Page 5452 – Christianity Today (2024)

If we stop celebrating who we are risk losing our identity

Reformation day was once an important celebration in the Protestant church calendar. Today, however, it has almost dropped from sight. And the reason for this is not hard to find.

It no longer seems important to us that we are Protestant evangelicals. We may even have permitted this way of life to become a forgotten heritage. We have allowed ourselves to forget who we are.

Identity is connected to history, and memory is the golden link. In former times, we reviewed our theology and kept in touch with our spiritual ancestry on several occasions during the year. This was especially so on Reformation Day. That October Sunday was nothing less than a community birthday party, a commemoration of a “second Pentecost” for the Christian church.

A real Reformation Day festival cannot help but be positive. Even the word “Protestant” comes from the Latin word that means “to be a proponent of a position,” or to “testify for.” Anglican Dean William R. Inge said, “It is ignorance which seeks to restrict the word to the attitude of an objector.” The Protestant Reformation preeminently concerned belief. It was a profound effort to restore the faith and life of New Testament Christianity. This process involved four steps, the foundation stones of the Reformation.

Scripture

The first step was recovery of the Scriptures. To understand early Christianity, it was necessary to return to the primary sources, the documents by the apostles and evangelists.

For centuries there had been a silence of the Scriptures in the church. Written in long-forgotten languages—Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek—they were available only in Latin, a tongue spoken by a mere handful of scholars and ecclesiastics. Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) wished that “the countryman might sing them at his plough, the weaver chant them at his loom, and the traveller beguile with them the weariness of his journey.” Yet all Erasmus managed was a better text of the Greek New Testament for fellow scholars.

Then Martin Luther used that text (1515) as the basis for his translation of the New Testament into German. He once summed up his whole ministry as one derived from Scripture. He said, “I simply taught, preached, wrote God’s word; otherwise I did nothing.” Unfortunately, the German Scriptures soon became the sole preserve of the powerful princes and learned theologians. The people were unable to penetrate their teachings.

Meanwhile, Henry VIII, that belated champion of the English Reformation, put an English Bible in every parish church of his realm. But it was the English Puritans and separatists who finally took the Bible off the lectern and put it into the hands and hearts of the British people. They shared “the deeply held belief that all God’s children have the right to read and understand God’s Word.”

They thus snatched the Scriptures from the elite classes—bishops, theologians, scholars, and nobles—and placed them into the care of the people. Like the Bereans, “they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). In the words of Anglican historian J. R. Green, the result was that “England became the people of the book, and that book was the Bible.”

Philip Hughes, a Roman Catholic historian, said of these early Puritans that through constant personal study of the Bible “these people have themselves become transformed into scriptural figures, and all the drama of their lives has itself become transformed into a scriptural event, itself a continuation of the sacred story.”

We can see a present-day effect of that enthusiasm for the Bible in the vast and growing number of home Bible studies. Women alone, men alone, and couples or other mixed groups are meeting informally each week to search out the meaning of a passage of Scripture. One woman said after a study led by people she considered fundamentalists, “Well, I can see that all fundamentalists aren’t rock-heads!” She remarked after another study concerning her recent conversion, “Dear Lord, thank you for helping me make up my fool mind.” The power of God works through the study of the Bible.

Another woman first realized the meaning of justification by faith in a couples’ study of Colossians. A Christian friend had been explaining that doctrine to her for years, but the penny never dropped until she saw it through a home Bible study.

God used the Bible in the Reformation, and when it is placed in the hands of ordinary people today, he uses it still.

Faith

The Reformation also affirmed the centrality of faith. Some call this the recovery of the gospel. It was a natural correlary of returning the Scriptures to the people. Within the pages of the Bible it soon became evident that salvation was not a matter of man’s works but of God’s grace.

Troubled souls soon found relief in that discovery. Martin Luther had been beside himself with unforgiven guilt. In the cloister he had wondered, “How can I, as an individual, be assured of the forgiveness of sins and thus of the favor of God”? Then one happy day he read the words of Saint Paul, “I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.… For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live’” (Rom. 1:16–17). Luther later remarked, “Then it seemed to me as if I were born anew and that I had entered into the open gates of Paradise.”

At about the same time, Ulrich Zwingli, an intelligent and ambitious Swiss priest, suffered intensely because of his “most profound failure in the matter of personal morality.” During the Zurich plague of 1519 he hovered for weeks between life and death. Then Zwingli was overwhelmed with a sense of God’s mercy and majesty. Now a “twice-born” man, he confessed that “religion took its rise when God called a runaway man back to himself, when otherwise that man would have been a deserter forever.”

A generation later, John Calvin, wrestling with the problem of pride, experienced a “sudden conversion” that occurred after he had been studying the Scriptures. Calvin came to know the power of God, by which one can transcend selfishness. He simply said, “We are not our own, … we are God’s.”

For each of these men, faith was not merely intellectual assent to propositions in a powerful and popular book. It also involved a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Each of them vividly illustrates Henry Ward Beecher’s observation that though “we may preach much about Christ, no man will preach Christ except so far as Christ lives in him.”

