Page 6272 – Christianity Today (2025)

L. Nelson Bell

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We usually associate Abraham with faith, and rightly so. He is spoken of as the “father of the faithful,” and three different religions claim him as such.

The Apostle Paul argued justification by faith on the basis of Abraham’s imputed righteousness, the result of his unquestioning belief in God and His promises.

Martin Luther stood immovable on the affirmation, “The just shall live by faith,” and this sublime truth became a corner-stone of the Reformation.

We Christians rejoice in the fact that we are saved by faith, not works; that it is the pure grace of God through faith on our part which makes us whole.

But strange to say we so often overlook the necessity for obedience. Obedience is faith in action. What validity can there be in a profession of faith which is not confirmed by obedience to the will of God? One can but wonder whether many Christians are not living in a state of suspended spiritual animation, truly accepting Christ as Saviour but living without obedience to his revealed will and therefore never having him as the active Lord of life.

Years ago, Saul, king of Israel, disobeyed God, saving some of the spoils of a victory even though he had been commanded to destroy all. His excuse: he had preserved the best of the flocks to be used for a sacrifice to God.

But we read: “And Samuel said [to Saul], Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to harken than the fat of rams” (1 Sam. 15:22).

Many a Christian is covering up disobedience under the false front of supposedly Christian activity. We fool ourselves by deliberately disobeying God and engaging in frantic work for the Church or some other Christian cause, thinking our duplicity is unnoticed by God.

The Bible is full of references to obedience, of the importance of man’s recognizing God’s authority and submitting to it. But there is entirely too little said nowadays about obedience as an integral part of the Christian faith. The confession of the lips and belief in the heart must be validated by obedience of the will.

We should obey God because of who he is. He is sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Such attitudes should in themselves elicit obedience. Furthermore, despite the grandeur of his Person as Creator he deals with us, his creatures, with infinite love and patience. How foolish can we be? Certainly at no point more than in the realm of disobedience.

We should obey God because of who we are. Where he is sovereign we are the dependent; where he is omniscient we are ignorant; where he is omnipotent we are powerless; where he is omnipresent we are limited by time, space, and circumstance.

Little wonder that we Christians repeatedly find ourselves in difficult situations! Living in rebellion to God’s perfect will we bypass him and go our own ways—only to meet frustration and defeat. Even animals can be taught obedience to commands or gentle pressures. But we stubbornly take the bit in our own teeth and then complain because of difficulties which are the natural result of our own disobedience.

Obedience has its reward, now and for eternity. Disobedience is deadly, its effect going on forever. We live in an age of disobedience. Delinquency, adult and juvenile, stems from a willful rejection of the laws of God in favor of one’s own way.

Obedience requires knowledge of God’s will, faith in his goodness, and confidence in his promises. The Bible is wonderfully explicit in many areas and in others lays down principles which are to guide our lives. Obedience therefore requires knowledge of and faith in the written Word. The writer recently called the attention of a group of young Christians to the fact that in the Book of the Proverbs alone practically every problem of today’s teen-agers is answered.

Our problem is not so much to know what the will of God for us may be as to be willing to obey that will. God has not left himself without a witness; by clear and direct leading of the Holy Spirit, in Bible study, during prayer, through contacts with others, by combinations of circumstances, God makes his will known. But, knowing his will, what are we doing about it?

We started out with Abraham as an example of faith. From that faith there proceeded an obedience which in turn led to a promise and a covenant, “because thou hast obeyed my voice.” Who can fully imagine the anguish of Abraham’s heart when he was told to offer his son as a sacrifice? But the writer of Hebrews describes his faith in these words: “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son. Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure” (Heb. 11:17–19).

Here faith and obedience are so intermingled no one can say where the one began and the other ended. Abraham’s confidence, his assurance, his faith acted to effect an obedience which God honored, both for Abraham’s good and for His own glory.

We should search our own hearts to find out whether we are holding back something we should be yielding to God in obedience. God is never unreasonable, nor does he ever make a mistake. Despite our acknowledgment of this fact as a concept of God, we only too often deny it in practice.

Obedience is a matter of outward action and of inward discipline. There are many things we should do, or not do, in the realm of personal habits and interpersonal relationships, but obedience also involves something more. Paul writes: “Our battle is to bring down every deceptive fantasy and every imposing defense that men erect against the true knowledge of God. We even fight to capture every thought until it acknowledges the authority of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4, 5, Phillips).

Authority! Authority demands obedience, and that is where we fail. We confess Christ as Saviour, but we deny his authority to command our obedience to his will.

For Christians this is a matter of deep concern, for peace of heart and mind, along with usefulness in the work of God’s kingdom, is at stake. We cannot prosper in our spiritual lives so long as we are disobedient to God’s revealed will. Nor can he use us for his glory while we live in a state of known rebellion.

Obedience is a matter of sanctification, of growing in our knowledge and performance of God’s will. At times it involves taking a step in the dark; but that matters little, for the One who commands is also the One who will guide and strengthen, and out of obedience there surely comes the outpouring of God’s blessings—blessings reserved for the obedient heart and will.

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Along with the racial crisis, the slippage in private and public morals speaks insistently to our national conscience. Recent issues of Look, reporting on “The Tense Generation” and surveying the relation of “Bigness, the Bomb and the Buck” to moral decline; Life’s exposé of party-crashing; book-length discussions such as Margaret Halsey’s bitterly indignant The Pseudo-Ethic, and Grace and Fred Hechinger’s eye-opening Teen-Age Tyranny—these state the problem.

The facts are familiar. No longer do we just read about what is happening in other places. The problem has come to our own communities. None of us, to be sure, is entitled to view the moral lapses of others, young or old, with any feeling of superiority; Paul’s word, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,” is for every Christian. Yet we cannot shut our eyes to what is happening to moral standards in our country. And to continue discussion of the problem is obligatory.

The diagnosis has been made in frightening and authentic detail. For this public service, the mass media and the many others who have spoken out are to be thanked. But diagnosis, although the first step toward remedy, is not enough.

Of common-sense suggestions about what to do—a return to basic integrity, the practice of more self-restraint, no longer following the crowd but going the way of individual conviction—there can be little criticism. Nevertheless Look’s carefully researched article, “Morality U.S.A.,” to turn to a popular coverage of the problem, leads to some questions. These relate not so much to the accuracy of facts presented as to the analysis of their cause. Moreover, the soundness of the conclusion that is reached requires evaluation.

Three institutions in our American life, the article tells us, have a powerful responsibility to influence morality: government, business (including the labor unions), and the Church. Each has failed. This is correct; whether through poor example, lack of courage to voice conviction, or selfish unconcern, these institutions are culpable.

But this assignment of blame is incomplete. A realistic appraisal of the causes of the moral sag must include at least two other institutions—the press (both book and periodical) and the entertainment world.

Let us look at them. Consider first the press, so indispensable to our enlightenment and to our liberty. Here we face one of the thorniest problems of our complex society. Freedom of the press is a very great treasure and also an inescapable responsibility. Censorship has its critical dangers for liberty of expression. Yet a problem remains. To put it bluntly, probably no generation of youth has been subject to more extensive corruption than that which threatens American children today. This statement relates both to the printed page and to popular entertainment.

Relevant at this point is a recent editorial in The Christian Century stating that the ruling of New York State’s highest court (the Court of Appeals) judging Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer to be “flagrantly obscene” actually “jeopardizes rather than protects the health of our free society.” Although the revolting character of passages (and they are many) in Miller’s book is admitted, the statement is made that a healthy mind can take it while “the sick mind will find as much appeal [italics ours] to prurient interest in the Bible as in Miller’s sordid descriptions”—an incredible comparison.

The argument, representative of influential liberal opinion, ignores what books like Tropic of Cancer, along with the many salacious paperbacks and magazines sold in drugstores, supermarkets, bus stations, and airports, are doing not just to the sick-minded but also to immature youth. In the continuing battle over censorship, youth are the forgotten people. Let them fend for themselves, as long as we can read and write what we wish—this seems to be the attitude of many adults.

What is the current flood of easily accessible and morally debasing literature doing to school children? That it is one of the causes of the pitiful sexual precocity that characterizes so many American adolescents is undeniable. The author of “Sodom and America” (see p. 14) speaks out in passionate objection against corrupting literature. Certainly the problem of censorship will never be solved in callous unconcern for the mind of youth. The ancient question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” surely applies to our young people. Along with “the right of people to choose for themselves and to read what they choose” must go responsibility for the moral and mental health of inexperienced youth.

The other institution that, with government, business, and the Church, must share the blame for moral decline is the so-called entertainment world. Here the point needs no great elaboration. It is too constantly before our eyes and ears for us to mistake it. Let us simply say that not the least of the causes of the decline in morality is the ethical irresponsibility apparent in the motion picture and television industries. The exaltation of certain movie and television personalities out of proportion to their worth, their glamorization in mass media and in the Las Vegas kind of setting, the pre-occupation of some producers with violence and even perversion, all have their share in the present confusion regarding standards and values. According to Norman Mailer, “the most important, probably the only dynamic culture in America, the only culture to enlist the imagination and change the character of Americans, was the one we have been given by the movies.” Again there is the sensitive problem of censorship. Yet as a liberal Jewish leader, Rabbi William F. Rosenblum of Temple Israel, New York, recently declared, restrictions must be set up to keep children under eighteen from viewing morally harmful films.

For the evangelically minded reader, the discussion of the Church in the Look article holds great interest. Protestant leaders quoted are well known, although conservative evangelicals apparently were not included in the survey. What the religious authorities say is correct as diagnosis. Take, for example, the statement of Dean Samuel Miller of Harvard Divinity School: “The church simply has lost its cutting edge. It has taken the culture of our time and absorbed it. It’s ghastly that the church is run not to serve the reality of human beings, but to conserve institutions.” Discerning also is the comment of Chaplain William Sloane Coffin, Jr., of Yale University, who approaches more nearly to the heart of the matter: “We churchmen are gifted at changing wine into water—watering down religion.… We’ve never had attendance so high and influence so low, and maybe the two are not unrelated.”

What would an evangelical say about the failure of the Church in the present moral crisis? Surely he would be specific about the watering down of religion of which Mr. Coffin speaks. Thus he would, with humble realization that “we have this treasure in earthen vessels,” call attention to the omission from the discussion of any reference to the great Founder and Head of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord. He would say that, while of divine origin, the Church is a company of human beings and that human beings through the sin common to us all are in need of redemption and constant renewal. For what the evangelical misses in many of the current discussions of morality is any clear reference to the Gospel of Him who alone is able to change sinful men.

The Church may well have failed because of our human weakness. But the Lord of the Church cannot fail. And if the Church has not provided the moral leadership needed, the answer may in large part be its neglecting to proclaim the saving truth of Jesus Christ in the conviction and power of the Holy Spirit, while majoring on secondary matters.

To the charge that this is oversimplification the evangelical replies that for the Church believingly to proclaim its sovereign Lord and Saviour is the most profound thing it can do. For in Him are combined the prophetic concern for social justice and the passion for the individual soul, both of which are essential if the Church is effectively to reach the people.

When it comes, then, to the moral dilemma of our times, diagnosis is not enough. The remedy must surely include the proclamation of Jesus Christ according to the whole of Scripture. Such proclamation must involve—let the fact be re-emphasized—honest dealing with our hardest social problems in faithful reference to the inspired Word of God, and this not just from the pulpit but in personal, face-to-face living. It must be more explicit about the sinfulness of the sin that so easily besets us all. It must dare to take a stand for the great biblical absolutes, moral as well as theological. And it must be accompanied by love, patience, tolerance, and the courage to take sides and to stand up to the winds of shoddy morality and self-indulgence that are blowing through our secularized society.

“Do we need a new code to solve our crisis of morality?” The question introduces the Look article and is answered at its close. It is a question that many—in education, in the home, and even in the Church—are asking. And the answer is disappointing.

“What the experts are saying,” we are told, “about almost every aspect of American morality today is: In a rapidly changing world we have lost our traditional moral guidelines.… We are groping, painfully and often blindly, for new standards that will enable us to live morally and decently. The experts feel strongly that we cannot turn back to earlier, more rigid behavior patterns.… We must find a new moral code that will fit the needs of the society we live in. We have a large measure of freedom to carve out lives we regard as moral—if we take the risks and pay the price.”

So we are left with nothing more than the moral relativism that is itself a prime cause of the present problem. Because “the experts” dismiss the “earlier, more rigid behavior patterns” and thus slip perhaps into what C. S. Lewis calls the chronological fallacy—that what is old is therefore no longer relevant—the conclusion is reached that “we must find a new moral code.” Not only is this the do-it-yourself principle that is directly opposed to the grace of God which is at the center of Christianity; it also presumes to set aside the Decalogue which is given us by the living God and from which morality itself derives. What really is meant by a new moral code? Would it justify widespread practices that are now in conflict with biblical ethics? Or would “a new code” accommodate itself to the revolt against the standards that our people, despite their failure to live up to them, have always accepted? No one, however well meaning, can set aside God’s laws, which do not change whether men keep them or not.

No, diagnosis of the sag in morality is not enough. Like every other problem that results from human sin, the moral problem cannot be solved merely on human, relativistic grounds. We need to acknowledge not only our failure but also our inability to cope with our failure apart from God’s continuing help. We need not a new moral code but a return to the divine law of Him who never changes. For recovery from the moral slump even to begin, we need to repent in accord with the Lord’s words to Solomon: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

Gains In Evangelical Education

The steady gains registered by evangelical colleges across the land attest conservative Christianity’s growing stake in the liberal arts field.

Recently Spring Arbor College in Michigan, founded ninety years ago by Free Methodists, expanded from a junior college to a four-year liberal arts program with advance accreditation from the North Central Association. In a “miracle year,” President David L. McKenna announced projection and completion through gifts and private support of a new library and women’s dormitory, and an enrollment increase of 100.

Michigan’s Governor Romney, featured speaker for the inaugural program, noted that Michigan has a relatively small percentage of church-related higher educational institutions (fewer than twenty). Governor Romney expressed firm belief that America’s greatest danger is not subversion from without but submersion from within. He listed as present dangers:

“First of all, the submersion of individuality under the mass of giant corporations, giant educational institutions, and giant government.

