Page 5695 – Christianity Today (2024)

It was 3 A.M. in Switzerland as a car made its way down the winding mountain road from Villars past the homes of sleeping people. Suddenly the driver saw an orange glow in the sky, and he soon realized that it was caused by flames in a chalet, a wooden building in the typical Swiss style with a wide overhanging roof. “Fire!” he announced to the village of Huemoz in the only way he could, by keeping his hand constantly on the automobile horn.

Betty pushed up on her elbows to look out the window, wondering why all the rude noise was being made. Immediately her eyes caught the orange glow and the flames only a few hundred feet away. “Jane, wake up! The chapel is on fire!” Jane quickly telephoned the local fire brigade. By that time others had seen the awful fact that the chapel was in flames, and L’Abri students, helpers, and workers were getting all the fire extinguishers out and running down the hill to try to put out the fire. The village church bells began to ring, calling everyone to help.

While all this was going on, it was early evening in Dallas, Texas, and my husband and I were at the last session of the last of the eighteen seminars showing the film How Should We Then Live. Dr. Schaeffer ended that seminar with a lecture not only vividly reviewing the failure of humanism and the tragic history of the last two decades but making clear the hopelessness of the future as we speed toward an authoritarian society and arbitrary absolutes. He gave the only alternative to this dark expectation as the return to God’s biblical absolutes, the truth revealed through the Scriptures and through Christ. His call to the many thousands gathered there, to be ready and willing not only to hear and understand the will of the Lord but to do something about it, was given during that hour with a power that could only be described as the power of the Holy Spirit. The response was tremendous, something that could be felt, as well as observed, as a reality of resolve before the Lord.

There is a hidden battle going on in the heavenlies, but sometimes it breaks through as if a curtain were drawn back for a brief moment. When we returned to our hotel that last night in Dallas to make arrangements to leave the next morning for the funeral of my father, the phone rang. “We just had a call from Switzerland saying that the chapel has burned. It’s not completely destroyed but badly damaged. It was a little after five A.M. there, and they have just finished putting out the fire.”

Two kinds of fire—destructive fire and the long-prayed-for “tongues of fire to preach thy Word”—taking place at the same hour. Coincidence? Satan doesn’t let any of us battle against his successes without trying to throw crippling discouragement at us in return, in one way or another. Demonic attacks can come through seemingly ordinary human weaknesses. Hot ashes, thoughtlessly but without any wrong intent put in a cupboard, can be fanned into flames to turn the beauty of walls, windows, piano, and organ into ashes. Who has won? The story hasn’t ended yet, but let us go for comfort where comfort is to be found.

“To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn … to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified” (Isa. 61:2, 3). Satan’s work has always been to take beauty and turn it into ashes, spiritually, intellectually, and physically, and to turn joy into mourning. The comfort God gives us as he tells us of the return of Jesus is to reassure us that finally the process will be reversed, and he will give us beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning. The day is coming when the victory will be complete.

However, God also illustrates over and over again, and will continue to do so until Jesus returns, that he is all powerful, and that he can take what Satan meant for harm to God’s people and turn it into the very reverse. God is able to bring out of blackened walls and piles of ashes beauty, that his people may be called “trees of righteousness” and also that he might be glorified.

Come to Haggai 2:3–9: “Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye see it now? Is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing? Yet now … be strong, all ye people of the land, saith the LORD, and work: for I am with you, saith the LORD of hosts.… My spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not. For thus saith the LORD of hosts: Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts. The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts.”

“Oh,” you say, “you are taking things out of context.” But this is the kind of God we have. This is an example of what he is able to do for his children. He is all powerful, and there is victory after victory in the continuous battle, and will be, until that final moment of victory when Satan himself is to be cast into the lake of fire. We are to be comforted and encouraged, and are to go up to our mountain and start gathering wood to rebuild, whatever form the rebuilding is to take.

The other kind of fire was included in Jesus’ last words to his disciples and to us, just before he went up into heaven: “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them” (Acts 2:1–3).

Tongues of fire portrayed the first coming of the Holy Spirit to give people the ability to speak languages their hearers could understand. The truth was given in an understandable form and with the power of the Holy Spirit. The power available to us today is the power of the same Holy Spirit. The power given is for a purpose, that men and women might hear truth in language they can understand, not only linguistically but intellectually and culturally.

Beauty from ashes is one kind of victory God gives, but also power and purpose as a result of the fire of the Holy Spirit burning unhindered for moments of time in history. The battle will continue, but “enduring to the end” means getting up out of one ash heap after another and asking for God’s help to rebuild something of beauty to his glory and by his power, physically, intellectually, and spiritually.

Remember the outcry a decade and a half ago over the U.S. Supreme Court’s “Regents’ Prayer” decision? The nation’s highest tribunal told New York educational authorities that as agents of the government they could not prescribe school devotional activities. After the ruckus had died down, many Americans—including many evangelicals—saw the wisdom of the ruling. It said that government should not be in the religion business, not even to the extent of writing a short prayer for students in tax-supported schools. A subsequent ruling banned Bible reading and prayer as devotional exercises in public schools. State-ordered religious activity is out of place in America, said the justices. Jefferson’s church-state wall must not be breached.

Now the shoe may be put on the other foot. Serious consideration is being given to government-mandated restriction of religion. Instead of protecting the separation wall so carefully built through American history, current proposals at the federal level would breach it. None of these, of course, is labeled as an attack on that cherished principle. Religion is hardly mentioned in them, as a matter of fact. The net effect, though, could be a restriction of what the First Amendment calls the “free exercise” of religion. The main attack now is on propagation of the faith through the mass media.

One bill in Congress, H.R. 41 (see May 6 issue, page 61), is the opposite side of the “Regents’ Prayer” coin. It puts all religious groups in the category of “charitable organizations” and then dictates that a government-prescribed announcement be inserted in their radio and television broadcasts whenever they ask for support. If enacted into law, this requirement would constitute federal regulation of program content (even if only a small part of it). This is hardly “free exercise.”

It makes no difference if the proponents of the legislation have the highest aims and the purest motives. It makes no difference that they want to help their constituents know more about the groups sponsoring these broadcasts. (Knowing more about the finances of some sponsors would presumably dry up some support.) The only important consideration is that this would be a breach in the wall. It is no less dangerous for Congress to dictate the content of gospel broadcasts than it is for leaders of any faith to get their type of devotional activity written by the government into the school curriculum.

H.R. 41 would also give postal officials broad authority to look into the finances of “charitable organizations” that mail appeals for money. Government auditors would go over the books of all these mailers to be sure their financial disclosure statements met Postal Service criteria and matched the facts. No appeal could be mailed that did not include an approved disclosure statement. Any church-sponsored welfare institution, missionary society, evangelistic association, or Christian school that sent out a report of its work mentioning a need for support would have to comply. Whether the basic concept of such a disclosure in every report is good or bad, the unacceptable aspect is that this bill would force religious organizations to include certain content in their materials. This, too, would be a restriction on “free exercise.”

Another bill in the congressional hopper that would limit the freedom now enjoyed by religious groups is H.R. 478, which would levy a confiscatory tax on those “charitable organizations” (including specifically religious groups) that did not spend contributed income within a period specified by Congress and in a way approved by Internal Revenue Service auditors. The bill would also force disclosure of a variety of financial details not only to donors and to the IRS but also to anyone who requests a statement. In other words, the bill would make the business of the XYZ mission the business of any curious person. Requests for information could be made by non-donors, non-Christians, non-citizens, or anyone else. By this single provision the government would be telling the mission how to spend its money. This would be something less than “free exercise” for the group that believes in reporting only to those who pray for it.

The sad fact is that the practices of some unscrupulous preachers, self-appointed messiahs, and careless stewards have created a demand in some parts of the population for more regulation of religious affairs.

Scores of bills introduced by congressmen have little or no chance of being enacted. But H.R. 41 (introduced by Wilson of California) represents a serious and concerted effort that could succeed unless Christians get involved. Neither H.R. 41 nor any of others is the answer to isolated instances of charlatanism. The simplest one in a voluntary society is for people to stop responding to appeals by groups that are unwilling to account for their stewardship to the satisfaction of the contributors.

Memorial Day Prayer

President Carter has asked Americans to put prayers for peace on their Memorial Day programs. “I designate the hour beginning in each locality at 11 o’clock in the morning of that day as a time to unite in prayer,” he said in his Memorial Day proclamation. “I urge the press, radio, television, and all other information media to join in this observance.” As Americans remember their war dead, it is certainly appropriate for them and for Christians around the world to beseech God to hasten that day when men shall turn their swords into plowshares.

Can hom*osexuals ‘Inherit the Kingdom’?

“In general, the Church has always maintained that hom*osexual acts are sinful. But we live in the twentieth century, and new insights might allow or compel us to examine this tradition if we are to receive the truth.” So said Bishop John Yates of Gloucester, England, chairman of a Church of England committee on hom*osexuality, on a BBC program on hom*osexuality and the Christian faith. Theologian Norman Pittenger, another speaker on the program, admitted his own hom*osexual bias and claimed that Christian tradition was mistaken on this point, according to Religious News Service.

From what source do we get our religious knowledge? What is the basis for the Christian’s moral judgments? Traditionally (and we use this word advisedly) the Church of Jesus Christ has claimed that the Bible is normative. It teaches us how to become Christians and how to conduct ourselves as Christians. And what does the Bible have to say about the subject of hom*osexuality? Paul in First Corinthians writes: “Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor hom*osexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (6:9, 10, NIV).

The person who looks favorably upon hom*osexuality can do one of two things with this passage and others like it. He can push the Bible aside and deny its teaching. Or he can claim that Paul’s words here apply only to his day and not to ours. If this is so, must we not conclude that the other prohibitions in this passage—against such things as thievery, greed, slander, drunkenness, idolatry, and adultery—are likewise cultural overhangs of an older day and are not binding on Christian conscience today?

Whether readers of the Bible deny its clear teaching about hom*osexuality or accord to the teaching a cultural status that empties it of binding force, the result is the same: the authority of the Bible is rejected, its other teachings are called into question, and the Christian faith suffers a loss. That churchmen should concur in the opinions of the world and try to validate that which the Bible condemns is tragic.

What to Do With Laetrile

Big Daddy continues to watch over citizens who are prone to use things that are not good for them. The latest of the forbidden fruits is saccharin. Alcohol and tobacco, to name two addictives, are certainly more pernicious than saccharin. But for some reason there is little talk of banning them.

Another substance banned by the United States government is Laetrile, which has been acclaimed by various people as a cure for cancer. Multitudes afflicted with the dreaded disease flock to Mexico, where they pay high prices for injections of this vitamin and for supplies that must be brought across the border illegally.

Almost without exception the medical fraternity is agreed that Laetrile does nothing to cure or arrest cancer. An advertisem*nt in this magazine for a book defending Laetrile brought a harvest of vigorous protest from physicians. It was as though even the advertising of such a book contributed to the earlier death of some cancer patients. But loud and insistent voices have accused the medical profession of depriving cancer victims of something that would help them.

It would seem reasonable to make Laetrile available as a prescription drug, even if it would be only a placebo. This would put the responsibility on the medical fraternity, not the government. It would enable physicians to treat cancer victims now in the hands of quacks who are dispensing Laetrile illegally. And it might have a beneficial psychological effect for patients who are convinced of its effectiveness.

