Page 6218 – Christianity Today (2024)

The contemporary Christian world urgently needs the right leaders. Just as industry, trade unionism, commerce, politics, and international affairs require effective leadership, so we are looking for men and women able to provide capable guidance for our young people, our church programs, and our missionary endeavor. We are looking for Christians who are developing the same traits of character that made the Apostle Paul such a dynamic leader in the early days of the Christian Church. He was God’s man for the Church to lead her forward in outreach and understanding. What can he tell us, centuries later, of the essential characteristics of leadership?

The Apostle was a man of tenacity of mind. The essential mark of a little man is a complete absence of aim; there is no point to which he is moving with resolution of mind and will. Many in positions of official Christian leadership today fail for just this reason. W. H. Murray in The Story of Everest tells us that when one is climbing without oxygen at high altitudes, the mind loses interest in events and objectives and must be spurred on by the will. “The will itself must be primed before leaving camp in the morning by imparting to it a settled determination to reach some chosen point.” The true Christian leader is the man who knows his purpose, who has his eyes on his goal and is determined to press toward it despite the distracting atmosphere of the times and the many difficulties to be faced. Among essential elements of Christian leadership are conception of purpose and concentration on achievement. Paul possessed these to the full. Two supreme aims, two “magnificent obsessions,” were always before him.

He was determined to preach Christ. “Woe is me,” he cried, “if I preach not the Gospel.” The offering of the living Christ to dying men was the inspiration of his life. In a day when Christian leaders seem to be busy “here and there,” the direct offering of Christ receives less and less priority in our thinking and activity. Many consider that in concentrating so exclusively on the ecumenical issue, contemporary Christian leadership has neglected its main task. A Church more interested in herself than in the world outside will suffer judgment.

Again, the Apostle was determined to be like Christ. He expressed his hope “that I may win Christ.” Christian sanctity today is in danger of being relegated to the sidelines of the saints in our stained-glass windows when it ought to be in the very center of our discipleship. Paul saw clearly that “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” was to be the goal of his life and of the life of every convert in the Church.

Performing The Impossible

He pursued these goals with resolution and tenacity of mind, despite many obstacles. His “magnificent obsessions” enabled him to dominate imprisonments, beatings, and shipwrecks, all events that would have discouraged a lesser man. He would have understood the words of a Chindit leader in Burma during the last world war: “The possible will be done at once; the impossible will take a little longer!” Stuart Holden reminds us that “Christianity lives by the supernatural to achieve the impossible.” Such resolution is of the very stuff of Christian leadership.

Neither did personal limitations divert Paul from his sense of purpose. The fact that “his bodily presence is weak and his speech of none account” did not prevent him from “pressing toward the mark.” Great leaders have often had weak bodies. “Down the streets of Portsmouth, more than a hundred years ago, walked a sailor with one arm, one eye, a persistent state of nerves and unable to tread a ship’s deck without being seasick. Indeed, he would probably have been in a home for incurables—were not his name Horatio Nelson. The man’s spirit drove his flesh.” Paul was cast in the same mold.

Conviction of belief also marked the leadership provided by the Apostle. Leadership without conviction is betrayal, at best hypocrisy. There was no half-heartedness either in Paul’s declaration of the Gospel or in his belief in its truth and power. Unconcerned lest he trample on peoples’ toes, he cared not for the religious susceptibilities of his hearers. Knowing his message to be offensive to some but believing it to be the Gospel for all, he did not present it as a valuable insight, a point of view worth considering, a philosophy demanding consideration, or a mere contribution to man’s religious search. He refused any attempt to put Christ on the same level as the discredited gods of Greece and Rome.

Dr. William Barclay reminds us that there were two stages in the religious life of John Bunyan. At first he could only say that the Mohammedans think their religion the best and the Jews think their religion the best, and ask, “What if Christianity be a think-so, too?” The final stage came when he could cry, “O now I know! I know!” Paul’s conviction was of this nature. He believed that his message to the world was nothing less than the statement of what Almighty God had done when he broke in by his Son. He believed that in offering Christ to men he was offering them their only hope for time and for eternity. No apologetic or half-hearted mutterings for the Apostle, then, but a clear decisive statement of the truth with all the power of his Spirit-inspired utterance. There was no shame in his presentation of salvation, through the Cross, to the sophisticated Greeks. “I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified.” To the pragmatic Romans he stated boldly, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe.”

The situation confronting modern evangelism demands a similar quality of leadership both at home and overseas. Some responsible Christian leaders appear to look over their shoulders at the resurgent ancient religions of the world before talking of the “Christian contribution.” Those who stand in true “apostolic succession” believe unhesitatingly in the relevance of the Gospel for the modern world with its morally and spiritually sick citizens.

The British military leader of the last war, General Bernard Montgomery, not only believed firmly in his own strategy but was able to “get it across” to the troops under his command. These men gave of their best because they sensed the conviction of their leader and clearly understood from him what was to be done. Paul’s leadership was of the same caliber. He could state his beliefs clearly and relevantly, and men understood what he was saying. We are committed to the task of persuading men of the power of the Christ in whom we believe passionately. They will only believe when they see our conviction. The rank and file of the Christian Church will respond to the challenge of evangelism when Christian leaders echo the words of the early evangelists, “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”

The Whole World In View

Yet another characteristic of the leadership provided to the Church by the Apostle was his breadth and largeness of vision. Paul was anything but a short-sighted Christian when he looked out on his world and his faith. Free from the narrow-mindedness and insularity of the first-century Jew, he turned his eyes on the whole cosmos; he grasped God’s great plan for history. In his writings and speeches he declares Christianity to be no mere sect of ancient Judaism but the fulfillment of the best Jewish hopes, the consummation of God’s revelation, the final answer to the world’s religious longing. His was a “big” Christianity, not just a local religion of which he was the roving sales representative. He saw history to be the sphere in which a sovereign God worked out his purposes. He saw the Church, despised and ridiculed by many, persecuted and hated by some, to be the very Bride of Christ. Though the wise dismissed his Master as “the Galilean carpenter” and treated Him as a nonentity, Paul saw him to be “the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation.”

Mankind today is being forced to think “big.” The rapidity of jet travel and communications has brought the other side of the world to our own doorstep. The infinities of space are explored by the rocket probe and the radio telescope. No longer can we hug the skirts of our own nationality to us in cosy and irresponsible isolationism. The leader “in the steps of St. Paul” is the Christian who has lifted up his eyes and who, seeing the greatness of his faith, his Lord, and his task, communicates this largeness of vision to his fellow Christians. Here is a Christianity tailor-made for the expanding universe of the space age.

The military leader must see the war as a whole and see each battle or skirmish in the light of the campaign and ultimate victory. So often our preoccupation with local problems has tended to limit our vision to the isolated battle, to make us narrow-minded and petty, to blur our vision of the great cosmic struggle between Christ and the forces of evil. We lead the Church in the local engagement, but we are ignorant of the other spheres of conflict, of the state of the war as a whole. True leadership sees that the fight is not just against local difficulties but against “principalities and powers,” sees the conflict in the mission fields, discerns the same struggle in every page of church history. True leadership encourages the local congregation to think of the real enemy, the bitter struggle, the far-flung armies of the Cross, and the ultimate triumph of the Lamb.

Yet another characteristic of this great first-century leader was the warmth of his love. He was bound to his churches by his deep affection. The man who could write to the Philippian believers, “For God is my witness how I yearn for you all with all the affection of Jesus Christ,” was neither cold-blooded nor aloof. The warmth of his love is clearly revealed in his ready memory of and interest in names. The long lists at the end of several of his letters are not merely of academic interest but reveal a man who cares for his fellows, whose greatest desire was their spiritual welfare. We are often told that the most important matter to a man is his name; yet how forgetful the busy pastor can be, how casual and disinterested the Christian leader can become. Do we wonder at our people’s lack of response?

Paul’s prayers reveal his love. He could write to the Thessalonians, “We give thanks to God for you all, constantly mentioning you in our prayers.” Throughout his letters we have his prayers for the spiritual welfare of the people whom he loved so dearly. The quiet saint with his prayer list is cast in the same mold of leadership. The pastor praying through his congregational list is the true leader of the flock.

His love led him to encourage others. Harrington Lees writes, “St. Paul had a genius for friendship. No man among the early Christians can have had so many friends as Paul. His powers of leadership gathered others around him, so that, quite early in his missionary journeys we read of ‘St. Paul and his company.’ ” He inspired and encouraged these men so that they gave of their best for Christ and his Kingdom. With a complete absence of superiority or condescension he could speak of them as “my brother” or “my fellow worker.” Never thinking of himself more highly than he ought to have done, he lived for those whom he served as a bond-servant of Jesus Christ. Too frequently Christian leaders can give the impression that the Church exists for them rather than they for the Church. Love finds glory in giving, whether of encouragement, friendship, or self. D. E. Hoste, Hudson Taylor’s successor as director of the China Inland Mission, claimed that the true sign of leadership was whether anyone followed. The believer will always respond to the heart of love.

Apple Peeling

I held tight in my hands

A red Stehman Winesap,

Freshly picked from an autumn dawn.

I tested its body for a hardness

That took a strong bite

To make it crack and wet my lips.

It passed this test;

But I could not eat with pleasure

Until I felt I improved it.

So I started to peel off its

Few specks and scars.

“No use taking a chance with infection,” I said.

(I’m a careful eater, you know.)

But each cut of the knife made a new

Imperfection for me to peel off—

Till now I’m down to the core

Which is clinging to my sticky fingers.

All the rest is a pile at my feet

That the fleas are at already.

I’ve had too much of apple peeling;

All morning lies before me

But my appetite is gone.

For a few specks I cut it all away.

Now must I start over with the seeds?

I’ve peeled too long, too much;

With the scars went the best.

Now I’m left with the core, and the seeds,

And the heap at my feet.

GLENN M. LEHMAN

James Taylor is the pastor of the Baptist Church of Ayr, Scotland. A graduate (M.A.) of Edinburgh University and the Scottish Baptist College of Glasgow, he is a member of the Ministerial Baptist Union of Scotland.

