Page 5817 – Christianity Today (2024)

On the closing day of his St. Louis crusade last month, evangelist Billy Graham was asked by a local newsman if there were factors that made the campaign different from those held in other cities. Yes, said Graham (who celebrated his fifty-fifth birthday at the crusade). He cited support from the Roman Catholic community as one of two aspects that distinguished this crusade from the rest.¹The other he mentioned was the extent of enthusiastic support from the black Christian community and from local black media people.

“When we were here for meetings twenty years ago,” Graham said, “I don’t think Catholics were even allowed to attend.”

This time, the official weekly newspaper of the St. Louis archdiocese carried an editorial giving the ten-day crusade unqualified endorsem*nt (see reprint, this page).

Such turnabouts are becoming more common these days. They are the result not simply of an ecumenical spirit or the influence of the charismatic movement, as is generally supposed, but of a growing new appreciation for basic Christian virtues on the part of Roman Catholics at the grass roots (see also the editorial on page 30).

“I’m a fundamentalist,” said one Franciscan trainee for whom Graham’s St. Louis meetings represented a spiritual feast. That many Roman Catholics share his sentiments was attested by their wholehearted participation in the crusade. About fifty Catholics, including some sisters, were reported to have taken the pre-crusade counselor-training courses. Several nuns sang in the choir regularly. It was impossible to determine what percentage of the audience of 20,000 that jammed the St. Louis Arena at each meeting was Roman Catholic. But among those who respond to the invitation and complete commitment cards in the Graham meetings, the Catholic proportion is now up to 10 per cent in cities such as St. Louis and Cleveland where there are large Catholic populations. In St. Louis, Catholic contacts were referred to one of the more than 2,000 specially organized interdenominational “nurture groups” for spiritual follow-up. (This more intensive follow-up program is the result of studies done at another recent crusade.)

A number of evangelical Protestant enterprises besides Graham’s are attracting increasing Catholic interest. These include Young Life, Campus Crusade, Neighborhood Bible Studies, and Bill Gothard’s Institute of Basic Youth Conflicts. Kathryn Kuhlman draws more rank-and-file Catholic interest than any other Protestant figure.

Roman Catholic history has been punctuated by a number of attempts to return to fundamental biblical principles, the most obvious of which resulted in the Luther-led split we now know as the Reformation. Since the Reformation, many Protestants have feared that Rome was out to recapture the losses. But Pope John and the Second Vatican Council caused such an upheaval that many Catholics no longer are sure what they are supposed to believe. In the resulting vacuum there has been a surge of interest in Bible study and a quest for deeper spiritual reality. Many Catholics feel free to consort with Protestants who have the same interests, and some indeed look to Protestant ministries for inspiration and fellowship. Commenting on current developments, a number of Catholic leaders of spiritual-renewal efforts said in interviews that nothing less than “an evangelical awakening” is going on.

St. Louis has apparently been an especially fertile ground. Dioceses in Missouri were the first of some forty around the country to give public support to Key 73, and Catholics in St. Louis have been particularly active in such Key 73 projects as Scripture distribution.

Leighton Ford, Graham’s evangelist brother-in-law, also found Catholics sympathetic to a crusade he held in Milwaukee in October. Reporters noted at the time that the campaign was the first event of its kind in the area to have Roman Catholic support. As in St. Louis, Catholics were told in the diocesan weekly that the hierarchy approved of their participation.

Members of Roman Catholic religious orders feel they have been much more open to the new “enthusiasm movement,” as many call the spiritual renewalists, than diocesan churchmen. The latter represent the more institutionally oriented segment of the church and have more reason to toe the official Vatican—and national Catholic headquarters—line.

Most Protestants do not know that Roman Catholicism has at least two diverse “wings,” so they tend to associate hierarchical statements with the whole of the church. Catholics themselves tend to be doctrinally bewildered these days, which is undoubtedly one reason why a recent poll found that attendance at Mass has dropped sharply among older people. Use of the confessional is also reported to be dwindling.

A new kind of ecumenism is emerging. Thousands of Catholics attend Protestant-organized Bible-study groups around the world. There would undoubtedly be more if Protestants were more receptive to their participation. Younger evangelicals who do not share the militant anti-Catholic sentiments of bygone years are helping to break down the barriers, and intermingling is quite common in charismatic circles. Catholic parishes often do not provide as many fellowship opportunities as are usually found among evangelical Protestants, which may be another reason why many Catholics get involved in inter-Christian groups. The feeling may also be growing among both Protestants and Roman Catholics that the issues separating them are becoming less important than their common perils in an increasingly secular and atheistically dominated world.

The charismatic movement is currently the most remarkable phenomenon in the Roman Catholic Church (see June 22 issue, page 36). But there are other trends in the church that, while less spectacular, are nonetheless having a profound effect. One is the Cursillo Movement (cursillo means “short course”), which sponsors occasional three-day retreats in each participating diocese aimed at winning persons to Christ, promoting deeper relationships with God, and getting members involved in personal evangelism. The retreats are followed by weekly “sharing” meetings in which participants help one another to persevere. The movement was started by a priest and his laymen in Majorca, Spain, in the late forties.

Cursillo national coordinator Gerald Hughes, 44, of Dallas says part of the Cursillo strategy consists of selecting leaders in a given “environment” of society (advertising, education, communications, medicine, politics), then attempting to convert them and link them together in an ongoing witness. Those so reached make a threefold commitment: to nourish their spiritual life through prayer, to study (the Bible), and to “Christianize” their environment. A national conference on evangelization of environments will be held next July in the midwest.

KEEP THE CHAIN UNBROKEN

A Lutheran newsletter has some tongue-in-cheek suggestions for church members unhappy with their pastor:

“Simply send a copy of this letter to six other churches who are tired of their ministers. Then bundle up your pastor and send him to the church at the top of the list.

“Add your name to the bottom of the list. In one week you will receive 16, 436 ministers, and one of them should be a dandy.

“Have faith in this letter. One man broke the chain and got his old minister back.”

As for the future, Hughes sees evangelical Catholics and Protestants working together across denominational lines (“the power of the Holy Spirit will give us unity”).

Hughes and a number of other Cursillo leaders think highly of Campus Crusade and they exchange information with Crusade leaders. (Some Cursillo chapters use Crusade’s literature in their evangelistic programs.)

One such admirer of Campus Crusade is Richard Kieran, 33, an Irish priest who is principal of an Atlanta high school, head of the Atlanta priests’ council, and a Cursillo leader. Earlier this year Kieran spent ten days with Crusade leaders in Europe, helping to open Catholic doors there. His first contact with Crusade was in a neighborhood Bible study group four years ago. Since then, he has taught a number of mixed and Catholic Bible-study groups and has produced on tape a resoundingly evangelical study of Romans.

Kieran “very definitely” believes an evangelical awakening is taking place among Catholics. Quoting Scripture verses, he says that the inner power of the Spirit has been lost throughout much of the Catholic Church and that it will take a “spiritual revival” to get it back. Cursillo, he asserts, has developed key leaders in many parishes and they’re now “doing things for Christ.” He believes the charismatics are a part of the awakening, but he is wary of those who may rely on experience instead of faith.

Prior to Billy Graham’s summer crusade in Atlanta Kieran went to the sponsoring committee and asked why Catholics were not invited to participate in the planning. A committee leader cited fears of conservative backlash. Kieran says his bishop wasn’t very happy about his interest in the Graham crusade either. But he’s hopeful that the future will bring increased inter-evangelical contact.

The early prime leaders of the Catholic Pentecostal movement were once active Cursillo leaders (a quiet parting of ways took place in the late sixties). One of them, Ralph Martin of the Word of God Community in Ann Arbor, also received training from the Navigators and Campus Crusade. Evidences of evangelical stirrings in the Catholic Church, he says, can be seen in the widespread return to Scripture, the new emphasis on Scripture in Catholic religious education, the Vatican Council’s decrees that say, in effect, “bringing people to Christ is what it’s all about,” and the rise of spiritual renewal movements in the church.

“Because of the influence of Italian Catholic culture, it’s hard for Protestants to see beyond the mass and confession,” says Martin, “but there is more. Protestant evangelicals emphasize peak moments; Catholics place more emphasis on growth in Christ.”

Still another person convinced that renewal is happening is executive director John Burke of the Word of God Institute in Washington, D. C. Indeed, Burke, 45, is making a significant contribution to it. A Dominican priest who until recently taught at Catholic University, he organized last year’s National Congress on the Word of God, attended by 10,000 Catholics, including more than 1,000 priests and two dozen bishops. Its purpose was to emphasize biblical theology in preaching.

A lot of members are dropping out of the church because of the lack of spiritual nurture, Burke contends, and part of the answer is to revitalize preaching—the avowed goal of his institute. Revitalization begins with the preacher himself, he says. “He must realize he is a sinner saved by the blood of Jesus, and he must experience the life of Christ.” This is a necessary prerequisite to the annointing and illumination of the Holy Spirit, Burke believes; only then can authentic, powerful preaching flow forth.

Burke has conducted a number of parish renewal conferences (small Bible-study groups usually spring up afterward) and seminars for clergymen.

Bishops are getting involved too. At last month’s national meeting of Catholic bishops in Washington, the New England bishops met to discuss the need for spiritual renewal and the role that prayer can have. “To communicate the Gospel, the people who do it have to be on fire, and that means they must be people of prayer,” asserted Bishop Peter L. Gerety of Maine.

Meanwhile, things are happening in other lands too. According to a researcher, the Pentecostals in the Catholic Church in Ireland now outnumber non-Catholic Pentecostals.

Bolivian Catholic Pentecostal evangelist Julio César Ruibal, 20, converted at a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting, last month preached to huge crowds in Colombia. The biggest crowd in Medellin’s history, an estimated 70,000 or so, overflowed the stadium. “The impact he is making is phenomenal, and his preaching is soundly evangelical,” reported correspondent Leroy Birney, a Protestant missionary.

Overlapping Graham’s crusade in St. Louis was a month-long family prayer drive in the archdiocese. It was conducted by Father Patrick Peyton, the noted priest who has had a kind of movement of his own around the slogan “The family that prays together stays together.” Peyton said he and Graham “were together on the same program a while back, but this is the first time we’re conducting campaigns simultaneously in the same city.… You should not consider it competition. I think we’re both for the same beneficial thing. It’s just that here, instead of one voice, the plea is being made with two.”

Graham does not dilute his views to accommodate Roman Catholics, but he does try to relate to them. At the closing invitation, for example, he said that for many people, stepping out of a crowd in a religious service was a new experience. But, he added, “in a Catholic church or an Episcopal church you come forward in communion. So in a sense you know what it means.”

Some 5,600 responded at the St. Louis meetings (about half made first-time decisions). Total attendance came to 224,400, including overflow crowds that viewed the meetings on closed-circuit television in an adjoining auditorium.

Catholic interest in evangelism is expected to grow still more as the time approaches for the International Synod of Bishops, to be held in Rome next October under the theme “The Evangelization of the Modern World.” A 7,500-word document recently distributed by the Vatican through national episcopal conferences focuses on the theme. The document defines evangelization as “the activity whereby the Gospel is proclaimed and explained, and whereby living faith is awakened in non-Christians and fostered in Christians.”

Meanwhile, a joint commission of Catholics and Methodists is studying “Common Witness and Evangelization” in light of the upcoming synod and the World Methodist Council’s proclamation of 1975 as a “Year of Evangelism.”

DAVID KUCHARSKY and EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Mary Redefined

America’s Catholic bishops in their annual meeting last month “redefined” the role of the Virgin Mary in an attempt to pacify traditionalists while maintaining an open door to ecumenicity.

In a fifty-six-page, 20,000-word pastoral letter, the bishops sought to “allay the fears” of Catholics who think Mary was “deemphasized” by Vatican II, said Marian theologian Eamon Carroll of Catholic University in Washington, D. C. Carroll, prime author of the statement, added that he hoped it would also give Protestants a new view of Marian theology. “We ask our brothers in other Christian churches to reexamine with us Mary’s place in our common patrimony.”

The document, approved by the 250 bishops at the meeting in Washington, couches Mary’s position in careful phraseology. While not disavowing Mary’s title as “Mother of God,” the bishops acknowledged the title had created tension with non-Catholics. For most of the letter, she’s referred to as “mother of the church.”

Also redefined was the contentious claim that Mary is a “mediatrix” between man and Christ. Mary, while occupying a special position, does not take precedence over man’s direct access to Jesus, “the supreme intercessor.” Instead, said Carroll at a press conference, Mary should be looked on as a “daughter of the church; sister of the faith.” That redefinition, he acknowledged, reflects a change in Catholic thinking “but not a loss.” She is still to be accorded devotion.

Describing Catholics as weak on biblical moorings, Carroll pointed out that the document spends ten pages carefully tying doctrinal positions to biblical passages. (He said, however, that he personally does not interpret all Scriptures literally—leaving open the question of what he does take literally.)

In all, said Carroll, the document provides a “good, clear, authoritative basis for the doctrine of Mary in the church.” And, said he, the document has “a stronger biblical basis for the doctrine than existed before Vatican II” along with a “greater sensitivity to ecumenism.”

BARRIE DOYLE

Overseas Missions: Stalled?

North American foreign-mission agencies are barely keeping ahead of 1969 levels, according to statistics in the 1973 Mission Handbook, published this month by the Mission Advanced Research and Communication Center (MARC), a subsidiary of World Vision.

The triennial handbook sets the total number of Protestant missionaries overseas at 35,070 as of the end of last year, an increase of less than 2 per cent over 1969. On paper, mission giving increased about 10 per cent—not enough to overcome the rate of inflation and devaluation. Mission giving in 1972 is listed at $393 million, including $30 million in estimates by researchers to cover gaps (some agencies failed to provide financial information).

Researcher William L. Needham, author of the MARC book, points out that while the number of career missionaries has remained somewhat static there has been a rapid rise in the number of short-term missionaries.

Brazil has the most U. S. and Canadian Protestant workers (1,986). Japan has 1,917, Mexico 1,294, India 1,195, and the Philippines 1,185.

The Southern Baptist Convention leads in fielding missionaries (2,507). Others in the top ten include: Wycliffe Bible Translators, 2,200; Churches of Christ, 1,623; Seventh-day Adventists, 1,546; Youth With a Mission, 1,009; The Evangelical Alliance Mission, 922; Assemblies of God, 967; United Methodist Church, 951; Sudan Interior Mission, 818; and the Christian and Missionary Alliance, 803.

The MARC report covers approximately 95 per cent of the denominational and independent missionary-sending organizations in the United States and Canada.

WHERE IT’S AT

Kids are changing. In its latest survey of 26,000 high school leaders, Who’s Who Among American High School Students of Northfield, Illinois, found that:

• 77 per cent believe religion is relevant to society and 66 per cent attend religious services regularly (last year it was 63 and 57 per cent);

• 83 per cent favor traditional marriage (71 per cent—including 66 per cent of the Catholics—would seek a divorce if the marriage was a failure);

• 72 per cent have never used drugs (though 82 per cent said drugs were readily available on or near campus), but only 19 per cent had never drunk alcoholic beverages;

• 95 per cent say their relations with their parents and other family members are good;

• 72 per cent say they have never engaged in sexual intercourse (up from 60 per cent in 1970), but only 41 per cent do not approve of pre-marital sex (up from 34 per cent four years ago).

Catholics lead in attending religious services (83 per cent attend, Protestants 70 per cent, Jewish youth 16 per cent), with attendance highest in the South and lowest in the Northeast.

