Page 5864 – Christianity Today (2024)

The Troubled Family

Hope For the Family: Five Essays, by Arnold de Graaff, Paul G. Schrotenboer, John A. Olthuis, Gordon Spykman, and Hendrik Hart (Wedge, 1971, 52 pp., $1.25 pb), Solving Problems in Marriage, by Robert Bower (Eerdmans, 1972, 148 pp., $2.45 pb), Is the Family Here to Stay?, by David Hubbard (Word, 1971, 97 pp., $2.95 pb), The Family First, by Kenneth Gangel (His International Service, 1972, 139 pp., $1.95 pb), and Power Ideas For a Happy Family, by Robert H. Schuller (Revell, 1971, 128 pp., $3.95 pb), are reviewed by H. Norman Wright, assistant professor of Christian education, Talbot Theological Seminary, La Mirada, California.

Today many people are concerned about actual and proposed changes in the family structure, and numerous writers have tried to analyze these changes and suggest responses.

That is the nature of Hope for the Family. The five essays in this volume were originally talks given in a lecture series of the Association for the Advancement of Christian Scholarship, in Toronto. Although the essays are brief, the authors make their points adequately. The plea throughout is that Christians, individually and as families, must create and maintain distinctive life styles despite conflicting social trends and pressures. The biblical conception of the family is discussed, along with the cultural background of the biblical commands. This is lacking in many similar works.

Perhaps the most pointed chapter is “Hidden Invaders of the Home.” Parents, the state, business, schools, and even the church fall under critical analysis. Many will be disturbed by some of what is said here, and should be! For example:

Many Christians try to live according to two visions—to enjoy the best of two worlds—to remain Christians while at the same time pledging to uphold the faith of consumption. Sooner or later, however, one vision, one spiritual force, will gain the upper hand, will become the directing, the determining force in our lives.

The book is not limited to an exposé of the problems. The final section especially includes specific suggestions on what to do to improve family life. The book will be helpful for ministers, families, and classes in family relation.

A book that moves from the diagnosis to solutions is Dr. Bower’s Solving Problems in Marriage. Though written for Christian couples, it would not be unsuitable for non-Christians. The treatment of Scripture is not extensive; with so much practical teaching in the Bible about interpersonal attitudes and behavior, the author would have done well to bring in more scriptural applications. When he does use Scripture, it is well integrated in his discussion.

Bower has not tackled so many subjects that he has to be superficial. For the most part what he says is well illustrated, though at times one would very much like to have the discussion extended.

What Bower says about openness and self-disclosure in marriage is well balanced. Two examples of his advice are:

The marital motto Peace at Any Price may involve white lies in order to maintain tranquility, but it tends eventually to create increasing falsehood and hypocrisy.

If honesty has been absent in a relationship for a considerable time, sudden decision to be open with a spouse who may be undergoing severe physical illness or undue stress may be more than he can emotionally handle. A person must assess the spouse’s emotional strength to receive the material to be disclosed and select an appropriate time for disclosure.

The discussion on “Learning Acceptance” deals with the danger of idealistic thinking, the fallacy of comparison, the uniqueness of the individual, and similar points. “The tendency to expect equal performance from all persons,” suggests Bower, “opposes the concept of the uniqueness of the individual, with his own kind and intensity of needs.”

What the book really needs is a concluding chapter drawing everything together and focusing on the stability and hope Jesus Christ can give to any relationship. And, as I suggested before, it needs to bring in more scriptural teaching.

Dr. Hubbard’s thoughts in Is the Family Here to Stay? are really not his own; they originated with the Bible. Unfortunately, this volume is too brief, especially in the latter chapters. It should be expanded to include more specific answers. Unlike many writers, however, Hubbard can convey meaning and depth in a very few words; what he says is said carefully.

Are marriages made in heaven? Yes, Hubbard says, because our capacity for marriage is God-given. It is divinely commissioned. From this point he moves into a discussion of the purpose of marriage.

Throughout the book the author shows insight into the biblical pattern for marriage and understanding of practical problems. A practical amplification of First Peter 3:1–4, 7 focuses on the meaning of the grace of God in a marriage relationship. At the start of the discussion Hubbard points to a basic problem:

What makes marriages take a turn for the worse?… At root it is our inability to accept each other as we really are that sabotages our marriage. Where criticism is a commodity and forgiveness is in short supply, you have a ready market for martial disaster.

The author’s presentation of the biblical teaching on the roles of husband and wife is brief, specific, and refreshing. In discussing “What ‘Be Subject’ Does Not Mean,” he suggests,

For a wife to be subject to her husband does not mean a compromise of the wife’s conscience. In our sinfulness we as husbands may ask wives to do just that. And in your sinfulness you as wives may be tempted to give in and avoid a struggle. When your conscience is involved, stick to your convictions, but be sure your conscience is taking its orders from the Bible as God’s own Word and not from your whims, hunches or intuitions.

He goes on to discuss what being subject actually means.

The endorsem*nts accompanying Kenneth Gangel’s The Family First lead one to expect a complete and practical presentation on family life. But although it scratches the surface in many areas, it does not go far enough in its analysis of the problems or in its solutions.

The book is obviously directed toward a very conservative audience. For those who have done much reading in the area of family life it will have little appeal. Those who are just beginning their study may find it provides an overview, but other books could be more helpful. For example, to devote only a page and a half to the biblical teaching on divorce is almost a hindrance to a proper understanding. It would be better not to speak on a subject than to treat it so inadequately. On the whole, much of the material in this book has been discussed in others; there are few new ideas.

A positive refreshing look at the family and its potential comes from Robert Schuller in Power Ideas For a Happy Family. In seven brief chapters focusing on such points as the family as a whole, marriage, and teen-agers, Schuller presents rules or suggestions followed by practical examples or illustrations. His style is simple, even homey, and to the point. Many of his admonitions are just common-sense suggestions, such as “Be intimate always.” “Put priorities on your values.” “Give, give in, forgive and never keep score!” Several times the reader is challenged with the idea of committing his life to Jesus Christ as the answer to life’s problems.

In his chapter addressed to teenagers, Schuller tackles some of their usual gripes and complaints, showing them the positive side of the picture. This chapter and the one on the “Six Success Points For Parents” are the best in the book.

If you are looking for in-depth research, this is not the book to choose. But if you have limited time for reading and are seeking an uplift with a few simple principles to consider, Schuller’s “power ideas” can be of help.

Leo And Luther

White Robe, Black Robe, by Charles L. Mee, Jr. (Putnam, 1972, 316 pp., $7.95), is reviewed by Marvin W. Anderson, associate professor of ecclesiastical history, Bethel Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota.

The Luther Yearbook for 1971 lists 853 items directly related to Luther. Edith Simon’s Luther Alive (1967) and Richard Friedenthal’s Luther, His Life and Times (1967) are among the more notable recent biographies. Now in a “gossipy” account, Charles Mee, Jr., editor of Horizon, attempts to set off the white-faced Medici Pope Leo X from the black-robed Augustinian Eremite, Luther. The chapters of this well-written account alternate between Luther and Leo. Chapter III, “The Cardinal’s College Education,” is the best of the lot.

Apart from its literary merits. White Robe, Black Robe has some historical flaws, more of omission than of commission. Mee’s claim of the rehabilitation of Leo X ignores such works as G. True, Leon X etson siècle (Paris, 1941). Nowhere does Mee suggest why the Reformation broke out in Germany. The Fifth Lateran Council with its clamor for reform is missing. K. M. Setton (1969) has examined the entire Turkish peril, which needs greater attention than Mee gave it if one wishes to read other reasons for Leo’s transalpine policies. Notable for their absence from the bibliography are the following: Richard Douglas, Jacopo Sadoleto; H. Jedin, Trent I; especially J. M. Headley, Luther’s View of Church History; two recent works by M. Spinka on Hus; and Fife’s 1957 Revolt of Martin Luther, which should replace the 1928 Young Luther listed.

Mee’s weaving together of what scholars have learned of these two figures makes fascinating reading for the layman. At the end, however, one might question Mee’s conclusion that the establishment fosters its own ruin. If that is so, how can he explain that the Reformation led to a vigorous survival of papal authority as it reformed itself under Leo’s successors? Not until the twentieth century has papal authority been challenged so severely. One must conclude that for all its merits, White Robe, Black Robe misses the point of Luther’s protest. By 1547 one could read this epitaph of Luther: “Living I was thy plague, dying I shall be thy death, O Pope.”

This biography of Luther and Leo, original in its conception and skillfully executed, at times dazzles the reader with its accounts of Renaissance Rome. It is like the shallow lagoon at Venice, shimmering in the Adriatic sun. The real truth lies elsewhere, a full five fathoms deep, in Catholic and Protestant aspirations that the papacy be purged.

The Right Question

Understanding Speaking in Tongues, by Watson Early Mills (Eerdmans, 1972, 76 pp., $1.95 pb), is reviewed by Edmon L. Rowell, Jr., minister, Lee Street Baptist Church, Danville, Virginia.

This compact volume attempts to interpret glossolalia for the non-glossolaliac so that he can understand not just the phenomenon itself but his fellow Christian who has this gift. It is a comprehensive and balanced interpretation of tongues-speaking.

After defining glossolalia, Professor Mills offers a brief historical survey of the practice, concluding with its recent outbreak among non-Pentecostals and the organization of a number of interdenominational glossolalia “fellowship.” Then he turns to the bulk of his study:an examination of the roots of the present glossolalia movement in the religious ecstasy of the Near East, and glossolalia in Acts and First Corinthians.

The Hebrews of the Old Testament were only one people among many who practiced religious ecstasy; Mills cites examples from Phoenicia and Greece of “ecstatic speech” (not necessarily unintelligible as is tongues-speaking today—at least to the novice). Then he turns to a brief survey of ecstaticism in Old Testament prophecy, concluding with the reminder that there was a “development away from ecstatic forms of prophecy toward a more ordered form of discourse.” Mills adds that the important lesson of this survey is that at least by the first century, in some quarters, “objective phenomena intended to prove the indwelling of the Spirit were suspect … even considered manifestations of an evil spirit.” The situation changed by the time of Paul and Luke.

Dealing first with Acts, especially the Pentecost narrative (Acts 2), Mills marks three traditional interpretations of “tongues” and cites major proponents: (1) that tongues represents unintelligible speech (foreign languages); (2) that what was unintelligible speech to the uninitiated was understandable to those who possessed the Spirit; and (3) that the Pentecost narrative is invalid, either corrupted or fabricated.

Mills suggests that “the theological intent of Acts, in the final analysis, is to demonstrate that the gospel is dependent neither upon Peter nor Paul, nor the twelve, but rather upon a superhuman power—the Spirit of God.” In view of this intent, he says, glossolalia “is the effort to express the inexpressible: the indwelling of the Spirit of God in the lives of men. When the kerygma sank home to a responsive heart, ordinary human language could not express the emotions that were aroused; therefore, the believer broke forth in ecstatic speech.” Finally, Mills says, in view of Luke’s emphasis on the role of the Spirit in the early Christian community, glossolalia in Acts “should be seen as a legitimate example of the way God worked through these Christian pioneers to the end that all men might come into the circle of the redeemed.”

Turning to Paul, Mills notes the ambiguity of the account in First Corinthians and the seeming ambivalence of Paul’s attitude towards “strange speech.” He concludes that Paul accepted speaking in tongues as at least one valid “gift of the Spirit” while cautioning moderation and tolerance, and that therefore Paul’s attitude is not different from Luke’s—that glossolalia is a legitimate expression of the indwelling power of the Spirit.

At this point Mills goes astray. He insists that Luke’s account of glossolalia in Acts (Pentecost) should be considered primary. Evidently his reasons are the ambiguity of Paul’s teaching on glossolalia and the question over whether glossolalia at Corinth was a true “gift of the Spirit” or merely an attempt to imitate Pentecost. Luke’s account, however, is at least two generations removed from the event at Pentecost, while Paul’s interpretation of “tongues” in First Corinthians speaks to a situation immediately at hand.

Glossolalia in the New Testament was seen as one manifestation of the ecstatic union with the Spirit, but not the only or even the normative one. This is the conclusion to which Mills comes, but on the basis of Paul, not Luke. In his final chapter, he encourages the nonglossolaliac to get behind the “noise” of this “strange speech” and hear what the glossolaliac is saying. It may be, he suggests, “that one of the greatest needs of the modern church is to rediscover the tremendous resources of the Holy Spirit. All of Christendom needs to experience the joy and vigor of the Spirit’s presence.” Mills leaves the reader with what is surely the right question to be pondered: “Could it be that through this ‘strange stirring’ in the church God may be calling Christians to a higher level of faith and service?”

Off The Beaten Path

A Tudor Tapestry: Men, Women and Society in Reformation England, by Derek Wilson (University of Pittsburgh, 1972, 287 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by A. N. S. Lane, doctoral candidate in church history, Cambridge University, England.