The Race to Create Life” is the title of the lead article in the October, 1962, issue of Harper’s Magazine.

“The synthesis of an organism has long been our goal,” state the authors of a recent article in Scientific American.

“Dr. H. C. Watson with model of the mystery of life,” reads the reporter-contrived caption of a newspaper picture showing a scientist holding a complicated molecular model.

“Scientists Close In On The Secret of Life,” declares Life on its cover of October 4, 1963.

Headlines, articles, picture captions such as these are appearing with an accelerating frequency. Do they generate eager excitement over some dramatic new scientific breakthrough? Or do they arouse misgivings and serious doubts?

“If scientists can create life in a test tube, who needs God?” a Christian young man, without any thought of disrespect, asks his father, a pastor, who related the incident to me.

“The very possibility of scientists creating life in a tube has forced me to do considerable rethinking of some of my beliefs,” a well-known seminary professor quietly discloses.

There appears to be more unease than elation among many Christians when they see headlines such as those above. I too am a Christian. I am also a chemist and a teacher of chemistry. I know that developments in science can be upsetting to the Christian community. I know that some few centuries ago most Christians were sure that if the earth were not the center of the universe, then Christianity would collapse. One man, Bruno, was burned, and another, Galileo, was harassed for most of his life for believing the new Copernican astronomy. In more recent times, the idea of an earth considerably older than 5,900 or so years was felt to challenge directly the credibility of the Good News of the New Testament.

The pastor and father of the young man wondered if the possibility of scientists’ creating life would precipitate another go-around between science and Christianity. Neither he nor I thought this would happen. Yet the problem of what to say in reply to the young man’s question haunted my friend, whose education was long on theology but short on science. It is my hope that the reply I shall sketch most briefly in this short, non-technical article will be of some help to those readers who feel that if scientists are really on the road to creating life, they are engaged in something of which God would most surely disapprove.

First of all, it may never happen. For technical reasons, the construction of a living cell out of its chemical inventory may turn out to be impossible. The catalog of molecules that comprise a living cell is incompletely known, and the organization plan, the blueprint, is only very dimly understood. Even if both equally important aspects were fully known, the actual construction might still prove to be technically impossible. Two years ago Dr. Paul Weiss, a scientist with the Rockefeller Institute, reminded an audience of molecular biologists that scientists would be on shaky scientific foundations even to predict if cells could be made from scrambled molecules (reported in Chapter 1, “From Cell to Molecule,” of The Molecular Control of Cellular Activity, J. M. Allen, editor [McGraw-Hill, 1962]). In point of fact, we do not yet know the details needed to go from molecule to cell, and even if we did, knowing is not the same as doing. The rather complete knowledge of the laws of the solar system that we now have does not make it possible for anyone to make a duplicate. But all of this is an evasion.

The possibility of scientists’ creating life is a real one. It may not happen for, shall we say, “x” centuries (where “x” could be, but is not likely to be, a fraction). But it is still possible. In a sense, it is science’s “three and a half minute mile.” When it happens it will be truly exciting, and then we shall all get used to it. All research even remotely connected with problems of disease or aging directly or indirectly contributes to that storehouse of experience and knowledge which will be necessary for the creation of life in a test tube. If you favor continued research along medical and biochemical lines, you must realize that you support the stocking of that storehouse. This, of course, does not commit you to favoring the drawing from its shelves of the wherewithal for the final assault on the creation of life. Yet even that effort will have an important place in medical research.

Between Life And Non-Life

Just exactly what will have happened if scientists create life? This is not a naïve question, for “life” is not so easy to define as might be thought. There is no sharp, unyielding borderline between life and non-life. Nature knows no sharp boundaries. We think that the sun “stops” where our quick and dangerous glance stops seeing it—at its edge. But our eyes, marvelous though they are, are very limited optical devices. The atmosphere of the sun extends to the earth and beyond. There are animals that look like plants. There are chemicals that can reproduce themselves but not grow (viruses). There are other chemicals that can “grow” but not reproduce themselves (crystals). A no-man’s-land exists between the living and the non-living—an area where neat classification schemes work badly or not at all.

Scientists are not bent on making a man in a tube—a notion at which they would scoff. It will be in the no-man’s-land where life will first be created in a test tube, if indeed this has not already been done! If you say that a virus is a living thing, then life has already been created by scientists. The tobacco mosaic virus infects the leaves of tobacco plants. It consists of two well-understood kinds of chemicals—protein and nucleic acid, the former acting as an “overcoat” for the latter in the virus particle. These two (dead) chemicals can be combined in a test tube with the result that the mixture has full viral activity. Is this the creation of life? It depends upon whether you insist on placing the virus outside the no-man’s-land and in the class of living things. In cells appropriate to it (and only in those cells), the virus seems alive, for it reproduces itself dramatically. The host cells die. But in a glass jar, the virus is just like a chemical. It is inert. It can be crystallized. Is it dead? Is a grain of wheat left for centuries in some Guatemalan tomb dead? One noted scientist has remarked that the words “life” and “living” are meaningless at the borderline.

One point should be clarified before we go on. We are not talking about the creation of matter or of energy from nothing. Life is not a thing. It is a process, more correctly a vast interlocking, self-regulating matrix of processes occurring among highly organized “things,” chemicals. The “creation of life” is the setting into motion of that process among an organization of molecules where before the process was nonexistent. It is taking some of the stuff of the air, the earth, and the waters and organizing it in a dynamic way. We must distinguish, therefore, between creation in the sense of bringing something into existence out of nothing and creation in the sense of bringing life into being from existing substances. This distinction exists in the Genesis Creation account. Most interpreters say that the language used in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” means a creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo). What God initially made, however, was “without form and void” (v. 2). According to the rest of the Genesis account, subsequent creative activities had to do with God’s bringing form, order, and eventually what we call the living process to the original “stuff” of the cosmos. Thus in Genesis 1:11, “God said, Let the earth put forth vegetation …,” and in verse 20, “God said, Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures …” (italics mine). The previous analogy to the problem of duplicating the solar system was obviously very inexact. To do that would require the creation of vast quantities of matter. Yet the analogy did point out the difference between knowing and doing.

A Monumental Breakthrough

Over a hundred years ago organic chemists were baffled by the chemicals that are routinely synthesized day in and day out by plants and animals. The chemicals so made, which contained the element carbon, completely eluded every effort at synthesis in a test tube. Try as they could, organic chemists were unable to make nature’s carbon-containing compounds in the laboratory. There seemed to be something in the nature of things, some basic law of nature, that thwarted these efforts. The early chemists became firmly convinced that a “vital force,” available only in living things and unavailable from laboratory chemicals and apparatus, was needed for the synthesis of nature’s compounds of carbon. Then in 1828 a German chemist, Wöhler, accidentally synthesized from mineral substances and heat the compound known as urea. Your liver makes this substance every day as it metabolizes proteins. Being a waste product, it is removed from the blood stream at the kidneys. It took other scientists some ten years to become reconciled to the profound implication of Wöhler’s experiment. The present-day synthetic drug industry is one of the many monuments to this scientific breakthrough. Organic chemists discarded the “vital force” theory, and over the intervening years they have synthesized millions of organic compounds.

Wöhler’s overthrow of the vital force theory is mentioned in thousands of classrooms. But was the theory really overthrown? Philosopher-scientist George Wald has puckishly pointed out that Wöhler’s experiment did no such thing. There was a living agency present at Wöhler’s workbench as he arranged his tubes and chemicals. A tremendously important “vital force,” without which the experiment could not have succeeded, hovered over the apparatus. It was none other than the chemist, Fredrich Wöhler, himself. Wöhler had not really demonstrated that a vital force was unnecessary. If there is such a “thing” as a “vital force,” then Wöhler, being alive, unquestionably had it. What he had conclusively shown was that a chemist, a living thing, who could make urea internally by means of his liver, could also make it externally with minerals and test tubes and energy.

Professor Wald’s insight is relevant to the meaning of the creation of life “in a test tube.” If scientists eventually accomplish this, it will mean simply (!) that man has the capacity to set into motion the complicated living process outside the body as well as inside it. Technically, this will be a truly great achievement. Philosophically and theologically, however, it would create no new problems. Such problems as freedom and determinism, or mind and brain, are with us now. Quite likely they always will be argued among amateur and professional philosophers. Hard determinists will see the creation of life “in a tube” as evidence for their position. Christians will have an opportunity to declare again their praise of God, who brought into being a creature, man, who can accomplish such a great scientific achievement. The creation of the process of life in the laboratory will not tip the scales in these debates one way or the other. As Christians we acknowledge and worship the Lord of life, however life emerges.

When I first became interested in the problem discussed here, I was struck by the shallowness of my own thinking about life. I suspect others might plead guilty, also. What do we do when we want to talk about real Life? We resort to an adjective, “real,” or to a capital letter, “L.” Or to make ourselves clear, we say, “life in “Christ”—as if there were any other form of life worthy of the name. John said, “He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son has not life.” The contrast between the physical life we all think of when we use the word “life” (precious as that is) and the Life Jesus offers is so great it seems that the best way to compare the two is in terms of life and non-life, as John did. Jesus was equally blunt. He stated, “I am come that they might have life” (John 10:10) surely a startling statement to make to people who, if they had any self-awareness, were sure they were alive.

Scientists may someday “create life” (and, speaking as a chemist, I think it would be fun to be part of that future team). But the source of that Life that is of transcending importance is our Lord, Jesus Christ. That is the whole point. The distraught young man had missed it.

John R. Holum, who is associate professor of chemistry at Augsburg College, Minneapolis, Minnesota, has the degree of Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He has written a textbook entitled Elements of General and Biological Chemistry and has been a Science Faculty Fellow at the California Institute of Technology.

This is the week all church choirs—pros and shaky amateurs alike—tackle cantatas. The most popular new one is probably “The Wonder of Christmas,” penned by a man who has sold one million copies of ten cantatas.

In 1957, John W. Peterson was known only as a writer of hymns and gospel songs, but “without really knowing how” turned out his first cantata, “Hallelujah, What a Savior,” in a month. Since then, twenty-live to fifty fan letters a week have poured in, including one from the superiors at a Michigan convent who “adjusted” the text.

