Page 5482 – Christianity Today (2024)

At the Christmas season, millions of Christians will confess their faith in the words of the Nicene Creed. To some evangelicals, this smacks of a “dead liturgy” not too far removed from heathen prayer wheels. No doubt these words of Nicea have lost their meaning for some, and their repetition has become merely a mechanical ritual.

But it need not be so. Once men died over these words. And in our twentieth century, there are still those who have gladly laid down their lives for the truths for which these ancient words stand. In Western Christendom, alas, these words have lost their power. We have forgotten what they mean—if we ever knew. But the words of Nicea spell out the heart of Christian faith.

Refinement Under Fire

The Nicene Creed, first formed at the Council of Nicea in A.D. 324, comes down to us as reshaped at Constantinople in the year 381. The main difference between the original form and the one associated with the Council of Constantinople is the article on the Holy Spirit including the references to Scripture as the source of divine authority (“according to the Scripture” and “Who spoke by the Prophets”). Still later the Western churches changed the original “we believe” to the more personal “I believe,” and then, long after, at a provincial synod in Toledo, Spain, added the famous “filioque” (and the Son) to the statement that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. Most evangelicals now agree that whatever may be right about the additional phrase, it ought not to have divided the church in A.D. 1064. In any case, churches of both East and West, Catholic and Protestant, have adopted this 1,600-year-old statement from Constantinople as a standard second in importance only to the Apostles’ Creed.

Hundreds of millions of devout and not so devout have repeated the familiar words throughout the churches of Christendom:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God; Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of very God; Begotten, not made; Being of one substance with the Father; By whom all things were made: Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, And was made man: And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried: And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures: And ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of the Father: And he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, The Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; Who spake by the Prophets: And I believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church: I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins: And I look for the Resurrection of the dead: And the Life of the world to come. Amen.

In the ancient imperial city of Constantinople, we are told, the barber in his shop and the merchant in his stall argued with customers over the issues at stake. Was Christ hom*oousion (of the same identical substance) or only hom*oision (of similar substance) with the Father? Was Athanasius or Arius right?

The very same battle rages in the church today, only the controversy is carried on in very low visibility, unfortunately, because even evangelical leaders don’t know the difference between the orthodox and the Arian or Jehovah’s Witness view of Christ.

Tripping Over The Doctrine Of The Trinity

The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 (commonly called just the “Nicene Creed”) spelled out the Christian doctrine of the Trinity for the ancient church—yes, and for the church of today, too. Then, as now, it was not accepted without strong, even bitter, opposition. Across the years opponents have voiced two basic complaints about the doctrine of the Trinity.

First, the doctrine of the Trinity is a flat contradiction. God may be one or three, but he is not both. Because it is a contradiction of terms, only an insane person or a religious fanatic who has closed his mind to rational thought can believe in the Trinity.

To this, Christians reply that it is no contradiction at all to hold that something is both one and three—so long as a person does not say it is one and three in the same sense at the same time. No Christian asserts such nonsense about God. We do not say God is one and three in the same sense. We say there is one God and only one—not three. God is one in his being. This one God, however, exists as three persons. God’s psychology is more complex than that of man: in him there are three I-thou personal centers or personal relationships. So God is not one and three in the same sense, but one in one sense and three in quite a different sense.

Second, it is further objected, contradictory or not, that the doctrine of the Trinity is certainly not found in the Bible. It is true that the word “trinity” is not in the Bible and that there is no formal definition of the Trinity to be found anywhere in the Bible. The nearest thing in the Bible to an explicit doctrine of the Trinity is found in 1 John 5:7: “For there are three that bear record in heaven—the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”

But the textual problem regarding this verse is so severe that even many devout evangelical scholars do not believe it was a part of the original epistle. If their conclusions are valid, the only verse in the Bible clearly teaching the Trinity is not really part of the Bible.

Thus, far from being biblical, it is widely argued, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity really represents a philosophic elaboration of the Greek church—a sort of accommodation to pagan polytheism. The original simple gospel of Jesus Christ was taken over by Greek intellectuals recently converted from paganism and blown up into our doctrine of the Trinity. The Trinity, therefore, represents the Christianity of the Greek creeds of the fourth or fifth centuries A.D., but not of the Bible.

No Christian claims that the Bible sets forth in its pages an explicit statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, but he does claim that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a true description of what the Bible teaches God is like. The creeds are not philosophical elaborations of biblical truth; they are not philosophical statements at all and were never intended to be. They are statements of what their authors conceived to be certain basic facts. They may occasionally employ philosophical terms, but essentially they are simple confessions of facts the writers wished to state unambiguously and clearly enough that they could be distinguished from other alternative statements which, so the writers of the creeds believed, denied these basic facts.

We have a contemporary example of how an idea needs to be protected against debasem*nt. We believe in “democracy.” Unfortunately, today Communists say “me too.” But we think that while they hold to the term, they don’t have the real thing. To make this plain, we find it necessary to define democracy. These detailed distinctions of just what kind of “democracy” we believe in are boring to some and repulsive to others. To us they are simply words used to guard the truth with which we began. We really do believe in democracy.

So the early church had to define and redefine against recurring heresies what it meant when it said that Jesus Christ is really God as well as man. If we wish to communicate the Christian doctrine of the Trinity in our day and to distinguish it from false views, we shall have to do the same. The basic facts indicated by the Trinity are to be found in the Bible and are very clearly and simply set forth. Throughout church history, Christians have found it necessary to elaborate this simple faith with 70,000 footnotes in order to safeguard the simple and elementary facts of the Bible. But the basic doctrine lies on the very surface of the biblical teaching.

The Saving Sense Of Mystery

The Christian has no desire to reduce God to human size. Our thoughts are not God’s thoughts, and his thoughts are much higher than man’s. We insist that the reverent believer in the doctrine of the Trinity must learn to reckon with the mystery of the infinite God.

Nevertheless, we must bear witness to what we believe. By the word trinity we seek to communicate ever so feebly what we believe God is like. If we can’t say what we mean by the words we use about God, then there is no way to bear verbal witness to the truth of our faith. We could not obey the biblical commandment to preach the gospel. No doubt there is much that we do not know about God. But some things we do know. We know that God is not a stick or a stone. We know that our triune God is not 100 million gods of popular Hinduism. And we know that the doctrine of the Trinity is not nonsense.

The Christian has a guide for his thinking in the biblical record that tells us not only of the acts of God by which he sought to reveal himself, but also the interpretation or meaning of those acts set before us in the Bible. We dare not go beyond what God’s Word says, but we should be ungrateful and disobedient to say less than it says.

Trinity On The Other Side Of Mystery

The biblical teaching about the triune God may be summed up very simply. There are three who are called God and who are treated as God in the Bible. (1) The Father is called God, and we are to worship him and to reckon with him as God. (2) The Son is called God, and we are to worship him and to respond to him in ways appropriate only to God. (3) Likewise, the Holy Spirit is called God, and we must respond to him accordingly. (4) In the Bible, each of these is not the other but is distinct from the other in personal ways. The Father gave his Son and sends his Holy Spirit. The Son prays to the Father and likewise sends the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit witnesses to the Father and to the Son. (5) Yet there is just one being who is God. We do not worship three gods; we are monotheists.

All of this, no doubt, is mysterious. In the one God are three interpersonal relationships, and no Christian claims to understand this mystery. But it is not a contradiction. And it is not nonsense. All we are really saying is that God’s psychology is more complex than our own human psychology. This ought not to surprise us or prove too troublesome to handle. We do not yet even understand our own finite human psychology. Why should we not expect the psychology of the infinite God to be more complex and mysterious than ours? Why should we insist that we must understand the divine psychology fully before we are willing to receive what God reveals to be true about his own nature?

This Side Of Mystery

Many subbiblical views have crept into the church through the centuries. Each one presents slight variations from every other one, but essentially all are very similar and tend to fall into one or the other of two patterns. That there is nothing new under the sun is certainly true of heretical views of the Trinity.

The error most frequently made in popular statements of the doctrine of the Trinity is Modalism. The so-called Modal view of the Trinity agrees that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are God, but it argues that the triune God, Christ included, is all one single person who simply appears or reveals himself in three different ways that the church (misleadingly) calls three persons.

All modalistic views of the Trinity founder on the person of Christ. The New Testament makes an obvious distinction between Jesus Christ and the Father, and this distinction is precisely that of a personal nature. In his incarnation Jesus Christ was a self, with a personal life and a personal-like relationship with God the Father. On New Testament grounds, therefore, Jesus Christ and the Father God must be personally differentiated.