A Reformation Day service, therefore, forces churchgoers of long standing to reflect on their own relationship: Have I ever consciously placed my trust in the Person of Jesus Christ? Or has overoccupation with church attendance or other activities made me too religious to be a Christian?

It is possible to obscure or ward off wholehearted faith in Christ by a flurry of activity and talk. But God looks on the heart. He asks if we have trusted our inner lives to Christ.

Conscience

Reformation Day can also celebrate a third affirmation, liberty of conscience, or the teaching of “the right of private judgment in religion.” One scholar has said that “the one essential principle” of the medieval system was “the control of the individual conscience by an authority or law placed [outside] it and exercised over it by man assuming to act in the name of heaven.” In the Protestant churches, it was necessary, therefore, to make a case for liberty. Any religion resting on the crucial importance of personal faith had to allow freedom in matters of conscience.

The English Congregationalist, Robert W. Dale, explained the real meaning of this doctrine: “The right of private judgment in Religion, as the Reformers understood it, was not the right of every man to form a religion according to his own fancy; but the right of every man to listen for himself to the voice of God.” (Submission is unto God, not self.) And Martin Luther, in another setting, quipped, “Every man must do his own praying, dying, and believing.”

The entire Reformation was one extended illustration of this liberty of the Christian man. For instance, when Martin Luther stood before the German emperor at the Diet of Worms in 1521, he refused to abandon his convictions. He said, “Unless I am convicted by the Scriptures and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of Popes and Councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.”

For the Pilgrim fathers, the cost of being men of conscience was exile—twice. As the Pilgrims were about to leave the Netherlands for North America, Pastor John Robinson reminded them of their commitment to liberty. In the seventeenth century he felt that many of his contemporaries had failed to go beyond the initial work of the first Reformers. Robinson said, “We have come to a period in religion [when] the Lutherans cannot be drawn beyond what Luther saw. And the Calvinists stick where Calvin left them. Luther and Calvin were precious shining lights in their times, yet God did not reveal His whole will to them. I am very confident that the Lord hath yet more truth and light to break forth out of His Holy Word.”

What would it mean today if each of us listened for himself to the voice of God, and did his own living, praying, and dying? First, one would see a revival of personal Bible study—almost a miracle in these group-oriented, nonmeditative days when our first act upon entering the empty house at night is to turn on the radio or TV.

Second, if we listened to God’s voice, new truth and light would burst forth from Scripture to help with such knotty problems as the nuclear question. What should the United States, and the individual Christian, do about the proliferation of nuclear weapons on our planet? And what would happen if, sensitive to Scripture, we learned God’s viewpoint about joblessness and economic justice, a matter directly touching millions in America? We see non-Christian books imaginatively dealing with the anxiety that possesses people today; but are Christians reflecting God’s message of relief from this tension in such realistic terms that we can talk and live the gospel to our neighbors and those of our own household? In this last part of the twentieth century, we may yet expect new light on such critical issues if we each listen for God’s voice.

Fellowship

A fourth affirmation was the catholicity of the church, or the teaching of the “priesthood of all believers.” For Protestants, the real meaning of catholicity was made evident in the Apostles’ Creed. There they would proclaim that they “believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints.” For them, genuine catholicity meant the presence of Christ’s fullness among his people, constituting a new nation of priests. This led to the conclusion, as Arthur Rouner has written, that a Protestant church is “the people’s church. It belongs to them. It is their work, their life, and their responsibility under God.” This catholicity naturally leads to a free and open fellowship for the people of God.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote in the Westminster Record concerning the help afforded by this community: “What a wonderful place God’s House is. Often you may find deliverance by merely coming to the House of God.… I thank God that he has ordered that his people should meet together in companies and worship together.…

“How has the House of God come into being? It is God who has planned it and arranged it. To realise that alone puts you in a more healthy condition. Then you begin to go back across history, and you begin to remind yourself of certain truths. ‘I am here, at this present time with this terrible problem, but the Christian Church has been going all these long years.’ At once you begin to think in an entirely different way.”

It is in this fellowship of diverse and free individuals in a community of faith and love that we offer our unified praise to God. In a comprehensive and inclusive manner, we join our voices with Christians of all ages to offer the sacrifice of praise, the chief service of this new “nation of priests.” In the words of the ancient and venerable Te Deum Laudamus:

We praise Thee, O God, We acknowledge thee to be the Lord.…

The glorious company of the Apostles praise Thee;

The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise Thee;

The noble army of martyrs praise Thee;

The Holy Church throughout the world doth acknowledge Thee.…”

For each of the Reformers, this vision of the cooperative community of saints was essential to Protestant faith and life. It was expressed theologically in the great confessions of the faith such as the Augustana, prepared and signed by both clerics and laymen. It would be expressed practically in the worship and polity of the Protestant churches. Both clergy and laity were recognized as “living stones” that “built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5).

Is your church a “people’s church”? We say clergy and laity together are living stones. But sad to say, in some churches there is serious division. The clergy are either viewed as the entertainers (with the congregation the supposedly entertained), or they are the hired experts. It is they who, in place of the laity, study the Bible, pray, visit the sick, counsel the troubled, raise the cash, state the Christian position on everything of consequence, and, worst of all, often allow the congregation to lead the Christian life vicariously through them. Such clericalism, sometimes even encouraged by the congregation, undercuts the Reformation’s discovery of biblical community.