The Ford In Our Future

Vice-President-designate Gerald R. Ford is a man “very committed to God,” says his son Michael, 23, a seminary student. “He’s not outspoken or vocal about his commitment—he’s not that kind of a man,” he said in an interview. “Dad is more a man of action who incorporates his faith into his work.”

The quiet faith is what makes Ford a “real man” to his old friend and Constituent, evangelist Billy Zeoli. Zeoli, president of Gospel Films in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and also noted for evangelistic work among professional football teams, says Ford has taken a definite Christian stand. “I can say he has accepted Christ as his Saviour and that he is a growing Christian.” Zeoli says he has spent time praying and studying the Bible with Ford for years.

Ford, a football star at the University of Michigan (he was voted outstanding player in 1934, when his team won only one game), and still a fan, accepted Christ at a Washington Redskins-Dallas Cowboys pre-game chapel service Zeoli conducted two years ago, according to the evangelist. Since then, Zeoli has met often with Ford, who as House Minority Leader invited the evangelist to lead Congress in prayer on October 11—as it turned out, the day following former Vice-President Spiro Agnew’s resignation. Ford and Zeoli also jointly sponsored an athletes’ luncheon the day of the Presidential Prayer Breakfast last winter.

Ford, 60, a lifelong Episcopalian, attends Immanuel (Episcopal) Churchon-the-Hill in Alexandria, Virginia. His home church is Grace Episcopal in Grand Rapids, where parishioners remember him as a Sunday-school teacher “who believed in what he said,” according to a Detroit Free Press story by reporter Hiley Ward.

While awaiting confirmation, Ford’s closely knit family was apparently finding growing unity through prayer. Said his son Michael: “It’s been an uplifting experience. We’ve all been drawn closer together and we’re giving each other spiritual support through prayer.… [The prospects] are so crucial, so demanding, that I know he’s getting deeper into the faith.”

Michael Ford, a first-year student at Gordon-Conwell Seminary in Wenham, Massachusetts, said he plans a career in full-time Christian service as a youth minister. The decision to drop out of a political science-law program (the course his father followed) and opt for the ministry came after he made a commitment to Christ at Wake Forest University last year. It caused some surprise at home, Michael said, “but Dad knew my Christian faith was playing a strong part in my decision.” He said his father helped him investigate seminaries, warning him away from “liberal” schools and suggesting instead a seminary that held a “strong orthodox view of Christianity.”

With all eyes on the vice-presidential post, the Ford family is hesitant about discussing the possibility of his becoming President (the family believes President Nixon will see his term through), Michael said. “Dad takes one step at a time.”

Ford, a leader of the congressional prayer groups, spends time in prayer meetings with Presidential Assistant Melvin Laird, says Zeoli. “He [Ford] has a real evangelical involvement.” To help him along, Zeoli sends him a weekly letter containing a Bible verse and a prayer.

The Ford family’s lifestyle has changed from the moment he was picked as Agnew’s successor, said Michael. “But I think it’s brought about a real revival of our dependence and trust in God. I think all of these events show that God is going to work his will for the glory of his Kingdom.”

BARRIE DOYLE

Urbana 73

A record crowd of nearly 15,000 is expected to attend Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship’s tenth triennial missions convention December 27–31 on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana. Advance registrations were running well ahead of the 1970 pace.

IVCF traces its roots to a Christian student movement that arose one hundred years ago in England. It spread to the United States in the late thirties, and in 1941 IVCF was chartered. In 1945 the Student Foreign Missions Fellowship merged with it, and in 1947 Inter-Varsity joined with similar groups in other countries to organize the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.

Inter-Varsity has about 120 campus staffers who assist chapters at more than 400 college and university campuses and 300 schools of nursing. Missionary preparation and activities are emphasized at 125 Christian colleges.

From its inception IVCF has stressed missionary work. Its stated purpose is to assist faculty and student members to evangelize, to grow spiritually, and to “discover God’s role for them in the world mission of the Church.”

The first missionary convention was held at the end of 1946 in Toronto. It drew 575 delegates representing fifty-two denominations and 151 campuses—along with representatives of fifty-six missionary agencies. Each successive convention grew in size, and at Urbana 70 there were more than 12,000 delegates from sixty-one nations. Over the years many hundreds of young people have volunteered for overseas missionary service. A computer at Urbana 70 helped to match prospective missionary candidates with sending agencies, a service that will be offered again at this year’s convention.

SUNDAY IN SLOW MOTION

Neither the church nor soccer suffered much, at least at the outset, when Holland banned Sunday driving because of the current oil crisis. (Few spectators showed up for the horse races, though—and even some horses didn’t get there.) Despite fears, the Reformed churches’ traditional fall offering for missions apparently held up well on the first car-less Sunday.

Undertakers took the day off; there were no traffic deaths (Sunday’s usual toll is eight). Special permission was granted some 16,000 doctors, midwives, journalists, and others (including a few pastors) to drive. Even so, there were only two accidents: a collision between a Belgian and a German car (foreign visitors were allowed on the road), and a horse and buggy that went out of control.

More than 80 per cent of Dutch oil comes from Arab countries, which shut off the flow because of Holland’s support of Israel. No-car Sundays may become the rule in the forseeable future. Many Dutch families in the cities have traditionally donned their Sunday best and pedaled to church on bicycles. But the outcome of the oil crisis may be a decline in church attendance in rural areas, where attendance has been best. A number of small congregations served by visiting preachers are already planning a cutback in the number of church services.

JAN J. VAN CAPELLEVEEN

A battery of ninety seminars arranged in interest clusters (medicine, education, media, evangelism, religions) will be offered at Urbana 73, says director David Howard. Among the speakers will be Anglican pastor John R. W. Stott, Samuel Escobar (IVCF’s Canadian director), missionary Samuel Moffett of South Korea, pastor-educator Philip Teng of Hong Kong, several students, and a lay worker from Colombia.

The event will conclude with a New Year’s Eve communion service in the huge assembly hall.

Sabbath Security

In the first court action it has undertaken to enforce the prohibition against “religious discrimination” in employment under the provisions of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, the U. S. Department of Justice has filed suit against the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, for discharging a fireman who is a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Salomen Zamora was dismissed in October for refusing to work on Saturday, his sabbath.

The suit asks that the city be ordered to reinstate Zamora to his previous position in the fire department with back pay to date of discharge, allow him to observe his sabbath in the future without loss of leave time or other penalty, and correct its alleged discriminatory practices with respect to all city employees.

GLENN EVERETT

The Millennium: A Bad Beginning

Correspondents Gordon R. Lewis, a professor at Conservative Baptist Seminary in Denver, and Cal Thomas of KPRC-TV news in Houston covered last month’s “Millennium ’73” visit of Guru Maharaj Ji (see September 28 issue, page 46) to the Astrodome in Houston. The following story is based on the reports they filed.

The Millennium was ushered in last month in Houston, but it got off to a poor start. Instead of the 85,000 who were expected to be on hand to herald the coming of teen-age Guru Maharaj Ji, less than 15,000 (police said 10,000) showed up for the three-day event in the 66,000-seat Astrodome (estimated rental: $75,000). These included thirty-seven chartered plane-loads of disciples (twenty-five of the planes were from other countries). Nevertheless, the self-proclaimed “perfect master” unabashedly declared it to be “the most important event in human history.” And his devotees acclaimed him as the only true contemporary spiritual master, and they crowned him “king of kings.”

Why was it history’s most important event? “Just the fact that the guru is here,” said former anti-war activist Rennie Davis, coordinator of the affair who publicly kissed the guru’s feet. Previously the guru’s special “knowledge” was limited to monasteries, but “this is the first time there has been a perfect master to make the knowledge available to the whole world,” explained PR man Richard Profumo.

Yet the knowledge didn’t seem all that available. Maharaj Ji talked about love, peace, harmony, unity with God, light, and energy in three discourses, promising a “practical realization” of it all. To “receive knowledge” of these things is akin to a conversion experience, but Maharaj Ji had delegated the giving of the knowledge to mahatmas (great souls). Only thirty or so mahatmas were seated near the guru’s throne, which was perched atop a thirty-five-foot-high stage amid water-falls, lakes, and fountains. Many in the audience were unable to reach the mahatmas for the required seven-or eight-hour knowledge session, and they left frustrated and angry—without the millennial peace. The PR people seemed undisturbed; the sincere will receive knowledge at the right time, they said.

Getting the knowledge is the central objective, commented Rennie Davis. “Then we can do what the street people sought in the sixties—abolish capitalism and other systems that oppress.”

There were dramatic productions on Christ and Krishna—two earlier spiritual masters (there can be only one at a time), slide and light shows, a 50-piece rock band, offerings, hawking of guru merchandise (pennants, T-shirts, buttons, records, books, even ear plugs at 50 cents), demonstrations (HareKrishna chanters and several Christian groups held forth at the entrances), and a press conference.

Maharaj Ji packed the news conference with his own people and called mostly on them. He brushed aside the few questions reporters managed to ask (“Why don’t you look that up yourself?” and “Ask one of my devotees about that”). Then he abruptly concluded the session when a reporter asked him about his stomach ulcer, his Rolls Royce and expensive homes, and the starving people all over his homeland of India.

On the final night of the event Maharaj Ji disclosed that his Divine Light Mission will build a “divine city” at a site yet to be determined, a city where everyone in need of food and clothing can come and receive it free; payment will be in the form of service. Architect Larry Bernstein said the self-supporting city will have non-polluting factories and it will run on solar energy.

To build that city will cost a lot of money, a commodity that does not seem to be in short supply as far as the guru is concerned. He stayed in the Astroworld Hotel’s $2,500-per-day Celestial Suite (he brought his own sheets—“they’re very clean people,” explained a hotel staffer). The camera equipment that recorded Millennium ’73 for a film cost $500,000. Maharaj Ji says he gets all his money from tax-deductible contributions—apparently from sources other than offerings in meetings (the Astrodome offerings were not large).

The boy guru had to pay a $13,000 bond to the Indian government before leaving. In passing through Indian customs recently he was found to have thousands of dollars of undeclared cash and jewelry, and his passport was temporarily lifted.

While his devotees seek the millennium’s peace, Maharaj Ji is apparently already enjoying its prosperity.

Dulling The Numinous

The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land (Eerdmans, 141 pp., $1.95 pb), and C. S. Lewis: Mere Christian (Regal, 242 pp., $4.95, $2.95 pb), both by Kathryn Ann Lindskoog, are reviewed by Cheryl Forbes, editorial associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Part of the business of a literary critic is to analyze, synthesize and explicate the meaning behind the words, the tools of literature. Images, symbols, themes are all necessary considerations in such critical endeavors. The business of a “popular” critic, one who writes for the layman rather than the scholar, is to communicate the joy of literature and stimulate the desire to read. Kathryn Lindskoog’s two volumes on Lewis straddle the line between these two purposes. Such straddling is not necessarily bad; Lewis himself sometimes did it. But Lindskoog’s books do not fully succeed on either side of the line.

Lindskoog’s theological treatment of Narnia in The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land (originally a master’s thesis at Wheaton under Clyde Kilby) deals with three subjects: nature, man, and God. She follows Lewis’s theology in a fairly consistent manner. However, the most important aspects of Narnia are found not in the theology behind the stories but in the stories themselves. Lindskoog discusses theology at the expense of imagination. As Lewis himself said, the Christian elements of Narnia were secondary to his desire to spin a tale.

Lindskoog also reveals an unfortunate misunderstanding of allegory when she forces Narnia into that mode. She has support for it from such a discerning critic as J. R. R. Tolkien, who disliked the seven chronicles because of what he saw as allegorical overtones. However, Walter Hooper in “Past Watchful Dragons” (found in Imagination and the Spirit, edited by Charles Huttar) convincingly argues against seeing Narnia as allegory. For example, Lindskoog finds a direct correspondence between Aslan and Christ. Hooper points out that Aslan is not the atoner for Narnia but merely Edmund’s redeemer. According to the text itself (The Lion, the Witch and the Ward-robe), any innocent person familiar with “the Deeper Magic from the Dawn of Time” could have volunteered for the sacrifice. Lewis himself once commented that Aslan was never intended to be Christ:

If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair represents Despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, “What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?” This is not allegory at all [Letters of C. S. Lewis, edited by W. H. Lewis, Harcourt, 1966, p. 283].

As a “theological guidebook” through Narnia to provide non-devotees of Lewis with background, Lindskoog’s simply written volume has merit. However, those interested in Narnia should first read the chronicles and then the criticism. And here is where Linkskoog falls short of fulfilling the popular critic’s function; her treatment of Narnia is not compelling enough to urge nonfantasy readers to travel to this other world.

The second book, written with the same general purpose, paraphrases Lewis’s pungent thoughts along broader lines. Lindskoog considers such additional topics as death, heaven, and hell. C. S. Lewis: Mere Christian deals with his major apologetic works as well as his fiction, while only occasionally mentioning his literary criticism. Included at the end of each chapter is a helpful list of “Further Reading About C. S. Lewis,” and in the “Afterword” Lindskoog compiles “Special Resources for C. S. Lewis Readers,” which is perhaps the best contribution of the volume. But the “Annotated Chronological Listing of C. S. Lewis” proves inadequately annotated.

Lindskoog’s works suffer when compared with Mary McDermott Shideler’s Theology of Romantic Love: A Study in the Writings of Charles Williams, which also criticizes topically. She dulls the numinous quality that characterizes all Lewis’s writings.

An Outstanding Commentary

Colossians: The Church’s Lord and the Christian’s Liberty: An Expository Commentary with a Present-Day Application, by Ralph P. Martin (Zondervan, 1973, 192 pp., $5.95), is reviewed by Edmon L. Rowell, Jr., minister of the Lee Street Baptist Church, Danville, Virginia.

Professor Martin, now of Fuller Seminary, whose previous Pauline studies are well known and respected, now presents an expository commentary in the best sense of the term. Its purpose is to interpret for our day and situation the meaning and message of Colossians on the basis of an honest and thorough exegesis of its meaning for those to whom it originally was addressed.

Any who come here for help should come prepared to do some serious reading. So prepared, however, one will not be disappointed. The serious student will be hard pressed to find a clearer statement of the problems of interpretation presented by Colossians or a more comprehensive review of the most viable attempted solutions.

Martin’s introduction is concise but thorough. The intriguing but really less important—and sometimes confusing—questions of authorship, date, and place of writing he relegates to an appendix at the end of the commentary. He rightly insists that, for interpreting Colossians, the important preliminary question concerns the nature of the teaching of those “errorists” in the church, against which teaching the epistle is directed. Martin first suggests the possibility that the church at Colossae was a young church in what was surely an old and decaying community. He suggests further that heretofore the Christians in Colossae had remained faithful, but that evidently the novelty of the theosophy of the errorists was appealing to some and disturbing to others.

Martin believes that Paul saw at least three reasons why this false teaching was a threat to the young church: (1) it degraded Jesus Christ (docetism), (2) it robbed the Christian of his liberty (legalism), and (3) it engendered a haughty exclusivism and human boasting (righteousness based on supposed self-achievement). Martin outlines what can be known of this “fake religion” with its elements of ascetism, strict dualism, and astrology and suggests that, in Paul’s eyes, it was deadly dangerous to the incipient church. Colossians, therefore, is Paul’s remorseless exposure of that “philosophy of vain deceit” which threatened the young church.

The main body of the commentary is a section-by-section (distinguished from verse-by-verse) interpretation of the letter (under fourteen sections). The exegesis is thorough but generally not highly technical. Rather than using a lot of footnotes, Martin refers, within parentheses in the text, to readily recognized sources by an abbreviated title or the author’s last name.