The Shrinking Church Rolls

Most major denominations in America are losing more members than they are gaining. Some of the smaller and more theologically conservative churches are growing, but not substantially, especially when population growth is taken into account.

According to the newly released Yearbook of American Churches, the fastest-growing religious body has been the Salvation Army: its 1975 tally shows a 5 per cent increase over the previous year (to a total of 384,817).

Southern Baptists were the only Protestant group in the top ten to show an increase (1.8 per cent, to 12,733,124). The Roman Catholic Church rose 0.4 per sent (to 48,881,872). The grand total for all bodies reporting to the Yearbook was 131,012,953 members.

Genuinely New, But …

In Colossians Paul writes, “Lie not one to another; seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him” (3:9, 10, ASV). In these words Paul is not telling his readers that they are stili both old and new as many Christians think; rather, he appeals to them not to lie because they have put off the old man and have put on the new.

However, if we think that the new man never sins, we will not dare to see ourselves as such, since we stili do sin daily. It is therefore important for us to note that in this passage Paul does not identify the new man with sinless perfection. He says, “You have put on the new man that is being renewed … after the image of his Creator.” “Is being renewed” signifies that the new man is not yet perfect. One could say that we are now genuinely new though not yet totally new. But new we are—and so we ought to see ourselves.

To be sure, we still sin daily. But when we do, we do not revert to the “old man” state, any more than we suddenly become unregenerate. We remain new persons, but new persons living inconsistently. When we who are adults do childish things, we don’t suddenly become children; we remain adults who for the moment are not acting like adults. The fact that believers remain new persons in Christ should be for us a constant incentive to reflect that newness in new ways of thinking, talking, and living.

There is a close connection between being a new man in Christ and living in the Spirit. In Romans 6:6 Paul describes the believer as someone whose “old man” was crucified with Christ, so that he is no longer a slave of sin. In Romans 8:9, however, he depicts that same believer as someone who is no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit.

What does Paul mean by “flesh” and “Spirit”? We mut not see in these concepts a contrast between two aspects of man’s nature, a “fleshly” aspect and a “spiritual” one. We must rather see a description of two contrasting power spheres. Flesh does not mean the physical body in distinction from the mind but man’s whole being as it is under the power of sin. Though apart from Christ man is “in the flesh,” in Christ he is “in the Spirit.” To be in the Spirit means that a person who was formerly under the sway of the flesh has now been brought under the liberating rule of the Holy Spirit.

Although Christians are no longer in the flesh, they are still constantly tempted by the flesh. Throughout the present life, therefore, they continue to be involved in the struggle between flesh and Spirit. But they are to engage in this struggle not in the atmosphere of defeat but in the confidence of victory. Notice how Paul describes the struggle in Galatians 5:16, “But I say, Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” The emphasis is positive: If you walk by the Spirit, you will not be able at the same time to gratify the lust of the flesh. Since you are now under the rule and power of the Holy Spirit, you can triumph over the desires of the flesh and are no longer enslaved by them.

Philip K. Dick is the author of more than thirty science-fiction novels that are attracting a wide audience. Paul Williams, writing in Rolling Stone (Nov. 6, 1975), reports that Dick’s books are even more popular in Europe than in the United States and are being translated into French, German, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, and other languages.

Dick’s fiction merits careful reading because he is a skillful writer who treats important themes. Not all his books are currently available, though many are being reprinted. His first, Solar Lottery, was published in 1955. I recommend the following books to the newcomer to Dick: A Maze of Death, Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Man in the High Castle, and Martian Time-Slip. The sheer number of his books makes it difficult to generalize about them. Instead, I will discuss one novel, A Maze of Death, in some detail because it develops his themes in an explicitly theological context.

On an unexplored planet, Delmak-O, a random group of people are assembled to form a colony. The colonists do not know the purpose of their colony, and when they contact a satellite that is to transmit taped instructions to them, the tape is accidentally erased. Then one by one colonists are mysteriously murdered or commit suicide. Finally the remaining ones begin killing one another.

This brief summary of A Maze of Death only hints at the atmosphere of the book, and I will not reveal the solution to the mystery of the colonists’ situation and deaths. Like Dick’s other novels, A Maze of Death explores the nature of reality, presenting the world of experience as dependent on the minds that experience it.

In an earlier novel, The Man in the High Castle, a character cites a line from Gilbert and Sullivan that expresses Dick’s basic apprehension of life: “Things are seldom what they seem.” In his novels he dramatizes the variety of ways through which illusory or alternate realities occur: the use of electronic media and propaganda, political conspiracies, technological tinkering with the natural, psychotropic drugs, religious experience, and, finally, the human mind itself.

A Maze of Death posits a cosmos in which religion is real. Dick’s foreword states that “the theology in this novel is not an analog of any known religion” but is based on the “arbitrary postulate that God exists.” Actually, the religion in Maze is a composite of real religions, with a definite gnostic tinge.

The theology is simple: there is one deity who acts through three Manifestations—the Mentufacturer, the Intercessor, and the Walker-on-Earth. These figures appear and interact with various human characters. Explicit references relate the Intercessor to Christ, the Mentufacturer clearly suggests the Father as Creator, and the Walker-on-Earth is an analogue of the Spirit. A five-period division of cosmic history is given that reflects the Bible’s view of history, even to the covenant with the Jews.

In this theology the cosmos is viewed as a series of concentric emanations from the deity; the deity’s power becomes progressively weaker in the more distant circles. An adversary, the Form Destroyer, is awakened by the deity’s creative activity, and the Curse results. This cosmogony is a clear parallel to gnosticism. The coming of the Intercessor as God on earth results in a partial lifting of the Curse.

While the deity aids human beings, his power to do so is limited and dependent on external factors. Prayer, for instance, is augmented electronically and sent to “god-worlds” inhabited by superhuman beings. If the prayer is received it may well be answered, as were the prayers of several of the colonists, but the whole thing is chancy and dependent on natural conditions rather than divine power.

Dick apparently does not present this theology as true, in the sense that C. S. Lewis believed the theology behind his imaginary worlds to be true. Instead, he has imagined a world where the people believe the theology outlined above and where, therefore, it is real in their experience.

In attempting to find out who or what is killing them, the characters in Maze search for a building that they hope will provide the answer. When they discover it, it turns out to be a projection, whereas the real building is concealed by what one character describes as “a negative hallucination—when you do not see something that is actually there.” This statement is a special case of a more general principle in this religion, namely, that part of the Curse is that we are always “prisoners of our own preconceptions and expectations.”

A creature on Delmak-O, the Tench, functions as a kind of oracle. Dick derived the answers that the Tench gives from the I Ching; his use of the I Ching here and in The Man in the High Castle shows his anticipation of and contribution to the popularity of this ancient Chinese book that supports Dick’s own view of reality as multiple and ambiguous.

The characters of Maze confront the Tench with a basic question about where and why they are. Each of them has the same tattoo, PERSUS 9. When they ask it what the tattoo means, the Tench disintegrates. As a consequence, the reader, and the characters, discover that they are “really” the crew of a spaceship, the Persus 9, which has been disabled: “[an] accident had come and now they circled, forever, a dead star.”

The novel up to this point has been the computer-generated collective hallucination of the crew members, who have resorted to this device to drain off interpersonal tensions caused by their hopeless situation. They worked out assumptions for a reality, including the religion, programmed the computer, and plugged in. The computer’s “objective” output is a punched tape, a comment on the utter cleavage between human experience and the results of technological processing of experience.

This dénouement might leave the reader feeling tricked, albeit cleverly, except for two factors: the characters, especially Seth Morley, have become real enough that the reader feels continued interest and sympathy, and Dick twists the situation through a couple more turns of ambiguity.

We learn that Seth Morley does not easily adapt to the transition from the collective hallucination to the shipboard reality. Details from the adventure on Delmak-O are still real to him after he has unplugged. At one point, in despair, Morley exclaims, “I wish to God that there was really an Intercessor.” Shortly after this, the Intercessor appears to Morley in an isolated part of the ship. When Morley expostulates, “But we invented you!” the Intercessor simply replies that he is there to take Morley wherever he would most like to be. Morley decides he would most like to be a cactus, alive but not conscious, and the Intercessor takes him from the ship.

What “really” happens to Morley is left ambiguous: on the one hand, the Intercessor might be just a remnant of the hallucination; on the other, the people remaining on the Persus 9 cannot find Morley after this incident. As the novel ends, the crew is beginning another collective hallucination.

An important feature of the collective hallucination is that the crew members have “memories” of a past consistent with the hallucinatory world. For instance, Seth Morley and his wife begin the book with memories of eight years at Tekel Upharsin Kibbutz; as Seth thinks at the end of the novel, the eight years “had been a manufactured recall-datum, implanted in his mind … to add the semblance of authenticity to the polyencephalic venture.”

The impact of these artificial memories is to cast doubt on the “real” memories and situation of the crew of the Persus 9. For Dick, the artificial environment of our technological society is not just outer but also inner: his characters’ identities, as well as their worlds, are ambiguous and elusive.

I have been using the term “hallucination” to refer to the experiences of the crew of the Persus 9 while in “polyencephalic fusion.” However, this term is misleading: Dick says of similar events in another novel that they are “not a dream or even a hallucination [but] … a state entered into by the characters.” In Rolling Stone, Dick is also quoted as saying that “if two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion.” Since a number of people experience the colony on Delmak-O, Dick would have us conclude that that experience is as “real” as their situation on the Persus 9.

The catastrophic inability of the Tench to answer the question suggests that the question of the ultimate meaning of life is not answerable from within life itself. Although life may contain clues that point to a transcendent realm (i.e., the Persus 9 tattoo), immediate experience falls apart like the Tench when forced to answer the question of its own meaning. And since there is no suggestion in Dick’s fiction of a clear revelation entering the limited field of life, his characters are left with shadows and suggestions and faint hope.

There seems to be a strong sense of human fallenness in Dick’s work. The colonists on Delmak-O must struggle with the effects of the Curse. In another novel, several characters independently realize that “Genesis is right, there is a stigma on us, a mark” (The Penultimate Truth), but unfortunately, for Dick, the Intercessor won only a partial victory, and His objective existence would be doubtful anyway.

The significance of Dick’s fiction lies in the way he handles the themes of how we know, what is real, the social and spiritual effects of technology (including drugs), and honesty and a kind of doggedness as the only ways of surviving in an uncertain and dangerous world. The Walker-on-Earth praises Seth Morley for his love for an old cantankerous tomcat and his refusal to change the cat’s nature. This implies that Dick does hope there is a reality, a basic nature of things, that can be known if we respect things for what they are and refuse to alter them to suit ourselves. The terrible danger of technological man is that our power to alter now seems unlimited. Dick’s fiction sounds a clear warning about the dangers of this technological alteration of reality.

Eugene Warren is an assistant professor in the humanities department of the University of Missouri, Rolla.

Jesus, Naturally

There he sits: a Greek New Testament on his right, Lang’s Commentary on his left, an open Bible before him. And on top of the Bible, a fine-tooth comb. Thus barricaded, Mr. Evangelical (why does the word “evangelical” seem to have male properties?) is ready to fight for the faith.