And on the individual level, we need to ask ourselves: “Do other Christians know me, or am I isolated from them?” If, for example, we found ourselves trapped in a shameful sin, would there be anyone with whom we have such a relationship that we could ask for specific prayer or counsel? Or if we lost our job and as a result felt we were total failures on all fronts, would there be anyone with whom we could discuss our runaway emotions?

As the Reformation conceived fellowship, or catholicity, Christ is among us. So we can celebrate the opportunity we have for him to speak to us through our fellow Christians. His presence among us spells hope!

Each of these “foundation stones” of the Reformation—Scripture, faith, liberty, and catholicity—is alive today. Each is filled with the Protestant heritage as well as with the Protestant potential. Reformation Day 1982 affords us the opportunity to remember a glorious past and to celebrate a certain future of Protestant and evangelical faith.

C. George Fry is associate professor, historical theology, at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Duane W. H. Arnold is assistant director of Hothorpe Hall, Lutterworth England. The pair coauthored A Lutheran Reader (Concordia Theo1. Sem. Press, 1982) and The Way, the Truth, and the Life (Baker; to be published in November 1982).

The contemporary Christian often finds Halloween an uncomfortable topic. It’s a bit like walking past a graveyard and detecting among the tombstones a thoroughly raucous party in progress—a bizarre mixture of horrible screams and merriment—and wondering who might have called it. What is this mishmash of innocent fun, ugly pranks, and witches’ taunts? And what, indeed, might be “holy” about All Hallow’s Eve?

Most of us know the holiday’s name was Christianized centuries back. But we also realize the event must have a decidedly unsavory past, what with ghouls, goblins, and ghosts decorating everything from K-Mart windows to school bulletin boards. The blending of seasonal, Christian, and pagan is remarkable.

For instance, the thoughtful believer might visit a spook house sponsored by a Christian group. Should he become entangled among the screaming and often genuinely terrified thrill seekers, he may wonder about the edifying value of butcher’s gore depicting brutalized humans, or vampires and executioners reaching out for one’s throat. At the other end of the spectrum, he hears of parents forbidding any festivities, including the use of costumes or creatures of imagination. Were he to quiz other Christians about Halloween, he’d find an awkward vagueness, or perhaps fulminations against its wickedness, or simply appreciation for pumpkins, costumes, and mystery stories.

Are there thoroughly Christian ways in which to view Halloween?

More than a thousand years ago, Christians confronted pagan rites appeasing the lord of death and evil spirits. Halloween’s unsavory beginnings preceded Christ’s birth when the druids, in what is now Britain and France, observed the end of summer with sacrifices to the gods. It was the beginning of the Celtic year, and they believed Samhain, the lord of death, sent evil spirits abroad to attack humans, who could escape only by assuming disguises and looking like evil spirits themselves. The waning of the sun and the approach of dark winter made the evil spirits rejoice and play nasty tricks. Most of our Halloween practices can be traced back to the old pagan rites and superstitions.

But the church from its earliest history has invited its people to celebrate the season differently. Chrysostom tells us that as early as the fourth century, the Eastern church celebrated a festival in honor of all saints. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Christians celebrated “All Saints’ Day” in May in the rededicated Pantheon. Eventually the All Saints’ festival was moved to November 1. Called All Hallow’s Day, it became the custom to call the evening before “All-Hallow E’en.”

Some people question the whole idea of co-opting pagan festivals and injecting them with biblical values. Did moving this celebration to November to coincide with the druidic practices of the recently conquered Scandinavians simply lay a thin Christian veneer over a pagan celebration? Have we really succeeeded in co-opting Christmas and Easter, or have neopagans taken them back with Easter bunnies and reindeer? In a sense, it’s always been the same debate: do we ignore a pagan romp, merge with it, attack it, or cover it up with seasonal fun?

History would indicate there has been much value in the church’s “Christianizing” the calendar, introducing rich traditions of celebration and spiritual disciplines. Its success could be debated, but when neighbors are fearfully sacrificing to a lord of death and dodging witches’ tricks, it would seem an apt time to celebrate the Lord of life and resurrection. The ancient Christians, after all, had thought out their strategy quite well: the idea behind All Saints’ Day is the precise opposite of chains, moaning ghosts, and evil spirits.

Yes, there are decidedly Christian ways in which we can celebrate Halloween. In our worship services and seasonal events we can interweave two great themes.

1. The lives of saints of the past. In addition to the saints depicted in Scripture, we have nearly 2,000 years of history that can and should be used as challenges to piety and faith. We Protestants have been so concerned about avoiding the veneration of saints that we often have bypassed a rich heritage of faith. Just as the Book of Hebrews gives a roll call of believers, so we can look to countless examples of equally courageous lovers of God.

2. “The life of the blessed in paradise.” Most of us have been completely unaware that All Saints’ Day is a celebration of all the saints. It is a day when Christians can remember not only those great believers of the past but also loved ones and friends who have served Christ and are now in heaven. True, it is a day to remember the lives of well-known saints and “to follow them in all virtuous and godly living.” But it is also a day to remember our own “blessed dead.”