The real question is: Was Jesus Christ God or not? If he is God, then there must be some sort of personal distinction in the Godhead and Modalism is ruled out. A biblical view of the deity of Jesus Christ, therefore, clearly eliminates a modalistic view of the Trinity as inconsistent with the biblical data.

A second type of error in the history of the church is best illustrated on the modern scene by some Unitarians, and especially by Jehovah’s Witnesses. In the ancient church, this error was associated most frequently with the heretic Arius. All Arian-like views begin with a whole-hearted acceptance of the distinction between the person of the Son and the person of the Father. Jesus Christ definitely was not the Father, but had a distinctly different self-center and self-life. Since this is true, they argue, he may well be divine in some sense; but he is not truly a second God, for this would make for polytheism. He certainly cannot be God in the same sense in which the Father is God. Of course, in some lesser sense, he may be a god, but he is not “the Mighty God.”

Arians, Unitarians, and contemporary Jehovah’s Witnesses, too, all founder on the person of Jesus Christ. The question must again be put: Is he truly divine according to the biblical revelation or is he not? If anyone says he is not divine, then he must reckon with what the New Testament teaches about Christ when it says that he is divine (John 1:1), calls him “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28), when it requires an ultimate commitment to him appropriate only to God, when it ascribes to him the attributes of God and the right to be worshiped. In short, in some unique sense the New Testament unequivocally places Jesus Christ on the side of the divine. This cannot be escaped except by the rejection of the whole biblical witness to Christ.

But here the problem is presented in its sharpest form. Are we polytheists and idolators? If we say that Jesus is a second divine being in addition to the Father, then we are essentially polytheistic. On the contrary, if we admit that all of these things are rightly to be ascribed to Jesus, but he is after all not really God, on biblical terms we are clearly idolators.

The only solution that makes any sense is the biblical solution itself—that Jesus Christ is the only true God along with the Father and the Holy Spirit, that he has a personal center distinct from the Father and the Holy Spirit and, therefore, the one true God is one divine being and at the same time exists with three different personal centers in Jesus Christ, his heavenly Father, and the Holy Spirit.

This, in short, is biblical trinitarianism. There is no other way to preserve biblical statements from teaching blasphemy according to the Bible’s own standards.

The church today is faced with a crisis on the Holy Spirit similar to the one answered at Constantinople in A.D. 381.

Simply put, the problem then and now is: Who is the Holy Spirit and where in the world does he legitimately work? If Christendom had bothered to celebrate Constantinople, such questions would have been addressed.

Constantinople leaves no doubt that the Spirit speaks through the prophets; that is, the Old Testament spokesmen of God specifically, and all the biblical writers generally. This church council was addressing the question of scriptural authority as it added as an appendage to the Second Article the phrase “according to the Scriptures” to “And the third day he rose again.”

The prophetic Scriptures of the Old Testament were God’s Word, or more specifically, the words of the Holy Spirit. He was the one really speaking through the prophets. These words of the Spirit constitute the messianic plan that Jesus understands as applying to himself. The Scriptures contain God’s moral directives for living, but their chief and ultimate purpose is Christological.

Right here we are brought face to face with a current problem. Protestants have always denied the pope’s claim as a special spokesman for the Holy Spirit as the sole interpreter of the Holy Scriptures. But any “Spirit movement” claiming for anyone alive today a direct speaking of the Holy Spirit in the church outside of the Scriptures flies right in the face of Constantinople with its clear “Who spake by the Prophets.” As Luther adds an “only” to salvation with his sola fide, a sole is needed in this phrase.

The problem also appears in an entirely different disguise when the Scriptures are viewed as just another human literary production with only a casual influence of the Holy Spirit at best. This, of course, is the exegetical tradition coming from the eighteenth-century rationalism that did not and could not distinguish the Bible from other religious works from any number of different religious communities. These men held either that the Spirit does not speak through the Scriptures or that he also speaks through any number of religious writings. Whether they reduced the Bible to the level of other literature by secularizing it or raised all other religious writings to the level of the Bible, the effect was equally disastrous.

A somewhat more subtle and not so easily recognizable problem is the application of Scriptures apart from a Christological purpose. Constantinople attested to the Scriptures’ Christological purpose in saying that Christ rose “according to the Scriptures.” The phrase was taken from 1 Cor. 15:3–4. Paul cites no one specific Old Testament reference as he sees Christ’s salvific work as the Old Testament’s entire message. If the Scriptures are used outside of their Christological purpose, the full effect of what the Spirit intends to accomplish is lost.

Constantinople was specifically directed against those who refused to acknowledge the person of the Holy Spirit. Again, for much of Protestantism today, the Spirit’s individuality within God is reckoned unimportant. Any Trinitarian discussion is foreign. He is understood merely as God’s power or force, but not as that Person who has eternal existence with the Father and the Son and who for them accomplishes salvation in the world. What the Holy Spirit can do for the individual believer frequently has received more attention than who he is. The current “Spirit movements” of the mid-and late-twentieth century are so functional in stressing what can happen in the life of the believer if he “surrenders” himself, that the Person of the Spirit as he is eternally related to the Father and the Son becomes an outdated question, quite useless for real Christian life. The 1,600-year-old answer of Constantinople has lost none of its efficacy in addressing this problem.

The line of Christian theology stemming from Schleiermacher saw no practical purpose for any significant attention to the ancient church’s doctrine on the Holy Spirit, and shelved it. Contemporary “Spirit movements,” regardless of their attention to the Spirit, are hardly an improvement. The Spirit serves not himself but Christ, to whose redemptive work he testifies. The Spirit is Christ’s Spirit and not a self-serving force. He accomplishes his real work by creating faith in Christ, gathering into the church the faithful, and granting them a place in his resurrection. The highest honor given the Spirit is for Christians to trust Christ.

Constantinople’s belief that the Spirit is honored within the unity of the Trinity and not as a separate, autonomous power or force must be confessed again today with vigor equal to that with which it was proclaimed 1,600 years ago.

DAVID P. SCAER¹Dr. Scaer is professor of systematic theology at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana.

A scientist once asked author Dorothy Sayers to write a letter to his scientific organization, setting forth her reasons for believing in the Christian faith.

The letter was not at all what the scientist had expected. It said:

“Why do you want a letter from me? Why don’t you take the trouble to find out for yourselves what Christianity is? You take time to learn technical terms about electricity. Why don’t you do as much for theology? Why do you never read the great writings on the subject, but take your information from the secular ‘experts’ who have picked it up as accurately as you? Why don’t you learn the facts in this field as honestly as in your own field? Why do you accept mildewed old heresies as the language of the church, when any handbook of church history will tell you where they came from?

“Why do you balk at the doctrine of the Trinity—God the Three in One—yet meekly acquiesce when Einstein tells you E = MC2? What makes you suppose that the expression ‘God ordains’ is narrow and bigoted, while your own expression ‘Science demands’ is taken as an objective statement of fact? You would be ashamed to know as little about internal combustion as you know about Christian beliefs.

“I admit,” she continued, “you can practice Christianity without knowing much theology, just as you can drive a car without knowing much about internal combustion. But when something breaks down in the car, you go humbly to the man who understands the works; whereas, if something goes wrong with religion, you merely throw the works away and tell the theologian he is a liar.

“Why do you want a letter from me telling you about God? You will never bother to check on it or find out whether I’m giving you personal opinions or Christian doctrines. Don’t bother with me. Go away and do some work and let me get on with mine.”

Once again it is the end of year, and every Christian organization badgers its constituents for funds to balance the year’s budget. It is hard not to resent such pleas. But President Pearson of Miami Christian College offers us a sobering reminder to be patient:

“The trouble is, you are always asking for money. You are probably right. But let me tell you a personal story.

“I had a little boy; my firstborn. He was a delight to our hearts, but he was always costing me something. He needed clothing, shoes, food, and had special needs that I gladly provided, for he was my son. Then one day he died. It was an experience that I hope you will never have. He does not cost me a dollar now.

“Every need is an unfailing sign of life and growth. Body, mind, and soul have their needs and they must be met continually. A ministry that is constantly in need of funds is alive and growing and going somewhere. A dead ministry has no need, and will not bother you.”

Christmas Without Santa?

A friend writes who works in an inner-city Sunday school:

We had a staff meeting last week to plan our annual Christmas party for the kids. The meeting had just started when one of the workers dropped a bomb.

