Page 6210 – Christianity Today (2024)

In rural Europe the traveler frequently comes to a crossroads and finds a crucifix in a shrine at one of the corners. So the Christian Church today, as in every day, stands in her pilgrimage before the Cross of Christ.

In any discussion of the Atonement, oversimplification is a pitfall. Nevertheless, for the purpose of this study, which deals with current views of the meaning of the Cross, two categories are suggested: the “transactional” and the “revelational.” A view of the Cross that is true to biblical insights must have some characteristics of the transactional category. On the other hand, an exclusively revelational view stands in profound tension with certain aspects of biblical thought, a tension that has far-ranging implications.

By “revelational” is meant any view of the Cross in which its significance consists of its making known to men a timeless, divine truth. In such a view the key “happening” takes place within the minds of men. In the minds, or souls, of men, as they perceive the truth and respond to it and decide to act upon it, is the locus of reconciliation. Insofar as the Cross so considered is an event, it is an event in communication. Consequently the Cross in itself cannot be the reality that the good news tells about. Instead, the Cross is the means of disclosing good news, which may not be news in the strict sense but as old as God himself. What is new is only that God has said it and that men have learned of it.

By the transactional category, however, is meant those views of the Cross affirming that something happened at Calvary, something great and even cosmic, a change affecting and involving God. The change is something that happened objectively and not merely in the minds of men. It is not simply a timeless truth but rather an event on the basis of which God can say things to men about himself and his relation to them that he could not have said before.

Let the reader endeavor to forget any commercial or legalistic connotations the term “transaction” may have for him. For the transactional view of the Atonement has often been crudely and crassly stated. Nevertheless, certain aspects of biblical, Christian thought constrain us to see the Atonement as transaction. To be sure, this view also has revelational facets. The revelational and transactional are not mutually exclusive; it is possible to find both revelation and transaction in the Cross, both message and event. But any understanding of it as only revelation is deficient.

First, a merely revelational view fails to do justice to the fact that in biblical thought sin is against God and that atonement therefore must involve some kind of reckoning with sin on his part. As God, he cannot let sin pass. It is a challenge to his deity that he must respond to and put in its place. His love may prompt him to forego judging the sinner and to continue with the individual sinner as though nothing had happened. God may very well want to forgive and forget, although it is of course inconceivable that he should be indifferent to what sin does to the sinner. But there is another side to his being that must be satisfied and reconciled. And it has to do with the fact that he is the God of the man sinned against as well as the God of the sinner.

Behind the biblical picture of the problem of sin is a simple fact that the modern mind (with its democratic ways of thinking) tends to forget. The biblical conception of Deity, especially in the Old Testament, is closely tied to the conception of kingship. Etymologically, the Hebrew roots behind such words as “glory” and “majesty” refer to the materialistic splendor and pomp with which an earthly monarch is wont to surround himself. Now a king is in a way responsible for the well-being of his subjects. If during his reign the life of the kingdom flourishes, he is considered a good king. This is especially true of law enforcement. Under a good king, law-abiding citizens have protection and the righteous prosper. Under a poor king, robbery and brigandage abound.

Crime Against The Crown

Thus, when one man sins against another, more is involved than the impairment of a man-to-man relation. The glory of the ruler is called into question. He cannot be a good ruler and let such evil go unnoticed. Indeed, he should not have let it happen at all. He must therefore choose between the guilty and the innocent and set his face in some recognizable manner against the former, thus depriving the sinful subject of the presence from which all blessing emanates. This is why a crime is a crime not only against one’s fellow men but also against “the crown,” why the state pays for the prosecuting attorney, and why in former days something more than correction seemed to motivate the sentencing of the guilty to punishment. Something like this underlies the fact that in biblical thought sin is “against thee and thee only.”

Certainly our common ways of thinking support this. There is nothing to which the unbeliever points with greater effectiveness than man’s inhumanity to man, and the fact that the inhumane man does not always receive his just deserts. This is the prime datum of the atheist. And every thinking believer admits a real problem with his faith at this point.

The sinner, then, is a standing assertion that there is no God. He is against God, and God therefore must be against him. For God to ignore the sinner as a sinner would be an unacceptable compromise, although God’s love may preclude all desire for personal vengeance. His love for the victim of the sinner has been called in question by what he, the Sovereign, has allowed to happen in his realm. Thus, as has been so often said, the love and holiness of God are two sides of the same coin. To the sinner, God’s love for the man sinned against appears as holiness, or even wrath, because God’s love for the man sinned against requires him to turn his face from the sinner. And if God, the Source of all life, withdraws from us, our inevitable destiny is death.

Accordingly, it seems reasonable that even though God may want to relate himself to the sinner in ways of love, that relation must at least be veiled—to use a biblical term—until there has been an objective reckoning and the record has been put straight. That, we may believe, is what God was doing at Calvary. He was there in human flesh submitting to that ultimate humiliation to which his bearing with sinners leads. The Cross was an event, something that had to happen, something that could happen only by his taking the form of a human creature. Only by dying as a man could God be true to himself as the living God. But once he has died as a man, the veil between him and sinners can be put away.

This idea that the Cross made possible a change in God’s relations with men is not congenial to many twentieth-century Christians who like to think of his love as being too patient and enduring to be affected by sinners. Only men, they say, need to be reconciled, not God. And to substantiate their assertion they point to the various texts in the Bible using the word “reconcile.” However, there is one massive biblical fact that outweighs all these texts. It is that in the Bible record the Holy Spirit does not come to man unreservedly until after Calvary. Biblical theologians have often pointed out that under the old covenant the enduement of the Spirit always seems to have been qualified, as the prophets looked forward to the time when the Spirit would be “poured out.” On the other hand, under the new covenant men are baptized in the Spirit. The Spirit comes upon “all flesh.” Whatever our theories about the Atonement, the Bible testifies to a change in God’s relations to sinners as a result of Calvary; and this is attested by the very order of the books of the Bible. It is unthinkable that the Book of Acts with its account of Pentecost could be placed ahead of the four Gospels with their crucifixion story.

Transaction And Incarnation

Secondly, it is a fact that only a transaction-type of Atonement requires an incarnation. Here is another aspect of biblical thought that transcends any exclusively revelational view of the Atonement. For the revelational function could be served by any means that communicated the idea; an illusion or a theophany would suffice. If we epitomize the revealed message of the Cross as “God forgives sinners,” then we need on the Cross only an object that suggests God to our minds. This could be done by a remarkably good man or by a god who appeared to be a man, as extreme liberalism on the one hand and ancient gnosticism on the other hand have advocated with logical consistency. Both heresies stressed a God of love while tending to minimize his wrath and holiness, and neither needed an ontological incarnation.

The position that the Atonement is merely revelational and that this revelation of God’s love for us cannot occur except in an act of incarnation, fails to carry conviction. Let us give credit to the proponents of this view for wanting to take the Incarnation seriously and for stressing the fact that God was in Christ, but it is not required by their view that the Atonement consists of historical fact. All that is needed in this view is the story of the Cross. The real Cross, the Cross of history with a real God-man hanging upon it, is in the end superfluous for the revelational view.

Nowadays we often hear that one of the distinctions, if not the distinction, of the Christian faith is its basis in history. The assertion, with some allusion to the “mighty acts” of God, is almost a cliché. But if we limit our view of what God has done for us to revelation, we are jeopardizing this distinction. Thus we have another aspect of biblical thought with which our understanding of the Atonement should be in tune.

When the redemptive work of God is described solely in terms of revelation, the truth about God that has been revealed must inevitably become more important than the means by which it is revealed. For example, in the study of prophecy, the psychology of prophecy usually fascinates us for a while; but eventually we find that we must wrestle with the message on its own terms. When we shift focus altogether from the event to the timeless, we necessarily demote the event from the essential to the secondary.

Anyone who reads between the lines of contemporary theology can see that the currents of rationalization are slowly undercutting the offensive, historical particularities in which the Christian religion has hitherto been rooted. These currents erode the finality of the historic Christ. They treat theology in a framework of subjectivity. They describe salvation as an exercise in existential decision. The danger is real that the tree will lose its hold on history altogether and topple into the stream of immanentism and generality, and this at a time when, paradoxically, it is recognized as never before that the uniqueness of Christianity lies in its grounding in history.

If it should ever happen that Christian theology becomes detached from history, there is nothing to prevent the rapprochement of Christianity with Buddhism and Hinduism. Both these religions accommodate timeless, suffering saviours, and both may assent to the timeless divine love revealed by the Cross of Christ. Many no doubt look upon this eventuality with composure; winds blowing in that direction are evident. But as long as Christians see an indispensable transaction in a particular Cross, syncretism cannot come to pass, for such a Cross still remains an insurmountable stumbling block.

The twentieth-century Church indeed stands at a special “crossroads” as she ponders the meaning of the Cross. The integrity and identity of her heritage are at stake. The Cross is still crucial. As we form our judgments about it, God through the Cross is judging us.

Walfred Erickson is pastor of the Clyde Hill Baptist Church, Bellevue, Washington. He holds the B.A. degree from the University of Minnesota, the Th.B. from Northwestern Bible School and Seminary, and the B.D. and Th.D. from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Erickson is dean of the Lay School of Theology of the Greater Seattle Council of Churches.