Martin’s exegesis follows the RSV (printed at the head of each section), but the original is always in the background and transliterated Greek appears on almost every page—which should be clear to the reader who knows Greek, unobtrusive to the one who does not. Without burdening the page with detailed word studies Martin calls attention to the basic need for understanding the words themselves in their original context. His definitions usually are crisp and clear. For example, “grace is the undeserved favour of God reaching out to men who need his pardon because they are sinners”; “peace is not just ‘spiritual prosperity’; it is the salvation of the whole man both body and soul as the direct result of God’s grace.”

Unlike many running commentaries, this one presents each section as a complete unit. The section on Colossians 1:12–20, for example, could stand as an independent short study of this important passage. Yet each section is related to the whole: its introduction and conclusion serve both to make the section complete in itself and to relate the particular passage to the rest of the commentary. For a minister who no doubt will turn to this commentary for help with a particular passage this feature is of considerable importance.

At three places the author digresses from his running commentary to deal with two particularly important and difficult passages. There are two “notes” on Colossians 1:15–20 and one on 2:11–13. These “notes” are set in reduced type, at the most occupy only a few pages, and necessarily deal with some rather technical issues. Martin is adept, however, at reducing the “technical problems” to that which is necessary for honest interpretation.

His “Note B: The Setting of Colossians 1:15–20 and Its Application” is an example of the best kind of New Testament exegesis—sensitive to all the problems, aware of the important solutions, yet recognizing that despite the problems involved (some of which can never with certainty be solved) the meaning and message of the passage can come through. Of Colossians 1:15–20 Martin concludes that Paul’s concern is not at all cosmological speculation. Rather, “Paul’s chief concern is with the new creation, actualized in conversion and Christian baptism.… Redemption does not consist in knowing the cosmic secrets of the Universe but in the experiences of sin’s release and cleansing.” Let it be noted that the haughty, boasting modern needs that good word as desperately as did the errorists at Colossae.

An outstanding feature of this commentary that will be especially helpful to every serious student of Colossians (and, in fact, of Paul in general) is the author’s stated intention to express in “popular form” the important insights of other interpreters. With the reservation that the “popular form” here is a bit heavier than average, this intention is admirably realized. Martin reviews especially the important commentaries of Lightfoot, Scott, Moule, Lohmeyer, Masson, and Bruce, and includes a host of articles in recent journals and the relevant material in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. In addition he gives careful attention to a recent important critical commentary—Eduard Lohse’s (in Fortress’s “Hermeneia” series). Martin reviews both those important contributions with which he agrees and those with which he disagrees. Furthermore, he not only states his reasons for his own conclusions; he also fairly and clearly states the arguments in favor of conclusions with which he disagrees. This important feature greatly enhances, the usefulness of this commentary for today and the future.

In summary, the present work is a competent interpretation of Colossians by an experienced student of Paul who is fully aware of the contributions of others and who is adept in selecting what is most important and most helpful in relating the message of Colossians to our day. For this reviewer an important contribution of this work is Martin’s basic approach to the interpretation of Scripture. A statement in his preface indicates the nature of this approach: “Paul as apostle of Jesus Christ is primarily here writing in a pastoral context and concerned with a specific set of historical and cultural circ*mstances. What he writes has a timeless validity, but in its original form it is dressed in garments of its own day and age.” It is this sane and serious approach to biblical interpretation and this basic conviction of “timeless validity” that makes Martin’s commentary an important contribution to the Church’s ongoing task of rightly interpreting Scripture.

Philosophy Of Religion

Problems of Religious Knowledge, by Terence Penelhum (Seabury, 186 pp., $7.95), God the Problem, by Gordon D. Kaufman (Harvard, 276 pp., $10), and Risk and Rhetoric in Religion: Whitehead’s Theory of Language and the Discourse of Faith, by Lyman T. Lundeen (Fortress, 276 pp., $9.50), are reviewed by Robert Brow, Anglican Rector of Cavan, Millbrook, Ontario.

Penelhum’s work is elegant, readable, and rigorous. He is a thoroughly competent philosopher who also understands theology. Problems of Religious Knowledge should be required reading in university-level philosophy-of-religion courses, and many readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY would profit by working through it. The aim is to clarify what is at issue between “the knowledge claims made in religious faith and the rejection of these claims by religious sceptics.” As examples of religious faith Penelhum selects St. Thomas Aquinas’s statement in the Summa and John Hick’s presentation of Protestant neo-orthodoxy in Faith and Knowledge (second edition, 1966). The argument, however, applies to a much wider range of theistic theology. Penelhum rightly takes it for granted that the proofs for the existence of God so far offered have failed.

He uses G. E. Moore’s “Proof of an External World” to illustrate the requirements for a successful indirect proof of the existence of God. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book if only to keep us from the perennial temptation to think we have proved the existence of God and the consequent implication of the stupidity of agnostics.

In the third chapter Penelhum argues that although no proofs of the existence of God have so far met the standards of proof, this is no proof that no proof is possible. A chapter on “Faith and Verification” has an important discussion of Hick’s doctrine of eschatological verification—the view that although no proof is possible now, the situation after death could verify the believer’s faith.

After a careful argument that revelation and proof need not be mutually exclusive terms, Penelhum suggests in a final chapter that St. Thomas’s dichotomy between faith and knowledge is not necessary. The man who has faith “considers himself to know certain things which the sceptic says he believes mistakenly.”

In the first four pages Penelhum notes and briefly dismisses two approaches to the philosophy of religion that stem from Wittgenstein’s later work. He refers the reader to the literature and to his own work on the argument that religious discourse is not intelligible. He also rejects “Wittgensteinian fideism,” a view that was never argued by Wittgenstein himself but can be vividly illustrated by the works of Castaneda. The argument is that neither Don Juan’s world of magic nor a Christian theistic world view can be criticized from outside the system. You can adopt or refuse to adopt, but you cannot say that it is wrong. Penelhum’s too brief but (I think) plausible answer is that “it needs a great weight of argument to force us to hold, a priori, that what men of faith proclaim and what unbelievers deny is not one and the same thing, and known to be.” Although discussion may not be possible between two world views like magic and theism, it should surely be possible for, say, a believing and an unbelieving scientist discussing their faith over a period of time in the same laboratory to understand what they are disagreeing about.

NEWLY PUBLISHED

Is the Day of the Denomination Dead?, by Elmer Towns (Nelson, 160 pp., $5.95). Towns is the unofficial publicist for large Baptist congregations. Two earlier books, The Ten Largest Sunday Schools (1969, Baker) and America’s Fastest Growing Churches (1972, Impact), overlooked giant Presbyterian, Pentecostal, and black congregations, among others. Drawing on his research Towns seeks to show in the present book that whatever benefits denominations—which, like church buildings, are admittedly extra-biblical—may have provided in the past, they are now in urban, technological, changing society more likely to hinder than to help the advance of the Gospel. His thesis will disturb many but deserves consideration.

The Jesus Scroll, by Donovan Joyce (Dial, 216 pp., $5.95). Sarcastic and bitter attack on Jesus and Christians. Joyce tells of a no longer available document he has seen in a language he doesn’t read which supports such wild speculation as that Jesus lived to be eighty. According to Joyce, early Christian writings turned the Lord “into the greatest bore the world has known.”

From Time to Time, by Hannah Tillich (Stein and Day, 252 pp., $7.95), and Paulus, by Rollo May (Harper & Row, 113 pp., $5.95). Both books are highly subjective and deal with Paul Tillich as a man rather than as a theologian. They read more like exposés than biographies. The first, by his wife, is a disclosure of their life together in intimate detail. The second, by a student and close friend, is highly psychoanalytical.

Theological Investigations, Volumes IX and X, by Karl Rahner (Seabury, 268 and 409 pp., $9.75 each). Thirty-four essays and lectures on a wide variety of topics, written 1965–67.

p*rnography: The Sexual Mirage, by John Drakeford and Jack Hamm (Nelson, 189 pp., $6.95), and Obscenity, p*rnography, and Censorship, by Perry Cotham (Baker, 206 pp., $2.95 pb). Two differing approaches by evangelicals to a current ethical issue, especially to what should be done about it. (It is noteworthy that those who have opposed laws against racial discrimination because “you can’t legislate morality” are sometimes avid promoters of anti-p*rnography laws.) Both books are worth reading.

Medical Ethics, by Bernard Haring (Fides, 250 pp., $8.95), and Human Medicine, by James Nelson (Augsburg, 207 pp., $3.95 pb). Two ethicists, a Catholic and Protestant, give excellent, readable analyses of such issues as abortion, euthanasia, birth control, and experiments on human beings. They examine all sides of the question, including their own opinions, from a Christian viewpoint.

Which Way?, by John and Karen Howe (Morehouse-Barlow, 136 pp., n.p., pb). Comments guiding young Christians on practical and theological problems in the Christian life. Brief treatments of major topics.

Whatever Became of Sin?, by Karl Minninger (Hawthorne, 242 pp., $7.95). A call by one of the foremost psychiatrists to recognize sin for what it really is. Informally written. Especially significant because of the author’s prominence and his closeness to a biblical view though he writes from a psychiatric rather than exegetical perspective.

Cutting the Monkey-Rope, by John Galen McEllhenney (Judson, 126 pp., $2.50 pb). A look at the question, “Is the taking of life ever justified?” The author decides it is not, whether judicially or by abortion or enthanasia. He uses both Scripture and literature, especially Moby Dick.

William Penn and Early Quakerism, by Melvin Endy (Princeton, 410 pp., $17.50). Detailed examination of William Penn and his relation to the Quaker movement and his own religious thoughts. Counters some established views on the origin and development of Quakerism.

Story and Reality, by Robert P. Roth (Eerdmans, 197 pp., $3.45 pb). A look at the Gospel in the framework of a narrative of life rather than, as is most usually done, philosophy. Roth sees the literary narrative approach to theology as the intended way of revealing truth.

Prayer in a Secular World, by Leroy T. Howe (Pilgrim, 159 pp., $5.25). An analytical rather than inspirational discourse on prayer, its structure and inner dynamics. Written for those who want to be Christians in some way but have trouble with the notion of praying. Howe teaches philosophical theology at Southern Methodist.

The Living God, edited by Millard J. Erickson (Baker, 513 pp., $7.95 pb). Thirty-three selections intended to acquaint students with a variety of views on what theology is, how God is known, and what God is like. Good refresher for those out of seminary. Tillich, Ramm, Bultmann, Warfield, Aquinas, Barth, Calvin, Berkhof, Henry, and Augustine are among the contributors. A much better balanced anthology than is customary.

Man in Motion, by Gary Collins (Creation House, 167 pp., $4.95, $2.95 pb). Fourth and final volume of the “Psychology for Church Leaders” series. The other titles—Man In Transition, Effective Counseling, Fractured Personalities—are each slightly longer and have the same prices.) Looks at learning, emotion, motivation, individual differences, interpersonal relations, and the psychology of religion.

The Old Testament Books of Poetry From Twenty-six Translations, edited by Curtis Vaughan (Zondervan, 710 pp., $9.95). The complete King James text of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon is compared with selected significant variations from one or more of numerous other translations.

Death in American Experience, edited by Arien Mack (Schocken, 201 pp., $7.50), The Phenomenon of Death, edited by Edith Wyschogrod (Harper & Row, 235 pp., $12, $3.45 pb), Deaths of Man, by Edwin Shneidman (Quadrangle, 238 pp., $8.95), Death and Western Thought, by Jacques Choron (Macmillan, 320 pp., $6.95), and The Mystery of Death, by Ladislaus Boros (Seabury, 201 pp., $2.95 pb). The first of two contain eighteen essays by scholars and professionals in various fields, looking at the impact of death from a variety of perspectives. The third is by a psychologist and grows out of his daily experience of work with dying persons and the similar and varying patterns he has found. The fourth is a rarity: a hardback edition of a work issued in paperback ten years earlier. It is a philosopher’s survey of thinkers from Socrates to Sartre, and has become a classic. Since the reality of death is one of the key thrusts of the evangelistic appeal, it is well for Christians to know something of the feelings and thoughts of men regarding it. The fifth is a paperback edition of a worthwhile philosophical and theological treatise.

A flaw in Penelhum’s otherwise sparking philosophical work is the assumption that the point at issue is whether or not God exists. “Perhaps God exists, and perhaps not. Philosophy will not tell us. But if God exists, then Abraham and Isaiah and Peter and John and Paul knew that he does.” Since Kant, it has been objected that existence cannot be a predicate. Penelhum merely notes the discussion of this question in modern philosophy but dismisses as “misguided apologists” the many who have difficulty with the proposition that God exists.

For myself, I cannot see that it is misguided to hold that propositions such as “mauve exists,” “justice exists,” “love exists,” “Jones exists,” or “an artist exists for this painting” are meaningless. If those are meaningless, then “God exists” can fare no better. Once we have decided to use “mauve,” “justice,” or “love” in an agreed way, it then makes sense to discuss whether a particular dress is mauve, whether a particular law is just, and whether so and so exhibits love. Having agreed that we are going to apply the name “Jones” to such and such a person, we can ask whether Jones still lives in Toronto.

Now it obviously makes sense to discuss whether this painting was painted by an artist or by chance splashes of paint. If we admit that there was an artist, we can discuss whether he is still alive, and whether he is or was a loving man, a just man, and so on. Similarly the proposition “God exists” is totally meaningless, and philosophers and theologians should be reminded that it is not asserted in any of the great creeds. What is asserted in the first chapter of Genesis is that our world was created, and whoever did this is given the name “Elohim” in Hebrew, “Allah” in Arabic, or “God” in English. According to this use of the word, an atheist is then someone who denies that this world indicates creation in any sense that includes personal intention. The fool of Psalm 14:1 said not that “God does not exist” but that “there is no Creator” or possibly “there is no Judge.”

Most modern atheists would assert that instead of being created by intention this world came into being by haphazard chance. It is also possible to believe that this world was created, and then accuse the Creator of injustice, lack of love toward oneself or others, and so on. In this case one is not an atheist, but a Marcionite or a rebel against one’s Creator, and the form of the argument required to justify God is quite different.

Happily Penelhum’s otherwise excellent account of the difference between theists and atheists could be restated without making “God exists” the point at issue. For “God exists” read “this world of mountains, fish, mammals, and men was created.” This proposition would then be what is common to most theists, and it is obviously denied by true atheists.

Our second work is a collection of essays and lectures by Gordon Kaufman of Harvard Divinity School. The aim is to explain “the logic of the concept of God.” This is therefore a philosophy-of-religion preface to the author’s Systematic Theology: A Historical Perspective (1968). A chapter on “Christian Theology” makes clear that Kaufman views theology not as the study of a God-given revelation but as the exploration of a perspective on life. Chapter three is entitled “Transcendence Without Mythology.” Kaufman views God “as a limiting concept”; the word “refers to that which we do not know but which is the ultimate limit of all our experiences.” He then lists four types of limiting experience, and picks an experience “on analogy with the experience of personal limiting as known in the interaction of personal wills.” He later explains that just as we find ourselves limited and frustrated in our relation to other persons, we have a similar sense of limitation and frustration in relation to our world as a whole. This would then suggest that we are faced by, or answered back by, a personal being behind our world that we can then call “God.” This move later enables Kaufman in chapter six to change the meaning of revelation from personal acts of God, which to him would be mythological, to the whole process of world history.

