Page 5677 – Christianity Today (2024)

Will God consign people who have never heard of Jesus Christ to eternal punishment? If so, where is his sense of fair play? Where is his love? If not, how are they saved?

I disregard both the doctrines of universal salvation and of the annihilation of the wicked. The former answers the question, but without considering certain biblical texts (see, for example, Matt. 25:46; Rev. 14:11; 20:10, 15). The latter does not answer why does God not give everybody an equal opportunity to be saved.

Evangelicals have considered three other possible solutions. The first says that people may be saved through the revelation of God in the visible creation and in the human conscience. People who respond to this general revelation receive the benefits of Jesus’ redemptive work without their hearing and believing the Gospel in their lifetimes. The second answer argues that people hear the Gospel at death. Then they have the opportunity that they did not get while alive. The third is a variation of the first two. Only those people who responded well to general revelation have an opportunity to hear the Gospel after death.

Proponents of these views appeal to Scripture. Noah, Melchizedek, Balaam, and Job are examples of salvation through general revelation. But this overlooks the possibility that their knowledge of God came from the original special revelation to Adam and Eve, a revelation that started the practice of religion. (See the old, but still valuable book by Samuel M. Zwemer, The Origin of Religion, Loizeaux, 1945.) Yet by the time of Jesus the special revelation of God at the dawn of human history had long since suffered dysfunctional corruption—thus the need for missionary activity.

Matthew 25:31–46 says that all nations will receive judgment according to the amount of charity they had toward the wretched of the earth. Jesus identifies these people as his brothers. Matthew does not mention the Gospel here, it is claimed. But this interpretation, which has proved irresistible to many a humanitarian, counters Jesus’ definition of his brothers as those who do the Father’s will (Matt. 12:50), revealed specifically in his teaching (see Matt. 7:21 with 7:24–27 and 28:20). Such a view also ignores the parallelism with Matthew 10, where the persecuted people who need shelter, food, and drink are not the world’s needy but Christian missionaries. When viewed in context, the passage does not support the view for which it is cited. “One of these least brothers of mine” (25:40) is a messenger of the Gospel.

John 1:9 says that the Word enlightens every man. But the context deals with the incarnate ministry of Christ as providing that light. John later shows that the disciples need to be sent for the saving effects of that light to be felt (John 20:21–23). Furthermore, the gaining of Christ’s light is connected with believing in him (John 1:9–13; 3:16–21; 8:12–30). John jumps from the old creation at the beginning (vv. 1–3) to the new creation, dating from the incarnation (vv. 4–18). He does not write about a general ministry of the Word through the light of reason and conscience. Therefore, John 1:9 means that Jesus as the Word brings the light of salvation to everyone who hears and believes.

Some people appeal to God’s acceptance of Cornelius, his household, and others like him (Acts 10:1–2, 34–35). But Luke and Peter are not talking about heathen people deficient of special revelation, but about God-fearers, Gentiles who know and follow the special revelation of God in the Old Testament. Such Gentiles frequented the synagogues, where they regularly heard the Scriptures read. Furthermore, God sent Peter to preach the Gospel to these people. They do not support the possibility of salvation for the unevangelized.

According to Acts 18:9–10, the Lord said to Paul, “I have many people in this city [Corinth].” But in view of Acts 13:48b (“and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed”), we cannot assume that the Lord’s statement refers to ignorant but acceptable heathen rather than to those people foreordained to salvation. The very fact that God sent Paul to preach the Gospel to the people in Corinth weakens the case of salvation through general revelation and of post-mortem belief in Christ.

Yes, the heathen understand general revelation (Rom. 1:19, 20), but the thrust of Romans 1:18–3:23 is that the heathen, along with the Jews, stand under God’s wrath because of their sin. Paul mentions general revelation to show that mankind has rejected it. If Romans 2:14–16 described the good works of conscientious heathen, the context would only permit that Paul recognized that people could be moral without being saved. However, the statements in Romans 2:14–16 could refer to Christian Gentiles (the view favored most recently by C.E.B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Romans, T. & T. Clark, 1975).

Paul in Romans 10:18 quotes Psalm 19:4. The psalmist is talking about general revelation, but Paul reapplies the phraseology to “the gospel … the word of Christ.” Reapplications of Old Testament passages typify Paul’s style.

If we assumed that Christ’s preaching to the spirits in prison (1 Pet. 3:18–20) offered salvation to deceased human beings, it would still not solve the problem of ignorant heathens. The text limits that proclamation to the spirits who were active during the antediluvian generation of Noah and then confined to prison. Moreover, these were disobedient spirits. And disobedient to what? General revelation alone? Can we be sure that the special revelation of a destructive flood formed no part of Noah’s preaching of righteousness?

But First Peter 3:18–20 probably does not refer to an offer of salvation to deceased human beings. The context favors a proclamation of triumph over hostile powers of the underworld. Just as Jesus gained vindication before them, at the last day his persecuted followers will gain vindication in the presence of their persecutors. (When lacking qualifications to the contrary, the term “spirits” refers to spirits of an angelic or demonic kind, not to the spirits of disembodied human beings.)

First Peter 4:6 indicates that the people are deceased Christians who heard and believed the Gospel prior to suffering martyrdom. During the interim between their martyrdom and resurrection they enjoy a disembodied life with God (cf. 2 Cor. 5:8; Phil. 1:23). Peter designs all of this to steel his Christian readers against the possibility of their own martyrdom. The passage does not afford good grounds, then, for believing in conversion after death.

Those who see an out for the unevangelized heathen want to avoid impugning the justice of God and sacrificing his love. But do the suggestions of salvation through general revelation and of conversion after death in fact do the apologetical job they were intended to do? No. Does the preaching of the Gospel give them a better opportunity to be saved than they would have had apart from such preaching? If it does, God remains unfair and unloving to let some hear while others do not. On the other hand, if for the sake of equal treatment God does not allow the preaching of the Gospel to enhance the opportunity for salvation, we have no reason to preach the Gospel.

And what of the many who have heard the Gospel, but only from those whose conduct does not recommend the message or only from those who in other ways have failed to make it clear and convincing? Or what about people whose backgrounds make them less susceptible to evangelism? The list of inequalities could go on and on. If we demand equal treatment for people who have never heard the Gospel, others cry out for equal treatment too. The attempt to justify God’s ways cannot stop with the ignorant heathen. The facile solutions I criticized rest on a philosophical view of the problem that is far too simplistic and restricted—and on a theological view of our ability to justify God’s ways that is far too inflated.

Given the complexitites, we might not be able to recognize perfect equality. Who knows? Anyway given our limitations and the complexities of the question we should hesitate to either accuse God or apologize for him. We can hardly improve on Paul’s statement that the fate of the lost demonstrates the wrath and power of God, just as the salvation of believers demonstrates his mercy (Rom. 9:22f).

The Bible is our only source of information concerning the status of the unevangelized heathen. The notions of salvation through general revelation or after death find no solid footing in Scripture. In fact the Bible indicates that apart from hearing and believing the Gospel the heathen are hopeless. All men stand condemned under Adam. They have rejected general revelation and God’s wrath remains on them apart from belief in his Son. Now is the day of salvation. Paul puts all of the pieces together by writing about the necessity of confessing Jesus as Lord. And for that to happen someone must preach the Gospel, and someone needs to send the preacher. Without the human witness here and now, an essential link is broken; the chain of salvation will not hold.

Scripture says that the preaching of the Gospel is necessary to save the lost. Those who propose contrary views need better biblical evidence. Otherwise our view of the Bible is threatened. Staying within Scripture, however, we discover behind the great commission a reason to evangelize the heathen more compelling than the desirability of bringing them into the joy of salvation a little earlier than they otherwise would enter it. Apart from our preaching to them the word of Christ, they have no hope. Let us rescue the perishing.

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

Last spring a seminarian and I had a long-running conversation on the meaning of success. He wondered what difference it would make if he flunked his courses and was recorded as a dropout. What difference would it make if he failed to achieve those vocational goals that family, church, and seminary seemed to regard as successful? What is failure, anyway?

And, what is success? Worldly success is one thing; spiritual success is quite different. Worldly success is judged without reference to God or eternity. Spiritual success is judged by God from the perspective of eternity, without reference to the world’s evaluation.

Let’s take worldly success first. We need to make a further distinction. The world judges a person from two perspectives: private experience and public impact. A person may be enviously successful in his private life. He earns enough money to meet his needs and even gratify some of his desires. His neighbors respect him, his friends like him, his family loves him. He enjoys a maximum of pleasures and suffers a minimum of pains. He has good health and peace of mind. He is free from guilt, depression, or regrets. At a ripe old age he dies in his sleep, is decently buried, and is mourned. That is a successful person. Yet, since he makes no public impact, he could be called a failure.

Consider the reverse. A person may be famous but a failure. Fame has little to do with a person’s emotions, intimate relationships, or qualities as a human being. To be publicly successful someone must be superior in some way—in beauty, brains, or brawn. Such a person has a higher status in society. He is admired, perhaps envied. Popularity, fame, influence, political power, rare creativity, enormous wealth—these mark the successful person.

In each of us is a desire for recognition, a desire to be important or influential. Paul calls it the pride of life. It’s a desire to be noticeably superior. And it explains our winner complex. As Vince Lombardi, one-time coach of the one-time invincible Green Bay Packers, put it, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” This desire makes Hertz boast, “We’re Number One,” and Avis pants, “We try harder.” That motto inspires the Horatio Alger message of such books as Bound To Rise, Rags to Riches, and Struggling Upward. Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie counseled aspiring young men in his famous The Road to Business Success to “ ‘aim high.’ I would not give a fig for the young man who does not already see himself the partner or the head of an important firm. Do not rest content for a moment in your thoughts as head clerk, or foreman, or general manager in any concern, no matter how extensive. Say to yourself, ‘My place is at the top’ ” (The American Gospel of Success, Moses Rischin, Quadrangle Books, 1965, p. 92). That is what motivates business and industry today. Peter Kohen in his study The Gospel According to the Harvard Business School says that the apparent ethic of that sophisticated institution is “the American way … which urges people to compete for the sake of competing, win for the sake of winning, and which honors him who does all of this without pause or letup—the fastest, the nicest, the sportiest, the artiest; because things wouldn’t be the way they are unless God meant them to be” (Doubleday, 1973, p. 328).

I could just as easily have used education or government or military defense rather than business and industry for my examples. And unless I am mistaken this is the philosophy that the Church operates with. We have allowed the world to impose on us standards of success that are not biblical; and here I mean American evangelicals. We may criticize Norman Vincent Peak’s theology but we buy his psychology and methodology. We agree that the right thinking plus the right programming and motivation plus the right techniques will change any failure into a shining success. We agree with him that faith turns losers into winners. Faith? Well, positive thinking. Faith? Well, confidence in one’s own potential. Didn’t Jesus assure us that if we seek God’s kingdom first everything—everything!—will be added to us? Then why drive a Volkswagon when, as God’s successful servant, you ought to be driving a Cadillac? Why shepherd a little flock when, as God’s successful servant, you ought to occupy a commanding pulpit and be a magnetic television personality? Why remain satisfied with a small but sufficient income when as God’s successful servant you ought to eventually retire to Florida in comfort and security and play golf until you are welcomed into heaven’s country club?

But perhaps I am too sarcastic. To borrow a biting phrase from philosopher William James, evangelicalism is bowing before the bitch goddess of success. It worships at the shrine of sanctified or unsanctified statistics. We are sinfully concerned about size—the size of sanctuaries, the size of salaries, the size of Sunday schools. We are sinfully preoccupied with statistics about budgets and buildings and buses and baptisms. I repeat: too many of us are worshiping the bitch goddess of success.

In our colleges and seminaries we infect students with the virus of worldly success. We communicate the message that success in God’s service is to be an evangelist like Billy Graham or an author like Hal Lindsey or a pastor like Robert Schuller or a visionary like Bill Bright. Maybe we have been failing to communicate a clearcut biblical understanding of success. And, therefore, we fail to prepare our graduates for failure.

First, God’s standards of success differ from the world’s. In Luke 16:15 Jesus affirms that “What is highly esteemed among men is an abomination with God.” Second, the Bible turns values topsy-turvy, puts first what men put last and last what men put first. It praises the failure that is success and denounces the success that is failure. Paul warns us in First Corinthians that the achievements prized by the world—gold, silver, and precious stones—may be written off by God as wood, hay, and stubble. And when the writer of Hebrews in the eleventh chapter lists successful people, the overwhelming majority turn out to be worldly failures—people in conflict with their societies, people like Jesus and Stephen and Paul and Peter who died as criminals, not the sort of ecclesiastical big-wigs who get invited to a Presidential Prayer Breakfast.

Third, God has established certain standards of success. His criteria are not pulpit eloquence, communication skill, penetrating insight, remarkable gifts, encyclopedic knowledge, mountain-moving faith. His criterion is Christlike love (1 Cor. 13:1–3). Matthew 20:25–27 tells us that service inspired by a Christlike love is a mark of success. And in Matthew 25:21 a third criterion of spiritual success is the faithful use of the talents God has given us. Whether we have five talents, two or one, we are to use and multiply them in God’s service.

Most of us will work without ever becoming well known. Do we have faith to face failure? Do we really believe that worldly success is wood, hay, and stubble? We need to remember how often the Church will judge us the way the world does. Before anyone decides on a full-time ministry, for example, they must realize that God may be calling him or her to a ministry of tedious mediocrity. Regardless, God’s approval is the important point. It is far more important to follow God’s blueprint for your life than to be another Billy Graham or Hal Lindsey or Robert Schuller or Bill Bright. Each of us needs the faith to cling to biblical principles or success despite possible worldly failure. And each of us must have the faith to keep serving even if unappreciated, unsung, and unapplauded—in short, we need the faith to face failure.