The tapestry of the Tudor period presented a story by a series of panels, each depicting a scene or event. That is what Derek Wilson’s book succeeds in doing for the English Reformation from 1520 to 1546.

In the foreword this book is aptly described also as “a landscape, the deepest recessions of which are from time to time pulled into focus by the telescope of research.” The nine chapters progress stage by stage through the developing Reformation. But whereas most books speed the reader down the much travelled highways of this landscape, Wilson has chosen rather to lead him through the less explored country lanes. He seeks to show how the Reformation affected ordinary men and women, though his “ordinary” folk are almost entirely gentry. This he does by considering especially some Lincolnshire families, mainly the Ayscough family (pronounced Askew).

All except the most important footnotes are put at the end of the book, a practice that will no doubt please the layman as much as it irritates the scholar. The style is not always what one would associate with a scholarly work (two chapters take the form of individuals musing over their past careers), but this should not lead one to underestimate the book. Many years of painstaking work with the primary sources lie behind it. The foreword is correct in stating that this study is “based upon massive evidence rather than upon dogmatic and question-begging ideologies” (such as those associated with Weber and Tawney).

The chapter titles are taken from chess, a happy choice for the year of Bobby Fischer. Don’t attempt to guess the contents of the chapters from the titles. The “King’s Bishop” is John Longland, not Cranmer. There are chapters on Lincolnshire, covering Sir William Ayscough (“A Knight’s Progress”), the 1536 rising (“Knight’s Defensive”), and the aftermath thereof (“Rival Knights”). Centered more on the court are those chapters on Thomas Cromwell (“Pawns in the Game,” which concentrates on his Nottinghamshire agents) and the aftermath of his execution (“Check, Countercheck”). In the final chapters the two themes are blended as Anne Ayscough moves into the center of the stage and becomes engulfed in the court intrigues. The book ends with her martyrdom in 1546 with John Lascelles, one of the Nottinghamshire pawns. There is a brief epilogue on the futures of the causes and families discussed.

By concentrating on the study of more obscure persons, Wilson succeeds in showing what was happening in the country at large, and not just at the center. The extent to which Reformation doctrine took root under Henry VIII is a good example of this.

The book is not totally without blemish. For example, Anne of Cleves may have kept her head because she was continental rather than because she was plain. Also, it seems strange to denote the Protestant position repeatedly as “liberal.” Several times Wilson speaks of the rise of a new middle class as a characteristic of this period without showing awareness of penetrating criticisms of this theory by J. H. Hexter.

But the bulk of the book is fresh and interesting. Although the obscurity of most of the characters makes it impossible for all but specialists in that precise area to vouch for the accuracy of many points, the standards of the book as a whole inspire confidence in the author.

This Tudor tapestry is most attractively presented. There are not only eight plates of illustrations but also five pages of family trees and three pages of maps. These last two items are an invaluable aid in following the text, especially where it becomes genealogically complex. There are also a nine-page index and a six-page bibliography.

Because of the subject matter, this well-produced and very readable study is not for those who know nothing of the period; for them a book like A. G. Dickens’s The English Reformation would be much, more useful. For one who has already made the journey once up the main highway, however, this tour round the country lanes is warmly to be recommended. Studies like this of other bypaths in the history of the Church are much needed.

NEWLY PUBLISHED

When Parochial Schools Close, by Martin Larson (Luce [McKay, 750 Third Ave., New York, N. Y. 10017], 313 pp., $7.50). What really has happened to the public schools—and their financing—in those cities where, gradually or suddenly, large numbers of students at Catholic schools have transferred to them? Research gathered in this book shows that parochaid propaganda is far removed from the real situation. (See also editorial, page 28.)

The Christian and Social Action, by Charles Furness (Revell, 256 pp., $8.95). The head of the social-work department of Philadelphia College of Bible discusses the biblical bases for contemporary expressions of Christian concern with social problems.

Buddhism, Christianity, and the Future of Man, by Douglas A. Fox (Westminster, 184 pp., $6.95). A comparison of two great religious systems by one who knows and is sympathetic to Buddhism but subscribes to Christianity and recognizes that both cannot be true. Although Fox does not try to gloss over the conflict, he offers no real basis for choosing between them, and concludes that both can be “meaningful.”

Maria, by Maria von Trapp (Creation House, 203 pp., $5.95). The story of Baroness von Trapp, from her painful childhood to her recent baptism in the Spirit at one of Notre Dame’s large charismatic conferences.

Are Demons For Real?, by Robert Peterson (Moody, 136 pp., $.75 pb), and My Name Is Legion, by Glenna Henderson (Bethany Fellowship, 128 pp., $3.95). Many accounts of demon possession in Borneo with reflection by missionary Peterson (British title: Roaring Lion), and an autobiographical account of a formerly demon-possessed American.

The Expectation of the Poor, by B. N. Y. Vaughn (Judson, 182 pp., $3.50 pb). The Anglican bishop of British Honduras describes the disillusion of third-world nations with economic development and what the Church can do about it.

The Ideal Church, by Erroll Hulse and others (Carey Publications [5 Fairfield Close, Haywards Heath, Sussex, England], 89 pp., about $1 pb). Papers read last year at a predominantly Calvinistic Baptist conference.

Tired Dragons, by Edwin C. Lynn (Beacon, 272 pp., $12.50). Attempts to provide plans for rejuvenating church buildings and gives examples (with floor plans) of churches that have remodeled. The book affirms that church buildings are not unnecessary.

A Religious History of the American People, by Sydney Ahlstrom (Yale, 1158 pp., $19.50). The definitive one-volume study by the leading authority. He tries to be fair to all phases and beliefs. Well worth the price.

Jesus Power, by Sherwood Eliot Wirt (Harper & Row, 124 pp., $4.95). The author, who stands close to the center of the evangelistic dynamic in our age, gives biblical and psychological insights into the nature of the human will to power and how it can be redeemed and transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Timely and stimulating.

The Problem With Prayer Is …, by David Hubbard (Tyndale, 91 pp., $.95 pb). Very practical help.

Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus, by Theodore Ziolkowski (Princeton, 298 pp., $10). From the late nineteenth century, fiction has evinced a fascination with Jesus. Often the conception of him has been quite different from the evangelical’s, however, and it is these “transfigurations,” wrought by such widely read authors as Hesse, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Greene, that have been the most influential. Ziolkowski thoroughly explores the change in the image of Jesus and concludes that an even stranger shift is taking place: Judas is replacing Jesus as the central figure.

White Black Man, by Bob Stultz and Phil Landrum (Creation House, 172 pp., $3.95), and The Black Christian Experience, by Emmanuel L. McCall (Broadman, 126 pp., $3.95). These two books provide a shocking contrast. The first grippingly explains the black ghetto man’s life, while the second historically, blandly explores those black Christians who haven’t had it so bad.

Why Priests? A Proposal for a New Church Ministry, by Hans Kiing (Doubleday, 118 pp., $5.95). The controversial Catholic theologian writes much more as if he were with the Plymouth Brethren.

Religion and Bereavement, edited by Austin H. Kutscher and Lillian Kutscher (Health Sciences, 216 pp., $12.50). Essays, readings, and quotations designed to help professional men help the bereaved. Most of the excerpts fall within the Judeo-Christian perspective. Practical advice on funerals and funeral music is also included.

We’re All in This Together: Issues and Options in the Education of Catholics, by Mary Perkins Ryan (Holt, 166 pp., $6.95). Protestant reflection on religious and general education can also be enhanced by the reading of this book.

About School, edited by Mark Tuttle (Lanthorn Publications [Houghton, N. Y. 14744], 144 pp., $2.50 pb). Thought-provoking essays by evangelicals involved in higher education on meanings and methods of Christian colleges.

The Shape of the Question, by Kent S. Knutson (Augsburg, 128 pp., $2.50 pb). A serious attempt by the head of the American Lutheran Church to rephrase and understand questions about the nature and person of Jesus Christ and the doctrine of the Church. Fails to discern the apostate elements in certain “radical” theologies and thus, despite its winsome style, is a weak contribution to a vital discussion.

East to Eden, by Charles Corwin (Eerdmans, 181 pp., $2.95 pb). Taking the current Western fascination with Eastern religions as his point of departure, the author explores the impact of biblical religion and the concepts it created on social change in the Orient, especially Japan, and comes up with some striking and persuasive reversals of traditional clichés.

What’s a Nice Jewish Boy Like You Doing in the First Baptist Church?, by Bob Friedman (Regal, 102 pp., $1.25 pb), and Pursued, by Vera Schlamm with Bob Friedman (Regal, 212 pp., $1.25 pb). What happens when a Jew becomes a Christian? These two books explain the difficulties and the joys involved in such a reversal. Considering the upsurge in the “Jews for Jesus” movement and the antagonism of “Jews for Judaism,” these are timely volumes to read and to pass on to your Jewish friends.

Confronting Popular Cults, by Thomas Starkes (Broadman, 122 pp., $1.95 pb). Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Armstrongism, Christian Science, Unitarianism, and American expressions of Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism are covered in an excellent introduction. Good text for study groups.

Raping Our Children, by Gloria Lentz (Arlington, 224 pp., $7.95). Despite its grotesque title, this book is soberly written and gives a wealth of background information on the burgeoning business of school sex-education programs, bureaucratically imposed and commercially exploited with scant consideration for the welfare of the pupils, the rights of parents, and Judaeo-Christian moral standards. Inconclusive but thought-provoking.

Winning Souls Through Buses, by Jim Vineyard (Impact Books, 160 pp., $3.95). Very practical guide by bus director at three congregations where it has really worked.

The New Testament: The History of Investigation of Its Problems, by Werner Georg Kümmel (Abingdon, 510 pp., $10.95). A masterly survey of the history of New Testament research by the successor to Rudolf Bultmann at Marburg. To balance its tendency to neglect British and more conservative scholarship, use an earlier work by Stephen Neill, The Interpretation of the New Testament, 1861–1961 (Oxford, 1964).

Helping the Helpers to Help: Mental Health Consultation to Aid Clergymen in Pastoral Work, by Ruth Caplan (Seabury, 241 pp., $6.95). Report, with examples, of Harvard psychiatrists’ attempts to assist (not replace) clergymen involved in counseling. Wider implications are discussed.

Art and the Religious Experience: The “Language” of the Sacred, by F. David Martin (Bucknell, 257 pp., $15). Drawing on all the art forms—music, literature, painting, sculpture, and architecture—Martin explains that the arts have become the religious experience (á la Matthew Arnold). Christians who want to understand our culture need to recognize this, and Martin provides a good introduction.

The Public Servant and the Pastor, by A. James Armstrong (Tidings [1908 Grand Ave., Nashville, Tenn. 37203], 56 pp., $1 pb), lectures delivered by Bishop A. James Armstrong at Capitol Hill United Methodist Church that attempt to focus on the whole gospel mission.

Ecumenical Progress: A Decade of Change in the Ecumenical Movement 1961–71, by Norman Goodall (Oxford, 173 pp., $10.25). Sequel to a 1961 book on the World Council of Churches by one long associated with the council. An adequate reference work, but not to be considered a critical appraisal.

The Expanded Life, by Myron S. Augsburger (Abingdon, 127 pp., $3.25), and The Old Law and the New Law, by William Barclay (Westminster, 121 pp., $1.95). Two books that can be used in creative study of discipleship. Augsburger considers only the Sermon on the Mount, while Barclay includes the Ten Commandments in his study. The former has a more stylistically imaginative approach.

Confessions of a Heretic, by Dave Hunt (Logos, 216 pp., $2.50 pb). Tells of wheeling and dealing in lumber, real estate, and other commercial endeavors, with frequent “miraculous” aid to stay one jump ahead of creditors and lawmen. He also relates in a kind of sub-plot the difficulties with his Brethren assembly brought on by his naïve but vigorous enthusiasm for the charismatic movement.

In view of the trends of biblical scholarship, it must be reaffirmed that the two testaments are to be studied together. It is debatable whether one should be simply a New Testament scholar or an Old Testament scholar: the ideal is a biblical scholar, one who is equally at home in both testaments. Although few have the mental ability to master the number of languages involved, not to mention the secondary literature, the ideal needs to be kept in view. Concentration on one testament or the other is bound to lead to a lack of balance.

This leads to a second point: the most important element in the “background” of the New Testament is the Old Testament. That is to say, one needs to understand the teaching and even the thought-forms of the Old Testament in order to come to grips with the message of the New. The writers of the New Testament documents lived and breathed in the environment of the Hebrew Bible (see F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Development of Old Testament Themes, Eerdmans, 1968). This is evident not only from the New Testament’s extensive quotations from and even more numerous allusions to the Old Testament, but also from the vocabulary and grammar of the New Testament documents. Although all wrote in Greek, the majority of the early Christian writers thought in Hebrew (or Aramaic); even though they used Greek words, these words, especially when they had theological overtones, were often used in quite different senses from their common meaning in secular Greek (see D. Hill, Greek Words and Hebrew Meanings, Cambridge, 1967). Thus all attempts to understand the new Testament from the point of view of Hellenism, especially from the alleged parallels with Greek religious thought, fall to the ground. Although Hellenism is one of the influences on the New Testament, it certainly is far from being the most important. The student is advised, therefore, to look to the Old Testament as the chief and most influential item in the background to the New Testament.