“We can’t have a Santa Claus this year,” he said. “I just read in a book that Santa Claus is a secular humanist.”

All of us thought he was joking, but it turned out that he was serious.

“Look, you guys,” he shouted, “have you ever rearranged the letters in Santa? It becomes Satan. And Satan is our enemy. Furthermore, Santa wears red, and red is a diabolical color. And Santa is identified with fire because he comes down the chimney.”

“How about if we dress him in white and have him come through the laundry chute?” I suggested.

“And we could call him Father Christmas or Kris Kringle instead of Santa,” added our superintendent.

“Look,” I argued, “if we don’t have a Santa to give these kids some toys and fun, there just won’t be any party. It’ll die before it’s born.”

But our fellow laborer was adamant. “I will not promote a secular humanist!” he shouted. “Secular humanism is ruining our nation!”

“This neighborhood couldn’t be ruined much more,” I commented.

“Look at it this way,” calmly spoke our fearless leader. “These kids know that Santa is just a story. He’s a part of the fixtures of the season. We always try to give the true meaning of Christmas and share the gospel. I don’t see anything wrong with having a Santa.”

“Let’s vote on it,” I suggested. The vote was six in favor of Santa and one opposed.

“Bah, humbug!” said the opposition as it walked out of the room, slamming the door.

“I wish he had stayed,” said our leader. “That 300 pounds he carries around helps make him a perfect Santa Claus. I wonder if all overweight people fight secular humanism?”

We closed the meeting by joining hands and singing a verse of “Silent Night.”

P.S. I volunteered to play Santa. I’m not sure I know what a secular humanist is, but I do know what a Christian is; and this year, Santa will be a Christian.

Joyfully yours,

EUTYCHUS X

Slap From A Distance

You have continuously rejected my offerings, and even chose not to print any of my letters to Eutychus & His Kin. I’ve felt the slap from a distance. Perhaps I can come in the back way, in the CT hymn contest.

DOVER A. HADDOCK

Blue Ridge, Ga.

Misleading Statements

It is sad to see Paul Steeves making one misleading statement after another [Eutychus & His Kin, Oct. 23].

The most serious accusation against the Siberian Seven is that they practice “fanatic religious expression” and “totally refuse to submit to the government God has ordained for them.” The Seven represent many thousands of Pentecostals who have consistently been denied even the one basic freedom supposedly guaranteed in the Soviet constitution: freedom of worship.

This group has openly and bravely fought for the right to exist as a Christian community. It is the Soviet response that has been fanatical, treating the group like criminals. Loyalty to the state can never be higher than loyalty to God. Steeves goes on to say “they will refuse subjection to any government, wherever they may live.” Their coreligionist, Yevgeni Bresenden, who asked for the same rights, was allowed to emigrate a few years ago. There are 30,000 other Pentecostals who wish to emigrate.

Prof. Steeves asserts that we are somehow responsible for Soviet persecutions by intensifying our “belligerence towards the Soviets.” Human rights and religious liberty are indivisible. The most political act of all is to be intimidated into silence when the basic Christian conscience demands concern and prayer for the suffering, no matter under what political system this may occur.

MICHAEL BOURDEAUX

Keston College

Kent, England

Luther A Lunatic?

In reference to R. C. Sprout’s article, “Grace Saved His Sanity, Too” [Oct. 23], I never understood if Sproul was affirming or denying Luther’s insanity. In this modern religious world where there is little known about true conviction of sin, it is possible to believe that religionists would call Luther a lunatic. If Luther was insane, I pray that God would rain down insanity on us all.

REV. CARY G. KIMBRELL

Denham Springs, La.

We think Luther was eminently sane—Eds.

Urgent Matter

Your editorial, “What Separates Evangelicals and Catholics?” [Oct. 23], discusses an urgent matter. I thought your treatment was timely and positive.

I was troubled as you were by so many of the Catholic clergy’s answer to the Gallup poll, that “heaven is a divine reward for those who earn it by their good life.” I even found this thinking portentous for the future of us all. Such seeming presumption in Christian man’s unaided strength over against faith in unearned grace, carries elements of danger for society’s well-being as well as for the individual’s salvation.

JUAN FELIPE CONNEALLY

Los Angeles, Calif.

Church history teaches us that the freedoms Protestants enjoy were hard won, and central doctrines still separate Protestants and Catholics. The church is ill served when the distinctives between the two schools of theology are blurred. How much better it would be for believers to have a clear understanding of the doctrinal distinctives.

RALPH NITE, JR.

Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch

Amarillo, Tex.

Napping Again!

You were caught napping again! [What If … cartoon, Oct. 23]. Which one of us was asleep while they changed the label on the church where the 95 theses were nailed?

GORDON PSALMONDS

St. Louis, Mo.

I suppose it is a good thing that after Luther found the door of the Cathedral of Augsburg filled with postings, he went to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg to post his 95 theses, or we would still be waiting for the Reformation.

REV. TED MENTER

Saint Martin Lutheran Church

Port Huron, Mich.

Strong Complaint

It is necessary to lodge a strong complaint due to a terrible lapse on the part of one of your writers, John Van Til [“God’s Righteous Kingdom” (Books), Oct. 23].

He attributes to the reconstructionist position (which was set forth in my book Theonomy in Christian Ethics and subsequently critiqued by Chantry’s book, the occasion of the review) the view that America is God’s chosen nation. That view is a horrible misreading of Scripture, and wrong-headed. My books do not set forth such a view, nor is it an inference from any of the views I do advance. Indeed, I have publicly repudiated and openly criticized the idea that America is God’s chosen nation. Furthermore, not even Chantry attributes such heresy to the reconstructionist position; the “chosen nation syndrome” does not even play a part in his book. Why he broaches the view at all is beyond me.

It is difficult enough to teach what we believe to be biblical doctrine these days without being forced to correct misleading misrepresentations as well.

GREG L. BAHNSEN

Orange, Calif.

Inerrancy—“Tempest In A Teapot”?

Inerrancy is not a “tempest in a teapot,” but what is at stake is the divine authority of Holy Scripture and the possession of the norm of truth to which everything else will be subjected [“Rhetoric About Inerrancy: The Truth of the Matter,” Sept. 4].

You give reasons to think that Professor Rogers has substantially revised his stance on inerrancy since the publication of his three volumes concerning the Scriptures. It is stupefying that he could so drastically misunderstand the position of scholarly inerrantists, who have never to my knowledge espoused a denial of the humanity of Scripture, or insisted on notarial precision as indispensable to truth, or assumed a rationalistic basis for the ultimate evidence for the inspiration of Scripture. How someone who received as solid a theological training as Dr. Rogers did could so radically misconstrue the inerrantist view is a very great puzzle to me.

None of the matters which he avers estranged him can properly be considered justifiable charges against the Council on Biblical Inerrancy or other informed inerrantists. Nothing would please members of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy more than to welcome Dr. Rogers into our ranks, if indeed he sincerely espouses inerrancy as delineated, for instance, in the Chicago Statement of 1978.

We have no desire to pursue the controversy in low visibility. We are eager to understand others, and also to be understood for what we profess.

ROGER NICOLE

South Hamilton, Mass.

Correction

In your news section [World Scene, Oct. 23], regarding “Africa’s first graduate-level English-language seminary …”: in September 1981 the Nairobi International School of Theology opened its doors, with all African students. This school is one of our international branch schools. It operates fully at the graduate level.

STEPHEN M. CLINTON

International School of Theology

San Bernardino, Calif.

Letters are welcome. Only a selection can be published. Since all are subject to condensation, those of 100 to 150 words are preferred. Address letters to Eutychus and His Kin,CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, Illinois 60187.

At this joyous Christmas season, the entire editorial staff of CHRISTIANITY TODAY extends to you warmest greetings, and wishes you God’s very best as we celebrate together the birth of the Savior. In him we find the one still point in the universe around which all creation revolves. “Peace on earth, good will toward men” are the familiar words of the angels’ song. Our prayer is that we may experience his peace in the midst of this maddening world. We trust the pages of CHRISTIANITY TODAY will reflect not only the turbulent restlessness of contemporary society, but also the quiet inner calm of soul that comes from peace with God.

Read the moving story of his father’s death at Christmastime that is told by Thomas Oden of Drew University. Some years ago when my own father died, a friend warned me, “No matter how old you are, you will grow another inch when your father dies.” And so it was. His death moved me out to the very edge of eternity. In Tom Oden’s case, the death of his earthly father, whom he dearly loved, helped him to understand better the nature of his heavenly father, whom he also dearly loves.