If sixteenth-century man was disturbed by a deep sense of guilt, twentieth-century man is also disturbed by a debilitating sense of defeat. Whereas Luther saw human existence as needing forgiveness, a modern German theologian sees it as requiring courage. Doubtless modern man understands Tillich’s observation at least as well as he does Luther’s, for his life is haunted by defeat, and he regards himself more the victim of life than the bearer of it.

How can the Cross be presented as helpful to a generation victimized by dark powers within and by massive, uncontrollable historical forces without? Is not the Cross itself a symbol of defeat? Surely a figure nailed to suffering and death is not a symbol of victory. Is not the Cross a symbol of man’s problem, rather than a symbol of its solution?

Too often Christians have presented Christ crucified as though he were a victim, one more to be pitied than believed in. On the pages of Scripture nothing sanctions this view of Christ. In death no less than in life he is always the Lord. It was not a victim but the Lord who died. The Cross bespeaks a sacrificial death, a voluntary act. Christ’s death was self-chosen; it was accepted and has therefore the character and value of a sacrifice.

Jesus himself determined the fact of his death. He said it forcibly: “I lay down my life.… No man taketh it from me.… I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” He himself poured out his own life in death; he gave his life, and thus it was a sacrificial ransom for many.

While nothing in the biblical record suggests that Christ was a victim, many things in its story reveal that his destiny was not really in the hands of his enemies but in his own.

Jesus determined also the time of his death. Those who took counsel to put him to death decided that it must not occur during the Passover, lest it precipitate a riot. But Jesus had set his date and would keep it. He himself stirred up the people to high-pitched messianic expectations by raising Lazarus from the dead, by requisitioning a donkey with no permission asked; and intentionally fulfilling Old Testament prophecy, he himself provided the acclaiming crowd of Palm Sunday. He prompted Judas to act “quickly”—and the chief priests, having their man suddenly thrust upon them, had to use him at once or not at all. Christ determined that on the day the traditional paschal lamb was chosen, the Lamb of God would also be chosen. By Jesus’ own plan he was chosen on Thursday and died on Friday.

Nor was Jesus the victim of Judas. Jesus himself announced that he would be betrayed by one of the twelve. He did not expose Judas but prompted Judas to expose himself. Compelled to follow suit when the betrayal was suddenly announced, Judas too had to ask, “Lord, is it I?” And Jesus answered, “You yourself have said.”

Confronted in Gethsemane by an armed mob, he again dramatically revealed that he was no helpless victim caught in a web of circ*mstance. He spoke, and the mob reeled backward in impotence.

On the Cross, he remained the Lord, Lord of the Cross itself and of the hatred that fixed him to it: “Father, forgive them.” From the throne of his Cross he commanded, “Woman, behold thy son!” And to John, “Behold thy mother!”

Even in the jaws of death, he remained Lord. All death and hell could not reduce him to a passive victim. He remained the acting Subject. Strange paradox, in his very dying he was functioning as Lord, pouring out his own life. He remained in command of his anguish, rejecting the preferred intoxicant that in full consciousness he might truly give himself sacrificially in an act of love.

How strangely he died! Death did not come to him; he went to death. At the time he willed, he with a strong, “loud voice” himself committed his spirit into the hands of God. His death was his own; in dying he was still in command.

How else could the Lord die but in this royal manner in which death itself became the victim, and the Resurrection was assured? Small wonder he arose—it was already disclosed on the Cross that he would. Let the Church again proclaim the Cross as the Lord’s self-chosen place and time and manner of death. It will then become again a symbol of triumph, and men will lift up the Cross with courage and declare once more: In This Sign We Conquer.

The theory of the transference of knowledge has been formally rejected by educators. At the same time the reading public continues, in many cases, to proceed on the hidden assumption that an author’s proficiency in one specialized area qualifies him to speak in other fields. In few cases has this principle been applied with more enthusiasm than to Arnold J. Toynbee. The massiveness of his historical research seems to have persuaded many readers (and perhaps Professor Toynbee himself) that he possesses a special capability in religion and theology.

Certainly his studies in history, to which he has recently added his twelfth volume entitled Reconsiderations, are impressive. Sections of this volume do, however, tend to raise the guards of the reader. With great forthrightness he expresses as a canon for his religious interpretations that the Incarnation must be rejected as being unworthy of God. To him, any loving overture made by God toward man would need a priori to be made in an unspecialized and universal manner. He rejects categorically any view of a unique (that is, given at one time or in one place) movement of God toward the human race.

This proposition involves Toynbee in other problems, to which Edward Whiting Fox calls our attention in “The Divine Dilemma of A. J. Toynbee” (Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter, 1963). The dilemma proves ultimately to be a multiple one. In this article we propose to draw attention to three of its aspects.

First, in his analysis of sainthood—an element to which he attaches great historical importance as well as great significance for man’s future—Toynbee observes that sainthood requires a belief in the perfectibility of the self. At the same time he notes that this element, involving as it does the belief that man is the highest in the scale of finite spiritual reality, represents the most damaging form of hybris or pride. This contradicts in principle the second element in sainthood, namely the denial of the self. Toynbee is thus faced with a vexing initial problem.

This turning back upon itself by humanism leads to yet more serious trouble. Toynbee sees springing from man’s innate capacity for self-centeredness the quality that leads to what he deplores as the pretension to uniqueness by religious systems. To him, this is a most objectionable feature of classical Judaism, of historic Christianity, and of militant Islam.

Despite earlier indications in his works that he estimated highly the creative role of Christianity in the development of the West, here is later evidence that he carries his dislike of the Christian claim to uniqueness to a point which causes him to minimize the manner in which the Church contributed to the culture of the first six or eight centuries of our era.

A second problem arises for Professor Toynbee from the relativism implied in his rejection of the category of uniqueness as valid for Christianity. Now it is quite possible that he believes that by demanding that the Christian abandon the claim to the once-for-allness of the Incarnation, he will save Christianity from inevitable conflict and consequent loss, as the shrinking of today’s world brings it into close touch with other religious systems. If he conceives his task in this way, he is not the first who felt it essential to come to Christianity’s rescue.

In reality, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Toynbee’s philosophy of history is very much akin to Hegel’s. Now if he hopes to serve as a saviour in the same way Hegel sought to be one, he will probably be disappointed. There will arise in our time, as in the early nineteenth century, some perceptive thinker who will, like Kierkegaard, ask no quarter and give none, and who will point out, in a manner so clear that all will be able to see, that relativism and synthesis have little in common with the Christian message. Such a voice will confront Toynbee’s desire for syncretism with a reassertion of the claims of the Unique and Unrepeatable One.

In his book, Christianity among the Religions of the World, he earlier (in 1957) assured us that since the consequences of Original Sin are now worldwide and since the world of modern technology is “small,” the Western world must approach other religions upon the basis of what all systems have in common (p. 92). Here he implies that for Christians to assert the uniqueness and potential universality of their religion amounts to religious tribalism. In the light of the currency of such claims, it is heartening in the extreme to note the voices raised against syncretism, particularly by such men as Hendrik Kraemer and Hans Küng.

Thirdly, Professor Toynbee creates for himself a king-sized dilemma in his own proposal for a substitute “Faith” that he feels might avoid the hybris he sees betokened by the claim to religious uniqueness.

In his development of this theme, Toynbee takes as established the older views of Old Testament criticism. To read his interpretation of the history of Israel’s religion, one would suppose that he felt that Wellhausen had spoken the last word in Old Testament scholarship. He appears never to have heard of the researches of such men as Walther Eichrodt or Oscar Cullmann.

Following the conventional trend of the older scholarship, Toynbee believes that in the “pure and undefiled religion” of Deutero-Isaiah can be found the system best capable of universal extension. Granting his thesis that there was a specific form of Deutero-Isaianic religion, and that it was the genial sort of system he seems to need if he is to eliminate the explosive element from the world religious scene, he is still inextricably involved in a problem. He admits that the behavior of the contemporary heirs of this religious tradition has shaken his faith in human nature as a whole. (See the article by Fox mentioned above, pp. 124 f.)

Professor Toynbee seems scandalized at the “chosenness” manifested by Zionism. Why, he seems to be asking, cannot this group of men who have inherited so much not share their treasure with all men? The poignancy of the dilemma now appears: he is asking a religio-ethnic group to sacrifice their “chosenness” as a whole, while elsewhere he emphasizes the crucial nature of individual human activities and achievements in the progress of societies.

Moreover, does he not, in his summary rejection of the Incarnation, actually reject the major creative role of the One who came to perform history’s most crucial individual task? And regarding his insistence that individual men and women “undertake sainthood,” is not the indispensable prerequisite to such an undertaking an act of personal faith in a unique act, performed by a unique Person? We submit that this can come, not through any supposed “loss of the self,” as theoretical Buddhism prescribes, but rather through an identification of the self with the One who is transcendently unique.

Christian schools and colleges enjoy a rich measure of parental financial support. I neither minimize nor ignore this ofttimes sacrificial loyalty when I argue that if our Christian educational system is to play an ever extending role in American life, we must seek supplementary financial aid from state sources.

Of course, state aid to Christian education is given and accepted daily, a fact of which the Higher Education Facilities Act (now Public Law 88–204) is the most recent evidence. The disputant who is unaware of this has yet to let his principial right hand discover what his practical left palm has grown calloused with taking.