A book that merits mention before we turn to individual items in the background to the New Testament is The New Testament Background: Selected Documents, edited by C. K. Barrett (Harper, 1961). Here is a mixture of selected pagan and Jewish writings that throw light on the pages of the New Testament. It should be noted, however, that Barrett’s method of listing the pagan sources first might give the beginner the mistaken impression that these are more important than the Jewish, when the reverse is actually the case. Still, the work is a unique collection of documents and a handy companion to the New Testament for the student.

INTERTESTAMENTAL HISTORY It is all too easy for Protestants, who are not usually familiar with the Apocryphal books found in the Roman Catholic Bibles, to suppose that nothing important happened in Israel between the end of the narrative of the Old Testament (about 400 B.C.) and the coming of the Messiah. But this is far from correct. Many important events took place in the history of God’s people that were far-reaching in their influence; indeed, it was during this period that Judaism as such emerged. And so we need to understand something of the history of the so-called Intertestamental Period in order to understand the world into which the Gospel came.

Israel and the Nations by F. F. Bruce (Eerdmans, 1963) devotes the largest portion of its space to this period and provides the general reader with an accurate and interesting account. Two small but excellent books by D. S. Russell, Between the Testaments (SCM, 1960) and The Jews From Alexander to Herod (Oxford, 1967), also offer historical accounts of the period. The Hellenistic Age, edited by A. Schalit (Vol. 6 of “The World History of the Jewish People”) (Rutgers, 1972) provides a comprehensive and scholarly account of the political, social, and religious life of Jews in Palestine from 332 B.C. to 67 B.C. E. Schürer’s standard work, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ (five volumes, T. and T. Clark, 1895), is being revised by a team of scholars under the able editorship of M. Black and G. Vermes; in spite of being generally out-of-date, it is still a useful tool.

THE APOCRYPHA This is the name given by Protestants to those books that, though found in the Greek Old Testament (along with other writings), were excluded from the Hebrew canon. Included among these writings are Third and Fourth (= First and Second) Esdras, First and Second Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, Baruch, Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom of Solomon, the Epistle of Jeremiah, the Prayer of Manasseh, and additions to Daniel and Esther. They are given canonical status by Roman Catholics but have been traditionally regarded by Protestants as (to use the words of Luther) “books which are not held to be equal to Holy Scripture and yet are profitable and good to read.” They provide the most accessible information on the theology and history of the intertestamental period.

The best introduction for the general reader is B. M. Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (Oxford, 1957); along similar lines is L. H. Brockington, A Critical Introduction to the Apocrypha (Duckworth, 1961), which is designed as a brief handbook for theological students. The literature itself is available in a number of modern translations including the RSV and the NEB. It is perhaps handiest to have a copy in an annotated edition, such as The Oxford Annotated Apocrypha, edited by B. M. Metzger (Oxford, 1965), or the Standard Edition of The Jerusalem Bible (Doubleday, 1966); both provide the student with helpful introductions and notes. The advanced student will wish, however, to refer to the Greek versions, which are included in the Septuagint (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, December 19, 1970, p. 19).

The Jerome Biblical Commentary (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, November 6, 1970, p. 21) contains excellent bibliographies on each of the Apocryphal writings, and the student wishing to do detailed study in the literature is referred to these for guidance.

OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA The Apocrypha is not the only collection of writings from the intertestamental period. Another even larger group of Jewish writings is known as the Pseudepigrapha. The designation comes from the fact that many of these writings are attributed to some Old Testament character. In this group are the Books of Enoch, the Psalms of Solomon, the Letter of Aristeas, the Book of Jubilee, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and others. There is no really convenient and up-to-date collection of these documents for the non-specialist, though the majority of them are found in the second volume of R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1913). Charles is, however, a rather dated and extremely bulky tome. One of the needs of the hour is for a reliable, not overly technical introduction to the Pseudepigrapha with English translations. For now, students will have to make use of materials in books that are not directly related to the Pseudepigrapha but devote some space to these writings, or of studies that treat only a part of the literature or individual books.

The best introduction is the concluding section of O. Eissfeldt, The Old Testament: An Introduction (Harper & Row, 1965), which includes not only excellent introductions to each book but also extensive bibliographies. A good survey of a large body of the pseudepigraphical literature is the study by D. S. Russell entitled The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (Westminster, 1964), which concentrates on the theology of some of the most important writings. The student is referred to the bibliographies in Eissfeldt for studies of the individual books and to the bibliography at the end of Russell for a selection of the more important general studies of the subject.

DEAD SEA SCROLLS Since 1947 some four hundred manuscripts, most of them fragmentary, have been discovered in the hills along the shore of the Dead Sea near the place we know as Qumran. Approximately one hundred of these are parts of the Hebrew Scriptures; the rest are other Jewish writings, some of them known previously to scholars and some now known for the first time. There is no evidence to suggest that Jesus or John the Baptist was ever connected with the Qumran movement. The value of the Scrolls for the study of the New Testament lies in the information they give about first-century Judaism, particularly sectarian or non-rabbinic Judaism. They tell us much about the religious environment of early Christianity, relating how one group of Jews interpreted the Old Testament and understood their own mission in the world. Through the Scrolls we are given much insight into the kind of religious terminology and thought-forms that prevailed when the Gospel was first expressed.

Two accurate, readable, and non-technical introductions to the Dead Sea Scrolls are available in F. F. Bruce, Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls (Eerdmans, 1961), and W. S. LaSor, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Faith (Moody, 1962); both are available in inexpensive paperback editions. For the non-biblical literature itself there is G. Vermes’s translation and introduction, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin, 1962). Here the general reader can test for himself the absurd claims that a few sensationalists have made concerning the “revolutionary” implications of the Scrolls for the Christian faith.

At a slightly more advanced level are the introductions by F. M. Cross, Jr. (The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical Studies, revised edition, Doubleday, 1961) and J. T. Milik (Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of Judea, Allenson, 1959). The standard scholarly edition of the Scrolls is Discoveries in the Judaean Desert (Oxford, 1955 ff.).

Literally thousands of books and essays have been written on various aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The student is referred to the books mentioned above for references to some of the most important studies. The Scrolls and the New Testament, edited by K. Stendahl (Harper & Row, 1957), gathers together stimulating essays that relate the Qumran materials to various aspects of New Testament research, and J. Murphy-O’Connor (ed.), Paul and Qumran (Priory, 1968), and J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), John and Qumran (G. Chapman), bring together other essays that attempt to apply the data of the Scrolls to the Pauline and Johannine literature. For the advanced student there are two exhaustive bibliographies: W. S. LaSor, Bibliography of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 1948–1957 (Fuller Seminary, 1958), and B. Jongeling, A Classified Bibliography of the Finds in the Desert of Judah, 1958–1969 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971).

The reader should be warned that a few of the popular books published on the Dead Sea Scrolls are grossly unreliable. Most notable are those by A. Powell Davies, Edmund Wilson, and H. J. Schonfield, and some of the more recent publications of J. M. Allegro. This statement is based, not on some theological prejudice of Christian scholars, but on the verdict rendered by the world of scholarship as a whole. The earlier works of Allegro, however, are fairly reliable and are not in this category.

PALESTINE IN THE TIMES OF JESUS A student of the New Testament should always keep before him the historical context of the Incarnation—first-century Palestine under the influence of Roman rule. A scholarly but not too technical introduction to the environment into which the Gospel came is W. Forster, From Exile to Christ (Fortress, 1964). In The New Testament Era (Fortress, 1968) B. Reicke provides the reader with an admirable introduction to the setting of the gospel story, though the book includes much more than this. For the beginner there is the fascinating little book by H. Daniel-Rops, Daily Life in Palestine at the Time of Christ (Mentor, 1964); the author sketches the geographical, historical, and cultural environment of the life of Jesus. Along similar lines but more comprehensive are A. C. Bouquet, Everyday Life in New Testament Times (Scribner, 1953), and Everyday Life in Bible Times (National Geographic Society, 1967).

Long the standard study of the social and economic environment of the capital city of Judea in New Testament times but until recently available only in German is J. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (Fortress, 1969). This is certainly one of the more important books in this area and will remain a useful tool for the serious student for many years to come. Other works that provide introductions to the history of Palestine in New Testament times are S. Perowne, The Life and Times of Herod the Great (Hodder and Stoughton, 1956); The Later Herods (Hodder and Stoughton, 1958), also by Perowne; and G. A. Williamson, The World of Josephus (Little, Brown, 1965).

After reading Williamson one should turn to Josephus himself, since he is the chief historian of the period. His writings are available in many translations and editions; perhaps the best place to begin is with the Penguin edition of The Jewish War, translated by G. A. Williamson (1959). The advanced student will wish to make use of the nine-volume edition of the writings of Josephus in the “Loeb Classical Library,” edited by H. St. J. Thackeray et al. (Harvard, 1926–65), where the Greek text and English translations appear side by side; an excellent index appended to the set enables the student to make fruitful reference to Josephus’ works for points of contact with the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.

RABBINIC JUDAISM This is not exactly a part of the “background” of the New Testament, since most of what we know about Rabbinic Judaism dates from later years and we can rarely be certain that a particular rabbinic idea or interpretation existed prior to A.D. 70 (the date of the destruction of Jerusalem, a decisive event for the development of Judaism during the following centuries). Nevertheless, we have good reason to suspect that there is a basic continuity between the Judaism that existed in New Testament times and that of subsequent generations; indeed, the later writings contain many traditions that are said to go back to the New Testament period and even earlier. If one uses the material cautiously and gives due regard both to the dates of the varying traditions and to the diversity of thought that existed in rabbinic Judaism (not to mention the various sects of Judaism which existed in New Testament times), study of this subject can throw much light on the New Testament.

THE DOVE

Genesis 8:15

John 1:32

Twice sent to signal

God’s relenting,

My flights were short

But to the mark.

I lighted first on land

And then on light:

The flood of grace

The grace of blood.

I saw both times,

His mercy spent,

Christ buy what God

would have redeemed.

JOHN LEAX

An interestingly written book is F. C. Grant, Ancient Judaism and the New Testament (revised edition, Oliver and Boyd, 1960); a reading of Grant will serve to correct many mistaken notions, not to say prejudices, held by Christians. Along a different line is M. Simon, Jewish Sects in the Time of Jesus (Fortress, 1967), a book that serves to emphasize that Judaism in the New Testament period was far from uniform in its views. We need to bear this in mind when attempting to relate the Judaism of the time of Christ to the teachings of the New Testament. An older yet still in print work that has not been replaced, though it needs to be corrected in various places, is A. Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1891). Whatever the weaknesses of Edersheim’s work in the light of modern research, he certainly gives the student an adequate appreciation of the fundamental Jewishness of the gospel story.

The standard study of Pharisaic Judaism is the three-volume work by G. F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era (Harvard, 1927–30). I. Epstein’s Judaism: A Historical Presentation (Penguin, 1959) should be on every Christian student’s bookshelf; it gives an excellent introduction to the subject in a very readable form, though it extends beyond the early period through the Middle Ages to the present day. R. A. Stewart, The Earlier Rabbinic Tradition (London: Inter-Varsity, 1949), is a useful survey of the material; the author’s longer study of Rabbinic Theology (Oliver and Boyd, 1961) is also helpful, though it tends to give an overly systematic picture of the situation. J. Bonsirven, Palestinian Judaism in the Time of Jesus Christ (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), is designed to give the student a reliable picture of some of the fundamental teachings of the rabbis on various subjects. Not exactly bedtime reading, but an essential tool for one who wishes to examine some of the primary materials for himself, is H. L. Strack, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (1931; now in print by Atheneum).

C. G. Montefiore and H. Loewe, A Rabbinic Anthology (World, 1960), provides the Gentile with a good introduction to the ethical and religious teachings of the rabbis. A careful study of this volume will go a long way to help the Christian understand Pharisaic Judaism and will serve to remind him that the “Pharisees” of the Gospels do not represent all Jews or even all Pharisees (even in the Gospels we have Nicodemus!). J. Bowker, The Targums and Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge, 1969), and G. Vermes, Scripture and Tradition in Judaism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1961), provide scholarly introductions to Jewish exegesis of the Old Testament, which gives the student points of comparison for studying the interpretation of the Old Testament by early Christians. (Compare also F. F. Bruce, Biblical Exegesis in the Qumran Texts, Eerdmans, 1960). A standard reference work citing Jewish literature that could be thought to throw light on the New Testament is the German Kommentar Zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, edited by H. L. Strack and P. Billerbeck (six volumes, Munich: Back, 1922–61); the student should be aware of its weaknesses, however, and should never depend on it as a final authority. Strack-Billerbeck is useful as a Gentile Christian’s key to the sources, but it is no substitute for a critical study of the sources themselves. C. G. Montefiore provides the English reader with a selection of the sort of material contained in Strack-Billerbeck, insofar as it is related to the study of Matthew and Luke, in his Rabbinic Literature and Gospel Teachings (1930, reprinted KTAV, 1970). W. D. Davies is a Christian scholar who has spent the greater part of his life relating the New Testament to Jewish literature; all his writings will be found to be helpful and reliable. The most important are Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (SPCK, 1955), Christian Origins and Judaism (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1962), and The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount (Cambridge, 1964). D. Daube, The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism (London: Althone Press, 1956), is a very illuminating study of the subject but is, unfortunately, out of print.