All of this can be summed up in an anecdote about the great conductor Arturo Toscanini. One evening he brilliantly conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The audience went mad; people clapped, whistled, and stomped their feet. Toscanini bowed and bowed and bowed. He signaled to the orchestra, and its members stood to acknowledge the wild applause. Eventually the applause began to subside. With the quieting applause in the background, Toscanini turned, looked intently at his musicians, and almost uncontrollably exclaimed, “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” The gentlemen in the orchestra leaned forward to listen. Why was the maestro so disturbed? Was he angry? Had somebody missed a cue? Had the orchestra flawed the performance? No. Toscanini was not angry. Toscanini was stirred to the very depths of his being by the sheer magnificence of Beethoven’s music. Scarcely able to talk, he whispered fiercely, “Gentlemen, I am nothing.” That was an extraordinary admission since Toscanini was blessed with an enormous ego. “Gentlemen,” he added, “You are nothing.” That was hardly news. The members of the orchestra had often heard the same message in rehearsal. “But Beethoven,” said Toscanini in a tone of adoration, “is everything, everything, everything!” That is the attitude we need toward ourselves and toward Jesus Christ.

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

A Christmas Wish

At Christmas time I think of snow … “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” And a tree … “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” And lights … “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” Gifts, of course … “The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.… When He ascended up on high, He gave gifts unto men.” Singing … “He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God.” Laughter … “Then was our mouth filled with laughter.” Yes, food and joy and merriment … “Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart.” And above and beyond all else, love … “To know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God … “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

I wish you a snowy, soul cleansing Christmas, a tree that radiates light, one over-arching Gift and many gifts, songs and laughter, food and merriment, and love enough to satisfy you.

I wish you this from Christmas morning to Christmas night, and then through all the night until that great second morning dawns, when there shall be no more night.

EUTYCHUS VIII

Equal Time

Thanks to the editor and staff for the generous comments about me and my new job (“A New Post for David E. Kucharsky,” Oct. 21). Those comments call for equal time in which I acknowledge my debt to all my colleagues at CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Their counsel and cooperation were crucial.

I would only add the appeal that we keep encouraging each other in the urgent task of proclaiming God’s word to a needy world and that we keep trying to make our presentation more effective.

DAVID KUCHARSKY

Editor-designate

Christian Herald

Chappaqua, N.Y.

A Break From Tradition

Praise the Lord, truth is coming through (“What is Happy About Halloween?,” Oct. 21). The only unhappy thing about this matter, as I see it, is that the article should have appeared about the first of October, and should appear each year about that time. It takes a lot “to put you always in remembrance” and education to break away from vain tradition and accept what is truth. What is true about Halloween and its origin might be true about many other vain traditions practiced by otherwise good Christians.

JEREMIA FLOREA

Seventh-day Adventist Church

Bay City, Mich.

If it is somehow evil for children to celebrate a “traditional” Halloween—though no worship or acknowledgement of the Druid god of death is intended, then is it somehow good to celebrate a “traditional” Christmas with gift exchange, etc.,—though no worship or acknowledgement of Christ may be intended?

WILLIAM T. TANN

Palouse, Wash.

Wasn’t that a rather dismal attempt to bring happiness to Halloween? John J. Howe’s notes on the ancient and honorable instinct of humankind to reverence, or appease, or celebrate the dead—but at least to remember them were interesting and nicely chosen. It is somewhere in the final paragraphs that the ancient animosities appear.

What is frightening about his view of Halloween is that these distortions are published at this late date. My fellow chaplain, an Episcopalian, was dumbfounded to see them in CHRISTIANITY TODAY. For one thing, first time I learned that we pray for the saints: thought we all considered they had it made. And how far from “idolatry and blasphemy” are the words of the alternative prayer for All Saints: “May we who aspire to have part in their joy be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives,” or of the first choice, “May their prayers bring us your forgiveness and love.”

With Christmas approaching do not assign John J. to any stories about St. Nick. Mistletoe and holly must drive him right up the tree. Easy to see where he stands on indigenization, or Chinese rites, or African Masses. And a couple of more articles like that will push the whole ecumenical movement back to duidic times and primeval shadows.

VINCENT B. RYAN, S.J.

Veterans Administration Hospital

East Orange, N.J.

Retribution Or Rehabilitation

If I may venture a prediction, John Piper’s article “Deciding What We Deserve” (Oct. 21) will prompt a small flood of letters protesting that the notion of recompense is sub-Christian, inconsistent with God’s unconditional love, unenlightened, reactionary and the like. Although it has been ably defended by such thinkers as C.S. Lewis and John Wenham, the view that justice is retributive is not very popular even among evangelicals.

As a lawyer trying to think through legal problems from a Christian perspective, I find Piper’s thesis most helpful. Too often, for example, considerations such as political ideology, wealth, social status, and race distract us from the fundamental issue of whether the actions of a criminal defendant really deserve a particular punishment. And in contrast with the rehabilitative theory (that the criminal is sick and should be “treated” rather than punished), the retributive theory allows a person the dignity of “paying his debt” and making a new beginning. In Leviticus 19:15 God commands: “You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” Perhaps this commandment embodies a beneficent aspect of recompense that many of us have overlooked in the past.

WILLIAM A. BRAFFORD

Raleigh, N.C.

Deliverance In 1933

I have just finished reading D. Bruce Lockerbie’s article “Laughter Without Joy: The Burlesque of Our Secular Age” (Oct. 7). What an insightful, perceptive article! One point that Mr. Lockerbie makes causes me a bit of concern, however. It is true, of course, that there was no Moses or Esther to deliver the Jews from Nazi Germany in 1933. But as Mordecai reminded Esther, the absence of a personal leader could give opportunity for deliverance to arise to the Jews from another place. In spite of the fact that there were many excesses and brutalities committed by Allied Armies during World War II, it is possible, I believe, to see the God of Israel at work in the Allied effort bringing deliverance to the Jews.

W. WINGER

Brethren in Christ Church

Carlisle, Pa.

Thank you for the revealing, relevant article by Lockerbie. I was deeply moved by it.

WM. A. SWETS

Minister of Pastoral Care

Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church

Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

For Better Sex Education

Harold O. J. Brown’s “Others Say” on “Abortion and Child Abuse” (Oct. 7) erred, I think, in assuming that there are five million fewer unwanted children today because of the greater availability of legal abortion since the early 1970s. He seems to overlook the fact that according to the best estimates, the number of illegal abortions prior to 1970 was about the same as the number of legal abortions performed today. Nor do Americans seem to be any more abortion-prone than people in any other country. In Italy and Austria, where church and state both frown upon abortion, the abortion rates are four times greater than in the United States.

It is interesting that a survey of anthropological literature by psychologist James Prescott a couple of years ago showed that societies that are more permissive with regard to abortion tend in general to be more caring societies than those which frown on abortion. It would be a cheap shot to point out that Nazi Germany prohibited abortion while committing barbarities against Jews and political opponents.

Since even the proponents of free choice on abortion would prefer the avoidance of pregnancy to abortion, is it not time for pro-choice and anti-choice people to join in supporting better sex and family education in the schools and better pregnancy counselling and improved methods of contraception?

EDD DOERR

Director of Communications

Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Silver Spring, Md.

A Reducing Program

You have written a very interesting editorial (“There Are Many Ways to Steal,” Nov. 4) regarding Senator Mark O. Hatfield’s approach to tax reform (S. 1969), which he calls “Simpliform.” I cannot agree that the line-by-line tax reform approach which you advocate is as good as Senator Hatfield’s proposal or that his would create more problems than it solves.

You indicate that “Christian schools should not” get general funding from the public purse. However, your basic argument against “Simpliform” in favor of the present system is to provide motivation for “the non-typical large donor who has, because of tax advantages, contributed large sums to private schools.…” Your logic here seems illusive. Doesn’t this advocate doing indirectly what you say should not be done directly? Senator Hatfield says we ought to do it directly if at all. You refer to those institutions who want no government support so they can be free from government regulations. If, as you imply, they are dependent on the “non-typical tax donor,” motivated by a tax-break, they are not as free even now as they might fancy. That tax-break rests on the good graces of the government and may be wiped out at the whim of any Congress. “Simpliform” would make them free indeed without the crutch of a tax-break. Senator Hatfield apparently ascribes a higher motivation to the non-typical contributor than you do. He knows that the donor’s out-of-pocket part of the gift is more substantial than the tax-break and, isn’t it logical to assume, that his primary motivation is the support of a good cause rather than the tax-break. Hatfield’s bill is designed to enable him to give more, consistent with that higher motivation and without any government strings attached.

The line-by-line tax reform method used in last year’s Tax Reform Act was not a colossal success. Congress has already found it necessary to enact several bills this year to correct it. One became law last spring. Another has passed both Houses of Congress and is currently awaiting the President’s signature. There are at least four other bills passed by the House and awaiting Senate action which include more than 100 additional changes to the one Tax Reform Act of 1976. There must be a better way to deal with what you call a “hodgepodge” in the present system. “Simpliform” would replace volumes of government regulations with a few simple instructions. We never thought of that producing more problems than it would solve. We do concede, however, that it might create a few problems including unemployment for a large number of IRS agents who would no longer be needed.

FLOYD ROBERTSON

Secretary of Public Affairs

National Association of Evangelicals

Washington, D.C.

Clarification And Correction

Edward E. Plowman is to be commended for his judicious and relatively comprehensive news report on the 37th General Council of the Assemblies of God (“Assemblies of God: A Leader Upheld,” Sept. 9). However, his comment that the chief staff members of AGORA, a new magazine of opinion, “are associated with the 650-student Southern California College” (SCC) needs clarification and correction. Your readers need to understand that AGORA has no official connection with the college, or for that matter, with the Southern California District of the Assemblies of God. While three of the editors are professors at SCC, the fourth [one] (myself) is a professor of history at California State University [in] Long Beach.

AUGUSTUS CERILLO, JR.

Professor of History

California State University

Long Beach, Calif.

This is our Christmas issue—our twenty-second; the 1977th year of the Saviour’s birth. Christina Rossetti wrote: “Born in a stable, / Cradled in a manger, / In the world His hands had made, / Born a stranger.” Two millennia later, he is still a stranger to the almost three billion people who have never heard of him or his salvation. Will we tell them of him?

To our loyal readers to whom Jesus is both Saviour and friend we say: a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Until recently, most Christians accepted the idea of a basic moral obligation. The Apostles who took the Gospel into the Greco-Roman world met the concept of a “Natural Law” and identified it with the biblical creation order. The ten commandments are the revealed codification of the Natural Law.

This concept today is often hotly rejected. Modern atheist ethical relativism thinks that all morality is different depending on place and time. It is sociologically conditioned and by no means the outcome of some eternal world order. But an eternal moral order is also disapproved by people inside Christendom. Karl Barth and his school believe that all ethics worth the name must be rooted in the one revelation of God in Jesus Christ. It becomes uncertain whether the Church then still can make a plausible contribution to public morality. Indeed, some people take this failure to be a virtue, declaring that the Church has nothing to do with public morals and is not the guardian of society.

Perhaps Barth has influenced the visible alienation from the Natural Law idea in much of Roman Catholic theology. Rome’s moral theologians used to lean heavily on Natural Law and claimed to deduce the most astonishing details from it. Nowadays they wish to apply it only in a most general, formal sense.

When the Natural Law idea was being attacked by many kinds of relativist secular philosophies, its traditional defenders in Christendom publicly or secretly withdrew their support from it.

Strangely enough, though, while Roman Catholics move away, at least some Protestant ethicists (who traditionally don’t make much of Natural Law) have begun to raise doubts about its outright abandonment. In the thirties Emil Brunner, turning away from the early existentialist extremes of dialectical theology, tried to link Protestant ethics again to the Natural Law idea. His influence, though, was curbed by the further ascendance of Barth and, then, Bultmann. Bonhoeffer’s farsightedness made him call the Decalogue “the law of life”: “The commission to guard life in itself leads to the second tablet” (of the ten commandments).

Now we should be clear in our minds that the waving aside of the Natural Law concept cannot be taken lightly. With it would go the idea of a common moral ground without which any culture will soon fall into disintegration and destruction. Certainly, as Brunner and Macquarrie observe, Natural Law has been a useful obstacle to any dictatorship and the moral arbitrariness that goes with it. Its counterpart, legal positivism, has the doubtful distinction of having served as the philosophy of autocratic monarchs as well as of National Socialism.

People used to accept the idea that man had a set of built-in moral obligations. That view seems now to have been discarded, not only in the secular world but also in Christendom. Why?

Christians must grasp the task of conveying to humanity a sense of God’s righteousness. If we were to drop this as being none of our business we would soon find out that we have also done away with the prerequisite for the message central to Christianity, namely the forgiveness of sins. Where there is no accusation, proclamation of acquittal becomes obsolete.

We need to reexamine the idea of Natural Law and its range of validity. Is there any connection—material or formal—between this concept and the New Testament? Non-Christian philosophers have argued that some Natural Law was obvious in the desire of most normal people to secure their own survival. Knut Logstrup, the Danish moralist, has shown that man feels a basic obligation to guard the life of his fellow man, beginning with the “natural” compulsion of care for the new-born and for the family. A wide range of moral demands is being set up, demands pertaining to the benefit of man’s physical and spiritual existence. Theologically speaking, they are the requirements of the sustaining of creation with which God has charged man.

It is worth noting that in Christ’s own moral perspective “doing good” goes together with “saving life.” We find this expounded in the six “corporeal works of mercy” that Christ specifies as his standards for the Last Judgment: to feed, to give to drink, to house, to clothe, to care for the sick, and to give fellowship to those in solitary confinement (Matt. 25:31–46). This describes some basic needs of man, and in a sense represents a New Testament version of the “Natural Law.”