Here is a unique opportunity for our churches. At the first news of a death, and during the first weeks of grief, the bereaved receive much attention. But how many widows ever hear their husband’s name mentioned years later by fellow Christians? Persons who were once a major part of a church’s life are forgotten—though not by their loved ones. A child who dies may be mourned by the church, but a year later that child is seldom mentioned or thought of—except by parents and siblings.

In every congregation sit people who have a great desire to speak of those in their families who loved Christ and them. Remembering such people both privately and publicly is what All Saints’ Day is about. Perhaps the pastor could give vignettes of numerous departed saints from the congregation, pointing out specific characteristics of faith worth emulating. All sorts of creative approaches could be developed. Appropriate three-minute eulogies by elders or other spiritually mature leaders intimately acquainted with the departed could be very powerful in a morning worship service. In less formal events, other approaches could be taken, including the reading of written tributes.

In Holy Days and Holidays (Edward M. Deems, ed., Gale, 1968), a compilation of sermons, literary allusions, and notes, there is a lengthy section on All Saints’ Day that includes much on the subject of Christ’s power over death and the joys of heaven. Here is one quotation from this volume:

“An eminent divine once said, ‘The first idea I had of heaven was a great city, with walls and spires, and a great many angels, but not one person I knew. Then one of my little brothers died, and then I thought of heaven as a great city, with walls and spires and one little fellow that I knew. Then a second brother died, then the third and fourth, then one of my friends died, and I began to know a little about it, but never until I let one of my own children go up into the skies had I any idea as to what heaven was like. Then the second and the third and the fourth child was taken away from me, and there came a time when I lived more with them and with God than here on the earth.’ So the best view of heaven comes to you and to me, when we have loved ones in that city of light.”

In our generation, modern medicine has made such recurring intimacy with death unusual. In past centuries, when disease and war made it much more common, celebrating All Saints’ Day was a deep comfort and inspiration. Yet even today, most of us have our own “saints” whom we long to see again. This anthology’s All Saints’ section is full of statements about death’s poignancy and parting from loved ones, but it is also full of triumphal joy, hosannas, a call for singing the songs of that far country. It is all the reverse of the dead becoming ghosts who roam cemeteries in agonized quests, or the spiritual powers taunting and torturing humans. Christ has conquered both evil and death. Our Christian response is celebration.

However, we must never be superficial about it. Evil exists. It impinges on our world. Jesus, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, was never naïve about evil. Some, hearing the call for a celebration of light, would reassure all with a Disneyesque church production on heaven’s delights.

Unfortunately, the more gruesome aspects of Halloween observances carry a certain authenticity. After all, Dracula may not have grown batwings and sucked blood from maidens’ throats, but the historic count did impale his dinner guests. Refiner’s Fire in this magazine frequently analyzes great Christian literature, including some that depicts witches, goblins, and evil penetrations of all created matter. Our celebrations of victory in Christ are always set against the dark background of the overwhelming evil that made the Cross necessary.

Bruno Bettelheim, in The Use of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (Knopf, 1976), makes a compelling case for the value of the old fairy tales. He argues that their depictions of children’s worst fears in the form of ogres, cannibalistic stepmothers, and witches with children-sized ovens help them work out their genuine fears of death, abandonment, and unknown evils. On an even deeper level, the tales confirm to the child that evil is a reality, that the dangers are real, but that there is also a path to the good and to “salvation.”

This is true on many levels. Christians often are accused of being so quick with easy answers they seem never to have genuinely heard the questions. Until a person has wrestled over the eloquent angst of Pinter, Sartre, and O’Neill, it is doubtful that persuasive answers can be either assimilated or communicated.

And this is not necessarily an argument for sending out one’s four-year-old in a witch’s costume. Those who feel squeamish about immature children identifying with evil should not be too lightly dismissed. Nor is it necessarily healthy for witches to be depicted as darling little black-magic miscreants, as if all evil were simply a silly folklore heritage for our enlightened contemporary amusement. It is here that the Christian who has read Macdonald, Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams has an additional perspective with which to interact with children. Christians need not take a shallow “goody-two-shoes” approach, but they should develop a rich variety of ways in which to celebrate.

Let the children enjoy much lighthearted fun! Parties may include seasonal events like pumpkin-decorating contests (ever seen a Groucho Marx pumpkin head?), outrageous costumes, and lively skits, perhaps with a Linus pumpkin patch as a backdrop. There is plenty of room for unique approaches, such as one used in the Episcopal church in Fairfax, Virginia. It has celebrated an All Saints’ party for children and adults with costumes of saints from Joan of Arc and Francis of Assisi to John the Baptist. And there is a Presbyterian church in the Chicago suburbs that finished off a church-basement Halloween party with a reading of an original adaptation for Halloween of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, complete with mysterious noises and rattling chains.

We Christians can celebrate the fact that at death we pass from the land of shadows into the land of light. But this assurance is not for everyone. Halloween is also the time for thoughtful evangelism. In some Halloween settings this has been crudely done with grotesque allusions, making a burlesque of a serious message. But sensitively communicated, All Hallow’s Eve can be a ripe time for communicating Christ’s power over death and evil.