For those who wish to go directly to the primary sources, the following English translations are available: H. Danby, The Mishnah; I. Epstein (ed.), The Babylonian Talmud in English; H. Freedman and M. Simon (eds.), Midrash Rabbah; and W. G. Braude (ed.), The Midrash on Psalms. All but the first are multi-volume.

THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD The tendency of a certain brand of scholarship at the end of the past century and the beginning of the present was to stress the influence of the religious ideas of the Graeco-Roman world of the first century on the thought-forms of the New Testament. The majority of scholars today recognize that this is the least important of the major influences on the New Testament, as has already been stated above. Still, Hellenism is one of the factors in the background of the New Testament, and the student cannot overlook this fact. The New Testament was, after all, written in Greek!

Two aspects of Hellenism are important for a proper understanding of the New Testament. First, there is the Greek language and its vast literature; then there is the pervasive Hellenistic culture of the first Christian century, that mixture of Greek and Oriental ideas and ideals. Perhaps the most useful tool for the student who has not had formal training in the classics is The Oxford Classical Dictionary, recently revised under the editorship of N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Sculland (Oxford, 1970); for usefulness this is to be compared to a good Bible dictionary. M. R. P. McGuire, Introduction to Classical Scholarship (Catholic University of America, 1961), will help to orient a student in the field and offers helpful bibliographies. A. Lesky, A History of Greek Literature (Crowell, 1966), is the standard introduction to the non-Christian literature; it contains extensive bibliographies, including both translations and critical editions of the various writings. A similar though much less technical work is H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Literature (Dutton, 1960), which will be found useful for the less advanced student. The most important Greek writings themselves are available in convenient parallel (Greek and English) editions in the various volumes of the “Loeb Classical Library” (Harvard). The standard lexicon to the literature is the massive tome by H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, et al., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford, revised edition 1968). It is so extensive that it serves as a quasi-concordance to the literature.

The best brief introduction to the culture and history of the times is probably W. W. Tarn, Hellenistic Civilization (third revised edition, World, 1961). Much more extensive are M. Rostovtzeff’s two works: The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (three volumes, Oxford, 1941) and The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (two volumes, second edition, Oxford, 1957). A. D. Nock, Conversion (Oxford, 1933), and C. N. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (Oxford, 1957) are complementary and important studies of the interpenetration of Christianity and Graeco-Roman culture. Both books make for fascinating reading and are available in paperback.

The Greek papyri or fragmentary documents that began to come to light out of ancient Egyptian rubbish heaps toward the end of the nineteenth century have introduced an aspect of Greek language and culture hitherto unknown to scholars. Although some of the earlier claims for their importance were, like the claims made for the Dead Sea Scrolls, exaggerated, their study is still important for an understanding of the New Testament. E. G. Turner, Greek Papyri: An Introduction (Oxford, 1968), provides the novice with an introduction to the relatively new discipline of papyrology. The most accessible collections of papyri are G. Milligan, Selections from the Greek Papyri (Cambridge, 1910; now out of print but often obtainable in used book stores), and the two volumes in the “Loeb Classical Library” entitled Selected Papyri, edited by A. S. Hunt and G. C. Edgar (Harvard, 1932–34). A. Deissmann, Light From the Ancient East (1927, now in print by Baker), is the classic survey of the material as it relates to the New Testament, though Deissmann is much too enthusiastic about the far-reaching effects of the new discoveries and tends to overstate his case. J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament (1930; now in print by Eerdmans), is the standard lexicon of the language of the papyri as it relates to the New Testament writings; it is still a very useful tool, though it needs to be brought up to date in the light of the past forty years of research. A good survey article is “The New Testament and the Papyri” by W. Barclay in The New Testament in Historical and Contemporary Perspective, edited by H. Anderson and W. Barclay (Blackwell, 1965).

BIBLIOGRAPHIES TO NEW TESTAMENT RESEARCH Many bibliographical aids are available to guide the student in his research. Space allows mention of only the most important. D. M. Scholer, A Basic Guide For New Testament Exegesis (South Hamilton, Mass.: Gordon-Conwell Bookcentre, 1971), is intended for the student who has studied some Greek and wishes to do more advanced exegesis; it is the best and most up-to-date bibliography of New Testament studies available. Along similar lines is A Bibliographical Guide to New Testament Research (Cambridge, England: The Tyndale Fellowship for Biblical Research, 1968), though it is designed with the advanced graduate student in mind and therefore includes a stronger emphasis on foreign languages. J. C. Hurd, Jr., compiled A Bibliography of New Testament Bibliographies (Seabury, 1966), designed to save the student from fruitless hours of search. B. M. Metzger has edited two very useful works: Index to Periodical Literature on Christ and the Gospels (Eerdmans, 1966) and Index to Periodical Literature on the Apostle Paul (Eerdmans, 1960); while these are not exhaustive, they will give the student an adequate bibliography with which to begin. A Classified Bibliography of the Literature on the Acts of the Apostles by A. J. and M. B. Mattill (Eerdmans, 1966) does seem, however, to be exhaustive. New Testament Abstracts, published three times a year by a team of scholars under the editorship of the faculty of Weston College (available for $10 per annum from 1627 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, Mass. 02138), will be the most useful tool for helping the advanced student keep up with what is being published in the two hundred or more journals that contain scholarly articles on the study of the New Testament.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

Hundreds of Christians who have wished they could be foreign missionaries have for one reason or another been unable to go overseas. But since World War II, God has brought increasing opportunities for a Christian to be a “foreign” missionary in his own language, and often right in his own living room. Each year more and more foreign students and scholars come to the United States. In 1971, there were 144,708 students and 12,047 scholars, according to Open Doors, published by the Institute of International Education. They were in 1,748 institutions scattered throughout the fifty states. In addition, several thousand foreign medical doctors were working as interns and residents in our nation’s hospitals.

These students are a very strategic group. Many will return home to become leaders in government, industry, and education. An African student I met as an undergraduate some years ago on pier 42 in New York is now minister of education and economics in his country.

Some of these students come from countries where Christian witness is prohibited; if they are ever to hear the Gospel, it will be while they are in this country. And a number of students come from a social class we probably couldn’t reach if we were in their homelands as missionaries. Political, social, and racial barriers tend to be fewer here than there. I was a close friend of the son of the foreign minister of a Middle Eastern country closed to missionaries, and I was entertained in the home of the speaker of the house of one of the largest countries in South America because his daughter and her husband stayed in our home for a few days.

These students are often more open to the Gospel here than they would be in their homeland because they are away from the pressures of family, friends, and government. Many are curious about Christianity; they think America is a Christian nation and want to know what makes it tick.

Getting to know some of these students is not nearly as hard as it might seem. Call the foreign student advisor at the college or university nearest you and say you would like to meet some students from overseas and invite them to your home on a regular basis; the advisor can probably give you names. Better yet, drop in on a campus international student club or one of the national associations, like the Arab or Indian association, and meet students.

If you live in a port of entry, such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans, or Miami, you could volunteer your services to an organization like the International Services Association that meets students on arrival. If no organization in your college town meets students on arrival and gives orientation tours of the campus and city, you could initiate such a program, if the college approved your plan. There are Christian organizations, such as International Students Incorporated, Campus Crusade for Christ, and Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, that are looking for Christians to follow up the hundreds of students with whom they have made contact. (A free copy of “A Guide to International Friendship” is available from Inter-Varsity at 233 Langdon, Madison, Wisconsin 53703.)

Inviting students to your home for dinner is best. If that isn’t possible, arrange to go out with them to a restaurant. It’s usually best to have two students together at first. This eases the strain all around. Be sure to confirm your verbal invitation and its details in writing. I arrived at noon one time to pick up some students from Asia for dinner and found them in bed; I had said twelve o’clock, and they thought I was going to come at midnight! Arrange to pick the students up, since public transportation can be very confusing.

Beware of possible dietary restrictions. Ham and pork would be anathema to a Muslim, and some Hindus are vegetarians. You can ask the student if he has any dietary restrictions; he will undoubtedly appreciate your thoughtfulness. If you have to take a shot in the dark, chicken and fish are the safest, and you’ll ring a bell with people from almost every part of the world if you serve rice.

Before saying grace, explain to your guests that it is your custom to thank God for your food. This is not the time to quote every verse you know from Genesis to Revelation in your prayer, nor to pray, “If there be any around this table who do not know the Lord.…” Simply express thanks for the food. If it’s your custom to have family Bible reading and prayer at the table, by all means have it with your new friends there. Don’t however, develop the custom just for this occasion. If you have children, they will be sure to betray you! If you read around, include your guests if they are comfortable reading English. In your prayers you will certainly want to ask God’s blessing on the students, their academic work, and their families back home.

Your new friends may ask questions about Christianity that will be a natural lead-in to conversation about the Lord. These should be allowed to develop naturally, however. Make no attempt to force conversation about spiritual things. If you do, your friends will suspect that you are interested in them only as possible converts.

Spiritual impact is most likely to come out of a solid, continuing friendship. Imagine yourself in Bangkok, Thailand, knowing little of the language and having no friends. Ask yourself what things you’d appreciate help with. Simple parts of everyday life would loom large. You would need to know, for instance, about the transportation system, using the telephone, where to get your clothes washed, what stores were reliable, perhaps where to get food for a special diet. You would be very thankful for a person whom you knew well enough to be able to ask him simple questions and be sure you’d get straight answers.

You would also need help with the meaning of certain words or phrases in the language. Suggest to your student friends that they write down English words and expressions they hear that they don’t understand, and offer to go over their lists with them from time to time. I remember well the amazement and laughter of a Japanese postdoctoral professor when I told him what the expression “what’s cooking?” meant. He had been puzzled by this for months. My wife once taught an informal English class for the wives of foreign scientists who were doing short-term study at a laboratory near our home. A few days after she distributed a list of 150 idioms and their meanings, she was besieged with requests for extra copies. The scientists had gotten hold of their wives’ lists.

In a foreign country you would be interested in places of historic and scenic interest, and so, no doubt, are your new friends. Also, visits to such things as a labor-union or PTA meeting, a court, a farm, a factory, and schools will probably be welcome. These are the kinds of experiences that help a foreigner feel he has gotten beneath the surface of the culture.

You might suggest that your friends from overseas cook some of their country’s food for you and your family. They’ll probably appreciate this opportunity both to eat their own food and to give you a glimpse into their culture. Perhaps they’d like to bring some other friends along.

As your friendship with a foreign student develops, you may want to ask some questions that could lead to conversation on spiritual matters. You might ask, “What contact have you had with Christianity in your country?” Perhaps he was educated in a mission school. Perhaps he’s had no contact at all with Christianity. It’s helpful for you to know this, and the question could well be a launching pad for conversation. You might suggest that it must be confusing to try to understand Christianity when there are so many different denominations here. You can point out that the differences are minor compared to basic agreement on the deity of Christ, his death for our sins, his resurrection from the dead, and the necessity of the new birth. The student would probably be glad to have copies of the New Testament or parts of it in a clear, modern English version. You might also be able to get a copy in his own language from the American Bible Society. As his interest develops, a book like John Stott’s Basic Christianity can be very useful in giving a clear, objective statement of the faith.

By all means invite your friend to go with you to church, without forcing the issue if he would rather not. If he goes, protect him from overly eager people who might try to “buttonhole” him and put him in an embarrassing situation.

Never identify Christianity and the American way of life as if they were inseparable. If the foreign student feels he must become an American in order to become a Christian, he is not likely to be interested. Most foreign students are highly critical of America’s foreign policy, and perhaps of parts of its domestic policy also. One test of your relationship with the foreign student is how free he feels to criticize America to you.

By all means try to learn a little about his country. Read an article in an encyclopedia so that you at least have some idea of its geography, history, and present conditions. Be sure to avoid ignorant and unfeeling questions, such as “Do they wear shoes where you come from?” If the student’s name is difficult to pronounce, write it down and work at saying it properly.

The main prerequisite for work with overseas students is not education but love. Children are an asset rather than a hindrance; they help break the ice. A Japanese friend of mine tapped me on the shoulder as we heard a baby crying and said, smiling, “Universal language!”