There are other Scriptural reasons, too, for that early identification of Natural Law and Decalogue. In the context of the second announcement of the ten commandments one reads: “Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people” (Deut. 4:6). The Decalogue is assessed as something that all men will understand. For they all yearn for justice, and this is an appropriate definition of it.

Paul has indicated the substantial consonance of “natural” and “revealed” law in a well-known passage. “When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature (or ‘natural law’) what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, their consciences also bear witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse” (Rom. 2:14, 15). This significant passage has always been the scriptural basis for the inclusion of the Natural Law concept into the body of Christian doctrine. We should heed it afresh and understand it as it speaks of the challenge every man finds in his heart. This world remains the theater of the war between good and evil, between the sustaining and destruction of God’s creation, and of the great drama of God’s redeeming work in history. Disparaging or disposing of the Natural Law would only help to mute the call that comes with life itself: the call to discover and to honor God’s sovereignty.

Recent reports from the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) indicate that tensions in relationships between church and state and between Christians themselves may be mounting.

The most recent round of recriminations and accusations dates from the self-immolation of Lutheran pastor Oskar Brusewitz in the Saxon town of Zeitz near Leipzig in August, 1976, to protest his government’s oppression of young Christians (see September 10, 1976, issue, page 81). A month later, some 4,300 East German Lutheran ministers read from their pulpits a pastoral letter that exhorted believers not to forget Brusewitz’s sacrifice (see November 5, 1976, issue, page 80).

The latest controversy raging in German Christian circles revolves around Wolfgang Defort, an East German refugee who was released recently by GDR prison authorities and permitted to emigrate to West Germany.

Defort, a 35-year-old radio engineer and former employee of the East German police, was arrested in July, 1973, on charges of agitation against the state and attempting to flee the country. He was convicted and sentenced to serve forty-two months in the maximum security prison at Cottbus. Somehow, on January 13, 1975, he managed to escape. He fled to the little town of Forst-Eulo near the Polish border. Late that night he sought refuge in the home of a local Lutheran pastor. Defort told the minister his story and asked for help in fleeing the country. Before the evening was over, the Lutheran pastor and his wife were joined by two other Lutheran ministers whom they had summoned, and by the church’s youth group, which had come to the minister’s home for a meeting.

As the evening wore on, a lively discussion took place among the pastors and Defort concerning the dangers of providing shelter and assistance to an escaped prisoner. The ministers, two of whom themselves had spent time in prison for allegedly agitating against the state and “misusing” the pulpit, urged Defort to give himself up. They argued that his presence endangered innocent lives and that in any case he was too weak to make it to the border. They promised to intercede with the government on his behalf, but he would not be dissuaded. Finally, at about midnight, with a police helicopter hovering overhead and the police and border troops searching nearby, one of the pastors phoned the authorities and turned in the fugitive.

The East German courts added ten more months to Defort’s sentence and returned him to Cottbus. In September, the government without explanation suddenly released him and allowed him to proceed to West Germany. There he immediately called a press conference and denounced as cowards the three pastors who had denied him shelter. More seriously, he accused them of violating their ordination vows in which they pledged to maintain confessional privacy. (East German Lutherans place more emphasis on confession than do most of their American counterparts, some elevating it to the status of a third sacrament.)

East German church officials replied that the three pastors had been forced into the distressing decision not because they feared for themselves but for the safety of the innocent people who were present in the ministerial home that night. They spoke of the “difficult situation” in which the church found itself in the GDR.

This in turn has led to a round of criticism of the East German church leaders by West Germans. Ursula Besser of the West German Christian Democratic Union asserted that it was “the lamest excuse I have ever heard.” The Berliner Massenblatt suggested that servants of God had become tools of the state, and a leading West German union newspaper called for the resignation of the three pastors.

After the initial wave of indignation subsided, a less emotional dialogue over the incident ensued, both within the East German Lutheran community and between East and West German Christians. At a church in East Berlin last month, a Lutheran bishop spent his entire Sunday sermon trying to explain that the action of the three East German pastors was “understandable.” Likewise, cooler heads noted that it is easy to criticize from a comfortable chair in the West but that it is more difficult to make morally correct decisions in a split second when the police are at the door.

The debate has brought to the fore at least two crucial issues in church life in East Germany today. First, there is the continuing problem of sometimes having to choose between the lesser of two evils, a perplexing choice that occasionally Christians almost everywhere must face. Should the three pastors have helped a refugee in need at the risk of endangering others not directly involved?

Second, there is the issue of trust of church leaders in the GDR. Many rank-and-file believers already lack confidence in high church officials and feel that they too often are used by the Communist government for propaganda purposes. Now the Defort affair has raised the question of pastoral trust. Can church members count on their ministers to hold in confidence sensitive matters that are shared with them? Is the pastor’s house any longer a haven of refuge for the needy and helpless?

As this controversy continues to simmer, other developments may portend serious trouble ahead for Christianity in the GDR. For instance, only 14 per cent of all children in the land currently take church instruction. One source reports that things are especially difficult in smaller communities where scrutiny is close and teachers pressure their students to drop their religious training programs. Ridicule and the technique of pointing out that religious people do not “get ahead” in the GDR have been the most effective weapons. In one village recently, 50 per cent of the children reportedly dropped religious instruction in a Lutheran church after such pressure from teachers at school.

A survey this year in Brandenburg, the area surrounding Berlin, revealed that there are 116 villages in that province without a single church member. Official census statistics—disputed by some church leaders—show that out of a fairly stable population of about 17 million the number of Protestants in East Germany declined from 15 million in 1950 to 8.5 million in 1975.

Moreover, most of the money for new church construction comes from the West. The church in East Germany is an increasingly poor institution. Some call it a “ghetto church.” For example, in 1976 West Berlin Lutherans budgeted and spent 106 million marks while their Lutheran brethren in all of Brandenburg could raise only 10.5 million marks for their work.

The outlook for Christianity in East Germany, however, is not all bleak. The American Bible Society reports that supplies and distribution outlets for Bibles in East Germany are now considered adequate. Between 100,000 and 300,000 copies of either the entire Bible or the New Testament have been sold or given away annually since 1973, when the new German common-language translation of the New Testament first became available. Outlets for sales of Scriptures now include thirteen Bible societies and more than twenty Protestant bookstores.

Also, Christians of several denominations (Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, and occasionally even Roman Catholics) have recently joined together in common evangelistic efforts in many towns and cities. One Lutheran minister who travels all over the country holding evangelistic meetings reports crowds of from 300 to 3,000 nightly. The government, though, forbids these services to be held outside church buildings, and this limits opportunities to reach people who have negative feelings toward organized religion but who might otherwise be open to the Gospel message in a “neutral” setting.

One Lutheran pastor who is heavily involved in evangelistic work notes that the greatest success is enjoyed among young people from 15 to 25 years of age. Thousands of individuals in this age range have made decisions for Christ in the last five years, says the pastor. He explains that the schools effectively deflect most younger children from the churches through a variety of means. Even Christian parents find it difficult to compete with the state schools for the religious loyalty of their children, he states. East German teen-agers, however, often become restless and bored with the system and seek meaning for life elsewhere, he says. “Increasing numbers of them are finding that meaning in Christ,” he adds.

The average Lutheran church is still comfortably filled on Sunday mornings, but mostly with the elderly and with young people. Much less frequently in attendance are middle-aged adults and young children. Baptists, Methodists, and Mennonites are smaller groups but tend to attract wider age groups.

So, Christians in the GDR preserve the testimony of the Gospel despite many difficulties. Since the Socialist Unity Party, the Communist body that governs East Germany under a one-party dictatorship, regards the Christian Church as a kind of fifth column or Trojan horse in the midst, tensions between church and state are likely to continue for the forseeable future. Communist goals call for the eventual liquidation of religion.

Meanwhile, the continuing presence of the Church in the GDR and elsewhere in Eastern Europe often provides a handy propaganda tool in Communist dealings with the West. Dietrich Strothmann of the respected Hamburg weekly newspaper Die Zeit feels that the present church struggle in the GDR is “one to sustain itself more than anything else.” However, he also notes that a vital Christianity easily could become an attractive alternative for large numbers of East Germans in the future. Should that be true, then some kind of major confrontation between church and state in East Germany may loom ahead.

Hard-Cover Blasphemy

Despite all the opposition, Danish filmmaker Jens Jorgen Thorsen is still determined to produce a movie on Christ that depicts him as a hom*osexual. The proposed film had been eligible for Danish and Swedish subsidies, but these were declared off limits to Thorsen after a barrage of protests, and a number of countries denied him shooting access. He now hopes to make the movie in America next year with a budget of $1.2 million.

British producer David Grant, who has joined Thorsen in the project (see August 12 issue, page 34), claims that $500,000 has been guaranteed by Danish millionaire Hans Schmidt, and that an unnamed Canadian distributor will put $200,000 into it. Grant also says that an American publishing firm—which he declines to name—has agreed to pay $600,000 in advance royalties for a hard-cover book based on the script.

Plans call for the book to make its appearance ahead of the film, but negotiations reportedly were still bogged down last month over the book’s title. Thorsen, says Grant, wants the book to have the same title as the film—“The Sex Life of Jesus.” The publisher, however, is holding out for something less sensational.

TM Grounded

It was called, officially, “Science of Creative Intelligence for Secondary Education—First Year Course—Dawn of the First Year of the Age of Enlightenment.” A grant from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare subsidized its teaching in four New Jersey high schools. Opponents of the instruction called it Hinduism. Last month, in a seventy-eight-page decision, a judge in federal district court ruled the government-funded teaching of Transcendental Meditation (TM) unconstitutional.

The ruling by Judge H. Curtis Meanor in Newark was the first on the use of public funds for such instruction, the New York Times reported. While his decision affects only New Jersey schools, it is expected to be cited if cases arise in other jurisdictions. Public schools in Florida, Kentucky, New York, and California have also offered TM courses. (See December 21, 1973, issue, page 9.)

At the heart of the judge’s decision was the finding that “defendants have failed to raise the slightest doubt as to the facts or as to the religious nature of the teachings.” The plaintiffs had built their case largely on the contention that students were actually being initiated into a particular sect as well as being taught its doctrines. Meanor’s ruling agreed, taking issue with both the textbook and the “puja” ceremony when students enter barefoot into “incense-filled rooms” to pay obeisance to the memory of a departed TM guru. Some TM recruiting literature insists that it is not a religion.

The current guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, brought the practice to the United States in 1959. He is said to have hundreds of thousands of American followers.

TM introduced another teaching this year—the art of flying. For a price students will be taught levitation, and foam rubber mats are being installed in TM centers to cushion their landings. Reporters who have asked for a demonstration have received instead only a picture of a Canadian woman a few inches off the floor, and she was said to be overseas—unavailable for interviews.

Disciples Decide

More than 5,500 voting delegates and thousands of observers gathered in Kansas City last month for the biennial General Assembly of the 1.2-million-member Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). In recent years, the church’s conventions have been relatively quiet, but a number of proposed resolutions on hom*osexuality were circulated in the grass roots and generated sharp interest in the convention long before the participants hit town.

Nearly one-fourth of the time consumed by debate was spent on issues concerning the relationship of the church to hom*osexuals. The delegates eventually adopted by a two-to-one margin an 8,000-word document on hom*osexuality for study by the denomination’s 4,400-plus congregations. They also adopted by a vote of 2,541 to 1,312 a resolution supporting laws to protect the civil liberties of hom*osexuals. They rejected by a vote of 2,304 to 1,538 a bitterly debated measure that condemned hom*osexuality as an alternate life-style for Christians. A fourth resolution, calling for a clear statement against the ordination of hom*osexuals, was referred to a blue-ribbon committee for study and recommendation.

The study document attracted much controversy because of the relaxed view it takes toward hom*osexuality. It sees no reason for barring hom*osexuals from church membership, it finds no evidence that hom*osexuals constitute any greater threat to society than others, it questions many “historical assumptions,” and it states that much Christian thinking on the subject is built on “questionable interpretations of Scripture.”

Although the document specified that it was “not to be construed as an official statement of the attitude or policies” of the denomination, some delegates insisted that it was in reality a position paper.

During the emotion-laden debate on the life-style resolution, Mrs. Carol Blakley of Caldwell, Idaho, a member of the denomination’s policy-making general board, read a long letter from her oldest son. In it, he explained his hom*osexuality and asked that his parents react non-judgmentally and without guilt. A morality “that would condemn me for something over which I have no control must itself be without humaneness,” read Mrs. Blakley, her voice cracking at times.

During the course of debate the delegates defeated a move to refer the measure to committee. After the final vote was taken, Pastor Lonnie Q. Johnson of First Christian Church in Ridgeway, Missouri, took the microphone and declared that his church had voted the previous day to break from the denomination if the resolution condemning hom*osexual life-style was not approved. “Christians should be fighting sin and not approving it, and therefore we withdraw,” he said.

Kenneth L. Teegarden, the denomination’s general minister and president, offered to meet with the congregation, and he implored it not to leave. Choked with emotion, he was unable to finish, and the assembly came to his support with a standing ovation.

Teegarden was instructed to write a pastoral letter explaining to Disciples congregations the meaning of the actions taken concerning hom*osexuality. The letter was approved with few negative votes. In it, Teegarden emphasized that the actions do not represent a position on hom*osexuality. Defeat of the resolution opposing hom*osexuality as an alternate life-style, he said, “does not mean the General Assembly endorsed such a style. It does mean the assembly felt the matter should be studied thoroughly before any pronouncements are made.”

In other actions the assembly:

• approved in a near-unanimous vote a call for two years of discussion with the 1.8-million-member United Church of Christ with a view toward possible union.