That’s the image I got as I read the various statements by various evangelicals about Franco Zeffirelli’s film Jesus of Nazareth, shown in two parts on NBCTV. Although some, notably Bill Bright, gave the film high praise, others either qualified their approval or launched into harsh, unjustified criticism.

To film the story of Jesus for a six-hour program is a difficult task at best. It means condensing certain episodes and leaving others out completely. But isn’t that what the gospel writers did? They all are in basic agreement, but each brought his perspective and memory to work on the material.

The producers of this film knew they would not please everyone. And some details were confusing. For example, John, after baptizing Jesus, says, “This is my beloved son.…” Zeffirelli wanted to avoid assigning a voice to God, he explained at a press conference. His idea was that John was repeating the words he had just heard God speak. Hence the long pause after Jesus’ baptism. But without the explanation, the viewer might think that Zeffirelli was denying the incarnation. He used the same technique with the annunciation; there it worked. There were also some minor discrepancies with Scripture, but they didn’t detract from the impact of the film.

The film was beautifully photographed and sensitively directed, and the actors chosen with great care, which is what we would expect from a director as gifted as Zeffirelli. But the ingredient that sets this Jesus film apart from the others is its naturalness, its simplicity. The Gospels tell Jesus’ story in simple, straightforward prose, with no purple passages or trumpet-like words. And Zeffirelli translated that style onto film. Mary matter-of-factly tells her mother that Elizabeth is no longer barren. She quietly explains that she must visit her. Mary and Joseph calmly, though at times wonderingly, accept the unusual occurrences surrounding Jesus’ birth and circumcision.

In much the same way Jesus begins his ministry. He is baptized along with others who came to hear John preach. He has an air of quiet dignity, meek and strong simultaneously. He performs miracles naturally, as though they are as much a part of his nature as breathing—which of course they were. The feeding of the five thousand shows this perhaps better than his other miracles. The raising of Lazarus comes close to theatrics but is nevertheless a powerful scene. Zeffirelli avoided melodramatic camera close-ups of Jesus’ eyes, the technique previous film-makers used to convey the intensity of Jesus’ personality.

Jesus’ resurrection, too, is almost understated. Although some critics thought Zeffirelli used too light a touch in the resurrection and thus undercut the event, I think he matched the spirit of the gospel writers. There were no angel choirs at the resurrection. Just a stone rolled away, an empty tomb, limp grave-clothes. The drama came later, with Mary Magdalene telling the disciples of the resurrection. Of course, Jesus rose from the dead; he said he would.

Zeffirelli is an artist; he uses film the way painters use oils and canvas. Some of the scenes even look like Renaissance religious paintings. During the Magnificat the camera backs up to show Mary and Elizabeth centered in porticos, each seemingly a half of an early religious painting. The crucifixion shots reflect the great religious paintings that are part of our religious heritage. At those points Zeffirelli might be accused of some slight posturing, but for me the use of tradition and its symbolism enhances the beauty and meaning of the episodes. And it places the director in the long line of great religious artists of Western culture.

The six-hour film got more than 40 million viewers, half the audience of Roots. Jesus of Nazareth is a better film, and a greater story. In fact, it is the story by which all others should be judged. I hope NBC makes the film an annual Holy Week event.

CHERYL FORBES

No one was at the airport at Bucharest to greet us when we landed. Pan Am had canceled the last leg of its flight from Washington to the Romanian capital for reasons related to the earthquake that had shaken the land one week earlier, on March 4. It was obvious that our hosts, the leaders of the Baptist Union, hadn’t received word that we would be on a later Lufthansa flight instead, and they had gone home.

My traveling companion and interpreter was George Crisan, a retired American government lawyer who edits the newspaper that serves Romanian Baptists in the United States. Crisan was born in western Romania, became a successful bank lawyer in his home town of Arad, and spent time in jail under the Communists in the late 1940s before escaping to the West. He is a teacher of the Sunday-school class that President Carter attends at First Baptist Church in Washington, and he is the deacon who serves Communion to the Carter family. In recent years he has had close dealings with the Romanian embassy regarding immigration cases, and these contacts helped to pave the way for our visit.

Our mission was to assess and report the extent of the losses suffered by the churches in the earthquake and to determine whether aid could be channeled directly to the churches (see the report of the disaster, April 1 issue, page 54). Also, we wanted to see up close the revival-like conditions we both had noted on separate visits to western Romania (Transylvania) earlier; the rate of growth among Baptists, Pentecostals, and Plymouth Brethren (known in Romania as Evangelical Christians) is higher in Romania than almost anywhere else in the world. Additionally, we wanted to analyze the changing state of religious freedom.

It was cold and dark when the airport bus deposited us at the edge of the devastated downtown area. Clean-up and rescue operations were still in progress, and some buildings were in danger of collapse, so vehicles were banned. We had to carry our luggage through the streets the last mile to our hotel. Along the way, a tall, husky man in a business suit and overcoat befriended us and lent a hand with our bags. At one point the stranger took us down a side street past a cordon of soldiers and police to where a large apartment house had collapsed, killing many. Under powerful lights, teams of men were working feverishly but gingerly atop the four-story-high pile of rubble, removing the debris piece by piece. Dust and the nauseous stench of death did not stop them from trying to save whoever might still be alive. Days earlier, someone had heard tapping noises from within the rubble. Heavy equipment was ruled out in the rescue effort. It had to be one piece at a time.

I will never forget that scene and the spiritual parallels it suggested. Preachers all over Romania for weeks afterward used references to disaster work as illustrations in calling their people to a greater commitment to evangelism. (Incidentally, victims were still being dug out alive more than a week after the earthquake.)

Our hosts finally caught up with us after we reached the hotel, and we mapped out a preliminary itinerary for the next ten days.

We spent the first five days in eastern Romania, where the quake’s damage was worst. Here we interviewed denominational and government leaders, toured stricken areas, and listened to accounts of survivors. We visited churches and pastors in Bucharest, Ploesti, and Brasov, a large city in the Carpathian mountains not far from the epicenter of the earthquake. We also chatted over meals with seminarians and faculty members.

Thoroughly Biblical

On the day after our arrival, a Saturday, we attended a large funeral of a prominent Baptist family killed in the earthquake. Seven pastors preached, affording us a broad glimpse at the kind of preaching that has fueled the revival fires in Romania. The messages were thoroughly biblical, were preached with few or no notes, and were delivered with a simple but powerful eloquence that tugged at the hearts of the listeners. (My interpreter at the funeral and at most of the church services and official meetings we attended was Dorin “Doru” Motz, a gifted self-taught linguist who teaches part-time at the Baptist seminary in Bucharest and who helps to direct the Living Bible translation project in Romania.)

Among those who preached at the funeral were Cornell Mara, the newly elected president of the Baptist Union of Romania and pastor for thirty-three years of the Brasov church; Joachim Tunea, pastor of Golgotha Baptist Church (known as the “first” Baptist church) of Bucharest and former secretary general of the Baptist Union; and Josif Ton, pastor of a Baptist church in Ploesti.

Ton is the best-known, best-educated, and most controversial clergyman among the Baptists. In three widely circulated papers he has called on the churches to resist intrusion into their affairs by the state, he has called on the government to give the churches their full freedom and to consider giving up atheism as a component of socialist ideology, and he has called attention to many individual cases of alleged violations of rights of Christians by government authorities.

An Arrest

We spent parts of two days with Ton, both in Ploesti and Bucharest. He gave us a copy of his latest paper. It had not yet been published in the West, but he had given copies to the authorities. As a result he was arrested on the night of April 3 as he was preaching at Iasi, a city near the Soviet border. Some of his colleagues were arrested that night also. (See News.)

Ton’s name figured heavily in many conversations with Baptist leaders and pastors, and he will be referred to later in this report. The believers are divided over him: some, especially the young, favor his no-compromise stands and confrontation tactics; others, especially the old, favor the middle way in church-state relations, and they warn that Ton and his colleagues may split the denomination. Many of the church leaders also fear that Ton’s actions may result in severe setbacks in a gradually improving climate of religious freedom. A number of leaders told us they now enjoy more religious freedom than ever before in their lifetimes.

More Than Journalists

We had intended to confine ourselves to the role of journalist during our visit, but that was impossible. When the leaders and pastors discovered that George Crisan has a Sunday relationship with Jimmy Carter, that I had been a Baptist pastor (for ten years in San Francisco), and that Billy Graham was one of the founders of Christianity Today, they insisted that we speak in their churches.

We spoke in two churches in Bucharest, including the main Baptist one (Golgotha), and at the church in Brasov where Union president Mara is pastor. We spent our final five days in Transylvania, the cradle of the Baptist movement in eastern Europe, where we spoke in eight churches. These included some of the largest in the country, in cities and villages alike. Among them were the 1,400-member Speranta (Hope) Baptist in Arad, a city of about 200,000, and the Baptist church in Curtici, a town north of Arad near the Hungarian border. The church in Curtici was one of the first Baptist churches organized in Romania. Its current membership is about 1,000. Speranta’s congregation has built with its own money and volunteer labor what will probably be Romania’s largest Baptist building for some years to come. Dedication is scheduled for this July. Meanwhile, throngs of more than 1,000 jam into the old building for services, and the church has organized several branches.

In most of the churches where we spoke, the auditoriums were packed to overflowing. People stood in the aisle right down to the pulpit area, for hours at a time. At some places the crowd spilled into courtyards outside where they listened to loudspeakers. In every church there were large numbers of young people. No matter what day of the week services are held, we were told, the churches are always filled. We addressed well over 7,000 people in eleven churches.

A number of the services lasted two and even three hours. Meetings often begin with an hour of congregational prayer. Music is also a substantial part of Romanian Baptist services. Many of the churches feature several choral groups, string and brass bands, and soloists in a single service (up to an hour’s worth), and there is plenty of congregational singing. Few churches have modern electric organs (most are of the foot-pump variety that have a way of changing key in mid-song), there are few hymnals, and choral and instrumental music is often hand-copied. Yet the spirited music in the churches of Transylvania is the best I have heard anywhere in the world.

Our part of the program was about the same in each meeting. Crisan gave greetings on behalf of Romanian Christians in America and then told about President Carter and his faith. If the President ever visits Romania, and we hope he does, the Baptists will surely invite him to preach. They consider him a brother, and they hold lay preachers—upon whom their own churches rely heavily—in high esteem.

I followed Crisan’s remarks with expressions of sympathy and concern on behalf of American Christians aware of the suffering caused by the quake. The people generally knew little of the extent of the damage to the nation’s churches, so I reported to them what I knew. I told them how Christians from other countries had pitched in to help in times of disaster elsewhere and how Christians in the West wanted to help in the current crisis. “When one of us suffers, we all suffer,” I reminded them.

Then I took the audience on a quick global tour, pointing out how God is at work throughout the world and giving examples of the remarkable spread of Christianity in our time—including the example of Romania. The average Romanian gets relatively little news of the outside world and virtually no news of the spread of Christianity in other lands.

In each message I told of recent spiritual developments in Washington and affirmed that the Gospel had spread right to the top in America. There was enthusiastic response when I added that my prayer is for the Gospel to spread right to the top in Romania.