“Secondly, the submersion of inherited principles of morality under the overwhelming pressure of conformity to the mores of the crowd.

“And finally, the submersion of idealism under the oppressive weight of pragmatism, of accommodation to the facts of life, or reality, if you prefer.…

“I firmly believe that this moral decay constitutes a greater danger to our country than the atomic bomb, or than the ambitious designs of the communists. If our country perishes it will crumble from within—not from the pressures which fall upon it from without.”

The governor indicated two roles that private Christian colleges can fulfill—to function as centers of education, and to function as “reservoirs of morality in a wasteland of decay.” He noted that church-related colleges have no monopoly on morality, since “the great moral teachings which comprise our Judeo-Christian heritage are available in abundance in our public institutions. But where the public institutions introduce the students to these principles of morality, the church-related institutions go a step further—they encourage the romance.”

Herbert Spencer long ago emphasized the tragedy of possessing knowledge and power without character. He declared that to educate reason without changing desire is to place a high-power gun in the hands of a savage. Free Methodist Bishop Leslie Marston has remarked that, were Spencer alive today, “he would substitute an H-bomb for a gun,” so immeasurably greater in this twentieth century is man’s power to destroy than it was in the nineteenth century.

In greetings to Spring Arbor College, Dr. Marston added some well-worded observations on the plight of contemporary education:

“We must admit that an education is inadequate and even dangerous to society, however great may be the learning and skill it produces, if it fails to achieve a culture of the heart and the development of a character to direct both learning and skill to the welfare of man and to the glory of God. We must have the safeguard of an education that is Christian.…

“But there are those who conceive of Christian education merely as an additive to secular education, missing the fact that to be Christian, education must be Christian to the core and not merely on the periphery. Christian education is not something less than education, with religion added; nor is it education, plus something other than education. Properly speaking, Christian education is the integration of all knowledge, life, and character in terms of those eternal principles of truth without which any education is deficient.”

These are sound principles. One may take heart that the evangelical community is determined to preserve the Christian stake in the liberal arts, and is determined also not to yield the educational enterprise to any narrow pursuit of unrelated facts indifferent to the claims of goodness and wisdom.

Protestant Conscience On Race Issues

There is much self-basting these days over discrimination against minority groups, and it is well so. Never as now has emphasis been needed on the equal dignity of all men before the law.

Some spokesmen, however, are using the occasion not so much to pummel their own consciences as to malign others. The Church in general is blamed for all the evils of this world. Or the South’s racial problems are traced by liberal spokesmen to “arthritic evangelicalism.”

There is no reason to deny evangelicals a full measure of blame in many matters. But when liberal scholars refer to “arthritic” evangelicalism—as if that designation exhausted all available varieties—either these critics have become propagandists or they simply are not informed.

Not all evangelicalism is concerned merely about pious peccadilloes. True as it is that biblical beliefs need to be fully worked out on the subject of race, let us remember that evangelicals sponsored those great missionary movements to Africa and Asia. Let us remember that Finney’s revival crusade was anti-slavery. Let us remember that Billy Graham, long before many others from the South, took a strong stand on the race issue.

Despite all the liberal thunder on the subject of race today, let us remember too that there has been a great deal of “arthritic” liberalism also. In the 1820s, when Unitarianism in the Southland began its shift from biblical theology to social action, it almost died a-borning. For all the social-gospel emphasis (which had weaknesses of its own), the liberal conscience in the South awakened tardily to race issues, faced as it was by the magnitude of local problems. There is no need to single out evangelicals as an exclusive target of criticism, for foot-dragging on vital social issues is to be found in the entire spectrum of church and national life. And the aberrant liberal emphasis on legislative rather than regenerative solutions often tends to exchange one form of social injustice for another.

All of us share the guilt. No single theological emphasis can be credited with the movement for renewal. Serious differences exist as to whether CORE or NAACP or some other secular agency ought to define ecclesiastical strategy, or what reliance ought to be placed on this or that dynamism. But all agree that race prejudice is wicked, that all racial injustices must be overcome, and that an active program for transcending such injustices is necessary.

It is good, moreover, to find evangelicals reflecting the sensitive conscience on racial concerns discoverable in this issue’s essay on “Evangelicals and the Race Revolution.” Its author writes with the white heat of deep conviction. We need not agree—and, in fact, we do not—that Christians who were unenthusiastic about the “March on Washington” have forfeited their right to a voice in working out a solution. We know too many level-headed Christians who have had and will continue to have great influence in working out solutions but who remain convinced that street demonstrations may hasten changes while deferring the basic solution of the race problem.

The Billy Sunday Centennial

November 19, 1963, marks the centennial of the birth at Ames, Iowa, of William Ashley (Billy) Sunday, who through his revivals in the first decades of this century wrote an important chapter in the history of American evangelism. Those who heard him and his song leader, Homer Rodeheaver, in hundreds of revivals throughout the country were estimated at 100 million. His was the day of huge, specially constructed tabernacles in large cities, and under his urgent and vivid preaching multitudes “hit the sawdust trail.”

Before his conversion Billy Sunday had been a big-league baseball player. There were those who criticized his colloquial and sometimes slangy sermons and who called him a sensationalist because of his gymnastics in preaching. But his meetings, which reached a high point in New York in 1917, reflected the mood of the day. Moreover, in his impassioned advocacy of prohibition, he spoke for a good deal of contemporary Protestant idealism. His influence in the United States was widespread, the evangelical churches supported him, and his ministry marked for many thousands the difference between spiritual life and death.

Since Billy Sunday’s revivals, mass evangelism has undergone changes. The larger part of his ministry was in the years between the early 1900s and America’s entry into the First World War to “make the world safe for democracy.” This was a period of optimism, with the idea of progress prominent in religious thought. But more recent decades with the Second World War, the cold war, and the threat of atomic destruction have pressed upon mass evangelism a new seriousness of expression in keeping with an apocalyptic age. Present-day evangelism in its greatly expanded outreach through radio, television, and jet-age travel, has also developed organizationally in respect to public accounting of funds, cooperation with churches, and follow-up of inquirers.

Billy Sunday was a dedicated servant of Christ. God used him to speak to people of his day. His place in evangelism is secure, and there still live many who were won to Christ through him. He is not and will not be forgotten.

The Missing Step

Bishop Fred Pierce Corson, president of the World Methodist Council, recently proposed six “steps” that might lead to union between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism: communication, fellowship, education, communion, purpose, and effort. The proposal was made at the fall commencement of St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia, at which Dr. Corson became the first Methodist bishop ever to receive an honorary degree from a Roman Catholic institution.

The bishop is a respected Protestant leader and a man of good will. Yet we wish that the steps he proposed had been seven in number, the seventh being doctrine, which, despite its educational implications must stand alone in its own right. For it is with doctrine that all efforts at church union must ultimately wrestle. The differences between Protestantism and Rome go very much deeper than communication, fellowship, education, communion, purpose, and effort. These may lead toward unity, but unity without agreement on the great biblical doctrines of the faith can lead only to compromise of precious conviction. For example, the doctrinal differences involved in the Roman Catholic mass as contrasted with varying Protestant positions regarding the Lord’s Supper represent deepest conviction and go to the heart of the separation between the two groups.

There is no question of Rome’s doctrinal position. In his homily at the opening of the second session of Vatican Council II, Pope Paul VI spoke of “those who believe in Christ but whom we have not the happiness of numbering amongst ourselves in the perfect unity of Christ, which only the Catholic Church can offer them.” He also declared that “this mystic and visible union cannot be attained save in identity of faith.…” Where Roman Catholicism stands doctrinally is clear and unambiguous. But the same firmness of doctrinal conviction is not characteristic of Protestant ecumenical leadership.

The present ecumenical exploration of union may be occupying itself with outward differences while hopefully underestimating the profound depths of doctrine that separate the great groups in Christendom. For if outward differences are sometime, somehow, reconciled, there will yet remain the great gulf of doctrine to be bridged.

But doctrine may not after all be a “step” to union. Instead it may well be the door to any true unity among Christians.

Elizabeth The Conqueror

London has a new possessor, and all America is indebted to the Columbia Broadcasting System for revealing this in a sabbath-evening telecast, “Elizabeth Taylor’s London.” London’s powers of survival heretofore have been enormous: The Londinium survived Boadicea’s sacking in A.D. 61; another layer of burnt ashes was added by a later fire during the Roman occupation; then there was the Great Fire of 1666; and only yesterday there was the devastating, measureless pounding of World War II. And now the great city had to draw itself up once more to face Elizabeth the Conqueror, in whose very presence even weak men were known to become weaker.

Would the woman whose powers had left children fatherless manage to disarm a city by her beauty? Would London’s friendly hospitality prove its downfall? It had to withstand the challenge of the hardened beauty of the face that stares at one continually from innumerable newsstands. The city confronted the flat, hard tones of an almost expressionless voice reading from the incomparable writings of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Churchill, and from great speeches of Queen Elizabeth I and William Pitt.

This was the tour guide approved for Americans by some network executive, perhaps not entirely insensitive to commercial pressures which have been referred to by retarded souls as “callous.” It was Miss Taylor who was chosen to point to the Houses of Parliament, mother of parliaments, reflecting the grandeur of representative democracy. She showed us Big Ben, symbol of faithfulness through the years. We saw St. Paul’s and other great churches, reminders of moral uprightness. A clergyman graced the screen for a few moments to speak of the Pilgrims, now often dismissed as “Puritans.” The changing of the guard spoke of the courage and fortitude of the British fighting man. A reference to Lincoln’s Inn mirrored the majestic justice of British law. And there was the rugged strength of the Tower of London, the character of the Tower Bridge.

This was Liz Taylor’s London? But then there was also reference to Chelsea’s Bohemian life and a flickering reminder of the Dorchester Hotel, where Miss Taylor meets Mr. Burton. And in a climactic crescendo, Miss Taylor read a passage from Elizabeth Barrett Browning which spoke of the purity of love.

Selling Wheat To Russia

The government’s decision to permit the sale of American wheat to Communist Russia is so complex a moral and political question as to be deceptive.

Economically the decision seems sound enough. It will diminish our almost one-billion-bushel surplus, save the American taxpayer storage costs, and produce gold earnings to lessen our dollar drain. And in any event, Russia now gets our wheat or flour by the simple device of buying it from countries to which we sell it.

Yet both politically and morally the whole matter is highly ambiguous. Khrushchev has promised to bury us with the shovel of economic competition. If the weapons of his warfare are economic, is it wise to alleviate his economic troubles? Is not this like oiling your enemy’s gun?

On the other hand, a refusal to sell excess wheat to a hungry nation would not enhance the stature of the United States. Moreover, the sale is a dramatic spotlight showing all the world a basic weakness in the Communist society. Agriculture is the foundation of any nation’s economy. The sale of bread to a nation that may soon deliver a man to the moon but cannot deliver bread to his fellow men on earth is powerful propaganda. The sale may make the Soviet Union look not only hungry but also naked.

The President has assured Americans that the Russian people will learn where their bread comes from. They should. We also hope that they will learn that millions of Americans still pray, each day, “Give us this day our daily bread”; that many of them prayed over this wheat at springtime sowing and gave thanks to God in Thanksgiving Day prayers at harvest time.

The whole question is tangled in moral and political ambiguities. Should the United States sell, let alone give wheat to enemies that hunger? About a year ago Secretary Dean Rusk justified a “no wheat policy” for Red China, where there is massive hunger and starvation, on the ground that this was no time to lighten the pressures upon an unfriendly regime. Should we now offer free food to Cuba amidst its devastation by hurricane and thereby disprove the Castro propaganda that we hate the Cuban people?

It would seem that any wheat deal with Russia ought to have included as a condition the granting of some degree of freedom to peoples under Russian domination. Had Russia refused, Khrushchev would have shown the world that he would rather have people hungry than free. The mere fact that the sale is economically of mutual advantage is politically deceptive. Such relief as we shall get from too much wheat and too little gold is not equal to the political advantage the Soviets reap by relieving their hungry. The sale to Russia is more likely to be a straw in the wind than an isolated transaction. Trading our wheat for the freedom of others is a worthy consideration.

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WHERE THE SHEEP ARE

There is this friend of mine whose name is Charley, and who is very big in a great big company. This company sells electrical gadgets and electrical household equipment to millions of people, and it is up to my friend Charley to figure out how to advertise these wares on billboards and on radio and TV, not to mention magazines and newspapers.

He told me one day that he had made quite a discovery. He happened to notice that since they sold millions of items they must have been selling to some very ordinary people, and meanwhile he was spending all his time with very extraordinary people. He was beginning to lose his ear, or his touch, or his vocabulary, for the common man. In the morning he had breakfast with his ever-loving wife, a graduate of a very fine university, and we can hope that their table talk reflected some of this education. Then he joined a car pool made up entirely of nothing less than vice-presidents; and then he talked to upper-echelon men and women all morning about advertising; and then he went out to lunch at the club with nothing less than vice-presidents; and then he talked advertising all afternoon with the experts; and then he rode home again at night in the car pool with all the vice-presidents; and then he spent the evening in an exclusive community.

After his “enlightenment” he began riding into the city on a street car, standing up as often as he sat down and making it a point to engage someone in conversation. He took his coffee break at some hole-in-the-wall. He ate his lunch in a wide variety of diners. He began to subscribe to some magazines he had never seen before.

My boy Charley has had what one critic mentioned regarding D. H. Lawrence’s writing: “shattering glimpses of the obvious.” No company is very big, and indeed no company can stay big, that doesn’t discover ways of getting at that mass which serves as its base. Where are the people?

Depending upon where you are on the ecclesiastical ladder (let’s take another look at the fortune cookie) you might make a fresh assessment of the people you are supposed to be reaching. The Gospel is for the whole world, and we are constantly tempted to get clubby. Put the hay where the sheep are.

EUTYCHUS II

THE NEW PENETRATION

“Outburst of Tongues: The New Penetration” by Frank Farrell (Sept. 13 issue) was the clearest, fairest, most comprehensive presentation of the issue of speaking in tongues that I have read. I could sense no bias or prejudice. Such an article has been needed, and I thank you for printing it.