• approved by a close voice vote a resolution calling for normalization of relations with the People’s Republic of China.

• supported ratification of the Panama Canal treaties.

• urged “aggressive pursuit” of human rights around the world and expressed “dismay” at violations of religious freedom and human rights in Communist-dominated countries.

Adventist Views

The Pacific Union Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church announced it has paid $650,000 to settle federal government charges that it discriminated against women teachers in its schools. At the same time, however, the conference said it refuses to acknowledge that the government had any right to be involved in the case in the first place.

The U.S. Labor Department filed a complaint in 1975, charging that the Adventist unit in California did not pay men and women teachers and administrators equally for equal work. The government suit referred to wages at the California schools from 1972 to 1974. A one-track pay scale was implemented by the denomination in 1974, putting it in compliance with government regulations.

The government will use the $650,000 to pay personnel in the California schools for the 1972 to 1974 period; anything left over will revert to the U.S. Treasury.

Church officials contended that the government’s intrusion into church-school affairs was unconstitutional, but they said that they agreed to a settlement because they wanted to avoid long, costly litigation.

Just after the settlement was announced, the Adventists held their Annual Council Meeting in Washington, D.C. The 317 delegates adopted a 1978 budget of $114.5 million for the 2.8-million-member denomination’s educational, medical, and evangelistic work. (The church maintains 4,200 elementary, secondary, and post-secondary schools around the world with a total enrollment of about 442,000. It also operates 135 hospitals and sanitariums, fifty of them in the United States and Canada. Last year these institutions treated more than five million patients, according to Adventist sources.)

For the third year in a row, the council turned aside a proposal to ordain women.

The delegates also took a strong stand against hom*osexuality. They said that hom*osexual behavior of a marriage partner is to be considered a form of adultery and thus be grounds for divorce. In a statement on the ministry, the delegates decreed that “violations involving sexual perversions” would make void a pastor’s ordination to the ministry. An offending clergyman could never again serve as a minister or teacher in the church, even though he might repent of his offense and be rebaptized as a church member, the statement said.

Booted Out

The United Bible Societies (UBS), a global alliance of national Bible societies, voted recently to withdraw recognition from one of its affiliates, the Philippine Bible Society (PBS). Cited by the UBS executive committee were “irregularities” in the 1975 and 1976 PBS audits, inadequate supplies and distribution of Scriptures, questionable administrative practices, and lack of trust in the PBS by its constituency. The UBS in September, 1976, gave the PBS one year to get its house in order; a review this September failed to show significant progress, and the severance took effect last month.

This means that most of the PBS’s outside support, which averaged between $150,000 and $200,000 annually in past years, will cease. It may also give critics of the PBS in the Philippines more leverage in their campaign for reform. The PBS’s board, however, is self-perpetuating (Bishop Estanislao Abainza of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines is its chairman), so change may be slow in coming. A source familiar with the situation said that the administrative inadequacies have existed since about 1970 and the financial problems since 1973.

Religion in Transit

David R. Berkowitz, the accused “Son of Sam” murderer in New York, contends that not he but evil demons commanding his body had carried out the six killings with which he has been charged. In a taped psychiatric interview introduced at a competency hearing in court, Berkowitz pleaded for a trial so that he could tell his story of demonic possession and “at last have peace of mind.” In 1973, he professed faith in Christ and became active in a Baptist church in Louisville, Kentucky, then dropped out a year later (see September 23 issue, page 45).

A regional meeting of the Roman Catholic charismatic movement attracted nearly 40,000 to Atlantic City for a three-day conference last month. Nearly forty bishops, including four cardinals, endorsed the conference, and about a dozen participated. “Nothing is more necessary to this secularized world than the witness of this spiritual renewal,” declared Archbishop Peter L. Gerety of Newark. “God’s grace is being poured out all over the church, and you are part of it.”

The California Court of Appeal ruled that a lower court has the power to place limits on the Hare Krishna sect’s religious activities at San Francisco’s International Airport, including the dissemination of literature and talking to the public.

The Israeli government announced late last month that it was prepared to release Archbishop Hilarion Capucci of a Middle East uniate Catholic church if a formal request were received from Pope Paul VI. The archbishop has served nearly three years of a twelve-year sentence for smuggling arms to Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territories.

At exactly 8:30 P.M. President Alfonzo Lopez Michelsen of Colombia walked into the Red Room of the Tequendama Hotel in downtown Bogota for an evangelical-sponsored “Banquet of Hope.” Behind him came the four major candidates for next year’s presidential election, various government officials, the heads of the country’s four major labor unions, and numerous other dignitaries. Together, they represented the highest echelons of political power in a nation where evangelical pastors were being jailed, beaten, and murdered only twenty years ago.

Their presence at the Wednesday-night banquet last month was seen by some conservative Protestant leaders as the most significant symbolic advance ever for evangelicals in the southern hemisphere. “We’ve worked for this for thirteen years,” declared Argentine-born evangelist Luis Palau, the main banquet speaker. “In a country where extermination of Protestants was once the policy of the government, the highest officials now come to listen to us,” he said. “This demonstrates a new respectability.” (It was in Colombia in 1964 that Palau launched his mass-evangelism ministry, and in the intervening years he has become Latin America’s best-known evangelist.)

The banquet was sponsored by the Colombian Confederation of Evangelicals, an alliance of leaders, churches, and mission groups of various backgrounds. The coordinator was Alfredo Torres, who directs the Colombian work of World Literature Crusade, a California-based organization. Torres spent time in jail years ago for “unlawful” preaching; at the banquet he sat next to the president and exchanged pleasantries. He noted that this was the second banquet meeting patterned after the annual National Prayer Breakfast that is held in Washington, DC.

“The president didn’t come last year, and we were glad afterwards that he didn’t,” said Torres in an interview. A missionary explained: “A politician spoke for an hour and a half, and two other program personalities got into a shouting argument over doctrine. Embarrassing pictures that showed them glaring and gesturing at each other appeared in the morning papers.”

More careful preparations were made for this year’s event. Palau was invited as the main speaker, and churches throughout the country were asked to encourage their people to fast and pray for the meeting.

It was held against a backdrop of deepening trouble for the nation’s 25 million-plus inhabitants. The coalition that has governed the nation since the end of the repressive dictatorship in 1958 is breaking up. The inflation rate is soaring toward 35 per cent; López Michelsen won the presidency in 1974 largely on the campaign pledge that he would do something about inflation. He could not deliver. Food prices doubled. In September the unions called a general strike that led to violence, more than a dozen deaths, and hundreds of arrests. The unions demanded a 50 per cent catch-up wage increase; the government balked at anything over a 20 per cent increase in the $59-a-month minimum salary.

Kidnappings and industrial sabotage by leftist guerrillas are on the increase. Violence and corruption plague the emerald trade, an important element in the country’s economy. Drug smuggling has hurt relations with the United States. More than half of all births reportedly are illegitimate.

Tulio Cuevas, head of the largest union, calls the national situation “a powder keg.” Everyone in power agrees that changes must be made.

In order to keep the speaking engagement, Palau took a day off from a major crusade he was conducting in the Dominican Republic (see following story). An evangelical senator whisked him from the Bogotá airport to a warm-up, open-air prayer meeting outside the national government building. Many of the 2,000 participants were kneeling; others were standing, some with hands lifted and tears streaming down their cheeks, shouting, “Glory to God!” There were short testimonies. “Many were killed for this day,” cried one pastor. “Now we are the church victorious.”

The evangelist gave a short message, then was ushered into the Senate chamber where he prayed with a group of legislators. “This is the first time we politicians have been challenged with the Word of God,” one of them commented.

At an afternoon press conference, reporters representing Bogota’s major dailies asked such a question as, “What must one do to be ‘born again’?” and, “What are your evangelical crusades doing to solve the problems of drugs and alcoholism?”

About 1,500 persons bought $12 tickets for the evening banquet. The papal nuncio and cardinal had been invited, but both politely declined. Seven charismatic priests were said to be in the audience.

Pentecostal pastor Hector Pardo, a former priest who spent time in jail after becoming a Protestant, led the guests in singing, “How Great Thou Art.” It was another occasion for tears of joy, and they glistened in the brilliance created by television lights. (The banquet proceedings were broadcast live on state radio and by videotape on national television the next day.)

The political figures preceding Palau were supposed to give only brief remarks. Instead, they delivered lengthy, depressing diatribes about the problems of the country, demanding that the president do something. López Michelsen brushed aside Palau’s invitation to respond. “It would take me all night to answer these moralists,” he said.

Between speeches, Palau and the president chatted about several topics. López Michelsen told the evangelist that he was much impressed by “your brother, Jimmy Carter.” He said: “When I was in Washington for the signing of the Panama Canal treaty, [Carter] took us Latin Americans into a room and read the Bible and gave a prayer.”

One of the best-educated leaders in Latin America, López Michelsen—a Catholic whose mother was Protestant—holds three earned doctorates. One of his dissertations was on the influence of Calvin on democratic society, and it was later published as a book. “Democracy cannot survive without strong doses of the Calvinist ethic,” he told Palau. “That is what Latin America needs.”

Palau replied that evangelicals “are committed to preaching an experience with Jesus Christ that will produce an ethic to transform the nations.”

Palau’s turn to speak did not come until almost 10 P.M., and the meal had not yet been served. He skipped his sermon points about the Colombian “moral crisis,” indicating that the other speakers had pointed out the nation’s problems. He moved directly to a Christ-and-salvation challenge as “our only hope.” While Palau was still speaking the waiters suddenly began serving the food, and he had to close abruptly.

After the banquet was over, the president and other politicians lingered for a half hour, conversing with evangelical leaders and signing bilingual Gideon New Testaments that had been placed at every plate. Long lines formed to get the signatures of López Michelsen and Julio Cesar Turbay-Ayala, said to be the leading candidate to succeed the president.

Amid Colombia’s political and social turmoil, the constituencies of evangelical churches are growing about three times faster than the population, and the Catholic charismatic movement is multiplying even faster than that.

The new respectability and acceptance enjoyed by evangelicals may have national boundaries, however. Visas permitting missionaries to work in the national Indian “territories” are now unavailable. The Wycliffe Bible Translators agency awaits a new contract that will allow it to continue linguistic work. Government officials want at least half of the staff members of Wycliffe and other foreign cultural agencies to be Colombians. Meanwhile, resident Wycliffe workers must undergo police checks and have permits renewed every six months.

Visas allowing missionaries to work elsewhere are granted on a quota basis. Part of the blame for the squeeze is attributed to Mormons, who alarmed officials by asking for 500 visas at one time. In 1976, 780 North American missionaries representing seventy-one agencies were at work in Colombia.

Colombian evangelicals are scattere among more than forty denominations and are fragmented by differences over tongues, separatism, and attitudes toward the Catholic charismatic renewal movement. Their greatest unity ever, according to one observer, was displayed at the Banquet of Hope.

Caribbean Crusade

The following news account is based largely on a report filed by correspondent James C. Hefley.

History buffs identify the Dominican Republic, a country that shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti, as the site of many European firsts in the western hemisphere: the first city (Santo Domingo, 1496), the first university, the first Catholic cathedral, the first coin mint, the first Masonic lodge. Some historians believe that the body of Christopher Columbus is entombed in this “land he loved most,” not far from an ancient tree stump on the Santo Domingo waterfront. Smaller than West Virginia and with a population of five million, it is the only country in the world with the Bible in its flag. Tradition says it is open at John 8:32: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

Last month evangelist Luis Palau and his team delivered the truth of God to the Dominican Republic in a nation-wide crusade. Palau and his associates preached to a cumulative total of 116,000 (thousands more were reached through radio and television), and 4,000 “inquirers” came forward at the meetings for spiritual counsel.

Four week-long satellite crusades, led by Latin-born associate evangelists, were held in early October. Palau spoke on the closing nights in three of them. Crowds of 6,000 heard him at Santiago and San Juan. At Santiago, the country’s second-largest city, there was a minor uproar when a Christian folk-rock group—invited by the local crusade committee—sang the Beatles hit, Mother Mary.

The climactic eight-day crusade in Santo Domingo (population, 800,000) was originally scheduled to be held at the National Sports Palace. Because of sports events, however, the first four meetings had to be held in the baseball stadium, located in a crowded poor section of town. Crowds averaged 10,000 a service there, almost twice the attendance at each of the last four services in the modern enclosed sports hall, which is located in a middle-and upper-class residential neighborhood. Between 200 and 400 inquirers—most of them young adults—came forward at each service.

“We had different crowds in each place,” commented Jim Williams, the Palau team’s executive director.

Trans World Radio beamed the Santo Domingo meetings live to missionary radio stations throughout the Caribbean area and Latin America. Palau appeared daily on an afternoon call-in TV show in which he offered answers and counsel to viewers with questions. Some of the callers were directed to three family-counseling centers that the team operated in the city during the crusade.

Palau took one night off from the crusade to speak at an evangelical banquet gathering in Bogotá, attended by the president of Colombia (see preceding story). The evangelist has talked with many Latin presidents but was unable to meet with President Joaquin Balaguer of the Dominican Republic, perhaps because of Palau’s known friendship with Alfonso Lockward, who may be Balaguer’s main challenger in next May’s election. (Palau says he tries to maintain a strictly apolitical stance and to touch base with a variety of political leaders. One evening he dined with the president of the Dominican senate at the home of a prominent senator in Balaguer’s party who is an evangelical.)

Lockward, 40, is an elder and lay preacher in a Plymouth Brethren assembly. Formerly the minister of planning in the Balaguer administration, he is now the presidential candidate of the Revolutionary Social Christian Party on a platform that includes land reform and redistribution. If he is elected, he will face a tough task. One American corporation alone—Gulf Western—owns more than 20 per cent of the country’s cultivable land, one-third of the sugar industry, four major hotels, and other profitable interests.