The Bible is a book full of enigma, mystery, parables, and symbols. The Christian has every right to plumb the richness of imagination and creatures of imagination. Let’s not disappoint our children with a shallow or negative response to Halloween. Let us instead celebrate one rooted in the great traditions already pioneered for us.

In his book Celebration of Discipline (Harper & Row, 1978), Richard Foster says, “Why allow Halloween to be a pagan holiday in commemoration of the powers of darkness? Fill the house or church with light; sing and celebrate the victory of Christ over darkness.”

Indeed!

Harold L. Myra is president of Christianity Today, Incorporated. His book for children, Halloween, Is It for Real? (Thomas Nelson), was released this month.

We were in Las Vegas where Bill was holding a crusade when the phone rang. It was our son Franklin calling from the Las Vegas airport: “I’m on my way to L.A., Dad, and it looks like the MGM Hotel is on fire.”

We switched on the TV. Between the normal program segments came sporadic announcements. The fire, they announced, was under control.

We stepped outside. Our motel faced the opposite direction, but over the rooftop, in the distance, hung an ominous pall of heavy smoke. And helicopters were passing, one after another, heading toward the MGM; then they were heading toward the Civic Center where the crusade was being held. They had been lifting guests trapped on top of the MGM to the center, while school buses were collecting those who made it down the ladders or stairs. Shortly before the tragedy the city had practiced for just such a disaster. The cooperation was incredible; helicopters came from everywhere, and all the school buses arrived. Police were organized.

Bill was due at the center to make some TV spots, and when he arrived the guards at first waved the car away. Then, on recognizing him, they opened the gates and motioned him through.

Dick Furman, who, with Franklin and their wives, was attending the crusade, was one of the first doctors on the scene. He worked nonstop for hours on the victims, most of whom suffered from smoke inhalation.

The Salvation Army provided piles of clothing. McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants sent food. Every hospital was filled, and the overflow filled a large section of the huge Convention Center. All this I saw briefly in the center as we let Bill off. And I marveled at people’s unselfish cooperation in helping each victim. Everyone helped who could.

We Christians are involved in an even more urgent job of rescuing the lost: from eternal damnation. Do we put their rescue before petty religious differences? Are we willing each to do our part unselfishly, to join hands and reach out to the hurt and lost before it’s too late?

The issue, he says, is not recognition of the Bible as the infallible revelation from God for our salvation.

True dialogue with evangelicals begins only when I try to understand them as they understand themselves. Then they can recognize themselves in my description of their viewpoints; to do otherwise is to bear false witness against my Christian neighbors. Only then do I have the right to evaluate their convictions with criteria from my Roman Catholic tradition. I must ask myself, “Do I recognize in these Christians the biblical faith of all ages as I believe that faith to be? What do we affirm in each other of that common faith gift?”

In my attempt to understand evangelicals, I must compare ideals with ideals, practices with practices. I do not, for example, compare evangelical practices with my own Roman Catholic ideals. Neither do I limit my analysis to evangelicals’ statements about themselves. I include their total life, individual and corporate, as well as the historical, intellectual, social, political, even economic, assumptions that undergird that total life. Don’t we still tend to evaluate each other too much as abstractions, even as theological systems? Perhaps we prefer to do so because we are less awkward and more comfortable with these far less-complicated exercises.

Some Historical Reasons For Estrangement

U.S. immigration and church-growth patterns in the nineteenth century created a Roman Catholic defensiveness in a nation where Protestantism as a whole was the unofficially established religion. The ethos was overwhelmingly evangelical Protestant, and their churches increased by means of very indigenous and intentional evangelism. Roman Catholics were among those to be converted. On the other hand, the Roman Catholic church here grew almost exclusively by the millions of immigrants and their prolific cradle offspring. Protection of the faithful from slippage into evangelical Protestantism and the preservation of unity among those quarreling folk of such different ethnic backgrounds became a Catholic pastoral necessity.

Furthermore, most Catholics settled in urban areas (except for pockets in the Midwest, Louisiana, and the Hispanic-Indian Southwest). Only a small Catholic minority existed in the rural South and on the expanding frontiers. This proportion roughly continues today in those areas where clearly identifiable evangelicals dominate.

Moreover, during the earlier decades of this century, Roman Catholics were absorbed with their own peculiar (and earlier) modernist crisis. They were almost totally unaware of the similar struggles in Protestant circles. Catholics knew practically nothing about the specifically American intra-Protestant battle for the Bible, the social gospel debate, or the struggle for power in such places of influence as seminaries, periodicals, and publishing houses. Even now, most Roman Catholics are unaware of that debate and how it still shapes the present intra-Protestant dynamic.

Even as recently as the 1960s, evangelicals were on the defensive, low-profiled, and publicly overshadowed by the second decade of the National Council of Churches/World Council of Churches, and by the Second Vatican Council. American churches were suddenly being forced to respond to new or rediscovered social issues, and the evangelicals seemed “out of it.”