Viewing his career from this popularity crest, Peterson finds even the setbacks—a ruined vocation, wartime piloting in Burma, foodless days in college, the rise of Elvis Presley—were guidance from God. He’s now forty-two but looks about thirty-five, an effect enhanced by a tall, trim figure, dark hair, and an almost boyish face with a ready grin.

The Petersons are spending their first Christmas in Grand Rapids, where he recently moved to steer the renascent Singspiration, a gospel music house with a mercurial past. With the composer are his serene wife, Marie, and three daughters who reflect her dark Syrian beauty: Pamela, 13; Candace Kay, 15; and Sandra Lynn, 18, back from Moody Bible Institute. Their handsome L-shaped ranch house might lack furniture and rugs at the moment, but because of its newness, not lack of finances. There’s a white Imperial in the garage, too, but one day fifteen years ago, when he also was at Moody, Peterson didn’t even have twelve cents to ride Chicago’s Lake Street el.

In analyzing this cantata-based prosperity, Peterson listed pitfalls he has tried to avoid: “Most cantatas are disjointed. The choir has a number, then everything stops while the soprano wails through a solo, then another break,” he said, slicing the air with his hands. “I try to weave it together as one big package of music.”

As thread, he uses modulations between sections instead of abrupt key changes, Scripture narration, and a recurring song theme. But this may be the key to popularity: “Because I’m basically a writer of melody, I always use some sweeping, lyrical melodies which will be fun for the choir to sing.”

He throws in just enough modern harmony “to make it interesting” but eschews a highbrow style which he contends would “ruin my message” and “only sell to 10 per cent of the city churches.” His musical credo is that “you can become too musical.… I’m not primarily interested in raising musical standards.… I don’t want music to get in the way, but to carry a message.”

A man who prefers music’s middle of the road, Peterson was born on a Lindsborg, Kansas, farm, the youngest of seven in a Swedish-American family. He was four when his father died, after the family had moved to nearby Salina.

When John was a boy soprano, a Major Bowes team came to town. He won the local talent contest and chimed in on three shows. As a result of this exposure, a voice teacher gave him free lessons for many years, and KFBI put him on the air weekly as the folksy “Singing Farm Boy.”

At twelve, Peterson said, he received Christ as his Saviour, but in high school “the Lord really got ahold of my life.” He began to read voraciously from Christian books and became active in local evangelism, a course which ruined a youthful dream:

“My one passion was to be an opera singer,” he recalls. “After my voice changed, I still had a good tenor voice and even a group of fans. But I started so young as a church songleader and did so many campaigns and meetings it ruined my voice.”

As a high school senior, he added a tune to a previously written poem—his usual method even now. “After that one song, there was a fire in my soul, and it’s been there ever since.” He wrote a lot, scrapped most of it, bombarded publishers with the rest. Then in 1940, while guitar-strumming around the countryside in one-night meetings with his brothers’ “Norse Gospel Trio,” he sold “Yet There Is Room.” The thrill of that first $8 check was blunted by the publication, which credited “John W. Patterson.”

Being on the road so many Sundays, Peterson lost touch with his home Swedish (now Evangelical) Covenant church and has since worshiped with all sorts of Protestants, often in independent Bible churches. However, he has been a Baptist for much of the past decade.

The daily touring grind permanently lowered the pitch and quality of John’s voice but led to a life partnership. His future wife, an acquaintance in high school, became a radio fan, came to hear him at a tent meeting, and became a Christian. (Her family had been nominally identified with Eastern Orthodoxy.) They married several years later, while he was in the service.

During the war, Peterson was a troop supply pilot in the Himalayas. Cruising fiercely alone into florid sunrises, gazing up at endless stars and down at massive peaks, he realized anew “what a tremendous universe this is.” Often he worshiped right in the co*ckpit or sketched song ideas on the back of his flight plan.

One sketch later became his first big hit while he was a post-war student at Moody: “It took a miracle to put the stars in place; It took a miracle to hang the world in space.…” When Percy Crawford was on campus, he bought it and eleven other songs from the aspiring writer. Crawford later sold the rights to a New York publisher, Hill and Range Songs, which had the song framed as one of its all-time best money-makers. For each of the dozen songs, Peterson got $3.

But he had a daughter and wife to support, and “I really needed that $36 that week,” he said.

After Moody, he almost entered Northern Baptist Seminary, but prayer led him instead to get a bachelor of music degree at the American Conservatory in Chicago, majoring in theory and composition—a course he had dropped after a week in high school. His composition teacher. Erwin Fisher, tried vainly to steer him into highbrow orchestral writing.

From graduation until 1955, he worked for Moody’s WMBI. One song from that period, “Over the Sunset Mountain,” was so popular that a commercial publisher offered a fat price for it if he would “broaden” the last line from “Jesus my Savior I’ll see.”

That temptation didn’t last long, but the lure was stronger after he moved to Montrose, Pennsylvania, and his first full-time writing job with Singspiration and its founder, Al Smith. A year later, Hill and Range Songs, mindful of the success of “It Took a Miracle” and of the Hit Parade popularity then of “inspirational” songs, got Peterson into its plush office. There it offered him big promotions and recordings on name labels with stars like Eddie Fisher, and handed him $2,500 as a teaser. He signed a contract.

Then, overnight, rock ‘n’ roll swept the country, and Hill and Range poured its interests into the fad. Peterson had a chance to rethink the deal and decided against it.

“What is the music of America?” he asked. “The ones who hit the majority of people are Rodgers, Gershwin, Porter—you can’t get around it.” One of his unfulfilled goals is to write his own musical, with a Christian message in it, using a non-biblical story with the typical boy-meets-girl angle and colorful format.

Interested librettoists will be able to reach him in a few weeks at a brand-new Singspiration plant in Grand Rapids, where he owns the company along with the Zondervan brothers of book-publishing fame.

The Ncc Election

Bishop Reuben H. Mueller, ranking clergyman of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, was elected to a three-year term as president of the National Council of Churches. He was named at the NCC’s sixth General Assembly in Philadelphia.

Mueller, 66, is the presiding bishop of his 748,000-member denomination and has served since 1957 as chairman of the NCC’s Division of Christian Education. He is also a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches.

Fulfillment Of A Forecast

A prophecy came true in Toronto last month when the Rev. Kenn W. Opperman began his ministry at the Avenue Road Church of the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

The prophecy dates back to 1943 when Opperman, then eighteen, first visited the church to give a Christian testimony. He had been converted just four days before, and a devout Christian woman at the testimony meeting predicted that he would some day be the church’s pastor.

The Avenue Road Church was enjoying amazing popularity in evangelism at that time under a youthful, handsome minister—Charles Templeton. As a sports cartoonist-turned-evangelist, Templeton was a phenomenon, especially among young people. Starting with an empty church scheduled for demolition, he soon headed a prosperous congregation which saw many answers to its prayers. Finances were met in the toughest times—even after a disastrous fire which gutted the church the night before the dedication of its newly renovated quarters.

Templeton and his wife were also gifted vocalists, and he went on to become a leading figure in Youth for Christ.

Subsequently he left for Princeton Theological Seminary, and under his urging the until-then independent Avenue Road Church joined the Christian and Missionary Alliance in 1949.

Templeton became then a Presbyterian evangelist in the United States. But at the peak of his church career he left the ministry. He went on to secular work and today is one of Canada’s leading television personalities.

Meanwhile, Opperman studied at Canadian Bible College in Regina, Saskatchewan, spent four years as a pastor, and served several more as a missionary in Peru. Some began to see in him the earmarks of a missionary statesman. His last venture before assuming the pulpit at the Avenue Road Church (succeeding the late A. W. Tozer) was a world tour of mission fields.

The prophecy of Opperman’s appointment was well known to Templeton: the woman who made it was his mother.

KENNETH G. WARES

The church-state-school controversy with respect to religious exercises anti observances in public schools promises to be a continuing affair, and the most any discussion (including this one) can hope to do is to lift some aspects of the question into a place of prominence where they may in turn shed some light upon the substantive issues involved. One of the interesting aspects of the discussion has been the claim that in relieving the public schools of the nation of the responsibility for conducting religious exercises, the courts have left the schools free to inculcate without bias the moral values upon which our society rests.

Underlying this contention is the supposition that our religious pluralism comprises three major traditions and no more. Actually, thoughtful persons recognize that, as Bernard J. Kohnbrenner notes in School and Society (May 20. 1961, p. 241, there are four visible pluralistic elements in our society: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, and secular humanism.

The self-conscious spread of the fourth of these, secular humanism, vastly complicates the problem at issue. In place of a situation in which the public schools are left free to be creedally neutral, we have in point of fact a series of strictures upon public education which actually foster the avowed creed of secular humanism.

But, someone is heard to object, may not the values which we prize be transmitted to students by a neutral public school, and in such a manner as to avoid all sectarian difficulties? Or, another asks, may not any influence upon the lives of children in the public school be accepted as part of God’s pervasive activity in behalf of children? Yet others will prefer that nothing of a religious nature be mentioned in the public school, thereby leaving a clear field to the religious educational facilities of the three major religious traditions.

The first of these objectors assumes that our basic values stand in their own right, and require no spiritual undergirding. He does not ask, “How shall our children’s spiritual needs be met?” but assumes that the schools’ inculcation of moral values will be effective without reference to supernatural concerns. But can we assume that educators who themselves are without spiritual anchorage will interest themselves in wholesome ethical values, much less teach others such values? We think not.

Far from reassuring, for example, is an article in School and Society, issue of Summer, 1963, entitled, “The Function of Schools in a Changing Society.” Written by Grace Graham, professor of education in the University of Oregon, the article takes for granted that “values” are completely fluid, and that in such times as these, the transmission of adult “beliefs, values, and attitudes” to the young leads to total irrelevance.

The article further assumes that children and youth (presumably of all ages) are capable of discovering adequate value systems for themselves, if only their minds are developed “in many directions through different kinds of experiences.”

