficult problem. Caesar cannot make Christians or change hearts.

The Church is in the world to proclaim the Gospel to others who need to be redeemed. There is grave danger that the pressure of some to make the Church “relevant” by engaging in social engineering, economics, and politics can make her irrelevant in the very area where she is most needed. Her competence and calling are, or should be, in the things of the Spirit.

In our Lord’s story of the prodigal son, it would seem that the wayward boy’s primary need was to “come to himself” and return to his father with a confession of his unworthiness and need. This can well be termed a “conversion experience,” and it was the key to his rehabilitation.

The primary emphasis now evident in some areas of the Church indicates that there are those who do not regard mankind’s—the “prodigal’s,” if you will—spiritual state as of vital importance to the Church. Apparently these persons will be content if they can make the erring son happy, comfortable, and prosperous in the “far country”; they do not feel that they must bring him back to his Father through the redeeming work of Jesus Christ.

I shall be accused of lacking social concern. I do not; no Christian should. But if the Church’s primary concern is not spiritual, she fails in her mission. This is not a matter of “alternatives” but of priorities, and unless the sequence is kept clear we shall fail all along the line.

In most of the major denominations, there is taking place a thorough reappraisal of the function of the Church. Even more important, we believe, would be an appraisal of the message of the Church. Too many hungry sinners rise from their church pews still feeling unfed; they have heard about various secular issues and social programs, but the needs of their souls have been neglected.

Slowly but surely the concept of the Christian minister is being changed. Instead of a man who concentrates on spiritual matters, he is becoming one whose primary focus is on secular affairs—to the great loss of the Church and the confusion of an already confused world.

At the same time, many Christians feel that the spiritual nature of the Church is being subverted to secondary ends. They rightly feel that it is their duty to wield their individual influence for righteousness, but they see ecclesiastical leaders assuming secular leadership and using the name of the Church to further their own concepts for the social order.

With all my heart I agree with Dr. Bulkley’s affirmation in the second paragraph of his letter, that it is the grace of God which must lay hold on a man’s heart to remake and renew his heart.

But we are confronted on every hand by the Church’s becoming a pressure organization for social changes, all of which are blueprinted to follow a particular concept of righteousness. And churchmen do not hesitate to solicit the forces of secular government to accomplish these ends.

A good physician will not be content with treating symptoms. He looks for the cause of the disease. The Church should do no less.

Party Words and Party Line

You Can Say That Again

It was E. Stanley Jones who said some years ago, “Christianity is a very wordy religion.” This could well be a very telling criticism. I don’t know exactly what can be done about the problem, though, since Christianity does depend on words for the proclamation that is at the very center of its task.

More serious than the number of words we have to use, however, is the way we use them. One of the debates now surrounding the new Presbyterian confession concerns the question whether the old words of the old confession are still useful in this day and age. On the other hand, there is voiced the criticism that even in the new confession all is not too clear. So there may be some old words that need to have their content refurbished and some new ones that don’t carry the message. This wordy religion of ours can play all kinds of tricks on us before we get complete understanding.

A few days ago I sat in a committee meeting in which most of the members were quite anxious, as some committee members are these days, to use nothing but the latest words. The only trouble is that the latest words are beginning to take on a patina all their own.

I took the trouble to copy down sixty-two terms in one committee meeting. I won’t afflict you with all of them, but I am sure you will delight in the new-old familiarity of a representative few. Enjoy with me our committee meeting: articulated, hopefully, readiness, target group, orientation (in all its variants), dimension, contextual, viable, dialogue, power structure, position papers, meaningfulness, spelled out, rubric, area, shared, ground rules, challenge, shared perceptions, frame of reference, drag out on the table—and so on far into the night.

It seemed to me that my new role is to inform you so that I may elicit responses in terms of precluding the option. And now I think it is about time to finalize this amorphous reference.

EUTYCHUS II

The Party Line

To insist, as you do (“Millennium Tomorrow,” Editorials, Feb. 4 issue), that churchmen, to be true to their calling or responsibilities, must do nothing more than espouse the official line is exactly the kind of thinking that permitted a Hitler to rise to power.…

EMMER ENGBERG

Gustavus Adolphus College

St. Peter, Minn.

• Espousing “the official line” (as found in some recent ecclesiastical pronouncements) is precisely what we have encouraged churchmen to avoid in the Viet Nam question, lest they encourage Communist aggression.—ED.

As You Like It

May I say how deeply I appreciate Christianity Today. It has given me a wider horizon of evangelical thought from men of God whose zeal in defending the faith is most heartening.

R. T. GRAY

East Finchley Baptist Church

London, England

Responsibility

The editorial on evangelism (Jan. 21 issue) is one of the best articles on our responsibility in today’s world that I have ever read.

JOHN EDMUND HAGGAI

Key to Life Broadcast

Atlanta, Ga.

Of Books And Choices

The inclusion of J. Jeremias’s The Central Message of the New Testament among “Choice Evangelical Books of 1965” (Feb. 4 issue) is unfortunate because it is misleading to evangelicals and misrepresents Professor Jeremias’s own position.

Beside the fact that the attitude reflected throughout this volume toward the origin, character, and authority of the New Testament text is unacceptable to many evangelicals, divergences of an even more fundamental character are present. For instance, the argument that Jesus viewed his death as having sacrificial character is supported in part by the allegation that he was mistaken about the nature of his own burial and the fate of some of his disciples (p. 44). That this notion of a fallible Jesus has undermining and even destructive consequences for evangelical Christology and soteriology hardly needs to be said.

Neither a limited amount of private conversation with Professor Jeremias during my student days in Göttingen nor a careful reading of many of his writings has given me any indication that he is or cares to be considered an “evangelical” in the sense in which that word is employed in American church life.

Evangelicals have made and will continue to make appreciative use of Professor Jeremias’s writings. They are thankful for his careful philological studies and the judicious and sober manner in which he customarily deals with the text. But they truly profit from his work only when they keep in mind that his position—including his opposition to Bultmann—is something other than evangelical.

RICHARD B. GAFFIN, JR.

Instructor in New Testament

Westminster Theological Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

Your Book Review section for January 21 contained an excellent report of Professor John Macmurray’s Search for Reality in Religion, together with most appreciative references to the religious experience of its author.…

JOHN PITTS

Calvary United Presbyterian

Pompano Beach, Fla.

Against Book-Club Banning

Re your advertisem*nt for the Conservative Book Club (Jan. 7 issue) and the unjust criticisms leveled against it by some of your readers (Feb. 4 issue) …: The Book Club has offered books from such reputable publishers as Random House, Macmillan, Van Nostrand, McGraw-Hill, Harper and Row, and Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Its current selections are Marguerite Higgins’s Our Vietnam Nightmare and Oleg Penkovskiy’s The Penkovskiy Papers (a current best seller nationwide).