We all know, for example, that tax exemption is tax support, for the community together pays for certain services to our schools through property taxes. If we are really opposed to public aid for religious schools, let us initiate petitions to set matters right.

And there would be much more than tax exemption to set right. For the various GI bills have poured, and still do in lesser measure, billions of dollars into pedagogical lifeblood regardless of whether it flows through public, private, or religious arteries. Again, the Surplus Property Act of 1944 enriched educational institutions supported by some thirty-five religious denominations with grants of land, buildings, and supplies, all paid for by public funds; and this continues today. The College Housing Act makes long-term, preferred interest federal loans available to religious schools for dormitory construction; and the worth of the preferred rate on the loan my own Christian college now enjoys will amount to some $400,000 before it is amortized. The Defense Education Act puts millions of loan-dollars into student pockets on all campuses, on deferred interest and with promise of half-cancellation to future teachers. Faculty members share in outright grants under the same act, regardless of confessional status or institution.

There are, in short, forty-one federal programs now in effect that siphon tax monies into educational coffers without distinction between public recipients and private and religious recipients—and let him who shares in none of these directly or indirectly cast the first stone. In 1957–58, private and religious colleges took 15.8 per cent of their total budgets from federal sources (while public schools took less, 14.8 per cent). Therefore the point I am suggesting is ineluctable; for most religious institutions the question of the hour is not, Should we take federal aid? We simply do! The vital question is: How much, and in what form should such aid come to us?

To put the matter this way robs our discussion of a certain aura of principial virtue but keeps our feet nearer the ground. The fact is that this year 60,000 American college and university faculty members—at all types of schools—get a part (and some get all) of their salaries through federal grants; one out of four faculty members at the eighty-five United States medical schools does, too. And the total federal contribution to American education, now running nearly $3 billion per year, will be over $5 billion annually by 1970.

To Share Or To Stare

This is what the situation is. Discussion is not enlightened by imagining it otherwise, nor by supposing that wolf-shouting is likely to reverse the trend. Christian education may plan now fully to share or simply to stare. Our fate is in our own hands.

For this is our challenge: Do the nation’s religious schools propose to share more and more in the distribution of tax dollars that belong no less to us than to our public school neighbors? Or are we so out of touch with the realities of pedagogical expense that we will deliberately forego our birthright for the crumbs we surreptitiously catch from the public table?

Say that by 1975 there will be at least 5.9 million students enrolled in higher education, with proportionate strains upon lower levels. Say, as does the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, that by 1980 the United States will have added twenty new medical schools and will require 80,000 engineer graduates annually. Admit that the demand upon all levels of educational structure will, in respect to dollars, be trebled, and that the urgent need for qualified teachers at all levels will still be, as it is now, critical.

This “Wave of the Future” is coming; we can hear its mighty roar not far away. Will Christian schools mount it or be overwhelmed by it? We are probably unanimous in the theoretical answer: Christian education, on all levels, must swell with that wave; ride its crest; give climate, vision, context to the lives of as many of those millions of students, those hundreds of thousands of teacher graduates, those engineers—and the like—as possible. Those new medical schools: shall not some be set on Christian campuses? Those teachers on whom so much, so incalculably much, reposes: how many will come from Christian classrooms?

The Function Of Money

The answers to such questions are not exclusively bound up with money; but it would be incredibly naïve and irresponsible to ignore the critical function money plays in the quality and quantity of Christian education available to the nation—in its faculties, its facilities, its capacities. Over-burdened teachers whose loyalty dissipates their energies, antiquated laboratories, laggard libraries, limited curricula: these are not the promise of creative tomorrows. But if not these, then only because increased funds are to be found, staggering in prospect: a college handling 2,500 students today on a budget of $2 million, anticipating 4,500 students by 1970—on a budget of $4 million. And this in annual operating costs alone. Add another, say, four—or six—or ten—million for plant and modernized equipment. Study the nearest state university for yourself, and you will find this but a moderate anticipation—no frills, and perhaps many students turned away from the door.

There is little use talking leadership and not talking money, money coming in regularly and without constant promotion; and crass or not, big leadership in education involves big money. Just ask where leadership comes from now: Harvard, Yale, Columbia, California … very big money!

Nor is talking money a depreciation of faith in God’s power to provide. It is precisely money we ask him to provide! To seek it is not to minimize trust but to implement it.

Let us face it squarely, then: Why federal money?

Well, first of all, let us remind you, many of us already take federal money (as well as local tax exemption). Find out why we do, and you have your first answer. And there are others, all good.

1. We know, as many of our more secular-minded contemporaries may have forgotten, that widespread religious practice and sensitivity are indispensable to a democratic way of life. Our republic rests upon an explicitly Christian conception of man, whose rights are inalienable because God-given, man being (our Declaration says) God-made. This consciousness must flourish—we know—if our liberties are to flourish. Christian education therefore has high moral claim upon federal tax support. It is indispensable to national political health. Moreover, the Christian educator who is persuaded of this intimate and causal connection between his work and his country’s welfare finds in this persuasion not only clear conscience but also moral imperative in seeking federal aid, for it is his country whose freedoms concern him.

2. We ask, further, only for what is our own. Each of us pays, it is estimated, no less than three hundred tax dollars annually for the nation’s schools. Should not a just share of that sum be given to our own schools?

3. We ask, indeed, only just payment for work well done. Christian schools do a civic job, under public supervision. They graduate citizens, most of whom take useful and honorable places in American life; citizens, indeed, especially exposed to the spirit of our founding documents, as I have argued above. For this service, the nation owes in simple justice adequate recompense. We need not be shamefaced to ask for it; by what strange reticence do we delay presentation of our bill?

4. Nor have we any right to watch Christian education progressively priced out of many parents’ market. Tuition fees go steadily up. How many children today whose parents earnestly desire a Christian education for them are not enrolled in a Christian school because the last tuition hike stepped out of their ability to pay? What school contented itself with accepting only the “best” of its applicants, thus foreclosing its Christian teaching to others of God’s image-bearers because it lacked funds for additional salaries, equipment, plant (thus ensuring, too, that in four years there will be just so many fewer Christian college graduates to teach forthcoming applicants)? What agonized parent was obliged to choose this year to commit his children either to ordinary laboratory equipment, a small library, and weary teachers on some Christian campus, or to the burgeoning facilities of the public, secular institutions springing up like mushrooms on tax (also our) support? These are matters of conscience! They concern every member of the Christian community. They involve the very character of our nation. They are not resolved by proclamations of principle, nor by mumblings of fear. The Christian educator is his brother’s children’s keeper—every last hopeful, earnest, seeking one of them.

5. And, finally, to share with the educator, and with us all, that awesome responsibility, God has placed at our right hand one of his good gifts: the state, a great and good democratic institution under whose wings we praise him. The Bible leaves no doubt of this, that the state is a God-ordained gift intended both to regulate and to serve the community. We owe it allegiance, obedience, and prayer; it owes us discipline, order, and good. We owe it our taxes; it owes us a return upon that investment in services. Yea, more, in our great land, this “it” is in fact “we.” Demean the state and we demean ourselves. Fear the state and we cower before our own political poverty and ineffectiveness. This agent is our own. We thank God for it. Let us honor him, too, by using it as a supporting hand in Christian educational enterprise.

Nor need we blink the stock objections to so doing.

1. Why, once more, the federal government?

First, obviously, for an equitable distribution of support. Again, for an equitable collection of that support, for the federal income tax is as nearly just a system as can theoretically be devised. And, contrary to some popular delusion, federal monies are collected and distributed with remarkable efficiency. Finally, because we are one nation, one people, with one concern in the just availability of education in sufficient quantity and quality.

2. But to risk, then, federal control? What good to gain the world but lose the soul?

Let us neither ignore the possibility nor fear the shibboleth. He who pays the piper may wish to call the tune. Who pays our bills now? Must we not always be on guard against being obliged to pipe an alien tune? The price of liberty is always vigilance. But the forecasters of federal coercion must strain at the gnat and gulp down the camel to find any footing for their fears. Did not the GI bills pour their billions into education (including Christian education) with no hint of coercion? Federal grants in research total more than one-half of the current operating budgets of schools like M.I.T.—without any invasion of administrative initiative. Indeed, Howard University of Washington, D. C., subsists on federal funds but has an independent administration. No strings trail from grants in land, buildings, equipment; no student is warped or governed by his loan, nor is the student whose diet is enriched by the federal lunch programs. We need not speculate about the doom of tomorrow; let us simply study objectively the practice of today, when billions of dollars of federal money do flow into teaching, and leave (indeed, make) it free. And this pattern is not, in fact, unique to America: in England the state pays the piper, but governing local school boards freely set the tune; in the Netherlands the religious schools receive nine-tenths of their budget from the state, which they spend in complete autonomy. We give God small thanks, and display little faith, if because of magnified forebodings we reject the extended hand of government he has made to serve us. Be men of faith, indeed! Also in the matter of trusting that God gives not in vain.

Federal coercion is neither a certainty, a probability, nor a trend. It is simply a problem, nay more a challenge! Does anyone suppose that if our democratic state falls prey to tyranny, it will need the fact of tax support of schools to justify an invasion of educational integrity? On the contrary, the best antidote to tyranny is a flourishing panoply of Christian schools, feeding into American life graduates who know why they, and all men, are entitled to liberty! And such a panoply of Christian schools will never flourish more than if nourished by adequate funds, in generous measure from federal aid.