The article by Robert Frykenberg will try your soul when you realize how difficult it is, even with the best will in the world, to succor the helpless and downtrodden in a world impregnated with evil. By ignoring the evil structures of society and the selfishness of mankind, we may salve our consciences through furious, but misguided, social action. The result is only frustration and a wasteful stewardship of the resources at our disposal.

Too often, unfortunately, the evangelical alternative is to sit on our hands and do nothing. But surely this represents a wholesale repudiation of the fruit of “pure religion” as defined by the Bible: “to look after orphans and widows in their distress.” The only valid evangelical option must be obedience to the biblical command to love our neighbor and to minister to all who are in need. But our help must be informed by an intelligent and planned application of biblical, personal, and social concerns, appropriately balanced, and motivated by discerning love.

God In Focus

O Come, Let Us Worship, by Robert G. Rayburn (Baker, 1980, 319 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by George W. Long, pastor, Lookout Mountain Presbyterian Church, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee.

Quickly establishing the importance of worship, “‘the Father seeketh such to worship him’ … Nowhere in all the Scriptures do we read of God seeking anything else from the child of God,” and lamenting the lack of attention to it in evangelical churches, Rayburn offers help.

Asserting that “worship of the true and living God … can be acceptably offered only by those who have been redeemed,” Rayburn examines its basis in both the Old and New Testaments, points to the rich (yet neglected) heritage of the church from centuries past, and becomes quite specific in offering suggestions, even citing passages appropriate for a call to worship and naming hymns that would be suitable for morning worship services, weddings, or funerals.

The author develops a philosophy of worship and offers specific help in implementing it. Rayburn’s specifics are not to be taken as “canned” programs, but rather as examples of what a thorough study of the nature and purpose of worship would produce.

At the heart of this book is a discussion of the objective and subjective aspects of worship. The worshiper is indeed to experience a blessing in his relationship with God, but God himself is to be the primary focus in private and corporate worship. His honor is the primary concern.

This work covers possibilities for glorifying God through worship that are exciting, and the author’s challenge to give as much time and thought to preparing for worship as to sermon preparation pricks the conscience.

If the evangelical community to which Rayburn’s book seems to be directed follows his counsel, many of its churches will have the content, variety, and quality of their worship enhanced. They may be able to capture something of the beauty of classical Christian expressions while using them sincerely and thoughtfully enough that they will not become empty repetitions.

Luis Palau, Man Of God

The Luis Palau Story, An Autobiography (Revell, 1980, 176 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by John E. Kyle, missions director, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, Madison, Wisconsin.

The he author, a native of Argentina, has often been called the “Billy Graham of Latin America.” He has preached the gospel to nearly three million people in 37 countries.

This book reveals how God used many events in the early life of Luis Palau to mold him into the godly vet dynamic evangelist he is today.

Palau shares openly his rebellion as a child, his love for his mother, and, although he died when Luis was 10, the influence of his father upon his life. The account of his conversion in a summer camp at age 12 and the joy of his new-found salvation, which was followed by the loss of that joy in later teen years, is dramatically shared.

Palau’s career as an employee of the Bank of London, a national missionary in Argentina, an Overseas Crusade missionary to Colombia and Mexico, and finally as the president of Overseas Crusades is written in a manner that causes one to wonder at the preparation God gave this man to become an evangelist. Meeting his wife, Pat Scofield, while attending Bible college in the U.S. and their eventual marriage and gift of four sons is shared honestly, revealing his weaknesses as well as his love for Pat.

His struggle with a burden to give God the glory for everything continues. It is Palau’s belief that “if you attempt to steal away any glory from God, He’ll remove His hand, and that will be the end of your ministry.” One would never realize that this dynamic evangelist and godly man struggles with such a burden.

The evangelist Luis Palau will never be fully understood without reading this book from beginning to end. It is an important book since in all probability Luis Palau will continue to be greatly used of God around the world for many years to come.

Evaluating Ministry Today

Ministry in America, edited by David S. Schuller, Merton P. Strommen, and Milo L. Brekke (Harper & Row, 1980, 582 pp., $31.95), is reviewed by Donald K. McKim, assistant professor of theology at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa.

This encyclopedic study will undoubtedly become a standard source for assessing contemporary attitudes toward ministry. Originating in the Readiness for Ministry Project begun by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada (ATS), the data here are drawn from students in 200 seminaries and from some 5,000 randomly selected clergy and laity.

Over 12,000 people participated in some aspect of the project, many responding to 444 descriptive statements of what ministry is and should be. Using statistical and sociological tools, Drs. Schuller of ATS and Strommen and Brekke of the Search Institute of Minneapolis analyzed the data. They present the information through 225 figures and tables. Their report surveys 47 denominations, and interpretations by “experts” are presented for 13 denominational “families.”

Basic information forming the foundation for the analyses comes from 64 core clusters. These are concepts used by laity and clergy across denominational lines for assessing the quality of ordained ministry. The clusters are profiled in tables listing the elements of the cluster, how important each element was for delineating the cluster (“load”) and the “mean,” showing on a range how essential to harmful each element was for ministry. The figures accompanying each table show the differences between clergy and laity for each family and also how the denominations differ from each other in assessing the importance of each characteristic. One can note significant differences at a glance. There is much of interest and much to ponder by simply perusing the tables and figures.

For example, in which Protestant churches is there the greatest gap between the laity and clergy in terms of the laity’s higher expectation for an “Affirmation of Conservative Biblical Faith”? Answer: in the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian-Reformed families.

The study found that “laypeople, as a general rule, place far less importance than do clergy on ministries outside of the congregation.” Sharpest disagreements between the two groups were found in the area of “ministry to community and world.” Also, laity “generally consider it of less importance that a beginning minister seek to be a theologian in life and thought. Their expectations fall well below those of their clergy in every denominational family.”

In terms of the positive and negative characteristics deemed most suitable for ministry, the study speaks clearly. People most highly desire their young ministers to have qualities grouped under the heading “service without regard for acclaim.” This cluster describes a person who is “able to accept his or her personal limitations, and who, believing the gospel, is able to serve without concern for public recognition.” The second highest factor is personal integrity, followed by Christian example, acknowledgment of mistakes, and building church community. The top four expectations thus have to do with one’s personal faith commitment.

The personal qualities that all groups agreed were the most detrimental to ministry were alienating activity, professional immaturity, and self-protecting ministry.

Seminaries, denominations, and local churches can profit highly from this book. Expectations may now be juxtaposed with theological understandings. The resulting harmonies or disharmonies will point us toward strengths and weaknesses in our preparations for ministry.

Shopfloor Faith

The Christian in Industrial Society, by Sir Fred Catherwood (IVP, 1980, 188 pp., £4.50) is reviewed by Harry Antonides, director of research and education, Christian Labour Association of Canada, Toronto, Ontario.

This is an updated and revised edition of a book first published in 1964. Many changes, some traumatic, have occurred in the interval, but the author’s original emphasis on bringing to bear Christian insight on everyday living is as urgent as ever.

Sir Fred Catherwood is a prominent British industrialist who presently serves as member of the European Parliament. He challenges his fellow Christians to apply their faith to their daily work, their professional ethics, their income and wealth, their views of politics, economics, taxation, and the stock market. Having spent many years in British business and industry, the author elaborates on the responsibility of big business and unions, shopfloor power, Christian employers’ attitudes toward their employees, and the functioning of large organizations. He rightly insists that Christians should be known for their integrity in dealings with colleagues, employees, and even competitors.

The author is at his best when elaborating on practical ways of personal interaction and on the Christian view of work and possessions. He proceeds from the biblical instruction that man is called to “have dominion” over the earth as an image bearer of God called to love and serve his neighbor. An appendix is devoted to the well-known Weber-Tawney thesis.

On the one hand, there is a healthy emphasis in this book on integrating faith and action. On the other hand, the author’s description of existing structures and practices is not sufficiently critical. For example, the strike weapon and the closed shop are justified too easily without sufficient attention to the need and possibilities for responsible alternatives.

Furthermore, it seems to this reviewer that Catherwood concedes too much to the humanists’ claim to autonomy. He writes that economics is about means and not ends, that it is not “concerned with the ethical standards used in deciding priorities for the satisfaction of wants,” and that “economics, as economics, is a science not concerned directly with morals or politics.”