University Students

On our last night in Romania, a Monday, Crisan stayed behind to visit relatives in Arad, and I traveled with local Baptist leaders and interpreter Motz to Timosoara, a university city of more than 200,000 about an hour’s drive south of Arad, near the Yugoslavian border. I had wanted to slip in and merely observe a meeting of Christian university students at First Baptist that I had heard about in Bucharest. The church fathers, however, on hearing that we were in the area, put together a full-scale church service and asked that I speak. Nearly 1,000 crowded inside, and hundreds stood in the courtyard outside. I apologized to the students for having preempted their meeting, and I told them it had been my wish only to visit it.

There were some quick huddles, and as a result the students—about 300 of them—remained after the main service was concluded. For the next hour and a half I stood at a microphone in their midst and answered questions. They wanted to know about church life in America, about personal devotional practices of American Christians, about dress styles (and codes), about Billy Graham and his crusades (fully a third of the questions were about the evangelist and his methods—he is loved and wanted throughout Romania even though he has never been there). I told them about such ministries as Campus Crusade for Christ, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, Navigators, and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. The idea of assertive witness and organized fellowship on campus was a foreign but appealing concept to them. They also seemed fascinated when in response to a question I informed them that a number of scientists with advanced degrees are Christians.

A show of hands revealed that nearly half of the students had become Christians at an early age, having been raised in Christian homes. Few had received Christ during elementary and secondary school years. Nearly one-half were recent converts, having accepted Christ as Saviour at age twenty or later—a significant indication of what has been happening in Romania lately.

The leader of this group is Doru Matei, 35, an engineer who has been working with young people for fifteen years. He has been conducting the Monday-night meeting for the past two years. A number of churches, I was told, now have youth meetings, and some young people have organized their own informal Bible-study fellowships.

Matei brought the meeting to a halt sometime after 10:30 P.M. with prayer and the singing of “Alleluia,” a popular chorus brought back by the five Romanians who attended the 1974 Lausanne evangelization congress. They sang the final verse, “Jesus loves you,” in English, with their hands joined and uplifted.

On the drive back to Arad, one of my pastoral hosts remarked: “You are the first American who has ever addressed a meeting of Christian university students in our land.”

Two years ago, they added, I would not have been permitted to preach in their churches.

Why the Growth?

We met with no restrictions on our journey. We traveled freely, spoke with whomever we wished, and said what was on our minds. The officials of the Department of Cults (President John Rosianu, Vice-President George Nenciu, and Director Julian Sorin), the state body in charge of religious affairs, received us graciously and with respect, and we engaged in a frank exchange of viewpoints. A Romanian radio and TV reporter interviewed us; he was especially interested in what George Crisan had to say about Jimmy Carter’s faith.

Our hosts—pastors and lay leaders alike—were hospitable to the point of sacrifice (average worker’s pay: $125 a month), accepting us warmly into their hearts and homes and busy schedules. After evening church services we gathered in homes for sumptuous banquetsize meals, and long into the night we swapped stories, sang hymns and choruses with family members and local church officers who dropped by, and conversed about serious matters of faith and church life. The church leaders did not evade our most candid questions.

We held private conferences with groups of pastors, discussing their needs, problems, and challenges in light of present-day trends. These were chaired by our main host in Transylvania, Pastor Trajan Grec of the Curtici church, president of the 120-church Arad Baptist association and vice-president of the Union.

“Why do you think our churches are growing?” asked Pastor John Trutza of Speranta Baptist in one such conference. (Trutza and Grec were among the five Romanian delegates at Lausanne.)

I replied that I had come to find out why from them. However, I offered some observations: (1) the Baptists and other evangelical denominations in Romania have their roots in persecution, and suffering somehow has a purifying, strengthening effect in the life of the Church; (2) the pulpit ministry is rooted solidly in the Word of God, and the pastors are persons who walk with God; (3) there is a strong and dedicated lay leadership (the Baptists have more than 800 lay preachers, and a number of the deacons I met have the spiritual qualifications of a pastor); (4) prayer has a central place in the life of the churches and in members’ family life; and (5) an increasing number of people are sharing their faith with others.

The Baptists have more than 1,000 congregations with approximately 200,000 members, and they have been baptizing 20,000 persons a year since 1972. The Pentecostals have between 150,000 and 200,000 members in nearly 1,000 congregations; they have more than doubled in size in the past fifteen years. The Evangelical Christians, an amalgamation of several Brethren bodies, are thought to have about 120,000 members in nearly 400 recognized congregations (many other congregations meet without benefit of government approval). The Seventh-day Adventists have more than 50,000 members, and they are growing rapidly too.

In a country of 21.5 million, though, the total free-church population is small. The Romanian Orthodox Church claims the nominal allegiance of up to 85 per cent of the population. Jews (100,000), Uniate Catholics, Roman Catholics (1.5 million), German-speaking Lutherans 200,000), Unitarians (80,000), and Hungarian-speaking Reformed members (700,000) account for much of the remainder. (We were told by various spokemen of stirrings of spiritual renewal in the mainline denominations, especially among the Reformed and Orthodox.)

Freedom the Issue

As indicated earlier, the Baptists—and to a certain extent the other free churches—are confronted by some serious problems. Many of them are related to religious freedom. The issue of religious freedom in Romania is a complicated one whose roots are jumbled in history, ideology, and personalities.

Moldavia and Walachia united in 1861 to form Romania after hundreds of years of indirect rule by the Turks. Romania seized Transylvania, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and other chunks of land after World War I. Until that time the Romanian Orthodox Church was virtually the only church in Romania, and it therefore had considerable political clout (all archbishops and bishops were automatically members of Parliament, for example). Discrimination against the religious minorities by the Orthodox soon turned into outright repression and persecution. Baptists were virtually outlawed in the 1930s and their property confiscated. (The Baptists have been harassed ever since German Baptist pioneer Johann Gerhard Oncken and his followers spread the movement to Transylvania in the late 1800s. Their Anabaptist forbears suffered persecution as early as the middle 1500s.)

After World War II the Communists came to power and began addressing the country’s many grievous social ills. The regime stripped the Orthodox Church of its special privileges and political power, closed many of its institutions, and decreed that all religions were now equal before the law. Yet because of its official atheist position, the government ended up enacting repressive measures against the churches. Persecution and control became so bad during the Stalin-Krushchev era that it seemed the gates of hell were prevailing against the Church after all. A thaw began about 1962, and the level of religious freedom has risen remarkably in the past five years.

The German- and Hungarian-speaking congregations seem to have a greater degree of freedom than Romanian-speaking ones. Some leaders believe this is because many local authorities are Orthodox loyalists at heart bent on protecting their church from evangelicals. According to this theory, the authorities would view evangelical church growth among Romanian-speaking people as being at the expense of the Orthodox Church. It is a fact that the German-speaking Baptists seem to have ample supplies of Bibles and Christian literature while the Romanian-speaking churches have severe shortages. (Emigration, however, is high among the Germanic people.)

I hasten to add that we had a pleasant and informative visit with Orthodox officials, and that they are ecumenically inclined. They, like the Baptists and others, sometimes have “problems at the local level” that do not reflect headquarters thinking and policy.

How much freedom the churches will have in the future remains uncertain. Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu is apparently committed to keeping his country independent from the Soviet Union in many spheres. At the same time he seems intent on assuring the Soviets they need not fear ideological lapses on his part. In 1975 he launched a “cultural revolution” aimed at instilling Communist ideology and building national unity. (We saw the equivalent of Marxist soap operas on TV. Very funny.) If there is any opposition to the ideological offensive by the churches, trouble can be expected.

This is why most of the Baptist leaders want Josif Ton and his colleagues to cool it. Baptist Union secretary general Paul Barbatei, a lawyer from Cluj, acknowledges that “the noise” surrounding Ton’s earlier papers resulted in some good for the churches. But he feels it is time now to consolidate the gains and to negotiate quietly regarding other grievances. Among his priorities are problems of discrimination against believers in higher-education and employment opportunities.

I know that such discrimination exists. We were approached at various places by young people who were being hindered in their pursuit of an education or career simply because they were believers. We also met several gifted adults who because of their faith were fired from responsible positions. Some were given menial work instead, and some are being denied any further employment at all.

Many of the younger believers sympathize with Ton and are getting impatient with the state. They want full religious freedom, and they want it now. If the clamor keeps up, the state may be forced to make a hard choice between ideology and human rights.

How well is America evangelized? This question was asked in a disturbing Christianity Today article entitled “How ‘Christian’ Is America?” (December 3, 1976). The author went on to say, “With a 71 per cent membership in religious organizations, it might seem that America is now virtually evangelized. No one I know of, however, believes that is so.” Well, I do! But before going into that, let me repeat some of the encouraging things brought out in that article.

1. “America has the largest group of professing Christians to be found in any country in the world.”

2. “More American people attend church in an average week than attend all professional baseball, basketball, and football games combined in the average year!”

3. “Some fix the number of U.S. evangelicals at 40 million, although the figure is a soft one.”

And to all of that good news can be added the facts that many of our nation’s best-known radio and television preachers are evangelical and, to quote Christianity Today’s senior editor, David Kucharsky, “most of the nation’s great churches are now evangelical” (“The Year of the Evangelical,” October 22, 1976). Many of us can remember when such things were not so.

But there is another side to the coin. Dr. C. Peter Wagner, the author of the article in question, says that of the 143.8 million adults in the United States, “more than 106 million … fall into the ‘functionally unchurched’ category. This is 74 per cent. In other words, three out of every four American adults are lost and need to be evangelized.”

And it is with this that I take exception. I believe that most of those 106 million adults are evangelized. Evangelized, yes. Converted, no. It seems evident to me that we are living in the most evangelized nation in all history. The United States is a land of gospel surplus. Let me illustrate what I mean by looking at first-century Jerusalem, certainly a city of gospel surplus. It was evangelized, yes. But converted, no.

1. John’s proclamation concerning the Lamb of God must have been much discussed by Jerusalem’s citizens.

2. Some of Jesus’ miracles and much of his teaching occurred in Jerusalem.

3. Wouldn’t most residents of the Holy City hear about the revolutionary cleansing of the Temple?

4. Then came the betrayal, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus, at which time the curtain of the Temple was torn in two. Furthermore, the bodies of holy people were raised to life, and they went into the city.

5. After his resurrection, Jesus revealed himself to five hundred, of whom a hundred and twenty waited and prayed in an upper room in Jerusalem until Pentecost. This was followed by Peter’s sermon, and the turning of three thousand people to Christ. All who heard Peter that day were evangelized, but not all were converted.

6. But the evangelization of Jerusalem did not end with Pentecost. The Lord kept adding to the number of believers daily (Acts 2:47). Then we discover in Acts 4:4 that five thousand more were added to the church. We now have more than eight thousand believers.

7. In Acts 5:14 we find more believers, multitudes of men and women, added to the church. And this is capped by Acts 6:7, which says, “The Word of God increased and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a large number of priests were obedient to the faith.”

8. The Holy City was by this time saturated with the Gospel, that is, well evangelized. For those who still doubt it, there is a strong word of testimony given by the enemies of the Gospel: “You have filled Jerusalem with your teaching” (Acts 5:28).