As the Roman Catholics officially stepped into the national and world ecumenical arena in the 1960s, they found only mainline Protestants, Anglicans, and Eastern Orthodox. Evangelicals were not interested. In fact, they were not even present. Most were “anti-ecumenical.” Some judged Protestant ecumenism to have reached a nadir in the very dialogue of Protestant churches with Roman Catholics. Most Roman Catholic leaders, however, welcomed this clear distinction. They preferred dialogue and cooperation with mainline Protestants, but not with evangelicals because of the latter’s “anti-Roman” stance and aggressive proselytism among vulnerable Catholic flocks.

In the late 1970s, therefore, American Roman Catholics were suddenly caught off guard by, in Carl Henry’s phrase, evangelicals “coming out of the closet.” Evangelicals did not appear to be gasping their last breath or just “catching up to where all the rest of us Christians are—or were.” Roman Catholics suddenly had to ask themselves: “Who are these evangelicals?” To their surprise they found some evangelicals who were even wilting to meet with them. And to their dismay, evangelicals were offering conflicting answers to the question of who they were.

What Are The Images?

Catholics soon discovered that “evangelical” covered a broad spectrum. At the same time, they could recognize an overall evangelical identity. They do this both positively and negatively, differing only in what they stress.

Evangelicals uniformly have a serious devotional commitment to the Bible, and they jealously guard its unique character as God’s revealed word. But too frequently they quarrel among themselves about interpretations and tend to subdivide, usually by aligning themselves around super-preachers or national mass-media evangelists.

Evangelicals are respected for their personal commitment to Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior. Too often, however, they do not recognize the same experienced commitment when it is expressed differently in those who do not call themselves evangelicals. This appears as a not-so-subtle form of “self-righteousness in the name of God’s righteousness.” It prompts criticisms that evangelicals seem more judgmental about other Christians than about themselves.

Evangelicals display a serious personal and communal commitment to direct evangelism at home and abroad. But they often act as if most other Christians were nonbelievers. Roman Catholics, with so many Hispanics among them today, often experience a manipulative hard sell. As one Catholic puts it: “It seems their evangelizing style is works over grace.”

While evangelicals exhibit a vigorous variety of charitable works, they avoid many critical social, political, and economic issues that demand Christian response. When they do choose to involve themselves directly in such issues (as in Moral Majority, Christian broadcasting, etc.), they are too blunt and clumsy in their approach to others, Christian or otherwise, who hold differing prudential judgments.

Finally, the evangelical community appears to be formed around common foes (organizations, causes); it gains its identity more by what evangelicals are against than by what they are for.

Remember: the above descriptions—right or wrong in their stresses—are those offered by many Roman Catholics with whom I have spoken over the last five years.

More Careful Observations

Those of us Roman Catholics who are trying to engage in dialogue with evangelical Christian brothers and sisters hope to be more careful and nuanced. We are finding, for example, that although one can point to historical, sociological, and theological lines that help discern an identifiable community called “American conservative evangelicalism,” the label loses much of its discriminating power unless one is also aware of the subgroups that form that coalition.

What a wide variety of traditions! They come from within the mainline churches (Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist); the Reformation churches, with their strict interpretation of their confessions (Missouri Synod Lutherans, Christian Reformed); the “peace” churches (Brethren, Mennonite, Friends); the more conservative wing of the Restoration movement (Campbellites) and of the “holiness” tradition (Wesleyan Methodist); the fundamentalist groups, which now include those who gather around radio or television preachers; most black churches; adherents of parachurch groups (the majority of U.S. Protestant mission organizations, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, Campus Crusade for Christ, Navigators, and so on).

No wonder it is difficult to reach a description in which all of the above would recognize themselves! I realize that many evangelicals still use the 1974 Lausanne Covenant as their rallying point. Yet as a Roman Catholic I can easily subscribe to the substance, and much more, of that “confession.” I recognize so much of my 1974 self in that covenant.

And since many evangelicals now regard former foes as common allies, their present coalition may be more fragile than first-view appearances would indicate. New configurations are looming. I expect new alignments not only among many evangelicals, but also among them and many Roman Catholics. The convergences in understanding and incipient common witness that may form these new alignments are the following:

• Biblical doctrines about, for example, God’s works of grace outside the Christian community, (proverbial Wisdom literature, and so on), or among those who do not explicitly accept the explicit claims of faith in Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior; Christian action in transforming society, as an essential part of evangelization; and justification by faith as it relates to the above two.

• The principles and applications of Christian social ethics, especially in a pluralistic society with its tradition of civil liberties.

• The core of the charismatic movement, and other searches for disciplined spirituality, including liturgical forms.

• Direct evangelism among the un- or dechurched, and the rejection of proselytism (in the pejorative sense) among other Christians.

More Fundamental Issues

At an even deeper level, there are two issues to consider. The first is the authority of the Bible. The issue is not the recognition of the Bible as the infallible revelation from God for our salvation (the Second Vatican Council is most insistent on that!), but rather the traditions used by both Roman Catholics and evangelicals in interpreting the Bible.

At issue are “low” and “high” views of creation, the relation between nature and grace, general and special revelation, justification and sanctification, salvation outside the historical proclamation of the gospel or beyond the frontiers of the church. The ways these views are often presented are not so clearly drawn from the Bible. Rightly or wrongly, they are convictions influenced by prevailing historical pressures, philosophical currents, intra-Christian debate and confrontation (seldom by true dialogue). However, what does not help the discussion is the disparity between most Roman Catholics and most American evangelicals over the “sense of history,” and the relation of faith to culture, culture to faith.