In a chapter on “God as symbol” Kaufman uses a quite different method of analogy. He views the whole of Western culture centered on our theistic view of God as providing a map. The map has many roads, which go off the map, but all point in the direction of the city of God. We can if we choose use this map to order our lives in certain characteristic Christian ways. No proof of the existence of God is possible, but if we adopt the map we have a focus in what we call “God.”

We then ask on what basis we choose the Christian map over any other. The answer is that we cannot choose and act without some kind of map. The result is that “one does not ask first whether it is true that God exists (a speculative question), but rather whether this is an appropriate life-policy for men to adopt.” Kaufman then argues that speaking of God is one way, and perhaps the only way, to view our world as a moral universe. In chapter nine Kaufman contracts “secular” and “religious” world views with the “theistic” one that he has recommended.

Kaufman’s introduction is written in the shadow of Wittgenstein, but he does not use the methods that Wittgenstein has opened up for philosophy and theology. It is quite wrong to speak of theological discourse as a “language-game.” Often several language-games would be needed to clarify even a simple theological statement. Thus to understand “God created the world” Wittgenstein would want to know the speaker’s language-game for “the world.” Various language-games for using the word “created” could be constructed: e.g., would a beautiful pattern splashed on a white wall by a car driving through mud be a creation? Only then would the speaker’s language-game for the word “God” become clear, or it might in turn require several language-games to bring the use into proper focus. What then would Wittgenstein do with the following assertion by Kaufman: “The master act of God (which he has not yet completed) is the temporal movement of all nature and history toward the realization of his original intention in creation”? Are we back to theistic creation as usual, or is this theism of the Teilhard de Chardin variety? And how would ordinary men and little children learn the proper use of the word “God”? It is time that theologians who wish to venture into the philosophy of religion discipline themselves by a thorough exposure to the methods of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.

Our third work is Lyman T. Lundeen’s presentation of Whitehead’s theory of language. The style is one of verbose obscurity, and philosophers will find the uncritical use of references extremely tiresome. Lundeen does succeed in showing that Whitehead wrestled with problems of language that are now commonplace since the modern linguistic turn in philosophy. Thus he notes Whitehead’s rejection of the notion of “substance.” “The standard of actuality is no longer the Cartesian independent substance, but subjects who are constituted by their experience of each other.”

Typical Wittgensteinian insights are that language deceives us into thinking that stones, planets, animals, and so on exist as distinct entities, and so we are lured into dangerous oversimplification. There is the denial of logical precision in any assertions except those of mathematics: “such clarity as is given is relative and partial. Things are clear enough for the moment.” It does not follow from this, however, that “religious assertions, like all other human claims about concrete experience, are a mixture of certainty, probability, and provisional projection.” “I have a headache” has nothing probable or provisional about it, nor does “I believe in God, Creator … and in Jesus Christ.”

The incredibly obscure string of statements about God collected from the works of Whitehead (pp. 149–53) cannot help anyone to do theology. This book may serve students of Whitehead as a collection of his thinking on language and religion, but it does not rate as serious philosophy.

This column by the late Executive Editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAYis reprinted from the October 8, 1965, issue.

“The just shall live by his faith.” Thank God for that one condition laid down for our salvation. But the seal of that faith, the evidence of its genuineness, is love and compassion for others. There is no such thing as a Christian with a right vertical relationship to God but without a right horizontal relationship to his fellow men.

One day a man asked our Lord which was the great commandment of the law, and Jesus replied: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matt. 22:37–39).

For some of us this is very strong meat. We think we love God deeply because we have an unquestioning faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But we look around us and find it exceedingly difficult to love some of the unlovely, cantankerous, unwashed people with whom we come in contact.

Yet it is precisely at this point that we exhibit the validating seal of our faith. When the Apostle James wrote, “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also” (Jas. 2:26), he was in no way contradicting the Apostle Paul’s affirmation, “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8, 9).

It is clear as crystal that a faith content with mere affirmations is spurious. True faith has a seal of its genuineness—love, concern, and action for others.

The story is told of a German church destroyed during World War II. Later, when the rubble was being cleared away, a statue of Christ was found with only the hands missing. A famous sculptor offered to restore the hands, but the officers of the church declined, saying that here was a symbol of our Lord’s dependence on the hands of his followers to serve him in loving concern and compassion for others.

How does this concern differ from that associated with the so-called social gospel? The difference is this: The latter can be an end in itself, but true Christian love and compassion is a by-product of the Gospel and a fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Our Lord illustrated our need of compassion by the story of the Good Samaritan. A man was beaten, robbed, and left wounded, unable to walk. One religious leader came along and, seeing the victim, passed by as far as possible from where he lay. Another came close, took a look, and also left the man unattended. But a despised Samaritan came, sensed the situation and the need, and did something about it; he bound up the man’s wounds, carried him to an inn on his own animal, and made full provision for the days of recovery.

“Which of these three, thinkest thou,” Jesus asked, “was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go and do thou likewise.”

Does this make some of us uncomfortable? It should. We all too often wrap around ourselves the robes of orthodoxy while failing to exhibit love and compassion where it is so desperately needed.

The twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew gives us our Lord’s prophetic account of a coming judgment. What rivets our attention is the basis of the judgment: how men have responded to the needs of others. Here what matters is not what men have professed but how they have practiced it. The genuineness of faith is exhibited by love and compassion. Here in its stark nakedness one sees faith without works—dead, useless, spurious faith. Our Lord will recognize then—as he does now—the extent to which men are nothing more than pious frauds.

Our Lord’s depiction of this judgment scene makes plain the humility of those who serve him through their acts of mercy and the self-satisfaction of those who deny him by inaction.

The necessity of validating faith by actions of love in no way detracts from the prime necessity of faith, nor does it bypass the basic role of preaching in the ministry of the Church. Furthermore, social concerns can become distorted into a humanism that has no relation to Christianity. It seems that today the Church is often more concerned about making the prodigal comfortable and happy in the far country than about bringing him back to his Father through faith in Jesus Christ.

Where then is the dividing line between a faith validated by Christian action and social works centered in physical rather than spiritual welfare? Is not this division clearly found at the Cross? True Christian love and compassion should be a by-product of our love for the One who died for us.

It is possible to engage in all kinds of social action, not only without any Christian motive, but even to the detriment of the recipients of the action. It is also possible to call ourselves Christians but show neither love nor compassion to those who so desperately need both. Yet faith without works is dead, and social concern without spiritual concern is just as dead. Both are insidiously dangerous because they generate within us a satisfaction with ourselves that is wholly unjustified.

For twenty-five years the writer shared in the work of a large mission hospital in China. We had good buildings, good equipment, and well-trained doctors and nurses, and we tried to practice the best medicine and surgery possible in those days. But this humanitarian work was not an end in itself. In every way possible—by example, by word of mouth, by the printed page—we endeavored to preach and teach Christ as men’s basic and ultimate need. The cup of cold water was accompanied by the message of the saving Gospel. This long experience in “social work” has convinced the writer both that Christian love and compassion are an integral part of the Christian faith and that humanitarianism as an end in itself is a denial of that faith.

This is an area where Christians should search their own hearts and motives. Too often we pass by on the other side. And too often we look at human need without thinking of the need of the soul that Christ died to save. A hard orthodoxy without love and compassion is a travesty of the Christian faith. A sentimental humanism is likewise a travesty.

As Christians we must beware lest we belittle the efforts of some with whom we do not agree. After all, God is their judge. At the same time let us beware lest we deny our Lord by failing to love those about us with a love expressed in action.

Fourth in a Series

There is no need whatever to apologize that a Buddhist may chair a university religion department or teach in an elementary or secondary public school; public education can accommodate even proponents of the death of God or other momentarily fashionable views. Something else is at stake, however, when public education reflects the religious heritage of the West and the basic commitment of the citizenry mainly through the perspective of those who disown it, or professes to be neutral while denying adequate representation to traditional religion. Such a posture is akin to religious propaganda and not to academic objectivity.

The Supreme Court makes it clear that the teacher of the history of religion, comparative religions, and sacred texts must not endorse one religion over competing faiths in the classroom, nor give systematic indoctrination in any creed. The fact is that many religious colleges and day schools thrive in the United States mainly because American public education is thought not to deal adequately or fairly with the religious heritage and commitment of the masses. Some persons no doubt busily blast public schools as such in justification of private schools. But private schools do not depend upon inept public schools for their existence; they have a legitimacy of their own, whether public schools fulfill their proper role or not. The private school need not be in competition with the public school in the area of religious teaching and religious adequacy.

To be sure, the public campuses are not evangelical colleges or Christian elementary and secondary schools and are not expected to be so. But a school jeopardizes rather than protects its public character if it virtually excludes competent scholars who reflect the religious heritage of the West on its own presuppositions. Apart from a few noteworthy exceptions, the representation on secular campuses of evangelical scholars in religion and philosophy departments is proportionately very small; it might well be asked whether an anti-supernaturalistic and anti-evangelical bias has gained religious academic tenure.

Not only historic Protestant Christianity but the Catholic faith and traditional Judaism suffer maltreatment from such prejudices. Fair treatment must be accorded all religious perspectives, whether minority or majority faiths. We are now seeing on public campuses the rise of divisions of Jewish studies in affiliation with religion departments; divisions not only of Christian studies but of Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and/or evangelical studies and of other alternatives as well may emerge unless a truly representative overall balance of scholarship is maintained, providing a comprehensive overview of the past religious heritage and of the present religious scene.

Unfortunately, modern academic tolerance often is reduced simply to indifference over questions of religion and ultimate values, and even to polite disdain for the Judeo-Christian heritage; current resignation to value-free education nurtures the peculiar suspicion that attention to religious traditions will somehow prejudicially taint education. The Schempp decision declares that a complete education requires “a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization.” If this is so, what can we say about a generation that has had virtually no academic exposure to Old Testament and New Testament religion, or whose impressions are often limited to the prejudices of those contemporary thinkers who dismiss the supernatural as mere myth or linguistic bewitchment?

Study about religion in the public arena calls, assuredly, for both academic competence and an academic spirit. It is remarkable that across the years few states have included religion as a required subject for teaching certification at the elementary level. Recently Michigan and California approved religion as a teaching minor; Wisconsin also has an approved program at Marquette. But religion has traditionally been taught simply in an introductory crash course. The question now arises whether only prescribed institutions are to hold a monopoly of religious training that counts toward state teaching credentials, or whether all accredited institutions preparing elementary and secondary school teachers will be free to declare religion studies a part of their teacher program. And are faculty recruits for religion offerings to be drawn from public institutions whose religion departments are prone to exclude candidates who do not bend easily to the prevailing religious orientation?

The Schempp decision applies in principle to public education at all levels. It is now often emphasized, however, that elementary and secondary education differ significantly from higher education. At elementary and most secondary levels, students stand in a compulsory educational relationship to educators; at higher levels this relationship is voluntary. Some observers would also add that elementary and secondary students are more prone to indoctrination by their teachers. This may be true, but in this mass-media age even elementary school children are not exempt from skepticism over television commercials; college and university students, on the other hand, frequently parrot or mirror the views of their professors even in areas like philosophy that presumably demand critical reflection.

The second point in the Schempp decision refers specifically to the Bible. Public schools obviously cannot be expected to teach the Bible in the same way as do church institutions. Many church-related schools, for example, insist that the Scriptures be taught by believers only, and that Scripture be presented as the Word of God or as qualitatively unique. The Bible, according to the Supreme Court decision, merits study “for its literary and historic qualities.” For an evangelical Christian to insist that the Bible cannot be studied as literature or history unless one is a believer, and unless the Bible is accepted in advance as the Word of God, is inexcusable. The believing instructor ought not to forget that faith is a divinely engendered response that not he but God presses upon man. It is equally inexcusable for a non-evangelical to insist that one must be a modernist or a disbeliever to appreciate the literary and historical facets of the Bible. [To be continued.]

As recently as 1950, the Roman Catholic Church seemed a tightly organized, monolithic structure confident of its strength and of its unique calling and ministry. On November 1 of that year, Pope Pius XII promulgated the bull Munificentissimus Deus, elevating the long-standing tradition of the bodily assumption of Mary to heaven at her death to a binding dogma, one that has to be accepted for salvation (“Mariam … fuisse corpore et anima ad caelestem gloriam assumptam”). This reinforcement of traditional Catholic Mariology threw up a roadblock to fellowship with the Protestant denominations whose ecumenical enthusiasm had led to the establishment of the World Council of Churches only two years earlier. In addition, it was also an affront to the Eastern Orthodox, who had been celebrating the feast of Mary’s assumption for many centuries, but who steadfastly hold that no new doctrines beyond those approved by the seven ecumenical councils of the undivided ancient church may ever be made obligatory for believers.

Yet within a few years’ time, Pius XII had passed from the scene, to be replaced by the affable John XXIII (1958–63). The new pope convened the Second Vatican Council, and even before its work was finished, it was evident that the ancient, monolithic Roman church was being shaken to its foundations.

John XXIII had announced in his first encyclical, Ad Petri cathedram (July 2, 1959), that the chief goal of Vatican II was the growth of the Catholic Church. Aggiornamiento (“bringing up to date”), which involved liturgical reform, celebration of the Mass and other services in national languages rather than medieval Latin, the easing of many traditional rules, and the giving of more authority to the bishops than the monarchical papacy had previously allowed, was expected to reduce some of the traditional obstacles to Roman Catholic expansion and bring many “separated brethren” and perhaps even separated denominations “to Peter’s see.”

But the opposite happened. For example, theologian Hans Küng, whose timely interest in the theology of Karl Barth earned him a full professorship at Tübingen university, became so involved with Protestant thought that in the eyes of many he has ceased to be a Catholic. Gregory Baum, a Jew whose conversion to Roman Catholicism seemed to involve recognition of the unique claims of Jesus Christ, has now moved, and led others, in the direction of universalism and syncretism. The replacement of the old Latin Mass with modern-language translations, often of questionable quality, has confused and troubled countless faithful Catholics, leading to the establishment of rebellious “traditionalist” congregations. Some priests have advocated and practiced a “theology of revolution” that apparently owes more to Marx than to Aquinas or Jesus. Defection of priests and nuns has become almost a mass movement, and the number of “vocations”—decisions to enter the priesthood or a religious order—has dropped drastically. Previously vigorous Catholic evangelistic organizations such as the Paulist Fathers (established by a converted Unitarian with the goal of winning Protestants to Rome) have become little more than clubs for discussion of comparative religions.

Twenty-three years after Munificentissimus Deus, it is very hard to tell where the Roman church is going. It is evident that there is a tremendous evangelical stirring among Roman Catholicism’s world-wide constituency. Bible reading is encouraged. A kind of charismatic revival reminiscent of a genteel Protestant Pentecostalism has made great headway in Catholic parishes, often among precisely those Catholic people most interested in the spiritual reality and truth on which the papacy used to claim a rather strict monopoly. Attendance at Protestant services and evangelistic campaigns, formerly prohibited or severely limited, is not merely tolerated but often encouraged. At the same time, traditional Catholic leadership figures are either bogged down in doctrinal and disciplinary wrangles—such as the entanglement of the present pope in birth control and priestly celibacy disputes—and hence unable to give real leadership, or moving into such far-out “theologies” that they are no longer acceptable to the masses.

Evangelicals are finding that nominal Roman Catholics are increasingly sympathetic to the biblical Gospel proclaiming salvation by faith and the need for a personal relationship to Jesus Christ. What are the reasons for this? Perhaps a primary one is the fact that the Roman church has accustomed its adherents to think in terms of absolute truth and binding principles. They expect something more from religion than mere optimistic philosophizing or social altruism. Roman Catholicism in the past may not have given them a confidence-inspiring, satisfying personal faith, but it has conditioned them to look for one. They know about commandments that are meant to be obeyed, and they understand something of the seriousness of sin and of God’s judgment. Hence, unlike nominal Protestants accustomed to thinking in relativistic terms, they can understand it when they hear that God “now commands all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). At evangelistic rallies, members of Catholic parishes are frequently disproportionately numerous among those coming forward.