Someone has well said, never underestimate foreigners’ intelligence or overestimate their information. You don’t have to speak loudly to them, just slowly. Many of them, though highly educated and cultured, are as unaware of the basics of the Gospel as a savage in a jungle. You could be the first one ever to communicate the Gospel to one of these strategic friends from overseas. Some time ago a Hindu postdoctoral student told me she had never before held a New Testament in her hand. I have had Muslims say to me, “This is the first time in my life I have ever heard why Christ died.” I could introduce you to people in many countries of the world and from every religious background who found Christ in this country while they were students and returned to their own nations. Now they function as missionaries who do not come home on furlough and who are ten times more effective than any foreigner could be.

It is a tragedy that every year thousands of foreign students return home without having seen the inside of an American home and without having had any contact with a vital Christian who could demonstrate the love of Christ and share with him the Good News of the Gospel. Did some of them live in your town?

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

If I were going to become a missionary to Brazil, I would first of all have to learn to speak Portuguese, Brazil’s native language. Of course, I feel much more comfortable speaking English. I am accustomed to expressing my faith in English. I pray in English. I worship in English. For me, my faith and the English language are inextricably entwined. But I want to tell the Good News to the Brazilians, and so I learn to speak Portuguese. The fact that I happen to prefer English doesn’t make it the only language for communicating the Gospel.

Although God hasn’t called me to Brazil, he has made it very clear to me that I am to share my faith with the secular society in which I live. But in order to communicate the Good News of Christ to the secular world, I’ll have to speak its language. One of the languages the world understands is music. And to communicate the Gospel through music, I may have to set aside my personal preferences and speak in the musical language of the people I’m trying to reach.

Were I called to be a missionary to Brazil, I could insist on speaking English. I could decide that if people really wanted to hear the Gospel, they could learn to listen to it in English. And of course that would be plainly ridiculous.

Yet this is essentially what some churchmen are doing. They insist on speaking only the traditional musical language of the Church.” If people want to hear the Gospel,” they say, “they should learn to hear it in the grand old hymns and anthems of the Church.” And so, for many people the musical message is lost in a language they don’t understand.

Men with vision throughout the history of evangelism have realized the need to speak in the musical language of the people. The Church through the centuries has borrowed secular-sourced musical styles to proclaim the Gospel.

For example, says Albert Bailey, Hilary (c. 310–366) used the rhythm of Roman soldiers’ marching songs in one of the hymns he wrote, in an attempt to make the hymn popular. The hymns of Ambrose (340?–397), too, were written in this marching meter, which was “easy for the unlearned to pick up” (The Gospel in Hymns, by Albert Bailey, Scribner, 1950, p. 220). Polyphony was introduced into the music of the church through the folk songs sung by Western European troubadors.

Before his conversion, Francis of Assisi learned to sing in the streets. After his conversion he continued to sing in the streets, but now his songs contained the Gospel in language the commoners could understand.

The hymns of the Renaissance were written in the vernacular. “In Dulce Jubilo” was a barbarous mixture of Latin church lyrics and German popular music; its present popularity is perhaps due to its “swinging” fourteenth-century German melody.

It was Martin Luther who through his Hymnbook brought hymn-singing to the people. Luther took hymns from the choir and gave them the joyous spirit of folk songs.

In recent years, John W. Peterson has made use of Broadway-ballad patterns of rhythm and melody. Because they speak in a musical language many people are accustomed to and enjoy, his songs are often effective in spreading the Gospel, convicting of sin, and pointing to Jesus.

Every generation has its own particular kind of music. We mustn’t selfishly insist on speaking and hearing the Gospel in our own musical language and thereby deprive young people of hearing the Gospel in a musical language they can understand.

Music is an important part of the Bible, especially the Psalms. Verses from Psalm 81 express a joyful musical feeling: “Sing aloud unto God our strength: make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob. Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the psaltery. Blow the trumpet in the new moon.…” I recommend reading through the Psalms to catch their rhythmical exuberance. It reminds me of some of the youth music of today. Their instruments were bright (trumpets, flutes) and percussive (cymbals, tambourines). They made great use of instruments closely akin to today’s guitar (lutes and other stringed instruments).

Our religious music should have a note of freshness and spontaneity. The psalmist often urges a new song: “Praise the Lord with harp: sing unto him with the psaltery and on an instrument of ten strings. Sing unto him a new song: play skillfully with a loud noise” (33:2, 3). Musical instruments in the hands of Spirit-led men and used by the Spirit can express the joy of knowing God’s love and salvation.

The music of the Psalms is joyful and exhilarating because it comes from the heart: “Sing ye praises with the understanding” (Ps. 47:7). Our Christian music should be the spontaneous reaction of a life touched by Christ. Any other restriction on music goes beyond the scriptural view.

Today’s generation has its own music, used to promote everything from drugs to free love and to protest pollution, overpopulation, and the war. The now generation is accustomed to communicating in this musical language. We need to make use of it to communicate to them the timeless Gospel of Jesus Christ.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

One perspective for viewing God’s cosmic plan is to see it as the calling and preparation of a people. Adam and Eve were to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth,” becoming a people (Gen. 1:28). God’s promise to Abraham was, “I will make of you a great nation” (Gen. 12:2)—and he did. God chose the children of Israel, redeeming them from Egypt, saying, “I will take you for my people, and I will be your God” (Exod. 6:7; cf. Deut. 7:6). This theme echoes consistently through the Old Testament.

Moving into the New Testament, we learn that the People of God finds its center and basis in Jesus Christ. The unfaithfulness of God’s people in the Old Testament did not thwart his plan. God is still calling out and preparing his people—not the biological Israel, but the new and true Israel, the Church. John the Baptist came “in the spirit and power of Elijah,” his ministry “to make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (Luke 1:17).

Paul was deeply conscious of God’s plan to prepare a people on the basis of faith. Christ “gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:14; cf. Rom. 9:25, 26, 2 Cor. 6:16). The same fact is cited by James (Acts 15:14), John (Rev. 21:3), and the writer to the Hebrews (Heb. 8:10). Peter says, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.… Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy” (1 Pet. 2:9, 10). This is the “new covenant” of which Jeremiah spoke, in which God says, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer. 31:33).

In a previous article (“The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, November 6, 1970), I described the Church as the fellowship, or community, of the Holy Spirit, and indicated the relevance of this concept for church structure, showing the necessity of some type of small-group structure. The purpose of the present essay is to view the Church not only as a fellowship, a koinonia, but also as a people, a laos. This too is an essential biblical emphasis and has important implications for church structure. What does it mean, biblically, to be a people? And how should the Church be structured to experience this reality of peoplehood?

Biblical Basis

The idea of a people has rich biblical and especially Old Testament roots. Biblical Greek uses the word laos in referring to the Church as a people. This word (from which we get “laity”) occurs more than 2,000 times in the Septuagint, usually translating the Hebrew word ’am. Laos is the word commonly used for Israel as God’s people; “it serves to emphasize the special and privileged religious position of this people as the people of God” (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Kittel and Friedrich, Eerdmans, 1964–9, IV, 32). In the Old Testament, laos “is the national society of Israel according to its religious basis and distinction” (ibid., p. 35).

In the New Testament, laos occurs some 140 times. It is the word both Paul and Peter use to describe the Church as a people, as the new Israel. Thus in the New Testament “a new and figurative Christian concept arises along with the old biological and historical view and crowds it out” (ibid., p. 54).

This forming of a people provides the basis for the Church’s mission of service and proclamation. As a people, the Church is itself the verification of the message it proclaims—or else the betrayal of that message. As Mennonite scholar John Howard Yoder notes, “the work of God is the calling of a people, whether in the Old Covenant or the New.… That men are called together to a new social wholeness is itself the work of God which gives meaning to history, from which both personal conversion … and missionary instrumentalities are derived” (The Concept of the Believers’ Church, edited by James Leo Garrett, Jr., Herald, 1969, p. 258). Yoder continues,

Pragmatically it is self-evident that there can be no procedure of proclamation without a community, distinct from the rest of society, to do the proclaiming. Pragmatically it is just as clear that there can be no evangelistic call addressed to a person inviting him to enter into a new kind of fellowship and learning if there is not such a body of persons, again distinct from the totality of society, to whom he can come and with and from whom he can learn.… If it is not the case that there are in a given place men of various characters and origins who have been brought together in Jesus Christ, then there is not in that place the new humanity and in that place the gospel is not true. If, on the other hand, this miracle of new creation has occurred, then all the verbalizations and interpretations whereby this brotherhood communicates to the world around it are simply explications of the fact of its presence [p. 259].

The Church is constituted a people just as an individual is constituted a child of God: by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. The converted individual becomes part of a transformed people. And the working out of this reality always produces a church with New Testament dynamic, unless stifled by unbiblical traditions.

Biblically, we can distinguish at least five characteristics of the People of God:

1. The Church is a chosen people. The emphasis here is on the fact of God’s sovereignty and initiative; it is God who moves to choose and redeem a people for himself. The Church is the result of God’s sovereignty and grace (2 Tim. 1:9). It exists because God has acted graciously in history.

The fact of God’s choosing a people for himself implies a distinction between those chosen and those not chosen. If God has chosen a people, then that people really exists as a people, a people in some sense identifiable and distinct from the world. It is not an anonymous people.

2. The Church is a pilgrim people. Here we have an emphasis that is difficult but biblically necessary. Difficult, because it can be misconstrued to mean theological and practical withdrawal from the world. But necessary, because without this emphasis the Church tends to slip into the worst kind of worldliness.

Adam and Eve were not created to be pilgrims. God made a home for them that should have been permanent. “The LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Gen. 2:8). Adam and Eve were at home in the world and in harmony with their environment—morally, physically, and psychologically.

But when sin entered, man became a wanderer. Our first parents were expelled from the garden. After his act of murder Cain was condemned to be “a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth” (Gen. 4:12). But what happened? “Cain went away from the presence of the LORD … and he built a city” (Gen. 4:16, 17). The world came under the dominion of evil, and man tried to build his substitute Eden in this tainted world.

So henceforth the story of redemption is the story of God’s calling out a people for himself. This people is called to be a pilgrim, to live in active tension with the world, “looking for a city not made with hands,” knowing that the time of final reconciliation, the end of the pilgrimage, will come.

The Church is a pilgrim people. This does not mean that it is completely divorced from, or has no responsibility for, its cultural context; the Church’s mission is still reconciliation. It does mean, however, a fundamental moral tension between the Church and human society. The pilgrim aspect results from the estrangement produced by sin and is a reminder of and testimony to the alienation between man and his world. And this is a precondition for true reconciliation.

3. The Church is a covenant people. The relation between God and his people is specific and is morally and ethically based. It is grounded in the covenant, and hence there exists the possibility of fidelity or infidelity to the covenant.

A major significance of the covenant is that it grounds God’s people in real history. The covenant implies a covenant occasion in which the contract between God and man was actually established in space and time. The Hebrews were deeply conscious of this. Thus we have the historical giving of the law in the Old Testament and the establishing of the New Covenant in the historical last supper, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The covenant is established in historical occurrences that can be recorded, commemorated, and renewed.

These historical occurrences have been recorded for us in the Scriptures; hence the Bible is the Church’s Book of the Covenant. The People of God is a people “under the Word.” The Bible is normative for the life of the Church, not because of some particular doctrine of inspiration, but precisely because it is the Book of the Covenant.

4. The Church is a witness people. Its task is to point to what has happened in the past and is happening in the present that is truly the action of God. Jess Moody reminds us that the Church must be able to say “This is that”—it must have something miraculous to point to. As he says, if our only success “is that which can be explained in terms of organization and management—that is, something the world could do with the same expenditure of effort and technique, [the world] will one day finally repudiate us” (A Drink at Joel’s Place, Word, 1967, pp. 22, 17).

The Church must witness to God’s personal acts throughout history—and, as the Book of Acts makes clear, supremely to the resurrection of Jesus Christ (e.g., Acts 2:32, 3:15, 4:33). It must also be able to point to contemporary miracles of personal conversion and genuine community that give credence to the miracles of an earlier day. As John Howard Yoder says,

The political novelty which God brings into the world is a community of those who serve instead of ruling, who suffer instead of inflicting suffering, whose fellowship crosses social lines instead of reinforcing them. This new Christian community … is not only a vehicle of the gospel or fruit of the gospel; it is the good news [The Concept of the Believer’s Church, edited by James Leo Garrett, Jr., Herald, 1969, p. 274; italics added].

But the witnessing role is not purely passive. God has given the Church a “ministry of reconciliation” that “through the church” God might bring about the reconciliation of “all things, … things in heaven and things on earth” (2 Cor. 5:18; Eph. 3:10, 1:10; Col. 1:20). This gives Christians a mandate for working in various ministries of reconciliation, performing those “good works which God prepared beforehand” for the fulfilling of his plan of reconciliation (Eph. 2:10).

5. Finally, the Church is a holy people. The biblical demand for holiness is insistent: “You shall be holy for I am holy” (e.g., Lev. 11:44, 45, 19:2, 20:7; 1 Pet. 1:15, 16). Says Paul, Christ sanctifies the Church that it may be “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:27).

This holiness is a sharing of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). It is the fruit of the Spirit’s dwelling and acting, not only within the individual believer but also within the redeemed community. It is an aspect of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Human personality and the Christian community were made to be indwelt by the Spirit of God, and they reach their potential only when they are.