3. There is, though, the vexing question of constitutionality. This must finally be settled in the courts. All that we know now is that few cases seem to bear—and none conclusively—on direct federal grants to Christian schools. And we know that indirect grants, in many forms, now come into our hands. The problem is, it appears, not one of constitutional authority but one of method.

And is not this the essence of the whole matter?

How can we obtain tax assistance, the very dollars we pay to the state—on all levels—in such a way that the full integrity of our program is assured while at the same time the survival, let alone the extension, of that program is guaranteed?

If we can convert our abstract controversies about whether into concrete discussions of how this should be done, our schools, our country, our children, and our God will be well served.

View From An Apartment Window

The sun is coming up again.

Remember when it hid obscured by clouds and smog?

The combined efforts of men keep us from the full measure of spiritual strength, now realized once more by means of heavenly intercession.

Smell the foggy mist!

See the dissected rays of the eastern sun, pierced by grey streaks and yellow blotches and reflections!

Is there not hope in the brightness of that ball?

Will not the day bring forth new joys?

Man’s fickle, neon glimmer shrinks in contrast.

God arises this morning.

The dew of Hermon permeates the air.

The words of the Preacher echo in the morning sights and smells.

The vanity of hammering and roar is mute by divine intervention,

As the silhouette of a sparrow glides effortlessly in the oriental gold.

ROGER W. SHUY

Lester DeKoster, director of libraries at Calvin College and Seminary, has the A.B. from Calvin College and the A.M. and A.M.L.S. from the University of Michigan. He is the author of “Communism and Christian Faith” and also of “The Vocabulary of Communism.”

Dr. Robert K. Bower of Fuller Theological Seminary points out that church growth is intimately related to the ministry of education (see the article on the opposite page). CHRISTIANITY TODAY, in more than seven years of publication, has endeavored to publish frequent articles on various aspects of Christian education. This issue includes, in addition to Dr. Bower’s article, a forthright debate on the propriety of federal aid to Christian education (page 8). The article by Dr. McKenna (page 13) traces the significance of modern trends for Christian colleges. Our lead editorial (page 24) says that the influence of the evangelical minority in education is too often underrated.

In the stillness of a spring morning, Carl A. Mortenson hopes to climb into the co*ckpit of his “Evangel 4500” and taxi across a private airstrip just west of Chicago. That in itself will make missionary aviation history, for the small, twin-engine plane is the first ever designed especially for missionary use. Beyond that lies a vigorous test program for the new aircraft with Mortenson as test pilot. If it proves successful, the “Evangel 4500” could make missionary flying safer.

Missionary aviation has had an admirable safety record, despite the fact that single-engine planes are used almost exclusively. Planes of the Missionary Aviation Fellowship, for instance, have traveled some 9,000,000 miles without a fatality. The fleet of planes operated by the air arm of Wycliffe Bible Translators also has escaped major tragedies.

The 29-year-old Mortenson, however, feels that missionary aviators ought not to rest upon their laurels. Serving to support this view is the fact that there have been at least three fatal accidents of missionary aircraft within the last nine months.¹A Dutch Roman Catholic missionary was killed last spring when his plane creashed in West Irian. On June 29, 1963, Joel Robertson of Air Crusade, Inc., died in a crash in Guatemala (this accident was blamed specifically on engine failure). Last month, the Rev. and Mrs. John B. Woods, Presbyterian U. S. missionaries, were fatally injured when their plane struck a mountain in Mexico. All three were single-engine Cessna 180s, which are widely used in missionary aviation. At least one of the crashes was attributable to engine failure.

Mortenson hopes to reduce the risk with the development of his twin-engine “Evangel 4500.” The twin-engine feature is only one of a number incorporated into the design geared for use in remote areas. (See CHRISTIANITY TODAY News, May 10, 1963.)

Many missionary aviation experts are questioning the wisdom of Mortenson’s venture despite the fact that development of the prototype has been achieved in close liaison with aeronautical engineers and certification inspectors of the Federal Aviation Agency. He has received no official encouragement from MAF, from Wycliffe, with whom he served as a pilot-mechanic in Peru, or from Moody Bible Institute, where he received his aviation training.

MAF officials have traditionally relied upon commercial production-line models with minor modifications, and then only when these models have survived the “infant mortality rate” among new designs. To start from scratch with a fresh design is too risky, they feel, especially in view of limited budgets. Moreover, they feel that the extra engine in Mortenson’s plane may be more of a liability than an asset because it introduces so many more complexities.

But such arguments have not shaken Mortenson’s faith in the project. With the help of a special non-profit corporation headed by chemistry professor Paul M. Wright of Wheaton College, he has labored for over two years, even though he never had any guarantee of funds. The entire project has been financed by contributions. Biggest boost came when the “Back to the Bible” radio broadcast raised $10,000 to pay for the engines.

Mortenson originally had hoped to have the plane flying by the end of last summer. But work progressed at a slower pace than he had anticipated. He says that no major technical problems have been encountered, however, and that a maiden flight this spring seems fairly certain.

Protestant Panorama

Methodist Board of Missions voted a sweeping reorganization of its structure, designed to unify the administrative and promotional work of Methodist missions in the United States and forty-eight other countries.

United Presbyterian Board of National Missions will launch an intern program this summer that will put six seminary students to work for integrationist organizations in the South.

Athletes and spectators at the Winter Olympics did not have to look far to find a Protestant church. The newly completed Evangelical Church of the Resurrection in Innsbruck, Austria, stands midway between the Olympic village and the stadium. During the games it was staffed by an Austrian, a Swedish, an English, a Hungarian, and three German pastors.

Miscellany

Twenty-nine cardinals of the Roman Curia met with Pope Paul VI last month to discuss the possibility of summoning a “Pan-Christian Conference” that would be attended by religious leaders from East and West, with the pontiff presiding as “first among the bishops of the Catholic Church.”

A draft declaration calling for the elimination of religious intolerance was completed by a special United Nations study commission. An official of the World Council of Churches, however, termed the document “inadequate and disappointing.”

A report that President Johnson will propose federal aid for parochial as well as public schools in depressed areas drew a statement of criticism from Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The organization, which was holding its annual meeting in Houston when the reports appeared, said “subsidies to parochial schools under any pretext are subsidies to the churches which own and control them.”

A purge of educators in Ghana included the arrest of Dr. Dennis Osbourne, a physicist who had been active in evangelical Christian work among students at the University of Ghana. Osbourne was well known for a series of pamphlets on Christian truth which he had written for undergraduates.

Sudan Interior Mission launched publication of a new French-language magazine for Africa. The editor of the periodical, to be known as Champion, is Mademoiselle Giselle Joly.

Scholars working on a new translation of the Polish Bible hope to conclude their work by 1966 in time for the thousandth anniversary of the Polish nation.

A new advertising sales organization to be known as Opinion Magazine Group is being established for The Christian Century, ecumenical Protestant weekly, America, a Jesuit weekly, and Commentary, a monthly sponsored by the American Jewish Committee. The group will offer advertising space in all three publications through a single order.

The first issue of a new Journal of Ecumenical Studies was due this month. The journal, scheduled for publication three times a year, is sponsored jointly by Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox scholars.

Philadelphia College of Bible will sponsor a Golden Jubilee Banquet April 17 as part of its fiftieth anniversary celebration.

Personalia

The Rev. Harry Rine De Young named chairman of the United Presbyterian Division of Evangelism.

Dr. John Laney Plyler is retiring as president of Furman University (Baptist).

Dr. Gordon G. Johnson nominated to be dean of Bethel Theological Seminary.

Professor Norman W. Porteous named principal of New College, University of Edinburgh.

The Rev. James Dunlop nominated moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ireland.

Bishop Robert Selby Taylor elected Anglican Archbishop of Capetown, South Africa.

John C. Eller named president-elect of American Protestant Hospital Association.

Richard C. Underwood named editor of Together, family magazine of Methodism.

The Rev. Jesse W. Myers resigned as United Presbyterian chaplain at the University of Maryland. He had been publicly rebuked by university officials for criticizing fraternities.

They Say

“Scotland Yard is searching for more space in which to store its embarrassingly large stock of obscene books and pictures, and HM Customs is forbidden to burn any more obscene books because they were breaking the rules of a smokeless zone by making black smoke.”—The Guardian of London.

Deaths

BISHOP CLARE PURCELL, 79, former president of the Methodist Council of Bishops; in Birmingham, Alabama.

DEAN ROSCOE WILSON, 81, noted Anglican churchman; in Melbourne, Australia.

THE REV. F. R. WEBBER, 76, authority on church architecture of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod; at Mt. Vernon, New York.

The Federal Communications Commission will soon issue a “primer on fairness” to radio and television stations. Although not specifically directed at religious programming, it implies stringent curbs ahead for ministers who use the air waves to make “personal attacks.” FCC sources say religious programs give them the most trouble.

Direct government censorship is forbidden by the Federal Communications Act. But the FCC feels that under its “fairness doctrine” it can require holders of radio and television station licenses to give any individual or organization subjected to a personal attack a reasonable opportunity to reply.