Palau says that Lockward is the first serious evangelical presidential candidate in the history of Latin America. The candidate and his wife, a lawyer, are active in evangelical affairs. Mrs. Lockward raised much of the $20,000 local budget for the Palau crusade. Lockward is president of the board of CARIBE, the missionary publishing agency of the Latin American Mission, and he is known in U.S. evangelical circles.

Lockward envisions someday a Palau crusade in Cuba under Dominican leadership. “We must meet for fasting and prayer and be ready,” he told the Santo Domingo crusade committee. “By going to Hungary, Billy Graham has made a way for us in Cuba.” Palau says he’s willing to go.

Plymouth Brethren adherents and Free Methodists provided some of the crusade’s strongest support. The counselors were trained by veteran Brethren missionary Jim Cochrane. Superintendent Angel Caceres of the Free Methodist Church served as the chairman of the crusade’s seven-member central committee.

Palau, 42, became a Christian in his boyhood in Argentina through the endeavors of a Brethren missionary who led his parents to Christ. He studied at Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, Oregon, and married one of his classmates. He returned to Latin America as a missionary under Overseas Crusades, a California-based independent mission group. His team has always been a division of Overseas Crusades, and he was recently elected to the mission’s top executive post, succeeding founder Dick Hillis. The evangelist now resides with his family in Portland.

Palau conducts few meetings in the United States and therefore is not well known here, a factor that hinders financial support of his ministry. He has recently preached in Spain and elsewhere in Europe (where Third World figures are “in”), but his greatest popularity is in South and Central America.

Kindling Fires Along the Ohio

The following coverage is based in part on a report by correspondent Art Toalston.

Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum, located next to the city’s better-known Riverfront Stadium, seats 17,516. Still reeling from the effects of a fatal nightclub fire across the Ohio River in Kentucky earlier this year, fire marshals will not allow one more than 17,516 to enter. So, when evangelist Billy Graham conducted a ten-day crusade there last month, everyone knew exactly how many people were present when a capacity crowd was announced. The place was filled nearly every night, with the opening service being the notable exception (because of a ticket mix-up). Thousands were turned away, but some who didn’t get inside stayed to hear the sermon on loudspeakers outside.

While the marshals kept a watchful eye and never had to call firemen to the coliseum, other kinds of fires were associated with the event that was officially known as the Tri-State (Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio) Billy Graham Crusade. Said Graham on the last day, “We’re at the point where we could have continued for another month and seen the beginning of a real spiritual awakening in this area.” The response to the evangelist’s invitation to make a commitment to Christ was an unusually high 4.4 per cent of the cumulative total attendance. The number of churches—especially smaller ones—giving wholehearted support and bringing non-Christians to the meetings was considered extraordinary by Graham staffers.

Graham came into a region that was excited about a number of explosive issues. Many citizens were still numbed by the number of deaths in the fire. Cincinnati bears the dubious distinction of being the city in which convicted p*rnographer Larry Flynt publishes Hustler magazine. School officials are contesting a desegregation suit, and while the crusade was in progress the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People advocated a protest vote against a school tax.

“What a wonderful thing it would be if Christ could move right through the city and the suburbs and bring us together so we can tackle our problems,” Graham declared. He pointed to participation in a crusade as one of the best ways for blacks and whites to get to know each other in a spiritual dimension that will make improved relationships possible. Jerry Kirk, white pastor of College Hill United Presbyterian Church, and E. O. Thomas, black pastor of Inspirational Baptist Church, chairman and vice-chairman, respectively, of the crusade executive committee, were among those announcing a follow-up group called Evangelicals Together for Christ. It will concentrate on seeking solutions to the area’s social ills.

At the request of local leaders, one Saturday night service had a social-justice theme. In an unusual move Graham asked that the evening offering be cancelled and that would-be contributors give the money instead to their local churches, earmarked for ministries “to help needs and hurts where you live and worship.”

More than $280,000 of the nearly $400,000 crusade budget had been raised before the first meeting was held. Among the contributions were $5,000 from the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio and $3,000 from the United Presbyterian Presbytery of Cincinnati, unusual gifts in an era when governing bodies of mainline denominations have avoided formal actions indicating sympathy with Graham crusades.

Graham team member John Corts, who directed the Cincinnati effort, was even more pleased with offerings at the coliseum. The average gift was nearly $1 per person attending, almost double the amount usually received. The response was particularly gratifying because the Cincinnati campaign was the first since Graham’s finances became the subject of wide media attention last summer. After the budget was subscribed, subsequent offerings were earmarked by the local executive committee for telecasting the crusade nationwide in December and for relief work in India, where the evangelist plans to preach in December.

Support by pastors was also encouraging to team members. One minister who had been involved in preparing his congregation to participate and who enrolled in the counselor training classes said the experience was “equal to a year in seminary.” The crusade’s school of evangelism attracted an enrollment of 1,500 pastors, lay leaders, and wives. They came from seventy-eight denominations.

When it was all over, a cumulative attendance of 160,615 had been recorded, and 7,075 decisions for Christ were registered. One newspaper reported that even Graham had been “converted”—in his attitude toward the city. He did admit, in fact, that at the beginning he had misconceptions about the Queen City on the Ohio River. He said he had always heard that it was “one of the most difficult cities” from an evangelistic point of view. As he prepared to leave it, the evangelist declared that the experience gave him a very positive view instead of the one he brought to it.

Graham: Feted By Jews

“You know that I stand before you as an evangelical Christian who is committed to the beliefs of the New Testament. You do not expect me to be anything other than what I am.”

With this introduction evangelist Billy Graham last month made his first public address to a national Jewish group. He considered the opportunity important enough to fly to Atlanta on the eighth day of his ten-day crusade in Cincinnati (see preceding story). It was the annual meeting of the American Jewish Committee’s national executive council. A long-time friend, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the AJC staff, presented to Graham the agency’s first national interreligious award.

“Let us not hide our differences under a basket,” the world’s best-known evangelical told his audience of some 200 Jewish leaders. Quoting Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, he counseled understanding and respect. Then the evangelist launched into a brief review of his own testimony, ending with: “I am here today because of that commitment made forty-three years ago.”

That 1934 decision for Christ in a North Carolina revival pushed him into a study of the Bible that had profound effects, he recalled. Graham said the result was not only an intolerance of “social and personal evils” of his generation—such as racial discrimination—but also a realization of “the debt I owed to Israel, to Judaism, and to the Jewish people.”

In introducing the speaker, Tanenbaum left little question that Graham had done as much as any Christian to pay off that debt. He heaped lavish praise on the evangelist, declaring that most of the progress in Protestant-Jewish relations in the past quarter century is attributable to Graham’s leadership. Tanenbaum, who has been working at improving Jewish-Christian relations for twenty-five years, said that Israel’s political leaders—from Golda Meir to Menahem Begin—could “recite chapter and verse” of times when Graham provided assistance. In addition to aiding the cause of Israelis, said Tanenbaum, Graham has also “been present” to Jews elsewhere in their times of crisis. The evangelist was cited for his repudiation of “deceptive techniques” of proselytism by some Christian groups.

In response, Graham paid tribute to Tanenbaum for working “shoulder to shoulder” with him in trying to build bridges between attenated groups. Of the rabbi he said, “No man in this country has helped me to understand [the Jewish point of view] as he has.”

The audience was slow to warm up to Graham as he spoke of meeting “Jesus Christ face to face, a Jew who was born in Bethlehem and reared in Nazareth.” Before he finished the thirty-minute address, however, he had been interrupted by applause five times, and at the conclusion he got a sustained standing ovation.

Graham hit the issue of proselytism, currently a top Jewish concern, only obliquely in the speech. He chided Jewish parents as well as Christians for failing to transmit spiritual values to their children. America needs “a spiritual awakening that will not only dynamically influence the social and political life of this country but answer the deepest needs of our young people,” he declared. The evangelist spoke of Old Testament revivals and called on his audience to join with Christians seeking a reversal of the nation’s moral and spiritual decline. He renewed his call for daily reading of the Ten Commandments in public schools.

In a news conference prior to the luncheon Graham stuck by his position that his work is “to proclaim the Gospel to Jew and Gentile.” He reaffirmed the stand he took in 1973 at the height of the controversy over Key 73’s espousal of Jewish evangelism. In it, he said he never felt called to “single out the Jews as Jews.”

In an even-handed statement on the Middle East, the evangelist said he believes Jerusalem will one day be the capital of the world. Not only does Israel have a right to exist, he declared, but “the Palestinians also have a right to exist under legitimate leadership committed to the peace of the Middle East.”

Four days after Graham’s Atlanta statement, a full-page advertisem*nt signed by fifteen evangelical leaders (not including Graham) appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post. It cited their belief in “Israel’s divine right to the land” and voiced apprehension over “the recent direction of American foreign policy vis a vis the Middle East.” Coordinating the ad project was Arnold T. Olson, president emeritus of the Evangelical Free Church of America. Other signers included Hudson Armerding, Pat Boone, W. A. Criswell, Kenneth Kantzer, Harold Lindsell. Clyde Taylor, and John Walvoord.

A Jewish leader who wished to remain anonymous “advanced” the cost of the ads, according to Olson. He told a reporter that about twenty evangelical leaders were asked to sign and that there were no outright refusals, although some were unable to give permission to use their names before publication deadline.

ARTHUR H. MATTHEWS

A Look At the Books

Minnesota securities authorities last month re-registered the charitable gift annuity program of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association after BGEA officials filed a 1976 financial statement with the state. The document does not include all thefinancial details that the BGEA plans to make public after the end of this year (see October 21 issue, page 44), but it is the most complete public report of BGEA finances available so far. The state securities commissioner re-registered the annuity program within a week after receiving the information. George Wilson, executive vice-president of the BGEA, said in a statement at the time of filing that “there has never been a question about the security of the annuity fund.”

According to the balance sheet, the annuity fund listed assets of $3.3 million as of September 30, up $1 million from a year ago. Nationwide, 746 annuities were in force at the end of June, the report indicated. Currently only $147,000 has been invested by Minnesotans in the fund, but the commissioner authorized the BGEA to write up to $300,000 worth of the gift contracts in his state.

Overall statistics for the BGEA at the end of 1976 showed $28.7 million in income, of which $26.9 million came from gifts. The remainder came from bequests, interest, and other sources. The year’s expenditures came to a total of $27.7 million. Of that amount, $10.4 million was designated for “evangelism ministries,” $8.8 million for broadcasting and films, $2.8 million for Decision magazine, $2.5 million for overseas activities, $1.5 million for direct mail and postage, and $1.4 million for administration.

The report filed in Minnesota did not cover all the affiliated Graham organizations, but association directors have said that all will be included in the annual report to be made public after the 1977 audit. Among the other organizations is the World Evangelism and Christian Education Fund (WECEF), headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The Minnesota report indicated that WECEF got $3.6 million from the BGEA last year. In addition, Wheaton College received $942,114 for its Billy Graham Center, other Graham affiliates got $20,996, and other religious organizations received $209,352. All the gifts were listed under the category of “evangelism ministries.”

Combat Zone

The “fight to the finish” between Baptist evangelist Bob Harrington of New Orleans and atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair is apparently over. Harrington claimed he had won a “technical knockout in the thirty-second round” when Ms. O’Hair stormed off stage at a rally last month in Bryan, Texas, and declared that she would not make any more appearances with him. It was the pair’s thirty-second public appearance together in a controversial barnstorming debate tour that began in Tennessee in August (see August 26 issue, page 34).

The evangelist described Ms. O’Hair’s refusal to continue the series as “the greatest Christian victory over an atheist in history.”

Ms. O’Hair said she stepped out of the debates because she was disgusted by Harrington’s tactics and by the attitudes of the largely Christian audiences. Frequently, she said, she was painted as a Communist. And she said she didn’t like it when Harrington led the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance, pausing to chant over and over again, “One nation under God.” It was scary, she said.

Ms. O’Hair may have left the debate series in order to do battle closer to home. It seems that while she was on the road with Harrington someone stole from her American Atheist Center in Austin, Texas, tapes containing computer programs needed for mailing and accounting. She filed a complaint with the police, and she publicly charged a former employee, Susan Stroebel, with the theft.

Her son, William J. Murray—the vice president and administrator of the center until he quit in September—came to Mrs. Stroebel’s defense. (Murray, 31, was the central figure in the 1963 Supreme Court decision that banned government-prescribed prayers from public schools.) He claimed in a press conference that his mother had violated decency standards in accusing Mrs. Stroebel, and he said that no computer tapes were missing.

In a bizarre shouting match with her son and his attorney, Ms. O’Hair called Murray a liar and accused him of siding with individuals trying to cripple the Atheist Center.

Murray suggested that Ms. O’Hair’s allegations were a ruse to cover up “managerial problems” at the center. He indicated that he may take legal action against Ms. O’Hair over the center’s operations. He declined, however, to discuss the differences that led to his resignation as his mother’s chief executive.

“No matter what Bill Murray does, I love him,” Ms. O’Hair told reporters. “I am protecting him because I am his mother.”

Earlier, both Ms. O’Hair and Murray said that the center had “made money” in her debate appearances (offerings at the meetings could be designated to either Harrington or Ms. O’Hair). However, Harrington’s business manager, Zonya LaFerney, said the evangelist had lost $60,000 in the venture (Harrington underwrote auditorium rentals and promotional costs). Audiences got thinner as the tour wore on, and one recent debate attracted fewer than 300. In some cities, pastors organized boycotts, voicing various objections to the debates.