Implications For Church Structure

Theologically the Church is constituted the People of God, but in fact it often fails to demonstrate this reality in space and time. Whatever may be the more so-called spiritual reasons for this lack, it must also be seen as a problem of ecclesiology, and especially of church structure. What can the Church do to incarnate this reality, to make it visible? It seems to me that four implications are especially vital.

1. The individual believer must be able to feel himself a part of the larger corporate unity of the People of God. This means the Church must meet together in a way that encourages and expresses the fact of peoplehood. As with koinonia, so with laos: it is meaningless to talk of peoplehood as a reality if in fact our structures stifle the experiencing of the reality.

Here again we must be reminded of the spatial and temporal obstacles that we as believers face in this life—obstacles that keep us from automatically realizing our sense of peoplehood. There are mystics, of course, who enjoy an isolated existence and do feel, mystically, their union with other Christians. But their experience is far from the reality of most of us, and it is not the ideal. The average Christian needs church structures that lead to a sense of peoplehood.

2. But what kind of structures do build this sense of peoplehood? Obviously, structures that actually bring the People of God together at specific points in space and time. So we have a second guideline for church structure suggested: The Church must meet together regularly as a large congregation. It must actually come together as a people.

This is one reason—though not the only one—why small-group fellowships, essential as they are, are not in themselves sufficient to sustain the life of the Church, biblically understood. The individual cells of the Body of Christ must see and feel their unity with the larger body.

It is not physically possible, of course, to bring the entire Body of Christ together at one time and place. Physical limitations require “intermediate structures”—whether associations, denominations, “crusades,” or “movements”—that bring together a large cross section of the People of God.

The need for such large-group structures was brought home to me while in Brazil. In the city of São Paulo, the fiery Pentecostal evangelist Manoel de Mello is building what is billed as the largest church in the world. Thousands of his followers in the “Brasil Para Cristo” movement meet together each Saturday night. Packing into the public buses, perhaps singing as they come, they converge on their temple. From all parts of the city and outlying areas they come, ready to share the joy and excitement of a great throng of believers. They pray, sing, witness, and hear their leader. Tomorrow they will be scattered in hundreds of congregations around the city, many of which are small and struggling. But they will not be discouraged: they know they are a part of a people, a movement! Something is happening, something big, something God-sized. They have seen it and felt it.

Some may scoff, sniffing about “emotional release” and “crowd psychology.” Certainly there are the dangers of extremes and counterfeits. But we must recognize the dependence on structures that is a part of our humanity while we are bound by space and time. And one cannot deny the practical value of this identification with one’s church as a people.

Actually, most new religious movements have instinctively sensed, in the beginning, the need for some form of regular large group gatherings, whether mass rallies, evangelistic campaigns, “congresses,” or other forms. Often mass preaching services, such as in early Methodism, fulfilled this function.

A variety of forms is possible. What is essential is the gathering together of a large group of believers, and that on a regular and frequent basis—the periodic uniting of smaller congregations and cells into a great throng.

3. Further, taking our cue in part from the Old Testament, we must stress the need for covenant experiences. Both the ancient Hebrews and the early Christians were conscious of being a people because something had happened: God had acted in history to choose and form a people. In the Old Testament, these acts of God were periodically recalled by special festivals and celebrations. Such commemorations were covenant experiences, occasions for the remembrance and renewal of the covenant between God and man. And this suggests a third implication for church structure: TheChurch needs periodic festivals that have covenant significance.

MORNING HYMN

The morning sun burns through the haze

To call my heavy heart to praise

The mercy of my Saviour’s ways,

More faithful than the silent rays

Of each created dawn.

When sunlight streams along my way

Where pines drop jewels rainbow bright,

Shall I find gladness in this day

And doubt his love who gave me sight

And bid the darkness flee?

Shall light in darkness lift my heart

From God the Giver yet apart?

Great King of mercy, Lord of good,

Not in the shadows of this wood

Does light arise to me.

For all the dawns that yet may rise

To lift my eyes to trees and skies

Are born where Light in darkness died

And Christ our Life was crucified

Upon another tree.

My Father, fill this shadowed place

With that most sweet Shekinah fire,

The glory of my Saviour’s face—

My portion and my heart’s desire,

My green fir tree of grace!

EDMUND P. CLOWNEY

I am not talking here of superficial celebrations patterned after those of the world. Rather I mean occasions that spring from and celebrate the genuine joy and excitement of corporately sharing the fact that God has acted. This is what the Old Testament religious festivals were all about. The Church needs festivals analagous to the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles, not to the Tournament of Roses, New Year’s Eve, and the Super Bowl.

Interestingly enough, American Protestantism used to have such a festival, the camp meeting. In the best camp meetings, whether denominational or non-denominational, the sense of peoplehood and covenant responsibility was periodically recovered. Thousands flocked to such meetings during much of the nineteenth century.

But the camp meeting has gradually faded into the mists of American folk history or been replaced by the family camp, and no suitable substitute has yet appeared. Billy Graham crusades and the recent rallies of the Jesus movement have on occasion sparked some sense of peoplehood, but only sporadically, and therefore, ineffectively; their main purpose lies elsewhere.

Whatever the form of such covenant experiences, there are at least four functions they might fulfill:

a. Celebration of the acts of God. Reciting with joy and gratitude the acts of God in biblical history, in Jesus Christ (especially the Incarnation, Resurrection, and Pentecost), in the particular history of this particular part of God’s people.

b. Covenant renewal. Reciting the terms of God’s covenant with man, God’s part and man’s part. This would involve repentance, confession, and rededication to God and a renewed sense of fidelity to the Bible as the written Word and Book of the Covenant.

c. Evaluation and definition. Evaluation: Have we been faithful to the covenant? Where have we failed? What changes should be made? Have we betrayed the biblical perspective, either by pickling our faith in unbiblical traditions or by making changes that are equally unbiblical in their inspiration? And definition: What does it mean, today, to be the People of God? What is our relation to non-Christian society? What are the limits of our involvement with the world?

d. Renewal of a vision for the future. Where there is no vision, the people perish. We must think historically and biblically about the future. We must catch a vision of future possibilities, remembering we serve a God who yet promises to do a new thing. Covenant occasions are right for the continuing definition of a biblical eschatology.

4. All the foregoing brings us to a final implication of the concept of the People of God for church structure. As we have seen, the People of God does not exist for nothing or by accident. The basis of the Church’s existence as a people is all-important. Therefore, in the Church’s structuring of itself the basis of the Church’s existence as a people must be kept central.

What is this basis of the People of God? It is nothing other than the Word of God—God-in-relationship; the person of Jesus Christ as living and active; and the Bible as historically conditioned but once-for-all revealed truth (Heb. 4:12, 13). The Church is constituted a people by the Word of God.

Here, perhaps, is where large-group and small-group structures come together. The small group is an excellent context for Bible study and genuine theological work by the whole Body of Christ, rather than by “professional theologians.” Here the real biblical meaning of being a people of God in these days needs to be hammered out.

For some, it is an offense to speak of the Church as a distinct people. For those who wish to emphasize the solidarity of all mankind in the face of injustice and other social ills, any suggestion that the Church is or ought to be distinct is scandalous.

But the fact remains that the Bible speaks in these terms. Further, the Church as a distinct community is a practical necessity. Truth does not exist independently of structures of common life.

But how does one define who is, and who is not, a part of the People of God? What are the criteria for identification? Various solutions might be suggested, but this much is clear: The kind of structures suggested here, which heighten and define the Church’s sense of peoplehood, naturally tend to draw together genuine believers and repel those not sincerely interested in the things of the Spirit.

Where church structure is fundamental, where it allows and encourages the sense of being the People of God rather than quenching the Spirit, there we may hope for a new depth of Christian faithfulness and for new life in the Church.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

November marks the 400th anniversary of the death of John Knox, clerical leader of the Scottish Reformation. Knox was unquestionably a significant figure in sixteenth-century Britain, in England as well as his native Scotland. Has he anything to say to twentieth-century Protestant Christians?

In at least one respect Knox was out of tune with present-day Protestant thinking: in his attitude toward women, or at least toward women in government. In 1558 he published his First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment (Government) of Women, in which he stated,

To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any Realm, Nation, or City is repugnant to nature, contumely to God, a thing most contrarious to his revealed will; and finally, it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice [Works, edited by Laing, IV, 373].

Protestant Christians have outgrown and repudiated this kind of male chauvinism; women hold some of their most responsible church offices.

In certain other aspects of Christian life and work, Knox does have something important to say to today’s Protestants, or at least something of which to remind them. For one thing, he did much to make Scotland a Bible-reading and Bible-loving country. The Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages did not encourage laymen to read the Bible, for it believed that an uninstructed reader of Scripture might be led astray into heresy and thereby imperil his immortal soul. But Knox believed that by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the Bible was intelligible to the ordinary reader. As he put it to Mary, Queen of Scots, in one of his interviews with her:

The Word of God is plain in itself; and if there appear any obscurity in one place, the Holy Ghost, who is never contrary to himself, explains the same more clearly in other places; so that there can remain no doubt, but to such as obstinately remain ignorant [John Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland, edited by Dickinson, II, 18].

Knox encouraged Christian believers to read the Bible. One might say that he gave the Bible to the Scottish people, and it came to occupy the paramount place in Scottish religious devotion that it has retained almost down to the present day—the kind of thing immortalized in Robert Burns’s well known poem “The Cotter’s Saturday Night.”

Knox also believed that Christians should study the Bible in groups as well as individually. He said in his “Letter of Wholesome Counsel”:

Considering that St. Paul calls the congregation the Body of Christ, whereof everyone of us is a member, teaching us thereby that no member is of sufficiency to sustain and feed itself without the help and support of another; I think it necessary for the conference of Scriptures, that assemblies of brethren be had [Works, IV, 137].

In a day when many Christian congregations are being revitalized through the leavening influences of small groups that meet regularly for Bible study, this recommendation of Knox is much to the point.

Knox was a great preacher, deeply convinced of the value and importance of the pulpit in spreading the Christian Gospel and building up believers. The Protestant Reformation produced some outstanding pulpiteers—Luther in Wittenberg, Zwingli in Zurich, and Calvin in Geneva—but perhaps none more eloquent and effective than Knox. There is impressive evidence to the power of his preaching. The English ambassador Thomas Randolph wrote of Knox that “the voice of one man is able in one hour to put more life in us than five hundred trumpets continually blustering in our ears” (preface to Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland, edited by Dickinson, I, xlvii). When Knox labored as a minister in England between 1549 and 1553, he was offered not only the bishopric of Rochester but also the vicarage of All Hallows, Bread Street, one of the most important preaching stations in London at that time. After Protestantism was legally established as the state religion in Scotland in 1560, Knox became minister of St. Giles, Edinburgh, perhaps the most significant and influential Scottish pupit of that day.

Few of his sermons have survived, but from what is known of his pulpit ministry it is clear that he was a prophetic preacher: he based his sermons solidly on the Bible, the revealed word of God, and sought to apply its message to the religious situation of his day. In particular, he did much to alert his fellow Protestants to the menace of a resurgent Romanism in Scotland since Queen Mary, who ruled in Scotland between 1561 and 1567, was a devout Roman Catholic who would have liked to overthrow the Reformation settlement and restore Scotland to the papal allegiance.

Today the value of preaching is being questioned even in some Protestant circles. Knox can serve as a pointed reminder that the Protestant Reformation was fed and spread mainly by prophetic preaching. There is no reason to think that such preaching is any less influential today: it still pleases God “by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (1 Cor. 1:21).

Knox placed a high value on the two Christian sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and especially the latter. The essential feature of the Lord’s Supper is, of course, not anything that Christians do but something Jesus Christ does for them and in them. Said Knox,

The Lord, Jesus, by earthly and visible things set before us, lifteth us up to heavenly and invisible things—He prepares this spiritual banquet—He witnesses that He himself was the living bread—He sets forth the bread and wine to eat and drink. He giveth unto us Himself—and all this he does through the power of the Holy Ghost [Works, III, 73].

Then he adds:

Herewith also the Lord Jesus gathers us unto one visible body, so that we be members one of another and make altogether one whereof Jesus Christ is the only Head.

Knox believed that the Lord’s Supper was primarily the sacrament and symbol of Christian unity and as such should be celebrated regularly by believing Christians, even if they were not yet fully organized into a functioning congregation. Ever since Knox’s day the celebration of the Lord’s Supper in the Church of Scotland has been a very moving and meaningful Christian service.

Many Christian churches today are experiencing what has been called a liturgical renaissance. One aspect of this is a renewed emphasis on the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Knox would have fully approved of this development as a contribution to Christian unity as well as to Christian renewal.

George M. Marsden is associate professor of history at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has the Ph.D. (Yale University) and has written “The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience.”