This means that stations, unless they want to donate extensive free time for such replies, will take the initiative to restrict personal attacks.

The FCC says it is merely restating a position taken in 1949. It was delineated in a public notice to all broadcasters July 26, 1963, in which the commission declared: “Whenever a controversial program involves a personal attack upon an individual or organization, the licensee must transmit the text of the broadcast to the person or group attacked, wherever located, either prior to or at the time of the broadcast, with a specific offer of his station’s facilities for an adequate response.”

The new primer will say that a station owner can rightfully demand to see the text of a sermon scheduled to be broadcast so that he can decide whether to risk it. Except in the case of political speeches, which are governed by a different code, stations are held responsible for knowing what they are putting out over the air. And if anyone is attacked and a complaint is received, the stations have the obligation to inform the person of the attack and to offer him time for response.

The time need not be equal, says an FCC spokesman, but the forthcoming document will indicate that an “adequate” opportunity is expected.

What the FCC is trying to get rid of is the type of presentation that easily degenerates into repeated name-calling. Stations may still broadcast any kind of program that they desire. But it is nonetheless obvious that programs involving extensive personal attacks will get the station into a string of red tape and the granting of so much free time for response as to make the operation uneconomical. If any station fails to abide by the new primer and listeners complain to the FCC, the station may not be able to get its license renewed. Station licenses granted by the FCC are valid only for three-year periods.

Some broadcasters may be eager to see how the new primer defines “personal attack.” Does reasonable criticism of a theologian’s viewpoint constitute such an attack? And what about adverse comments on people who are dead?

The broader question of liberal or conservative interpretation of theology comes under a different FCC policy, one in which the commission expects stations to present a balanced diet with respect to controversial issues. Listeners can complain to the FCC if, for instance, a station’s religious programming reflects a decidedly liberal bias. If the FCC then determines that the area served by the station includes a substantial population of theological conservatives it can raise the complaints at license renewal time. A severe bias can conceivably prompt the commission to withhold a license because the station in not serving its public adequately.

Free Time For Atheists?

Does the Federal Communications Commission require radio and television stations to be “fair” to atheists and Communists?

FCC Commissioner Robert E. Lee, in a statement to the first International Christian Broadcasters Convention, said no. He declared that the “fairness doctrine” of the FCC does not apply in the case of atheists who seek radio or television time for rebuttals to religious sermons.

“This country believes in God,” Lee said during a question-and-answer period, “and we do not consider this a controversial issue.”

The three-day convention combined the twenty-first annual meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters and the fourth triennial World Conference on Missionary Communications. Delegates saw the intensification of efforts to meet the challenge afforded by modern electronic media. NRB approved a plan to establish a permanent secretariat, and a spokesman said it would begin operating “in a matter of weeks.”

Capturing the fancy of many a delegate were reports of the effectiveness of commercial-type radio “spots” carrying a religious message. Use of such spots, usually paid for at commercial rates, seems to be growing rapidly. The most exhaustive test campaign thus far appears to be one sponsored by Mennonite Broadcasts, Inc., and carried out by a Washington, D. C., advertising agency. A representative of the American Bible Society also reported a campaign with spots. One delegate said that messages with a “word for the Lord” had been interspersed in a series of play-by-play accounts of college football games.

A research firm that conducted surveys in connection with the Mennonite campaign claimed that the spots had “brought one out of every four men in a predetermined age group (18 to 40) in Terre Haute, Indiana, from a condition of ignorance to awareness of a selected Christian truth” (see News, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, January 3, 1964).

Most controversial speaker at the convention was Dr. John Bachman, a Union Theological Seminary professor and noted authority on religious radio and television programming (and new chairman of the Board of Managers of the National Council of Churches’ Broadcasting and Film Commission). Bachman called for rapprochement among broadcasters with differing theological views. His appearance prompted the Presbyterian Journal to “wonder if Dr. Theodore Epp of ‘Back to the Bible’ fame will be invited to address the next NCC convention?”

Christopher Columbus set sail for the Orient but landed in America. Early this month many churchmen set out for Columbus, Ohio, to attend a study conference on church-state relations which they believed would support the Jeffersonian doctrine of “absolute” separation of church and state. But like Christopher, the conference wound up on another continent. It had steered a middle course.

The four-day meeting was a precedent-setting one. It was the first study conference on church-state relations called by the National Council of Churches. It was the first time the NCC had invited non-member Protestant communions to send voting delegates, these representing conservative groups like the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and several state conventions of the Southern Baptist Convention. And along with some 400 representatives of sixteen Protestant and Eastern Orthodox bodies came nineteen Roman Catholic and Jewish “participant-observers,” the first to share even indirectly in the formation of a major NCC document—as they took part in drawing up section reports used by a “findings committee” of delegates in preparing the final 3,000-word conference statement. Observers were named also by the National Association of Evangelicals and the First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston.

The delegates faced a complex and perpetually vexing problem area in Christian thought, and their findings, while not constituting an official NCC “policy statement,” were seen by observers as highly significant guidelines for continuing examination of church-state relations by the nation’s religious bodies. Delegates stated the rationale for their gathering in this way: “The necessity for new attention to the problems of church-state relations arises not only from the expansion of governmental programs into areas where churches and other voluntary agencies have served and continue to serve but also from the transition of this nation from a Protestant to a religiously pluralistic society.” The pluralism motif was stressed throughout the document though there were some who questioned the thesis and wished it stricken.

In qualifying the “complete” separation, or “wall of separation,” theory, the document points to the frequent “overlapping” of the functions of church and state, and thus the “interaction” of the two structures. Yet it asserts church-state separation to be a constitutional principle and declares “acceptance and support of Supreme Court decisions insofar as they prohibit officially prescribed prayers and required devotional reading of the Bible in schools.” An attempt to delete the word “support” was defeated. Opposition was asserted to “any proposal such as the so-called Christian Amendment which seeks to commit our government to official identification with a particular religious tradition.”

On the other hand, the document states that “government exceeds its proper authority if it shows hostility or even indifference to religion”: “While it is not the business of government to promote or support religion, it is government’s role and duty to further religious liberty. The clause of the First Amendment prohibiting an establishment of religion must be balanced against the clause prohibiting interference with the free exercise of religion.”

Going beyond this, the document asserts that “under some well-defined circ*mstances, government may legitimately support specific programs of church-affiliated health and welfare agencies. The sole purpose of any governmental policy in this respect must be the promotion of a clearly identifiable public interest as against a private interest of an individual or religious group.” It is also declared that such government aid should not be aimed “primarily” at the support of religious institutions or programs but should be “incidental” to large programs in the public interest. It should also be made certain, the document says, that agencies receiving aid do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed (this point was sharply debated), or national origin.

This brought the delegates to what proved the most controversial subject in their statement of findings—federal aid to parochial schools, which in general they opposed, but with certain exceptions. Following is the key passage: “Since parochial elementary and secondary schools are maintained by churches so that ‘religion permeates the entire atmosphere’ of the school, government funds should not be authorized or appropriated for overall support of such schools as distinguished from aid in support of specific health and welfare programs conducted by such institutions to meet particular needs.”

This section, adopted by a vote of 85–57, was a revised version of wording that would have approved federal aid for any “specific programs” of private and parochial schools that would meet a public need. As amended, it approves federal aid for such programs as school lunch projects and medical treatment while rejecting government funds for educational purposes.

There was lively debate over a proposed amendment that would have removed the word “overall’ in reference to government support for parochial schools, a revision that would have given the findings a more rigid separationist tone. The proposal died on a 79–85 vote.

The delegates acknowledged the parental right of choice of schools, but they denied that a choice of parochial or private schools “imposes on the state any obligation to support such choice through the granting of public funds in overall support of such schools.” They cautioned that such support “may well have the result of further fragmentation of the educational system and weaken the role and position of the public schools.”

But recognition was given to “the seriousness of the financial problem of the parochial schools.” In response, the conferees proposed “shared time as the most creative measure for solving this problem and [we] are willing to explore other legal methods for solving it.”

The study document passes very quickly over what is becoming an increasingly thorny problem for U.S. congressmen: the differences between education at primary and secondary levels on the one hand and college education on the other with regard to proposed federal aid. The document says simply that “these differences [undefined] with respect to the constitutional and policy questions involved in governmental support of non-public education enterprises remain to be explored.”

Summing up the conference, one leader said: “This is not the first or the last step in the quest. But I think it’s a significant step.”

Closing Up Shop

The major agency of cooperation among American Lutherans began a formal dismantling process this month. At its forty-sixth annual meeting, held in Charlotte, North Carolina, the National Lutheran Council took initial steps toward transferring activities to the proposed new Lutheran Council in the United States of America.

The LCUSA, as now projected, will embrace the Lutheran Church in America and the American Lutheran Church, both of which participate in the present NLC, as well as the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod and the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, which do not belong to the NLC.

Planners have a target date of January 1, 1967, for establishment of the new agency.

Among key problems in the transition are those connected with the separation of the council’s regular program from its functions as the American committee for the Lutheran World Federation. The Missouri Synod and the SELC are not members of the federation.

Another problem is what to do with the campus ministry of the present NLC. An NLC news release noted that “the NLC bodies differ with the Missouri Synod in their philosophy and approach to this area of activity and lack of doctrinal agreement is a major obstacle.”