One of the matters of controversy involved Harrington’s association with convicted p*rnographer Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler. Flynt recently gave Harrington a custom-outfitted $155,000 bus for his travels. (The evangelist told a reporter that he also has a Learjet for use “on weekend situations.”) Harrington said his friendship with Flynt stems from last year, when Flynt published an eight-page article about him in Hustler. He said Flynt invited him to do the interview after being turned down by Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, and Rex Hum-bard.

The evangelist said he also participated in Flynt’s wedding to Althea Leasure. Ms. Leasure markets an extensive line of sexual toys and devices through the pages of Hustler. Additionally, he preached at a Flynt family reunion.

In the face of growing opposition from ministers, Harrington is moving more and more into the personal-motivation field with lectures, tapes, and literature. A recent advertisem*nt bills him as an “inspirational entertainer.” The lectures offer advice on how to make money, on how to be a success, on how to repair an unhappy marriage, and the like. Around his neck these days he wears a large gold pendant proclaiming, “It’s fun being successful.”

Special Report

Six former students of Ambassador College, the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) school in Pasadena, California, have published a scathing attack of the school, the church, and its leaders. Their criticisms are contained in Ambassador Report, a ninety-two-page magazine they released late last month. The church’s leaders—WCG founder Herbert W. Armstrong, 85, and his son, Garner Ted, 47, president of Ambassador and the voice of the sect on hundreds of radio and television stations around the world—had no immediate comment.

The magazine’s thirty articles attempt to document charges of sexual immorality, deception, financial irregularities (including misuse of charity funds), intimidation of employees by “computer snooping,” secret monitoring of college classrooms, exploitation of members, opulence, false prophecies, and doctrinal accommodation.

Five of the magazine’s publishers are recent graduates of Ambassador: Robert Gerringer, Bill Hughes, John Trechak, and Leonard and Margaret Zola. The sixth, Mary E. Jones, attended for two years. They had been members of the WCG from four to fifteen years.

All six were involved with another Ambassador alumnus, Timothy Nugent, in a similar but smaller publishing project last year, Ambassador Review. As a result of “irreconcilable differences” with Nugent—who headed the anti-Armstrong coalition—his colleagues split with him and continued the publishing venture with a new name. Charging that his former collaborators had pirated his material, Nugent secured a temporary restraining order to halt distribution of the magazine. A few days later, however, he settled out of court, and the ban was lifted.

The slick-paper, full-color Ambassador Report cost more than $10,000 to produce and represents two years of research, according to the publishers. Three of the articles score the playboy life style of the younger Armstrong—in whom, writes Trechak, “one is tempted to believe … the hypocrisy of Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry is actually surpassed.”

One of the two cover stories, “In Bed With Garner Ted—America’s Playboy Preacher,” purports to be an interview with a young woman allegedly seduced by the handsome church executive.

The other cover story features the views of chess wizzard Bobby Fischer. He disclosed that although he was not a member of the WCG he contributed $94,315 to it over an eight-year period that ended in 1974. “I’m not interested in getting my money back,” he is quoted as telling interviewer Leonard Zola. “I just want to make sure that nobody gets ripped off mentally.” He is also quoted as saying: “This idea of Herbert’s that you can’t trust your own thoughts—that’s the key doctrine that I think has to be blasted out.”

Fischer apparently took his complaints to the publishers of the Ambassador Reportearlier this year, but he now contends that the material was printed without his permission. He has retained attorney Stanley R. Rader, the legal brains behind the WCG and one of its vice presidents, to represent him and “punish” the alleged offenders. The publishers acknowledge that Fischer tried to get the article deleted.

Fischer himself was sued last month in a Pasadena court by Holly Ruiz. She is asking $5,000 damages, claiming that Fischer broke into her apartment on October 10. She alleges that he struck her when she refused to sign a statement saying that he was unaware that conversations about his involvement with the Armstrongs had been tape recorded. Mrs. Ruiz reportedly had attempted to sell the interviews to a national magazine.

Several days after the Ruiz incident occurred, Bill Hughes—the Ambassador Report’s business manager—reported that his apartment had been burglarized. Stereo equipment and other articles of value were shunned, but 200 tape recordings and other supporting documents were taken, he said.

In an introductory statement in the Report, Trechak says that the publishing board tried without success for fifteen months to meet with the Armstrongs and other church leaders to discuss their criticisms. Rader, however, insists that no such communication reached him or other officials. In a telephone interview he branded the magazine’s contents as “scurrilous material with no foundation in fact.” He said that the publication contained “nothing new” and amounted to “a rehash” of defamatory criticisms that were aired several years ago and were “adequately dealt with” at that time. Further response to the resurrected charges, he stated, is therefore unnecessary. He added, however, that certain allegations in the Report concerning him are libelous and that he plans to take legal action against the publishers.

The publishers said that 5,000 copies were distributed to persons who had sent donations for the project or whose names had been referred to the publishers (Box 4068. Pasadena, CA 91106).

The back cover of the Ambassador Report carries the caption, “Tithing Pays Off!” It shows photos of what are described as the homes and grounds of the two Armstrongs, Rader, and executive assistant Robert Kuhn. Estimates of the value of the residences range from $300,000 to $2 million.

Such charges as those contained in the publication resulted in a schism and a purge of some WCG clergymen in 1974 (see March 15, 1974, issue, page 49). The church currently claims a membership of 60,000 worldwide.

JOSEPH M. HOPKINS

Rediscover America

“Religion is increasing its influence on society, but morality is decreasing. The secular world shows that religion is not seriously affecting our lives.”

Such was the lament of converted Watergate figure Charles Colson (Born Again) at a Nashville luncheon during the annual meeting of Religious Heritage of America, an organization founded in 1951 by Chicago insurance man W. Clement Stone (a sometime Nixon financier) and other business leaders, including Wallace Johnson, co-founder of the Holiday Inn motel chain. Colson, the former special counsel to Richard Nixon, cited conclusions of pollster George Gallup to support his contention, and he pointed to the profusion of p*rnography and the increase in abortions.

Colson’s concern is shared by the leaders of RHA, and in response they unveiled a fifteen-year campaign to be called Rediscover America. It will emphasize “a return to honesty in personal and national life.” Its culmination is set for October 12, 1992, the five-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery of America.”

“Dishonesty is the litter on our moral picnic table,” said Stone, who serves as RHA’s president.

“If we do not wake up and sell Americans on America, it could be we’ll not have Americans to sell America to,” said Johnson.

William J. Simmons, a retired black educator who is president of the Nashville Rediscover America Committee, asserted that problems of honesty revolve around a moral “breakdown of affluent rich people.” There, he said, is “where we need honesty.”

RHA’s founders believe that “the strength, growth, and survival of our nation may be credited to the active belief … in [Judeo-Christian values] by our nation’s founding fathers and succeeding generations.”

At an awards dinner on Halloween night that was attended by 650 persons from across America, RHA cited a number of people it felt had contributed to that goal. They included: Robert Schuller, a Reformed Church in America clergyman who is pastor of the Garden Grove (California) Community Church (named Clergyman of the Year); Paul Brandel, a layman of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America and a Chicago attorney (Churchman of the Year); and Mrs. Henry Cannon, a United Methodist member and the entertainer known as “Minnie Pearl” on the “Grand Ole Opry” show (Churchwoman of the Year).

Faith and Freedom awards went to editor Lillian Block of Religious News Service, communications director Everett Parker of the United Church of Christ, and Southern Baptist radio-television producer Jim Rupe. Colson received a Life Inspiration award, and special awards were given to comedian Jerry Clower, a Southern Baptist layman, and author-lecturer Heath Bottomley.

WALLACE HENLEY

Wrong Boss

Garnet Morris Bryant is out of a job and some lucrative benefits. He says it’s all because he followed his conscience and the literal teachings of the Bible.

Bryant, 32, was fired from his job on an assembly line for a Ford auto plant in Louisville, Kentucky, after he refused to take orders from his foreman. A licensed preacher and evangelist for the United Christian Church, he balked when Joyce Woosley was promoted last May to be his supervisor. His repeated requests to be transferred to a department with a male foreman were denied. Ford suspended him several times and gave him a leave of absence to do missionary work for the 21-year-old conservative denomination. When he returned last month, he was told he would have to work for Ms. Woosley—one of three women foremen at the plant—or be fired.

Bryant cites Paul’s words to Timothy as authority for his stand: “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” (1 Timothy 2:12).

His dismissal came six months before his tenth anniversary with the company; pension benefits do not become effective until the completion of ten years. His job paid $400-plus a week.

Bryant, who will become the unsalaried pastor of a small church, says his denomination hasn’t helped him much. The United Christian Church has some 3,000 ministers, and about one-third of them are women.

Piping Hot

Fourteen pipes from the organ at the Episcopal chapel at the University of Miami in Florida have been stolen since the opening of classes this term. The pipes, ranging in length from the size of a cigarette holder to more than three feet, are valued at $600. School officials think it’s more than a case of simple vandalism. They say a student may be stealing the pipes to use as marijuana-smoking “bongs,” which are similar to water pipes. Chaplain Henry Minich is inclined to agree. “Some students,” he said, “have told me the pipes could be used as bongs.”

A New Era Or A New Void

The Justification of Knowledge, by Robert L. Reymond (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1976, 168 pp., $4.50 pb), is reviewed by Robert H. Countess, First Batallion chaplain, Army Engineer Center, Ft. Belvoir, Va.

Who can take seriously a professor of systematic theology who in only 168 pages attempts to demonstrate that every evangelical heavyweight in apologetics ends up destroying, in principle, epistemology? But that is exactly what Covenant seminary’s Robert L. Reymond assays to do. How successful he is will be left to the reader to decide. I am impressed with this monograph. It could be judged a very significant apologetical work, not because it accomplishes so much positively but because its negative criticism of Van Til, Clark, Schaeffer, et al. is so devastating.

Reymond shows that Gordon H. Clark’s absolute idealism leaves us with the impossibility of knowledge, that C. Van Til’s extreme bifurcation between God’s knowledge and man’s knowledge leaves us with no anknüpfkungspunkt (point of contact) between what God knows and what man knows, and that Francis Schaeffer’s capitulation to a non-Christian, apostate epistemology leaves us with no possibility of ever achieving a dogmatic port for the “Good Ship of Zion.” Such serious charges, if proven, mean that after two thousand years of rigorous, intellectual activity by the best Christian minds, we seem to be at a terrible apologetical impasse.

Reymond has been personally acquainted with most of the apologetes he cites. His own lineage is, in descending order, from Van Til, Clark, and Schaeffer. He has taken great pains to reflect accurately their position.

The work is divided into five chapters. The first defines apologetics as a defense of the faith as specifically related to epistemology in the broadest sense of this word. Chapter two treats “The Faith We Defend” and surveys basic Christian doctrines before arriving at a Christian theory of being and knowing. The latter will remind the astute reader of Van Til’s Defense of the Faith: for example, “Every fact in the universe has meaning by virtue of its place in the unifying plan of God.” In the third chapter Reymond presents B. B. Warfield’s traditional approach to apologetics: On the basis of a great “mass of evidence” one can conclude that “the doctrinal teaching of the Bible writers is trustworthy.” But this method can only lead to “probability” apologetics and can never “prove” anything because it is inductive in approach. His colleague at old Princeton, Charles Hodge, in agreement with this method wrote, “reason must judge of the credibility of a revelation.” But Reymond sagaciously observes that the data for induction are always incomplete and, therefore the traditional method never yields more than probable evidence. (In this connection one must compare Francis Schaeffer’s reduplication of old Princeton.)

It is in chapter four that Reymond, as it were, places the fat in the fire. For him the only viable methodology is presuppositionalism and the crucial issue is epistemology. “In order for the human knowing subject to know, and to know that he knows, two prerequisites are obviously necessary: (1) the necessary learning apparatus …, and (2) a pou sto sufficiently comprehensive to serve as the ground for the universal conceptions which in turn are necessary to give all the particulars their meanings” (p. 75). Because of the effects of the Fall, man’s mind will not lead him to the truth regardless of how great the evidences for God. Only regeneration can begin to reverse these sinful noetic effects. Because God is the Creator, all men have everything in common metaphysically but they have in principle nothing in common epistemologically.

Having conceded indebtedness to both Clark and Van Til, he now reviews the 1945 conflict between these men over epistemology. Van Til insists that man can know nothing as God knows it. God knows univocally, man only analogically. “We dare not maintain that (God’s) knowledge and our knowledge coincide at any single point.” When Van Til asserts that he refuses to make any attempt at stating clearly any Christian doctrine because he desires to defend Christianity, Reymond exclaims: “This is an incredible statement!” Van Til’s analogous knowledge becomes no knowledge at all, and this is what Clark has charged. In addition Reymond draws a noteworthy parallel: “Exceedingly strange it is that as ardent a foe of Barthian irrationalism as is Van Til, he comes nevertheless to the same conclusion concerning the nature of truth for man as does Barth.”

But neither does Clark escape Reymond’s razor. He too is a presuppositionalist. For the Christian apologist, “only arguments whose conclusions follow necessarily from correct premises and therefore which give formally valid demonstrations” are to be embraced. Clark’s supreme major premise for all his deductions is that “the Bible is the Word of God.” (It is interesting for the reader to look up Psalm 65:4 from which Clark concludes that he personally had to choose this “first principle.”) Clark also denies that sensory experience has any validity as part of the knowing process, which denial has led critics to charge that he thus cuts himself off from his major premise. The Bible is a book that can be touched, read, or listened to. Clark’s dogmatic deductive methodology, if taken seriously, says Reymond, leads ultimately to skepticism.

In the final chapter Reymond briefly treats Aquinas, Buswell, Carnell, Schaeffer, Montgomery, Pinnock, and Josh McDowell all under “Empirical Apologetics.” He objects that this method is a kind of natural theology, which eventually leads one to special revelation. “It implies that men, apart from Christ, have by their own autonomous pou sto justified their claimed privilege to judge any and all other truth claims.” The twelve pages devoted to Schaeffer will interest those who are unaware of the L’Abri phenomenon.