As a Christian and a conservative, I feel that it is no disgrace to belong to the club.…

WILLIAM L. BROWN

Ypsilanti, Mich.

Even if there were something undesirable about the Conservative Book Club, their advertisem*nt proved only that they and CHRISTIANITY TODAY are in agreement regarding advertising, not necessarily politics.

The … club is not “a front for the John Birch Society” as claimed. Being a JBS member, I think I’d know if it were.…

WILLIAM A. REDMOND

East Taunton, Mass.

I was very disturbed when I saw two letters from readers objecting to the full-page advertisem*nt.… Personally I felt that you acted rightly in accepting this advertisem*nt.…

Let me add that I am well pleased with CHRISTIANITY TODAY. I admire your sane and scholarly outlook, combined with your faithfulness to the Word of God, and find your magazine both helpful and inspiring.

WALTER C. JOHNSON

Hanover, Mass.

Not Either/Or

Editorials and articles in CHRISTIANITY TODAY frequently address themselves to the alternatives of individual conversion and the changing of social structures as appropriate ways by which the Church is called upon to function in her task of serving Christ in the world—always to the detriment of the latter. Is it not possible to raise the question seriously as to whether or not these are really alternatives? May it not be that, if we are to be his instruments in the development of a world in which freedom and justice, peace and brotherhood, are to be genuinely characteristic of human relationships, we stand in need both of persons who are individually committed to Jesus Christ, acknowledging him as Lord and Saviour, and of laws and social structures which will support rather than frustrate this goal? Why is it necessary to stress either at the expense of the other?

For my part, at any rate, the fact that I am personally involved by vocation in that part of the Church’s mission which does seek to have some impact upon the structures of society certainly does not make it impossible for me to recognize that personal commitment to Christ and the changing of men’s hearts is fundamental. Laws and social structures can and do make a vast difference in how men act toward each other, but they cannot, save obliquely, transform men’s inner motivations and attitudes. They can make a man treat his brother with a greater degree of justice, but they cannot make a man love his brother and respect him. Only an event that transpires deep within his inner being can do that, an event in which the grace of God lays hold upon him and remakes and renews his life. So far as I am concerned, there is no argument about that.

But the trouble is that so much that passes as profound conversion and change of life, so much that goes by the name of “giving one’s life to Christ” or “being born again,” just doesn’t seem to ring true, just doesn’t seem to bring forth the fruit one ought to have the right to expect of it. To be sure, the man who claims to have undergone this experience very likely now attends church more frequently and stands ready to pray and testify in public—which is very good, but scarcely evidence of a life which is now lived not for self but for Christ and others. Or he may give up drinking or smoking or playing golf on Sunday. Or he may begin tithing and bearing witness to his conviction that tithing realty pays. Or he may become a more faithful husband and a more loving father and a more useful neighbor. Even though it may sound as though I am doing so, I am not really meaning to belittle any of this. I am only trying to make it clear that all of this and much more is just a beginning and that much of it is pretty peripheral, at that. “Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees”—and of the conventional Christian, too—“you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

A man can do all of these things and still remain in very significant and central ways the same old sinner. The prosperous business man can be “saved” and still keep tight hold on all the prejudices and presuppositions dictated by the supposed self-interest of his particular economic class. The happy suburban dweller can become a Christian as a result of an evangelistic campaign and still put what he conceives to be the maintenance of property values in his neighborhood above the achievement of justice for his Negro brethren who would like to purchase homes there on the same basis as do those whose skin is white. The patriotic American can give his life to Christ and still lack any sensitivity to the feelings and aspirations and deprivations of the vast millions of men and women and boys and girls who live in Asia and Africa. More splendid, well-meaning people than we can possibly count will express their Christian faith and life through deeds of kindliness and service to their fellow men without recognizing that there are vast numbers of other persons whose needs can be met only if the structures of society are so changed that the meeting of these needs comes to be the usual rather than the unusual thing to happen—and without further recognizing that, before kindness can really speak to men’s souls, they have to experience the sort of justice which acknowledges their dignity and worth as persons.

What I am ultimately trying to say is that, if a man’s heart is so changed that he comes to love his neighbor as himself, and if he begins to comprehend the meaning of that love, he will come to see that his neighbor, wherever he may be across the world, can find the sort of life to which justice entitles him only through the changing of social structures. It does little good to find one man a job if the structures of our economic life—even in the midst of abundance—result in a constant figure of unemployment which is in the millions. It does little good to help one Negro family find a home outside the ghetto if the whole structure of our real estate industry and local politics is fashioned in such a way as to close almost every door outside the ghetto to almost every other Negro family. It does little good to do very much for anybody if we are unable to create the structures for the world which will serve to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war. That is to say, even the kindest and worthiest of motives are not enough to make unnecessary the elimination of those structures of society which frustrate the achievement of justice and the substitution for them of structures which will make the achievement of justice more likely.

And there is no evidence that the kindest and worthiest motives are what emerge from what we label the conversion experience. All too frequently it is all too clear that what emerge are the old self-regarding and self-seeking and self-satisfied motives intensified and deepened by now being identified with God’s will and purpose. It isn’t that personal commitment is not desperately needed and at the very heart of the Christian life. It is rather that so much of what passes for it is almost totally superficial, and this remains true, even though there may be a good deal of emotion and feeling accompanying it and even though there may also be some change in the habit patterns characterizing one’s life.

There is no more striking example of what I am talking about than the current civil rights situation. People all over the country had for many decades been “giving their hearts to Christ,” and probably a larger proportion of them had been doing so in the South than anywhere else. But these same white American Christians who allegedly had been well saved were hard at the business of maintaining social institutions all over the country, and especially in the South where their concentration was so marked, which relegated millions of their fellow American Christians whose skins happened to be a bit darker to a sort of second-class citizenship which disgraced this country before the world and which was a denial of all of the human concern that Christ’s coming was all about. These darker-skinned, American Christians were kept out of the white churches and schools and neighborhoods (unless they came in as servants). They were denied the right to vote, the equal protection of the law, the equal opportunity for employment in accordance with their capacities. To be sure, they were often treated kindly as individuals; but it was a patronizing sort of kindness whose every manifestation was based on the presupposition that these were inferior beings and that their altogether wiser white neighbors knew what was really best for them and could be trusted to make their major decisions for them. There is no need to say more of this. The facts are well known and indisputable, and the facts were perpetrated by good Christians who were sure that all that was needed was for men’s hearts to be right—and that, since they had given their hearts to Christ, obviously they were right.