What does all this mean for the evangelical trying to witness to Roman Catholics? He must be aware of the tremendous vacuum created by the virtual collapse of traditional Roman authority, and recognize the great opportunity offered by the hundreds of millions of Roman Catholics who have been led to expect something true and authoritative from God, but who have not yet heard the Gospel presented in personal and understandable terms. At the same time, he should be aware not only of the extreme disarray in Protestant churches, but also of the tenacity of the ties with which many Roman Catholics, even fallen-away ones, are bound to their church. He should not press a converted Roman Catholic to forsake all his Catholic traditions, especially if he cannot help him to find an adequate evangelical congregation where the sense of worship and of the majesty of God is strong. But, recognizing that authentic Bible teaching and biblical fellowship are rare within Roman Catholic circles, he should do his best to bring the evangelically inclined Catholic into a parallel fellowship, such as a Bible-study or prayer cell, where the Word is taught and believed.

Whether a world-wide breakdown of Roman Catholicism is imminent, and whether in view of Catholicism’s. tremendous role in Christian civilization our culture could survive one, is not clear. But it is clear that there is a tremendous hunger among tens of millions of Catholics today, and a corresponding opportunity to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to them in simplicity and in power (see also News, page 46).

Willa Cather: Understanding God’S Ways

Attitudes toward Christianity play a major part in some of Willa Cather’s finest novels. Whether writing of Catholicism or Protestant fundamentalism, she explores the matter of hypocrisy and sincerity in those who profess Christianity. The novelist herself, born December 9, 1873, was raised a Baptist and later became an Episcopalian.

In One of Ours, which was written in 1922 and which won a Pulitzer Prize, Claude Wheeler’s mother is a member of an unidentified “fundamentalist” church. (To Willa Cather all denominations stressing personal conversion blend together; theological distinctions are ignored. Her characters are either Protestant fundamentalists or Catholics.) Claude knows “that nothing could happen in the world which would give her so much pleasure as to see him reconciled to Christ.” But sending him to a denominational school did not help:

Now he dismissed all Christian theology as something too full of evasions and sophistries to be reasoned about. The men who made it, he felt sure, were like the men who taught it.… Though he wanted little to do with theology and theologians, Claude would have said that he was a Christian.

Claude’s mother is a sympathetic character. Her Christianity does not keep her from concern for others. Cather juxtaposes that form of evangelical faith with that of Claude’s future wife, Enid, whose only desire is to become a missionary to China like her sister. Instead she marries Claude, neglects him for her faith, and eventually leaves him to nurse her sick missionary sister. She loves impersonally, out of duty.

The novels centering on Catholicism also explore appearance and reality. In Death Comes For the Archbishop, perhaps her most famous novel, Bishop Latour and Father Vaillant willingly sacrifice comfort for mission, and travel from France to Arizona to preach to the Indians. While the two men struggle to civilize the land and Christianize the natives, another priest robs his parishioners and lives in sinful gluttony. Father Vaillant is this priest’s antagonist; he is a man dedicated to God. Yet these dedicated Catholics love the world enough to spend time ordering it. Cather’s sincere Protestant Christians for the most part ignore order and concentrate on piety. This other-worldly element in fundamentalism disturbed the novelist, who found in trees and rocks and other earthly things beauty to be cherished. She resisted categorizing God’s ways and boxing his purposes and rebuked those who encouraged religious conformity. Perhaps her attitude toward Christianity may be summed up in Mrs. Wheeler’s later and less fundamentalist position: “As I get older, I leave a good deal more to God. I believe He wants to save whatever is noble in this world, and that He knows more ways of doing it than I.” While Willa Cather may not have understood God’s ways, her sensitive portrayal of characters who thought they did provides the reader with a firm reminder of the fallibility of man.

The Spirit Of St. Louis

Missouri’s largest city was named after King Louis IX of France (1214–70), who had a morally memorable reign. He was named a saint undoubtedly because of his participation in the crusades, but his conduct on the throne was marked by exemplary integrity. He was strong, able, wise, and above all, honest and compassionate. He kept very close tabs over his officials, gave personal attention to grievances of his subjects, and through it all went a long way toward achieving order at home and peace abroad.

The city of St. Louis also has a great reputation to live up to in its association with Charles Lindbergh. Billy Graham, in a sermon during his crusade in St. Louis last month, recalled how the famous aviator turned down a million dollars from a company that wanted him to endorse its product. Lindbergh maintained that his solo flight across the Atlantic in the Ryan monoplane “Spirit of St. Louis” was conceived as an investment in the cause of aviation, not to make money.

Key 73, headquartered in St. Louis, is a symbol of integrity in evangelism. Concessions could have been made to this or that group with some worthy ax to grind, but to its credit it has maintained a truly independent character with primary loyalty only to Christ. It didn’t sacrifice the best on the altar of the good.

Surely this is a day when people should be more sensitive to the need for integrity. When Graham’s St. Louis crusade is televised from coast to coast in the weeks ahead, we hope it will have this salutary effect.

American Genesis

To promote a more responsible celebration of Christmas, a Washington, D. C., group called Alternatives, founded by Bob Kochtit*ky, has published an Alternate Christmas Catalogue. The catalogue is “about a simpler lifestyle which does not violate or oppress other humans or the environment; a lifestyle which creates, nurtures and protects life instead of destroying it; a lifestyle rooted in the great traditions of our religions and nation and cultures and therefore responsive to all the earth’s inhabitants.” It suggests that people purchase no Christmas gifts, that they make whatever gifts they give, and that they give the money saved to organizations “helping people and the earth.” The goal is $5 million diverted from consumer products in five years.

There are needy libraries and individuals overseas that would deeply appreciate a complimentary subscription to CHRISTIANITY TODAY. You can designate the recipient, or let us choose from requests we have received. An overseas subscription is $8.50 for one year, $13 for two, and $16 for three.

We like the basic idea, though we wonder if the publishers understand that the basic motivations of people must be changed if their inclinations to buy up so many goods and services are to be reversed. Evangelicals, moreover, may prefer to make their own choices of groups to donate their Christmas money to. Many of the thirty-one organizations described in the catalogue, while claiming a religious affiliation, do not specifically proclaim the message of salvation through the one who came to earth on that first Christmas.

We would like to go beyond Alternatives’ Christmas idea to suggest that North American Christians think about an alternative New Year’s Eve this year. Let’s forgo the revelry (there’s little to cheer about, anyway), and instead gather in churches and homes in a spirit of repentance and confession. Pass up the parties and make Watchnight services a special time of quiet commitment, a new turning to God. If we mean business about the things that really matter, we can also forget about football and parades on New Year’s Day and use the time for spiritual meditation.

Such an observance could literally turn our continent around and give it a new beginning. A major reordering of personal and social priorities could result. The only question left is whether the God of judgment has brought us low enough to give us the motivation to do it.

Budget Input

If you have any say in determining a particular minister’s salary, or if you are helping to support a missionary or other type of church worker, you will want to keep in mind as you project your 1974 giving that inflation has taken a heavy toll this year. Rises in the cost of living hit particularly hard at those with small salaries from which a high proportion must go for food and other necessities. Many in full-time Christian vocations fall into this category. They need substantial increases simply to keep up.

Back To The ‘Old Ways’?

According to a survey of 26,000 high school leaders, recently released by Who’s Who Among American High School Students, there is a resurgence of traditional values in the religious and moral realms. For example, 77 per cent of those responding feel that religion is relevant in today’s society (84 per cent of the Protestants, 79 per cent of the Roman Catholics, 58 per cent of the Jews), while 66 per cent claim to attend religious services regularly (70, 83, and 16 per cent for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews). Sixty-eight per cent intend to raise their children in the same general way that they were raised. On the other hand, only 41 per cent say that they discuss problems with their parents, and a miniscule 1 per cent consult a minister about them (see also News, page 49).

Evidently the “revolutionary” mood of the late sixties has faded, and the pendulum is swinging back toward more traditional values. But it is also clear that there is much ambiguity and uncertainty. The radically new is no longer so attractive, but the “old ways” and their concrete implications are only vaguely discerned. There appears to be a longing for something substantial but uncertainty as to where it can be found—a clear challenge to Christians to proclaim what Paul calls “the whole counsel of God.”

A Holiday Sky Show

The energy crisis will probably pull the plug on a lot of decorative Christmas lighting this year, but a natural display in the holiday sky will more than make up for the loss. The recently discovered Comet Kohoutek is now moving around the sun and is expected to emerge spectacularly during the latter part of December. The comet is very large, and its position in relation to the earth and sun is ideal for a dazzling show. Astronomers predict that the comet’s tail may extend across one-sixth of the sky. Skylab III astronauts have been planning spacewalks to observe Kohoutek, including one on Christmas Day that will, it is hoped, be relayed to the world via television.

South Americans will be treated to an even more awesome display: an annular eclipse (one in which the moon covers all but a bright ring around the circumference of the sun) on the day before Christmas.

Perhaps we’ll be privileged through these unusual events to experience some of the thrill felt by those who saw the Star of the Nativity.

Cold Winter Coming?

The fact that our lives have become darker, slower, and cooler in recent weeks should encourage us all to face up to the facts of the energy crisis. It no longer seems like an idle threat or scare story; it is a reality that affects us personally. And some of us may yet feel it much more; already there have been record low temperatures in the eastern and midwestern United States.

There is no present crisis in supplies of energy, though there may be such a crisis in the future if the world continues to use energy at the current rate. The crisis today is caused by the decision of the Arab oil-producing countries to try to get by extortion what they have been unable to obtain through war or through the United Nations. They apparently are willing and ready to stop the machinery of production around the world even if it leads to a great economic catastrophe.

One can hardly deny that both the Arabs and the Israelis have a case. Who can blame the Jews for refusing to return all the lands they secured by conquest when to do so might threaten their very existence? And who can blame the Arabs for wanting to get back what they lost in the 1967 war?

The problem cannot be solved until both sides make real concessions. And no one knows at this point whether this will happen. Meanwhile the Arab oil producers have the rest of the world at their mercy. Even if one were to grant the justice of their demands, is it possible to condone their strategy?

The situation today demonstrates the interdependence of the world in which we live. No nation lives or dies to itself anymore. It also teaches us that we must develop new sources of energy, perhaps fuels of which we have no present knowledge. Meanwhile the United States must reduce its demands for energy and help to work out a peace settlement that will unlock the flow of oil for the world.

The current crisis once more shows the Christian that neither men nor nations, not even the most powerful on earth, are fully masters of their own fate.

The Miracle, The Mystery

A miracle has in it elements of mystery, for it apparently defies the laws of nature and, since it is not repeated, is not subject to verification. The incarnation of Jesus Christ is both miracle and mystery.

In the incarnation: (1) God assumed human form, and existed in unique fashion as both man and God; this was a once-for-all event. (2) A Hebrew virgin conceived by the Holy Spirit (this was no parthenogenesis because the child would then have had to be female). (3) The birth occurred in Bethlehem of Judea in accordance with the prophetic predictions; for Jesus to have been born elsewhere would have either nullified his claim to be the Messiah or invalidated the prophetic Scripture. (4) The event occurred at a particular time in history and was marked by what the Wise Men described as “his star in the East”; for Jesus to have been born at any other time would have removed him from the epicenter of God’s eternal plan of salvation and have left man without a redeemer or any hope of one yet to come.

At Bethlehem’s manger, miracle and mystery merge to form a pattern that defies explanation from any other perspective than that of divine revelation. God indeed has spoken decisively, but the fashion in which he spoke has been “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.” This is both the offense of the Gospel and its power to enlighten and save. In this Christmas season men must get behind the trees, the tinsel, and the toys to the cross that followed hard on the manger, and the miracle and mystery of the resurrection that far surpass the miracle and the mystery of his birth.

Day Of Infamy

In doing the sort of in-depth research necessary for this column I went to one of the young secretaries in our office.

“Tell me,” I said, “everything you know about December 7.”

She flipped over the leaves of her desk calendar and announced, “It’s a Friday.”

“What else is it?”

“Let’s see,” she said, “the only holiday you know is Global Tree Frog Day but that’s in April. Sorry, there’s nothing on my calendar. You must have the wrong desk.”

“Try thinking history.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Something happened on December 7. Hiroshima?”

“Nope.”

“End of the Second World War.” “Try Pearl Harbor.”

“Of course,” she said, brightening. “The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1947.”

“No—1941.”

“What do you expect? I wasn’t even born then.”

So much for the day that was going to live in infamy. Not only does the day not live in infamy, but the perpetrator of that infamous act is now our most important ally in the East.

In our state, a Democrat turned Republican has just won the governor’s chair. And in national politics a former Democrat has his eye on a future Republican nomination for President.

The point of all this is that in politics, whether international or local, expediency is the operational principle. Yesterday’s enemy becomes today’s ally. The Chinese are no less enemies of human freedom than they were in the days of the cold war, but their friendship is thought to be necessary in maintaining the international détente.

At one point in my immoderate youth I became a card-carrying conservative, rallying behind the banner of God and Man at Yale and “Human Events.” I even (blush) wrote a fan letter to Barry Goldwater.

My naïveté is so deeply entrenched and resistant to illumination that it took some years for me to realize that only the amateurs in politics operate on the basis of fixed principles. Professional politicians are champions of expediency.

Unfortunately, this principle has come to control a great deal of modern life. It’s easy to see it in operation in business arrangements and sometimes even in personal relationships.

Expediency says, “I’ll do whatever is in my own interest.” What we need to do is to recapture the principles of the radical from Galilee who demands that we do what is right even if it works against our own interests.

EUTYCHUS V

An ‘Iffy’ Leadership

Did I ever … thank [Cheryl Forbes] for all of the good press she’s given us? By reporting our activities she has helped us gain acceptance and support from the Christian community, which we need and want. One thing I like about her reporting is that she has the knack for picking up statements we’re making which seem to typify or epitomize the event for us.…

However, in her article on Jesus Christ Superstar (The Refiner’s Fire, “‘Superstar’ Brings Us Together—In Protest,” Oct. 12), she used the phrase “Moishe Rosen and his Jews for Jesus. Ordinarily that would be cool. However, I think it would be safe to say that I named the movement, but unlike Adam, our first father, who named the animals, then had dominion over them, the Jews for Jesus movement is mine by participation and influence, not any real authority.

Now here’s where the real problem comes in. The parents of many of these young people, and most of them are in their early twenties, think that I’m some kind of a Svengali who has succeeded in mesmerizing their children, then brainwashing them to do my will.

I’m a spokesman, but I don’t even have a figurehead position of leadership. Jews for Jesus in San Francisco is unofficially organized like a tribe and maybe I’m the tribal leader, but I’m the leader of the tribe by the consent of the others.…

Most of the decisions to demonstrate as we did at Jesus Christ Superstar are shared decisions. We have a staff or council meeting for two hours every Monday afternoon. About twenty-five people attend. The initiative for the Superstar demonstration came from Steffi Geiser. My role is chiefly that of a strategist. Anyone who attends the council meeting has the right to make certain initiatives. Then we follow an adversary procedure to try to find fault with the plan or the project. If there is any disagreement, we call for a vote.… Anyone who votes, even if he votes no, must participate in a group project. Since I’m the only one who is trained as a preacher, I get most of the speaking engagements. However, several of the group are in Bible college and a couple have graduated already. What I’m trying to say is that my leadership of Jews for Jesus is a sometime thing and an iffy thing.