As one who left the ministry of the Assemblies of God many years ago, but remains sympathetic to the good work they are doing, I wondered why Mr. Farrell did not mention the rather large number of former ministers who have left their ranks. It seems to me quite significant in considering the over-all view of the subject of Pentecostalism that this movement has contributed many ministers to many other denominations, and they have found a satisfying ministry in the old-line churches.

Principal reasons for this exodus, I believe, are: first, the rigid, inflexible, unyielding doctrinal position regarding the work of the Holy Spirit which does not allow for any freedom of interpretation or personal convictions, and, second, such an over-emphasis on this one doctrine that a well-balanced ministry of the Word is difficult, if not impossible.

I hope evangelicals can move closer together in mutual respect, and in sharing … ministries, for surely we have something of value to give one another. However, this is difficult so long as Pentecostals hold to their position that the only Spirit-filled ministers are their own. Having had several years’ experience in both camps, I would say that a great deal more tolerance and understanding and respect for a person’s personal beliefs and experiences is given to Pentecostal people by the historic denominational churches than is reciprocated.

My hope and prayer is that the doctrinal dogmatism of Pentecostal denominations, which serves to make all other Christians second-rate citizens in the Kingdom of God, will give way so that we can experience a fellowship of equals in Christ.

PAUL GASTON

Pacific Beach Congregational Church

San Diego, Calif.

REQUEST PERMISSION TO REPRINT CONDENSATION.…

R. C. KLINE

Des Moines Tribune

Des Moines, Iowa

Very impressed with your marshaling of facts.… The article is objective enough so as not to offend any serious Christian, and I think presents the evidence in such a way as to dispel the worst aspects of the problem.

WILLIAM KILMER

Montana State College

Bozeman, Mont.

I refer to Mr. Farrell’s reference: “A journal relates that in the entire state of Montana only one American Lutheran pastor has not received the experience of speaking in tongues.” I don’t know what “journal” it is that printed this fabrication. Presumably it was some organ which devotes itself to promoting the phenomenon.…

The truth is that there are approximately ten out of the 104 pastors in Montana in the American Lutheran Church who have at some time been enabled to speak in tongues. The majority of these are confining it to private devotion, as should be the case according to Scripture, if they are using it at all. As district president, I have tried to keep in close touch with the movement. I have not yet found one individual who came into “speaking in tongues” entirely apart from some previous or preliminary instruction or promotion. I would not thereby rule out the Holy Spirit’s involvement, but it does raise serious questions whether it is a gift or an achievement. Where the user stays strictly by Paul’s advice to confine it to personal devotion it can help to deepen the individual’s spiritual life, unless it is not accompanied by a renewed hanger for the Word. Where it is plugged and promoted, openly or subtly, it is certain to be divisive and arouse trouble within the congregation.

R. A. DAEHLIN

President

Rocky Mountain District

The American Lutheran Church

Great Falls, Mont.

• President Daehlin’s information is welcome. The journal cited is generally believed to have a record of reliability better than this instance would indicate.—ED.

We believe that Jesus Christ instills new life in believers through the avenues of the Word and the Holy Sacraments and that baptismal regeneration is a lively wondrous fact of faith and abundant grace. We believe that super-exuberant manifestations of unintelligible tongues can never become normative for Christian experience and that such are neither necessary for Christian development nor necessarily even Christian.

KARL H. BREVIK

Bethlehem Lutheran Church

Kalispell, Mont.

Editor Frank Farrell’s article, which tried to be an objective review of the “new penetration” in the main-line churches, actually marshaled the most powerful arguments against it.… What we are witnessing is not “an outburst of tongues” but an outburst of spiritual power.… The Scriptures plainly state (1 Cor. 12) that speaking in tongues is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.…

JAMES W. BROWN

Mulino Community Baptist Church

Mulino, Ore.

One cannot adequately expound the Scriptures relating to salvation until he has obeyed the plain command to repent and believe in Christ. Neither can the Scriptures relating to the baptism of the Holy Spirit be adequately interpreted by commentators who have not entered into the realm of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit described by Paul.…

With regard to the relative cessation of the gifts of tongues, helps, and governments alter the fourth century, it must be remembered that the early Church underwent marked degeneration in its purity and spiritual power during this same period.… Is it not to be expected that with the increasing spread of the Word of God and its original teaching that the original purity and power typical of New Testament Christianity should reemerge, even with the Latter Rain of God outpouring his Spirit according to James 5:7, 8?

JAMES F. LA VALLEY

Pomona, Kan.

Although he took his editorial prerogative of leading the reader to accept his own opinions, his is the first such article I have read which did not assume that its author thoroughly understood this phenomenon without experiencing it, and [scoff] and [deride] the poor mental cases who had found this blessed experience. He reported the facts on both sides, and only then drew his conclusions.…

He makes a distinction between tongues as in Acts 2:4 and “ecstatic utterances” in the Epistle to the Corinthians. Pentecostal doctrine is that all such manifestations are languages. Some of course have been recognized as such, but as for the rest we term these languages also because we believe this is scriptural. A language of course appears gibberish to someone who does not understand that language.

JEAN NAVA

Springfield, Mo.

I would like to say I enjoyed reading this article very much. You see I have the baptism of the Holy Spirit, too. I received it way back in October of 1929. Brother! We were so persecuted in those days we had to have church out in the wide open spaces. But it is real and has been a blessing to my soul these many years.

JOHN BAVA

Davis, W. Va.

Thank you for what I consider to be the most objective article on tongues in a non-Pentecostal magazine. I think you have rightly pointed out the dangers and pitfalls, namely spiritual pride. I also think there is a danger of the movement taking on the proportions of a “spiritual fad”.…

There was no reference to the possible eschatological significance of the revival of tongues, namely the fulfillment of Joel 2:28–32 before the second coming of Christ. Other facts still unknown to us: Is God preparing his Church for persecution and suffering such as the Huguenots and others endured? Is he unifying the true body of believers in the Spirit within the ecumenical church for a last great witness and ingathering?

… I think there is danger in our categorizing the gifts, and saying some are inferior, some are superior. We must be careful not to deny the value of this very vivid New Testament experience in the life of believers. This downgrading attitude is what in my opinion has caused the Pentecostals to react with the unscriptural doctrine that no one is filled with the Spirit that has not spoken in tongues.

EUGENE L. MADEIRA

Allentown, Pa.

I would like to commend (with slight reservation) Frank Farrell for as objective a report as one could expect from a non-Pentecostal. This article was written maturely and fairly. Whatever may be said concerning the immaturity of much of the Pentecostal movement in the past fifty years, there have often been equally immature attacks made on the movement by well-meaning evangelicals. This was a refreshing deviation.

But … the terms “baptism in the Holy Spirit” and “baptism of the Holy Spirit” are used interchangeably in the article. Most Pentecosals differentiate between these two experiences and, in fact, speak of three baptisms: into the body of Christ, in water, and in the Holy Spirit.…

There is doubtless some tongue-talking that is satanic; surely there is also some that is merely psychologically produced. But these do not argue against the possibility that some speaking in tongues is a real work of God.…

I feel it was unfair to categorically refer to the list of past and present evangelical greats as “non-glossolalics.” I would contend that several of these men experienced this work of the Holy Spirit, for some biographical material seems to substantiate this. Because they (and possibly wisely so) did not resound their experience, are we assured they did not have it?

JACK W. HAYFORD

National Youth Representative

International Church of the Foursquare Gospel

Los Angeles, Calif.

This is Christian journalism of the highest order.

The satirical reasoning of Dr. Farrell’s third from the last paragraph brings out in sharp focus both the arrogance and the fallaciousness of the Pentecostals’ claim that only the alleged tongues speakers are Spirit-filled.… In refutation of the “doctrine,” Dr. Farrell cites a number of outstanding servants of God who, as far as anyone knows, have not been tongues speakers: Calvin, Wesley, Moody, Graham, among others.

Now this sort of argument is of course a difficult one for the Pentecostals to answer, and in the past a profound silence has been all they could offer in reply. Lately, however, their strategy has changed: they are now beginning to claim that this or that Christian non-Pentecostal leader has spoken in tongues, among such being perhaps some of those mentioned by Dr. Farrell. They have not hesitated to affirm that Billy Graham has spoken in tongues.

MEYER MARCUS

Staten Island, N. Y.

• To dispel what doubt may exist on the matter, it can be said here that Dr. Graham has not spoken in tongues nor in any way become involved in the tongues movement.—ED.

You have packed into a short compass information which is most enlightening and helpful.… I would like to order fifty copies.… I have a strong interest in the subject of tongues.… I have made some study in this area. For a time I felt that it was of God, but gradually came to feel otherwise.

D. R. LINDBERG

Puget Sound Chapel

Seattle, Wash.

Are reprints available?… If so, what is the cost?

GEORGE R. WARNER

President

World Gospel Mission

Marion, Ind.

• Reprints of the original article (“Outburst of Tongues: The New Penetration”) are available at 15ȼ each. For an order of ten or more the price is 10ȼ each. Write CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Reprint Department, Washington Building, Washington, D. C. 20005—ED.

Frank Farrell’s summary of the new interest in the charismatic revival is commendable. It adds confirmation to my opinion that CHRISTIANITY TODAY gives superior unbiased study and dissemination to the new trends affecting our faith. The new-old phenomenon (speaking in tongues) hitting the mainline churches is, without doubt, one of these important trends.

The Christian Advocate of July 4, 1963, speaks to this trend in our Methodist Church in an article by Fred B. Morris concluding, “… perhaps it is a real sign of hope.”

In my first semester last January at Wesley Theological Seminary (Washington, D. C.) I heard that the student body president (1962–1963, Elmer Frink), elected to this position by his fellow students because of his exemplary spiritual life, testifies to speaking in tongues.

I experienced speaking in tongues as a direct result of faith and prayer. I have always been interested in the increasing number finding this experience edifying, not only in the Methodist Church, but also in the other main-line churches.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY is my favorite, and I am continually made aware that my contemporary seminarians usually keep abreast with your penetrating commentaries on relevant issues in the Christian Church.

ALEXANDER BODA

Washington, D. C.

Serious … is the implicit legalism that often develops among Pentecostal believers. Those who have not received this gift search their consciences in vain to find some reason why they have not been baptized with the Holy Spirit. Legalistic demands are sometimes laid upon seekers after the gift of tongues. What a tragedy, that a gift could ever be determined by human merit!…

As Paul Tillich observes (in his lectures at Union Theological Seminary on the history of doctrine), the early Church drove the charismatic groups out of its fold when confronted with their doctrinal errors. Today the Church stands at a similar crossroads. Will it repeat this earlier mistake? Or will it receive this new outpouring of the Spirit as of God according to the Scriptures, at the same time correcting any errors and excesses by this same rule of faith and practice? The right decision of the Church now may herald a new age of spiritual blessing through an increased reception and exercise of the gifts of the Spirit.

GLENDON E. BRYCE

Calvary Baptist Church

Chicago, Ill.

Here in Oklahoma City are some people who are having similar experiences, and it seems to me there is a tendency on the part of such people to “seek the gifts of God rather than God, whom we see and know in Jesus.”

DON SCHOOLER

District Superintendent

Oklahoma City District South

The Methodist Church

Oklahoma City, Okla.

I was … surprised that he did not seem aware of the parallel between this kind of religious expression and so much of non-representational modern art. Most contemporary art is non-representational, impressionistic, non-literal, and not obviously even symbolic. It is an emotional expression of the experience of the artist in color and often lacks any sense of form. Contemporary artists stress the fact that it is not supposed to mean anything, but merely to cause one to respond meaningfully to it. It is authentic expression, and therefore capable of evoking authentic response.

Personally, I find it often dramatic, exciting, and stirring. I find myself searching for meaning in it, but often able to find none that is obvious enough so that I can have any assurance that I am not reading anything into it myself. I do not find it intellectually stirring, nor do I find in it any adequate guide to my own emotional development and expression.

DONALD SZANTHO HARRINGTON

The Community Church of New York

New York, N. Y.

I have been reading with much interest and profit your excellent survey of the new tongues movement. From the outset it has been my observation that for many there has come real dynamic and joy in the Lord, but always with little or no discernment (one gift of the Spirit is “discerning of spirits”) and very little understanding of the Scriptures.…

Dr. Eugene Nida … was here for our missionary emphasis week this spring and told of his effort to analyze the tongues made on tape recordings. [Dr. Nida] is one of the outstanding linguists of the world today, and he observed that the “language” was not a language since it had no grammar nor parts of speech but seemed to be only a repetition of sounds. A Midwest pastor who was converted among Pentecostalists, educated in their schools, and a pastor for a number of years was telling me the other day that he came to the persuasion that his experience of tongues was wholly a matter of flesh, a sort of “spiritual binge” which he could turn on or off according to his own desire. He then left the movement and has felt that he should not indulge in fleshly activities of this sort. All quite strange!

There is just one minor matter of correction of your article as relates to the brief reference to Wheaton. We have heard the report of “an awakening at Wheaton,” but it has not been discernible to us who live here. A protagonist of tongues came to campus without the knowledge of the administration and held a small meeting. Later we learned that three students had received the “gift.” Two of them came to Chaplain Welsh and me. Both were seniors and have graduated. They believed their gift to be of the Lord and that it should be used only in worship, never in public. The third person never did come to us.

A Pentecostalist pastor in whom I have great confidence telephoned me last spring to say that he felt he had to rebuke the person who had come here briefly and then was spreading abroad the word about “an awakening” because the report was wholly inaccurate. However, the substance of it has appeared here and there in the land, and one writer copies another apparently.

V. R. EDMAN

President

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

I want to thank you for … this forthright and sane article on a rather touchy subject at this time.

IRA JAY MARTIN, 3RD

Berea College

Berea, Ky.

The contribution on tongues … was magnificent.

JOHN BRATT

Calvin College

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Alvin Plantinga

Page 6272 – Christianity Today (7)

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One important aspect of twentieth-century philosophy is the rise of what has been variously called “analytic,” “critical,” or “linguistic” philosophy. As in most such cases, no exact date can be assigned to its beginnings. But modern analytic philosophy got its start, we may say, around the turn of the century when Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore began to rebel against the Hegelian idealism of their teachers. Not that they called what they were doing “analytic philosophy” or anything of the sort; these labels didn’t gain currency until considerably later. But their approach to philosophy and their ways of handling philosophical problems already characterized analytic philosophy.