I suspect that the problem lies in the author’s acceptance of an essentially individualistic concept of society. One of the consequences is that insufficient emphasis is placed on the need for Christian communal action outside the confines of the church organization. This relegates Christians to a position where they are forced to respond to given situations and societal structures without their having worked out an integrated, biblical world-and-life view of their own.

There is some sound, practical advice in this book, but Christians should be prepared to go beyond the point where Catherwood leaves off.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Various aspects of the church and its ministry are considered.

Church Ministry. The 1982 (57th) edition of The Minister’s Manual (Harper & Row), edited by Charles L. Wallis, is now available. Those who have used it know its value. The Revell Tarbell’s Teacher’s Guide (77th edition; Revell), edited by Frank S. Mead, is also ready for church school teachers using the International Lesson, KVJ or RSV. Beginning Your Ministry (Abingdon), by C. W. Blister, J.L. Cooper, and J. D. Fite, looks at 12 new pastors’ first five years. It is very helpful.

Five books view general matters of church life/ministry: To Dream Again (Broadman), by Robert D. Dale, shows how to make a church come alive; Congregations Alive (Westminster), by Donald P. Smith, offers practical suggestions on partnership in ministry; A Biblical Basis for Ministry (Westminster), edited by E. E. Shelp and R. Sunderland, offers excellent insight into the theology of ministry; Beyond the Barriers (Broadman), by W. E. Hull, is a study of reconciliation for the contemporary church; and Leading the Family of God (Herald), by Paul M. Miller, uses the family model as a basis for church ministry.

Church Growth.Growing Churches for a New Age (Judson), by Owen D. Owens, is a valuable look at 10 growing churches of various denominations. The Complete Book of Church Growth (Tyndale), by Elmer Towns, John Vaughan, and David Siefert, profiles the 100 largest churches and Sunday schools and adds valuable commentary, analysis, and theory. It is a most helpful book. George W. Peters offers a well thought-out Theology of Church Growth (Zondervan). Multiplying Disciples (Nav Press), by Wayland B. Moore, is for pastors and lay leaders who want a study of the New Testament method for church growth. The Pastor’s Church Growth Handbook (Church Growth Press), edited by Win Arn, is an interesting collection of essays, some general, some specific.

Pastoral Care. An excellent introduction to this subject is Mental Health Skills for Clergy: Evaluation/Intervention/Referral (Judson), by Dana Charry. Pre-Marital Counseling (Seabury), by John L. C. Mitman, is a manual for clergy and counselors. Restoring the Image (Paternoster) by Roger F. Hurding is a simple introduction to Christian caring and counseling. Resolving Church Conflicts (Harper & Row), by C. Douglass Lewis, is a case-study approach for local congregations, offering a guide through that thicket. The Private Life of the Minister’s Wife (Broadman), by Betty J. Coble, though not strictly pastoral care, is a caring book that should help pastor’s wives.

Discipleship/Witnessing. Ronald E. Griswold puts a good book behind an odd title in By Hook and Crook: Evangelism for the 80’s (Advent Christian General Conference, Box 23152, Charlotte N.C.). An exceptionally fine book on witnessing is Tell The Truth (IVP), by Will Metzger. Somewhat self-serving but helpful is Soul Winning (Harrison House), by T. L. Osborn. Pastoral Evangelism (John Knox), by Samuel Southard, is now revised to extend its usefulness. It is a good survey of the subject. Of Go Make Learners (Shaw), by Robert Brow, J. I. Packer said “Some books can be safely ignored, but not this one.” It offers a new model for discipleship in the church. Keith Phillips nicely covers the subject in The Making of a Disciple (Revell), and Walter A. Henrichsen offers helpful advice in How to Discipline Your Children (Victor).

But Christians are still working up a menu.

The advent of the decade of the seventies confronted theologians, and more particularly those regarding themselves as “liberal,” with inevitable shifts in theological focus. The preceding two decades were marked by the most serious attempts at reevaluation of “religious language,” these being the outcome of, among other things, the quest of theology for meaning. This quest was accelerated by the impact of current scientific and technological advances.

Theologians seemed to feel that the demand for precision in scientific expression in general made it necessary to restate traditional theological concepts. Behind this lay the conviction that modern man would reject traditional concepts out of hand as totally outdated.

This led, especially from the midsixties, to a mania among theologians of the trendy type to a new and seemingly inescapable coming to grips with secular culture. By the opening of the seventies, many felt that the basic groundwork of this process had been laid. Technopolitan man was glorified as the harbinger of a new day in which such questions as the normative quality of Christian faith for all of mankind were hopelessly anachronistic. The “secular man” whose thought forms and mores were drawn from urbanized life was proclaimed to be the model for the future.

Along with The Secular City, and broadly supportive of its thesis, came the “prophetic” words of Charles Reich’s The Greening of America with its siren song of the end of an era. Through the development of a new level of consciousness, especially among pot-smoking youth, there was promised an end of bourgeois life forms to which historic Christianity was allegedly bound.

A situation surfaced, however, in which it appeared that secular forms of life and the culture they fostered could not displace the lingering demands of the human spirit for the elements clustered around the broad subject of Transcendence. These centered in the conviction that there is One who stands above our affairs, a conviction supremely repulsive to the “theology of secularity.”

In fairness it needs to be said that one representative of the God Is Dead movement realized this in the early seventies. Paul Williams Van Buren wrote in Christian Century (May 29, 1974) that “Theology’s God can only be … the radically transcendent.” This suggests that the announcement of the end of belief in transcendence by the secular theologians was premature.

In the early seventies, secularism continued to offer challenges to historic Christian faith, but its ability to eliminate opposing forms of thinking seemed to offer decreasing promise. Rather, there came severe challenges to secularism’s claim to a monopoly on the pursuit of truth. It should be noted that some countercultural movements had already in the midsixties challenged the sweeping claims of many forms of the technological consciousness. It did, however, remain for new emergences of the 1970s to bring under severe fire the arrogant claims of the scientific method to see and describe reality. These newer challenges to the secular adulation of “technopolitanism” did not appear as head-on attacks. Indeed, many of those involved in presenting such challenges were probably not aware at the time of the significance of what they were advocating.

In any case, the most surprising factor that emerged on the religious scene in the seventies was the reassertion of “the spiritual,” of forms and institutions as well as ways of thinking that were supposedly dead or at least dying before the impact of secularism. This produced strong shock waves within liberal circles, waves that only recently have been calmed.

One of the most penetrating (and genial) analyses of this resurgence of “the religious” appeared in the April 29, 1981, issue of Christian Century. In “Theology for a Time of Troubles,” Langdon Gilkey notes that this phenomenon has not only occurred within our technological culture, but “as a conscious and relevant reaction to the tensions and dilemmas created by that culture.” It was this, of course, which was a source of embarrassment to the more radical forms of “secular theology” of the sixties.

It is not only the fact of the reappearance of religious concerns in the decade just ended that seems to have “caught theological as well as secular savants by surprise” (loc cit.), but the kinds of religious expression that have appeared. The spectrum is very broad, and in some of its aspects, frightening. Not only has there been vast extension of what Gilkey calls “fundamentalist religion of every variety,” but, as well, of far-out types of cultic and esoteric belief.

Many of these forms are basically congenial to some, at least, of the traditional elements in today’s cultural life, notably of middle America. But more surprising is the fact that elements and movements quite alien to our general culture find a home in the halls of academe. The occult, for example, seems no longer bizarre in university circles, but even seems to find acceptance as religious forms in these circles.

As a result, such questions as the meaning of religious language and the verifiability of religion’s claim, formerly regarded as all-important, seem to many to be trivial and irrelevant. This poses the most serious problem of adjustment for those who regard themselves to be the guardians of mainline and mainstream Christianity.

These questions relate not only to the theological scene, but touch also the entire range of values in the social order. The high visibility of “the religious” seems to modern churchmen to pose real threats to the smooth ordering of public process. Who would have dreamed a decade ago that mainline religious thinkers would feel threatened by “fundamentalistic” groups calling, for example, for the protection of the lives of the unborn?

How should evangelicals view and evaluate the surprising emergence of spiritual movements that challenge—with seeming success—the entire secularistic establishment? It is appropriate, first, to be grateful that the secular confidence has been shown to be a broken reed, and second, that the foundations for the contemporary plans to scrap the Great Commission, articulated with such vehemence at the Bangkok Conference in 1973, have been undermined.

On the positive side, evangelicals can rejoice that the “winds of the Spirit” still blow where he wills. While not all currents seem to be favorable, yet at the center of the assertion of “the religious,” Jesus Christ emerges as the towering figure he really is. Finally, the times offer an urgent challenge to “test the spirits” to discern which qualify as God’s indicators for our day.