And yet, with all that, the believers in that great city apparently had little interest in evangelizing Judea, Samaria, and the Gentile world. They were prepared to sow the gospel seed in Jerusalem repeatedly at the expense of fulfilling the rest of the Great Commission. Perhaps they were confusing evangelization and conversion. Perhaps they thought they were to bring the world (their little world) to Christ, rather than taking Christ to his big world.

This suggests the necessity for defining evangelization. One definition is found, I believe, in Acts 2:11. The context reveals people from many lands gathered in Jerusalem. They were being evangelized in their own languages by Spirit-filled believers. They responded by saying, “We [unbelievers] do hear them [the believers] speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.” From this I conclude that world evangelization means to give to all people an intelligible opportunity to accept Christ as personal Saviour.

Though that may only be a rudimentary definition of the word, it certainly points to the basic principle of operation followed by Paul. Having evangelized for two years in Asia (a province of Turkey), Paul claims that all who dwelt in Asia had heard the Word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks (Acts 19:10). He left Asia evangelized but not converted. He apparently felt the converts in Ephesus, Thyatira, Sardis, Smyrna, and the like should do the rest of the soul-winning, while he carried on with world evangelization.

In Romans 15:18–20, Paul, who consistently sought to preach the Gospel where Christ was not already known, refers to the outreach of his ministry. He says that from Jerusalem to Illyricum (Yugoslavia) he fully preached the Gospel. He does not suggest that he brought everyone in that 2,000-mile stretch of territory to Christ. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that he ever kept track of the number of his converts. But he certainly does suggest that he left believers behind him and that the Gospel was therefore available to any and all who wanted it. Paul was evidently not willing to saturate one small area with the seed of the Word at the expense of other areas. He refused to get bogged down in his little world to the neglect of God’s big world. But that is precisely what we who live in Gospel-affluent America seem to be doing.

I invite you to note the following facts:

1. We have more ordained ministers in the United States (330,000) than there are in all the other countries of the world combined. Of course, some of them do not preach the Gospel, but that is also true of some in other countries.

2. We have more Christian radio stations and more hours of gospel broadcasting (radio and television) than all the rest of the world. Beside this, we have 6,000 secular stations that air the Christian message from one to seven hours a week. Several fine evangelical preachers are on nationwide radio or TV networks every week.

3. Our Christian publishing houses and bookstores continue to increase, and the sale of Bibles and evangelical books is booming. There is more evangelical literature (books, magazines, and tracts) available in the English language than in all the other languages of the world put together.

4. We have 60,000 young people in our Bible institutes and Bible colleges, and many thousands more in our Christian liberal arts colleges. The combined total of students in Bible schools in the rest of the world does not match ours. Furthermore, we have more seminarians than all the rest of the world.

5. Our evangelistic outreach to children far surpasses that of any other country. It has been reported that on any Sunday there are more people in Sunday school in the United States than in all the rest of the world.

6. We have Bibles in most of the hundreds of thousands of our hotel and motel rooms. We have hundreds of Christian grade and high schools. There are far more Christian camping ministries in America than in all of Europe and Africa.

7. And what about the multiplied para-church youth ministries, and our church and city-wide evangelistic campaigns? In the recent “Here’s Life America” push, as many as 100 million Americans may have been exposed to gospel opportunity.

How does all this look in light of the fact that the United States contains only 5 per cent of the world’s population? If you were the Lord of the Harvest, would you so design things that one-twentieth of the field would be seeded and reseeded while the rest languished?

Our best missiologists today believe there are almost two billion people yet to be understandingly introduced to Jesus Christ. But apparently that does not concern us greatly, so long as there are “106 million American adults” who are “functionally unchurched.”

We conclusively demonstrate our indifference to world evangelization by the fact that 95 per cent of our trained Christian workers (pastors, evangelists, and so on) carry on ministries here in Gospel-affluent America, while only 5 per cent go to evangelize the 95 per cent of the world’s population living beyond our borders.

Then ponder the fact that we spend more than ninety cents of every church dollar on our personal religious concerns, while less than ten cents reaches the foreign fields.

America’s 74 million Protestants give slightly less than twenty cents a week per capita for foreign missions. If they gave only one dollar a week per capita (and how can we understand the Great Commission and give less?), our foreign-mission budget would total $3.85 billion, and that is almost ten times the amount now being received. All of this suggests that we really don’t believe the Great Commission as we should.

Perhaps we, like the early believers at Jerusalem, are not quite understanding the Lord of the Harvest. Maybe we are a bit confused as to whether we have been commissioned to bring the world to Christ (this will not happen) or to take Christ to the world (this must happen). We must be grateful that we live in the most thoroughly evangelized nation in the world, but never at the expense of getting on with reaching people for Christ around the world.

Huge sobs and gasps of air interrupted the otherwise constant groaning. Nothing is more disconcerting than watching a grown man cry. This father of fourteen children stood in front of his apartment in a housing project. As he saw us approaching, he tried to regain his composure. Wiping the tears from his face, he focused on us and asked, “Why my boy? What did he ever do?”

Moments before, a stranger had walked up to their sparsely furnished apartment, lifted a shotgun, and fired at point-blank range into the stomach of Cecil’s eldest son. “We didn’t even know him,” Cecil said. “There was no reason. None at all.” The boy was dead on arrival at the hospital.

Cecil was so upset that he didn’t sleep for five days. He didn’t go to work. He was afraid. If he went to his job, who would protect his remaining twelve children? Another son had been murdered just over a year before.

This tragedy was not unusual in Cecil’s neighborhood. Consider:

• A fifteen-year-old boy was murdered walking home from school because five boys wanted his letterman’s sweater.

• An eighteen-year-old high school senior had his chest blown off by a shotgun fired by four youths he’d never seen before.

• An eighty-five-year-old blind woman was found starving on the street. She died four days later.

• Fifteen-year-old Lisa was knifed by a rival gang in the park and now has a cross permanently engraved on her back and multiple scars on her stomach and chest.

• Twelve-year-old Jane was raped in front of her four little sisters.

• Nine-year-old Letitia hadn’t eaten in three days.

• The parents of Tony (4), Chico (5), and JoAnn (6) tied and locked them in the bathroom every day with no food “so they wouldn’t get into trouble.”

In Cecil’s community, the sheriff’s department has determined that it is more likely that a boy born in 1976 will die by murder than that an American soldier in World War II would die in combat. Cecil himself is ten times more likely to be a murder victim than his suburban counterpart. Cecil lives in the ghetto.

Why are the inner cities of America deteriorating so rapidly? Why do we have armed guards in our inner-city schools?

Why are there bars over the windows in many private residences? Why are the elderly afraid to walk to the store or to the mailbox?

The easy answer is to attribute the violence, loneliness, and hurt of the ghetto to sin. This answer is correct but only partial. There is a more complete answer, and it involves the Church of Jesus Christ and its responsibility to the 40 million Americans who live in the inner city: the city is without salt.

When you study recent church history, you discover that the evangelical church has run, not walked, away from the inner city, for what seem to be good reasons. People are afraid to be in the ghetto at night. Cars are stolen. Church property is vandalized. Parking is difficult. And when you remove the restraining and transforming influence of the Church, an area soon deteriorates. This is one of the major reasons why many of our inner-city areas become ghettos. The ghetto is isolated from the salt of the earth. And while there are some valid reasons for a church to move its buildings and meetings out of the ghetto, there is no excuse for totally deserting the people who live there.

In his high-priestly prayer, Jesus said, “I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from Satan’s power” (John 17:15, Living Bible). It was the practice of the first-century Jews to avoid the “tainted” Samaritans. But Jesus “had to pass through Samaria” (John 4:4), and as he did, the woman at the well—ghetto outcast of her day—was touched. A potent witness was spread because of this encounter, and many Samaritans believed. Jesus went where the people were—to the temple square in Jerusalem, to cities and villages, to the lake shores. He took the Gospel to the cities of the Decapolis, where Greeks in all their paganism were clustered. He went to the courts of the temple, where the hucksters and hypocrites were firmly entrenched, ripping off the people.

Paul found his way to the vital centers of the cities of the Greek world to evangelize and plant churches. He took his ministry to the proud, the pagan, and the castoffs in the marketplace, in the judgment seat, on Mars Hill, where men met to dispute. He carried the message even to Rome and to that special enclave of Caesar’s, the Praetorian guard.

What difference would it make if the Church were to re-enter the inner city? In Matthew 5:13 Jesus says that his followers are salt, and the basic characteristics of salt illustrate the potential effect.

Salt Preserves

Salt preserves flesh from decay, and the salt of the earth is meant to preserve a society dying in sin.

Christ himself came into the world, into our tightly organized, proud, and dying culture, to save us, to preserve us from the choices we had been making. God is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Salt preserves that which would otherwise perish. Through the incarnation Jesus Christ himself became salt—so that we perishing sinners might be preserved.

The problem with Sodom and Gomorrah for Lot wasn’t simply that they were centers of vice. Certainly the ancient world had plenty of those. The problem was that there weren’t enough righteous people in them to do any good (Gen. 18:32). Sodom and Gomorrah would have been spared if even ten godly people could have been found. There wasn’t enough salt in Sodom. Ironically, Lot’s wife became, in her weakness, a testimonial pillar of salt.

God’s people can have a restraining influence on sin. Often when I speak to a service club or some other secular group, I notice a change in the room when I am introduded as “Reverend” Phillips. Swearing stops. People behave a bit differently. The presence of a Christian serves as a temporary restraint on their behavior. I believe the Church could affect the inner city in the same way if it were there to:

1. Exemplify the life of Christ in some potent and visible way, to attract attention to the resources of life in Christ. Peter suggests that the “seeing” of genuine good deeds can bring glory to God (1 Pet. 2:12; see also Acts 2:47).

2. Pray for the ghetto on the basis of personal, firsthand concern. James says, “The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects” (James 5:16).

3. Bear the presence of the Holy Spirit, the restrainer of sin. In John 14:17 Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit: “He dwells with you, and will be in you.” If we are God’s regenerated people, we bear in ourselves the presence of the Holy Spirit. And we are told in John 16:8–11 that the Spirit of God convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. That potent presence of the Holy Spirit needs to be smuggled into the ghetto in our very lives—present and obediently reaching out in love.

4. Teach people in a way that makes a saving difference. Teach by precept and example. In First Timothy 4:11 Paul commands Timothy to teach the truths of Christ. He continues, “Practice these duties, devote yourself to them, so that all may see your progress. Take heed to yourself and to your teaching; hold to that, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (vv. 15, 16).

Salt Seasons

Salt makes palatable what would otherwise be bland. The Bible makes an interesting use of the idea of seasoning. In Exodus 30:35 we read that the incense offering was seasoned with salt. What a beautiful, symbolic recognition of the importance of seasoning in the life! Paul expressed the concern that Christians not come on drab and lifeless to unbelievers. He observes in Colossians 4:5, 6, “Conduct yourselves wisely towards outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every one.”

How is a life seasoned? What makes it tasty? Such things as knowing that there are people who care, having hope, feeling secure. Life in the ghetto, with its fear, hurt, loneliness, crime, and violence, is tasteless, almost unbearable. But the love of Christ can transform fear into security, hurt into comfort, loneliness into community, crime and violence into order and peace.

Salt Purifies and Heals

Salt has often been used as a healer for wounds and sores. But if you refuse to apply the healing salt, none of the potential healing power is realized.