The grading and incentive systems of the public school are alleged to commit the “sin” of sifting the gifted from out of the mediocre upon a purely class basis. It is alleged that patriotic groups within our society seek to foster an antique form of nationalism, and that “Puritan attitudes toward work, thrift, and play seem out of place in modern America” (p. 259). It goes without saying that the article decries any requirements that would test political beliefs (i.e., loyalties) of teachers or that would protect the young from the salacious products of the press.

In the light of the foregoing, it is far from certain that the values of “the life which we prize” will be conserved in the school which is made safe only for the secular humanist. The overtones of Professor Graham’s pleas for “freedom of the mind” are not encouraging for the continuance of an ethically based free society.

With respect to the second question, whether the influence of the school upon children may be regarded, simpliciter, as part of God’s pervasive activity, we would find it difficult to be sanguine in the light of the anti-supernaturalism which seems to have been part of the regimen of a significant number of institutions of higher learning in which our more influential educators have been trained. One wonders whether the naturalistic teacher can serve with great effectiveness as an instrument for the transmission of a type of outlook compatible with any kind of spiritual world-view.

The view that no use of Scripture and no practice of prayer in the public school can be of any value to the spiritual life of a people is held by many sincere persons. Some, especially of the Jewish faith, hold that such teaching would be ineffectual in the case of their children, and that absence of religious practice in the school is a potent challenge to the synagogue, or to the church or Sunday school, to take its task with greater seriousness. Well and good. But may not a total severance, by an agency which commands the ear of the child for such a large portion of the week as does the public school, from religious concern or religious reference produce a spiritual wasteland in the mind of the child that no spiritual agency, with necessarily less time of access to the child’s mind, can ever hope to populate?

One is perplexed to know precisely what attitude to take toward the children of the overtly irreligious, who seem to feel with sincere conviction that they wish their offspring to be protected from contact with the expressions and forms of religious faith.

Certainly we ought to respect the feelings of minority elements in our society. But do the secular humanists take time to consider the sentiments of those of religious faith, whose children are increasingly subjected to indoctrination in terms of the secular humanistic creed? This fact poses for concerned Christians a continuing source of perplexity.

PRESIDENT OF PEACE—President Kennedy’s funeral may well have been in many aspects the most elaborate and impressive farewell a modern ruler has ever received, yet its key elements—the union of religious solemnity and military display—have been familiar for centuries. But something new was added this time: the reading of a part of his Inaugural Address, … which above all made clear his desire—which he realized—to be a President of Peace, and not a President of War.—The New York Times.

PRACTICING CHRISTIAN—John F. Kennedy was a sincere and practicing Christian and none of his predecessors was more eager to be President of all the people, regardless of religious ties. Reared in a Catholic home and a Catholic community, he probably was not aware of the extent of religious rivalry that sometimes affects political life until his responsibilities encompassed the whole nation.—Hon. BROOKS HAYS, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention and special assistant to President Kennedy.

BARBAROUS ACT—Whatever the motive that fired the assassin’s bullet that killed President Kennedy, it was an act of insane barbarity. We bow in shame and sorrow that this deed could be done among us.—FREDRIK A. SCHIOTZ, president, The American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran World Federation.

RENEWED DEDICATION—[Methodists have] a renewed dedication to the ideals of universal peace, brotherhood, human welfare, justice and national integrity for which [President Kennedy] lived and worked so well.—The Methodist Board of Christian Social Concerns.

DELIGHTFULLY AMERICAN—Everything about him was so delightfully American. [He brought] a veritable breath of fresh air into areas of human life too often a setting for the stuffy, the amateur, and the inexpert. President Kennedy was not a utopian dreamer. He was a contemporary figure who measured up to the requirements of our modern age.—E. F. CARPENTER, Archdeacon of Westminster.

1900 YEARS LATER—In the emotional aftermath of President Kennedy’s murder, the nation is being subjected to a seemingly endless series of sermons, both in pulpits and in the public prints, on the evils of “hatred”.… The sermons are sincere and, hopefully, edifying as well. But they happen to be irrelevant to the death of Mr. Kennedy.… If it is absurd to try to blame the assassination on the political rights, it is yet more absurd to insinuate that it was the result of something dreadfully wrong with American political life as a whole. Until we know something different, the reasonable assumption must be that the assassination was the result of something dreadfully wrong in the mind of Lee Oswald. It would be good and desirable if the world could now adjure all hatred. But since hatred still exists 1900 years after the Crucifixion, it is … unlikely that it will vanish now.—The Sunday Star, Washington, D. C.

COURAGEOUS STAND—He knew well the dangers of the stand he had taken on behalf of the American Negro. A weaker man would have avoided trouble, but Kennedy was a brave man and he would not back down from his courageous stand.… He dared to penetrate iron curtains and proclaim not just a policy of containment or co-existence but a braver and more dangerous policy of co-operation between the Great Power blocs. If he believed in the rights of man, he strove also for the liberty of man.—H. C. WHITLEY, St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh.

SYMBOL OF MATURITY—John F. Kennedy was a symbol of America’s coming of age. As our first Roman Catholic President, as a President who committed himself unequivocally to the cause of the forgotten and disenfranchised in our society, he symbolized our country’s long-delayed and long-awaited repudiation of religious bigotry, racism and hypocrisy.—LEWIS WEBSTER JONES, president, National Conference of Christians and Jews.

ATTACKERS RESPONSIBLE—Those who have been making irresponsible attacks upon [President Kennedy] and his policies are as responsible for his death as the one who pulled the trigger.—A joint statement by EUGENE CARSON BLAKE, stated clerk, and SILAS G. KESSLER, moderator, the United Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

AMERICAN APATHY—We as citizens of this country are involved in this terrible act insofar as we have shrugged off the frequent expressions of bitterness and hate made by people on the extreme left or the extreme right as of no threat to our country.—ARTHUR LICHTENBERGER, presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church.

A GOOD STEWARD—Endowed with extraordinary talents and a great measure of this world’s goods, he was ever the good steward, never forgetting that these gifts were entrusted by God to his care for the benefit of his neighbor. He described his own life when he uttered his famous appeal “Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country.”—A joint statement by the American cardinals and bishops attending the Mass for President Kennedy at the North American College in Rome.

MAN OF CONVICTION—[President Kennedy] was a man of conviction. He stood for the separation of church and state in the face of demands for federal aid to parochial schools by his own Church hierarchy.… He symbolized a new era in the religious relationships of American citizens. He espoused the Civil Rights bill to guarantee the equality of all Americans regardless of race. He stood for the rights of the Negro as a first class citizen. He was a man of broad humanitarian sympathy.… He was a man of faith—faith in God, faith in country, faith in the American people and faith in himself as opposed to the nihilism of popular existentialism adhered to by the beatnik.—HAROLD J. OCKENGA, minister, Park Street Church, Boston.

Something Happens On The Way To The Pulpit

Bachelor of Divinity, by Walter D. Wagoner (Association Press, 1963, 159 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Wick Broomall, minister, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Augusta, Georgia.

The purpose of this brief book is to set forth the problems, frustrations, and possibilities of present-day seminarians as they train for and enter the work of the gospel ministry. Wagoner describes the material gathered in his book as resulting from “administering for eight years three very significant fellowship programs of The Fund for Theological Education: The Rockefeller Brothers Theological Fellowship Program, The Rockefeller Doctoral Fellowships in Religion, The Protestant Fellowship Program” (p. 10). These programs, plus collateral activities, gave Wagoner “a staggering amount of empirical evidence concerning what is going on in theological education, the younger clergy, and the church” (p. 10).

That the picture here given of much of theological education is authentic can be doubted only by those who have no firsthand knowledge of what happens to the young man who leaves the cloistered shelter of his home and church for the three-year exposure to “history, myth, kerygma, demythologizing,” and to such men as “Barth, Bultmann, Bornkamm, and Buri” (p. 74).

In addition to the confusing and conflicting theories concerning the Bible and Christian truths, the seminary student of today faces a bewildering array of personal problems caused largely by early marriage, family responsibilities, and his divided loyalty between his duties in the classroom and his duties as supply pastor of some near or distant church.

In such a hurried and confused state of existence, torn relentlessly between domestic duties and theological problems, the young man preparing for the ministry finds that he has little time to develop his devotional life; and it appears, from Wagoner’s survey, that the average seminary gives scant attention to this important facet of a preacher’s life. Thus the young man preparing for the ministry inevitably comes up against the question as to why he should be in the ministry rather than in some other profession. Some answer this question by deciding to enter some non-ministerial field of activity.

Wagoner’s delineation of the impact of the ecumenical movement on ministerial education shows plainly that most young seminarians leave their divinity schools with little reason left in them for their denominational preference or loyalty. Either because of a commonness of theology, including a common ordination and liturgy, or because of the impact of the one-church idea firmly impressed upon their minds, most seminary graduates today, it appears, could just as easily serve in one or another of the major Protestant denominations.

As already indicated, there can be no doubt that this book gives a fair picture of the atmosphere prevailing in most theological seminaries in America today. One wonders, however, if the author’s conclusions are not largely drawn from such divinity schools as those connected with Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Seminaries of a distinctly conservative and evangelical slant seem to have been left out of this survey.

This book diagnoses, on the surface, the disease affecting theological education; but it does not dig down below the surface to ascertain what are the real causes of the spiritual deadness so prevalent in seminaries and churches today. And if this investigation were ever consummated, one result would surely show that the dominance of a critical and unbelieving approach toward the Bible is at the root of theological education today.

WICK BROOMALL

Sermons As They Can Be

No Uncertain Sound, by R. L. Small (T. & T. Clark, 1963, 182 pp., 15s.), is reviewed by P. W. Petty, deputy warden of St. Ninian’s Training Centre, Crieff, Scotland.

The contents of this book merits its title. These sermons are not the work of a man determined to make the headlines at any cost and on any pretext, nor are they fiery exhortation more remarkable for heat than light, nor yet the easy platitudinous utterances of a man who has remained safely in his study and has not grappled with the perplexities and worries of life. Here we have the work of someone who knows what he believes without believing that he knows all the answers, a book that it would do anyone good to read. There is solid teaching here; but it is not dry, nor is it unrelated to life. Throughout, the different themes are handled with a competence and verve which make one envy alike the ability of the preacher and the congregation privileged to hear these words.