For ninety years following Emancipation, the Negroes, North and South, waited for justice to come to pass through the change of men’s hearts. Men’s hearts allegedly were changed, but it didn’t make any difference to the Negroes. Whites acted toward them just about as they had acted before that change took place. Only when the Supreme Court decision of 1954 opened the door to hope for the Negro and other decisions followed and legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, only then did things begin to change—only when obsolete and unjust social structures were challenged, and men no longer waited for something to happen in men’s hearts to make the difference. Then the civil rights movement, from Montgomery to Selma and beyond, took hold, and the old structures of prejudice and segregation and injustice began to totter. The Negro still has a long way to go, but now he is on his way—not because men’s hearts have changed, but because judicial interpretations and laws and sit-ins and freedom rides and demonstrations have put new hope in the minds and lives of men who previously had borne with injustice hopelessly. And the sad and bitter truth is that the roadblocks have been put in his way, and the law of the land has been frustrated again and again, and justice has continued to be denied, by these same white American Christians who are in church every Sunday and who are supposed to be new men in Christ Jesus.

Now it is a hundred years and more since Emancipation. I, for one, can conceive of no possible justification for expecting the Negro to wait one moment longer for justice to come from the changing of white hearts. That process has had its chance, and it has abysmally failed. Now the only possibility is to fashion and enforce laws which require men to do justly to their Negro brethren however they may feel in their hearts. Perhaps their hearts will eventually change just front force of the habit of acting justly.

Civil rights is but one dramatic illustration of the point I am seeking to make. There could be many more. Nothing I have said negates the importance of valid commitment to Christ and change in the human heart. But it does insist that that commitment and that change must be real, so real that they transform whole constellations of attitudes and make them ready to be just. And it further insists that the doing of justice cannot wait for all men to come to that sort of commitment but rather requires the alteration of social structures here and now.

ROBERT D. BULKLEY

Secretary Board of Christian Education

Office of Church and Society

United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

Philadelphia, Pa.

• A reply to Dr. Bulkley’s letter will be found in “A Layman and His Faith” (see page 26).—ED.

What to do when the minister discovers that churchgoers remember little more than the sermon illustrations

A pastor who grew weary of the usual Sunday morning “That was a good sermon” comments determined to find out just how effective all his “good” sermons were. He began to ask his people questions, such as which part of the sermon they particularly found helpful, or which part they remembered best. He was horrified to discover that the majority could remember nothing at all except a few incidental illustrations!

His problem is the problem of every preacher of the Gospel. We are all acutely aware of the difficulty of effective communication, a difficulty that is by no means a modern one. Paul noted that he had been sent to preach, but “not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect” (1 Cor. 1:17).

And here we find a clue to the perennial problem of communication. It is quite possible, as Paul says, that the chasm between the pulpit and the pew has been created by the words of the preacher rather than the hardness or blindness of the congregation. Reflecting upon some of the sermons that I have heard and read and preached, I find this to be not only a possibility but an actuality. In many ways the modern preacher is tempted to rely upon the wisdom of his words, only to find that such wise words become foolish and of no effect upon his hearers.

There are, first, the overly elegant. A good figure of speech, like a sharpened spade, can enable the user to dig deeper and faster. But it can be overdone. I have a copy of a sermon that I heard delivered to a group of ministers. In it there are such phrases as “asbestine, fear-filled negativists”; “history’s epileptic time clock”; and “hanging by a neurotic, emotional thread.” The entire message was peppered with similar elegant, and often bewildering, word combinations. I remember showing the sermon to a member of our church, a man with a master’s degree in education. We puzzled and debated for some time over the meaning that was intended, finally agreeing that the message was a striking and elegant achievement but quite ambiguous and perplexing.

It is not difficult for most preachers to overwhelm their congregations. Usually the preacher has had a certain amount of specialized education; often he is a man of superior intelligence. He will usually be speaking to at least a few people who have little formal education. It is imperative, therefore, that he keep in mind the counsel of Denney: “No man can give at one and the same time the impression that he himself is clever and that Jesus Christ is mighty to save.”

Secondly, there are the overly psychological sermons. A sermon preached in a large Eastern church included such ideas as the “quest for identity,” the risks involved in “self-declaration,” and our “involvement in the anxieties of living.” After reading the sermon carefully, I was able to capture the basic meaning. But what of those who were not able to give it careful study, who needed to understand it by hearing? I doubt that one person in an average hundred could have followed the thought.

The training in pastoral psychology that the modern preacher receives should not blind him to the fact that, even for the average college graduate, the thought patterns of psychology and psychiatry are not familiar ground. You may easily overwhelm your congregation with your psychological acumen, but will you bring them face to face with the living Christ?

Thirdly, there are the overly simplified sermons. I once sat under a preacher who used the same phrases and ideas so frequently that he began to apologize for them himself! An evangelist once said, “It’s the old, old story. You’ve heard it so many times before, but it’s still the wonderful Gospel.” I wondered whether he was proclaiming or apologizing.

The peril of depending upon the wisdom of human words does not excuse the preacher from striving to make the most effective use of the language. The story is an old one indeed, but it can be expressed in limitless ways. If the minds of the congregation are to be kept focused upon Christ rather than the Sunday roast, it is imperative that the preacher labor to retell the old, old story, sparing no efforts to capture the immensity of grace in human words, and drawing forth freshness from the well of his own experience and growth.

Fourthly, there are the overly egocentric sermons. While it is true that the preacher will always be working around the hub of his own experience, he must beware lest he find himself proclaiming his own frustrations rather than the riches of God’s grace. Somehow he must separate himself from the irritations and problems that he encounters throughout the week and concentrate wholly upon the truths of the Gospel as found in the Bible.

Otherwise he may find himself mistaking a chip on his shoulder for fire in his bones. A pastor stood up on Mother’s Day, looked at his congregation, and said: “I guess I’m supposed to say something nice about mothers today. But the way I feel about women today, it’ll be hard to say anything.” Problems with women in churches go back to the days when Euodias and Syntyche were at odds at Philippi. The wise preacher, however, will proclaim his Lord rather than advertise his personal problems.

Fifthly, there is the overly theoretical sermon. Ours is a pragmatic age. Whether the sermon is topical or expository, devotional or doctrinal, it will not penetrate the hearts of the congregation unless it can be shown to be practical. A man should never be left at the end of a sermon with the attitude, “Well, so what?” He ought always to be faced with a decision.