The Church of Jesus Christ has a healing ministry. In Malachi 4:2 we read that the Old Testament prophet looked forward to the coming of the “Sun of righteousness,” which would rise with “healing in its wings.” When Jesus began his ministry in Nazareth and read from the prophet Isaiah, he read the passage that said, “He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18; Isa. 61:1, 2). When the Twelve went out, Luke 9:6 says they “departed and went through the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.” In James 5:14 we read, “Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man.”

One can dogmatically prescribe Jesus as the cure for the inner city’s ills. But Jesus works through his Church. And unless the Church is willing to be the purifying and healing agent to the ghetto, its proclamations are like sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. How can a sick person in the ghetto “call for the elders of the church” if that church has abandoned the ghetto?

Salt Must Be Scattered

Salt must be in the right place. A box of salt in the corner of the garage is no more effective than a box of sawdust. Salt is useless when it is confined to its container.

The Great Commission was not “call ye all the people into one spot and give them a shot of the Gospel.” It was to go into “all the world” to teach and make disciples. That means going out and penetrating the sinful world with the transforming salt of the Gospel.

Christians can gather in their churches and be concerned about the ghetto for years, but the city feels no effect until the salt is scattered into its neighborhoods. The book of Acts is a narrative of the scattering of salt into a pagan world. This is a model that should stimulate us to action.

Jesus lived out his theology of incarnation. He became a man and lived among us (John 1:14). He did not count his valued status as God as something to be hung on to at all costs: rather, he “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:7, 8). At great personal cost, Christ came to identify with us.

To minister in the ghetto effectively, Christians must become a part of the ghetto. We must live there, identifying with those to whom we minister. A missionary to Rome would never live in Paris and commute. An urban missionary must not commute from suburbia.

When the Church is content to send millions of dollars and thousands of missionaries to the four corners of the world and damn its own “Jerusalems” through neglect, it ceases to be the salt of the earth.

Consider these facts. The 40 million Americans living in the inner city compose a mission field six times larger than Cambodia, larger than North and South Viet Nam, larger than any country in Latin America, larger than all but one country in South America and all but one in Africa. Ninety-five per cent of the people living in the inner city are unchurched.

No longer should Christians discuss whether our commitment to the city should be “social” or “religious.” We cannot provide bread for the hungry and neglect to break the bread of life. Nor can we be pious soul-savers who ignore a starving child, a trapped addict, a lonely prostitute. We must translate our faith into realistic action that heeds Christ’s model of healing the sick and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom. After specifically speaking about people who were hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, and imprisoned, Jesus said, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40).

Throughout church history, revival has always spread most rapidly among the poor and the oppressed. The inner city is ripe for revival. There needs to be conviction and repentance. But how will the people hear if there is no preacher? How can they be healed and preserved if there is no salt?

You needn’t bury meat in salt to do it some good. Just a little salt, strategically scattered, suffices. It was a small number of early Christians who had a great impact on the Roman empire. God is always willing to do his work with a small but faithful remnant. Ezekiel records the message, “And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none.” Amos tells in graphic terms of the rescuing of bits and pieces of the remnant in Samaria: “As the shepherd rescues from the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear, so shall the people of Israel who dwell in Samaria be rescued, with the corner of a couch and part of abed.” What a triumph it would be if we could get even some scraps of the Church down into the ghettos of our land.

The 40 million people who live in the American ghettos desperately need men and women who will submit to God’s call as missionaries and who realize that a mission field is not necessarily across an ocean. We need families who will move into the city and by their very presence be a model of the biblical standards for parenthood and family life. We need pastors, Bible teachers, and Christian laymen in the inner city.

Twenty centuries ago the Apostle Paul traveled from one metropolitan center to another preaching Christ crucified, risen, and coming again. We too believe that the Gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. Today urban America is the greatest opportunity for missions that the American church has.

It is to this mission field that over one hundred World Impact staff members have committed themselves. In each of our ministries, from San Diego, Los Angeles, and Portland to Omaha, Wichita, St. Louis, and Newark, urban homes are available to meet the needs of our neighbors twenty-four hours a day with emergency food, clothing, and medical supplies. We teach reading and offer budget and marital counseling. But most of all we teach children, teen-agers, and adults the Word of God, seeking to build strong Christian family units.

As new believers mature in Christ, they are invited to enter adiscipling relationship. When they are thoroughly trained, they join us in teaching others.

But last month we had to turn away four thousand people who wanted to study the Bible because there were not enough Christians to teach them. Our story now is “too little salt,” and our fear is that soon it will be too late.

No longer can we be content to say that blacks must reach blacks and browns must reach browns. That is a denial of God’s sovereignty. The Holy Spirit reaches any person he chooses through whatever vessel he chooses.

The Church must reverse its retreat and make a commitment to reach the inner cities for Christ. Christian men and women must become missionaries to the ghetto so that there no longer exists a city without salt.

Very wisely the apostle warned, “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit …” (Col. 2:8). Unfortunately, evangelicals do not always realize that one cannot beware of philosophy unless he is first aware of philosophy. “Why study error?” we are asked. “If one knows the truth, then he can recognize error. Government agents who detect counterfeits spend their time studying authentic bills. A fraud cannot be recognized unless one knows the genuine item.”

While that is true as far as it goes, we must go further. Who would go to a doctor who studied only health, one who declared upon hearing a patient’s symptoms, “Sorry, I do not research, discuss, or treat disease. I am interested only in health!” The point is this: the evangelical most likely not to be able to fulfill Paul’s command to beware of philosophy is the one who knows the least about philosophy. This dictum is directly applicable to the question of inerrancy.

The Basic Problem

Clark Pinnock was correct in saying, “The central problem in contemporary theology is neither theism nor ecclesiology, but epistemology” (A Defense of Biblical Inerrancy). Let me illustrate this point by a conversation I had with a professor from an evangelical seminary. The denomination supporting the seminary had just emerged from an inerrancy struggle that saw its weaker “inerrancy of intent” statement (which I am convinced Rudolf Bultmann could have signed, though it was carefully worded to sound evangelical) changed to a stronger statement that declared the Bible to be inerrant in fact and intent. All the seminary profs had signed the statement. The furor died down, the constituency was happy, and peace prevailed.

Since I was personally acquainted with the stand of one of the professors, I was curious as to how he could have signed the new statement. I asked him three questions. First, “Do you believe that the synoptic Gospels could be teaching one chronological system that represents Jesus as being crucified on one day and/or time of day and the Gospel of John be teaching that Jesus was crucified on another day and/or time of day?” He answered, “Yes, I do.” Then I asked, “Well, then, would you not consider this a contradiction in the teaching of the Bible?” His reply was perplexing: “I do not press the law of non-contradiction that far.” This answer is filled with epistemological, theological, and even ecclesiastical importance. The third question he did not have time to answer. It was this: “In view of your belief in this factual contradiction in the Bible, how were you able to sign the recent statement of the school that the Bible is inerrant in intent and in fact?”

Now I do not wish to imply that there was no answer for the question, nor even that there was no honest answer. I believe both are possible. This man is both scholarly and godly; I would in no way want to impugn his integrity. What I would like to contend is that when we reach the root question on inerrancy it need not be a matter of either the orthodoxy of the inerrancy statement or the integrity of the affirmers; it may be a matter of the epistemology of the interpreter. In short, the real problem is not moral but philosophical. Paul said, “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy.…”

The extant English literature on inerrancy has little to say about this most crucial philosophical dimension. What could be meant by the statement, “I do not press the law of non-contradiction that far”? The context in which the question was asked limits the possible answers. In the face of a clearly admitted factual discrepancy in the Gospels and in view of the philosophical presuppositions of the linguistical studies in which this professor was thoroughly trained, I would venture to say that he meant something like this: “Reality, particularly religious reality or truth, is not subject to the law of non-contradiction. That is, reality is existential or perhaps paradoxical. No abstract Greek philosophical categories can dictate spiritual truth. There are many kinds of logic, and the Christian exegete is under no obligation to be dominated by Aristotle’s logic.”

Now, this answer is exceedingly subtle. And unfortunately its implications pass right over the heads of most people in the pew and in the denominational headquarters, and often elude pastors and teachers in the evangelical college or seminary as well. Indeed, the subtleties are so great that one can readily see why some church leaders think this view is hypocrisy. No doubt some teachers have been deceptive in their stand on inerrancy. However, this need not be the case. It is perfectly possible that the problem is not ethical but epistemological.

The Epistemological Roots

In a helpful analysis of the philosophical problem at the root of the errancy view of Scripture, John W. Montgomery named two villains: epistemological dualism and existentialism. The dualism he traces from “Plato’s separation of the world of ideas from the world of things and the soul from the body, to the medieval ‘realists’ with their split between universals and particulars … to the modern idealism of Kant and Hegel …” (“Inspiration and Inerrancy: A New Departure,” Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society, Spring, 1965). The second enemy of inerrancy, existentialism, Montgomery sees stemming from Kierkegaard. “It has affirmed that ‘truth is subjectivity’ and that ‘existence,’ as manifested in personal relationships, precedes and surpasses in quality ‘essence,’ i.e., formal, propositional assertions or descriptions concerning reality.” Thus, concludes Montgomery, “the cultural pressure to existentialism, combined with a powerful tradition of metaphysical dualism, impels much of modern theology to reject inerrancy.” According to Montgomery, the most important factor is existentialism, whose “presuppositions (e.g., ‘existence precedes essence,’ ‘the objective-subjective distinction must be transcended,’ ‘truth is found only in personal encounter,’ etc.) can and must be subjected to philosophical analysis and criticism.”

The source for an adequate critique of existentialism Montgomery sees in the linguistic analysis of Ludwig Wittgenstein and in the verifiability principle in particular. In order for something to be meaningful, it must be empirically verifiable or testable in some way. In accordance with this principle, any statement that is not purely definitional (such as, “all husbands are married men”) or else empirically testable is held to be meaningless. All non-verifiable statements are literally non-sensical. Montgomery agrees with Wittgenstein’s statement in the Tractatus, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Into Wittgenstein’s “silent” and senseless category fall such statements of existentialists as “truth is discovered in responsible decisions” and “personal encounter is the only sure avenue to truth.” Since these are neither true by definition nor empirically verifiable, Montgomery concludes that they are meaningless. Thus linguistic analysis has helped the evangelical refute existentialism, and therefore destroy the existentialists’ objection to inerrancy. Wittgenstein has saved the day for evangelicals! At least this is what Montgomery thinks.

My analysis is that Montgomery is (1) right in identifying the problem, (2) imprecise in naming its source, and (3) incorrect in his hope for a solution via Wittgenstein and empirical verificationalism.

Philosophy is definitely at the root of the inerrancy problem. However, it is not really Platonic epistemological dualism as such that is to blame but Kantian agnosticism. This can be shown both historically and philosophically. Historically, the real problem with the traditional orthodox view of inspiration and inerrancy arose not after the Platonic influence on Christianity but after Kant. Furthermore, epistemological dualism in the tradition of Plato does not make it impossible to know God and speak descriptively about him. Indeed, many evangelicals think it does the reverse; they defend a Platonic epistemology as the only alternative to agnosticism.