The book falls into three main headings: six sermons on the challenge of suffering, these all inspired by the Book of Job; four on the great festivals of the Church; seven on our response to all that God has done for us. All are magnificent; yet if the congregation privileged to hear such preaching needed the first sermon to be preached to it, “Missing Notes in Contemporary Christianity,” what hope is there for the rest of us? Are we in these days asking the sermon to do what it can no longer do? In the old days in a rural community, the sermon was discussed half the week; now it cannot be. What might the results be if the young people, whose needs are brought so vividly before the congregation in the last of these sermons, could really meet the members of that congregation and talk together of the great problems and issues of life in the light shed by the Word of God and by these pages?

P. W. PETTY

Usefully Used

The Marked Chain-Reference Bible, edited by J. Gilcrist Lawson (Zondervan, 1963, 995 pp., plus 554 pp. of study material, 17 maps; black leatherette, $14.95), is reviewed by John G. Johansson, production manager, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This work has a fine appearance, and its many pages of study material make it a useful tool for a better understanding of the Scriptures. The four-color scheme for marking references to the Holy Spirit, prophecy, salvation, and to temporal blessings will, no doubt, appeal to many readers. The (60,000 cross-references in the center columns seem excellent, although some bear off to a point where there is very little left of the thought of the initial reference. The Bible Readers’ Aids contain much interesting information about the Scriptures, such as various tablets or stones from Bible lands and reproductions of several codices and manuscripts.

Formerly published by the John C. Winston Company as The Marked Bible, this work suffers because the old plates were used. This reviewer found broken letters on every page examined (in one place there was nothing left of two letters). Regrettable are: (1) the old KJV spelling and accentuation, instead of the modified spelling of today; (2) the many incorrect word divisions (mo-ther, ene-mies, hea-vens); (3) such plural spellings as “Ziphims,” “cherubims” (but “cherubim” in the encyclopedia part), and “Zuzims” (in the encyclopedia—but “Zuzim” on the map); (4) the use of Ussher’s outmoded chronology with its date of 4004 B.C. for the creation story; (5) the use of the old encyclopedic information (some of the copyright dates go back to 1937 and 1895), spelling “Selah” in 2 Kings 14:7 the same as the well-known “Selah” in the Book of Psalms instead of “Sela” (rock) as in more recent translations without any explanations as to difference in meaning.

The use of this work would be greatly enhanced if the publisher would go to the expense of resetting the type and revising the encyclopedia.

JOHN G. JOHANSSON

Haunted By The Divine Absence

The Failure of Theology in Modern Literature, by John Killinger (Abingdon, 1963, 239 pp., $5), is reviewed by Calvin D. Linton, dean of arts and sciences, The George Washington University, Washington, D. C.

Many men, including some of the more sensitive of modern writers, are finding this an increasingly lonely planet to live on. The population explosion neither alleviates nor intensifies the mood, for it is not people whom men miss. Rather, it is God, whose terrifying policy it is to withdraw from those who do not wish his presence—and our age, by and large, has not wished it. As did the Gadarenes, we have besought him to depart from us, for we are taken with great fear.

Modern literature, therefore, is often haunted—haunted by an Absence. And just as a close examination of the place where something weighty has long rested will suggest what was once there, so modern literature can teach much of God in its silences and its vacancies.

This, really, is Mr. Killinger’s theme: “What has happened to literature since Dante, since Spenser, since Milton and Bunyan? Why do we not continue to have literature of the first magnitude that is total and coherent in its witness to the Christian faith?” He is, however, more concerned with answering the first question—what has happened—than the second, why. Consequently, his title is a little misleading, since it is not theology that has failed in modern literature but modern literature that has neglected theology.

Mr. Killinger brings to his task several notable strengths. For one thing, he knows what Christianity is—not a codification of the social and psychological benefits man has decided over the years he would like to enjoy, but a divine intervention into human history, an Incarnation, bearing cosmic implications and radical solutions to the predicament of man. Hence Mr. Killinger does not find a Christian under every benign humanist he scratches, as have some recent writers on the same subject. Second, he brings an impressively broad and deep background of literary and theological knowledge, buttressed by formal graduate study, private reading, and teaching. Third (and most happily if not most significantly), he knows how to write, a rather rare trait in contemporary criticism.

Also unlike many other recent books on the same general subject, his volume is effectively organized around unifying ideas, and does not comprise merely a series of disconnected essays on certain modern writers. We have become too familiar with the kind of book that utters a few generalities at the beginning; examines half a dozen or so modern writers, rather laboriously summarizing plots and themes; and concludes each section with a more or less obvious summation of what the work “says” about religion. This author knows enough (in both senses) to stand, as it were, in the middle of a concept and to range out widely but selectively, weaving all of his data functionally about his major themes. Of the latter, there are seven, all basic doctrines of Christian theology: the doctrine of God, of Man, of the Church, of the Sacraments, of the Ministry, of Last Things, and of Atonement.

No one can speak of “modern literature” as if it were a unity, expressive of a hom*ogeneous sensibility. There are too many contradictions, ramifications, and echoes. But one can fairly assess a few of the features which set modern Western literature apart from equally apparent and prevalent features of earlier periods. One of these is that modern writers are the first to write, as a group, “on the tacit or declared premise that there is no God.” (The words are Edmund Fuller’s.) If we adopt the popular Jungian word “myth” to denote the prevailing faith (possibly unarticulated and even subconscious, but real) of any age, we may agree with Mr. Killinger in his identification of the modern “myth” as that of “the Absence of God.” This produces a far grimmer mood than that of the purest paganism, either the stoic’s awareness of “whatever gods there be,” presumably dark and malign, or the epicurean’s pantheon of divine delinquents, fashioning man with weeping and laughter, loathing and love. This, rather, is the Myth of Emptiness. In that hollow round of nothingness there is not silence, but whispers and echoes, fragments of former faiths, remnants of earlier beliefs, symbols of abandoned worship. “The numinous is there,” writes Mr. Killinger, “but the Christian construct is missing. It is a demonic world.” The vertiginous nausea of a Sartre; the absurdity of a Camus; the jungles of Conrad and Greene; the madness and despair of Beckett—“I cannot think, I do not know, therefore I am—or am I?” One cannot objectively deny that here is evidence, not of a mood of serene acceptance of the “fact” that man is the highest being in the universe, but one of defiance, of rage against an Enemy; just as the world of James Joyce is not the vaunted “new creation” of a “liberated” writer, with the godlike author seated in the midst of his world paring his fingernails, but a mere inversion of another world, the world Joyce grew up in, of Christian faith and Roman Catholic ritual.

It would be misleading, however, to suggest that the tone of the book shares the assertiveness of these sentences. On the contrary, it is descriptive, objective, and scholarly. Only in the final chapter, on “The Christian Artist,” is there an element of special pleading, to which the reader might like to request “equal time” for reply. After quoting Tom F. Driver, for example, to the effect that Christian art “is always less clear [as to theology and dogma] than is that of preaching and discursive literature.” the author observes: “Certainly there is no such priority of verbal over sensory communication as Protestantism has asserted. Such a priority is merely a historical accident.…” Surely not. Philosophically and practically, the word must take priority over the artistic symbol in the central role of the Church.

A good index and useful footnotes (from which may be derived a selected bibliography, though none is printed separately) enhance the value of the volume.

CALVIN D. LINTON

The Shape Of Glory

Them He Glorified, by Bernard Ramm (Eerdmans, 1963, 148 pp., $3), is reviewed by Harold B. Kuhn, professor of the philosophy of religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

One is astonished when he realizes that there has been to date no volume devoted wholly to a systematic exploration of the doctrine of glorification, or even of the rich range of usages that the term “glory” and its cognates have in the Christian Scriptures. Professor Ramm’s present volume points up the vastness of the materials in Holy Writ on this subject, and promises to achieve and hold a place of leadership among further studies in this area.

It must be left to the reader to discover the meticulous research that has gone into this work, which is biblically based from first to last. The most that a reviewer can hope to do is to indicate the major lines of the author’s thought and the range of Christian truth he relates to his study of the terms “glory” and “glorify.” With respect to the person and work of our Lord, Dr. Ramm notes the centrality of the Cross as it relates to the manifestation of the essential glory of the Eternal Son. He notes the entire sphere involved in His glorification, avoiding on the one hand the vagaries of “incarnational theology” and emphasizing on the other the contribution of Transfiguration. Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension (as well as the Parousia) to the total structure of glorification.

The volume emphasizes, of course, the general pattern of Christian evangelicalism, including a strong stress upon an objective atonement. In relation to the manward thrust of Christian redemption. Professor Ramm is sensitive to the whole range of applied soteriology; he emphasizes the dimensions of moral freedom and personal responsibility no less than the glory of the “inheritance restored.” He seeks at each point in his presentation to add perspective to the Christian doctrines that he discusses. He sees clearly the element of discontinuity involved in the final and full renewal of man in Christ, as well as in the world-renewal. It goes almost without saying that he envisions the redemption of the whole man, including the body, and explores the Christian hope of a final reconstitution of a redeemed and glorious “communion of saints.”

This reviewer has not read a discussion of the “glorification passages” of the Book of Revelation that can approach, in quality and depth, that of Dr. Ramm, as he surveys with sober insight the rich range of prophecies and promises given to the Exile on Patmos so long ago. This treatment should effectively disarm those who regard the Apocalypse as fantastic or unworthy of credence by intelligent persons.

Dr. Ramm works within the framework of a frank Christian supernaturalism, and pursues his work with a painstaking reverence. This reviewer found the volume to be delightful reading: the author has himself found his work to be delightfully adventuresome and has succeeded well in imbuing his volume with that spirit. Them He Glorified is a work which not only merits, but cordially invites, reading and re-reading.

HAROLD B. KUHN

Walk With Me

Varieties of English Preaching 1900–1960, by Horton Davies (Prentice-Hall, 1963, 276 pp., $6.60), is reviewed by Ben Lacy Rose, professor of pastoral leadership and homiletics, Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia.

When one walks with great men he seeks almost unconsciously to match their stride. Here is a book which allows the reader to walk with some of the noblest souls of this century, to see some of their strengths and their weaknesses, and to be infected by their passions and guided by their hopes.