Throughout the book Reymond writes clearly and argues persuasively. He exudes a gentlemanly demeanor toward those with whom he takes issue—which is everyone. Without arrogance he pleads for “both a methodology of communicating the faith and a methodology of defending that faith in a manner consistent with that faith.” His proposed solution to the Van Tillian dilemma is that the creature and the Creator do have knowledge that coincides as far as content is concerned, but man is never able to know a fact exhaustively. “The solution to all of Van Til’s difficulties is to affirm, as Scripture teaches, that both God and man share the same concept of truth and the same theory of language.”

There are indices of subjects and Scripture references but no glossary of terms. A summation chapter would have been helpful. Responses from these apologetes will surely be forthcoming. If Reymond has done his work well, we may see a new era in apologetics—or a new void.

What Has Psychology To Do With Theology?

Psychology and Christianity: The View Both Ways, by Malcolm Jeeves (InterVarsity, 1976, 177 pp., $3.95 pb), is reviewed by Kirk E. Farnsworth, associate professor of psychology, Trinity College, Deerfield, Illinois.

There have been many attempts “to restate traditional Christian beliefs in the latest psychological jargon in the belief that in some way this makes them more acceptable to contemporary man. At times this has resulted in ingenious attempts to demonstrate that this or that latest psychological model of man fits with the Christian model, with a further implication that if we had been clever enough we could have found it all in Scripture anyway.” With this accurate appraisal of present-day attempts to integrate psychology and theology, Jeeves launches into an excellent presentation of another view of integration, the Complementarity Model.

Drawing heavily on Donald MacKay (The Clockwork Image), Jeeves portrays psychology and theology as complementary, not competitive. Essentially, this means (1) they have a common reference, (2) each is in principle exhaustive within its own methodological limitations, and (3) they make different assertions. The main problem with this, as I see it, is that increasingly psychologists and theologians are making not different assertions, but rather very similar ones. Psychologists, for example, are not limiting themselves to “brain stories” (to use MacKay’s words) but are increasingly becoming conversant with “I stories,” moving from the mechanical to the personal. This is due to a paradigm shift that is gradually taking place within psychology, one that Jeeves seems unaware of. Even MacKay admits that detached scientific methodology should be abandoned when data are accessible and knowledge is available only through participation. Yet Jeeves sticks by his view that psychology provides “spectator” accounts of reality while theology provides “actor” accounts of the same reality. This assertion is true to the Complementarity Model but untrue to the field of psychology. Were Jeeves, an experimental neuropsychologist, to engage in psychology as a human science rather than a natural science, he would then be able to move to a different integration model, beyond anything he has discussed in his book. Had he entitled the book Experimental Psychology and Christianity: The View Both Ways, there would be no problem.

The topics he covers are fairly standard fare and quite well handled. He has a high view of body and of the wholeness of the person; he discusses psychoanalytic, ethological, behavioristic, and biblical views of persons quite well; he does a good job of discussing MacKay’s principle of logical indeterminacy; he presents informative discussions of conversion, moral development, guilt, and Freud’s and Skinner’s views of religion.

The book is aimed at non-specialists as well as college students majoring in psychology. I recommend the book to them if they keep in mind its limitations.

A Journalist Rejects The Gospels

Jesus Son of Man, by Rudolf Augstein (Urizen, 1977, 408 pp., $12.95), is reviewed by Charles C. Anderson, professor of religion, Ottawa University, Ottawa, Kansas.

Rudolf Augstein, publisher of the West German newsweekly Der Spiegel, is the author of this controversial book. To evaluate it, one must consider the author’s perspective.

One of the gains in biblical studies in recent years has been the recognition by scholars that no one approaches the biblical literature without preconceptions. At times, however, these preconceptions are so arbitrary as to render balanced treatment of that literature impossible. Augstein, although reared as a Roman Catholic, is now an agnostic. We should therefore be prepared for harsh treatment of his subject, Jesus.

Augstein’s ostensible purpose is to enlighten the layman about what has been accepted among theologians for over a century. As he puts it, “I am now probing how the Christian church dares appeal to a Jesus who never existed, to a mandate he never issued, and to a claim that he was God’s son, which he never presumed for himself.” According to Augstein, Jesus never claimed any of the messianic or theistic titles attributed to him. Augstein arrives at these conclusions by appropriating the more radical elements of German biblical criticism.

How then do we find what we do in our Gospels? Augstein states it simply: “The Gospels contain the lessons of the evangelists, no more; and those in turn contain the lessons of the Essenes, the Qumran community, the apocalyptics, the liberal Pharisees, the strict Pharisees, the Jewish Christians, the Hellenists and nothing else.” One is left with the distinct impression that almost any other source for the life of Jesus is to be preferred to the Gospels. As a consequence, the bulk of the history presented in the Gospels is not to be relied upon; for instance, we cannot be certain that Bethlehem was Jesus’ birthplace and Nazareth was his home town; we cannot be certain that Jesus had a trial. In connection with the crucifixion of Jesus, he writes, “The theme of our book here is that with the evangelists, not excluding Mark, it is no longer possible to sort out what they invented from time to time and what they put out for propaganda purposes.” And, of course, the resurrection is not a historical fact. Most New Testament theology, and even the parables of Jesus, are similarly brushed aside.

Perhaps the most disturbing feature of the book is the nest of assumptions upon which it is built. Augstein accepts only the more skeptical elements in criticism, and these only partially: for example, at points Bultmann is too conservative for him. Augstein shows slight acquaintance with scholarship outside German circles. He asserts that since there was an extended hiatus between the events of Jesus’ life and the writing of the Gospels in which no care for accuracy of transmission was maintained, the Gospels therefore have no “eyewitness” characteristics.

When cynicism will not do, the writing degenerates into sarcasm, which Augstein uses frequently in reference to the more conservative figures in German biblical criticism. The concluding chapter of the book is a defense of his agnostic position.

The historical and theological inadequacies of the book are complemented by frequent printing errors.

Augstein writes, “Paul seems to have suffered unspeakably from the law and the impossibility of satisfying its six hundred and thirteen precepts and prohibitions. More than anything, he wanted to abolish the law, rather than set it aside.” The accuracy of this judgment should be challenged, but could not the same sort of thing be said of Augstein in comparing his present position with his upbringing in the Catholic Church?

American Theologians

Authority and the Renewal of American Theology, by Dennis M. Campbell (Pilgrim Press, 1976, 144 pp., $8.00), is reviewed by Robert K. Johnston, assistant professor of religion, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky.

There’s a crisis of authority in every sphere of American life today, not the least theology. Christianity has maintained that “apart from the myriad authorities of earthly existence, there is one authority which is final,” God himself. But this ultimate authority is known only indirectly—through the Bible, inner experience, church tradition, the creeds, and human reason. While God is the focus of the Christian’s absolute allegiance, Christian theology through the ages has given “mediate authority” to one or another of these secondary sources. This situation—that there seemingly are multiple options for one’s theological norm—is the cause of the crisis in mainstream American theology, and it is Dennis Campbell’s subject in this book.

Campbell argues that the recovery of theology in America today hinges on the recognition of three things: “the centrality of the problem of authority for theology,” “the centrality of the Christian community as context for theology,” and the necessity of multiple norms for testing and correcting one’s understanding of the faith.

He develops his case historically, selecting representative theologians from five periods in American theology. In the first four chapters he deals with Jonathan Edwards, Horace Bushnell, William Adams Brown, and H. Richard Niebuhr. Each of these theologians, in Campbell’s interpretation, attempted to revitalize theology by adjusting his resolution of the problem of authority to the changing social and intellectual climate he encountered. Turning in chapter five to the present, Campbell highlights Langdon Gilkey, John Cobb, Gordon Kaufman, and Frederick Herzog as men engaged in constructive theology that is both intellectually rigorous and sensitively contemporary.

Jonathan Edwards, says Campbell, responded to the individualism of the Awakening by stressing as his theological authority the immediacy of revelation through “the sense of the heart.” Horace Bushnell, in a time of urban growth, reacted against the individualistic theology of revivalism and stressed that religious authority had its seat not only in experience but also in the Christian community. William Adams Brown (who taught at Union Seminary in New York) turned to man’s reason as the base and authority for theology, in an attempt to make Christianity more compatible with modern man’s new intellectual and sociological situation. After World War I with its shattering blow to the optimism of liberalism, H. Richard Niebuhr sought a new ordering for theological authority by reasserting the centrality of Christian community and the primacy of Revelation as its initiator and authority. His answer Campbell finds much like Bushnell’s and Edward’s.

Of the four theologians out of America’s past, the only one Campbell actively criticizes is Brown. He thinks that this turn-of-the-century liberal compromised the strength of his position by making modern man’s judgment normative in evaluating theology. In his last-chapter look at the contemporary scene, Campbell finds Gilkey’s “ultimacy,” Cobb’s process theology, and Kaufman’s “historicist perspective” similarly defective in that each sees modern secular reason as authoritative for constructive theology. Significantly different from these three positions, though still inadequate, according to Campbell, is the liberation theology of Herzog, which claims “that the Bible is, and must be, the authorizing source and norm for theological thought and action.” Campbell rejects this option, for he asserts (though he never adequately defends the point) that biblical authority is undermined by the fact that interpretations of Scripture vary and that no clear-cut determination of meaning seems possible apart from the use of other norms.

Campbell’s own stated position parallels his description of H. Richard Niebuhr’s. He maintains that “revelation can never be wholly contained in scripture, creed, inner experience, or church teaching, but all these function authoritatively.” One must admit not only the relevance of multiple theological norms but also the fact that there is “no one way of ascribing a hierarchy of importance among them.” Within the locus of “the community of faith,” one must affirm the complex dynamic of multiple norms. In this way one can achieve theological authenticity. “Authorization for constructive Christian theology results precisely from genuine accountability to the complexity of faith as it is expressed in manifold partial witnesses.”

It is interesting to note that Campbell fails to mention Niebuhr’s interest in Schleiermacher and Troeltsch, though their experiential and social roots are basic to Niebuhr’s (and Campbell’s) thought. He seems to want to separate his discussion from the problems in authority encountered by these nineteenth-century liberals. What he wishes to emphasize, along with Niebuhr, is the sovereignty of God as it is mediated through the experience of the faithful community and tested by those who, in Niebuhr’s words, “look from the same standpoint in the same direction.”

But can the faithful community bear this weight? Evangelicals, while seeking insight and correction from the faithful community, have seen the necessity of being radically committed to the Bible for its word and power. While creed, church tradition, inner experience, and reason can all help us stand before the Word (and might perhaps be our entrée to it), it is ultimately theology’s fundamental dependence upon the Bible that gives it authority for faith and life.

Regrettably, Campbell rejects this position. Believing that “the Bible cannot be uniquely authoritative because it does not speak univocally,” he is left, instead, with the multiple records of man’s experience of God as his norm. What should be initiatory and/or corrective has been made normative for Christian theology. What should be ultimately authoritative (i.e., Scripture) has been reduced to secondary importance.

Nevertheless, much about Campbell’s book is worthy of commendation. As a brief, informative historical survey of mainstream American theology, it is worth its price. Concentrating on that distinctly “American” contribution to theology, Campbell rightly focuses on H. Richard Niebuhr rather than on his better-known brother, Reinhold, for “neo-orthodoxy” remains foreign to the mainstream of the American tradition. Moreover, Campbell is correct in seeing the question of authority as the central theological issue. Although evangelicals will not agree with Campbell’s conclusions, they will find his discussion provocative and rightly focused.

Moreover, Campbell performs a valuable service for theology by stressing that its rightful social location is the church. The study of religion as an academic discipline is increasing in America today. This has caused theology to become preoccupied with secular consciousness, to take its cues from the university, and to seek validation in the court of human reason. As Campbell states, “theology initiates in the context of the Christian community; the locus of faith, therefore, may be understood as providing a setting of authorization which is exclusive as well as inclusive.”

Lastly, the book is valuable in pointing out that all theologians, including evangelicals, have multiple norms at work in their formulations. But here too lies the book’s major weakness. While stating that one cannot adjudicate which of the norms is to take priority—Bible creeds, church tradition, inner experience, or reason—Campbell does in fact place theological authority in one area, the collective experience of the church. This norm causes Campbell to reject Brown’s theology for being centered in reason and Herzog’s for having a biblical focus. Here also is why Campbell speaks approvingly of that tradition which finds its partial roots in Edwards and Bushnell and its full fruition in H. R. Niebuhr. Campbell’s operating norm, which is partially obscured by his theoretical commitment to multiple theological authorities, is the experience of God’s revelation as known in the church. It is this, according to Campbell, not reason or Scripture, that is ultimately authoritative.

Evangelicals will have difficulty with such a conclusion. Robert T. Osborn, writing from a standpoint outside evangelicalism, has rightly pointed out in an article entitled “The Rise and Fall of the Bible in Recent American Theology” (The Duke Divinity School Review, Spring, 1976) that the only alternative to a theology authorized by the Bible is a “natural theology authorized by universal human experience.” Campbell’s essentially human-based theology is more attractive (and faithful) than those recent “natural” theologies that he rejects, for it finds its locus in the church. But his ultimate appeal to man’s collective affections must also be rejected by evangelicals, who see the need for concentrating even one’s mediate authority in God himself. Scripture, as God’s uniquely inspired Word in human words, remains our most trustworthy norm and source for theological renewal.