Perhaps because it began as a revolt against Hegelianism, analytic philosophy is widely regarded as a destructive, iconoclastic force; people often associate it with skepticism, and with religious skepticism as much as skepticism of Hegelian dialectics. Hence many Christian intellectuals darkly mistrust analytic philosophy, suspecting that it is either a danger to the faith or a trivial waste of time (see, for example, “An American Bathtub,” by Calvin Seerveld, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, August 30, 1963). Now this attitude seems to me to embody a great mistake. In what follows I shall explain why I think so.

Misconceptions Of Analytic Philosophy

Almost everyone knows that such a thing as analytic philosophy exists, and that contemporary English and American philosophers typically are doing philosophy in a way recognizably different from that of their forebears of, say, fifty to seventy-five years ago. But most persons outside the ranks of professional philosophers don’t really have much of an idea as to what analytic philosophy is; misconceptions about it run rife. Some people seem to believe, for example, that analytic philosophers occupy themselves exclusively with language—with words and sentences and what is and isn’t good English—rather than with the traditional concerns of philosophy; and, these critics justifiably add, concern with such questions as what the difference is between the words “highly” and “very” is something of a come down for the “queen of the sciences.” Now while there may be some analytic philosophers of whose work this is a recognizable caricature, there are many more who talk about language as such infrequently if at all—G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell are prominent examples.

Other people seem to think that analytic philosophers pretty much confine themselves to logic or questions about logic. Now developments in logic have certainly played an important part in the development of contemporary analytic philosophy. But then logic has always been intimately related to philosophy; and most analytic philosophers have been interested in logic not for its own sake so much as for its use in dealing with extra-logical philosophical problems. And of course there are many analytic philosophers who don’t seem to care much about logic (in any traditional sense) at all.

Still others apparently believe that however one is to describe analytic philosophy, it is certainly quite different from traditional philosophy, and, indeed, is explicitly hostile to it. Here again there is a grain of truth in this idea. Some analytic philosophers, particularly some years ago, thought of themselves as making a complete break with traditional philosophy. They believed that analytic philosophy represented a radical new departure, enabling us finally to settle most of the traditional questions of philosophy, not by answering them, but by showing that the questions themselves are really nonsensical, can’t sensibly be asked. Chief among this group were perhaps the logical positivists; they held that most of the traditional problems of philosophy aren’t problems at all, but simply the products of confusion. I’ll say more about the positivists later; what’s important here it to see that positivism is by no means to be identified with analytic philosophy. Indeed, it is not easy at present to find a philosopher who is willing to call himself a logical positivist. And there is now a great deal of interest and concern, among analytic philosophers, with the great traditional problems of philosophy—human freedom, the nature of knowledge, the existence of God, the mind-body problem, and the problem of universals, to name only a few.

Granted that these are misconceptions, then, what is analytic or critical philosophy? I do not know how to give anything like a completely adequate definition. But perhaps the following, from an eminent practitioner of analytic philosophy, is as good as any; “the analysis and definition of our fundamental concepts, and the clear statement and resolute criticism of our fundamental beliefs—I call critical philosophy” (C. D. Broad, Scientific Thought, p. 18). Analytic philosophy is, first of all, philosophy; and it differs from non-analytic philosophy, it seems to me, chiefly in the following ways. First, its investigations tend to be piecemeal, thorough, and detailed. Secondly, analytic philosophers pay a great deal of attention to argument and counter-argument; they are less likely to announce startling theses with no argument, or only a half-hearted argument, than their non-analytic counterparts. And finally, analytic philosophers (the better ones, at any rate) strive mightily for clarity. They try very hard to say exactly what they mean; and they try never to introduce new terminology without carefully explaining what they propose to mean by it. (One might think this a relatively modest goal, but in philosophy it is a great deal harder than it sounds.)

Not A Novel Emphasis

It is apparent, I think, that analytic philosophy in this sense is really nothing new. Most of the great philosophers of the past were analytic philosophers to some degree or other. A great deal of Plato’s work, for example, is surely of a piece with contemporary analytic philosophy—particularly his determined attempts to explicate such concepts as those of justice, virtue, wisdom, and the like. Much the same may be said about Aristotle. Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Occam are analytic philosophers par excellence; their work is markedly characterized by careful argumentation and determined attempts at clarity. Descartes, Berkeley, Leibniz, Spinoza to a lesser degree—all these exhibit to at least some extent the qualities I ascribed to analytic philosophers. And the work of Hume and Kant, of course, is thoroughly germane to contemporary analytic philosophy. In short, the foes of analytic philosophy and some of its most ardent proponents make the same mistake here: both vastly over-estimate the extent to which analytic philosophy breaks with the tradition. To be sure, the work of almost any contemporary analytic philosopher and that of (say) Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, or Kierkegaard seem hardly to belong to the same discipline at all; but the same goes for the work of any of these and, for example, Occam or Leibniz. A great deal of contemporary analytic philosophy is profoundly traditional.

Now I said that it is a mistake for the Christian intellectual to regard analytic philosophy with suspicious hostility. It is a mistake, first of all, because analytic philosophy can make an important contribution to Christian apologetics. The intellectual world of the twentieth century has been full of forces running flatly counter to the spirit of Christianity. Consider, for example, the logical positivists, who were not prepared to concede that religious beliefs were even false; they devoted a tremendous amount of ingenuity and effort to showing that such alleged statements as God exists, or God was incarnate in Christ are, appearances to the contrary, utterly meaningless—in much the same way in which “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre” is meaningless. They are, according to the positivist, mere strings of words which appear to mean something, but really don’t; and accordingly, of course, they aren’t either true or false, any more than “Bix, bax, bix” is. What the positivists did was this: they tried to state a criterion (roughly, verifiability by sense-experience) which any alleged statement must satisfy if it is not to be nonsensical. This criterion was called the Verifiability Criterion; and in their palmy days (the 1930s) the positivists wielded their new weapon with vigor and assurance bordering on arrogance. Metaphysical statements, theological propositions, ethical statements, religious beliefs—all were declared meaningless and worthy to be cast into outer darkness.

Only The Observable Accepted

Now the positivists were stating and developing in detail an idea or trend of thought which has a long history and has a certain attraction to everyone. This is the thought that it really makes sense to talk about something only if that thing can be perceived by the senses. Talk about such alleged entities as ghosts, the embolism of the spiritualist, fairies, and so on is, according to this tough-minded view, mere meaningless verbiage. The paradigm of a sensible statement, on the other hand, is one like the chair in the corner is brown or this piece of paper is round. Statements such as these, that is, statements which ascribe an observable quality (roundness, being brown) to an observable thing (a chair, a piece of paper), the positivists called observation statements. Now the positivists never said, so far as I know, that only observation statements are meaningful. But one of the earliest statements of the Verifiability Criterion went like this:

VC1 A statement is meaningful if (and only if) it is or entails an observation statement.

Here the term “entails” is used in the following way: where p and q are propositions, p entails q means it is impossible that p is true and q is false. For example, the proposition All men are mortal and Socrates is a man entails the proposition Socrates is mortal. And the proposition there are three crows in that tree entails the proposition there is at least one crow in that tree.

According to VC1, then, all meaningful propositions entail observation statements. Critics were quick to point out, however, that mathematical and logical propositions do not entail observation statements; seven plus five is twelve, for example, does not entail any observation statement at all. And hence the positivist, if he wished to accept VC1, would have to conclude that mathematical propositions are all meaningless. Since this was a conclusion they found unpalatable, the positivists restated VC1 as follows:

VC2 A proposition is meaningful if and only if either it entails an observation statement or it is a tautology.

(A tautology is a mathematical statement or a truth of logic such as if Socrates is mortal, something is mortal.) But this wouldn’t do the trick either; for there were still many propositions which the positivist took to be meaningful and which, on VC2, turned out meaningless. Here is an example: Anything which is a crow is black. This proposition isn’t a tautology and doesn’t entail any observation statements. Indeed, it doesn’t even entail that there are any crows. It says only that anything you care to mention is such that if it is a crow (and perhaps nothing is), then it’s black. And since the positivists gave this interpretation to all universal propositions (i.e., they thought that propositions of the form all x are y really say anything which is an x is a y), they were forced to conclude that either VC2 was mistaken or else all universal propositions are meaningless. Finding the latter alternative unappealing, they restated VC2 as follows:

VC3 A proposition p is meaningful if and only if either (1) p is a tautology or (2) there is another proposition such that p and this other proposition together entail an observation statement which the other proposition does not entail by itself (A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, pp. 38, 39).

All crows are black, for example, doesn’t entail any observation by itself, but all crows are black and this is a crow together entail the observation statement this is black; whereas this is a crow does not by itself entail this is black. Hence all crows are black meets the condition for meaningful ness laid down by VC3.

An Opposite Defect

This attempt to state the Verifiability Criterion does not suffer from the deficiencies of its predecessors, all of which were too strong—i.e., they classified as meaningless many propositions which the positivists and everyone else clearly saw to be meaningful. Sadly enough for the positivist, however, VC3 had the opposite defect; it was far too weak. For just any proposition you please is meaningful according to VC3. Consider, for example, a peculiarly opaque utterance of the German existentialist philosopher Heidegger: “the not,” he says, “nothings itself.” This is surely about as good a candidate for meaninglessness as anything one could find; yet on VC3 it is perfectly meaningful. For together with if the not nothings itself, then the table in the corner is brown it entails the observation statement the table in the corner is brown. And it is easy to see that following this pattern just any proposition you pick can be shown to be meaningful, on VC3. So VC3 wouldn’t do for the positivists, either. There were further attempts to state the Verifiability Criterion, but all of them met with the same fate: they all turned out to be either too strong, like VC1 and VC2, or too weak, like VC3 (cf. Carl G. Hempel, “Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning” in Semantics and the Philosophy of Language, ed. by Leonard Linsky).

Two Lines Of Attack

Philosophers also began to ask about the status of the Verifiability Principle itself. Suppose it could be stated in a way which satisfied the positivist: why should anyone accept it? Why shouldn’t the theist retort as follows: “Your criterion is obviously mistaken; for many theological statements are not empirically verifiable; but theological statements are meaningful; hence it is false that all and only verifiable statements are meaningful”? What could the positivist reply? What sort of argument could he bring forward to show the theologian that he ought to accept the Verifiability Criterion and stop proclaiming these meaningless theological pseudo-statements? About all the positivist could say here would be that his criterion does fit scientific and common-sense statements and doesn’t fit theological statements. And to this the theologian could agree with equanimity; there are, no doubt, many properties which distinguish scientific and common-sense statements from theological statements. But of course that does not suffice to show that theological statements are meaningless or logically out of order or anything of the sort. Indeed, it can be shown that there can be no relevant defense of the Verifiability Criterion as a criterion of significance.

The Verifiability Criterion, then, has been subjected to these two lines of attack. Its critics have shown first that every statement of the criterion proposed by the positivists is either so strong that it eliminates many statements the positivists themselves wished to accept as meaningful (e.g., mathematical statements, universal propositions) or so weak that just any statement turns out to be meaningful, in which case metaphysics and theology aren’t eliminated at all. And secondly it was argued that there appears to be no reason to accept the Verifiability Criterion. As a result of these two lines of criticism, it is today exceedingly difficult to find a philosopher who is willing, in public at any rate, to express allegiance to logical positivism. But the point I want to call attention to is this: those philosophers who formulated and drove home the criticisms of the Verifiability Criterion were doing analytic philosophy; in fact the sort of activity in which they were engaged is a paradigmatic case of analytic philosophy.

Now of course some theologians were also concerned with the Verifiability Criterion. But for the most part their attempts to deal with it were not, I am sorry to say, of a sort calculated to win respect and assent of an impartial observer. Typically, they were inclined to say such things as that perhaps religious statements are nonsense, all right, but then after all we are to be fools for Christ’s sake. Or they said that the beliefs of Christianity were nonsense for the unregenerate, but the believer was enabled to understand them by an infusion of divine grace. Or, finally, they claimed that philosophy and reason generally have nothing at all to do with the case; that religion is a matter of the heart. Now each of these replies may possibly have a kernel of truth in it; yet how decisive and satisfying the philosophical answers seem by comparison! The philosophical answer meets the positivist on his own ground and defeats him there; this, if it is possible, is surely the right thing to do.

It is evident from the above, I take it, that analytic philosophy as such (as opposed to certain varieties of it) is in no way hostile to religion or theology. On the contrary, it can be a valuable apologetic tool, as the case of positivism shows. Contemporary thought, both inside and outside of academic philosophy, contains much that is hostile to Christianity. The Christian intellectual community must make good use of the powerful techniques of analytic philosophy in defending its beliefs.

Positive Values

I said at the outset that I thought suspicion and distrust toward analytic philosophy was a great mistake on the part of those Christian theologians and intellectuals who took up such an attitude. One of my reasons for so thinking has now become apparent: analytic philosophy has a crucially important role to play in Christian apologetics. But secondly, analytic philosophy is of value to the Christian community in that it promotes clear, penetrating, and careful thinking on matters of importance, hence providing a means for a deeper understanding of the faith. We say, for example, that God is omnipotent. What, exactly, do we mean when we say this? That God can do anything at all? But we don’t mean to assert that God can, for example, create a square circle or perform any other contradictory action. That he can perform any logically possible or consistent action? Raising one’s arm is a possible action; but we don’t mean to imply that God can raise his arm, for since he is a spirit, he has no arm to raise. Again, making a table which is not made by God is a logically possible action. God certainly can’t perform that action, however, for the proposition that he has performed it is self-contradictory. What then do we mean when we say that God is omnipotent? or that he is omniscient? or that he is the Necessary or ultimately real Being? In responsibly answering questions of this sort, the discipline, logical competence, and habits of clear and accurate thought fostered by the study of analytic philosophy are required.