Sacred Precincts Picketed

Now and then Britain gets a reminder that old-time militant Protestantism, like Charles II, is an unconscionable time dying. In Scotland each July 12 it organizes noisy processions to celebrate King Billy’s victory over the Papists in 1690; in England it has all but forsaken vocal protests during Anglo-Catholic services, and witnesses chiefly through incisive little notices in the “Personal” column of The Times. Earlier this month, however, it took to itself a modern weapon when its supporters picketed the decently somber confines of Church House, Westminster.

Inside, the Church Assembly was debating a controversial measure that sought to regularize the use of eucharistic vestments. This has been a well-aired subject in recent times, and nothing new emerged from the discussion, though a prominent layman, Mr. George Goyder of Oxford, created a stir when he asked why if our Lord wanted them to wear vestments he did not dress up specially for the Last Supper. In the end all three houses, Bishops by 31–0, Clergy by 214–30, and Laity by 182–68, voted in favor of the measure, which now goes forward finally for parliamentary approval. Such approval would not make vestments mandatory; it would merely give official sanction to a practice which hitherto has been illegal.

Later in the week pacifist pickets took over and found the house more sympathetic to their cause. A resolution by the Bishop of Chichester, Dr. Roger Wilson, opposing Britain’s independent nuclear force, was carried with an addendum which stated, “believing that the use of indiscriminate weapons must now be condemned as an affront to the Creator and denial of the very purpose of the Creation.”

When the House of Laity met separately, evangelicals again received a setback when a move that would in effect have officially permitted non-Anglicans to communicate in parish churches on occasion, was defeated 101–84. Two things were significant about the voting, however: the minority vote on this issue was the largest so far; and the majority vote was cast very largely by older members of the house.

The whole assembly discussed the report on deployment and payment of the clergy (see “New ‘Pauline’ Document,” CHRISTIANITY TODAY, News, February 14) and agreed to receive it after an official assurance was given that such reception in no way committed the church. It seems certain, nevertheless, that many of the report’s recommendations will in the church’s own time be implemented. As one means of furthering them, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Michael Ramsey, pleaded for more clergymen to make a vocation of celibacy. This would help solve the problem of filling vacant parishes by allowing men without domestic ties to move from place to place, wherever the need was greatest. The Bishop of Woolwich, Dr. John Robinson, said the report would not bring in the Kingdom of God, but that the future would be “very grim” if its recommendations were not received.

J. D. DOUGLAS

Jeopardizing The Union

Despite the somewhat ostentatious support given by the upper echelons in both churches, opposition is growing to the proposed Anglican-Methodist merger in England. This month in London saw the inaugural meeting of the Voice of Methodism, a movement pledged to uncompromising opposition to certain proposals in the current report (the issue will probably be decided next year). It seems likely that if these are accepted there will be a split within Methodism with, suggested some of the speakers at the meeting, a majority of Methodists dissenting.

The new movement, which has already appointed a full-time secretary and is inundated with offers of voluntary help, is planning to publish a regular journal and a series of booklets, and is appealing for at least $55,000 from supporters. One of the elder statesmen of Methodism, noted Old Testament scholar Norman Snaith, was unable through illness to attend the inaugural meeting but sent a message pointing out that “the essence of the Gospel and of Protestantism was justification by faith alone,” and that acceptance of the report involved “denying this by agreeing to the unhistorical notion of apostolic succession.” He was backed by Dr. Leslie Newman, who is reputed to have the largest evening congregation in Methodism (he takes up an appointment in the United States this summer). Some people spoke very confidently about reunion as the will of God, said Dr. Newman, but “this age was not conspicuous for its concern for God’s will.”

Meanwhile the (Anglo-Catholic) Church Union, which perhaps hoped the merger proposals would founder on other rocks, has at last come out with a plain statement. This body, which makes wide use of such pejorative expressions as “separated brethren,” professes to welcome the merger report but says it is “not an adequate basis of communion.” The union finds the language equivocal at times and points out that “some important theological questions are left unresolved, others barely mentioned.” It cites two notable differences of discipline in the two churches: the problem connected with Holy Communion, and that dealing with admission to holy matrimony after divorce.

The union has reserves also about Methodist insistence on maintaining relations with other non-episcopal churches, and comments: “It does not appear from the report either that the theological implications of communion have been adequately considered, or that the respective relations and discipline have been reconciled. An Anglican attending Holy Communion in a Methodist church might find that the celebrant was, say, a Congregationalist minister.” What the union’s statement fails to add is that already an Anglican who attends communion in the Lutheran Church of Sweden (with which the Church of England is in communion) might find the celebrant is a minister of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, whose orders are accepted by the Swedish Church but not by the Church of England.

J. D. DOUGLAS

‘One Man’S Way’

If anything can be an omen in the flickering world of Hollywood, the Protestant clergyman may be in for a new public image. After decades of movies that presented the Protestant minister as a confused and bewildered oozy sentimentalist whom no man in his right mind would take seriously, United Artists’ One Man’s Way presents a credible image of one of America’s best-known clergymen.

The film is the story of Dutch Reformed minister Norman Vincent Peale, played very satisfactorily by Don Murray. Born in the manse, the last thing Peale wanted to be was a minister, and he turned to journalism. But exposure to crime and human need awakened a compassion for people that sent the police reporter to the seminary. He wanted to meet human need with positive action, not simply write about it. Here lies the motif of Peale’s ministry.

When in a gas station his future wife met his back bumper with her front one—with a very positive impact—the romantic chase was on. The bumped became the pursuer, and the pursued the girl-who-is-never-at-home—for the last thing she wanted to be was a minister’s wife, which she thought could only be dull.

With the bright persistence of the original positive thinker, Norman refused to accept a negative answer. In the end, Ruth herself asked for what Norman wanted, and he complied by taking her to wife. Playing a starring role in her first motion picture, lovely Diana Hyland is no typical minister’s wife—but then neither is Peale a typical minister.

One Man’s Way is not the usual story of the minister’s struggle to coexist with the special attention of the congregation’s “unclaimed jewels” turned sour and with the usual cantankerous, immovable church boards. It is just what the title suggests: one man’s way of preaching. The script faithfully reflects Peale’s way of preaching down the years. At the first, he proclaimed a kind of do-it-yourself-with-God religion—a combination that makes all things possible. In the movie as in his life, there came—especially with his growing popularity—severe criticism, and even the charge that his message was blasphemous. Peale countered, in the movie as in life, that he was really preaching the God in Christ who so meets aching human needs that man, even in this world, can live on a note of optimism and in a mood of triumph. Here lies the key to Peale’s extraordinary appeal. He stresses what is often an unnecessary deficiency in preachers of more obvious orthodoxy.

Based on Arthur Gordon’s book, Minister to Millions, and produced by Frank Ross, One Man’s Way is certainly one of the best current religious movies. It is serious, warm, authentic, reverent, and always in good taste. May One Man’s Way become the way in which other religious movies are made.

JAMES DAANE

President Johnson climbed out on a theological limb this month. Addressing nearly 1,000 guests at the twelfth annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Johnson proposed establishment in the capital city of a “memorial to the God who made us all.” It should be, he said, “a center of prayer, open to all men of all faiths at all times.” He suggested that International Christian Leadership, sponsor of the breakfast, round up necessary support.

The Chief Executive’s idea found no immediate groundswell of acceptance (see editorial on page 26), but if nothing else, it was noteworthy for its very daring. Seldom does any high-ranking politician, much less the President, have any suggestion to make to the religious community much beyond a variation of “keep up the good work.” Johnson at least showed that he wants to be a participant rather than just a spectator. Some observers felt his word choice was unfortunate; critics immediately drew the inference from the term “memorial” that “God is dead.”

Hundreds of government leaders, including Chief Justice Earl Warren, House Speaker John W. McCormack, six members of the Cabinet, and several state governors, were crowded into the grand ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel. Amidst notables at the head table was Los Angeles publisher William Jones, who each year picks up the entire tab for the Presidential Prayer Breakfast. Republican Senator Frank Carlson of Kansas presided.

Johnson said that “prayer has helped me to bear the burdens of this first office which are too great to be borne by anyone alone.” In remarks to the Congressional Wives’ Prayer Breakfast, held simultaneously in another room, he recalled “those first dark days of November, when the pressures were the heaviest and the need of strength from above the greatest.” “Lady Bird and I sat down together to eat a meal alone,” he said. “No word or glance passed between us, but in some way we found ourselves bound together, and I found myself speaking the words of grace that I had learned at my mother’s knees so many years ago.”

First public endorsem*nt of the Johnson memorial plan came from the National Association of Evangelicals. Dr. Robert A. Cook, NAE president, noted in a letter to Johnson that “the Scriptures are replete with … references which make it plain that nations as well as individuals should acknowledge God, even as the founding fathers of our nation were careful to do.”

“The God of our American heritage is the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible,” Cook said, “and recognition of this fact can have great significance. An edifice for this purpose could serve as a testimony to the thousands who annually visit our nation’s capital, as well as to those who live and work here. It would stand in the same marked contrast with the idol of the godless dialectical materialism as does your confession of faith in God and His Son, Jesus Christ.”