A phrase beloved by a vocal segment of the theological avant-garde is “celebration of life.” Leading the celebration are such personages as Sister Corita Kent, Sam Keen, and Harvey G. Cox. They say that the Christian Church has bogged down in the “work ethic” and has so suppressed the human need for festivity that its ministry seems totally irrelevant to the rising generation.

Their proposal is that the Church take the lead in establishing a new, festive mood. In this new mood, the fantastic array of images and ideas that the electronic media bounce off our minds will be handled in a new way. Rather than deal with them rationally and scientifically, we are to confront them in a mood of festivity.

In his Feast of Fools Harvey Cox views festivity as a corrective to our present reluctance to do things symbolically. Our age has replaced symbol with technique, he says. Now it is imperative to break the rule of abstract ideas by returning to a free-floating form of liturgy that allegedly marked the group expression of pre-scientific man.

In analyzing festivity Cox finds three elements. The first is excess, which provides release from the usual structures of daily life and takes the celebrator beyond the usual conventional limits. Second is life-affirmation, a transcending of the negative aspects of life. Life is pronounced good, even in the presence of tragedy. Fantasy and festivity make it possible to affirm life even at the edge of death; evidence for this is found in the custom of holding wakes around the remains of the dead.

The third element in festivity is juxtaposition. Cox seems to mean that in festivity there is not only an involvement of the whole person but also the sharing of celebration with others. These others can contribute to the richness and uniqueness of this particular occasion, be it an anniversary, a public holiday, or an occasion of special group significance.

In the early part of Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse reminds us that “there are times when a whole generation is caught … between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence.” The advocates of celebration as a way out have perceived at least part of the truth, that our age is confused. They quite probably overestimate the degree to which the adult generation differs from the generation of rising youth. While the young doubtless reach out for “depth of myth and symbol and the richness of mysticism.” one may question whether adults are as deeply under the tyranny of “the empirical scientific attitude” as the apologists for a rising counterculture assert.

Celebration cannot exist in a vacuum. There must be some content at its center, or it will degenerate into orgy and dionysianism. It seems to me that today’s youth are being shortchanged at this point. I am writing this column on board a ship in the mid-Atlantic, and here it is almost impossible to escape the sights and sounds of the discotheque. Clever musicians, supported by high-wattage amplifiers, seem to have persuaded a large proportion of the young that loudness plus endless repetition of rhythms means festivity. But nothing times two or times five is still nothing.

In addition to meaning, celebration ought to involve some measure of relaxation and enjoyment. It is at this point that the “rock subculture” appears substantively bankrupt. A recent blurb announcing the coming of a new rock group to Europe pictured the leader in a dark costume, his claw-like hand poised to pounce upon his guitar. The advertisem*nt suggested that by the end of the program the only possible relief to guitarist and audience was found through destruction of the instrument. Celebration, anyone?

It is widely acknowledged that the rock subculture is a parasitic growth upon the consumer culture. It would collapse without the infrastructure of productionism, and upon the withdrawal of credit cards and or allowances paid by guilt-ridden parents. Those who can discern the signs of the times at all can see that such “celebrations” as Woodstock were well-planned exploitations of the rootless end-products of a permissive era by clever purveyors of utterly superficial forms of festivity.

When celebrative occasions like these fail to offer spiritual rootage beyond the material and the visible, in steps the occult. The magical, the mythical, the esoteric all promise to expand one’s vision beyond the limitations of time and space. That many of our young turn to the witches’ coven, or to its chemical counterpart of drugs, testifies not only to a broad dissatisfaction with mere technological modes of thinking and living but also to the bankruptcy of meaningless and orgiastic forms of celebration.

What has all this to say to the Christian Church in general and to evangelicals in particular? First, it suggests that the movement toward “celebration of life” has seized upon a basically valid element in its analysis of today’s mood. And it is entirely possible that too much has been made of the obligation, by all and at all times, to work. Perhaps because of this, multitudes have lost the ability to use leisure creatively or even to take time to reflect upon basic issues.

Again, it may be that the evangelical branch of Christendom has, with the best intentions, been too exclusively futuristic in its presentation of hope. After all, the charm of Disneyland, for adults as well as children, is its ability to transport the person to a world of fantasy and to almost-persuade that such a world could exist today. Perhaps evangelicals need to seek a biblical equivalent for the fantasy that the world presents—an equivalent that will help today’s men and women overcome the drabness of life and the menacing fear of meaninglessness.

The person with no hope and no future is as good as dead already. More important still, a merely futuristic “life in Christ” is a deformation of the Christian hope—a denial of the real heritage of the Christian in his Lord. Perhaps the Christian Church, and especially the evangelical wing, needs to discover some acceptable counterpart to the great liturgical “celebrations” of the Church of other eras.

Certainly this will not be found in rock-liturgy, or by dancing in the aisles, or by popping balloons during a “worship celebration.” But there is always something new in life for the vital Christian, something that ought to make him to come alive! Jesus Christ has visited our race to bring a better future into the present.

St. Paul left us a passage that may bear upon this question: “Be not drunk with wine in which is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.” Complex factors have inhibited mainline evangelicals in their efforts to fulfill this injunction. Perhaps the passage has something to say that will help us find an acceptable spiritual substitute for the excesses in which today’s advocates of celebration seem to find themselves trapped.

Reporters from South Korea accompanying Red Cross delegates to the Communist capital of Pyongyang for a dramatic, unprecedented exchange of visits between north and south interviewed Kang Ryang-uk, a former pastor and high-ranking Communist official, currently chairman of the North Korean “National Unification Democratic Front.” He may be the last Christian minister left alive in North Korea, a circ*mstance he undoubtedly owes to the fact that he is, reputedly, an uncle of Premier Kim Il-sung. Kim is to North Korea what Mao Tse-tung is to China.

Asked about Christians and the church in the north, Kang promptly attacked the United States. “We cannot tell how many Christians there are,” he said, “because all the churches were destroyed by the U. S. bombers during the war, and many Christians have abandoned their belief.”

Pressed about his own faith, he sounded confused and evasive. “Well …,” he said, “my belief has never changed. It is the same as in the past.” “Do, you believe in the existence of God?”

“I’m a pastor,” he replied. “How can I doubt it?”

Reporters asked if he intended to build new churches since all the old ones were destroyed. “I don’t know,” Kang said. “I think we could build a new one if the Christians wanted to do so. The republic’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion.”

“Do Christians have meetings here?” “I don’t think so, but I don’t know if they do in the provinces.”

“How about the supply of Bibles?”

“Not many people want them, because all the churches have perished,” he said.

Now 70, Kang was a respected Presbyterian minister in the north and had been assistant pastor of the largest church in Korea, the Central Presbyterian Church of Pyongyang. After the Communist takeover he was caught in the crossfire between his conscience and his powerful Communist relatives. He was terrorized by both rightist and leftist pressure groups.

In early 1946, rightists broke into Kang’s house to attack him as a relative of the Premier. His son and daughter were killed. Some observers believe this incident persuaded him to move to the left and try to help the church by collaboration rather than resistance to Communist power. He organized a Christian League to foster Christian cooperation with the Kim Il-sung government, but the league’s subsequent history gives little comfort to those who advocate Christian adaptation to Communist control as the best pattern for church survival. The league was never able to be more than a puppet front-organization for Communists’ manipulation of Christians as they proceeded to squeeze the church out of organized existence.

The Red Cross talks between North and South Korea have stirred intense excitement in the south, where some two million refugees, including thousands of Christians, have waited for more than two decades to hear whether wives, children, and other relatives left behind in the north are alive or dead.

Before the division as many as two-thirds of Korea’s Christians were northerners, and some of South Korea’s largest congregations are refugee churches. One of the best known of the refugees, Dr. Han Kyung-chik, pastor of Seoul’s 9,000-member Yung-nak Presbyterian Church, has said that had the Korean War been pressed to a successful liberation of the north, he believes that 80 per cent of the north’s 15 million people would have turned to Christ.

SAMUEL HUGH MOFFETT

To Russia With The Word

The founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators says that after five years of effort the evangelical missions organization has received an invitation to send linguists into the Soviet Union. Dr. W. Cameron Townsend added that the invitation from the Soviet Academy of Science was verbal, and that he has had no contact with the government. “We’ve got nothing yet in writing,” he said.

Townsend and his wife visited the Soviet Union in 1967 to lay the foundation for the program, scheduled to begin this fall. He made several trips to the Soviet Union to confer with members of the Academy, as well as with linguists and educators in the republics of Georgia, Armenia, Daghestan, and Azerbaijan. They will be in the Soviet Union until the end of October, working on the plan. “Soviets in the Academy and in the embassy here have been very helpful,” said one Wycliffe representative.

Dr. Esther Matteson, who two years ago did research in the U. S. S. R., plans to enter the country sometime in October; in the spring Dr. Doris Bartholomew will join her. Details on where the Wycliffe linguists will work, how many will be given entry, and how long they will stay haven’t been finalized yet, reported Townsend. But he did say that Dr. Matteson and her colleagues will be working with the Soviet Academy of Science, probably at a university in the Caucasus Mountains.

Dr. Matteson is considered an expert in comparative linguistics and will aid Soviet linguists in dialect comparison studies. She will also begin work on Bible translation.

Referring to the problems of evangelism in that area of the Soviet Union, Townsend said, “We’re bucking up against a double problem—the atheism of the government and the Islam of so many of the tribes in the area.” But Wycliffe translators believe in the power of God to work through the Word.

Townsend gave an example. He left a New Testament with a scoffing Moscow biochemist. Three months later the Wycliffe founder learned the man had become a Christian. “They get the revelation of God and it satisfies their hearts,” Townsend concluded.

Religion In Transit

Fired from his pulpit because his daughter wore a swimsuit in a beauty contest, the Reverend Charles Marshall of Hobbs Street Church of Christ in Athens, Alabama, has been offered a pulpit by 200 breakaway church members.

National Enquirer, a former sex and sadism tabloid, has changed content to self-help and religious articles—with a resultant tripling of the paper’s circulation to three million copies weekly, says publisher Generoso Pope, Jr.

Pepperdine University’s new $25.8 million campus in Malibu, California, has opened with 850 students seeking an education “emphasizing the standards and concerns of the Christian faith.” Funds for the Church of Christ-related college were raised completely by private pledges.

The governing board of the Southern California Council of Churches unanimously opposes a state November ballot measure that would limit farm laborers’ strike and boycott rights. The council, which spawned the controversial California Migrant Ministry, has generally favored unionization efforts by Cesar Chavez and his United Farm Workers organizing committee.

The Reverend N. Bruce McLeod, the newly elected moderator of the United Church of Canada, believes that one of his first tasks will be repairing the rift between his church and Canada’s Jews.

Greek Free Evangelicals, upset by a government decision not to license a church summer camp, have urged Premier George Papadopoulos and the Greek Supreme Court to overrule the minister of social welfare and issue the necessary permit.

A Vietnamese minister’s charge that his church, the Protestant Evangelical Church of Que Son, was bombed by either U. S. or South Vietnamese bombers is being denied by U. S. military sources. Twenty-seven were killed and fifteen injured in the incident.

A petition with 180,000 names Protesting liberalization of Swiss abortion laws was presented last month to the Swiss government.

Personalia

Preaching his initial sermon as pastor of the First United Methodist Church of Pasadena, California, retired Bishop Gerald Kennedy became the denomination’s first prelate to become a full-time local minister. In his first sermon he held up a cartoon from Punch magazine in which a robed church functionary quips: “I used to be a bishop but now I’m just a high-ranking Jesus Freak!”

DEATHS

LORD GEOFFREY FISHER of Lambeth, 85, former archbishop of Canterbury; in Sherbourne, England.

DALLAS BILLINGTON, 69, television preacher and pastor of the 16,000-member Akron (Ohio) Baptist Temple; in Akron, of a heart attack.

A precautionary guard was placed on Mormon president Harold B. Lee following the Mexico murder of the leader of a group that broke away from the mainline Mormons. The accused murderers—all but one apprehended—were from Utah, and police feared they would make an attempt on Lee’s life.

Dr. Jose´ Aracelio Cardona is the new president of the Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico. He has taught at the Seminary for twenty-one years in addition to serving several Presbyterian congregations.

Dr. Charles Seidenspinner, pastor of Ottawa’s largest evangelical church, Central Alliance Church, resigned to become president of Emmanuel Bible College in Kitchener, Ontario.

Bishop Olaf Sundby, 54, is the new primate of the Church of Sweden (Lutheran). He was appointed by King Gustav Adolf, head of the state church.

After eleven years as executive director of the National Association of Christian schools, John F. Blanchard, Jr., resigned to become superintendent of the Portland (Oregon) Christian Schools—a system serving 500 students.

Jesus Festival British-Style

Climaxing a year of spiritual emphasis in Britain called “Land Aflame,” the Nationwide Festival of Light sponsored a London Festival for Jesus last month. The following report came from London correspondents Peter Meadows and David Coomes:

Traditional British reserve shattered last month when thousands of Christian young people joined hands to dance and leap in worship at three open-air events during the five-day London Festival for Jesus. The spontaneous act of worship cut right through denominational barriers—both Catholics and Protestants participated—and united the young people in simple, joyful, reverent praise.