For these reasons, then, I believe that analytic philosophy has a most important contribution to make to the intellectual life of the Christian community: it is useful as an apologetic tool and it can deepen our understanding of our faith.

Alvin Plantinga is associate professor of philosophy at Calvin College, Michigan. Previously he taught at Yale University and at Wayne State University. He has the A.B. degree from Calvin College, A.M. from the University of Michigan, and Ph.D. from Yale University.

    • More fromAlvin Plantinga

Floyd Doud Shafer

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In 1956 Life magazine startled us with its article: “Why More and More Ministers Crack Up.” Since then pastors have been critically analyzed by a battery of self-appointed experts. Today, pastors are no longer hypochondriacally obsessed with themselves, as their evaluators imply. The open season on the ministry is over. Pastors are beginning to resist being told that they are sick, aimless, stupid, and irrelevant. They are starting to stand up and speak out in their own right—the pastor’s right.

It was a sore time when we fell flat on our backs at the insistence that we looked bad. Humility forced us to listen to what the experts said. We were shown filmstrips of our dark interiors: hastily hidden guilts, ill-concealed hostilities, and easily detected illusions of grandeur. We paid our humiliating homage to psychology and its sometimes facile documentation of guesses.

We were warned to expect a crack-up around every comer. We thought it wise to learn to dance on eggs. We probed our souls, irrigated our minds, and put our blown-up problems in the showcase for public view. A groan floated across the land: “Oh, those poor sick ministers.”

Our critics erred when they immobilized us on our backs. That position permits only one line of vision: up. We saw towering above us one known of old as the Good Physician. His prescription penetrated our fevered ears: “Take up your bed and walk.” Enfeebling obsession with possible ailments fled, and a long-tested formula, “My grace is sufficient,” became an exhilarating challenge. The wrong people were put to bed, and we are standing up to say so. The macerating surgeons of our souls stand aghast, and they should!

With gnawing remorse we heard proof that nothing justified our existence as ministers of the Word. We were dared to show our accomplishments, produce our credentials, and parade our results. When we couldn’t, or wouldn’t, we were told to quit, tear up the dream, and strive no more. We were badgered into choosing between false alternatives: either produce results or quit. We didn’t want to be in this business of ministering in the Word, or caring for souls, in the first place. Why not quit? Maybe our stance was just a self-induced trance. On that dimension, quitting was the only sensible decision.

Dour ones came to preside over our demise: some brought flowers and some brought black crepe. We were finished. We smiled at the flowers and wept at the crepe.

The Call To Obedience

But life is tenacious and God insistent. Men began to reconsider the matter. Questions flew from manse to manse and parsonage to parsonage. Who told us we were to have success in the first place? Who promised us that working with the Word would immediately produce worth in the world? Who said the care of souls would terminate with all souls cured?

A suspicion knifed its way to a new conviction: our job was to be faithful to the Word and loyal to souls: results were not ours to expect, or receive. We are not at the quitting point of either failure or success. We’ve been forced back on Christ, and he proffers the cross coupled to the command, “Follow me.” Recommitted men don’t go around their problems: they go through them. They will give, but not give up.

Many spoke of our stupidity. We were made sensitive to our ignorance and perceptive of our errors. Experts counseled us to consider the course of culture under their benign guidance.

We were students all, and from long to late we poured over volumes of profane and sacred lore. We knew something of how much we didn’t know. Some said we were too busy to have a grasp of essentials, and others said we were so barricaded from life that we could not know existentials. Our guilt was obvious, one way or the other.

What could we do? We called for the man with the wheelbarrow full of books. Maybe the angels do laugh, but we didn’t. We hung on the gems of truth issuing from the professorial wise ones. We could scarcely wait for the next volume, either from dialectical divinity or from pornographic deviltry, to tell us which way God was going in our culture. The wheels spun, the paper flew, and publishers flooded the land with wisdom. Savants promised to translate it into neat systems for us: plain, easy, quick—just the ticket for not-too-bright pastors. And administrators promised multi-colored, turn-over charts. The pulpit was to have wisdom again!

A Fresh Breeze Appears

That won’t go down. What is this appearing in the land? Here are pastors who can think, ministers who have read avidly for decades, men who are critical of those who profess to know all, pastors who can use words well, and ministers long since alert to the wisdom of a Book that somewhat antedates the cerebrations of the lately wise. Here are ministers who measure men’s wisdom against the true Man. They have discovered that knowing Him in love and serving him in devotion are parts of wisdom not likely to be altered by the next theological discovery. These men will not cease to love books, but they know they will find their truths, if they have them, in the light of Him who is Truth. Pastors are weary of being treated like nincompoops, and the intelligent resistance they are asserting comes as a fresh breeze across a musty room stifling with stale assumptions.

The final blow fell when pastors were told that they were a detriment to laymen, that their position made laymen second-class Christians, and that laymen resented the leadership of pastors. The critics said pastors were irrelevant and that an informed, sensitive, and expert laity was anxious to enthrone itself on the issues and decisions of existence. We heard that an ineluctable progress had ground out its ways leaving us behind as its useless dust.

Rumor had it that pastors could keep their positions within the church building, play around with liturgics, and amuse themselves with administrative tiddlywinks. In the real world, however, where living is live and words useless, the new layman would bring Christ into the market, the office, the parlor, and the arena.

Our antagonists spoke learnedly of the final blossoming of the universal priesthood of all believers. Pastors had worked for that goal across many centuries. When we were told that the goal was reached, we agreed to step aside.

We listened to hear report of Christ’s being enthroned in politics, play, businesses, and highways. But the old staccato of bitter words, the old sway of selfish ways, the old greed and graft, and the old shrieking crashes shot up from life like flames from a fiery furnace.

When laymen began to ask why we had withdrawn, we became suspicious. We assumed they wanted freedom from us. It turned out that the only group more surprised than we about this independent laity was the laity itself. The clergy-laity squabble was not the invention of laymen: it was the brain-child of ivory-towered men discoursing before captive audiences. The laity neither thought of it, nor approved it when told about it.

Then the laymen, with that instinctive wisdom that has been theirs across the years, called, not for the ivory-towered ones or the executive trouble-shooters, but for their own pastors. That call jerked us back to reality.

Heeding The Right Voices

Too long did we listen to the wrong voices. Too long did we take generous advice from poorly informed sources. Now men of the Word are aroused, and who will blame them for the claim of urgency in their coming, or for the flame of impatience in their voices?

Watch them coming now. See them ready to give and give again, in Christ’s name. Observe a divine love bursting through the muscles of men who have no life but love. Hear them raise up the challenges of brotherhood, and walk in its ways till felled. Hear them speak the truth in love, neither muting the truth nor sentimentalizing the love. Watch them strike out against the filth from the depths. See them grapple with whatever destroys the purity of homes. See them come not as buddies to be coddled or as boys to be bossed but as men to mediate the causes of eternity in the midst of time. Watch them at the head of companies striving toward the throne of grace, struggling to recapture reason’s citadel, going knee-bent to Calvary’s brow where they live. See them stand with little ones, the last refuge of hope against a hell that will pander their little souls for a dollar’s gain. Hear them tell men bound under the quaking, fear-shrouded cities of earth about a city with foundations, whose builder and maker is God. See them, world, and mark them well. Their love for their own, and all Christ’s own, knows no limits. Of course they fail, make errors, and falter—but still they come, heralds loved of God and men and sacred to both. No banners proclaim their coming and no placards boast their names, but in the chill of the night, when feet grate on the cold gravel, these men of the Word come with a warmth from God.

The debunking of the ministry of the Word fails, and the cultural kick backfires: the sophisticated theological esthetes have had their day. Now a goodly company of disciplined ministers rises in the land. Their heads are high, their minds are alert, and their hearts reach out to brethren. These men are talking back; they are contesting error’s sway and disputing wrong’s rule. They are not afraid to fail and are less concerned to succeed: they are bound only to be found serving in the name of the Son of Man.

They shall continue to come—borne, trained, and sustained by the people of God. A Saviour sends them, a people supports them, and a world needs them. They seek to be true though all else prove false. They come not alone—they come as Christ’s own.

Floyd Doud Shafer is pastor of Salem Presbyterian Church, Salem, Indiana. Ordained in 1941, he holds the A.B. degree from Hanover College, B.D. from Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, and S.T.M. from Union Theological Seminary, New York. From 1943 to 1946 he served as chaplain (major) in the United States Army.

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Stanley C. Baldwin

Page 6272 – Christianity Today (11)

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I feel like Lot. A few weeks ago, I was an Abraham, neither of the world nor in it. My contacts, primarily within the context of the churches, were rather limited and on a high plane. “There are a great many Christians about,” I thought, “and society in general is pretty decent.” Then the bubble burst. Appointed to chair a committee to investigate obscene literature in our nice little town, I began to probe. What at first seemed to be a minor blemish on our Christian complexion proved to be an ever-widening cancer of corruption.

And so, today, I feel like Lot, “vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked: for that righteous man, dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds” (2 Pet. 2:7, 8).

Sodom was a place where all restraint in matters of sex was gone. Certainly our society has not reached that state? No, but our literature well-nigh has! And unless the trend changes, our society, no doubt, will follow. For just as a man’s physical characteristics are determined eventually by what he eats, a people’s moral nature is shaped by what they read and think. And much of America’s literary diet today is just plain poison.

While I will not stoop to quote the trash nor name titles (lest I contribute to the plague), let me state plainly and positively that detailed, stimulating, lust-provoking accounts of sex acts, including all sorts of perversions, are readily available all across America in grocery stores, drug stores, malt shops, or wherever paperbacks are sold.

“First the thought, then the act” is a basic law of human experience. Authorities like J. Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation state plainly that “sex crimes and obscene and vulgar literature often go hand in hand. It is also a grievous fact that drug stores and ‘sweetshops,’ pleasant meeting places for past generations, now display publications which a few years ago would have a place only in the bawdiest of gathering places. These signs of moral decay, tolerated by adults, cannot help but debase the thinking of our impressionable teen-agers” (FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, January, 1960).

Again, a basic premise of literature is that the reader must be able to identify with the characters in the story. Thus, vicariously at least, our young people and adults who read these books take part in all kinds of sex escapades and orgies. Sociologist Albert J. McAloon, executive secretary of the official Rhode Island Commission on Youth, has been in this battle for six years, with the case going all the way to the United States Supreme Court. He says, “From my studies in psychology, literature, history, and mental hygiene, I am convinced that this assault on impressionable young minds through distorted human actions is causing grave problems in mental hygiene. To my mind, a child has enough to do just growing up, especially in adolescence, and is deeply hurt down deep in the psyche when he reads, views, and indulges in stories, films, or photographs which ridicule honesty, chastity, continence, or those values which keep us above animal living. It is also important to note that in the past year great stress has been laid upon homosexuality in paperback books; this and the undue prominence given over to violence certainly threatens our mental health.”

There is no doubt in my mind that one thing alone stands between our country and complete moral decay, with an accompanying divine judgment. That one thing is the Church of Jesus Christ. God would have spared Sodom if there had been but ten righteous there. And God is sparing America today because of Christians and their influence on morality.

However, the voice of the Church needs to be raised today against smut. When they see the scope of this problem, too many Christians say in discouragement, “I just do not see how we can do anything about it. I’m afraid it’s a losing battle.” I hardly think this attitude is worthy of Him who said, “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth.” I believe there is a great deal that we can and must do.

For one thing, Christians need to commit themselves anew to sharing the good news of Christ, which is God’s power unto salvation to everyone who believes. No one who is committed to Christ can continue to have any part with the production, sale, or use of smutty literature.

Another thing Christians can do is to form “watchdog” committees, perhaps sponsored by local ministerial or Christian businessmen’s associations, to work with law-enforcement agencies in keeping out smutty literature. In our own county, such a committee simply passes its findings on to the district attorney, who then notifies wholesale magazine and paperback distributors to remove the objectionable material. In some cases wholesalers may desire to cooperate; in others they may be afraid not to do so.

Still there are many problems in seeking measures of control that might not at first appear. For one thing, this is a national problem. To remove the trash in one city or county leaves the problem untouched in countless others. Furthermore, continual vigilance is required to spot the many new publications as they appear (or the same old ones as they reappear under new covers and titles). This requires a great deal of time-consuming and mind-contaminating reading by the investigators. Moreover, by the time bad publications are spotted, reported, and removed, many copies have been sold.

Probably nothing short of wide-spread, grass-roots, public indignation will bring a lasting solution to the problem. Perhaps if mothers across our land would picket every outlet where salacious literature is sold, if they would boycott every publisher that produces the trash, if they would raise a determined cry for adequate laws and law enforcement against the filth peddlers, we would see results!

These are drastic measures. They should be undertaken only after the most careful consideration. But cancer requires drastic measures, and, so far, the cancer of immoral literature has not responded to milder treatment.

In any case, ought we not to purpose that we will do something about this destroyer? that we will seek and find whatever measures are required to do the job? that we will fight this corroding blight until it is defeated?

May God grant that the day will dawn on this fair land when poisonous literature will be as rare as the poisonous tuna that recently claimed two lives in our nation. And may action against soul-poison come at last to be as quick and effective as the measures taken then, when every possible suspect tin of tuna was removed from grocers’ shelves. Pure food and drug laws are good, but we need pure food for our minds, too.

After all, Sodom was destroyed by moral poison.

Stanley C. Baldwin founded Calvary Community Church of Albany, Oregon, and served for seven years as its pastor. He was ordained by the Conservative Baptist Association and is now a full-time evangelist.

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L. David Cowie

Page 6272 – Christianity Today (13)

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An Episcopal rector of Hollywood was quoted by Time (September 6, 1963) concerning Billy Graham’s Los Angeles crusade, “I believe he’s putting the Church back fifty years.” At the ministers’ breakfast during the closing week of the crusade, Dr. Graham referred to the remark with kindness and humor: “I’m afraid I have failed. I had hoped to put the Church back 2,000 years.”

Actually, this is what the discerning observer noticed about the crusade. There was something of Acts 2 about it: prophetic preaching of the Lordship of Christ, the coming of the day of judgment, conviction of sin, repentance and faith, and an invitation to “save yourselves from this crooked age.”