The letter conceded “problems and difficulties” but added that “complete agreement on theology … is not necessary for the limited project under consideration.” Cook concluded by saying that “we are hopeful, therefore, that the International Christian Leadership, in accord with your suggestion, will take the lead in exploring the possibility and feasibility of implementing your splendid suggestion.”

Johnson was preceded on the breakfast program by Republican Governor Mark Hatfield of Oregon, who said that “the call for spiritual mobilization is a clarion call in this day,” and evangelist Billy Graham.

Graham cited a series of pressures that currently plagues the United States. He said that the nation is pressed demographically and psychologically, as well as by moral and social problems, by international crises, and by a pessimistic philosophy.

“The victory,” he said, “is found in a spiritual dimension, and I believe that the greatest need of America at this hour is a moral and spiritual awakening that will sweep the nation from coast to coast and put back into our society a moral fiber that we need, and a will to resist the forces of tyranny, and a will to maintain our freedoms at an hour when they are being attacked.”

Later that day, Graham and his wife, who had addressed the wives’ breakfast, went to the White House at Johnson’s invitation. Graham said he had telephoned Johnson several days before to assure the President that, press reports to the contrary, he had absolutely no presidential aspirations.

The President introduced his suggestion of a memorial as a “personal thought.” This is what he said:

“This Federal City of Washington in which we live and work is much more than a place of residence. For the 190 million people that we serve and for many millions in other lands, Washington is the symbol and the showcase of a great nation and a greater cause of human liberty on earth.

“In this capital city, we have monuments to Lincoln, to Jefferson, to Washington, and to many statesmen and soldiers. But at this seat of government, there must be a fitting memorial to the God who made us all.

“Our government cannot and should not sponsor the erection of such a memorial with public funds. But such a living memorial should be here. It should be a center of prayer, open to all men of all faiths at all times.

“If I may speak this morning as a citizen and as a colleague and as a friend, I would like to suggest to this group, which has done so much through all the years, that it undertake the mission of bringing together the faiths and the religions of America to support jointly such a memorial here in this Federal City—the Capital of the Free World.

“The world is given many statistics about the per capita vices of Washington, but the world knows all too little about the per capita virtues of those who live and labor here.

“I believe—and I would hope that you would agree—that the true image of Washington is not that of power or pomp or plenty. It is, rather, that of a prayerful capital of good and God-fearing people.”

What To Teach Teachers

The Education of American Teachers, by James Bryant Conant (McGraw-Hill, 1963, 275 pp., $5), is reviewed by Frank E. Gaebelein, co-editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAYand headmaster emeritus of The Stony Brook School.

In 1910 Abraham Flexner, after extensive study under the auspices of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, published his Medical Education in the United States and Canada, a book that revolutionized the training of physicians in America. Last September James Bryant Conant, former president of Harvard University, U.S. High Commissioner of Germany and later ambassador to that country, published The Education of American Teachers, another in his series of studies of American public education made under grant of the Carnegie Corporation. The parallel is significant, for Dr. Conant’s most recent volume contains the potential of changing the face of teacher education as Flexner’s book changed medical education.

Like its predecessors, The American High School Today and Education in the Junior High School Years, this book is a refreshing example of what happens when a first-rate mind, unencumbered by the hazy professionalism that marks many educational theorists today, applies itself to the problems of public education.

Charles Malik, former president of the General Assembly of the United Nations and himself a teacher, said, “Find the good teacher and forget everything else.” This may sound extreme, yet it places the emphasis for education in the right place. Already the influence of Dr. Conant’s other books on the public schools is widely felt. But the proposals he has made in them will fall short of full effectiveness, as will every other effort toward educational reform, without drastic changes in the education of teachers.

This is not a superficial study. Assisted by nine outstanding educators and scholars, Dr. Conant gave two years to the project, during which he visited seventy-seven higher institutions in twenty-two states and studied the state regulations that limit the freedom of local school boards to employ teachers. His subject is complicated by a staggering variety of theory and practice. It is also a battleground of academic civil war in which the professional education establishment is arrayed against the advocates of the liberal arts and sciences. No one who has done his share of reading the writings of professors of education can fail to admire the fair-mindedness and incisiveness with which Dr. Conant works through tangled verbiage and the multiplicity of programs to the heart of the problem.

Compared with existing practices, his proposals for revision of teacher education are radical. The elaborate system of required credits in education courses prescribed for the certification of teachers by state departments of education and a number of the regional accrediting associations must go. “Except for practice teaching and the special methods work combined with it,” Dr. Conant declares, “I see no rational basis for a state prescription of the time to be devoted to education courses.…” In its place, he would empower college and university faculties to set up the teacher-education programs they consider adequate and to stand behind these programs by certifying that those completing them are satisfactorily trained to teach. He proposes only three requirements for state certification: (1) “a bachelor’s degree from a legitimate college or university,” (2) evidence of successful practice teaching under state-approved direction, (3) “a specially endorsed teaching certificate from a college or university which … attests that the institution as a whole considers the person adequately prepared to teach in a designated field and grade level.”

Essential to Dr. Conant’s proposals is his plan for clinical professors of education to supervise practice teaching. Such professors would be first of all superbly skillful teachers of youth or college students. Although they would not be expected to engage in research and publish papers, their academic rank and compensation would be equal to that of any other professor. They might serve full time or part time and would be required periodically to return to classroom teaching. (The analogy to medical education is not fortuitous but deliberate.) Dr. Conant’s study convinced him that the single most effective instrument for teacher education is supervised practice teaching. Certainly the clinical professorship that he describes should greatly heighten the value of the practice-teaching experience.

In all, The Education of American Teachers contains twenty-seven separate proposals. Yet the heart of the book lies in the points just cited. Not that the other proposals are unimportant; the program advanced has inner consistency and should be considered as a whole.

The implications of the book for Christian education, while not apparent on the surface (Dr. Conant says practically nothing about religious education beyond brief mention of private denominational colleges), are nevertheless significant. By and large, the Christian colleges are heavily involved in teacher education. This is particularly true of the conservative evangelical colleges, which probably graduate more prospective teachers than prospective members of any other professional group. Moreover, many of the newer conservative evangelical colleges have in recent years been seeking regional accreditation. And it may be that this praiseworthy concern for academic standing has made them vulnerable to some of the proliferation of education courses and over-emphasis upon method to which Dr. Conant objects. Perhaps in their uncritical acceptance of some less favorable trends in education programs and in their desire to gain status, they have been in danger of adding their own share to the multiplicity of courses by setting up too many specialized courses in Christian education, some of which though not unsound might be unnecessary. After all, the great strength of evangelical education should be the integration of the whole curriculum with biblical truth.

In relation to courses in the philosophy of education, Dr. Conant is caustic. “The word philosophy, as used by many professors of education, is,” he says, “like a thin sheet of rubber—it can be distorted and stretched to cover almost any aspect of a teacher’s interest.” And he refers to “the philosophical foundations of education, which today consist of crumbling pillars of the past placed on a sand of ignorance and pretension.” The chief distinction of Christian education lies largely in its own philosophy. Dr. Conant’s strictures on the usual philosophy of education courses, while warning against slipshod thinking and belaboring of the obvious, should stimulate Christian colleges to the disciplined presentation of the biblical world view as it applies to education.

Much of the material with which the book deals is technical and pedestrian, as in the sections that consider varying certification requirements and treat existing programs. But there is a genuine fascination in following a powerful mind in its unsparing examination of practices almost sacrosanct to the educational establishment. For the persevering reader there are some flashes of humor, many examples of blunt common sense, and occasional passages of real wisdom. Referring to the habit of taking courses without any clearly defined purpose aside from the reward of higher pay, Dr. Conant says: “Discussing this subject in a summer school with more than one group of teachers who were purring with pleasure at their continuing education, I felt as if I were talking to opium smokers who were praising the habit of which they had long since become the victims.” Or consider this: “As someone has said, the diploma should not be the death mask of the educational experience. Education in breadth and depth, rightly conducted, should lead to further self-education in greater breadth and depth.” And this also: “Among the many things our professors of arts and sciences have failed to accomplish is the inculcation of the idea that vast fields of knowledge and culture are wide open to anyone who can and will read.… I wish no one receiving a bachelor’s degree would carry away the belief that his alma mater has ‘educated’ him. The well-educated man or woman of the future must be primarily a self-educated person. And self-education requires years and years of reading and a desire to learn.”

Dr. Paul Woodring, editor of the Saturday Review Educational Supplement, has said that 2,000 reviews and editorial mentions of The Education of American Teachers have appeared since its publication in September. Nevertheless, this review, one more among so many, will not be superfluous if it leads Christian educators to think with Dr. Conant about the single most important aspect of education and to ponder critically the relation of his proposals to the training of Christian teachers.

FRANK E. GAEBELEIN

A Book Of Provocations

Church Unity and Church Mission, by Martin E. Marty (Eerdmans, 1964, 139 pp., $3), is reviewed by James Daane, editorial associate, CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Marty’s thesis is that the churches have sufficient unity to resume and carry forward their mission to the world in new ways. He sees in the general rejection of proselytism (the conversion of the members of other churches to one’s own) “the informal recognition of other Christian traditions and confessions.” Here, as in so many other places in his book, a significant insight is immediately fogged over by his positing of conclusions not derivable from the insight. The rejection of proselytism surely has profound significance for denominationalism, but it has meant neither theologically nor historically the “informal recognition of other Christian traditions and confessions”; and Marty is misleading when he suggests that church unity on this score lacks only the courage of spirituality to face this fact. The idea inherent in denominationalism has never been that other churches did not and could not contain real Christians; the cessation of proselytism, therefore, does not possess the significance for church unity that Marty suggests.