HAROLD B. KUHN¹Dr. Kuhn is professor of philosophy of religion, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky.

Have I told him lately that I love him?

The words of the song, “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You,” are ringing in my head. Though the song is for sweethearts, the words are haunting me in a different way.

Have I, as a member of your church, told you, as my pastor (lately or ever), that I love you and thank you for all you are and do? A more nagging question is, Have I said anything to help smooth out the rough spots you encounter day in and day out? Have I done anything to give you a boost? Have I ministered to you?

Last Sunday, just before you were to go into the pulpit, our eyes met and I said, “Talk ‘purty.’” How pathetic of me. You were within minutes of probably the most difficult sermon of your ministry and my flippant words could not have told you that I understood, I cared—that I thought it was wonderful that you had brought to fulfillment your prayer to bring together two congregations hostile toward each other over a vicious church split many years before you came to us. You were entering the pulpit to bring a loving message of reconciliation to people who had taken separate ways, some of whom carried bitter hatred. Couldn’t I have said that I appreciate your healing ministry—that I admired your courage?

If I were to say, “I’m sorry,” you would say, “For what?” You overlook our shortcomings and see more good in us than is there. Maybe that’s a part of your deep understanding of grace. You continue to love people when they block the path. You maintain a beautiful spirit in spite of obstacles, disappointments, and discouragement.

A newcomer mentioned to me that in your own church people don’t seem to know you for the great minister you are recognized to be throughout the nation. “The prophet is not without honor save in his own land.” We do take you for granted. You are even criticized sometimes for being away from “our” church. Your ministry fortunately is not bounded by the streets surrounding our building. Have I told you that I am proud you are sought after interdenominationally and that you can bring blessing on college and seminary campuses, in troubled churches, among discouraged pastors? I am glad you share your ministry with as many as your priority commitment to “our” church and your time and energy permit.

Your energy seems unlimited, and that is a concern. How can you keep up this pace? On Sunday, perhaps after a night on a plane, you teach a class of newly-weds. Then you give yourself totally to preaching that is biblically profound, made understandable and usable. More than likely you and your wife will invite to dinner a couple having trouble or some lonely person. You graciously attend the frequent recital, anniversary, or dedication, then it’s back to church for the evening Bible teaching and afterward for treats at someone’s home because you are fun to be with.

There is no letup through the week. Surely you get too much of committees, board meetings, telephone calls, “Mickey-Mouse” details, leaks in the roof, hurt feelings, staff problems, trifles. You don’t show your disgust.

Your brilliant mind, linked with the heart of a learner, wants to study, delving into the minds of other thinkers. While you must yearn for more study time and for the writing you want to do, you accept the interruptions. When I asked if you could see my brother, you gave up an afternoon to counsel this troubled stranger. You owed him nothing, but he owes you his new lease on life.

That is another of your skills. You give a hurting person a new lease on life—and, in a way, that is almost everyone you meet. You seem to assume that everyone carries a burden and you perceive what it is. In turn, people know you earnestly care for them and so they open up to you. You give wise counsel and steer a new course.

You have the gift of discernment. You are not to be duped or manipulated: you can spot someone trying to con you, and then you get tough. You almost missed on Walter, however! We’re still laughing about how you frightened him with your gruffness when he first met you. The receptionist had called you from your study because there was another “one of those” asking to see the preacher. You approached him with a stern, “I suppose you want money.” His trembling, “No, Sir, I just want someone to look after my two little boys while I find a job,” made you do a quick about-face. You listened, you discerned, you acted.

Walter, today, is a beautiful success story: no longer a victim of alcohol or tobacco, a faithful and skilled worker on the job you found for him, reunited with his wife, the oldest son now baptized and the new baby dedicated. Walter loves to tell of his belief in miracles because of the miracle that happened to him. Thank you for being God’s instrument for making miracles happen for those like Walter. Thank you for your compassionate heart for people.

Thanks for recognizing and answering God’s call to you to the ministry. No one can doubt that call! Thanks for your obedience and sacrifice in leaving the big church where everything spelled success to come to our torn and bleeding church where the need for you was the greatest. Thanks for believing after six years of struggle that you are where God wants you.

Your untiring spirit, your servant heart (you’ve been caught dusting the piano), your heart for people, your hospital calls and visits to the shut-ins, your ministry in crisis situations, your pastoral care of your flock, your sermons and Bible studies and prayer times—all these reveal Christlike attributes of one who humbly and openly recognizes his own feet of clay.

I’m glad you are neither pious nor sanctimonious. But you are kind and considerate, delightful company in varied groupings, interesting and fun to be with. In recognizing our need for models, you serve as one in your roles of husband, father, grandpa, citizen, friend.

Though in no way are you narrow in scope, confined by clerical draperies, or blind to the humanness of us all, yet permeating every ounce of your being is the one compelling desire to win people to Christ, to disciple us, to nurture us in the faith.

When the going gets rough for us, we turn to you. We know sometimes the going gets rough for you, too, and you are the only one in our church who does not have a pastor. While it would be presumptuous for me to offer to be a pastor to you, I can be your friend. I am grateful I have you as my pastor—and my friend.

Have I told you lately that I love you?

EDITH CLEMMONS COE¹Mrs. Coe, who lives in Wichita, Kansas, is a former high school English teacher.

Walker Percy stands in the literary tradition of T. S. Eliot and Flannery O’Connor.

The name Walker Percy is unfamiliar to most evangelicals. It is only a little better known among secular scholars. And yet, among those who do know the novels and essays of Walker Percy, he is highly appreciated. He is one of the few Christian writers who can hold the attention of a large secular audience.

Percy should interest evangelicals, for he stands in the Christian-literary tradition of T. S. Eliot and Flannery O’Connor. All three have exposed the sterility of modern secular life and recommended as an alternative the Christian gospel. Further, all three are insightful essayists; taken collectively, their essays make an enlightening commentary on the study of Christianity and literature.

Percy’s first publications were scholarly articles on the philosophy of language, the rootlessness of contemporary life, and the source of racism. Two novels were rejected before he found his natural style in The Moviegoer (1961), winner of the National Book Award in 1962. More followed: The Last Gentleman (1965), Love in the Ruins (1971), The Message in the Bottle (1975, essays), Lancelot (1977), and The Second Coming (1980).

Percy’s commitment to writing and to Christ is a fascinating study. Like C. S. Lewis, Percy went through a long, intellectual struggle with secularism before he became a Christian. Born in 1916 in Birmingham, Alabama, his youth was marred try his father’s suicide when he was 11 and by his mother’s death in an auto accident two years later. He and his two younger brothers were raised by their paternal cousin, Uncle Will Percy, author, friend of Faulkner, lawyer, planter, and civic leader. He guided his youthful cousins with the diligence of a father. The personal philosophy he passed on was stoic and non-Christian: he believed in duty to others, self-sacrifice, and determination to defend truth and goodness, even as the moral walls protecting a civilization, Roman or Southern, crumbled.

Walker Percy came under further secular influence at the University of North Carolina during premedical studies. He went on to Columbia Medical School, and interned as a pathologist at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Of his education to this point, Percy has said, “My own development … has been a relationship to a … non-Christian humanism.… On the one hand there was science and on the other hand there was art, or play or emotion. I knew that wasn’t right. There had to be a more serious alternative than that.”

From examining the tissues of tubercular patients, Percy contracted the disease: “Then came the cataclysm, brought to pass appropriately enough by one of these elegant agents of disease, the same scarlet tubercle bacillus I used to see lying crisscrossed like Chinese characters in the sputum and lymphoid tissue of the patients at Bellevue. Now I was one of them.”

Two years of confinement in sanatoriums; the reading of existential writers, especially the Christians, Kierkegaard and Marcel; and a deep rethinking of his personal philosophy brought him to make several major changes in his life. He became a Catholic, and he changed his career from medicine to writing.

Concerning his growing unhappiness with secular humanism, he says, “An extraordinary paradox became clear: that the more science progressed and even as it benefited man, the less it said about what it is like to be a man living in the world.… What began to interest me was … the problem of man himself, the nature and destiny of man; specifically and more immediately, the predicament of man in a modern technological society.”