The author, the Putnam Professor of Religion at Princeton University, has selected fourteen men as representatives of preaching in England during the twentieth century. While he concentrates on the religious thoughts and style of preaching, Professor Davies sets forth salient and interesting facts about the life of each man. Choosing persons from many denominations, including Congregational, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Roman Catholic, the book reveals the vast differences between men whom God uses in a single generation to bring his message to men. The full list of preachers includes: J. H. Jowett, Bishop Henson, Dean Inge, Dick Sheppard, G. A. Studdert Kennedy, Monsignor Ronald Knox, Leslie D. Weatherhead, B. L. Manning, C. S. Lewis, Campbell Morgan, W. E. Sangster, J. S. Stewart, William Temple, and H. H. Farmer.

Professor Davies discovers six distinct types of preaching within the group: devotional, reasonable, liturgical, psychological, expository, and apologetical. To these are added two general categories: lay preaching and the preaching of truth through personality. For each type and category at least one and sometimes three examples are presented and analyzed.

The style of the book is popular and readable. The author, himself a son of an English manse, shows an understanding of and an appreciation for the pulpit work of each of the fourteen personalities, but his treatment of each is clear-eyed and impersonal. He faithfully reveals the failings of a man when this is necessary for the proper appreciation of his work and character. The truth is never lost in adulation and praise.

The author has no thesis to prove, no pet peeve to unload, no ax to grind. In a day when so many books are being written in an “accusative” mood, it is refreshing to read this book which introduces with proper enthusiasm men who did (or are doing) their task well and by whom all may be taught. It is not heavy reading, but it is profitable for any person, preacher or layman.

BEN LACY ROSE

God’S Own Theodicy

Acquittal by Resurrection, by Markus Barth and Verne H. Fletcher (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963, 192 pp., $4.75), is reviewed by James Daane, editorial associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

This is a book of more than ordinary significance for both theology and ethics. It will have a long discussion, large influence, high praise, and sharp criticism. I can here only hint at the book’s overall position and rich content.

In the first section, Markus Barth, son of Karl, puts his eye unabashedly on Rudolf Bultmann and begins with a strong argument for the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection. The Resurrection is not a postulate of faith, nor the product of the creative faith of the primitive believing community. On the contrary, so unwilling were the disciples of Jesus to believe in the Resurrection that they preferred to believe in ghosts. Nor is the Resurrection a myth inviting demythologizing or spiritualizing interpretations. It is an event which occurred at a given time, at a specific place, before chosen witnesses. “There is no difference between the factuality, reality, actuality of the crucifixion and of the resurrection events. They possess the same historicity.” Even more pointedly, “Had the New Testament writers known of the devices of the twentieth century, they would perhaps have insisted upon the confirmation afforded by a camera, a recording machine, or a newspaper reporter.” Barth further adds, “If the essence of history should be sought and found not in an infinite becoming and dying … but in God’s struggle and care for man, then the resurrection is to be considered at least as historical, if not more so [this may raise questions], as the death of Christ suffered from the hands of his enemies.” Anything less than a truly historical Resurrection would fail to support Barth’s thesis that the Resurrection alters the whole universe in all its time and history. To show that in biblical thought the Resurrection has anchorage in history, Barth gives extensive exegetical treatment to those New Testament passages which deal with the Resurrection, and particularly to those which implicitly or explicitly contain Old Testament texts. His purpose is to show that the Old Testament no more than the New allows the Resurrection, as in Bultmann, to be regarded as a mere postulate of faith.

While Western theological thought, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, associates justification specifically with the Cross, and sanctification with the Resurrection, Barth points to those biblical passages which make the reverse association and present the Resurrection as a divine act of justification or acquittal. Here the Resurrection is understood not merely as the justification of sinners, but as a public annunciation of God’s justification of himself. Barth writes, “By the resurrection God not only reveals what he is pro me; he manifests also what he is in himself.… God manifests not only that he ‘makes righteous’ but also and foremost that ‘he is righteous’ (Rom. 3:26). Unless the resurrection is explained as a deed by which God manifests, distinguishes, and describes himself, even his love and power, his holiness and righteousness, his mercy and grace—it is not explained at all.” Thus the Resurrection is also God’s justification of himself, of all his ways and works with men, specifically of his election of Israel, his promises to her, his covenant with her, and his call of Israel to service. In New Testament language, the Resurrection is God’s vindication of his amazing act of justifying the ungodly! Thus the Resurrection is theodicy—something which theologians and philosophers usually associate with the problem of evil rather than with that righteousness of God which triumphs over evil and justifies the ungodly.

The Resurrection as theodicy is, moreover, as every theodicy must be, total. It means the justification of all men, not merely of those who believe; the forgiveness and renewal of all things, of the entire cosmos, of all principalities and powers, which Barth defines as the state (Romans 13 is said to have a Christological foundation), as any structured power such as labor unions or political parties, or even the powers that inform an age or a culture. The Resurrection is a justification of all these things, for all things are made new, and a justification of God himself for his gracious acquittal of all men and all things. This is known, of Course, only in the Church, for the meaning and the fact of the Resurrection are known only by those who in faith participate in it. The Church’s task is to announce this hidden truth to all the world, to live according to this fact, and to gratefully praise God because it is true.

At this point the Resurrection becomes ethically relevant for politics, the state, for labor, culture—for everything. Here, too, the question of universal salvation arises, one which the book neither explicitly urges nor, indeed, in any way concerns itself with.

Barth’s argument is that the universal import of the Resurrection must be understood within a juridical context in which Jesus Christ appears as the legal basis for the justification of all men and of God himself for his act of justifying the sinner. And it is presented with massive exegetical and biblical interpretation. The questions and problems which it raises will not be resolved by the recitation of orthodox slogans or isolated texts—if for no other reason than that texts can be cited against every theology that has ever been constructed. The issues Barth raises can be successfully met only by an equally massive theological effort. Markus, it seems to me, stands in the tradition of his father, and his simpler style only makes his theological heritage the more powerful. In new and forceful ways he raises old questions: How can one construct a theology informed by an unlimited atonement and by a limited Resurrection? How can one avoid a theological, inverse version of Bultmann, a theology which posits the historicity of the Cross and Resurrection, but makes their effectiveness contingent upon the human response of faith?

Fletcher, in the second section of the book, indicates the sweeping ethical implications of this cosmic interpretation of the Resurrection for all areas of life: politics, law courts, and all structures and formations of power. He urges that the secular world is no subordinate, lower, natural kingdom (à la natural theology, or world versus Church), but the one realm for which Christ was bodily crucified and physically raised, and in which he therefore now reigns as Lord. On the basis of Markus Barth’s understanding of the Resurrection as acquittal, Fletcher argues that capital punishment is unchristian. The state may punish to protect itself against evil and evil men, but it may not demand the death of a murderer, since Christ already died in his stead. How can the state rightly ask for the life of a murderer when Christ has already given his life for the murderer’s deed? Fletcher’s discussion of the ethical obligations of nations who possess abundance in a world of poor and undeveloped countries, is no less provocative.

On the basis of biblical teaching, there can be no doubt that the physical, historical Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the justification both of sinners and of the God who thereby justifies them. Where this book rightly interprets this truth, it is right in a big way; where it is wrong, it is wrong in a big way. The theological task of discerning where the one ends and the other begins is equally big.

JAMES DAANE

Memorable Journey

Landscapes of the Bible, by Georg Eichholz, trans. by John W. Doberstein (Harper and Row, 1963, 152 pp., $8.95 until Dec. 31, 1963, then $10), is reviewed by Frank Farrell, assistant editor, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The title suggests the content though it does not exhaust it. The reader is taken on a tour of the Bible lands, not simply from Dan to Beersheba but from the Euphrates to the Nile. The narrative follows 104 color photographs, chosen to illuminate the terrains of biblical history.

Avoided is the motley array of commemorative structures which tends to obscure rather than enhance the biblical scenes. The photographs, many of them stunningly beautiful, are largely original in perspective and manage to capture the unexpected. In these pages one may view the mammoth monuments of the Pharaohs, gaze up at the towering columns of Baalbek, roam the forbidding fastnesses of Qumran, enter the gates of Jerusalem to the brilliant-hued Dome of the Rock, wander among the golden columns of sun-drenched Palmyra astride the Syrian desert in isolated splendor, then watch the sun set over the crusader castle which dominates Sidon’s harbor.

Tour guide Georg Eichholz is professor of theology at Kirchliche Hochschule in Wuppertal, Germany. He writes simply and includes archaeological data along with basic facts of geography. All of this serves to give colorful background for Bible study and should serve as a considerable incitement for such when placed in the hands of the layman.

In covering such a wide geographic area, the author has had to be very selective in his choice of sites for illustration and comment. One may be disappointed at omissions, but what is included is treated gracefully. Lessons of providence and history are not neglected. On the place of Israel among the nations, Professor Eichholz says: “This [Isa. 43:1–4] tells us what makes Israel Israel: the incomparable wonder of the elective love of God. This is the royal theme of its history, even though Israel itself often fails to recognize it. Knowing that theme, we hold Israel’s history no far-off thing, but history that is near to us, just as surely as Israel’s God is the God of all the world. Knowing this theme, we know that Israel’s history is not a triumphal march in the midst of world history, but rather the story of God’s meeting with his people.”

FRANK FARRELL

A Sunday-evening church service ended with fatal blasts of buckshot in Asheville, North Carolina, this month. A 57-year-old ex-convict barged into the sanctuary of the West Asheville Assembly of God and killed the minister, his own recently divorced wife, and himself. Police apparently were unable immediately to fix a specific motive in the shootings. The slain minister, the Rev. Lester M. Cobb, 44, leaves his wife, a son, and three daughters.

Protestant Panorama

Southern Baptist Hospital Board asked the American Hospital Association to “curtail its activities in seeking government participation” in the work of voluntary hospitals.

Seven new Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) have been established in Puerto Rico in three years. Goal for the decade is twenty new congregations.