Marty has a shrewd eye for the sociological factors that have made for denominationalism, and it is good that he points them out, for too many Christian churches prefer to close their eyes to this shaky underpinning of denominationalism. Yet Marty overstates and confuses matters when he asserts that “the denomination is basically a sociological category.” This is all too simple and too provincially American. The Church is worldwide, and there are many hom*ogeneous national and sociological units that contain many denominations where sociological factors do not account for church disunity. Truth and confessional differences embodied in denominationalism have deeper, more theological roots than the author suggests.

Marty contends that the ecumenical movement has reached a “stalemate” because those within the movement are chiefly concerned about unity and those outside the movement are chiefly concerned about truth. He realizes that the ecumenical movement will achieve little indeed if it produces only an “organizationally-fulfilled, undergirding and overarching Christian unity.” He reminds us too that denominationalism as such advertises the disunity rather than the unity of the Church, and that denominations tend to exist for their distinctive truths rather than for the whole truth of the Gospel. And he contends that if we put either unity or truth first, the stalemate between the “unity-firsters” and the “truth-firsters” will continue, and the Church’s cause of mission to the world will continue to suffer. Yet even though denominationalism does place truth first, few will agree with his injudicious judgment: “Every poll we have seen, every common-sense observation we can make leads us to one conclusion: that anything Christians might try will do more justice to truth than the competitive system they now inhabit.” I find myself in agreement with many of Marty’s observations and criticisms about denominationalism, but I find myself as completely lost in his judgment that any form of church life would be better than denominationalism, as I find myself completely in the dark as to what he really means when he says the only “solution” to the problems of unity and truth is simply to get on with the mission of the Church to the world. The churches cannot move forward from the historic point where they are, in total disregard of that history which brought them to the point where they are, and made them what they are.

The provocativeness of this book stems as much from its weaknesses as from its strengths, and both of these from its greater sociological than theological concern. It is in many ways a book of sane and balanced judgments, and I heartily recommend that it be read; yet its strength and weakness stem from an essential dissociation from both the ecumenical movement and the reality of denominationalism. Marty sees the claims of these locked in stalemate and proposes that the stalemate can be overcome, insofar as this is possible at all within history, if the whole Church will get on with its mission to the world. Such a solution is to solve the problem of death by asking the dead to arise. The task confronting the divided Church is really not this hopeless, and the solution lies instead in another direction. Marty himself hints at it when he proposes what he calls a biblical counterpart to a “sociological Machiavellianism” in which each church member operates within his own denomination—as regards both truth and mission—as the nature of Christ’s one Church demands. Here I think he is on the right path, though it is not, I think, consistent with his statement that any new forms of church existence would be better than denominationalism. Marty’s book points up the dire need of a thorough theological and historical study of denominationalism, for it is in denominationalism that every segment of the Church posits its understanding and commitment to both unity and truth.

JAMES DAANE

Sunday School Lessons

Arnold’s Commentary, edited by Lyle E. Williams (Light and Life, 1963, 330 pp., $2.95); The Douglass Sunday School Lessons, edited by Earl L. Douglass (Macmillan, 1963, 475 pp., $2.95); Higley Commentary, edited by Knute Larson (Lambert Huffman, 1963, 528 pp., $2.95); The International Lesson Annual, edited by Horace R. Weaver (Abingdon, 1963, 448 pp., $2.95); Peloubet’s Select Notes, by Wilbur M. Smith (W. A. Wilde, 1963, 419 pp., $2.95); Standard Lesson Commentary, edited by John W. Wade and John M. Carter (Standard, 1963, 448 pp., $2.95); Tarbell’s Teachers’ Guide, edited by Frank S. Mead (Revell, 1963, 382 pp., $2.95); The Gist of the Lesson, edited by Donald T. Kauffman (Revell, 1963, 125 pp., $1.25); and Points for Emphasis, by Clifton J. Allen (Broadman, 1963, 214 pp., $.95), are reviewed by Lois E. LeBar, chairman, graduate Christian education, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

The first seven titles are full-size book guides for teaching the 1964 uniform Sunday school lessons; the last two are pocket-size. The subjects covered are: first quarter—personalities around Jesus; second quarter—the Christian faces his world; third quarter—early Hebrew history; fourth quarter—letters to Christian leaders. At the beginning of each lesson, The International Lesson Annual and Tarbell’s Teachers’ Guide print the Scripture text in both the King James and Revised Standard Versions; the others use only the King James. All but the Tarbell’s Guide include daily devotional readings. The Douglass, Peloubet’s, International, Standard, and Tarbell’s lessons contain suggestions for correlated visual aids. Although the trend of Bible-centered lessons is to relate them more closely to life, three of these books are still called commentaries.

Arnold’s Commentary is geared for adults and youth. The Douglass lessons sometimes give different captions for intermediate-seniors and young people-adults. Peloubet’s gives topics for juniors and primaries also, and suggests different emphases for younger and older classes. Some of the more difficult of the uniform lessons for primaries and juniors are: man’s place in God’s universe, Christian principles in earning a living, the Christian looks at nationalism, the pastoral epistles, and qualifications of church officers.

Peloubet’s is distinctive for its quotations from outstanding evangelical scholars as well as for Dr. Wilbur Smith’s expositions of Scripture and his bibliographies. Each lesson concludes with a lesson in life, literature, or archaeology, and a truth for the class to carry home.

Arnold’s Commentary affords the teacher the most help in getting students personally involved in the lesson, because parts of the content are introduced through practical questions, enabling students to become participants rather than spectators. Both personal and factual questions motivate them beween Sundays to explore the next lesson. At the end of each lesson is a half page written from the viewpoint of a pastor, a half page by a layman, and a full page relating the lesson to life.

At the beginning of each lesson Tarbell’s Guide gives an overall personal question to launch the whole lesson and to stimulate inquiry. It is the only guide that has separate suggestions for teaching intermediate-seniors and young people-adults. For those teachers not content to “preach” to their classes, The International Lesson Annual adds an alternative teaching plan with well-worded questions for discussion and action.

The Higley and Standard Commentaries offer more specialized types of aid. Each week the Higley furnishes a paragraph on evangelistic and missionary application, a correlated superintendent’s sermonette to lead into the lesson, a simple illustration for the chalkboard, a teacher’s “pump primer,” and ten questions with brief answers to be cut out in advance and given to members of the class. The questions are factual, however, and tend to promote stereotyped recitation rather than personal interaction. The Standard Commentary is complete with introductory articles, lesson aims to “help the pupils to know this” and “lead pupils to do this,” quotable quotes, pithy points, personal questions for daily living, simple chalkboard illustrations, short factual quizzes, and correlated prayers.

In these seven guides differences in theological emphasis are evident in expositions of the same Scripture. For example, “… the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all …” (Tim. 2:5,6): Arnold’s—the one who paid the purchase price of salvation; Douglass’s—the only one who can reconcile an offended God and a sinful man; Higley’s—the idea of substitution for all; International—the need of translating the Christian faith into truly universal terms; Peloubet’s—that which is given in exchange for another as the price of his redemption; Standard—the substitutionary work of Jesus Christ as he died on the Cross to redeem men from their sins; Tarbell’s—therefore the one who is the only mediator between God and men.

The Gist of the Lesson and Points for Emphasis are pocket-sized condensations of the “seed thoughts” of the lessons for the year. “The Gist” was initiated many years ago by R. A. Torrey to provide practical evangelical treatment of lessons in concise form. In addition to Bible exposition. Points for Emphasis contains practical truths to live by and daily Bible readings. Although the authors of these small volumes make their words count, it is hoped that teachers will not consider these adequate preparation for teaching a lesson from the Book of books.

LOIS E. LEBAR

Paperbacks

Your Church & Your Nation: An Appeal to American Churchmen, by Paul Peachey (The Church Peace Mission [Washington, D. C.], 1963, 22 pp., $.15). A still very relevant discussion by pacifist Peachey; first published in 1950.

The Christian Conscience and War, a symposium (The Church Peace Mission, 1963, 48 pp., $.25). A statement on the problems of war and peace by theologians and religious leaders. First published in 1950.

The Challenge of the Ages: New Light on Isaiah 53, by Frederick Alfred Aston (self-published, 1963, 24 pp., $.40). An evangelical discussion to demonstrate that the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 is Jesus Christ crucified.

God’s Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioriation of America’s Environment, by Peter Blake (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963, 144 pp., $2.45; cloth, §4). Written in outraged fury against the wanton despoiling of the American landscape; with photography to show what was, and what Americans have done to it.

Professor in the Pulpit, edited by W. Morgan Patterson and Raymond Bryan (Broadman, 1963, 150 pp., §2.25). Twenty-two chapel sermons of high caliber, preached by the faculty members of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

The Faith of Qumran, by Helmer Ringgren (Fortress, 1963, 310 pp., $1.95). Written in the conviction that before isolated beliefs and practices of the Qumran community are compared with those of the New Testament, the overall theology of the Qumran should be understood. Translated from the Swedish.