At some point, the sermon must intersect the problems, the aspirations, or the interests of the hearer. Some years ago the newspapers proclaimed that President Truman had announced that the national deficit would be seven billion dollars less than anticipated. On a back page of one newspaper, there was a story about three boys who had made a splint for a dog with a broken leg. A survey revealed that 44 per cent of the women readers remembered the dog story but only 8 per cent recalled the President’s announcement.

Finally, there is the overly equivocal sermon. The temper of the age is symbolized by a Methodist church that had on its outdoor signboard a message urging attendance at the nearby Presbyterian church. There is almost a fear of dogmatism, a reluctance to preach in the spirit of “Thus saith the Lord” that borders on inanity.

A pastor in a large church of a total-abstinence denomination preached a sermon entitled “To drink or not to drink.” Afterwards a young woman remarked: “I’m still not sure whether he thinks we ought to or ought not to.”

Years ago Mark Twain revealed, in characteristic fashion, the absurdity of being overly equivocal. His editor had cautioned him to state only facts, and those that he could verify by personal knowledge. When he was sent to cover an important social event, he turned in the following: “A woman giving the name of Mrs. James Jones who is reported to be one of the society leaders in the city gave what is reported to be a party yesterday to a number of alleged ladies. The hostess claims to be the wife of a reputed attorney.”

God has chosen to save the world by means of the foolishness of preaching. Preaching is the utilization of words. Words that leave the hearers awed but perplexed, words that fail to capture the imagination, words that reflect the preacher’s personal frustrations, words that lack practical application, and words that hesitate in uncertainty will fall into that chasm that ever threatens to separate the pulpit from the pew. May our words be worthy of the “exceeding riches of his grace.”

I’D Do It Again

Every now and then someone says to me, “Pastor, if you had the opportunity to choose your vocation again, would you choose the gospel ministry?” And my answer always is, “Yes, even after twenty-five years in the ministry, I’d do it again.”

There are several reasons for my answer. I am sure that no profession offers so many opportunities for service, so many challenges, so many burdens to be lifted, so many sorrowing people to be comforted, so many eager youth to train, so many souls to be led to Christ, as does the gospel ministry.

No other profession requires so much hard work for such meager earnings, so much self-sacrifice often for such little appreciation, as does the gospel ministry.

Therefore, I say these things to my questioner: The ministry is the one profession you should never enter unless you are “called,” the one vocation you should never remain in unless you succeed, the one life-work you can never be content with unless you give more than you receive, and the only job in which your fellow man is your master, Christ your senior partner, your conscience, through the Spirit, often your only guide, and God your constant strength and stay.

The gospel ministry is humbling yet ennobling, tiring yet invigorating, discouraging yet more often encouraging, depressing yet exalting, filled with both distressing and glorious experiences. You will never be the same again after you prepare for and enter the ministry, and you will never want to be the same.

Your fellow men will use you, the Church will praise you, your Lord will bless you, and your Heavenly Father will reward you in his kingdom.

Yes, even after twenty-five years, I’d do it again!—THE REV. LESTER MILTON UTZ, Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Holmes Beach, Florida.

“For the most part” the new confession “follows the weaker or less orthodox elements and abandons those features that keep Barth more strictly in line with his Reformed foundation.”

There is an impression in some circles that the proposed United Presbyterian “Confession of 1967” is substantially an expression of Barthian rather than Reformation or biblical doctrine. Apart from the role of Dr. Markus Barth on the committee, the probable reasons for this are that (1) the language is in the new dogmatic style, (2) an impression of neo-orthodoxy is given, and (3) there are general parallels to Barth’s dogmatic presentation. Whether or not the confession is close to Barth’s theology in detail, however, is a more doubtful question that can be settled only by rigorously comparing it with his Church Dogmatics.

The understanding of confessions and their role forms an obvious starting point, for Barth, who had a hand in the Barmen Declaration of 1934, devotes several pages to this question. Parallel ideas in the proposed new confession would seem to be that confessions are subsidiary and reformable, that they can and should have a place as concurrent standards, and that they ought to contain something of general as well as purely local concern (“The Confession of 1967,” lines 10 ff.; Church Dogmatics I/2, 20, 2).

Barth, however, also demands that a confession should be evoked by an inescapable issue. The Presbyterians’ Special Committee on a Brief Contemporary Statement of Faith is in difficulty here: in the first place it has behind it the weak explanation that “a short Statement of Faith written in these times … should be of interest and value …” (“Minutes of the General Assembly,” 1957, I, 143), and in the second place the whole idea of a dated confession inevitably suggests passing opinion rather than burning conviction. The difficulty is met by (1) referring to the need for response to “a major watershed such as the eighteenth century” (in the background essay by committee Chairman Edward A. Dowey, Jr., included in the committee’s report), and (2) speaking of the search for a subject for reformulation (in the “Introductory Comment and Analysis” that precedes the confession text in the report). But the first reference leads to little positive conviction in the confession, and the artificial search shows few signs of the necessary concern. Barth, in fact, believed that a good confession (like Barmen) should be ready for the risk of a damnamus (“we reject and condemn”); it is hard to see how the “Confession of 1967” fits in with this understanding, for, when it comes to the point, it will not even come right out with a rejection of inerrancy!

The structure of the confession also calls for notice. It is basically soteriological, Christological, and ecclesiological. The main theme, reconciliation, is treated under the two heads of God’s work and the Church’s ministry, with an eschatological addendum. Part I on God’s work is trinitarian in treatment (on the basis of Second Corinthians 13:14), but precedence is here obviously given to Jesus Christ. At first glance this seems to be an outworking of the Christological emphasis characteristic of Barth’s Church Dogmatics, and it is obvious that the interrelating of Christ’s work, the Spirit’s ministry, and the Church’s mission follows the general structure of Church Dogmatics IV/1–3. Closer analysis, however, shows that for all the Christological stress, Barth’s work is quite different and more orthodoxly trinitarian in arrangement. Thus, it begins with prolegomena (Trinity and Word) in I/1–2, moves on to God in II/1–2, then to God the Creator, III/1–4, and only then to God the Reconciler in IV/1–3 (with a projected but unfinished conclusion on God the Redeemer in V). In fact, the outline of Church Dogmatics would provide a more comprehensive confession than is possible if one theme alone is made the subject. (Barmen, of course, achieves concentration in answer to a specific challenge, that of “German Christianity” under Hitlerite totalitarianism.) Another important structural point is that Barth rightly sees the need to introduce the doctrine of Scripture in the prolegomena; he solves the question of priority of God or Scripture by dealing with the latter in the context of a first trinitarian statement. In contrast, the “Confession of 1967” raises the question of Scripture only under I, 3, B, though in fact it already presupposes its doctrine in the preface (lines 11 ff.).