Homiletically, some seminary senior might have preached a better sermon than Peter’s, but the powerful plus is that God used it. Billy Graham’s homiletics could be criticized; as someone on the sponsoring committee remarked, “Whatever his text, he really has only one sermon.” But it is a sermon plus God. Its content is simple, its application direct, and the amazing thing is that people of all classes, races, and educational backgrounds are moved to Christ.

I saw this in 1957 at Cambridge, where undergraduates, graduates, and professors alike were crowded into Great St. Mary’s 3,000-capacity church and hundreds of them made commitments to Christ. At a luncheon in Dr. Graham’s honor given by the faculty, I talked with men whose names were world-famous in their various disciplines. At first they were curious, then interested; then as I watched their heads nodded unconsciously in agreement with Billy’s simple message of sin, judgment, grace, and salvation.

At Yale in 1957 I was eating with some students in one of the colleges before the first meeting of a week’s preaching mission by Dr. Graham. A rather flip senior, who was proud of his agnosticism, said to all of us at the table that he knew what Billy’s secrets were—his good looks and his magical speaking ability. I suggested that we go to the meeting and that he give me his opinion afterward. When the message was finished and scores of his peer group had remained to make commitments to Christ, the young man turned to me quietly and said, “I was wrong. This must be God speaking through him.”

This was true again in the Los Angeles crusade. People from all walks of life became inquirers and, we trust, converts—among them five psychiatrists, a number of motion picture and television personalities, society notables, and many young people. Well dressed and poorly dressed, educated and uneducated, all colors and backgrounds responded.

Personally, my one disappointment was with his sermon on the eve of the March on Washington. Although it is true that his calling is to preach the “Good News” and invite people to believe in Jesus Christ for salvation, an announced sermon on the “Race Issue” could, in my opinion, have applied the Gospel specifically in this area, as he did in his sermon on the Christian home. But here I remember that for years his crusades, in both organization and attendance, have been integrated in every section of the country. From a pastor’s desk or a theologian’s classroom it is easy to criticize, whereas Dr. Graham has continued to have a hearing on the basic evangel and at the same time has put Christian love into practice in the social dimension. It should also be noted that he does not claim to give the complete answer, nor does he make any claim to be a theologian; his charismatic gift is to be an evangelist. A specialist in obstetrics does not try to be a pediatrician or a surgeon.

In the crusade in Seattle in 1951, one who refused support and urged the ministers responsible to him to do the same was Bishop Gerald Kennedy. He sincerely felt that the crusade would set the Church back. Later, he heard Dr. Graham preach, and then met him personally. When the organizing group looked for someone to head the general committee in charge of the Los Angeles crusade in 1963, they asked Bishop Kennedy, now in charge of the Los Angeles Area of The Methodist Church, and he was glad to accept. Before 1,500 ministers at the close of the crusade he said he had learned three things:

“First, if we are going to be successful evangelists (a great word—says more than any other word to me) it involves preparation. When 10,000 or more are praying, something has to give. Some of our young ministers want to be free, but it is often an excuse to do nothing. As Augustine said, ‘Without Him we cannot, but without us He will not.’

“Second, the great expectancy there is in these meetings. I have sat out in the audience and have sensed this expectancy, and it is because of the great expectancy of the preacher. People come to our churches not expecting much and are not disappointed. We need a re-creation of expectancy.

“Third, we had a preacher who believes something. We need to find this again in the Word of God. This is not the end of a crusade, but the beginning, because we believe something. My life has been enriched, and I am grateful.”

Seventeen Years Ago In Kansas City

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum meetings are now history. As I saw the vast throngs of a total of 930,340 people, or an average of more than 44,000 per service, with almost 40,000 inquirers, my mind went back to our Kansas City, Missouri, Linwood Presbyterian Church, and a “Youth Nite” service on Sunday, February 3, 1946. The speaker was not important enough for the morning service, so about 300 turned out in the evening to hear Billy Graham. Our church bulletin said, “Around Charlotte, North Carolina, his home, and throughout the South, he is known as the Boy Preacher, because he started preaching shortly after his conversion at the age of 17. He is the director of ‘songs in the Night,’ one of Chicago’s most popular radio broadcasts and also the director of West Suburban Men’s Fellowship, a most unique gathering of business men from all over the western suburbs of Chicago, featuring outstanding speakers, and drawing large crowds. Billy Graham is one of the few evangelists who possesses a message for today’s youth. He was the first speaker at the rally of ‘Chicagoland Youth For Christ.’ He is immensely popular among the young people wherever he goes, and has spoken to audiences numbering upwards of five thousand in many of our large cities. Linwood will be indeed privileged to have this inspirational speaker.”

Since that time over 33 million people have heard him personally, plus uncounted millions over radio and television. His clothes are now more conservative, his poise more pronounced; but basically he is the same Billy: a simple, direct, genuinely sincere person dedicated to God in the closest thing to true humility I have ever encountered. I have seen him, through the years, damned by fundamentalists, stabbed in the back by liberals, mocked by ministers, harried by the press, heckled by students, yet maintaining a calm and loving attitude which became irresistible as a vehicle of God’s grace and which changed attitudes simply because his ego never became the issue.

One Of The Critics

One who was sincerely critical of him because of honest differences was Dr. Helmut Thielicke, professor of systematic theology and social ethics of the Theology Faculty of the University of Hamburg, Germany. At Dr. Graham’s invitation, he attended the Los Angeles crusade and sat on the platform one evening. As a result, he wrote the following letter, which he graciously gave me permission to quote, and I do so in full:

“August 23, 1963

“Dear Dr. Graham:

Now that I am back at Forest Home again, I feel myself warmly constrained to thank you very much for your friendly invitation and for the warmth and sincerity of your greeting. Even though the pedestal upon which you elevated me is certainly not appropriate, I have sensed your very friendly intention, and I should like to thank you for that.

“How different it is when men encounter each other face to face, rather than just hearing about each other! I am ashamed that we Christians—including myself—are always susceptible to the preconceived opinions, which belong to the precursors of death and murder, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. It is indeed a part of the style of the fellowship willed by God that it not be mediated by printer’s ink, but rather requires physical nearness and directness. Even the Kingdom of God has its laws of style. You have another form of proclamation than I do; Tillich and Bonhoeffer have others again. The evening beneath (or better, behind!) your pulpit was a profound ‘penance’ experience (poenitentia) for me in this and in another respect:

“We German theologians are in our tendency to criticism truly charismatic, and it has always been very easy for me to determine what was wrong or lacking in the other person. When I have been asked now and again about your preaching (which I of course know from the literature written about it), I have certainly not been too modest to make one or two more or less profound theological observations. My evening with you made clear to me (and the Holy Spirit will have helped in doing so!) that the question should be asked in the reverse form: What is lacking in me and in my theological colleagues in the pulpit and at the university lectern, that makes Billy Graham so necessary? And it became suddenly clear to me that this question is much more correct and corresponds much more to the pleroma of the Body of Christ and its gifts. For in the light of this question we learn to understand our mutual relationship as that of a complementary or mutually expanding relationship; we learn to see ourselves as various dabs of paint upon the incredibly vivid and colorful palette of God; we are led to humility and to gratitude that everything is not required of us, but that there is another one with his gifts at our side.

“Of course, this can only be said, when the other one is not a teacher of error. But it became unforgettably clear to me on this memorable evening that you, my dear Dr. Graham, are passing out Biblical bread and not intellectual delicacies and refined propaganda. I wish to thank you for that.

“The second offensive aspect which I had always noted as far as your ministry was concerned was also removed. I am speaking of the way in which you call people to come forward and to confirm their decision. It all happened without pressure and emotionalism (contrary to the reports which I received up until now). It was far more the shepherd’s voice, calling out in love and sorrow for the wandering ones. And it was in this respect that the undeserved place of honor I had, became truly meaningful, the place which you assigned me in your great kindness.

“Now I saw them all coming towards us, I saw there their assembled, moved and honestly decided faces, I saw their searching and their meditativeness. I confess that this moved me to the very limits. Above all there were two young men—a white and a Negro—who stood at the front and about whom one felt that they were standing at that moment on Mount Horeb and looking from afar into a land they had longed for. I shall never forget those faces. It became lightning clear that men want to make a decision, and that the meditative conversation, which we have cultivated in Germany since the war, is only a poor fragment. I shall have to draw from all this certain consequences in my own preaching, even though the outward form will of course look somewhat different.

“The consideration that many do not remain true to their hour of decision can contain no truly serious objection: the salt of this hour will be something they will taste in every loaf of bread and cake which they are to bake in their later life. Once in their life they have perceived what it is like to enter the realm of discipleship. And if only this memory accompanies them, then that is already a great deal. But it would certainly be more than a mere memory. It will remain an appeal to them, and in this sense it will maintain its character indelibilis.

“And so I am deeply indebted to you for this evening, and owe you great thanks.

“I cannot be thankful enough for this my second visit to America. It is the source of great joy to see how the books translated into English have not been limited to certain denominations, but they do their service in the most varied of church areas and theological directions. This was especially demonstrated for me in Los Angeles where I was together for two days with a large gathering of pastors from all confessions.

“God bless you and keep you, my dear Dr. Graham!

“With hearty greetings, Yours,

Helmut Thielicke”

Today I talked for forty-five minutes with the Episcopal rector who felt the crusade had put the Church back fifty years. How different it is, as Dr. Thielicke says, when men encounter each other face to face! I think the friendly conversation today has helped me to understand this brother in the ministry. He has never met Billy Graham, nor heard him except over radio or television. He came from a hyper-fundamentalistic background, and held two unhappy campaigns as an evangelist himself. His experience caused him to turn to liberalism, then, unsatisfied, to the theology and liturgy of the Episcopal Church. “I was looking for something that had its roots in the early Church,” he told me.

He laughed with real appreciation when we talked about Dr. Graham’s good-natured reply in wishing he had been able to put the Church back 2,000 years. “I’m not fighting him—I’ve always admired him,” he said. “But my early experience of people making new decisions every year makes me feel that is not the way to grow.” Yet two of the nine persons in his church who went forward in the crusade are for the first time teaching in his church school. I suggested that personality is not like a city hall, dedicated once for all, but is a living thing that could use periodic rededication.

I believe this, for I was one of the 40,000 who went forward during the crusade. I now believe that I find my roots more firmly planted in the early Church—and in Christ.

Spiritual Riddle

Not according to the deeds

that I have done,

but according to

the mercy more abundant

of my God.

This is the message

that my life must show

in gift conferred

by His own power on those

from sin’s destruction saved.

In mundane view,

prosaically involved

with things called

everyday,

I have been born to show

not for some distant scene

but now

just as I am

and where,

a wonder all improbable

of weaknesses and sin,

that in things so despised

God never hides from view

what He by grace can do!

RUTHE T. SPINNANGER

Dr. L. David Cowie, pastor of the Brentwood Presbyterian Church of Los Angeles, is a member of the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations of the United Presbyterian Church. He was formerly the pastor of the University Presbyterian Church of Seattle.

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Edmund W. Robb

Page 6272 – Christianity Today (15)

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The Methodist Church may no longer be the largest denomination in America. Its rate of growth not compare well with that of Protestantism in general. For the past six years there has been a decided decrease in additions on profession of faith. Methodism needs to examine itself.

The Methodist Church has this poor evangelistic record despite the fact that it has a General Board of Evangelism led by capable, concerned, and dedicated men. Under the leadership of this fine board, the church has an evangelistic program unsurpassed in Protestantism. The board supplies the church with excellent materials, well-trained resource personnel, and proven methods for the evangelistic program. Despite this, the church continues to show a poor evangelistic record.

The National Council of Churches annually releases stewardship figures of forty-six denominations. Last time The Methodist Church was forty-third. Of course, the massive membership of the church must be considered. The larger the membership, the more difficult it is to keep a high per-capita record. However, when it is remembered that The Methodist Church has become a middle-class church, the low per-capita figure indicates lack of commitment on the part of a great portion of her membership.

Poor attendance is another sign of the sickness in Methodism. While the morning worship services continue to be well attended, the Sunday evening service has been abandoned in most areas and is just barely alive in the Bible Belt. The mid-week prayer service is a forgotten experience. Discontinuance of the Sunday evening service and prayer meeting might be accounted for by changing conditions, and some would contend that these needs are being met in other ways. But there seems to be no answer for the decline in Sunday school attendance. At a time when there are more children than ever before, Sunday school enrollment is down in Methodism. Admittedly, this is a national trend. However, many conservative evangelical denominations have growing Sunday schools.

Neglect Of Personal Righteousness

Historically Methodism has been concerned with social righteousness. The church of the Wesleys has always believed in the social application of the Gospel. While The Methodist Church, when at her best, has had a prophetic social voice, she did not neglect in the past personal righteousness. Today we find the situation changing. The church has become so preoccupied with social concerns that she is failing in her quest for personal righteousness. Methodism has been alarmed about the atom bomb but strangely quiet about the moral deterioration of our people. We are rightly concerned about the sex crimes that plague our land but feel that Tennessee Williams is a prophet. We are worried about the direction of our youth but say little about the suggestive and repugnant movies and books that are filling their minds with filth. We are alarmed by the increasing number of illegitimate pregnancies but say nothing about immodest dress and sensual entertainment. We are concerned about war among nations but are doing little about the war in the soul of man. We are rightly concerned about racial injustice but are failing to bring men into the great Christian brotherhood. We are anxious that the alcoholic be accepted as a sick man but are silencing the prophetic voice against the liquor traffic and saying little about total abstinence. We are seeking to reform the world rather than convert the individual. Christianity has become synonymous with our social viewpoint, and personal morality is overlooked or given scant attention.

Methodism has a heritage that is unequaled in American Protestantism. In her founder, John Wesley, she has a noble example to follow. Wesley was an evangelist who did not neglect the social implications of the Gospel. While he believed in depth evangelism, he did not neglect the needy masses. He realized the high value of education but knew men must be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven. Under Wesley’s leadership the mightiest revival since Pentecost took place, and Methodism was born.