The second fundamental issue, I propose, is the church in all its biblical images (e.g., body, herald, servant, community of disciples, institution). In one sense, surely, we have a common profession of faith in the unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity of the church. This much is already formulated in the ancient creeds and has graced all expressions of the church yesterday, today, and, we trust, until the end of time.

But how much do we all consider, for example, the present divisions among Christians as wounding the holiness and catholicity of Christ’s church? What is the active authority in and of the church that is truly apostolic? What is the church function of parachurch groups. In what rests the biblical right to divide Christian communities? What is the faith of the church that does justice?

It is mission that keeps these two fundamental issues—the Bible of the church and the church of the Bible—in proper focus. The fulcrum or vital center around which all other revealed mysteries are grouping themselves, both for former and for new coalitions, is mission. It is what God in Christ has promised to do, and is doing, in the midst of people in this world, through his people.

If evangelical and Roman Catholic Christians can be more possessed by that vision and more deeply committed to its fulfillment, then one can hope past estrangements will fade and future common witness to God’s one mission will emerge.

Mission means sending. Surely we who have been baptized into the one body have been sent to be neither enemies nor strangers to one another, but to be brothers and sisters in Christ on behalf of all.

Thomas F. Stransky, a Paulist priest, was from 1960–70 on the staff of the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. He served two terms as Paulist president, and currently is director of the Paulist candidates’ one-year program in Oak Ridge, New Jersey.

It safeguards against liberalism on the one side and Roman Catholicism on the other.

It is time for Protestants to come to grips with an understanding of tradition in terms of their theology. As an evangelical, I am confident the divine truth that culminated in the Christ event was deposited in the Holy Scriptures.

Itself “tradition” in a sense, the Bible posesses a unique authority. It ought to rule the church and its theology as the paradigmatic and foundational source, distinct from such extrabiblical traditions as dogmatic formulations, catechisms, and liturgies. We must do justice in our theology to both the supremacy of Scripture on the one hand, and to the heritage of traditional Christian experience and reflection on the other.

The Bible is the divinely inspired and normative fixation of the truth of the Christian revelation, magisterial in its authority (norma normans). Tradition is human interpretation within the historical process of transmission, ministerial in function (norma normata). Ideally, the Bible and tradition are two complementary sides of Christian truth becoming effective in history.

It would be wonderful if there were perfect unity between the two—if the Bible and its interpretation were always to move along the same lines. But it was not so in the days of our Lord, and it has not been so since. Jesus found it necessary on occasion to contradict the tradition of the elders and appeal to the written Word of God. He made a distinction between Scriptures, which were divine in origin, and tradition, which was not. When the ideal unity of Scripture and tradition breaks down, as it often does, priority must be given to Scripture.

Doing theology places great pressure upon my understanding of tradition. On one hand, there is the four-century-old challenge of Catholicism. It appears to subordinate Scripture to tradition as interpreted by the magisterium, robbing it of the freedom it ought to have. On the other hand, there is the more recent challenge of religious liberalism. It offers a wave of novel conceptions often hostile to tradition but claiming to be in some way original and scriptural.

The first challenge makes it necessary to emphasize the critical function of the Bible over unsatisfactory accretions. The second requires us to warm up to tradition as never before. So we face a double dilemma: How does one remain evangelical without becoming liberal in the face of the Catholic question? And how does one remain evangelical without becoming Catholic in light of the challenge of religious liberalism?

The Roman Catholic Challenge

The Roman Catholic church has always appeared to absolutize tradition and its own teaching authority as if it were the Word of God, on a par with, and even above, the Bible. This observation by Protestants led to their sola scriptura emphasis, their belief in the supremacy of Scripture. But in their opposition to traditionalism, Protestants have often spoken as if they had no positive appreciation for tradition. In fact, of course, they do.

The Reformers themselves, for example, were close students of the fathers and loyal to the ecumenical creeds. Aware that Scripture is never in fact “alone,” they drew up confessions to guide the Bible reader and help him understand it aright. They esteemed the work of people like Augustine and Jerome even though they did not always find such men in total agreement with themselves. Nor did they consider them infallible. They made a sharp distinction between what Scripture taught and what these men said. What worried them was that novel doctrines and corrupt traditions might be introduced into the teaching of the church that were contrary to the Bible and unsupported by it (see Althaus, Theology of Martin Luther, Fortress, 1966, and Calvin’s polemic in Book IV of the Institutes).

As Article 22 of the Thirty Nine Articles puts it: “The Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardons, worshipping and adoration, as well of images as of relics, and also invocation of saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.” A modern example of such a doctrine would be the bodily assumption of Mary, which is not required by Scripture and thus not binding upon Christians.