No, the real problem is not Plato but Kant. It is Kant’s bifurcation of appearance and reality, of the thing-to-me and the thing-in-itself, that makes it impossible to know and speak of God. According to Kant, one ends in paradoxes and antinomies when he attempts to speak of God or reality. Kant notwithstanding, not everyone since him has been dissuaded from talking about God. But when people do speak about God, they too often concede that their language is not metaphysically descriptive but at best only metaphorically evocative or existentially relative.

Some have claimed that Kierkegaard is responsible for going beyond Kantian agnosticism to existentialist irrationalism. But irrationalism seems to be the wrong charge to lay at the door of the Dane. God is supranational but not irrational; Kierkegaard was quite clear on this point. He wrote, “The eternal essential truth (i.e., God) is by no means in itself a paradox; … it becomes paradoxical by virtue of its relationship to an existing individual” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript).

But even though Kierkegaard was not an irrationalist regarding God, he was an existentialist regarding revelation. Revelation is personal and not propositional, subjective and not objective. In this sense Kierkegaardianism is the product of Kantian agnosticism and militates against the orthodox claim that revelatory language can be truly descriptive of God, and errorless. In short, the source of the problem is epistemological, but the nature of the problem is not really dualism but agnosticism, not actually Plato but Kant.

Montgomery offered Wittgensteinian linguistic analysis—particularly the verification criterion of meaning—as a solution to the existentializing and subjectivizing of religious language. This hope is ill founded for several reasons, in my opinion. First, it has been argued, as Montgomery acknowledges, that the verification criterion of meaning is self-defeating because the principle of verification is itself not verifiable. But it will not do to say that it is offered simply as a definition or a mere linguistic proposal that is itself neither true nor false, for several reasons. (1) If this is so, then metaphysical statements cannot be categorically eliminated as Ayer intended in his first chapter of Language, Truth and Logic, “The Elimination of Metaphysics.” (2) There is no reason why someone may not offer a contrary proposal about language with equal pragmatic or personal justification (what other kind of justification could one offer, lacking philosophical arguments for it?). (3) Many astute linguistic analysts have given up the attempt to formulate a generally acceptable verification criterion. In an article in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (October 25, 1963), Alvin Plantinga argued that all attempts appear to be either too narrow, eliminating certain empirical or scientific propositions that the verificationists believe to be meaningful, or else too broad, including as meaningful metaphysical and religious statements that the verificationists wish to exclude. (4) Wittgenstein, even in his later writings, clearly intended that his view of language would eliminate both cognitive religious language and a historical verification of Christianity, both of which Montgomery wishes to retain. The subsequent discussion will show that Wittgenstein did in fact hold this view.

Montgomery elsewhere triumphantly (and mistakenly) quotes Wittgenstein’s statement that if a book on ethics could be written “this book would, with an explosion, destroy all the other books in the world.” Montgomery adds, “It is the conviction of orthodox Christianity that in Holy Scripture just such a book exists” (The Suicide of Christian Theology). But what Montgomery neglects to say is that according to Wittgenstein no such book is possible! The reason for this is clear in Wittgenstein: all religion and ethics goes beyond the limits of language. He states unequivocally, “Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural and our words will only express facts; as a teacup will only hold a teacup of water even if I were to pour out a gallon over it (“A Lecture on Ethics,” Philosophical Review, January, 1965). Indeed, as it turns out, when it comes to speaking meaningfully about God, Wittgenstein is as agnostic as Kant. He believed that language—meaningful language—is limited to facts, to the world, and clearly God is not a fact in the world. He says of religious statements:

“I would say, they are certainly not reasonable, that’s obvious.… I want to say: they don’t treat this as a matter of reasonability. Anyone who reads the Epistles will find it said: not only that it is not reasonable, but it doesn’t pretend to be. What seems ludicrous about O’Hara [an apologist] is his making it appear reasonable.… I would say, if this is religious belief, then it’s all superstition. But I would ridicule it, not by saying it is based on insufficient evidence. I would say: Here is a man who is cheating himself” (Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, edited by Cyril Barrett, University of California, 1967, pp. 57–59).

In like manner Wittgenstein claims that it is meaningless to speak of a “Last Judgment.” He writes, “I couldn’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the statement that there will be such a thing. No ‘perhaps’ nor ‘I’m not sure.’ It is a statement which does not allow of any such answer” (ibid., p. 58). More correctly speaking, then, Wittgenstein is neither theistic, nor atheistic, nor agnostic. Like A. J. Ayer, Wittgenstein is what I have elsewhere called “acognostic.” That is, Wittgenstein claims it is equally meaningless to affirm or deny that God exists or even question whether he does. The agnostic is wrong, said Ayer, because he supposes that it is meaningful to ask the question whether God exists. God is the realm of value, and the world is the realm of fact. And in addition to the basic fact-value dichotomy adopted by both Kant and Wittgenstein, the latter argues for the meaninglessness of all empirically based language about God. We cannot speak descriptively about God, and in Wittgenstein’s now famous words, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

In short, the problem is semantic atheism, i.e., the meaninglessness of all alleged God-talk. Indeed, one of the ironies of history is that Wittgenstein turns out to be a Kierkegaardian fideist. Despite the fact that the analytic movement springing from Wittgenstein and the existential movement arising from Kierkegaard are often diametrically opposed, the philosophical forefathers of each were fideistic in their beliefs and “acognostic” in their view of the truth claims of religious language. Recent studies have shown that both Kierkegaard and Tolstoy influenced Wittgenstein. Leslie Griffiths has pointed out that “Wittgenstein’s respect for Kierkegaard is evidenced in the distinction between religious belief and empirical justification and the denial that Christianity has its point of departure in the facts of history” (review of Lectures and Conversations …, Mind, July, 1970).

Wittgenstein does not mention Kierkegaard by name in his book Lectures and Conversations …, but in a conversation with Friedrich Waisman, Wittgenstein said: “Man has the urge to thrust against the limits of language.… Kierkegaard, too, recognized this thrust and even described it in much the same way (as a thrust against paradox)” (“Notes on Talks With Wittgenstein,” Philosophical Review, January, 1975).

What Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein have in common is “acognosticism.” Both hold that one cannot speak meaningfully—i.e., non-contradictorily—and descriptively about God. They are, along with most contemporary theologians, semantic atheists. Paul Van Buren saw clearly where linguistic empiricism leads when he wrote, “The empiricist in us finds the heart of the difficulty not in what is said about God, but in the very talking about God at all.… Today we cannot even understand the Nietzschian cry that ‘God is dead!’ for if it were so, how could we know? No, the problem now is that the word ‘God’ is dead” (The Secular Meaning of the Gospel).

The tragedy is that even some Christians who claim to have a cognitive view of religious language often turn out to be reductive acognostics. Frederick Ferré and Ian Ramsey are cases in point. Ferré rejects any positively descriptive God-talk and contends for a kind of macro-metaphoric language that reduces to equivocation. After denying that God-talk is to be understood univocally or by any intrinsic analogy, Ferré admits, “We are left with no more idea of God’s own characteristics than that he is responsible for the various characteristics of creation” (“Analogy in Theology,” The Encyclopedia of Philosophy). In a small group conversation last spring, Ferré responded to my analysis of his view by claiming he held to “equivocation with hope.” “With hope of what?” we may ask. The only hope of avoiding equivocation is to have some positive linguistic concepts that can be descriptively applied to God. But these Ferre does not have, on his own confession.

Likewise, Ian Ramsey claims to be empirical and cognitive in his view of religious language in that he develops qualified models that are empirically based, are religiously evocative, and are tested by “empirical fit.” But when it gets right down to the crucial question Ramsey warns, “Let us always be cautious of talking about God in straightforward language.… When we speak of God as ‘supreme love’ [for example], we are not making an assertion in descriptive psychology …” (Religious Language). In short, by his qualified models Ramsey has discovered ways we can engage in God-talk, but he can’t be sure that our talk is about God. That is, Ramsey’s religious language is empirically meaningful, but there is really no way to know if it is theologically or ontologically true!

What is really frightening is that Ferre and Ramsey are the more hopeful and constructive examples of those who claim a cognitive view of religious language. By contrast, the typical “acognostic” is much further from the “kingdom.” In this non-cognitive camp we have everything from Kierkegaard’s “paradoxical” language to Bultmann’s “myths” to Crombie’s “parables” to Hare’s “blik” to Jaspers “ciphers” and Tillich’s “symbols.” The simple truth of the matter is that none of these philosophies of language is capable of carrying an evangelical view of propositional and inerrant statements about God and historical facts. They are all subjective vs. objective or personal vs. propositional; they are existential vs. historical or evocative vs. descriptive.

Unaware of the subtlety of philosophy and of the hidden presuppositions of linguistic studies, evangelicals have found it very difficult to fulfill Paul’s admonition to beware of philosophy.

The Institutional Lesson

Several factors make the “acognostic” view of religious language extremely dangerous for evangelicals. First, in general evangelicalism has been known more for its piety than for its philosophy. Having been largely unaware of the subtlety of philosophy and of the hidden presuppositions of linguistic studies, evangelicals have found it very difficult to fulfill Paul’s admonition to beware of philosophy.

Second, those who have raised a warning among us about the philosophical and epistemological dangers, such as Montgomery and Schaeffer, sometimes lose credibility by not always showing great expertise and exactness in their philosophical analyses. The more sophisticated thinkers have tended to reject the essential insight of their argument because of the sometimes oversimplified (or even incorrect) historical treatment in which it is presented.

Third, this problem is accented on an institutional level because those in positions of authority and review are more capable in practical than in theoretical matters. To rephrase Plato one could wish: “O that administrators and board members were philosophers and that philosophers were administrators and board members!”

Finally, those not carefully trained in philosophy—and especially those naïve enough to believe that they can do theology and exegesis without philosophical presuppositions—often imbibe through secular studies a philosophy of language that is at root “acognostic.” This is often unconscious and does not manifest itself for years in their teaching and writing. And when it does appear, as in the views of my friend from an evangelical seminary, it is more likely attributable to bad epistemology then to impiety or conscious heresy. That is, the problem is often philosophical and not moral. The teacher really believes he is being honest and orthodox in affirming “inerrancy,” but his philosophy of language enables him to believe that a fact can be an existential “fact” and not an empirical fact, that history is really Heilsgeschichte and not Geschichte, that logic does not apply to reality but only to concepts, that revelation is only personal and not propositional, and so on.

A Proposed Solution

The solution to the problem we face in defense of historical and factual inerrancy is almost two thousand years old. It is found in Paul’s injunction to beware of philosophy. And the first step is to become aware of philosophy. Ignorance of the enemy’s tactics is not good strategy in any conflict. I would argue strongly for more philosophy in our schools, both undergraduate and graduate. We need to reinforce the philosophy majors we have and encourage the establishment of new ones.

Second, we should encourage more philosophical awareness on the part of non-philosophers in non-philosophy courses. This is especially true in linguistically related areas because of their crucial bearing on the doctrine of the verbal inerrancy of Scripture.

Third, I suggest efforts to make administrators, boards, and constituencies of evangelical schools more aware of the philosophical dimensions of this problem. I doubt seriously that the laity or clergy of my friend’s evangelical denomination would buy the explanation for believing factual contradictions in the Bible expressed when he said, “I do not press the law of non-contradiction that far.” If they really understood the philosophical and theological implications of his stand, there would no doubt be institutional changes. It is understandable that the layman would tend to think this professor’s stand involves dishonesty when in fact it may be no more than the subtlety of philosophy of which Paul warned us.