When we turn to lines 40 ff. of the confession and then to I, 1 (“The Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ”), we find many echoes of Barth, especially Church Dogmatics IV/1–3. Thus we might refer to the “God with man” of line 41 (C.D. IV/1, 57, 1); the emphasis on Christ’s presence in the Church’s ministry (41; C.D. IV/3, 69); the bearing of our judgment (56 f.; C.D. IV/1, 59, 2); the different images for the Atonement (61 ff.; C.D. IV/1, 59, 2); the exposure of sin by Christ rather than the law (82 ff.; C.D. IV/1, 60, 1); sin in the relations to God, fellow man, (self) and world (84 f.; C.D. IV/1, 60, 1); and the wrath of God as the expression of his love against all that opposes him (96 ff.; C.D. IV/1, 59, 2). In the shorter section I, 2 (“The Love of God”), we are again in the same circle as that of Church Dogmatics when we read of God’s showing power in the form of a servant (104; C.D. IV/1, 59, 1); or of his appointing the world of space and time as the sphere of his dealings with men (109 f.; C.D. III/1, 41, 2); or of life as a gift and task (118 f., a common German play on Gabe and Aufgabe); or of Christ as the fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel (131 ff.; C.D. II/2, 32, 2; IV/1, 57, 2).

EXEMPT?

I am a Christian.

I believe That Jesus is God’s Son and that he died

And rose again, and that it was for me;

This is my faith, such as it is,

And in this faith is all the hope I have;

But in the office where I work

Are men and women too

Who do not know this Way at all;

And there I am; I speak no word

For I am there, you see—

I, who am filed with envy,

Self-conceit and ridicule.

I see the need they have; and, God,

I dare not say a word, though I know well

How you have said, “Go, ye …”

I fear that I am one who bears your Name

But keeps his fingers crossed.

DONNA G. HUMPHREY

On the other hand, there are other no less striking differences. Thus the whole treatment of Jesus Christ in I, 1, A lacks the depth and comprehensiveness of Barth’s threefold presentation of Christ: the Lord as Servant (Priest), the Servant as Lord (King), and the True Witness (Prophet) (C.D. IV/1–3). Moreover, the use of “images” for biblical statements of the Atonement seems to go beyond what Barth says, and there is nothing comparable to Barth’s strict outworking of the judicial aspect, especially with its emphasis on representative substitution. In this respect there is also complete divorce from the important thought in Church Dogmatics that Christ is both elected and rejected (C.D. II/2, 33, 2), and rather oddly only the “risen Christ” is described in the confession as “savior of all men” (69 ff.; why not “crucified and risen Christ”?). Universalism is perhaps more categorically excluded by the confession than by Church Dogmatics (77 f.: “To refuse life from him is to be separated from God in death”), though this seems to have Arminian implications that Barth tries, if not always successfully or consistently, to avoid.

A final important matter in these two sections is that Barth, in the great patristic tradition, insists that one cannot deal adequately with Christ’s work apart from his person (hence the great Christological section in IV/2, 64, 2). The confession, however, merely states that “the Trinity and the Person of Christ … are recognized as forming the basis and determining the structure of the Christian faith” (lines 31 ff.; committal to Chalcedon?). The text fails even to give Christ his title as God or Son of God, except in a less precise way in lines 41 and 134. Barth is surely on the right lines when he explicitly works out his soteriology in terms of Christ, not merely as Priest, King, and Prophet, but also as God, Man, and God-Man.

The doctrine of the Word of God under I, 3, B (“The Communion of the Holy Spirit: The Bible”) is also strongly reminiscent of Barth’s teaching. Thus Christ as Word incarnate (lines 175 ff.), along with the word spoken through faithful preaching and reading of Scripture (187 ff.), recalls Barth’s Word incarnate, written, and proclaimed (C.D. I/1 and 2). The confession’s use of the term “witness” for Scripture (175 ff., 180, 183, and so on) is also in line with Barth’s discussion in Church Dogmatics I/2, 19, 1. Further points of similarity are the categories of recollection and expectation (cf. 180 ff.; C.D. I/2, 14, 2–3); the stress on the “present” character of God’s speaking (187; C.D. I/2, 19, 2); insistence on the truism that the biblical words are words of men (192 f.; C.D. I/2, 19, 2); and concentration on the historical and relative thought-forms and ideas of the Bible, with at least the implication that they are inadequate or erroneous (193 ff.; C.D. I/2, 19, 2).

It would thus appear that the “Confession of 1967” adopts substantially the view of the Word, and specifically of the Bible, found in Church Dogmatics. It does this, however, without the many important (if not wholly sufficient) safeguards that Barth incorporated into his work. Thus Scripture is for Barth the word written, whereas the “Confession of 1967” does not call it this but lumps it with faithful preaching as word proclaimed. Again, Barth gives the Bible precedence over preaching and thus accords it true normativeness, whereas the confession puts faithful preaching before reading, thus preserving normativeness only by way of the “faithful.”

Barth also accepts, though he does not emphasize, the original giving of Scripture by the Holy Spirit and the uniqueness of the prophets and apostles within God’s work of salvation (C.D. I/2, 19, 2; 21, 1). We look in vain for this note in the confession (except perhaps in 127 f.). Two noteworthy references to the Scriptures occur in the material accompanying the confession in the committee’s report: “The Holy Scriptures are the unique and normative witness to this work of Christ” (in Leonard J. Trinterud’s essay “Confessions of the Church: Times and Places”) and “It is not a witness among others but the witness without parallel, the norm of all other witness” (in the “Introductory Comment and Analysis”). Yet the confession itself does not accord to Scripture the uniqueness Barth strongly insists upon (an insistence not tempered by any such weak statement as the confession’s “… to whom the Holy Spirit bears witness in many ways,” lines 176 f.). Again, Barth argues that God speaks through the very words of Scripture—a version of verbal inspiration which involves him in the practical “fundamentalism” of which Niebuhr complains but for which there is no parallel in the confession. It should also be noted that when Barth makes Christ the hermeneutical key, he is in fact much more precise than the confession with its vague, clumsy, yet restrictive interpretation, “in the light of its witness to God’s work of reconciliation in Christ” (191 f.).