MOISHE ROSEN

Jews for Jesus

Corte Madera, Calif.

Critics tend to be critical, but ought not always to go uncriticized. Hence this opening dialogue with Cheryl Forbes on her recent review of Superstar.

First, to the point of anti-Semitism. Christianity has had to live with this for a long time. But it occurs to me that for our time, the message is rather that his own people killed him—as you and I would be the first to do were Jesus to venture into 1973 America. Is it not true that the most pious of his time found him most uncomfortable to have around? And would not we? Indeed, do not we?

The tour theme fascinates me, as it did our youth group and confirmation class. It is novel to have a story of Jesus begin with a bus trip. But if Jesus got on that bus at the end, it escaped our eyes. I think that was intentional, and therefore a far stronger statement of the resurrection than the record Superstar was (which ends with a musical interpretation of John 19:41).… You and I long for a more faithful interpretation of the great Story, but we are not likely to be satisfied. Any telling is an interpretation, if only a voice inflection of the telling, or even the reading of the passages as printed.… I do believe that I can learn from even the worst interpreter of that story. At least one of the purposes of the coming of Jesus is that we might be provoked—thought-provoked, that Superstar has been faithful to the intent of God. As the line goes, “This was unexpected. What do I do now?”

JOHN R. MCELDERRY

The Wheat Ridge Congregation of the United Church of Christ

Denver, Colo.

Not By Us

I appreciated Howard Snyder’s needed and balanced treatment of spiritual gifts in (“Misunderstanding Spiritual Gifts,” Oct. 12). However, the exegesis is seriously amiss where he quotes David R. Mains.… Talents are genetic and learned endowments to be offered to God as a living sacrifice, and these natural abilities may be anointed and blessed of God for service. Spiritual gifts, on the other hand, have prior existence in the Godhead and are not brought into existence by our attitude. For example, the gifts of salvation and faith exist in the Godhead independently of any change in human attitudes toward them; so it is with all spiritual gifts.

NORMAN COPPIN

Calgary, Alberta

Wrong Way Of Words

Immediately after mentioning to my wife how helpful it would be for CHRISTIANITY TODAY to publish an article on our speech (conversations), I ran across your excellent article “The Two Ways of Words” (Oct. 12). I commend D. G. Kehl on his work and recommend the publication to youth ministers throughout our nation. Is my speech outdated (at only age twenty-nine), and is it becoming an accepted practice for youth men to use historically taboo words even when preaching? The words I am referring to go even beyond the type wormed at by D. G. Kehl. In my last two years at the National Youth Workers Convention, in keynote addresses the audiences have been subjected to [all the usual “four-letter” words].…

I can fully appreciate the context of these words and the purpose for which they were uttered, but I must totally reject the choice of words themselves. Is this the manner of conversation we are to project to a world which is already confused?

GARY R. WILLIAMS

Youth Director

Community Baptist Church

Manhattan Beach, Calif.

Good Words

The officers and staff of the American Bible Society are most grateful for the splendid coverage you give the program we have called “Good News for New Readers” (Oct. 12). The endorsem*nt contained in the editorial “Spreading the Word With Impact” is warmly appreciated and should produce new support for the Bible cause from those who love the Lord and wish to see his Word more widely known. The news story by David Kucharsky is thorough and factual, characteristics which we have come to expect from your writers.

LATON E. HOLMGREN

General Secretary

American Bible Society

New York, N. Y.

Editorial Kindliness

We have been intrigued by the kindly handling which Salvador Allende has had in some sections of the press. It seems to us that in their solicitude for him, the press reveals its own preference for Marxism over against democracy. In this opinion it seems the only requirement is that Communism come to power by the so-called democratic process. Some people seem to forget that however it comes to power Marxist Communism is still Marxist Communism—the very antithesis of the democratic way of life and the very opposite of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Even though honestly elected to power (Allende, by the way, came to power with about one-third or more of the popular vote), the Antichrist would still be the Antichrist.

Your rather strange editorial “Repentance That Leads to Salvation” (Oct. 12) was by no means one of your best. We are sure that your apparent kindliness does not indicate that you join with those who would prefer Marxism over democracy just so Marxism comes to power by the use of what we know as democratic techniques.

THEODORE S. SMYLIE

St. Louis, Mo.

Luther Who?

Mark A. Noll’s article “Believer-Priests in the Church” (Oct. 26) opens with the sentence, “Martin Luther, as every school boy knows, challenged the Roman Catholic Church and founded Protestantism.…” Martin Luther did indeed challenge the Roman church and found Protestantism, but not every school boy knows it. I was appalled recently in announcing a showing of the film Martin Luther to discover that not one single young person contacted had ever heard of Martin Luther or the Reformation. All, however, had heard of Martin Luther King! Teachers are complaining that there is too much history to teach anymore, so I suppose there are historical priorities. At the same time many religious leaders are saying, Let’s have unity at the expense of doctrine. I suppose Martin Luther and his Reformation are caught in the squeeze—shall we say, victims of the latest phase-out?

JOHN M. KACHELMYER

Director

Christian Mission to Youth

Belen, N. M.

The Basic Formula

The editorial “New Reformation Aborning?” (Oct. 26) prompted me to make the following remarks.… I feel strongly that the “earlier Reformation allegiance” is exactly the place from which the “new Reformation” will come. This Reformation gave to all mankind a basic spiritual formula [which] … rests upon the assumption that it is the duty and sole function of the Protestant clergy to “preach the Word of God written.” It was the responsibility of the civil body to make and enforce such laws as would organize and control all of the activities of the civil body in accordance with the Law of God as found in the Word written. This is the democratic principle.

The alternative to this principle is, and always has been, the principle of the Oriental religions, and primitive religions, throughout history, viz., that both civil and religious authority and power were held by one man, the headman, by whatever name he might be called. This is the ontocratic principle.… There can be no freedom, either religious or political, as long as the powers of priest and magistrate, or the reverse, remain in the hands of one man, by whatever name he may be known.

This division of powers was the profound gift of God in Jesus Christ.

GEORGE L. TAPPAN

Minister of Pastoral Visitation

First Presbyterian Church

Binghamton, N. Y.

Question … And Answer

Cheryl Forbes’s statement that Bishop John Allin “will become, when consecrated, ‘chief apostle on earth,’ according to church tradition and polity” (News, “Bishop John: The New Chief Apostle,” Oct. 26) is simply untrue.… Ms. Forbes ought to let us know the source for such a bizarre assertion. Moreover, Allin will not be “consecrated”.… He has already been consecrated and ordained a bishop.… A presiding bishop … is of no higher order than his fellow bishops.

KENNETH D. ALDRICH, JR.

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church

Westville, N. J.

I am an Episcopal parish priest, a former newsman with metropolitan daily experience in Chicago and Washington, and author of a story from the sixty-fourth General Convention of the Episcopal Church [a quote from which] has caused some consternation among your readers.… My error, I believe, was in attempting to describe a vague church doctrine known as “apostolic succession.” A life-long Anglican and a priest for four years, I have been brought up to believe apostolic succession to be a doctrine of the Episcopal Church, albeit a touchy one in this day of ecumenical negotiating. I have understood the doctrine to mean that bishops are successors to the apostles by virtue of the laying on of bands at the time of their consecration. And further, that this line of succession is unbroken from earliest times to today. Likewise, all priests were included in the apostolic succession by the laying on of hands. Thus, I wrote that the presiding bishop is placed in a special relationship to the apostles at the time of his consecration. In other words, he is an apostolic successor.

Secondly, I took a vow at my ordination to “reverently obey … [my] Bishop, and other chief Ministers, who according to the Canons of the Church, may have the charge and government over … [me].” Thus if the bishop is a modern-day successor to the apostles, then the presiding bishop is “chief apostle” among those over whom he has authority.…

I did not intend to create controversy. I thought I was honestly reporting church dogma. My error was in attempting to interpret it. However, I am amazed that I, a life-long Anglican from a family of Anglicans and a priest of the Episcopal Church, could have gotten an idea which many have termed “sheer fantasy.” What this says to me is that it is time the Episcopal Church reviewed the doctrine of apostolic succession and the tradition of the historic episcopacy. I would urge theologians and church historians to write papers on these subjects in hopes of exploring their relationship and perhaps giving some answers to the questions raised by William White in 1789.… If the doctrine of apostolic succession and the tradition of the historic episcopacy are vital to the Christian faith, let us understand what they mean. If we believe either or both of these “dogmas,” let us say so. If we do not, then let us abandon that which we do not believe. For it seems to me that these “dogmas” are very much at the heart of ecumenical discussions as to the validity of holy orders, the nature of ministry, and the authority for ministry.

If my unintended “offense” has caused some in the church to seriously consider these matters, then I am thanksful. And if I am simply one confused priest, then I appreciate the opportunity to be corrected and humbly apologize for sharing my ignorance in an official press release.

JAMES M. CORAM

St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church

High Point, N. C.

Forties-Style

Your [news story] “Youth for Christ: Now There Are Two” (Oct. 26) was interesting, but it missed a couple of important points. The reason for the creation of Youth Evangelism Association is to provide a fellowship of men and women who want to help each other without rigid control over direction so long as they meet the high standards of separation and an aggressive evangelistic drive using both mass and personal soul-winning. Each member organization will remain completely autonomous and may do their job using whatever personnel and facilities best fit their local people and situations. A major dynamic of Youth for Christ historically has been the autonomy of local ministries. The departure from this approach is an integral part of the current administration of Youth for Christ, Incorporated—U.S.A. A central control is now the stated goal. The original intent and purpose of Youth for Christ International was service to local rallies. Now this has been reversed, with local entities serving the top-heavy headquarters.… Again, historically, Youth for Christ was known as an aggressive evangelistic outreach … with open, public invitations.… Now a new approach is being taught in what was formerly called the Youth for Christ Director’s School but is now dubbed the Summer Institute of Youth Evangelism. Public commitments to Christ are no longer popular with those promoting the current Campus Life philosophy. The new approach is “Don’t advertise your deal as a Christian event. Don’t use the name Jesus, or Christ, or God in your announcements, or during your initial (image) events such as Burgerbash or Scream-in-the-Dark.” This approach has long been used by another youth organization, but it is a complete departure from the hard-hitting, front-door type of youth evangelism begun by Torrey Johnson, Billy Graham, and Bob Cook, continued for thirty years by Al Metsker, and protracted by many of the largest local Youth for Christ rallies in America. The present regime of Youth, for Christ—U. S. A., by innuendo just short of decree, despairs the mass-rally approach that has been the mainstay of Youth for Christ during its thirty years of existence. The gigantic Billy Graham crusades (with the majority attending being youth), the phenomenon of Explo ’72 in Dallas, the success of the Kansas City Youth for Christ Super Rallies, and the Tristate youth for Christ Faith Festivals … are virtually ignored by the Wheaton-based Youth for Christ people.

The five founders of Youth Evangelism Association have been members of the Youth for Christ Executive Council. All are veterans of more than ten years in the Youth for Christ ministry. Each serves as executive director of a youth outreach that functions from a locally owned (not-for-profit) corporation, youth center complex. The tangible assets (land, buildings, and equipment) total more than $3 million. The combined annual operations budget of these five ministries exceeds $1 million. More than 10 per cent of all high school Youth for Christ clubs in America are connected with these five local ministries. The aggregate Saturday-night rally attendance in the five cities averages more than 3,000 teen-agers. These ministries won more than 6,000 teenagers to Christ during the past twelve months. One founder is the former Eastern Area vice-president of Youth for Christ. One is a former state director. One is director of the largest local youth ministry in the world.

Our [group’s] purpose is to continue the type ministry begun in the midforties, but proven even more effective in the seventies, as the way to reach the maximum number of young people most efficiently and economically with the unchanging Gospel of Jesus Christ.

GEORGE H. DOOMS

Vice-President

Youth Evangelism Association

North Evansville, Ill.

Fairy Tales For Women

Among the entertainments vying for the leisure time of women responsible for home management is the fiction in “women’s” magazines. Much has been said about the image of women in these glossy, colorful publications that promise help for achieving successful marriage and parenthood, beautiful hair, clothes, and figure, tastefully decorated homes, and good eating on a limited budget (without, of course, suggesting not buying the magazine as a step toward cutting cost). Indeed, they have felt the not-always-gentle prodding of some women’s groups. The purpose here is not to debate whether the magazines fit the image of women’s lib but whether reading them helps fit a woman to the image of God.

It is not an entirely just exercise: the magazines and their fiction make no claim of being Christian, and it is not completely fair to judge them by standards they do not set for themselves. Still, their readers must include thousands of church-going women and probably not a few minister’s wives. So it is not unfair to ask how the contents might affect Christian commitment.

To the mirror of biblical truth, then, we shall hold up thirty-six stories from fourteen issues (dated January through July, 1973) of Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Redbook. Eight of them are short, short stories—one or two magazine pages long. Nine are novelettes or condensed novels, and by length the rest fall somewhere between. Generally in this non-comprehensive sample the best stories—most entertaining and best written—were either short or long.

Only one has a clearly Christian theme. In “Mrs. Barton Declines” by Pearl Buck (LHJ, Feb.), a dying woman forgives her husband’s affair (he had committed suicide years earlier when she had refused to forgive him) and encourages her daughter-in-law to do likewise. The story concludes with a suggestion of salvation, resurrection, and eternal life:

“Of course,” Mrs. Barton said faintly but cheerfully, “I have to die sometime. Then … I’ll be buried in Boston.… But I’m not going to die. Not this time! I’m going to have a good night’s sleep as soon as Charles takes you home, Aline, and in the morning when you both come to see me, I’ll be resurrected!”

Mrs. Barton’s sisters and son had been called to her bedside on other occasions, but she had always rallied. This time, with those who trespassed against her forgiven, will be the last, the reader is allowed to believe.

Twice more in this sample an element of personal religion appears; in two stories frightened, lonely widows consider prayer. The woman in B. J. Chute’s “Turn of the Tide” (FC, July) believes she sees a gull being torn apart out on New York’s East River as she herself feels torn by fears of city life. “She thought she might pray,” Ms. Chute writes. “Pray that a boat would come along and run into the gull and kill it mercifully.… Or that the tide would suddenly rush in and whirl the gull away.” Finally the tide does begin to turn and she realizes the gull is actually a cardboard box. And a tugboat does appear: “It was the boat she had prayed for, and now it was here and she no longer needed it.” The point of the story is not her appeal to God for help but her realization that fear of the unknown is foolish and she might as well live one day at a time. It is an emotionally powerful story; the protagonist’s icy stabs of panic reach the reader, too.

Equally powerful for its depiction of terror is the condensation of The Crystal Mouse, by Babs H. Deal (LHJ, Jan., Feb.). Sara Hillstrom, just widowed, moves into her new apartment to discover she is the building’s only occupant. Strange night noises—most of which she makes herself—terrify her, but, she thinks, one o’clock is “too late to call anyone without a reason. And to whisper ‘Help’ is never any reason.”

Shamefacedly, and with a touch of self-irony, she looked up the number and dialed the Dial-A-Prayer. The line clicked, hummed, faltered, and a cheerful mechanical voice said, “The number you have reached is not in service at this time. This is a recorded announcement.”