Briefly Noted

PREACHING. It is a good idea for preachers to read a short book on preaching from time to time, both for renewing the sense of the value of the task and for fresh ideas. Various theological and homiletical points of view are represented in these recent titles: A Guide to Biblical Preaching by James Cox (Abingdon, 142 pp., $6.50), commended in our September 9 issue, p. 28; The Excellence of Exposition: Practical Procedure in Expository Preaching by Douglas M. White (Loizeaux, 191 pp., $4.25), a retired Baptist pastor; How Shall They Preach by Gardner C. Taylor (Progressive Baptist Publishing House [850 N. Grove, Elgin, IL 60120], 148 pp., $7.50 and $3.00 pb), the Lyman Beecher lectures at Yale by a leading black Baptist pastor; Biblical Preaching for Contemporary Man, edited by Neil B. Wiseman (Beacon Hill, 166 pp., $3.25 pb), by nine Nazarene leaders; Manual on Preaching by Milton Crum, Jr. (Judson, 189 pp., $8.95), an Episcopal Seminary professor; and Telling Truth: The Foolishness of Preaching in a Real World by James Armstrong (Word, 114 pp., $5.95), United Methodist bishop for the Dakotas. The Saturday Night Special by William L. Self (Word, 135 pp., $5.95) consists mainly of scores of suggested outlines which need considerable expansion by the preacher. Two collections of sermons that are out of the ordinary: Biblical Interpretations in Preaching by Gerhard von Rad (Abingdon, 125 pp., $5.95), showing how a prominent Old Testament critical scholar preaches constructively, and Black Preaching edited by Robert T. Newbold, Jr. (Geneva Press, % Westminster, 177 pp., $8.95), which contains twenty sermons by Black Presbyterians.

Calling his recent book The Best Dad Is a Good Lover, Charlie Shedd is not just employing a gimmick, but stating a fact. He provides his usual fare of breezy insights into family roles (Sheed, Andrews, and McMeel, 133 pp., $5.95).

Two recent publications from Victor Books provide introductory glimpses at the wide variety of religious expressions outside orthodox Christianity. Cults, World Religions, and You by Kenneth Boa (204 pp., $2.50 pb) covers nine Asian religions, a half-dozen of the older Christian deviations, various occult practices such as Tarot, and five aggressive new movements (T.M., Unification, Hare Krishna, Divine Light, and The Way). The Youth Nappers by James Hefley (208 pp., $2.25 pb) is just on the new movements, including the five mentioned above plus twenty-three others, such as Children of God, Local Church, and Scientology.

A classified but unannotated list of books updated through 1974 has become available this year as Aids to a Theological Library, edited by John Trotti (Scholars Press, 69 pp., $4.50 pb).

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is widely heralded as the leading American theologian. It is a publishing event of considerable magnitude to have in print for the first time ever his 210 page commentary on the last book of the Bible, Notes on the Apocalypse. Also available in complete form for the first time in two centuries is a 128 page work, An Humble Attempt to Promote … Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion … Pursuant to … Prophecies Concerning the Last Time. These two works together with a lengthy and very helpful introduction plus appendixes and index are bound together under the title Apocalyptic Writings and edited by Stephen J. Stein (Yale, 501 pp., $28.50). This volume is easily worth the price over against any half-dozen contemporary writings on the subject, most of which repeat each other. Such repetition cannot be charged to Edwards.

A History of Early Christian Doctrine Before the Council of Nicaea by Jean Daniélou, published by Westminster, is now complete with the appearance of the third volume, The Origins of Latin Christianity (511 pp., $25). At the same time the first volume, The Theology of Jewish Christianity (446 pp., $22.50), originally issued in English in 1964, is now re-issued. (The second volume, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, [540 pp., $17.50] was published in 1973; for a review see April 12, 1974, issue, pp. 36–40.) This major set belongs in all seminary and university libraries.

Self analysis is “in.” David Freeman is to be thanked for presenting a Reformed understanding in Know Your Self (Craig, 100 pp., $3.95 pb). Non-technical language is used in this interaction with contemporary psychological approaches.

James Hefley tells the stories of eight booming congregations that vary widely in their styles in Unique Evangelical Churches (Word, 164 pp., $5.95). Among those he treats are Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, known for its “body life,” the Body of Christ in Melbourne, a charismatic fellowship of which writer Jamie Buckingham is a leader, and Chicago’s inner city LaSalle Street Church, about which Hefley and his wife have also written a whole book, The Church That Takes on Trouble (Cook, 242 pp., $5.95).

Old Testament Books for Pastor and Teacher by Brevard Childs (Westminster, 120 pp., $3.95 pb) tilts too much away from views normally associated with evangelical scholars, but is of value for libraries and for teachers. It serves as a model format that others should follow in this and other subject areas.

MYSTICISM. Although some mysticism has been contained within orthodox Christian boundaries, it more often trangresses them. In addition mysticism is found in (or around) virtually all the world’s religions. For reasonably accurate descriptions of more than 1,000 mystics, movements, symbols, and practices see An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mysticism and the Mystery Religions by John Ferguson (Seabury, 228 pp., $14.95). Of the many books appearing on the subject, these are worth a second look: Mysticism in the World’s Religions by Geoffrey Parrinder (Oxford, 210 pp., $9.50), Mysticism: Window on a World View by Margaret Lewis Furse (Abingdon, 220 pp., $5.95), and Mysticism: Spiritual Quest or Psychic Disorder? by the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (419 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016, 120 pp., $4 pb).

Michael Griffiths, director of the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (formerly China Inland Mission), tells about the role of religion in the total social context in Changing Asia (InterVarsity, 120 pp., $7.95). The special asset of the book is the scores of photographs, many in full-color, that vividly depict the people of the most populous continent.

An Introduction to the New Testament is now available in a three-volume set by Mennonite scholar D. Edmond Hiebert (Moody, 300 + 381 + 294 pp., $7.95 each vol.). The first volume, on the gospels and Acts, was issued in 1975. The second, on Paul’s letters, was published under a different title in 1954. The third, on the rest of the books minus Revelation, was issued in 1962. Revelation was added this year.

David Howard, director of the triennial Urbana Missions Convention, in The Great Commission For Today (InterVarsity, 112 pp., $1.95 pb) draws from his Colombian experiences in presenting the world-wide scope of the Great Commission in the context of both testaments. Very readable.

For what’s happened to David Wilkerson’s ministry to drug addicts since The Cross and the Switchblade see The Jesus Factor by David Manuel (Logos, 182 pp., $1.95 pb). A directory of some seventy Teen Challenge centers is appended.

Let’s face it: there is nothing duller than the typical church newspaper ad. It serves the need of the motivated reader who is thinking of attending the church and wants to know the address or service times or sermon title. But its chances of attracting the typical newspaper reader are woefully slim.

Nowhere in the Scriptures does it say, “Stay put. I’ll bring the people to you.” We are told to go out into the world, proclaiming the Gospel. When we send out missionaries, we try to prepare them to relate to the people of a foreign land, and the first thing we do is teach them to speak the language so that they can communicate effectively. Should we do less in the unchurched wastelands of America? Hardly!

We are told to go out and bring the people in. They may not come to us on their own. One way to get people to come to your church is to advertise.

We need to speak to our friends and neighbors in a way they’ll understand. Advertising is one way. But if we’re going to invest in advertising, we should strive to make it attractive enough to encourage the unchurched to enter into His sanctuary.

Three years ago a church in Kirkland, Washington, began an advertising campaign that has met with very favorable community response and is yielding a high number of first-time visitors each Sunday. The ads change weekly and depart from the traditional. A bold title proclaiming “Who in Hell Cares?” hardly goes unnoticed in any publication, least of all in the hometown newspaper. “Datsun May Set You Free, But Make No Mistake About It … Only Jesus Saves” has a similar effect of standing out on the religion page. And the combined effect of a cartoon and an eye-catching headline engages lots of readers. This is the basic tenet of advertising—present an ad in such a manner that people want to read it. The church has based its ads on this principle, and the results have been dramatic. Since July, 1974, when the ad compaign began, church attendance has grown from 520 to over 1,150. The pastor says enthusiastically, “We paid for all the ads the day the first soul was won for Christ. We consider these ads to be a part of our evangelism program, and we use them to witness our faith and beliefs to the community.” Judging from the response, the witness is working. Many people came to the church because of the boldness and freshness they saw in the ads. And they stayed because they liked what they had seen and experienced.

Writing an effective ad doesn’t require a special talent. Most of us know what is appealing, and it’s simply a matter of applying that understanding to a given subject. All of the first 120 ads run by this church have followed one or more of the following precepts:

1.Adapt slogans created for other advertisers. For instance, a local bank advertised for months: “Come to Life.” A public transportation slogan was: “Take Me, I’m Yours.” Another advertiser said repeatedly: “Accept No Substitutes.” All these expressions fit into the church’s ads.

2.Use well-known terms and phrases not associated with Christianity. For example, “Be a Sport,” “You Bet Your Life,” “Soul Food,” “How’s Your Love Life?,” “Roots,” “Who in Hell Cares?,” “Pssssst,” “We Go By the Book,” “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

3.Make clear the position of your faith.

4.Make only one point per message.

5.Use the same title with more than one message.

6.Take maximum advantage of color reversal (white on black, black on white). It costs no more, but the eye appeal is greatly enhanced.

7.When artwork is used, make certain that it is not amateurish.

Church ads can be positional: “Here’s who we are and what we believe.” They can be provocative: “Don’t Send Your Children to Sunday School. Bring Them!” Others need to inform: “There’s going to be a musical at our church tomorrow night and we’d like you to come.” Or they can simply share a thought: “Peace Is Seeing the Sunset and Knowing Who to Thank.”

A church advertising campaign is more like a cartoon series than Madison Avenue. Who would read and heed it if the ad were repeated two weeks in a row?

There are arguments for and against repetition. Good (and bad) ads are repeated over and over again by the nation’s advertisers with good results: their products sell. But a church advertising series is much like a cartoon series. The appeal is its freshness each time. It would lose its effect if the same ad were repeated two weeks in a row. Of course, if an ad is repeated a year or two later, probably no one will notice the repetition.

A catchy advertising series will gather a continuing readership (“What are they going to say next?”). It can establish the image of the sponsoring church. It can proclaim the Gospel and make valid, vital points about salvation, God’s plan, and many more life-saving topics. In today’s world, an advertisem*nt can be the means by which a person first encounters the Christian message. But to do this, it must have pull.—C. NORMAN NOBLE, president, Nobel International, Bellevue, Washington.

A number of years ago New York papers were splashed with headlines concerning the exhibition of fury Salvador Dali displayed one fine morning on Fifth Avenue. A famous Fifth Avenue store had engaged him to design a window. He overlooked no details, and as far as he was concerned the window, which he finished late one night, was ready for his signature. The next day he found that someone had changed his work. Dali made a running start and jumped right through the plate glass window in front of startled passersby and window gazers. He destroyed the display. A melange of his work that included someone else’s ideas was not going to have his signature on it.

Dali jumped through a plate glass window of a fashionable Fifth Avenue department store. Every artist has his own way of displaying displeasure when his creation is changed.

Any creative person would react if his work were changed, whether it was an inferior painting with the signature of Rembrandt, or an architect’s plans turned into something he would never have made and even dislikes, whether it was a reflavored Chinese Wong Bok attributed to a cook who would never have made it that way or a film edited into something quite different from the original version. There is no work of art that can have a signature of one person when it’s been changed by another.

Most artists would not react as violently as Salvador Dali did. But there is nothing wrong with gently letting it be known that “This isn’t the way I did it. This isn’t the effect I wanted. This doesn’t communicate what I wanted it to.”

Art experts spend a lot of time determining the authenticity of certain paintings. Counterfeit paintings, an underground business, make money. A forged creative work is really a worse crime than a forged check, which only involves money.

We may get upset when people change our work, or when a counterfeit painting is passed off as genuine, but it is nothing to what the enemies of God do with his signature. When God finished the creation we are told that “God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” We have God’s declaration that everything he made was good. His creation was perfect. Yet day after day we have people blaming our imperfect world on God. But the perfect creation was changed, vandalized, and spoiled by human beings.

Through the centuries many people have used God’s signature fraudulently. An outstanding example of this happened when Moses was receiving the Law, and Aaron was making a golden calf. Aaron claimed that this molten calf was the work of God. After the calf was made these words were said: “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” And according to Jewish tradition, the holiest name of God was actually stamped upon the statue. The name of God, his signature, was placed upon a false representation of him. This adulterous worship substituted an idol for the living God as if there were no difference at all. No wonder the wrath of God was stirred up against them.

Falsifying a signature can take two forms: first, replacing the real signature for a more important one, and second, the placing of a signature of someone who did not make the creation upon the work of the one who did the work. Both of these have been done to the original creation of God and to the Word that he has given us.

Human beings without fear twist and change the Word of God, either adding to it and keeping his signature there, or removing his signature altogether and putting other signatures in his place. We should think about this as we read, “And the Word of the LORD came unto me saying …” or “the Word of the LORD came unto Elijah in the third year saying.…” We need to have the right kind of fear and awe concerning his Word. “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you” (Deut. 4:2) and “For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book” (Rev. 22:18, 19). There is an awesome seriousness in reading the Word of God and then tampering with it in some way. We can’t fail to tremble as we pray, “Lord give me your strength and your help hour by hour and day by day to not only not misrepresent what you have said, but to live as closely as possible in my weakness to what you have told me I am to be and to do.”

People have often claimed that God made something of which he had no part. Aaron and the golden calf is a prime example.

We need to reread Luke 16:19–31. The rich man wanted someone to go tell his brothers the truth, but Abraham replied, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” In John 5:39,46, 47 Jesus says to the Pharisees who had added so much to God’s Word that they did not even recognize him, nor his words of truth as he stood before them. “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.… For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” Changing works of art and leaving the signature is distressing enough, but the signature of the living God is everlasting, and can brook no substitute in content or in claim to authorship.