Finally, Barth recognizes in the Bible a direct, absolute, and material authority (C.D. I/2, 20, 1) that goes far beyond the imprecise “normative witness” of the confession (178). If I understand the confession rightly, it is ascribing to Scripture a historical normativeness that as such has the recognition of the Church (177 ff.). Now, this is true and important; but, as Barth points out (C.D. I/2, 20, 1), authority at this level is still indirect, relative, and formal. In virtue of its special position as given and used by the Spirit, however, Scripture has for Barth a direct, material, and absolute authority that frees it from dependence on the Church’s decisions (e.g., respecting the canon) and that makes it superior in principle to every other authority, whether tradition, fathers, councils, confessions, or teaching office. At this critical point, Barth undoubtedly sides with Reformation orthodoxy, whereas the confession with its generalization leaves the way open for accommodation not only to liberalism (“he will continue to speak to men … in every form of human culture,” 200 f.) but also to Romanism, with its list of relative authorities differing only in degree (infallible pope as well as normative Scripture). Failure at this point, of course, destroys the whole thrust of Church Dogmatics in its attempt, on the basis of the scriptural principle, to state a pure evangelical dogmatics in contradistinction to Romanist error on the one side and liberal Protestant on the other. For this, a witness that is directly, absolutely, and materially normative is required.

Time and space do not allow us to speak of Part II of the confession, where we would in any case be hampered by the lack of Barth’s definitive ethics of reconciliation in the projected Church Dogmatics IV/4. Enough has surely been said, however, to justify certain conclusions. First, the “Confession of 1967” undoubtedly reflects many elements of Church Dogmatics. Secondly, it is highly selective in its use of Church Dogmatics. Thirdly, it seems in the main to adopt generalizations without the delimitations that are so important in Barth. Fourthly, it also follows for the most part the weaker or less orthodox elements and abandons those features that keep Barth more strictly in line with his Reformed foundation. Finally, comparison with Church Dogmatics, quite apart from other criteria, brings to light many weaknesses in the conception, structure, and statement of “Confession of 1967.”

In sum, this is a “Barthian” confession only in a diffused and refracted sense. It would in fact be far stronger theologically, and more rather than less positive from the standpoint of orthodoxy, if it were in many respects closer to Church Dogmatics, though this would still leave it open, with Barth’s work, to the final and conclusive scrutiny of the “normative witness.”

WE BUILT A TEMPLE

We built a temple, beautiful and tall;

we made it stronger than a Berlin-wall.

We built an altar brighter than a star,

where we could pray, forgetting hate and war;

where we could find a refuge from the heat

of human anger in the violent street.

We heard the gentle voice of one who told

of Him who talked of peace in days of old.

Calmed were our souls till it would almost seem

that Calvary was rather like a dream.

Here we, caught in a tranquilizing trance,

could meditate in holy arrogance.

We built a church out in the suburbs, far

from where the noisy, frantic people are.

We built a ghetto out of shining stone;

walled in from Man, we serve our God—alone.

LON WOODRUM

Has the preacher become a promoter, planner, pusher, and performer, rather than a prophet and pastor?

In this age of “heat ’n eat,” “brown ’n serve,” and “chili ’n pour” we have turned more and more to religious innovations such as “dial-a-devotion,” “drive-in church,” and a general juke-box religion. The average pastor finds himself caught up and borne along on the tide of it all. (I speak as one who has spent nearly twelve years as pastor of various churches and who is now a pastor in a “specialized setting” as an Air Force chaplain.)

More and more I have found that there are forces that push the pastor. He must “be a success” at all cost, “go-go-go.” He must be “all things to all men”; but, unlike Paul, he is expected to be all of them at the same time. His call is to be Prophet, Priest, Pastor, Promoter, with the emphasis on the first three. However, he often wakes up to find that he is Promoter, Planner, Pusher, and Performer, with hardly any time to be any of the former.

The peril of this is that we may grow stale, go to seed, or become mechanically professional. For, you see, one could promote, plan, push, and perform even if the Holy Spirit did not exist. God could very well be on the sidelines, or not be considered at all, if our ministry consisted only of these things.

It is possible for us ministers and Christian workers to get so busy doing things for Christ, running Christlike errands, that we fail to see that the spiritual life is being Christlike. God has called us not just to do something but to be something. When one finds his spirituality lacking, his first impulse is to do something. Often what he needs is first of all to be something, to be what God wants. Those who do God’s work without being what God wants are the ones the world sees as hypocrites. Ultimately God’s cause is hurt rather than helped.

There are some defenses against this kind of mechanical professionalism. We need a bigger view of God and Christ. Often our God is too small, limited to certain programs, a certain church, a particular denomination. The story is told of a Japanese Christian in this country who had just heard a sermon by a famous preacher. Asked what he thought of the sermon, he replied, “From listening to him you get the idea that God is a white man, an American, and a Baptist. But everyone knows that God is a yellow man, a Japanese, and a Methodist.”

We need a bigger view of the Church. It is the only institution Christ founded. It is not primarily a money-raising institution, or a cultural center, or a museum or library. Rather, it is the only institution charged by Christ himself with the responsibility of teaching and preaching the Word of God. It is the only institution concerned about man’s soul and eternal destiny. The Church is in the business of changing lives, redirecting energies, recovering what is noble in man.

We need a bigger view of our own lives and ministry. First, we need to ask ourselves whether we are being what God would have us be. The basic question concerns, not what we are doing, but our attitudes and our status before the Lord. Perhaps the starting place is a renewal of dedication—not to our own breathless little program but to the Lord Christ himself.

Above all, we are called to live lives of holiness. Sometimes we cringe from that word, but this is still our first requisite for being used by God. We are never criticized for being too holy, only for not being holy enough. People expect us to be what we are inviting them to become. Self-imposed holiness is not the way to Christ, but Christ is the way to true holiness. We may be the “good organizer,” or the “good mixer,” or some other kind of good fellow; but if our lives are not primarily characterized by holiness, we must ask ourselves what place Christ really has in them.

We are called to be saints. A saint is not simply someone who has been elevated to religious prominence; he is first of all a person in whom Christ lives. The early Christians were called saints, holy ones; and we today, if we are the New Testament kind of Christian, are obligated to be saints also. We are called to live the spiritual life, which has been described as adoration of God, adherence to God, and co-operation with God.

The world is crying out today with a need as deep as the inmost part of the human soul. Some clearly feel their need; others feel only a dissatisfaction and an uneasiness they cannot explain. What they need is not more planning, promoting, or pushing, but a real demonstration of old-fashioned piety. The world needs someone who can say with serene confidence, “This is the way; walk ye in it.”

Does the Bible provide some insight into the marriage relationship that will help answer growing questions on birth control?