United Presbyterian Commission on Religion and Race pledged “unflagging support” to President Johnson in carrying out civil-rights policies of the late President Kennedy.

In New Zealand, the Anglican Synod of the Waiapu diocese approved a tentative plan of merger with other Protestant denominations. Archbishop Norman Lesser observed, however, that the plan would not be put into effect if it would “render the hope of union with the Roman and Orthodox churches unlikely or impossible.”

In Sweden, the Riksdag (Parliament) is weighing a measure to allow laymen to participate in the election of bishops in the Lutheran state church. The proposal originated in the executive branch of the national government and was approved by the church’s general synod.

Miscellany

A Communist newspaper in the Uzbek Soviet Republic reported that three women Baptist missionaries had been charged with illegal religious activities and sentenced to two years in prison. It said the women had been accused of “organizing secret meetings of an unregistered Baptist sect.”

A significant increase in the sale of religious and inspirational Christmas cards since the assassination of President Kennedy was reported from New York by Religious News Service. Particularly in demand were two cards painted by Mrs. Kennedy for the benefit of the National Cultural Center. One depicts the journey of the Magi, and the other shows an angel heralding the nativity.

Protest marches against the ban on public school devotions were conducted in Washington, D. C., and Hartford, Connecticut, last month. An assortment of about 350 pickets paraded in front of the White House on Thanksgiving Day. Two days later, 600 Assemblies of God young people demonstrated on the steps of the Connecticut capitol.

National Council of Churches delivered an initial check of $12,000 to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church of Birmingham, where a bomb explosion killed four Negro girls on September 15. The money represented donations to a fund established by the NCC’s Commission on Religion and Race.

The Rev. Elmer B. Sachs, president of an evangelical youth organization known as Sky Pilots, was sentenced to six months in a Colorado prison for failing to pay a $1358 civil judgment.

The Rev. Koji Honda, leading Japanese evangelist, will conduct a nine-day “Olympic Crusade” in the Tokyo Bunkyo Auditorium next September. The crusade will be jointly sponsored by the Honda Crusades organization and World Harvesters, Inc.

An $8,500,000 expansion program was announced for Wagner College, New York City’s only private, Protestant-related liberal arts college. A dormitory is already under construction, and funds are being sought to erect a new science building. The college, whose picturesque eighty-acre campus overlooks New York harbor, is associated with the Lutheran Church in America.

A new publishing plant for All-Church Press designed to quadruple its printing capacity was formerly dedicated in Fort Worth, Texas, last month. The ceremonies also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the organization, which publishes congregational and denominational newspapers.

Fifty-eight American couples flew to Korea last month to adopt a group of orphan children ranging in ages from three weeks to thirteen years. The flight was sponsored by a Protestant group on the West Coast in cooperation with Flying Tiger Lines. Costs amount to about $950 per couple. Another flight is planned for April of next year.

The Canadian House of Commons passed a private bill providing a name change for what will hereafter be known as the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Canada (former name: Canadian Union Conference Corporation of the Seventh-day Adventists). The bill also adds an official French name and enlarges the power of the corporation to hold land and publish literature.

Personalia

The Rev. Alton M. Motter named executive director of the Minnesota Council of Churches.

Dr. Harold H. Hutson appointed executive vice-president of Methodist-related American University.

Dr. Gilbert F. White, professor of geography at the University of Chicago, elected board chairman of the American Friends Service Committee.

The Rev. Angus Finlayson named moderator-designate of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.

Dr. Courts Redford, executive secretary of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board, plans to retire at the end of 1964.

Paul E. Hoffman, managing editor of the theological quarterly Lutheran World, was ordained in Geneva in what was described as the first Lutheran ordination service in the city’s history.

They Say

“How long shall we continue pompously to aver that the chief contribution of Jesus was simply to rehash all that had been said before by his Jewish ancestors? How long before we can admit that his influence was a beneficial one—not only to the pagans, but to the Jews of his time as well, and that only those who later took his name in vain profaned his teachings.”—Rabbi Maurice N. Eisendrath, in an address at the forty-seventh general assembly of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

The Rev. R. Eugene Crow of Los Angeles is the winner of a competition sponsored by CHRISTIANITY TODAY for sermons dealing with universalism. His entry, “Eternity, Our Responsibility,” begins on page 13. Other winners are listed on page 12.

The year-end mood always has a tinge of sadness, as the article on the opposite page says, and the passing of 1963 will be particularly sad. The editorial on page 20, however, calls attention to some encouraging notes. Another editorial, “Christ Comes Twice,” underscores hope for tomorrow.

Circulation this issue 214,822 copies.

The following report is based upon an exclusive interview with Mrs. Marguerite Oswald by Jimmie R. Cox, CHRISTIANITY TODAYnews correspondent, one week after her son was slain at Dallas police headquarters.

Mrs. Marguerite Oswald, mother of the man accused of the assassination of President Kennedy, tried under difficult circ*mstances to provide religious training for her three sons.

Her own parents were of different faiths. Her father, a Roman Catholic, permitted her mother to oversee the religious upbringing of the family. Her mother, a Lutheran, had Mrs. Oswald baptized in a Missouri Synod Lutheran church in New Orleans where she also was confirmed at the age of twelve.

When Lee Harvey Oswald was born on October 18, 1939, his father, Robert E. Lee Oswald, had been dead for two months. Although the elder Oswald had been an insurance salesman, he had insured himself for only $3,500. The only other money available to the widow was a small sum from the sale of the equity in the family home.

Like his mother, the infant Lee was baptized in a Missouri Synod Lutheran church in New Orleans. He was never confirmed.

Mrs. Oswald attempted to stay at home and rear her family but eventually was forced to go to work. She paid a maid to care for the children for a time, but when World War II came, she had to make other arrangements. The older two sons she placed in a Lutheran institution which accepted children having only one parent. She said she was expected to pay whatever circ*mstances would permit.

But Lee was too young to enter the church home. Mrs. Oswald said she had no choice but to leave him to the care of a sister, who also lived in New Orleans, and to hire other attendants for him whenever possible.

“The older boys received a wonderful religious education,” Mrs. Oswald declared, pointing out that Lutherans also operated a school in connection with the children’s home. But Lee was not accepted until he was three and remained in the institution only two years.

At this time, Mrs. Oswald remarried and moved with her second husband to Fort Worth. She took Lee with her and had the other two sons enrolled in a military academy. But the second marriage ended in divorce after only eight or nine months.

Mrs. Oswald remained in Fort Worth, working and sending her sons to school until Lee’s next oldest brother. Robert Oswald, entered the service. She then moved to New York to be near Robert and his wife.

“I wanted to have someone in the family to care for Lee while I worked,” she said. Lee then was eleven.

Immediately on moving to New York she enrolled Lee in a Lutheran school. It was an hour and a half, subway time, from their home, however, and she later moved to the Bronx, where Lee attended public school. A psychiatric report at that time is said to have considered Lee “dangerous.” but Mrs. Oswald refused to discuss it.

Mrs. Oswald moved back to New Orleans with Lee toward the war’s end, again so that she could be near a relative, her sister. When Robert Oswald received his discharge from the service, he wanted to return to Fort Worth, and Mrs. Oswald, with Lee, moved there, too, in July, 1956.

In October of the same year, Lee, then seventeen, joined the Marine Corps, thus beginning the turbulent career that ended in a tragedy which stunned the world.

“In every place we lived,” Mrs. Oswald insisted, “I always tried to be with my children. I was an active worker in my church in New Orleans before Lee was born, and as he was growing up I would try to see that he attended Sunday school and church.”

She said she was not able to attend regularly because of the necessity that she work for her children’s livelihood. At this point she commented somewhat bitterly on the attitude of some professing Christians toward her during her struggle to provide for her family:

“I don’t remember ever being visited by a minister or anyone representing a church during all that time, as we moved from one city to another.” She allowed, however, that perhaps church people were unable to contact her because she worked long and irregular hours.

Nevertheless, she added: “Some good people were very thoughtless and inconsiderate. They wouldn’t think of missing church on Sunday, but they would expect me to have Sunday dinner ready for them when they returned.” The implication was that it never occurred to her employers that she also might want to worship on the Lord’s Day.

In spite of this, and all that has happened, however, Mrs. Oswald asserts that her own faith in God has remained unshaken, and if anything, has been strengthened.

In the week following Lee’s arrest for the assassination of the President, she received more than 400 letters from all parts of the United States and even from foreign countries. Many of the letters have been from Christians—some quoting Scriptures of comfort to the distressed, others offering sympathy and material assistance both to the mother and to her dead son’s Russian-born wife and two children.

“I know that my son was not an atheist,” Mrs. Oswald declared. She recounted an incident that occurred shortly after his return to the United States after three years in the Soviet Union. His wife, who could speak no English, brought a double picture frame to his mother. One side held a picture, taken in Russia, of the young couple with their child, June. In the other side was a print of “Christ and the Child.” Pointing to her daughter, then to the painting of Jesus, she indicated in sign language and broken English that she wanted the child baptized.

Mrs. Oswald said Lee asked her to make arrangements for the baptism to be performed at a Lutheran church in a public ceremony. He later decided not to go through with the ceremony on grounds that a financial contribution usually was expected from the parents of children when they were christened.

“At the time,” said Mrs. Oswald, “he didn’t even have money to buy food and clothing for his family.”

Lee Oswald’s wife later had the christening performed in an Eastern Orthodox church in Dallas. The clergyman who performed the rite has been quoted as saying that it was done without Lee’s knowledge.

Mrs. Oswald said that on returning to her apartment in Fort Worth after her son’s burial, she found cards in her door from ministers of many denominations offering to make themselves available to assist her in any way possible. She said she was disappointed and grieved by the attitude of some persons, however, among them close acquaintances who remained aloof and showed no concern for her during her moment of greatest trial. A few persons were reportedly upset because her son was buried in the same cemetery with their deceased kin.

Mrs. Oswald still maintains that her son was innocent of the murder of the President, despite the evidence compiled against him.

She says, too, that she has no worries about the future. She recalls the words her minister spoke to her at the burial of her first husband. In answer to her question about why her husband had been taken, the minister replied, “You know that we can’t ask such things. Never question the will of God.”