It would not serve Ms. Deal’s story to have Sara find comfort. But it is significant that the appeal that fails is to a spiritual service. The next day Sara does find a companion: a young woman with whom she drinks lunch. Although the woman discloses she’s a “Jesus freak” and buys Sara a recording of Jesus Christ Superstar, Sara does not find through her the perfect love that casts out fear. Sara never finds it and ultimately dies. By spiritual standards, it is a bleak story indeed.

A similar failure occurs in a Good Housekeeping novelette, Search for a Little Girl, by June Lewis Shore (Jan.). While the parents, who had been returning home from vacation when their child was lost, and local people comb the snow-covered Kentucky countryside, the child is safe at the nearby farm home of a widower and his unmarried daughter. Before he could notify authorities about the child he fell ill and delirious. To his daughter Garnet the child seemed a replacement for the baby she’d lost, and for a brief time her severe depression lifted. The story suffers literarily from a lack of focus and spiritually from a lack of minister to comfort the desperate parents. And it is significant that Ms. Shore chose for the father of Garnet’s aborted baby a traveling evangelist.

Another ministerial indiscretion occurs in one of the most delightful of the stories, “How I Got Me a Bear,” by Robert Roper (RB, June). It is a country-music ballad in short-story form. A burly truck driver (the Bear), smitten by a Dairy Queen waitress, declares his love on the local radio station till the whole town knows he aims to claim her for his own. Embarrassed by the attention, she consults her cousin, who is a minister and who owes her a favor “since it was me that talked his Louisa out of going and getting a divorce when she caught him fooling with that Cherokee girl.” When the Bear returns and, before the assembled townsfolk, declares his love, she produces her clergyman cousin, who marries them on the spot. The story is a well-done bit of entertainment; only the minister’s escapade jars.

The minister in Shelby Hearon’s novel The Second Dune (RB condensation, June) appears moral enough; but his wife leaves him for another man. Harold’s divorce counters that of Ellen, the story’s narrator, who had left her husband to marry Harold’s lawyer brother. For the most part Harold is treated respectfully and sympathetically—and a bit patronizingly: the preacher is too tender to have to suffer this woman’s harshness. Ellen, however sees him in terms of her first husband—and no one worried whether he could bear the pain of losing his wife. It seems that Harold is a preacher just so he can appear pathetic (to his lawyer brothers at least)—as though such an appearance would be inappropriate for someone in another profession.

The only other appearance of organized religion is in The High Valley, a condensation of a mystery novel by Jessica North (GH, Feb.). The local Mexican priest is cultured, charming, intelligent, and understanding. He seems too good to be true. But at least he provides welcome relief from clergymen who show only the bad side.

Faith may not fare well in women’s fiction, but the happy nuclear family thrives. Indeed, more than two dozen of the three dozen stories feature love (or romance), marriage, and family life. Half a dozen times the main character’s family is diminished by death, but only four times by divorce—a far lower divorce rate than that usually cited by these magazines. For the fictional characters at least, the how-to-keep-a-marriage-humming articles seem to work.

A few of the love stories provide insight into the nature of love—and in the process offer the reader something to think about and an opportunity for growth. Two stories by Florence Jane Soman—“A Perfect Marriage” (GH, Mar.) and “Emergency” (GH, Jan.)—show the value of restrictions inherent in the choice of marriage and family over more casual liaisons. “Things That Last,” by Lauren R. Stevens (RB, March), describes fickle emotions: a boy concerned during his father’s terminal illness because his feeling of grief sometimes is overshadowed by other emotions wonders if his feeling of love for the girl he wants to marry will last through the flow of life’s events. The headstone he chooses for his father’s grave and the ring he buys the girl become symbols of lasting relationships.

Mostly the stories are less edifying variations on the boy-meets-girl-they-marry-and-live-happily-ever-after theme. And they are mostly mediocre stories. The preoccupation with happy romance is no doubt an appeal to readers’ fantasies, and the choice of stories suggests the editors believe those fantasies are of the type of which princes on white stallions slay dragons and carry off beautiful maidens. Perhaps so. Yet if women were to divulge their daydreams the world might also glimpse the creator of the great American novel, the discoverer of long-lost civilizations, the capable and profound exponent of a great truth. Indeed, such hopes of creativity and searches for truth bring a woman closer to the image of God than do dreams of fairy-tale romances. One could wish there were fewer fairy tales for women.

JANET ROHLER GREISCH

Christian evangelism, both in America and in the Third World, appears to be rounding a curve and entering a third stream. During the fifties and sixties, two streams of evangelism gained international prominence. The first was crusade evangelism, typified by Billy Graham. The second stream was saturation evangelism, which originated with the late Kenneth Strachan of Costa Rica and became a part of the American scene with Key 73.

The third stream of evangelism is called “church growth” and is related to Donald McGavran and his associates. Although Donald McGavran is a household name, so to speak, on the world’s mission fields, his teaching is not widely recognized in the United States as yet. Not until the fall of 1972 did he attempt to apply his growth principles systematically to churches in America. But events since then, most recently the publication of McGavran’s latest book, How to Grow a Church (with Win Am; Regal Books, 1973), have catapulted the church-growth movement into prominence in the United States. Since church growth has clearly become one of the major trends of the times in the church, I would like to try to describe the movement.

McGavran decided to put the two common words “church” and “growth” together and make them a technical term when he became disgusted at the way in which certain theological and missiological liberals had redefined such terms as “missions” and “evangelism” in unbiblical ways. Back around 1955, while a missionary in India, McGavran began to use the phrase “church growth,” filling it with his own meaning. He could not have had an inkling at that time that the term would gain the currency it now has. Among missiologists, one no longer has to stop to define church growth any more than he would have to define General Motors or free enterprise in the business world.

Particularly in America, however, many still have a hazy idea of the meaning of church growth. Some, for example, identify it as the particular view of one man. Donald McGavran is indeed the father of the church-growth movement, but it has become much more than McGavran. He has six close professional colleagues, more than 400 have graduated from his school, and thousands of others have identified with him through books, articles, and seminars. All these consider themselves very much a part of the church-growth movement.

Others identify church growth with one school. The Fuller Seminary School of World Mission and Institute of Church Growth is the institutional center for church-growth research, but church growth has far outgrown Fuller Seminary. Dozens of other seminaries and Bible schools in many countries of the world now list courses in church growth in their catalogs. More will do so in the future.

For some, church growth brings to mind a periodical. These people are among the 8,000 subscribers to the Church Growth Bulletin, which used to be virtually the only source for church-growth articles. Now almost all leading Christian periodicals are carrying church-growth material with increasing frequency.

The key book on church growth is McGavran’s magnum opus, Understanding Church Growth. But the literature has now gone far beyond that. In my own library I have a shelf five feet long labeled “Hard Core Church Growth.” Both Eerdmans and Moody have developed entire lines of church-growth publications, and the William Carey Library was established basically to publish church-growth materials.

Church growth, then, has become much more than a man or a school or a periodical or a book. It has become an entire school of thought that is profoundly influencing missiology and the theology of evangelism. Before looking at its distinctives, however, we would do well to glance at some central areas where church growth holds much in common with other lines of missiology and evangelism:

1. Theologically, church growth is in the conservative evangelical tradition. The typical church-growth advocate is thoroughly committed to the doctrines of the inspiration and authority of Scripture, the deity of Christ, the person and work of the Holy Spirit, the centrality of the Church, the depravity of man, heaven and hell, and the totality of the “faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). A biblical theological position is the bedrock of church growth.

2. As to the Christian life, church-growth people believe that orthodox doctrine must prove itself in daily living. Evidence of the fruit of the Spirit, the pious life, personal Bible reading and prayer, love for one’s neighbor, the cultural mandate, social service, and all other good and proper Christian qualities are both commended and practiced by church-growth people.

3. The church-growth school holds that men and women without Jesus Christ are eternally lost, and that soul-winning, disciple-making evangelism, and missions are a primary and continuing task of the entire Church.

4. The supernatural power of the Holy Spirit is a crucial part of the theory and practice of all church-growth people. All fully recognize that nothing is accomplished for the Kingdom of God without “power from on high” (Luke 24:49).

These four points have been characteristic of men and women of God throughout the ages. Other contemporary missiological schools of thought would claim them as well.

But the church-growth movement also has some distinctives. Again, these six distinctives are not the exclusive property of church growth. But years of experience have shown that these are the places where the rubber meets the road. They are the issues that have to be debated, even with others who hold the four points above in common with church growth. Evangelicals who disagree with the church-growth school of thought almost invariably do so on one or more of these six distinctives:

1. The proper combination of the lordship of Jesus Christ and the responsibility of man requires church growth. As our Lord, God has made his will clearly known in the Scriptures, and as his servants we do poorly if we do not pay attention. Our Lord, for example, is clearly not pleased with:

• Fishing without catching (Luke 5:4–11).

• An empty banquet table (Luke 14:15–23).

• Sowing without reaping (Matt. 13:3–9).

• A fig tree that bears no figs (Luke 13:6–9).

• Lost sheep that are not brought into the fold (Matt. 18:11–14).

• A lost coin that is sought but not found (Luke 15:8–10).

• Ripe harvests that are not reaped (Matt. 9:36–38).

• Proclamation without response (Matt. 10:14). Or, by extension of these principles, God is not pleased with evangelistic or missionary work that does not result in church growth. In bolder terms, and contrary to some popular missionary literature, God is interested in results, since he is not willing that one man, woman, or child should perish (2 Pet. 3:9).

2. What is the mission of the Church in the world? Church growth says that among the many good things God expects his Church to do in the world, a primary and irreplaceable task is to preach the Gospel to every creature, persuade men and women to become faithful disciples of Christ, and incorporate them as responsible members of his Church. When true disciples are made, there is church growth. But notice some refinements:

• The focus on the human responsibility in making disciples should not be overly individualized. The task is the task of the Church as a body, and individuals best function as members of the body. Goals are measured according to what is accomplished by the body as a whole.

• Numerical church membership growth is not the only task of the Church. But biblically it does have a very high priority, and God is glorified when new members are added to the Church.

• Ultimately, evangelistic effectiveness must be measured in terms of disciples, not merely decisions. Evangelistic reporting should, but rarely does, reflect this principle.

3. Clear objectives are necessary if the Church is to fulfill its mission in the world, and thus obey its Lord. God’s will as to missiological and evangelistic goals can and must be discerned from Scripture, articulated in plain terms, and subsequently used to measure achievements. In view of this, there is no need for Christians to work under a shadow of doubt as to whether they can really know what God’s objective is. Recourse to the “mysterious working of God’s Spirit” is often a thinly disguised rationalization of evangelistic failure, couched in pious terms.

No command of Jesus is clearer in this regard than the Great Commission. Careful exegesis of Matthew 28:19, 20 reveals that God’s imperative is to make disciples. Disciples are tangible, identifiable, countable people, and whenever a true disciple is made, church growth occurs. Objectives that deviate from or fall short of the ultimate objective of making disciples are, to the degree they do so, inferior, and in need of correction.

4. Sound, effective strategy must be developed as a means of accomplishing the biblical objectives mentioned above. Improved strategy will, other things being equal, result in more fruitful evangelistic work, and thus be more pleasing to God. Far from reflecting lack of spirituality, well-honed strategy is a mark of maturity and competence in God’s work. Efficiency needs to be stressed, since resources are limited and God is unhappy when invested resources do not bring intended results. The Parable of the Talents warns us that servants who fail to use their Lord’s resources productively are considered “wicked and slothful” (Matt. 25:26). Does this not apply to evangelists?

5. The social and behavioral sciences can contribute much to missionary strategy. Anthropology, sociology, psychology, and other related disciplines have made us aware, for example, of such valuable principles as:

• People movements. We now know that in many—if not most—circ*mstances, multi-individual interdependent conversions are the most productive vehicle for making disciples.

• The power encounter. Anthropologists have shown that a vital step in the conversion process of many peoples, particularly animists and followers of the occult, is a test of power between God and the evil spirits, known as the power encounter.

• Dynamics of innovation. Missionaries can be trained to avoid blunders as they try to introduce new ideas and practices into the culture in which they are working.

• Indigeneity. We now know that true indigeneity goes much deeper than self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating churches. Proper indigeneity can make the difference between a church that is effective in discipling an entire people and one that is sealed off and relatively impotent.

• Ethnotheology. A new discipline that combines the insights of anthropology with sound biblical theology is being developed with the goal of better communicating to peoples at home and abroad God’s plan of salvation.

6. Research is essential for optimum church growth. Sound evangelistic strategy must be based on facts, not on vague hopes or wishes or promises. Church growth is skeptical of promotional material and success stories if the facts of the case are not clearly presented. Research into the dynamics of the growth of churches in all countries of the world attempts to penetrate foggy thinking and make known the true state of affairs. For example, church-growth research has led to:

• A recognition of the resistance-receptivity axis. We now know that some peoples are more receptive to the Gospel at a particular time than other peoples. This is a key church-growth principle. Resistant peoples must be neither neglected nor abandoned, but sound evangelistic strategy will concentrate available resources on receptive peoples.

• A ruthlessly objective attitude toward evangelistic methods. Methods simply cannot be “canned” in Lower Zax, for example, and exported to Mamba Bamba Church growth diligently seeks to locate, describe, and analyze, for each time and place, the methods that God has blessed and those he has not blessed.

• A discovery of the crucial importance of structures throughout missionary history. The concept of the relation between modalities (the parish church) and sodalities (voluntary societies of Christians) is proving to be an invaluable aid to missionary strategy, particularly now that missionary societies are proliferating in the Third World.

Church growth believes that unfruitfulness is a curable disease. The remedies are diagnostic research, prescriptive treatment, and strategic care.

Three moods characterize all church-growth advocates, I have found, and these can therefore be said to be moods of the movement in general:

Obedience. Full obedience to the Word of God and the will of God is essential. No apologies at all are made for whatever unswerving obedience might involve.

Pragmatism. Church-growth people do not hesitate to use whatever means God provides to do the best possible job in reaching the goals. They are not very much interested in what should bring unbelievers to Christ, but they are acutely interested in what does, in fact, bring unbelievers to Christ.

Optimism. Christ said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” There is no warrant to be gloomy in Christian work. We are ultimately on the winning side. If God be for us, who can be against us?

For about a year now I have been witness to a drama that is all too familiar to us mortal men. Someone finds he has cancer; the medical treadmill begins, with its implacable log of defeat; hope is marshalled, begins the march, is rebuffed at every juncture, flags, rouses, flags again, and is finally quietly mustered out.

And meanwhile, because the people in the drama are Christian believers, everyone is dragged into the maelstrom that marks the place where our experience eddies into the sea of the Divine Will. The whole question of prayer gapes open.

The promises are raked over. And over and over. “Is the primary condition enough faith on our part?” “We must scour our own hearts to see that there is no stoppage there—of sin or of unbelief.” “We must stand on the promise.” “We must claim thus and such.” “We must resist the Devil and his weapons of doubt.”

And we leap at and pursue any and all reports and records of healings. “Look at what happened to so and so!” “Listen to this!” “I’ve just read this wonderful pamphlet.” We know the gospel accounts by heart. We agree that this work of healing did not cease with the apostolic age. We greet gladly the tales of healing that pour in from all quarters in the Church—no longer only from those groups that have traditionally “specialized” in healing, but from the big, old, classic bodies in Christendom—Rome, Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Presbyterianism, and so forth. “God is doing something in our day,” we hear, and we grasp at it eagerly.

And meanwhile the surgery goes on its horrific way, and the radiation burns on, week after grim week; and suffering sets in, and the doctors hedge and dodge into the labyrinthine linoleum and stainless-steel bureaucracy of the hospital world, and our hearts sicken, and we try to avert our eyes from the black flag that is fluttering wildly on the horizon, mocking us.