The festival drew several thousand young people to Britain’s capital for teaching and evangelism. Yet even though more than 65,000 people were involved over the five days, press and television gave the Jesus happening only superficial—though sympathetic—mention.

Some observers reportedly were dissatisfied with the festival’s results, but the enthusiasm and creativity of the extravaganza were applauded. Gospel pop concerts, teach-ins, clean-ups, and open-air mass worship caught the eyes and ears of London’s less-than-Christian population. To arouse festival excitement a fleet of text-decorated river steamers carried 2,000 clapping, singing Christians down the Thames, past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, to Tower Bridge.

Each morning other than Sunday, which was geared toward worship, teaching and training sessions were held at churches in the greater London area, with such subjects as “Jesus in my morals,” “Jesus in my marriage,” “Jesus in my church,” and “Jesus in my family.”

The evangelical morality movement, the Nationwide Festival of Light, this year shifted its emphasis to the Christian answer to life rather than concentrating on the problems of p*rnography, as it did at last year’s gathering.

During the afternoons the young people put the morning training into practice and showed their social awareness by spending time cleaning up the streets. Each evening in a different London park the group held a Jesus music festival.

A special afternoon and evening concert featured several top British show-business Christians, such as Cliff Richard, and the leading Jesus-music people, including American guests Larry Norman and Country Faith. The music event, however, was a “clan” gathering, attracting little interest from non-Christians.

Secretary Peter Hill admonished the participants on the last day, “Okay, you’ve enjoyed yourselves. Now make it count. Go back to your home towns and organize festivals for Jesus nationwide.”

A ‘Garbage’ Problem?

Concordia Seminary president John H. Tietjen, under fire for condoning doctrinal deviations, says his accusers are the ones who distort the Gospel. He warns that the theology underlying their charges “threatens our Synod with grave danger,” and “needs to be exposed and corrected lest it worsen, and in worsening, destroy the faith by which we live and which we are all given to confess.”

Tietjen’s counter-charges are in a thirty-five-page booklet in which he defends himself and his faculty against an exhaustive critique of the seminary conducted by Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, which owns and operates Concordia. In Preus’s 160-page report, prepared to comply with an order given him by the synodical convention in 1971, he contends that “some professors at the Seminary hold views contrary to the established doctrinal position of the established doctrinal position of the Synod” (see CHRISTIANITY TODAY, September 29 issue, page 38).

Tietjen asserts that both the Preus report and a Fact Finding Committee study on which it was based misrepresent what Concordia faculty members believe, teach, and confess. “Garbage in, garbage out,” he said. “The slogan of computer programmers is a good commentary on what happened in President Preus’ investigation of Concordia Seminary.… The procedures the committee used ‘to ascertain the facts’ were so seriously flawed that the outcome of the committee’s work is completely unreliable.”

More important, Tietjen charges that “the views of Scripture interpretation which lie behind the investigation and shape its results are less than Scriptural.” He also states that the theology behind the inquiry is un-Lutheran.

Tietjen sent his report to pastors with a letter saying that “we have grave misgivings about the doctrinal positions of our adversaries.”

‘DO-GOODER’ NO GOOD?

A two-nation police hunt is on for an evangelical minister accused of absconding with more than $4,000 in federal funds earmarked for a program at an Illinois rescue mission.

FBI agents and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are looking for the Reverend John Cifelli, treasurer of the Rescue Mission for Alcoholics in Galesburg, about 200 miles southwest of Chicago.

The money was given to the mission to expand its detoxification program and start a drug-abuse program; it was part of a $72,000 Federal Safe Streets grant. Cifelli, known as a “do-gooder” in the small town, was charged by Donald C. Woolsey, state attorney for Knox County, Illinois, and president of the non-profit organization through which the funds flowed to the mission. Woolsey thinks he himself unwittingly aided the embezzlement by co-signing a check for the stolen amount.

Canadian police got into the act when it was discovered Cifelli spent a night at a plush Toronto hotel the evening he disappeared with the cash.

Galesburg police say Cifelli was connected with the infamous Purple Gang of Detroit in earlier years and had served thirty-two months in the Ohio State Penitentiary before studying for the ministry and starting the mission.

Truly …

Local churches have been asked to help formulate the COCU theological base, according to the COCU executive committee. The committee said the churches cannot unite without tackling basic theological issues. It also said that the union plan depends on COCU’s ability to “present Jesus Christ to those whose loyalties lie in a wide variety of diverse places.”

Stunned by but recovering from the withdrawal of the United Presbyterian Church last spring, the executive committee said that COCU was in a time of “testing” but that it expected the remaining eight denominations to form a “truly catholic, truly reformed and truly evangelical” church.

Preaching Ins And Outs

First, the Reverend Aaron Morgan was in as pastor of the 2,000-member Grant African Methodist Episcopal church in the Watts district of Los Angeles. Then he was out. And then he was back in again. The congregation, objecting to the bishop’s method of selecting the minister (he didn’t consult them), locked Morgan out of the church and demanded a replacement. The following Sunday they allowed Morgan to preach.

Now that he’s in again, Morgan is optimistic about settling the differences once he gets to know his congregation. He told church members in his first sermon that he had no intention of directing sermons at individuals but merely wanted “to worship with you our God.”

Burning The Way Of Escape

In June the Russian Christian painter Yuri Titov arrived in Rome, having obtained permission for himself and his wife to leave the U.S.S.R. After considerable difficulty he had also obtained permission to take with him sixty-two of his own paintings, which he had never been permitted to exhibit or sell in the Soviet Union.

In an interview with La Pensée Russe (France), Titov declared, “On our arrival in Rome, we found out what that Soviet permission was worth. When we opened the parcels containing my paintings, we found that all of them had been drenched with sulphuric acid [as determined by chemical analysis]. Almost all of them were destroyed.… The mystical-religious ideals which are reflected in my paintings reveal the essential nature of the Communist hell and point to the way of escape from that hell by a return to spiritual values and to God. That is certainly one of the principal reasons for this Satanic act. In addition, it looks to me like a pathetic act of vengeance against my wife and me for having lived, while still in the Soviet world, according to our own convictions, tastes, and inclinations—all of which is forbidden in the country we have just left, and punishable according to various degrees of cruelty.”

‘I Amness’

A quasi-religious philosophy espoused by the head of religious studies at the University of British Columbia has sparked a mini-revolt among faculty members. A book on “I AMness” co-authored by William Nicholls was featured in an article in the Vancouver Sun recently. In quick reaction, two of Nicholls’s colleagues told the Sun in lengthy letters that they were disassociating themselves, their colleagues, the department, and the university from his theories.

The letters reveal a simmering dispute in the faculty. Six months ago a letter asserting non-confidence in Nicholls was sent to the university’s dean of arts. Nicholls’s reaction reportedly was to tell faculty members to get jobs elsewhere.

The theory that rekindled the dispute calls for a freeing of the mind from prejudices created by religion. Nicholls says he tried all the religions—Eastern and Western, orthodox and esoteric—and found them all lacking. (Nicholls is a former Anglican and secretary of the Student Christian Movement.) In fact, he views religion as the basis of all man’s hatreds today. Hitler’s extermination of the Jews, he says, was supported by Christians because it brought to reality fantasies many of them had.

I AMness was described by one writer as a conglomerate of Eastern and Western mysticism, Marxist social theory, and Freudian psychoanalysis.

Suing Science

William Willoughby, religion editor of the Washington Evening Star-Daily News, is convinced the federal government is monkeying around with his children’s education. Under an act of Congress, the federally funded National Science Foundation is supplying $7 million for research into a series of textbooks that teach evolution.

Demanding fair play, Willoughby filed suit in U. S. district court in Washington challenging the biology text. The series, “Biological Sciences Curriculum Study,” is used in about 45 per cent of the nation’s school systems, Willoughby estimates, including Virginia, where his three children attend.

Arguing that school children should be taught both creationist and evolutionist theories of the origin of man, the suit asks that the series be withdrawn and that the Science Foundation donate a similar amount for research into creationist theories.

Black Baptists: A Thirty-Mile Gap

More than the thirty-mile stretch between Dallas and Fort Worth separated the two big black Baptist bodies that met simultaneously in the two cities last month. The spotlight for the ninety-second annual meetings of the 5.5-million-member National Baptist Convention of the U. S. A., Inc. (NBCUSA), and the 2.7-million-member National Baptist Convention of America (NBCA) fell much of the time on their conflicting views on national politics.

Veteran NBCUSA head Joseph Jackson of Chicago was booed by many of his usually acquiescent followers when he praised President Nixon and attacked George McGovern in his keynote address at Fort Worth. Jackson aides charged that the booing came from supporters of McGovern bused in from the NBCA meeting in Dallas, but press observers said much of it came from the delegates (10,000 attended). It was not a deep rift; Jackson—a theological and political conservative—was re-elected to his twentieth one-year term with only four dissenting votes. Adopted statements opposed drug usage, violence, and manipulation of the news by television newscasters.

Over at the NBCA, President James Carl Sams of Jacksonville, Florida, seemed inclined to stick to preaching and leave the politicking to assistants. Although both conventions stopped short of an outright endorsem*nt of a presidential candidate (Jackson endorsed Nixon in a press conference), the 2,000 NBCA delegates unanimously passed a measure knocking the Nixon administration on racial issues. Therefore, the NBCA “cannot in good conscience support this administration for re-election,” it said. Additionally, the NBCA came out against a volunteer army (it would become a “bread-and-butter program for the blacks and poor”) and took a stand for busing.

There was an unsuccessful attempt to convene a joint session of the two conventions, and even a proposed breakfast meeting between the two presidents and their cabinets was turned down. A unity movement exists in the denominations; its leaders blame personality issues and presidential powers for the failure to achieve reunification (a breakaway group in 1915 organized the NBCUSA).

HELEN PARMLEY

A successor communion to the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. is in the making. The first step was taken September 7 when six ministers and ten elders signed a resolution agreeing to “covenant together to form an association to be known as Vanguard Presbytery, a Provisional Presbytery for Southern Presbyterian and Reformed Churches Uniting.” The churchmen belong to congregations that have withdrawn from the denomination or are trying to. A constituting convention has been scheduled for November 14.

The move came rather unexpectedly and without prior encouragement from the main conservative elements in Southern Presbyterianism, a strong segment of whom have shown a separatist bent but have not ventured a break.

Moderator L. Nelson Bell issued a statement that expressed regret over the organizing of the Vanguard Presbytery “because it fragments the witness of the Church which they are repudiating. Their conservative witness is sorely needed in our midst.”

Many Southern Presbyterians are united in concern about their denomination’s leftward theological drift but divided over whether and when to sever ties.

The covenant to form Vanguard Presbytery was signed at a meeting in the Eastern Heights Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Georgia. Convener of the meeting was the Reverend Todd Allen, minister of the church, one of two Savannah congregations that left the denomination in 1966 in a move that after years of litigation was upheld by the U. S. Supreme Court. A decision was made to incorporate Vanguard Presbytery in Georgia and to request legal counsel from Owen Page, the lawyer who handled the litigation of the Savannah churches. Allen was elected moderator, and Chester Hall of Louisville, Kentucky, was named stated clerk and treasurer.

A motion was adopted to leave the constituting resolution open for additional signatures for eighteen months. A motion to appoint an executive committee to transact business between meetings was tabled.

The resolution asserts “that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God, and only infallible rule of faith and practice, and … that the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms set forth the system of doctrine declared in the Scriptures.” The Book of Order of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (1934 edition) is said to set forth “a reasonable and practical formulary for church organization.”

The November 14 meeting of the new presbytery will be held in the Tabb Street Presbyterian Church in Petersburg, Virginia, whose congregation voted last month to declare itself independent.¹Some conservatives, including a number who advocate eventual separation, feel that defections now will make favorable property settlements more difficult if a merger is consummated. The local presbytery has refused to recognize the withdrawal.

Another decision of the Savannah meeting was that Allen, as moderator of the new presbytery, should accept an invitation to join the Steering Committee for a Continuing Presbyterian Church. The committee is composed of representatives of four conservative groups that have agreed that a schism is inevitable if the Southern Presbyterian communion continues to tolerate deviations from historic Presbyterian doctrine. The committee’s leadership has indicated it will support a proposed plan of union with the three-million-member United Presbyterian Church if the plan gives ministers and congregations the right to decide whether or not they want to belong to the merged denomination. If such a “survival clause” is not a part of the plan, then the steering committee plans to propose other tacks.

Bell said he is in “hearty sympathy” with the objections that Vanguard leaders have raised about the denomination, which has nearly a million members throughout the south. “However, as long as the constitution of our Church is the Westminster Confession of Faith,” he noted, “we are a confessional Church based squarely on the Holy Scriptures. Until that confession is repudiated, we have a solid source of reference and a clear statement of our beliefs, than which none better is to be found in any major denomination.”