“I did not question His will then and I do not question it now,” says Mrs. Oswald. “I know that things will be worked out according to God’s purpose.”

Sidelights

Lyndon Baines Johnson, thirty-sixth President of the United States, has been a member of the First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) of Johnson City, Texas. His wife and two daughters, however, are Episcopalians. The family has attended both Episcopal and Christian churches while in Washington. On Thanksgiving Day they worshiped at a union service in a Methodist church.… Only one other American President has been a member of the Disciples, James A. Garfield.… Numerous church leaders attended the funeral services for President Kennedy at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. Prominent clergymen included evangelist Billy Graham and integration leader Martin Luther King.… Britons flocked to churches on hearing the news of the assassination. Religious News Service reported from England: “It is safe to say that there was not a church, chapel or synagogue in this land in which there were not special prayers—in some cases special services—in which the worshippers paid tribute to the late President”.… The Bible upon which President Johnson placed his hand as he was sworn into office may have been a Douay Roman Catholic version. U. S. District Court Judge Sarah T. Hughes, who administered the oath, recalled that “I thought someone said it was a Catholic Bible”.… Only two weeks before he was elevated to the Presidency, Johnson cited Psalm 91 as his favorite Bible passage. He quoted the entire chapter in reply to a query from a New Jersey teen-ager.… The minister who presided at the burial service for Lee Harvey Oswald was the Rev. Louis A. Saunders, executive secretary of the Fort Worth Area Council of Churches. He is a clergyman of the Disciples of Christ. He went to the cemetery on his own and was called to officiate at the last moment after an out-of-town minister, through a reported misunderstanding, failed to appear. Having had no time to prepare, and having even left his Bible in his car parked two blocks away, Saunders began: “We have come here today to lay away the body of Lee Harvey Oswald. We are not here to judge him but to bury him. May God have mercy on his soul.” The clergyman then turned to newsmen and security men and said Mrs. Oswald had asked him to say that Lee was a good son to her, a good husband to his wife, and a good father.

Last Call For Tax Benefits?

American church-goers who put extra dollars in the offering plate by December 31 may get some income tax relief.

Contributions made before the end of 1963 will be deductible from gross income that is taxed at the 1963 rate, and present indications in Washington are that 1964 income tax rates will be a little lower. Thus, a charitable gift will not be worth as much in 1964 in terms of tax saving as one made this year.

Under present tax rates, a contribution to a religious, educational, or charitable institution means a tax saving of from 20 cents to 91 cents on the dollar, depending on the taxpayer’s bracket. The tax reduction bill which passed the House of Representatives in September sets rates 16 cents to 77 cents per dollar.

Congress, facing an election year in 1964, is believed almost certain to pass a tax bill, especially since President Johnson has made it the first plank of his legislative program and has promised Congress an effort to reduce expenditures and bring the budget into earlier balance.

It is believed that there is only a remote chance that the Senate would restore to the bill a provision recommended by the late President Kennedy that would allow any kind of deductions only to the extent that together they exceed 5 per cent of an individual’s income.

Even if this provision is rejected by the Senate, as it was in the House, there is a possibility that donations will be tax deductible only if they exceed $50 for an individual or $100 for a married couple.

Adjournment

Amid speculation that Pope Paul VI may not be as progressive as many have thought, the Second Vatican Council adjourned until next fall.

The pontiff issued a personal decree that made permanent certain transitory rights and privileges of Roman Catholic bishops, but left the big question of the collegiality of the bishops still unresolved. He took the edge off some of the liberals’ disappointment by announcing plans for a visit to the Holy Land next month.

Decrees were promulgated on liturgy and communications. They represent the only two of the seventeen schemata on the council’s agenda that have been completed. Both were approved by overwhelming votes.

Mapping Out Mapilindo

A fragile cultural federation in Southeast Asia embracing a combined population of 140 million spells opportunity for a group of Protestant evangelists. They feel that the loose association of Malaysia, Pilipinas (native spelling for the Philippines), and Indonesia provides a favorable climate for more effective proclamation of the Christian message. They have appropriated the term “Mapilindo” and are busy organizing an evangelistic strategy for the three countries.

The term “Mapilindo” was created by the chiefs of state of what was formerly Malaya (now Malaysia), the Philippines, and Indonesia during a summit conference in Manila last July. The federation still stands, despite the highly problematical attitudes of Indonesia and the Philippines toward the formation of Malaysia. The common racial beginnings of the three date back to the ancient Madjapahit Empire.

First step in the Mapilindo evangelistic plan will be a conference for Christian leaders in Singapore next August. Plans will be set in motion for the appointment of Mapilindo gospel teams comprising one evangelist each from Malaysia, Pilipinas, and Indonesia. The idea grew out of an early-morning prayer meeting among a group of concerned evangelical workers in Singapore last summer.

Much of the impetus for the new strategy came from Philippine evangelist Gregorio Tingson, a product of both Oriental and Occidental education. A former law student at the University of the Philippines, Tingson was sent to the United States following World War II by an American Christian serviceman who had heard him preach. Tingson had been converted to Christianity under the influence of Miss May Coggins, an American Baptist missionary now living in Phoenix, Arizona. While in the States, he studied at Olivet College of the Church of the Nazarene in Kankakee, Illinois.

Since his return to the Philippines, Tingson has taken yearly evangelistic tours through parts of Asia. His latest, this year, saw him in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Calcutta, Madras, Colombo, and Singapore.

It was the consensus of those at the Singapore prayer meeting that while the word “Mapilindo” is basically an appellation for the cultural federation of the three nations, the same word may yet serve as a strong rallying point for the cause of evangelism in that part of the world. A number of church leaders have voiced support. They believe that with the common aboriginal bond and racial affinity among the Mapilindo people, the formation of Mapilindo gospel teams will push ahead the cause of Asian evangelism significantly.

The teams could mean much, especially in Malaysia, where reportedly there is not a single native Malay Christian. The British government some years ago caused to be included in the Malayan constitution a provision prohibiting foreign missionaries from doing evangelistic work among the native Malays. The Christians found in Malaya are either Chinese, Japanese, Indian, or some other non-Malay nationality.

Evangelical observers in the Mapilindo region feel that the Mapilindo gospel teams may hold the answer to reaching the native Malays. A person from the Philippines or Indonesia has physical characteristics very similar to the native Malays.

The Mapilindo region as a whole counts only three million evangelical Christians out of the 140 million population (100 million in Indonesia, 30 million in the Philippines, and 10 million in Malaysia).

EUSTAQUIO RAMIENTOS, JR.

Last month at Oxford there died a man who had the rare gift, many said, of making righteousness readable.

Clive Staples Lewis was born in 1898, the son of a Belfast solicitor whose immediate forebears had come from the hills of Wales. The son achieved a Triple-First (highest honors) at Oxford and taught there many years. But it was Cambridge that gave him deserved honor in 1954 by appointing him to a new chair of medieval and Renaissance English, from which he retired this fall because of poor health.

Lewis had the knack of relevance and intelligibility in speaking to people, as was discovered in World War II when a series of his talks on radio won wide popularity among all classes. He was at once logical and imaginative. Preaching at Oxford one of the greatest sermons that city has known in modern times, he said:

“We are half-hearted preachers, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.”

All the writings of C. S. Lewis give the impression of an effective effortlessness; yet the Roman Catholic Tablet, comparing him with G. K. Chesterton, rightly joins in hailing him as one of the greatest Christian apologists of his time. The Tablet said it was puzzled, however, that his sense of “the Church” was astonishingly faint and crude.

A puckish humor could be discerned even in the index to Miracles (1947), which has the intriguing reference:

“Higher Thought. See Tapioca.”

As an Oxford don he never quite conformed, and his satire That Hideous Strength (1945) was sharper than even some of C. P. Snow’s commentaries on college life and intrigue. He was impatient with the cult of culture, could smell cant a mile away, and would not hesitate to scandalize the puritanical by a reference to “my favorite pub.”

Yet he was a profound biblical and patristics scholar whose Reflections on the Psalms (1958) shows what he might have done had he given himself to that field.

In his vivid apprehension of evil he has some affinity with John Bunyan, to whom this world was a constant battlefield with the soul’s eternal destiny in the balance. This outlook is seen in The Screwtape Letters (1942). It is his best-known book, but Lewis himself considered that his earlier work, The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933), in which he explained a recovery of faith, was a much more important volume. His published sales in paperbacks alone now top the million mark. Perhaps the most moving part of Lewis’s life, most of it lived in bachelorhood, was after his marriage in 1956 to an old friend, Mrs. Joy Davidson Gresham, while she was ill. It was like writing a new chapter to The Problem of Pain (1940), a penetrating work which had won him great acclaim. Through her illness he cherished her; then under the pseudonym “N. W. Clerk” he wrote A Grief Observed after her death three years ago. Few know the little book, fewer still that he was the author.

(Mrs. Gresham was an American divorcee, a poet and essayist who once joined the Communist party only to break away in disillusionment. She was the daughter of a New York Jewish couple. She was greatly influenced by his Miracles, and it eventually led her to him.)

A moderate Anglican layman, Lewis identified himself with no party and was no supporter of denominationalism. Perhaps his influence was most marked on the backslidden and the agnostic, whom he won without any dilution of the Christian challenge.

Most evangelicals enjoyed Lewis’s work and acknowledge especially his tremendous contribution in exposing the superficialities of many intellectual unbelievers.

Some evangelicals, however, have had reservations, including Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, a personal friend and the minister of historic Westminster Chapel in London. Dr. Lloyd-Jones told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that because Lewis was essentially a philosopher, his view of salvation was defective in two key respects: (1) Lewis taught and believed that one could reason oneself into Christianity; and (2) Lewis was an opponent of the substitutionary and penal theory of the Atonement.

Lewis died November 22, the same day that President Kennedy was killed. The news of the death was not made public until two days later.

Other Deaths

Two noted figures on the American religious scene died in November: Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, 70, and the Rev. John La Farge, 83. Rabbi Silver was long a champion of the Zionist movement and was known as a principal architect of the modern state of Israel. Father LaFarge was associate editor and former editor-in-chief of the Jesuit weekly America.