Finally, I suggest that we answer poor philosophy with good philosophy, not simply with piety. It is not my purpose to do this here. I shall only indicate the direction of the answer, again quoting the Apostle Paul: “We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ …” (2 Cor. 10:5). We must cut the tree of false philosophy at its presuppositional roots. We must ask the Wittgensteinian analysts how they can cognitively communicate to us the truth about God that it is impossible for us to make cognitively true statements about God. Likewise, we must ask the Kierkegaardian existentialists how it is possible to state the objective and propositional truth about God that God is neither objectively nor propositionally knowable. We must ask those denying that the law of non-contradiction applies to God and spiritual truth how they can make this non-contradictory statement. In short, we must show the self-defeating nature of the philosophy that would unerringly eliminate inerrancy. In The Weight of Glory C. S. Lewis aptly stated our obligation: “To be ignorant and simple now—not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground—would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren.… Good philosophy must exist if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

Things They Didn’t Tell You at Your Seminary Graduation

—Or some aphorisms for the brand-new pastor.

if you don’t know what you’re doing, do it neatly.

If you do know what you’re doing, try to explain it to the official board.

Scold your people and empty your pews.

Impose false guilt and increase aggression.

If you decide not to become Billy Graham or Peter Marshall, be sure to tell your wife, so she can decide not to become Ruth Graham or Catherine Marshall, if she wants to.

Let your first request at the trustees’ meeting not be for an exterminator at the manse.

When you visit in the hospital, don’t sit on the bed or discuss your operation.

Leave your German shepherd at home when you go to the Sunday school picnic.

Take your German shepherd along when you go to the first ministerium meeting.

Always remember to take the offering before the sermon.

During a discussion period, if someone asks a question and you know the answer, say, “That’s a good question.”

If someone asks a question and you don’t know the answer, say, “Opinion on that subject is divided,” or, “It would take too much time to discuss that. Next question.”

Keep an old book and a new book going all the time, but don’t read them at the same time.

Don’t be late for weddings or funerals.

Fifty-one Sundays of the year, preach so that the youngest child in your congregation can understand you. The fifty-second Sunday, preach so that the Ph.D, the Th.D, the Ed.D, and the M.D. are bewildered, awestruck, or filled with wonderment.

If a businessman phones you at 10:30 on Wednesday morning and says, “Pastor, I hope I didn’t get you out of bed,” don’t become paranoid. Just answer, “No, you didn’t. But come on over anyway after you’re dressed and my wife will fix some breakfast for you.”

For every conversation you have with another person, have one with God.

If the head deacon’s daughter wants you to perform her second marriage and tells you the ground for ending the first was adultery, remember to ask who the guilty party was.

When people comment on your sermon as they’re going out the church door, don’t take them very seriously.

Ask for a job description before you accept the call to be a D.C.E., assistant pastor, or youth pastor.

If you can’t tell a joke, don’t.

If someone says you lack experience, agree. Then say, “But time will take care of that.” It will.

There are limits to participation in community life. You don’t need to prove yourself by taking part in the annual rodeo.

Love the teen-agers in your congregation and they’ll love you. The same is true of young adults, middle-age adults, and elderly adults.

Most old people will love you even when you goof. Maybe more then.

Don’t press for action the first time you bring a matter up at a board meeting.

Never surprise the chairman of your board.

Remember that being a pastor is a lot like being the lead dog in a team of Alaskan huskies. You’re the only one who has a view and can see the horizon. So tell them what it’s like.

EUTYCHUS VIII

Slight Support For ‘Man of the Year’

In response to your editorial “Man of the Year at Wake Forest” (April 1), I would like to submit the following observations. You stated that members of the Men’s Residence Council selected Larry Flynt to receive the “Man of the Year” award and that the council was made up largely of those living in men’s dormitories. I would like to say that the majority of Christian men on campus are a part of this group and could be mistakenly labeled as supporters of this award. I am one of these and in no way support this perversion. The recipient of the award was decided upon by a very small percentage of the dormitory students at Wake Forest.…

Your editorial pointed to the problem as owing partially to the administration’s failure to recruit a Christian student body. How can an administration recruit a student body committed to Christian ideals when they themselves are not committed to Christian ideals?… The spirit of Wake Forest is one of secular intellectualism. It fails in its opportunity to be a leader in Christian intellectualism.… I, as many other Christians, thank Christianity Today for the attention they have given this situation.

N.C. MARK MATHESON

Winston Salem,

Now That I’ve Found You …

I don’t know where you’ve been all my life. I subscribe to about fifty journals, but I haven’t been getting Christianity Today until just recently. The book reviews in the current issue (April 15), not only those on sex but more particularly those on pages twelve through twenty-five, I found delightful. Also the article on Uganda and some of the book reviews in the latter part of the journal. I seem to be a subscriber now, so I’ll see if you keep up the quality of this issue, for which I commend and thank you.

KARL MENNINGER

The Menninger Foundation

Topeka, Kans.

An Excerpt From Armstrong

I was dismayed upon reading the edited version of my update articles on the Worldwide Church of God (April 1 and 15 issues) to discover that an exclusive quote prepared especially for this analysis by Garner Ted Armstrong had been excised in its entirety. I had asked Mr. Armstrong if he would care to comment on the reshaping of church policies and doctrines during recent years.… Since this material was deleted, I would greatly appreciate your publication of this excerpt:

The church equates none of its recent growth and development patterns with “compromise,” but rather with a broadening and maturing of its whole approach toward the Word of God and the practical application of that Word in the nuclear/space age.

Personally, I am deeply pleased and enthusiastic over the new maturity extant in the Worldwide Church of God—as exemplified by the openness of our local churches; the cultural, charitable, humanitarian, and non-sectarian educational activities of the Ambassador International Cultural Foundation; and the expansion of Ambassador College. There is an ever-increasing desire on the part of the leadership, ministry, and membership alike to go before the world with that pride which is devoid of ego, that humility which is absent of shame, and that determination which is tempered with wisdom.…

JOSEPH M. HOPKINS

New Wilmington, Pa.

In Appreciation

I want to express my appreciation of W. Ward Gasque’s review of books on eschatology (April 15). For a quite different evaluation of The Jesus Hope by Stephen Travis, as well as an attack on InterVarsity, see J. F. Walvoord’s review of the book in the April-June, 1977, issue of Bibliotheca Sacra.

JOSEPH C. WITT

Orange, Calif.

Our Books section in this issue features an informative review of five books on the question of the Christian in politics. While the focus is on the United States, the questions relate to Christians in every nation.

Two essays have to do with the Church’s outreach. What Keith Phillips says about the exodus of white evangelical churches from the inner city (he does not mention, incidentally, the continuing presence of many black evangelical churches) and what Don Hillis says about overevangelized America should make you stop and think.

Our new editorial address as of June 20 will be: 465 Gundersen, Carol Stream, Illinois 60187. News-related correspondence should continue to be sent to 1014 Washington Building, Washington, D.C. 20005.

The Christian who wants to understand the complex problem of world hunger is confronted by a confusing barrage of data and opinions. Some maintain, for example, that “every person has a right to an adequate diet.” Others hold that this principle is applicable in short-term and emergency conditions but cannot be extended into the future indefinitely. There are voices demanding that aid be given to hungry nations with no strings attached. Others denounce current “strings” but propose the attachment of others. Some speak of the ability of the earth to support (say) 15 or 20 or 35 billion inhabitants. Others heartily disagree.

To the statement that “every person has a right to an adequate diet” there is placed the parallel “right” of every nation’s people to produce with dignity adequate food for themselves (or marketable goods that will enable them to buy adequate food). This requires a level of development adequate to stave off crisis conditions. But liberation theologians decry any attempt by affluent nations to help raise, e.g., agricultural production (by “development”); they think it only delays the revolutions that they consider to be the only way out for poor nations.

There are those who insist that in some cases generosity is actually hurtful and wrong. They maintain that in some parts of the earth, food relief will serve only to keep the starving alive long enough to beget more people to starve. This would leave development in food production as the only merciful policy, but increased production in many cases would require quick abandonment of old taboos and methods in agriculture.

When human fertility goes unrestrained and any gains in food production are thus quickly offset, the problems of both affluent and poor nations become extremely sensitive. Shall the nations of the Fourth World impose rigorous methods for the control of conception? And should aid to these lands be conditioned upon effective measures to reduce birth rates?

To this latter question, some people in religious circles reply with a ringing “No!” And some societies, because of long-standing taboos against birth control or a misguided feeling that a large population makes for greatness, will agree. But the sensitive Christian may with much justification think that the receiving of food by needy societies should be accompanied by actions directly aimed at decreasing the need for donated food.

It goes without saying that the policies of donating nations are today far from the Christian ideal. Aid has all too often been allotted to governments that now act (or may be influenced to act) in a manner favorable to the policies of the giver. For instance, sales of grain may be denied to one nation whose government is trying sincerely to effect a just distribution of vital resources and granted to another nation whose favor the selling nation seeks to curry. This may have the effect of propping up repressive regimes by bailing them out of failures in their agricultural methods.

Such are the food policies of our time, in which more attention is given to political considerations than to the needs of the hungry. Three metaphors are sometimes used as rationalizations for these actions, or for no action at all.

The Spaceship Earth metaphor suggests that our planet is a spacecraft loaded nearly to the point of saturation, struggling to survive. The element of truth here is that our planet is experiencing exponential (geometric rather than arithmatic) growth. This is occurring not only in population but also in man’s demand upon the earth’s resources and in the level of environmental pollution.

The Lifeboat metaphor suggests that mankind is loaded into lifeboats, struggling to survive in a hostile sea. Most boats are filled with hungry, impoverished people, while a few contain well-fed, satisfied people whose resources the others envy. The poor threaten to overload the boats of the well-to-do and thus threaten the survival of all.

The elements of truth here are these: first, have-not nations might conceivably rise in a sense of envious outrage and possibly attempt to blackmail the affluent; and second, demands upon the developed nations might reduce all to poverty. Yet both of these possibilities seem remote at the moment.

The principle of Triage was first employed by the medical service of the French army. Wounded persons were sorted into three categories: those who would survive without special care, those who would in no case survive, and those who would survive if given care. If medical resources were limited, only the third group would receive attention.

This principle has at best limited validity when taken from the medical scene and translated into social policy. The element of truth embodied is that should a hunger crisis of world-wide scope arise, some selective decisions might have to be made by donor nations.

But what has all this to do with the biblical mandates, “Give to him who asks from you,” “As you did it to one of the least of these my [hungry or ill-clad] brethren, you did it to me,” and “If your enemy is hungry, feed him”? Without surrendering the field to the situationists, we can agree that wherever needs are immense and resources limited, some discriminating judgments have to be made.

Further, the thrust of New Testament teaching seems clearly to be that when ambiguous situations exist, agape dictates doing more rather than less. This involves risks—of encouraging unworthy attitudes, of possibly increasing some ills, and certainly of being exploited. But the claims of the hungry world upon Christians in the favored nations are strong, the more so when viewed in the light of the clear mandates of our Lord.