Percy’s essays help us to appreciate his novels. In “Notes for a Novel About the End of the World,” he discusses his role as a Christian novelist. His faith, he says, gives him a clear asset over secular writers. He and the secularists agree that contemporary man feels alienated or homeless, but he believes he knows why: man is estranged from God. One symptom of this estrangement is man’s sense of homelessness, and Percy’s novels amplify his belief in man’s homelessness apart from God. His protagonists feel rootless, displaced, and they search for meaning. As Binx Bolling puts it in The Moviegoer, “though the universe has been disposed of, I myself was left over.”

Binx searches for an authentic way of life that seems to end with his commitment to faith in Christ. Awaking one morning to begin another day as a New Orleans stockbroker, he suddenly realizes his hedonistic life is not satisfying, and he begins a search for something better. “Everydayness” is the symptom of alienation, Binx feels. He is always cheerful, witty, and pleasant, yet he is afraid he “should be lost, cut loose metaphysically speaking.… There is a danger of slipping clean out of space and time.” The richness of The Moviegoer comes from Binx’s ironic commentary: “all the friendly and likeable people seem dead to me; only the haters seem alive.”

Binx’s 14-year-old brother, Lonnie, a deyout Catholic confined to a wheelchair, is the Christian focus of the novel. He tells Binx that he prays for his salvation. When Lonnie dies, Binx seems to conclude his search with a commitment to Christianity.

Percy’s third novel, Love in the Ruins, is the one most outspokenly Christian. The story of Tom More, a nervous, troubled psychiatrist, but a sincere Christian and an avowed opponent of secularism, it is an unrestrained satire of behaviorist psychology, sex research clinics, selfish political conservatives, and naïve liberal protesters.

In presenting the Christian gospel as the solution to alienation, Percy is somewhat reticent, and so he is often misunderstood. Christians often are provoked that he is not more forthright in pointing to Christ.

But Percy believes Christianity restricts a writer with two liabilities: its language is not meaningful to the secular world, and its moral record is offensive to it. The first is the more serious to a writer. Percy believes Christian theological terms are devalued in the world’s ears, and such words as “God,” “sin,” and “salvation” are so commonplace and the ideas they express so defunct to the secular mind, that an evangelist “might just as well be shouting Exxon! Exxon!”

Percy believes the Christian novelist instead must be “cunning and guileful and must use every trick in the bag to achieve his purpose.” Percy is so cunning in depicting his religious commitments novelistically that they are often missed. Nevertheless, if a sincere messenger tells the good news to a modern castaway who has been waiting to hear it, then, says Percy, “the castaway will, by the grace of God, believe him.”

Pathology, Percy’s medical specialty, suits him novelistically as well. He is hesitant to prescribe the Christian cure for alienation, but he is brilliant at describing the nature of the disease.

RICHARDSON GRAY¹Dr. Gray is professor of English at Montreal-Anderson College, Montreal, North Carolina.

Who hasn’t, at one time or another?

Some people seem more prone to fall than others.

I recall one baby Christian (a grown man, but a baby Christian) who, if I believed in reincarnation, I would have said was the apostle Peter: hot-tempered, big-hearted, impulsive. The older Christians were waiting for him to fall.

And it wasn’t long before he obliged them.

He said later that the greatest stumbling block in the beginning of his Christian life was not his old drinking buddies, but skeptical Christians waiting for him to fall flat on his face so they could say, “I told you so!”

Many of us feel we have the gift of discernment when it comes to the faults and failures of other Christians—and on top of that, the gift of disapproval as well.

But even our Lord “came not to condemn” (we were already condemned) but to provide us a way out.

“If a brother be overtaken in a fault [a different way of saying ‘falling flat on one’s face,’ perhaps] you who are spiritual restore such an one …”

Who in your family or among your acquaintances do you most heartily disapprove of? Don’t you think that one is already eaten up with guilt? How can you show kindness? “The nicest thing we can do for our heavenly Father,” wrote Saint Teresa of Avilla, “is to be kind to one of His children.”

Someone once said, “The perseverance of the saints consists in ever new beginnings.” Having a proclivity for falling flat on my face, I find that encouraging.

When we see someone fall, we run to help, don’t we? Then let’s!

One former member calls it the “number one killer cult,” and says it has been responsible for more premature deaths than the horror of Jonestown. Its members, nicely dressed, go door to door offering literature and an invitation to “be in the truth.” They hardly look dangerous.

But William Cetnar, once a highly placed official, believes they are. Cetnar left the Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW) in 1962 and has since devoted much effort to leading others out of the sect. A Pennsylvania stockbroker, he now spends only about 5 percent of his time on that job—occupying the rest with conferences and lectures about JW and other cults.

Last month he was host to the third annual National Convention of Ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses, held in New Ringgold, Pennsylvania. At an interview before the conference, Cetnar said he believed the JW would continue as an unorthodox cult even after younger charges take over the leadership. Frederick Franz, JW president, is now 87.

Cetnar, who probably watches the organization more closely than any other person outside Watchtower headquarters in Brooklyn, believes it will stay an unorthodox cult “because a wolf cannot become a sheep.” He does, however, believe some substantial changes are forthcoming:

• The controversial ban on receiving blood transfusions will probably be lifted after Franz’s death, Cetnar thinks.

• A new date for the end of the world (JWs have previously predicted Christ’s return seven times) is likely to be announced, possibly 1988.

• By sheer mathematical necessity, some change will have to be made in the JW doctrine that Christ will return before an elect 144,000 Witnesses have died. The 144,000 places were filled by those living in 1914 and few remain alive today. But Christ is supposed to return before the entire generation has died.

The blood transfusion prohibition is an especially sore spot with Cetnar. Accepting the American Red Cross statistic that about 100 persons in every 1,000 need transfusions to survive at one time or another, Cetnar believes thousands of JWs have refused transfusions and entered early graves. “That’s bigger than Jim Jones,” he said.

Cetnar spent eight years in the Watchtower headquarters. Personally acquainted with Franz and other leaders, he left with the impression that many of Franz’s potential successors disagree with the transfusion ban. He said Colon Quackenbush, a writer for JW publications, Milton Henschel, and A.D. Schroeder (both translators of the JW version of the Bible, called the New World Translation) all believed blood transfusions were not forbidden by Scripture. (The doctrine is based on divine instructions to Noah in Genesis 9:4 that he not eat the blood of animals.) Cetnar said the influence of these three men will be sufficient to alter the doctrine after Franz—who favors it—dies.

Setting dates for the end of time is not new for the Watchtower. That has proven an effective recruiting device, with baptisms shooting up after each announcement of doom. In 1966, when the JW growth rate was especially slow, 1975 was set as the year of Christ’s return. Substantial growth followed until 1976, when the number of baptisms declined by a third.

Not many have left because of the failure of such quirky JW predictions as the 1943 pronouncement that rockets or airplanes could never penetrate the “air envelope which is about our earthly globe.” But Cetnar said altering the ban on blood transfusions will produce a backlash.

Cetnar said the organization loses converts out the back door almost as soon as they get in the front door. Tremendous amounts of energy are spent on proselytizing: for each person baptized in 1976, Witnesses visited 740 homes and distributed 1,650 copies ofjw magazines. Cetnar has consulted JW yearbooks on the number of baptisms and the number of active JWs. Since there are twice as many baptisms listed as active Witnesses, he believes there are more ex-JWs than present ones. It is difficult to determine just how many JWs there are because of the way records are kept. Estimates run around 5 million worldwide.

Leaving the sect may not be too difficult, but being “disfellowshiped,” or excommunicated, is. JWs who are believed to be leading others astray are disfellowshiped, then become nonpersons in the eyes of Witnesses. No JW will speak to a disfellowshiped Witness.

When family and friends actually pretend the disfellowshiped person does not even exist, the emotional pain can be great. Cetnar’s mother would not speak to him after he was excommunicated in 1962, and before she died, she requested a closed casket so her apostate son would not see her.

That is part of the reason for the ex-JWs banding together. They are encouraged to meet others who are in the same situation as they. At last month’s conference, the therapy was almost visible as one former Witness related her unhappy years in the sect. “1 hated every minute, every hour of being a Witness. But I thought it was the only way to survive Armageddon and live on paradise earth,” said Toni Jean Meneses of Kent, Washington.

Though unintended, another of her statements was a poignant comment on the evangelical church. “Many times over the years I would have left if someone had only presented the gospel to me.”

Moon Pleads Not Guilty In Tax Case, Cites Discrimination

Sun Myung Moon, leader of thousands of so-called Moonies, pleaded not guilty to charges of filing false federal income tax returns, and later declared he would not have to face such charges if “my skin were white and my religion were Presbyterian.”