The Methodist Church in America was formally organized December 24, 1784, in Baltimore, Maryland. At this Christmas Conference some sixty preachers were reported in the connection, and there were 14,988 Methodists in America. The conference was conducted in Lovely Lane Chapel; although it was the dead of winter they could not afford a stove to warm the building. These preachers, whose annual salary was $64, did not represent wealth or social position.

They considered evangelism their main work. They were “now” preachers, and they preached for decision. Their stated purpose was “to reform the continent and spread scriptural holiness over these lands.” Wherever others went for money these went for love of souls.

This humble group of insignificant, despised Methodists grew to be the largest denomination in America. In 1860 one-third of all U. S. Protestants were Methodist.

With this kind of heritage we are amazed to see the church of the Wesleys on the defensive and in retreat. What is her present predicament? I believe that Methodism has a theological, administrative, and liturgical predicament.

A Theological Calamity

Until World War II classical liberalism dominated the Methodist seminaries and the thinking of the church leadership. Much of the literature was humanistic and naturalistic, rather than theistic and evangelical. The social gospel with its resolve to build the Kingdom through reform was the predominant message. The inevitability of progress was the prevailing philosophy. Sermons were often little more than ethical essays.

Following this a reaction set in against rationalism and humanism. Along with most of the rest of Protestant Christianity, Methodist theologians began to see the weakness of liberalism. In seeking a way out of the theological predicament they were influenced by Barth and Brunner, and this led to a more biblical faith. However, there is much about neoorthodoxy that conflicts with the traditional Methodist message. Barth emphasizes the transcendence of God to the neglect of Christian experience. He stresses the holiness of God but has little to say about holiness of life.

With all of its shortcomings, neoorthodoxy was a healthy reaction. Methodist theologians began to study their Bibles seriously.

However, the reaction went past Barth, and instead of following the path of neo-evangelical Christianity, it followed left-wing existentialism. Now Bultmann is the inspired prophet and Tillich is his echo, and almost all of the Methodist seminaries have disciples of these men on the faculty.

Existentialism with its lack of authority and objectivity has worsened the theological predicament of Methodism.

This left-wing theology is eating the very vitals out of historic New Testament Christianity. One of the exponents of this thought has boldly declared in the national magazine for Methodist ministers that the birth of Jesus is historical but the narrative of the Virgin Birth is not; the Crucifixion is historical but the Resurrection is not. Is this not just an intellectual way of saying, “I do not believe”?

Methodism is in theological crisis, and if she does not return to the faith of Paul and Luther and Wesley and Clarke she shall cease to be a vital influence.

The Organizational Predicament

The organizational predicament of The Methodist Church is not as basic as the theological, but it is one that must be solved.

The episcopal form of church government with its power of appointment and itinerant ministry was ideal for a pioneering frontier church. Undoubtedly the connectional system of The Methodist Church contributed greatly toward her success in the early days of American life. Just as the organizational genius of Wesley conserved and spread revival, so American Methodism with its unique system of church government conquered a frontier for Christ.

Today there is much to be said for the appointive system. A church is never without a pastor, and a pastor is never without a church. The episcopal system offers security for the minister. For older men, conscious of the demand for younger preachers, this is important.

There are also many liabilities. For the most part appointments are made on the basis of salary and seniority. This is frustrating for the vigorous young men of ability and devotion, who must wait for the older men to retire before they can hope to have a church of any size. It also encourages inefficiency. The men know that if they will bide their time, promotion will come. If they have to move they will be taken care of. Seldom is a preacher demoted.

The system also encourages power blocks. While the bishops are sincere and dedicated men, there is nevertheless too great a temptation to succumb to prejudice and show favoritism.

Many ministers who do not have friends in the cabinet have difficulties in moving favorably. Of course the more talented, dedicated men will eventually advance, but slower than necessary. Many men serve churches that they are not qualified to serve and get promotions that they would never have if the congregations were calling their own pastors. There are many instances in which a strong church has requested an able man who was fully qualified. The cabinet and bishop have refused the request and have sent a man who would not be called to a church half that size under a congregational form of government.

The appointive system has another disadvantage: it limits personal freedom. The individual minister cannot decide what God’s will is for him. His whole destiny is in the hands of eight or nine men who, though they are good men, are making a decision that only the individual should make. The system also limits freedom in that the power of appointment stifles free speech. Seldom is a bishop voted down on the conference floor. Many men in The Methodist Church are unhappy with theological trends and social and political statements by various church boards. However, they remain silent; to speak out will brand them, and they won’t get that next promotion.

Stagnation will occur if a way is not found out of the organizational predicament. In my opinion, the way out is not to abandon the episcopal system but to reform it. The churches should be given greater voice in making appointments. The bracket system of salaries and seniority should be greatly relaxed, and ineffective men should be demoted.

The Liturgical Crisis

The last predicament of Methodism that we will consider is the liturgical.

From its inception Methodism was revivalistic in its emphasis and free in its worship. Written prayers and set forms of worship were almost unknown in early American Methodism. The worship consisted of joyful congregational singing and sincere Bible preaching. It was not unusual to hear shouts of joy and praise or sobs of conviction and repentance. Altar calls were the natural sequence to a sermon, and the number of conversions determined the success of the service. Early Methodists knew and experienced vital worship.

With the advent of liberalism, worship lost its glow. The choir sang the proper anthems, and the congregation remained silent during the singing of unknown and often unsingable hymns. The preacher gave a discourse on his current social concern. Worship became dull, and the congregation became spectators. Reform was needed.

Because of the evident need of vital and joyful worship the advocates of formal, ritualistic, liturgical worship sought to reform Methodist worship along their lines of thinking. They have been remarkably successful. The divided chancel, unknown in Methodism a generation ago, is being planned in 90 per cent of the new sanctuaries. Vestments and the clerical collar are quickly becoming accepted. The modern creed, the collect, the confession, the proper responses, the candle lighters, and unsingable hymns are a part of more and more Methodist churches.

And we are losing the common man. These things simply do not speak to the average church member. He is not a seminary or conservatory graduate. Besides, he can see through the pride, pretense, and sham of substituting form for experience.

There are those advocates of worship who want to go back to Wesley. They are thinking of the rigid high-church priest before Aldersgate. Wesley reached the masses not with his high-church prejudices but when he renounced them and went to the people with the Gospel. Where in Christian history has excessive liturgy brought revival? Who has been converted by the proper collect and confession? The characteristics of revival are spirit-filled singing and great gospel preaching.

It is true that we are living in a different culture and are seeking to reach a more sophisticated people. It is also true that we need form and dignity in our worship. But this should be done in simplicity and by means that will bring the congregation to experience God. That which speaks to a seminary worship professor or the more aesthetic member of the ministry may not speak to the majority of the people. We should not confuse aesthetics with spirituality. “Amazing Grace” will lift the masses to spiritual heights as much as the great masters will lift the musician. Our primary concern must be not to do things properly but to do that which will reach people and inspire true worship.

Where the Word of God is central and faithfully proclaimed, true worship will be experienced.

Methodism has a historic and living message to proclaim. May she reclaim that message and go forth to the people in the power of the Spirit, testifying to the redeeming grace that is in Christ.

Edmund W. Robb is minister of St. Paul Methodist Church in Midland, Texas, which in fifteen months has received 275 members into its congregation, now numbering 830. He is a member of the North Texas Conference of The Methodist Church and serves that conference as chairman of its Board of Evangelism.

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William Henry Anderson, Jr

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The September 13, 1963, issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY on page 28 quoted “one top evangelical leader” as saying of the March on Washington, “Our folks are sympathetic with solving the race problem, but we feel that this wasn’t the Way to go about it.” If this remark is indicative of evangelicals, then evangelicals have forfeited any voice in a Christian solution of the greatest domestic crisis our nation has faced in a century. This article will (1) examine the present Negro situation to show the inadequacy of the evangelical attitude, (2) seek to explain why evangelicals are so out of touch with present reality, and (3) propose some ways of beginning to rectify the situation.

Look at the Negro. The advancement of America’s colored people has been dishearteningly slow. For centuries Negro groups and leaders have petitioned whites for relief from injustice with so little success as to make the Negro lose faith in this method. One of these petitions, the Niagara Declaration of Principles of 1905, may be summed up under five heads: the right to vote, the end of discrimination in public accommodations, the right of free association with any man, equal enforcement of laws, and adequate education. None of these goals has begun to be fully implemented in the United States of America. Many appeals had preceded this statement and many have followed it, but as far as Negroes can observe, they are disregarded. Moral and spiritual appeals do not move Christian white America.

This disillusionment with the white people is not just at a national level, but also at the individual level. The white has a picture of a typical Negro: shiftless, dumb, dishonest, sensual. The Negro has also developed a stereotype for the white; cruel, dishonest, selfish, lustful. The fact that both stereotypes are proven untrue in individual contacts never seems to destroy their power; rather, these stereotypes have a devastating effect on community relations.

The Negroes during the time of petition and disillusionment were also developing a plan of action. They feel that the hundred years since emancipation have been terribly slow in yielding results, but considering the debilitating effects that slavery had on the Negro and the persistent destructive opposition of whites, the situation is coming along about as fast as may be expected. The Negroes learned that a sense of guilt over the father’s sin of holding his fellow man in slavery was not going to be expiated by the sons in many acts of while charity to the Negroes. After the first flush of enthusiasm following the Civil War, the whites forgot and neglected the Negroes, and life has become a bootstrap sort of operation for the Negro people. Pulling themselves up has been and will be a terrible struggle for the Negroes; but the end result will be a people prepared to hold their own in the rough and tumble of modern American economic and cultural life.

The Negro’s plan of action is based on observation of the American scene, of which the basic factor is materialism. A threat to profit or property can move a white Protestant a lot faster and further than any appeal to spiritual ideals. An economic boycott or a bit of destructive civil disorder brings the whites to the conference table ready to bargain in good faith faster than any other method. Also, Americans respect the successful man no matter what his means of success. Therefore since the Ten Commandments are not the absolute, the Negro must have a power base. Americans respect the man who is acquisitive, competitive, and ruthless in his activities; and so the Negro is quite willing to trade the little affection some whites might have for him for the respect of the white man. The methods of the revolution of 1963 are based partially on the pacifist doctrines of Ghandi, and partially on these considerations.

The means used by the Negro were summed up by the escaped slave and Negro leader, Frederick Douglas, as assimilation through self-assertion. If the Negro stands up as a man, the white must accept him. W. E. B. DuBois propounded the system to use: selected Negroes would be educated; then they would raise their fellows to their level. The system has worked and produced a remarkable group of leaders. King, Lewis, Young, Farmer, Wilkins, and others are brave, tough, and trained; idealistic, yet realistic in their tactics.

Today’S Common Ground

The idea of the white evangelicals doing something about race relations might have been useful a half century ago. Now the white churchman must get out and meet the Negro on the common ground of the community. The Negro is no longer coming to the white churchman’s ground; he is standing on his own ground. Some of the denominational leadership, led by Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, have understood this and have met and helped the Negro as asked. Evangelical leadership completely missed the point of the March on Washington and was not represented. The March on Washington was an act of self-assertion by the Negro—a standing up. The robes of the evangelicals may be unstained by contact with the Negroes; but these robes show a tinge of yellow from not being cleansed and bleached by a bit of travail and blood.

The evangelicals should do some soul-searching to discover how they got themselves into such a predicament. A biblical sense of the importance of men’s souls should have brought them close to the Negro. Also, the Negro churches are very conservative in their theology. Evangelicals pride themselves on affirming the oneness of man in their support of foreign missions. But conservative American churches and churchmen have done little in meeting the Negro problem. The little that has been done has been rather patronizing, and this the Negro considers an insult.

Evangelicals have often allied themselves with the conservative social and political forces in the United States, especially in the South. Observers ask whether conservative Christianity really has much value or is just part of a conservative attitude of mind. The identification of conservative religious leaders with conservative social and political attitudes has become a strong indictment of the evangelical position. Christianity at its inception and at certain great points in its history has been extremely radical. The usual conservative exaltation of property rights as the basic right sounds strange from those who profess to uphold the spiritual and downgrade the material.

Conservatives have a strong sense of identification with the past because God acted in history, revealing himself both in Christ and in Scripture. But evangelicals must understand God’s present and future workings in history. Attachment to the past should not blind one to the realities of the present and the possibilities of the future. Some values have to be reinterpreted in new situations if they are to remain Christian.

What can evangelicals do? First, they can become biblical and assert the oneness of all believers in Christ. They can also discourage the misuse of Scripture to further segregation. The story of Noah’s sons has nothing to do with race. The curse of Babel was for sin, and we should be overcoming rather than compounding the curse. The Bible separates only on the basis of faith—Jew and Gentile in the Old Testament, believer and nonbeliever in the New. Even the famous passage about unequal yoking (2 Cor. 6:14 ff.) applies only to believers and nonbelievers. Race, national origin, wealth, or education as the basis of separation is not scriptural. The presence or absence of living faith in Christ is the only biblical criterion for separation among people. In Christ all believers are to be one, and this without qualification (John 17:22).

If a congregation refuses or qualifies worship and membership for any reason other than lack of profession of faith in Christ Jesus and willingness to live a Christian life, it does not deserve to be called a church. Many churches have never had the opportunity to accept or reject a Negro member, but the attitude of willing acceptance must be present. And Negroes must be fully accepted into all activities of the church, for second-class membership is not membership. The Negro pew does not fit in the modern American church.

Evangelical ministers must identify themselves with the aspirations of the Negro. In some communities some of these aspirations may seem very unrealistic; but they are very real to the Negro, and the white leadership must accept them. The white clergy must not identify themselves only with the benevolent whites of good will but must stand on occasion with the Negro to show understanding of the Negro aspirations. The Negro feels the struggle for rights too desperate and betrayals too frequent for him to believe words any more. Actions are needed.

Duties Of The Laymen

Lay leaders of evangelical churches also have certain duties. First, they must, if occasion demands it, be willing to support full integration of their church. Secondly, they must support their pastor in his efforts to integrate the community. The pastor is acting as their representative to make their community more Christian.

The members of evangelical churches need to learn the disciplines of the love of Christ. The virtue of professing love for a man of different race who is continents away is mocked by the refusal to love a fellow American Christian because of his race. The essence of stewardship is the heart. A racist’s giving to missions makes a joke of Christ. Believers in Christ cannot ridicule the love of Christ by refusing to love the American Negro.