The English Renaissance exegete and saintly “Oxford reformer” John Colet, a close friend of Erasmus and Thomas More, is supposed to have remarked: “Better that no one should marry.” Whereupon someone asked, “But Dean Colet, then what would happen to the human race?” Taken aback, the Dean of St. Paul’s pondered the question, then suddenly brightened and said, “Why then the end of the age and our Lord’s coming could not tarry!” This tale may well be apocryphal, and certainly Colet eventually acquired a positive view of the marital state (Seebohm informs us that he advised More to marry and entrusted the control of St. Paul’s school to married burghers); but the story typifies some of the confusions that have attended theological thinking on the subject of marriage and childbearing across the centuries. Christians have often manifested strange blind spots in dealing with the theology of marriage, and current discussion of birth control by both Roman Catholics and Protestants is the unwitting manifestation of a theological perplexity that extends far beyond specifics such as the “rhythm method” or “the pill.”

Roman Catholics: Marriage As A Means

The attitude of the Roman church toward birth control is well known, though its rationale is seldom comprehended. Rome has never been happy with the principle of birth control. Limitations on childbearing in marriage are indeed permitted (preferably by sexual continence, but also today by the so-called natural rhythm method); however, such limitations are regarded as exceptions, applicable in cases of ill health, disease, acute poverty, serious temptation to sin, and so on. The use of “unnatural” (i.e., mechanical) birth-control devices stands condemned by papal decree; indeed, in 1930, the famous encyclical Casti Conubii declared that artificial contraception is “an unspeakable crime” and “shameful and intrinsically immoral.” Widespread debate is presently going on in Roman Catholic circles over the legitimacy of the birth-control pill (see The Pill and Birth Regulation: The Catholic Debate, ed. by Leo Pyle; London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1964), but Pope Paul has as yet given no indication that the pill trill be classed with “natural” birth-control methods. The Pope’s conservative statement of June, 1964, and his reported directive to the Ecumenical Council to re-endorse the affirmations on birth-control made by Popes Pius XI and XII suggest that Rome still looks with grave concern upon any techniques that would limit offspring in marriage (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Dec. 17, 1965, p. 34).

Critics of Rome have often gleefully pointed out the strange inconsistency that holds up the celibate state as an ideal for the clergy and at the same time seems to do all within its power to encourage childbearing on the part of the married. This is not, however, a genuine inconsistency at all, as one can see if he understands the theological base of the Roman view of marriage. Celibacy is most definitely regarded as the ideal state of life, permitting undivided attention to things spiritual (cf. the “marriage” between nun and Christ symbolized by wedding ring and white vesture). Marriage is of value not as an end in itself but as a means to an end. What end? As the Corpus Iuris Canonici makes clear (1013, Par. 1), and as the Holy Office reasserted in 1944 (Denzinger, 2295), the primary purpose of marriage is the generation and raising of children; other aspects of the marriage relationship must be viewed as contributory to the procreative purpose. Even the progressive Vatican II Schema 13, which endeavors to set marriage in a more Christocentric framework, twice states that “matrimony and conjugal love are by their very nature ordained for the procreation and education of children.” Rome is thus quite consistent in making every effort to discourage birth control, and in taking particularly strong measures against all attempts to limit birth by techniques in opposition to the “natural law” doctrine fundamental to all Thomistic theology.

The traditional Roman view of marriage and birth control has been a source of embarrassment to its advocates and a fruitful base for criticism by moderns who resent religious authority. It is pointed out that, pragmatically, fewer and fewer Roman Catholics accept the procreative “marriage as means” interpretation of their church. Thus in a 1956 survey of the marital relationships of English women, Chesser found that of his sample of Roman Catholics 47 per cent were practicing birth control; and in 1959 Freedman and his associates, in investigating the contraceptive practices of American wives, discovered that even among the Roman Catholics who were regular churchgoers, 26 per cent were using birth-control devices considered gravely sinful by the Church.

The application of “natural law” thinking to the birth-control issue seems especially bizarre, since it is difficult to see why man can legitimately control “natural” phenomena such as vegetation and animal population and yet cannot without sin control his own numbers in the face of severe population pressures. As one writer has put it, a fixed law of nature dictates that male Caucasians grow hair on their faces; but it is not sinful to use a razor—whether straight or electric! And why is the use of mechanical contraceptives more “unnatural” than the application of the rhythm method? The latter obviously creates an unnatural pressure on the married couple to restrain their desire during one phase of the menstrual cycle, whereas the use of contraceptives or birth-control pills permits intercourse when natural desire dictates. The rhythm method, according to Dr. John Rock of the Harvard Medical School, himself a Roman Catholic, “is to be considered an unnatural method, for it is during the fertile period that the whole psychosomatic psychology of the healthy, normal female is prepared and intended by her primate nature for coitus” (Medical and Biological Aspects of Contraception, Boston: Lippincott, 1943).

Secularists And Liberal Protestants: Marriage As An End

More important, however, than these specific objections to the Roman Catholic theology of birth control has been the rise of a very different philosophy of marriage in modern times. This is the view, nourished by the courtly love tradition of the medieval period and the romantic movement of the nineteenth century, that sees the union of man and woman not as a means to an end but as an end in itself. The twentieth-century ideological shift from essentialistic to existentialistic patterns of thought has greatly accentuated the new view of man-woman relationships; as the distinguished French medical scholar Chauchard puts it, “To speak of natural law is to produce an easy indifference. Modern man sees himself as free.… He refuses every constraint” (Apprendre à aimer; régulation des naissances et morale sexuelle, Paris: Fayard, 1963, p. 62). When combined with a thinly disguised contemporary humanism, the result is a sex ethic (not limited to marriage) that sees in the love relation per se the fulfillment of human aspirations and the manifestation of God-as-Agape. Thus we arrive at the so-called new morality of the Bishop of Woolwich and the permissive sex ethics of numerous moderns—philosophies that, in radical contrast with Roman Catholicism, absolutize the love relation with hardly a second look at procreation.

The attitude toward birth control arising from such an existentialistic-humanistic context is easily predictable: Birth control is no longer a theological problem; “we are faced with a problem that must be solved at the purely biological level” (David J. McCallion, “Human Population Pressures and Birth Control,” Canadian Journal of Theology, July, 1960). The ethics of birth control becomes situational and ad hoc. As a car sticker my wife saw yesterday expressed it: “Trouble Parking? Try Planned Parenthood.” The overpopulation issue engulfs birth-control thinking, resulting in weird volumes such as retired Army Colonel Alexander J. Stuart’s Overpopulation—Twentieth Century Nemesis: A Condensed, Objective Study of Procreation—from the Amoeba to Modern Man (New York, 1958). Even a respectable work like The Population Explosion and Christian Responsibility (1960) by Richard fa*gley, an official spokesman for the World Council of Churches, focuses chief attention on the economic and technological aspects of population growth and sees the ecumenical movement, with its united witness to an overpopulated world, as “the way forward.”