A 12-count indictment was handed down on Moon and an aide, Takeru Kamiyama, alleging Moon failed to report interest accumulated on a $1.6 million bank account and $70,000 in payment of stock to himself and his wife.

After pleading not guilty to the charges, Moon shook hands with the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Martin Flumenbaum, then wagged an admonishing finger at him.

Moon was freed on $250,000 personal recognizance bond, and required to hand over his passport and promise not to leave the country. The judge made an exception for a three-week conference in South Korea, scheduled to begin November 1 (with Moon’s bond then raised to $500,000).

While Moon was making his plea, supporters demonstrated across the street from New York City’s Foley Square courthouse. They carried placards claiming, “America needs Sun Myung Moon,” repeatedly sang the civil-rights song, “We Shall Overcome,” and heard speeches declaring Moon’s innocence.

Mose Durst, president of Moon’s Unification Church in the U.S., compared Moon to Christ, Socrates, and Martin Luther King, Jr. He alleged the indictment sprang from religious and racial discrimination, a statement echoed by Moon when he joined the demonstrators outside the courtroom.

“I am here today only because my skin is yellow and my religion is Unification Church,” Moon said in a 26-minute speech, his first public address in five years. But he added, “I have confidence in the judge and jurors who will work on this case.”

Deaths

Brooks Hays, 83, president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1957 to 1959, campaigner for racial integration, author, and confidant to Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson; October 11, at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, of natural causes.

Elsa Marty, 53, wife of theologian-author Martin E. Mary; September 28, at their home in Riverside, Illinois, of cancer.

North American Scene

Anti-Catholic crusader Jack Chick, whose comic books attacking the Roman church have angered numerous Catholics in America, continues to be a member of the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA). Chick’s possible expulsion from the association was not on the agenda of CBA’s October board meeting, although an official had said earlier it would be (CT, Oct. 23, p. 62). While it was not on the agenda, discussion of Chick arose at the meeting anyway. John T. Bass, executive vice-president of CBA, said the board voted to have a committee appointed to visit Chick. The committee will report back to the board by January 1 and “their report will be the basis of future action, if any, by the board,” Bass said. A CBA spokesman said expulsion is not a strong possibility.

God, according to a court decree, lives in Fresno, California. He was formerly Terrill Clark Williams, 42, a writer and broadcaster. Williams wanted to change his name to God because he believed “words are man’s most powerful tool, and by changing my name to God, I am demonstrating the power of God.” In the process of finding a court that would change his name to God, Williams lost his job, and had to sell his car and some furniture. Williams believes “the universe is God.”

“The Hour of Decision,” Billy Graham’s long-running radio broadcast, has shifted to a new format. The changes are intended to attract teen-agers and young adults to the program. Special features will include question-and-answer periods with evangelist Graham, missionary reports, reports on World Relief ministries, telephone interviews with Christians in a variety of ministries, and Graham’s messages. Graham assistant Cliff Barrows said traditional elements of the weekly broadcast will be retained to please Graham’s existing audience, and that the interviews and reports will “involve the listener in what is happening on the world scene of evangelism and missions.”

Abortions, a medical statistician believes, are on the increase, and the typical woman receiving them is young, white, and unmarried. Carl Tyler, Jr., assistant science director for the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, appeared before a Senate committee to testify on proposed constitutional amendments to restrict abortions. Tyler said there were 50 percent more abortions in the U.S. in 1978 than 1977. Abortion is proving to be one of the most popular methods of birth control; there are 30 to 35 million abortions performed annually worldwide.

Beset by theological dissension and accusations of plagiarism in the writings of founder Ellen G. White, the Seventh-day Adventist church (SDA) has taken the offensive against critics and set the optimistic goal of adding one million members to its ranks by 1985. This comes despite what SDA World President Neal Wilson has called “Satan’s subtle sophistiy and cunningness.”

Wilson made that comment at the 1981 Annual Council of Seventh-day Adventists, held in October. He had in mind the cases of SDA theologian Desmond Ford and former SDA pastor Walter Rea. The church stripped Ford of his ministerial credentials last year (CT, Oct. 10, 1980). Administrators were angered by his attack on the SDA doctrine of investigative judgment, which holds that Christ entered into a heavenly sanctuary in 1844. From there, according to the doctrine, Christ began passing judgment on each professing believer.

Rea, on the other hand, alleged late last year that much of White’s 53 books was taken shamelessly from non-Adventist authors of the mid-nineteenth century. Administrators have responded that not too much was taken from other authors and that White was no less a prophet for selectively using outside material—just as New Testament writers sometimes used segments from apocryphal literature.

These developments, president Wilson told the church at its conference, are ploys of the devil to sow seeds of discord and suspicion. But he happily noted that membership is increasing in America and overseas despite the problems. (Not all problems are theological—the church is also involved in an internal audit to determine how much money its agencies lent a prominent member who has filed for bankruptcy.) The 3.8-million-member denomination was challenged to add one million members by 1985. That drive, to start in 1982, includes the ambitious goal of attracting one thousand converts daily until the SDA gathers for its 1985 convention.

Other church officials at the October onference echoed Wilson’s suspicion of recent developments. Charles Hirsch, who heads the SDA’s educational program, stated clearly that academic freedom is not an absolute in the denomination. Hirsch’s statement was relevant to the cases of Ford and Smuts van Rooyen, an assistant professor of religion who was dismissed at an Adventist seminary last summer (CT, June 12, 1981).

Hirsch said Adventists believe academic freedom must be balanced by academic responsibility. “An Adventist teacher acknowledges his responsibility to conform to the church’s basic beliefs as well as the aims for its educational program when he accepts employment in … an [Adventist] institution.”

Richard Lesher, director of the denomination’s Biblical Research Department, addressed the issue of White’s authority. He said Adventists consider the Bible their ultimate authority and that the Bible’s unity makes it “its own interpreter.” Still, Lesher said in a telephone interview, White holds an important place in determining church belief.

He said the SDA has clearly affirmed the Old and New Testaments as the “only unerring rule of faith and practice.” White is looked to for “comfort, guidance, instruction and correction,” but does not stand above the Bible. Nonetheless, Lesher admitted “most Adventists would be more reluctant to disagree with White than Presbyterians with Calvin or Lutherans with Luther.” And he said it is “difficult” for an Adventist to say that White makes any errors in her interpretation of Scripture.

Only SDA officials, 300 in all, attended the annual conference, which is a significant indicator of the church’s direction, and largely determines its future agenda. SDA leaders are signaling their resolve to stand by traditional Adventism. The denomination has published and is heavily promoting Omega, a book seen by one nontraditionalist as “a convenient labeling and dismissal of the evangelical Adventist movement.”

Ford considers himself an evangelical Adventist, as does dismissed professor van Rooyen, who has contributed to Evangelica. That magazine is published by Adventists who seek more freedom to disagree with White and want to reaffirm such Reformation doctrines as salvation by faith alone. It used strong words on Omega, saying the book breathed a “spirit of religious McCarthyism” and “marks traditional Adventism’s rejection of the Christ proclaimed in the apostolic gospel and a retreat to the cult mentality which Adventism could have outgrown.”

Evangelica’s reviewer considers the book a feeble attempt to convince faithful Adventists they should not be “concerned with the overwhelming biblical evidence against the 1844 theology [including the investigative judgment] and the alarming discovery that the visionary was a plagiarist.”

Dissenters like van Rooyen claim most SDA scholars agree that the investigative judgment is doubtful and are skeptical of other pronouncements by White, but do not speak openly because administrators hold the traditional SDA views. The administrators say their view is that of most within the denomination and is biblically sound. The struggle within Adventism continues.

Did Adventists Discriminate?

Theological dissent and charges of plagiarism are not the only problems faced by the Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA). Now a graduate of its top school, Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, has filed a discrimination suit against the church.

The graduate is a woman, Carole Rayburn. She holds three degrees, including a doctorate from Catholic University, and a master’s degree from Andrews. A clinical psychologist, Rayburn says she applied for positions at two Maryland churches and was turned down. She believes she was turned down because she is a woman.

Denominational spokesmen say Rayburn has a weak case and that sexism is not involved. The suit, filed in federal court in Baltimore, will probably be heard in December.

The SDA church does not ordain women, but Rayburn was not trying to be ordained. She applied for positions as an associate pastor and an intern in pastoral care. A number of women hold such positions in the denomination. But Rayburn said she was denied employment and that a denominational official blocked her way.