If anyone considers these words too strong and the recommended action too radical, may I refer him to almost any daily newspaper on any given day. The Negro revolution is on its way and must be a revolution in the name of Christ. Read James Baldwin’s collection of essays under the title Nobody Knows My Name to understand present Negro attitudes. Read the New York Times’s résumé (August 29, 1963) of the speeches at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington to learn the Negro’s goals. Read A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States to learn why the Negro distrusts the benevolence and good will of the whites.

We may find it impossible to become unconscious of race. We may never be able to rid ourselves of the consciousness that the man to whom we are speaking is a Negro. But we can stop hurting our fellow in Christ. We have to love him as ourselves. We have to make sure his life is realized in its potential alongside ours. At best we communicate little with our fellow Christians and walk so lonesomely. But if we shut a fellow believer in Christ out of what we can give to one another in love, denying fullness of life as it might be ours to give, we deny our Christian profession.

The Church in the national crisis of the Revolution did quite well; in the national crisis of the Civil War it brought up the rear post facto; but in the present national crisis the Church has not distinguished itself. Some clergymen have distinguished themselves as heroes of faith, and some denominational agencies have testified of the love of Christ. The United Presbyterian Church has done better than others, though largely as a leadership project, not at the level of the rank and file.

Evangelicals have developed a habit of bland disregard of the social questions which have excited our nation. As it turned out in the past, they got away with it. But this integration question is a different matter. The twentieth century, as DuBois said at its beginning, is the century of race. Disregard of this problem could so discredit the evangelical cause as to bring it to disrepute and oblivion. The evangelicals have adopted a pooh-pooh, hands-off, none-of-our-business attitude. The Negro has gotten this far without any vigorous evangelical help, and so he probably will not need it in the future. Therefore the evangelicals are hurting only themselves. The conservative Protestant church had better get involved in this Negro revolution or face inevitable judgment by the Negroes and youth of today and the historians of tomorrow.

William Henry Anderson, Jr., is pastor of The United Presbyterian Church of the Redeemer in Pittsburgh. He holds the B.A. degree from Wheaton College, B.D. from Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary, and Ph.D. from New York University. He is an Air Force Reserve chaplain.

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Jesse Hays Baird

Page 6272 – Christianity Today (19)

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The Presbyterian denomination has always believed in evangelism, but it has had a continuously difficult time making up its corporate mind about it. It has split and nearly split over evangelism several times in its history, notably during the Great Awakening of early colonial times and on the Cumberland frontier about a century later. These controversies over evangelism have a way of dissolving themselves after time enough has passed for cooling off and clearer thinking. The reunions have been happy occasions with elaborate testimonials of regret over the unfortunate misunderstandings. Subsequent history is replete with thanksgiving over the reunions. But recurrently there are rumblings along the line of this same old earthquake fault. And again there are some rumblings today. Why is it so?

Somewhat in parallel, other denominations of Christians have also had their debates over evangelism. In some cases they have taken on distinguishing characteristics from their attitudes toward it. With some, evangelism has become almost their entire concern and program. With others, evangelism has been entirely or almost entirely eliminated—something considered of little or no value.

Why is this? Any activity which causes so much division in the “Body of Christ” should be investigated with concern. If evangelism is merely a bone of contention, a peculiar activity which is of interest to some Christians but distasteful to many others, should we not eliminate it once and for all? But if, on the other hand, evangelism’s constant resurgence and recurring demand for attention is indicative that it is a basic and indispensable part of a full-fledged Christian program, then we should study it in a comprehensive way and give it its proper place.

From The Early Years

Because I find myself “existentially” involved, I have been compelled during my half century of ministry to give this whole matter considerable thought. I happen to be one of those who love the word evangelism. It has played a considerable role in my Christian experience. At nineteen years of age I was first brought to a wholehearted consideration of the claims of Jesus Christ upon my life by what called itself evangelism. I was attracted by the changes I observed in the lives of some of my young contemporaries when they accepted the call of the evangelist and, as they said, “gave their hearts to Christ.”

During the days of my theological education in Chicago I set myself the task of observing and evaluating the different types of Christian service which were being carried on in that laboratory of human life. Along with other on-going Christian programs, I investigated the rescue missions and tabernacle evangelistic ventures. I saw and heard much—some that I liked and some that I did not like—but there deepened within me a sense of awe before what happens in a human personality, even a degraded personality, when the person is brought face to face with Jesus Christ and led to a genuine decision for Him. When I became a pastor I found myself turning at times to so-called evangelistic methods, and I have had many exciting experiences in “life changing,” as it has been called by one group of zealots. Through the years my heart has frequently been warmed when I have seen evident victories for godliness brought about by the “evangelists,” even those on the so-called “fringe” of the Christian enterprise.

Causes Of Timidity

It has not been hard for me to understand why some of my friends have decided they do not like “evangelism.” When they have backed up their attitudes with the reasons for them I have usually agreed in large measure. I have shuddered many a time on hearing of some of the methods employed and of some of the behavior which has gone on in so-called “evangelistic meetings.” My “shudder” has evidently been magnified in the feelings of these friends, to the point where they have denounced the whole affair as improper, irreverent, and worse than useless. The reason in depth for the negative attitudes toward evangelism has usually been some embarrassing experience when someone was taken advantage of by aggressive and obtrusive methods employed in “evangelistic meetings.” I confess there have been times when I have studied myself and asked whether I might be doing wrong by encouraging evangelism, because whereas my experiences with it have been largely happy ones, it seems to have been otherwise with many. But the end result with me has always been a still deeper conviction that evangelism rightly conceived and properly practiced is as basic as Christianity itself. The complex of negative attitudes toward it which exists today is, I believe, the result of flagrant misuse of the term evangelism. Charlatans have sometimes posed as “evangelists” and made easy money out of the deepest aspirations of trusting people. Other “evangelists” of obvious sincerity and noble intentions have dealt with sacred things in blundering and hurtful ways because they have not been properly trained to understand the things with which they were dealing.

The Evangelist’S Task

The “evangelist” in this specialized sense of the word is one who proves to have a God-given talent to “tell the good news” so effectively as to bring his hearers to understand and assent to it, for the good news must win a verdict of assent in the heart of the hearer before it becomes good news to him. Philip was selected by the early Church to be a deacon, but he turned out to be an evangelist. He had a heaven-born power to evangelize. Down through the Christian centuries there has been a notable procession of “evangelists” who have been used of God to turn multitudes of sinners from the error of their ways: Augustine, Savonarola, Whitefield, Wesley, Moody, and innumerable others. Sometimes, as in the case of Wesley (according to sober historians), the fruits of their evangelism have been so tremendous as to change the destiny of nations.

Thank God for these specialized “evangelists”; but there is no evidence that they have been the only preachers who have won converts to the Christian religion. Other more quiet servants of Christ, mostly unknown to fame, have done most of the evangelizing of the world, by methods and programs which were not so sensational. The fact to get hold of is that all of Christ’s ministers are “evangelizing”; only some are doing so in the more specialized sense of the term. It has been so from the beginning and so it is today. A faithful pastor who is making his whole church a life-changing force in the community is an evangelist par excellence, though he may never attempt “meetings.” But a zealot who is carrying the good news into the slums with his rescue mission or building a tabernacle to reach out to people who are church-shy is also at least trying to be an evangelist, and I hasten to confess that many of them function in areas where I am helpless. I never heard a more sincere and eloquent sermon than one by “Lucky Baldwin,” delivered in gutter slang to a congregation of human derelicts gathered in the State Street Mission of Chicago. They hung on his every word and knew what it meant. They knew that Lucky knew what ailed them, and they were almost persuaded to accept the medicine which he was recommending.

Jesus’ fishermen must fish in many different kinds of pools and use different lures according to the need. Their admonition from Him is to “catch men.” Once “caught,” it is amazing how even the lowest of the low will change from what they were to what God wants them to be. No method which is not honest, sound in doctrine, in keeping with Christian culture, and in the true spirit of Jesus Christ, should be tolerated, but within those limits the methodology of evangelism should be as varied as human nature is varied.

An Objectionable Dichotomy

I have listened in on arguments, especially among young Christians, which have pitted Christian education against evangelism. “I believe the way to make a Christian is to educate him in Christian truth,” says one side. “No, you must get him converted,” says the other side. According to Paul, John, Peter, and the other authors of the New Testament, both sides are correct. It takes both to make a Christian. Accept Christ; then grow up in Christ to spiritual maturity. Christian nurture is of supreme importance. But you must be born before you can grow up. There must be conversion. It may happen suddenly or gradually. Usually the latter. It may be a matter of crisis experience, or it may be so gradual and normal that the person is not aware of what is happening. But it must happen. You must be converted from sin to Christ Jesus.

It is because they believe so strongly in the reality of “conversion” and the necessity of it that some Christians become “evangelistic,” according to current usage of the term. They pursue “evangelistic” projects hoping for the conversion of people—as many as possible. They feel they owe it to their Lord and to all who do not know him as Lord and Saviour to encourage them to give Christ a hearing—yes, and to come to a decision for him. They feel that the supreme fact of Christianity’s impact upon the human race is that men must be converted, one by one, and then transformed by divine grace from what they are to what they ought to be. Therefore, to them the most exciting “good news” centers in “miracles of grace”: Saul the persecutor changed to Paul the chief of apostles; Jerry McAulay the crook transformed into God’s missionary to the down-and-outers; Toyohiko Kagawa, the confused son of an aristocratic Japanese polygamist family, converted to become the great Japanese evangelist, a blessing to the whole world. Allowing for all of the varieties of Christian experience, do we still believe in the reality and desirability of Christian conversion?

The final word which should be clarified and agreed upon in our study is “decision”—or shall we go back to John the Baptist and call it “repentance”? Whatever we call it, there is a human side to the sublime drama of conversion. God calls, but man must respond. Granted that salvation is of God; it is his Holy Spirit working within us that awakens us to newness of life and gives us the impulse to say “yes” to the call of the Christ. But however we explain it theologically, man must say “yes.” Man must decide for Jesus Christ and the Christian way. Otherwise nothing happens. “Whosoever ‘will,’ let him come.” Man must “will” to come. God, out of his infinite love, calls us, but he will not force us into the kingdom of heaven. We must decide for Jesus Christ and the Christian way of life against all of the varicolored alternatives which stand in opposition. It is within our power to say “no” to God, and if we do, the whole matter ends there. The Spirit departs. “Choose ye—whom ye will serve” is God’s challenge not only to Israel in Joshua’s time but to every generation and to every individual of the human race. It is almost impossible to say too much for the importance of Christian education, but Christian education must consummate in decision or it is a failure. The well-raised child of a Christian home, a pupil in a fine church school, may know much about the Christian religion; but it is only when, as an act of his own will, he accepts Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour that Christianity becomes vitally effective in his life. A Christian (“Christ-one”) is a person who not only knows about Christ but has chosen Christ as his Lord and Saviour.

The Burden For Souls

It is because my enthusiastic “evangelistic” friends believe these things—tremendously—that they act the way they do. They are trying to get “sinners” to “surrender” to God, “to make a decision for Christ”—in order that a “miracle of grace” may happen, the miracle called “conversion.” They know that the miracle is God’s work, but they believe that God respects human freedom and waits for human decision.

They also believe that God has chosen to use human witnesses to set up the conditions under which “decisions” are likely to be made. So they pray and work and experiment as John the Baptist did to prepare the way of the Lord into human hearts. Sometimes they fail; the answer is often “no” instead of “yes.” But sometimes they succeed. Multitudes of people have been thus led through “evangelism” to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Whether the decisive “evangelistic service” was held in a cathedral or a barn or under the trees at a frontier camp meeting does not matter. Isaiah suddenly burst through the familiar temple ritual and for the first time saw the Lord high and lifted up in the old temple in Jerusalem. Billy Sunday sat on a curbstone in Chicago and heard the testimonies of the evangelizing zealots of Pacific Garden Mission. A group of young people in camp in the hills or huddled about a campfire on the lakeshore find a Pentecost transpiring in their midst. Peter Marshall tells of a solitary spot among the hills of Scotland where “God tapped him on the shoulder.” What matters the place or the method? God has appointed us who know him to serve as his witnesses to those who do not know him. We are his agents to perform the human acts which will lead people to be still before him until they know that he is God. Methods are of necessity varied, but whatever will impel human personalities to be still before the divine personality of Jesus Christ while they ponder his claims is evangelism.

William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, at the close of a career which had gathered an army of human derelicts from the gutters of London and turned them into near saints, was asked how he did it. He said, “I don’t know; all I know is that Jesus Christ has had all there is of me.” That explained William Booth, and it also explained what he was striving to bring to pass in the lives of others. In fact, Booth gives us here a correct definition of the whole business of evangelism. Whether the participants be at the bottom or the top of the social ladder, it remains true that if Jesus can have all there is of them, wonderful things will happen—for them, in them, and through them. The key to it all, we repeat again, is decision. A discerning Negro preacher was asked to define the doctrine of election. He answered: God is holding an election to choose candidates for heaven. There are two votes to be cast—man’s vote and God’s vote. God always votes “yes.” When man votes “yes” the election is unanimous.

How can we set up conditions which will induce people to be still before God and give attention to his good news? That is the whole problem of evangelism. In my experience, when you do succeed in bringing a group of people, old or young, to be still before God, giving their wholehearted attention to his Gospel, they are likely to respond. Whatever methods are conducive to such stillness are worthy to be called evangelism.

Let there be more of it. “I heard a voice saying, ‘Cry—Whom shall I send and who will go for us?’” “The harvest is plenteous but the laborers are few.” And while we hesitate and argue among ourselves over methods, the preachers of atheism and despair fill the earth with their raucous propaganda.

We may be born again. Has it been so with us? All of us? We may grow up into the image and stature of Jesus Christ. Are we so growing up? That is the challenge of the Evangel. What a privilege it is to be an Evangelist!

Jesse Hays Baird is president emeritus of San Francisco Theological Seminary, San Anselmo, California. He served as moderator of the 160th General Assembly of what was then the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

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