And the questions come stealing over us: “Where is now their God?” “Where is the promise of his coming?” “He trusted in God that he would deliver him …” and so on. And we know that we are not the first human beings into whose teeth the Tempter and his ilk have flung those taunts.

We look for some light. We look for some help. Our prayers seem to be vanishing like so many wisps, into the serene aether of the cosmos (or worse, into the plaster of the ceiling). We strain our ears for some word from the Mount of God. A whisper will do, we tell ourselves, since clearly no bolts or thunderings have been activated by our importunity (yes, we have tried that tactic, too: the “non-faith” approach).

But only dead silence. Blank. Nothing. “But Lord, how are we supposed to know if we’re on the right track at all if we don’t get some confirmation from you—some corroboration—in any form, Lord—inner peace maybe, or some verse springing to life for us, or some token. Please let us have some recognizable attestation to what you have said in Your Book.” Nothing. Silence. Blank.

Perhaps at this point we try to think back over the experience of the people of God through the millennia. There has been a whole spectrum of experience for them: glorious deliverances, great victories, kingdoms toppled, widows receiving their dead back, men wandering about in sheepskins and goatskins—

“Men wandering about in sheepskins and goatskins? What went wrong there?”

“That’s in the record of faith.”

“But then surely something went wrong.”

“No. It is part of the log of the faithful. That is a list of what happened to the people of faith. It is about how they proved God.”

The whole spectrum of experience is there. The widow of Nain got her son back and other mothers didn’t. Peter got out of prison and John the Baptist didn’t. Elijah whirled up to heaven with fiery horses and Joseph ended in a coffin in Egypt. Paul healed other people, but was turned down on his own request for healing for himself.

A couple of items in the Gospels seem to me to suggest something for the particular situation described in this article, where deliverance did not, in fact, come, and where apparently the juggernaut of sheer nature went on its grim way with no intervention from Heaven.

One is the story of Lazarus and the other is the Emmaus account. You object immediately: “Ah, but in both those cases it turned out that the dead were raised.” Well, perhaps there is something there for us nonetheless.

For a start, the people involved in those incidents were followers of Jesus, and they had seen him, presumably, heal dozens of people. Then these followers experienced the utter dashing of all their expectations and hopes by death. God did not, it seemed, act. He who had been declared the Living One and the Giver of Life seemed to have turned his back in this case. What went wrong? What did the household at Bethany not do that the Widow of Nain had done? How shall we align it all? Who rates and who doesn’t? Whatever it is that we might have chosen to say to them in the days following their experience of death, we would have had to come to terms somehow with the bleak fact that God had done something for others that he had not done for them.

From the vantage point of 2,000 years, we later believers can, of course, see that there was something wonderful in prospect, and that it emerged within a very few days in both cases. The stories make sense. They are almost better than they would have been if the deaths had not occurred. But of course this line would have been frosty comfort for Mary and Martha, or for the two en route to Emmaus, if we had insisted to them, “Well surely God is up to something. We’ll just have to wait.”

And yet what else could we have said? Their experience at that point was of the utter finality of death, which had thrown everything they had expected into limbo. For them there was no walking and leaping and praising God. No embracing and ecstatic tears of reunion. Only the silence of shrouds and sepulchres, and then the turning back, not just to the flat routines of daily life, but to the miserable duel with the tedious voices pressing in upon their exhausted imaginations with “Right! Now where are you? Tell us about your faith now! What’d you do wrong?”

The point is that for x-number of days, their experience was of defeat. For us, alas, the “x-number of days” may be greatly multiplied. And it is small comfort to us to be told that the difference, then, between us and, say, Mary and Martha’s experience of Lazarus’ death, or of the two on the road to Emmaus, is only a quantitative difference. “They had to wait four days. You have to wait one, or five, or seventy years. What’s the real difference?” That is like telling someone on the rack that his pain is only quantitatively different from mine with my hangnail. The quantity is the difference. But there is, perhaps, at least this much of help for us whose experience is that of Mary and Martha and the others, and not that of the widow of Nain and Jairus and that set: the experience of the faithful has, in fact, included the experience of utter death. That seems to be part of the pattern, and it would be hard indeed to insist that the death was attributable to some failure of faith on somebody’s part.

There is also this to be observed: that it sometimes seems that those on the higher reaches of faith are asked to experience this “absence” of God. For instance, Jesus seemed ready enough to show his authority to chance bystanders, and to the multitudes; but look at his own circle. John the Baptist wasn’t let off—he had his head chopped off. James was killed in prison. And the Virgin herself had to go through the horror of seeing her Son tortured. No legions of angels intervened there. There was also Job, of course. And St. Paul—he had some sort of healing ministry himself, so that handkerchiefs were sent out from him with apparently healing efficacy for others, but, irony of ironies, his own prayer for himself was “unanswered.” He had to slog through life with whatever his “thorn” was. What does this data do to our categories?

But there is more. Turning again to the disclosure of God in Scripture, we seem to see that, in his economy, there is no slippage. Nothing simply disappears. No sparrow falls without his knowing (and, one might think, caring) about it. No hair on anybody’s head is without its number. Oh, you say, that’s only a metaphor; it’s not literal. A metaphor of what, then, we might ask. Is the implication there that God doesn’t keep tabs on things?

And so we begin to think about all our prayers and vigils and fastings and abstinences, and the offices and sacraments of the Church, that have gone up to the throne in behalf of the sufferer. They have, apparently, been lost in the blue. They have vanished, as no sparrow, no hair, has ever done. Hey, what about that?

And we know that this is false. It is nonsense. All right then—we prayed, with much faith or with little; we searched ourselves; we fasted; we anointed and laid on hands; we kept vigil. And nothing happened.

The Singing Christ

Their mighty song burns heavenward

And glory shines in sound;

The herald angels praise the Lord

In shouts that shake the ground.

Sing, O sons of heaven’s joy,

The wonder of his ways;

The birth-cry of an infant boy

Perfects his Father’s praise.

Sing, O Jesus, Mary’s son,

The pilgrim psalms appointed:

How great the works the Lord has done!

How blessed his Anointed!

Sing in Nazareth, young man,

The songs of jubilee;

Today fulfill redemption’s plan,

Proclaim the captive free!

Sing, O Saviour, lift the cup,

“Jehovah is my song!”

The sacrifice is offered up

Before the shouting throng.

“I come to do thy will, my God,

My body is prepared

To drink the cup and bear the rod

That sinners should be spared.”

Sing, O Christ, up Zion’s brow

From Kidron’s rocky bed;

The pilgrim songs are silent now

And all thy friends have fled.

Sing in agony, my King,

The God-forsaken Lord:

Count thy bones in suffering

While malice mocks thy word.

Sing, ascending King of kings;

Lift up your heads, ye gates;

The King of Glory triumph sings,

The Lord that heav’n awaits.

Sing, O Son of God’s right hand,

Our Prophet, Priest, and King;

The saints that on Mount Zion stand

With tongues once dumb now sing.

Sing, Lord Christ, among the choir

In robes with blood made white,

And satisfy thy heart’s desire

To lead the sons of light.

O Chief Musician, Lord of praise,

From thee our song is found;

Ancient of everlasting days

To thee the trumpets sound.

Rejoicing Saviour, sing today

Within our upper room;

Among thy brethren lift the lay

Of triumph from the tomb.

Sing now, O Lamb, that we may sing

The glory of thy shame,

The paean of thy suffering,

To sanctify thy Name!

EDMUND P. CLOWNEY

Did it not? What angle of vision are we speaking from? Is it not true that again and again in the biblical picture of things, the story has to be allowed to finish?Was it not the case with Lazarus’ household at Bethany, and with the two en route to Emmaus? And is it not the case with the Whole Story, actually—that it must be allowed to finish, and that this is precisely what the faithful have been watching for since the beginning of time? In the face of suffering and endurance and loss and waiting and death, what is it that has kept the spirits of the faithful from flagging utterly down through the millennia? Is it not the hope of Redemption? Is it not the great Finish to the Story—and to all their little stories of wandering about in sheepskins and goatskins as well as to the One Big Story of the whole creation, which is itself groaning and waiting? And is not that Finish called glorious? Does it not entail what amounts to a redoing of all that has gone wrong, and a remaking of all that is ruined, and a finding of all that has been lost in the shuffle, and an unfolding of it all in a blaze of joy and splendor?

A finding of all that is lost? All sparrows, and all petitions and tears and vigils and fastings? Yes, all petitions and tears and vigils and fastings.

“But where are they? The thing is over and done with. He is dead. They had no effect.”

Hadn’t they? How do you know what is piling up in that great treasury kept by the Divine Love to be opened in that Day? How do you know that this death and your prayers and tears and fasts will not together be suddenly and breathtakingly displayed, before all the faithful, and before angels and archangels, and before kings and widows and prophets, as gems in that display? Oh no, don’t speak of things being lost. Say rather that they are hidden—received and accepted and taken up into the secrets of the divine mysteries, to be transformed and multiplied, like everything else we offer to Him—loaves and fishes, or mites, or bread and wine—and given back to you and to the one for whom you kept vigil, in the presence of the whole host of men and angels, in a hilarity of glory as unimaginable to you in your vigil as golden wings are to the worm in the chrysalis.

But how does it work? We may well ask. How does Redemption work?

Ruth, the Moabitess, is one of four women cited in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. Orpah, Ruth’s country-woman and sister-in-law, does not appear.

Ruth’s story is told in four limpidly clear chapters in the Old Testament. The family of Elimelech, including his wife Naomi and his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, journeyed to the land of Moab to seek relief from the famine ravaging Israel. While there the sons took Moabite brides, Orpah and Ruth. In time Naomi lost her husband and both sons and, stricken with great sorrow, resolved to return to the land of her fathers. She urged her daughters-in-law to stay in their native land. Orpah consented, but Ruth refused to leave her mother-in-law, saying: “Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following you; for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God; where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if even death parts me from you.”

After Ruth and Naomi departed, Orpah returned to her land, and she does not appear again in the record. When Ruth and Naomi returned to Israel, Ruth urged herself upon Naomi’s wealthy relative, Boaz. In a daring ploy Ruth went at night during the harvest season to warm Boaz’s feet with her own body, thereby proposing that Boaz raise up children through her for the house of Elimelech. When an unnamed Israelite, next-of-kin to the widowed Ruth, refused to exercise his legal right to marry Ruth, Boaz deigned to love her and take her in marriage. Naomi and Ruth, who had returned from Moab in poverty, were now securely settled. Naomi’s joy was completed when the union of Ruth and Boaz produced a son. Naomi, who had changed her name to Mara (bitterness), was again called Naomi (pleasantness). The grandson of this son became King David, who was beloved of God. And it is in the line of David that the Saviour of all men was born.

NARRATOR: If, beyond the grave,

exist reflection, memory,

subjection to the craving

to recall a vanished history;

and if the lives beyond

all dying still may sense somehow the earth—

detached, pristine, not causing it—

ancestors of the Christ may

have been there, might have seen

the sight that night

when God enslaved himself by birth.

Winding out in whispers, spirits lurking

in the dank and dripping corners of the cave

breathe their wonder

at the Father’s finally worded nave,

His gentle gauntlet laid down to the world.

In the chorus move the strains

of joy, of high fulfillment, or of mortified chagrin—

all awed; and seeping somewhere in

the dry and faint remains

of weeping, weeping high and fine

from a strained and lonely face—

Orpah weeping for her almost own

that were not; tears for him, for them,

and most for Boaz whom she’d never known.

ORPAH: My sister went with old Naomi when

she left here, found herself once more a bride

and took (in love) for her God their God. Then

just as Naomi had, in peace, she died.

Her curse upon herself, like roses do

when spread with dung, bloomed into life. (Their God

has always done this for the ones who knew

how near he was to hear.) Her twilight held

the joy of seeing their son’s grandson, who

became both son and father of her God.

They left me stripped of love, of hope, of all

the promise I had spent in choices

squandered then and now beyond recall—

abandoned, hearing only echoed voices …

NAOMI: Come, men! Away from dust,

away from parching ground, we

must seek a new land, find

some new blood, cast our lot

where rivers flow and plants bloom green.

ELIMELECH: We go, dear land, but I will sing

(while leaving here and going where

His light is dim) what He did there

in Egypt’s dark. And He will someday

bring this stricken place a light

for those who wait in deepest night

but sharp-eyed for the promised King.

MAHLON: Why, when there is now enough to eat,

do the harpies beat thus, bite thus

deep within my throat?

Why then do the red flecks sparkle

in the sputum spat into the sunlight?

Where then is that Yahweh? Why, when in the sky

at last are clouds (that I’ll admit are

pagan), do I have to die?

CHILION: There my brother (phaw! his rancid

innards succored death for me) can

see no further than his expectoration

or his nightly enema;

while we, expatriates from the Promised land,

grovel with the dogs. Like Esau,

he was hungry, we were hungry, selling out our

rights of promise for a hunger we could not withstand!

TOGETHER: Come, wives, hold our heads of Promise

in your barren pagan wombs;

you may tell your sometime nieces, nephews

in your haggard days—you have held Jehovah’s rods,

given them a decent tomb.

ELIMELECH: With this my last and cloying breath

I praise thee, Lord, and welcome death.

NAOMI: So soon you’re gone now, husband-lover,

strangely foreign sons of mine:

Pray God? yes, but where in rag-tag

foreign blood can there be

another hope or any other man for me?

ORPAH: And now the voices shriek out of the darkness:

mine, Naomi’s (who would say her name

was Mara, bitterness) and Ruth’s, who in

a whisper loud as icy thunder says

she’ll go as well. My last farewell mocks on.

The voices rise from far away now. They

are clearer, though; like knives they pierce my ears.

NAOMI: I’ve come back home now,

brought a proven love away from there,

one final solace for a death-dealt, God-forsaken crone.

BOAZ: That Moab woman strikes my heart and fancy.

She is kin—Naomi’s, mine—it’s said.

Perhaps the time to fill my empty bed

is now. I’ll search and see;

the time for sons is almost by.

NARRATOR: There is within the spirits’ chorus

(at the cite of Him, the real new Jerusalem)

one voice antiphonal to Orpah

keening for a lost and shriveled self—

a voice that had she too gone back

she would have known as next-of-kin.

NEXT-OF-KIN: I sold my damned rights by birth for …

what? A fear of strangers,

scent of danger?

Scorn of neighbors, fear of favor

lost because some pagan shares my bed?

The reasons why are so absurd

(they must have been) I can’t remember when

before then

I had lost my awe of God and thought

I’d sound my soul by men.

RUTH: It was a daring gambit; she,

Naomi, forced me to it; but though we faced despair,

she knew that Israel’s God delights

in risks. And through it all Naomi clung

to Him. Now the child I bear

will be hers too; the days and nights

he dreams of Cod her legacy; and if perhaps among

his children’s children (my fond dream) our Father’s

promised one appears, then He will too belong to her.

[History and the Christmas Story]

Only she who bore the Child

and nursed him at her breast

received by sight what eyes of faith

had shown to all the rest.

Those who toiled the years before

the hour of holy birth

had borne through hardship, pain, and grief

God’s lineage on earth.

Root of Jesse! Royal heir

of David! Orpah’s fear

is out of place; Naomi’s hope,

the son of Ruth is here!

Praise our Lord who sent the Son

to solve time’s mystery:

in Christ he saved mankind and blessed

his faithful ancestry.

Praise the Father! Praise the Son

who sums up all, the last

of Adam’s race: the hope of all

men, present, future, past.