Though liberal Protestants and secularists have readily identified the erroneous reasoning in Roman Catholic birth-control doctrine, they have, strange to say, fallen into a more acute form of the same error. Roman Catholic “natural law” thinking is a variety of what G. E. Moore in his Principia Ethica called the “naturalistic fallacy”: the assumption that the descriptive (what is) automatically gives rise to the normative (what ought to be). But the liberals commit this same blunder with far less “justification” (since they have neither absolute church nor inerrant Scripture to interpret nature for them). The overpopulation problem in itself does not establish the morality of birth control, any more than it would establish the morality of war as a means of reducing the population. And the situational ethic of agape-love, as I emphasized in a previous article in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (“The Law’s Third Use: Sanctification,” April 26, 1963), leaves man with no guideline for the content of ethical action. Love is a motive, not a structure, and one makes a severe logical “category mistake” to think that it can serve both functions. A reliable revelation of God’s divine will is sine qua non for man’s ethical decisions in the realm of marriage and birth control as in all other areas of life. In Holy Scripture, one has the key to interpret God’s hand in nature and human life and the guideline for love’s operations.

Biblical Christianity: Marriage As Analogy

And how does the Bible view the problem area we are confronting? To answer this question we must move beyond proof-texting to the focal center of scriptural teaching on marriage. This center is not to be found in the first two chapters of Genesis, so often cited in isolation, but in Ephesians 5:22–32, which quotes Genesis in the context of the New Covenant in Christ. Understood in the light of New Testament fulfillment, marriage cannot be regarded simply as a means (“Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth”) or unqualifiedly as an end (“They shall be one flesh”). Rather, it is seen as an analogy—indeed, as the best human analogy—of the relationship between Christ and his Church. After having connected husband-and-wife with Christ-and-the-Church by no less than three hōs’s (“as”) and two kathōs’s (“just as”) in ten verses, Paul concludes with a summary statement on the marriage relation: “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” When and only when marriage is viewed as the “type” of which Christ-and-Church are “antitype” can we avoid the Hegelian-like dialectic extremes of the Roman and liberal Protestant views of marriage and birth control. Specifically:

1. As Christ’s relation with the Church is a total love relation, not just a means to an end, so one must not view marriage simply as a procreative function. Where birth control can contribute to “subduing the earth” in order to achieve a better total human relationship, it is not to be condemned (cf. William E. Hulme, “A Theological Approach to Birth Control,” Pastoral Psychology, April, 1960). By the same token, the psychosomatic wholeness implied in Christ’s incarnation for man’s salvation condemns the Manichean and neo-Platonic depreciation of the flesh that colors so much of Roman Catholic celibacy teaching. No better counteractive exists to all such functional misunderstandings of marriage than the writings of Charles Williams, the late Christian poet and friend of C. S. Lewis (Shideler well titles her treatment of Williams’s thought The Theology of Romantic Love).

2. Yet neither is the human love relationship an end in itself. “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given marriage”—why? Because “when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away”; in the full manifestation of the antitype the type is embraced and disappears. Thus the love relationship between male and female must never be absolutized. It is truly meaningful only insofar as it reflects the Christ relationship. Apart from this it becomes idolatrous, taking on demonic quality despite its lack of genuine ultimacy. The present state of American mores and morals is sufficient evidence of the appalling consequences that attend the isolation of sex from God’s revealed will.

3. In light of the divine analogy of marriage, we can see the centrality of children to marital union. Christ did not give himself up to death as an isolated deed; he did it to “bring many sons unto glory” (Heb. 2:10). As the union of Christ and his Church does not exist for its own sake but to bring others to spiritual rebirth, so the marital union is properly fulfilled in natural birth. And since natural birth precedes spiritual birth, as creation precedes redemption (John 3:3–12), so the Christian home can be the greatest single agency for nurture in the twofold sense; thus did the Reformers view it (cf. Lazareth’s Luther on the Christian Home). The burden of proof rests, then, on the couple who wish to restrict the size of their family; to the extent possible and desirable, all Christian couples should seek to “bring many sons unto glory.” After all, as C. G. Darwin pointed out at the University of Chicago’s Darwin centennial, those who restrict their birth rate will ultimately be engulfed by those who do not: “hom*o contracipiens would become extinct and would be replaced by the variety hom*o progenetivus.” The Christian application of this principle is obvious.

4. Sexual relations outside marriage are unqualifiedly to be condemned, not for the naturalistic (and logically questionable!) reasons set forth by Bertocci (“Extramarital Sex and the Pill,” The Christian Century, Feb. 26, 1964), but because they violate the high analogy of Christ-and-Church. Thus Israel’s prostitution of God’s grace through idolatry was symbolized by Hosea’s wife, who lived as a woman of the street, and Paul expresses revulsion at the thought of those who are “members of Christ” becoming “one flesh” with harlots, thereby violating the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:13–20). The crux of Paul’s argument against illicit sex is the analogy relation—that Christians “are bought with a price.” So the use of birth-control devices outside of marriage is not to be tolerated. And the hypocrisy of gas-station dispensers “for prevention of disease” is to be made clear in no uncertain terms.

How practically are Christian marriage partners to decide the birth-control question? Within the framework of the analogy relation, they are to consider it personally and prayerfully in light of their own physical, emotional, financial, and spiritual situation, and in light of the population picture in their area of the world. (The answer will not be the same for Christians in India and those in Canada; for those led to lucrative vocations and those led to pioneer missionary work.) They will act responsibly, remembering that irresponsibility is equally possible at the Roman Catholic antibirth-control and the secularistic pro-birth-control extremes. Viewing marriage as neither means nor end, but as the great analogy of Christ’s work of salvation, the Christian will seek to do all he can to make his marriage evangelistic—generatively and regeneratively. He will consider with all seriousness such proposals as that recently made by the Rev. Eldon Durham, who, in the face of the severe and rapidly growing population problem in so many parts of the world, advocates that Christians “begin to constitute families by means of adopting the unwanted, the disinherited, the dispossessed and the rejected children” of the earth (Time, Dec. 3, 1965, p. 77). Though such a suggestion must not be used to justify non-childbearing in American marriages and irresponsibility or immorality on the part of couples living elsewhere in the world, is not the proposal genuinely analogous to the “grafting” of the Gentiles unto the tree of salvation (Rom. 11)? Surely the childless Christian couple is here offered a superlative privilege and opportunity.

But however he is led to fulfill his personal responsibility before the Lord of the Church, the Christian stands free from the shackles of legalism and from the chaos of libertarianism. “If the Son shall make you free,” said Jesus, “you shall be free indeed.” On the basis of this merciful freedom in Christ the Apostle beseeches us as a reasonable act of worship to present our bodies “a living sacrifice holy, acceptable unto God.”