Let Scripture be heard and never silenced, and let its word receive respect accorded nothing else. Tradition deserves respect but tradition does not speak with a single voice, and all that it says is not of equal worth. Without the life and truth found in the canon of Scripture, tradition can be deadening and distorting. The church always needs to be reinformed. Hans Küng points this out in his book The Church (Doubleday, 1976) when he refers back to the apostolic foundations of the New Testament. Only in this way will the mark of apostolicity in the church be credible. In theology, this means we must strive for the fairest and greatest testimony to the gospel that we can achieve.

At this point, Karl Rahner finds a material difference between Catholic and Protestant theology (Foundations of the Christian Faith, Crossroad, 1978). While he admits the material sufficiency and normative authority of the Bible, he claims that ultimate authority resides in the magisterium, which infallibly interprets both Scripture and the developing tradition. Since the Bible and tradition are difficult to understand, it is left to the Roman teaching office to inform us about the content of faith.

What divides Protestants from Catholics is not the Roman emphasis of tradition over Scripture. It is rather placing the magisterium over both. The problem boils down to the authority of the Petrine office, and it is small wonder that Rahner called Küng a Protestant as soon as the latter raised his voice against the infallibility of that office.

Creeds and tradition are valid not because the church teaches them but because they agree with Scripture. Luther said: “This confession of faith [the Apostles’ Creed] we did not make or invent, neither did the fathers of the church before us. But as the bee gathers honey from many a beautiful and delectible flower, so this creed has been collected in commendable brevity from the books of the beloved prophets and apostles, that is, from the entire Holy Scriptures” (Trinity Sunday sermon, 1535). What practical meaning does it have to profess the material sufficiency of Scripture while refusing to let it function?

It does not follow from this that a teaching office has no use. Did not Luther himself, who rejected the Roman teaching office, become the authoritative guide to a host of later Lutherans? Who shall decide what is the true gospel? And how shall it be decided? Obviously, this cannot be left to a single expert or persuasive leader any more than it can be left to the Roman magisterium.

We must gather together the insights of all the people of God, but always keeping our teaching subservient to the Scriptures. We must rely upon a teaching charisma in the churches. We must heed the lines of the rich and complex scriptural teaching on the themes of the Bible so as to insure that the resulting interpretations cohere with and complement the full range of data. Such an ecumenical teaching office does not now exist, of course. The Faith and Order section of the World Council of Churches is an attempt to achieve this, and it may even be the seed from which such a ministry could grow.

Here is the sin of the church—our sin—that has caused this tragic and unnatural divorce between Scripture and tradition/church. The seeds of division this split have sown are vaster than any reform it brought to the church. Yet, the blame cannot be laid in only one area. The prophets cannot be blamed for sowing division when they indicted Old Testament Israel for forsaking the Law of God and the terms of the covenant. Jesus himself warned that his true word would divide people from one another. Precious though the unity of the church is, it is not worth much if it is based upon a sub-Christian view of what the gospel is. To answer sola scriptura with a sola ecclesia will not silence the criticism or cover the sin. The freedom of the Word of God must not be bound simply because it brings with it the danger of division. Because the church is not perfect, it needs the check the Bible provides. It cannot serve as a check unto itself.

But this conflict between Scripture and tradition can cause Protestants to neglect tradition entirely. We forget that the church is the pillar and ground of truth and that Protestant as well as Catholic beliefs are ecclesially shaped. We suppose that we can go directly and immediately back to the Bible, unaware that the message of the Word has been transmitted to us in the context of a Christian community. We have to remind ourselves that tradition is the process of interpreting and transmitting the Word. It is not the history of deformation. More often it is the history of heroic hermeneutical achievement. Therefore, in doctrines such as those concerning the Person and work of Christ, it is fruitful to review the options presented in creed and document, liturgies, and prayer, and let them shape our understanding even as we hear the Bible. As G. K. Chesterton remarked, tradition means “giving my great-grandfather a vote.” The richness of traditional wisdom can only deepen one’s own reflections, and serve as a corrective to the false moves in interpretation that sometimes threaten the truth (see H. Berkhof, ed., Christian Faith, Eerdmans).

Behind this error of neglecting tradition is a lack of appreciation of historicity in a broader sense. Neither the Reformers nor many premoderns were much aware of the development of doctrine or time-conditioned factors in their biblical interpretation. They tended to think, as some evangelicals also do, that their convictions were pure distillations of scriptural teachings. They did not reflect upon the historical factors that entered into the creedal formulations. They thought they were simply reading the Bible when in fact they were reading it to answer various contemporary rivals. All doctrine is to some extent a historically conditioned response to the questions on the agenda of a particular time and place. This compels us to be more self-critical about our truth claims and always to remain open to reevaluations of our convictions in the light of fresh discovery and deeper insight. Historicity does not relativize dogmatics, but it does remind us that the work of theology can never be finished, even as we anticipate a future unity of the faith in the knowledge of the Son of God.

At the same time, we admit that appealing to the Bible as check and arbiter has become more difficult in recent times. This is because of questions critical scholars have raised about the Bible:

Do we not approach the Bible with a discrimen that determines how we appeal to it as an authority?

Is there not a much greater diversity of teaching in it than conservative Protestants have been willing to admit, and does this not make it impossible to look to Scripture for a clear-cut doctrine of anything?

Has higher criticism not discredited parts of the Bible as being improper material to which we can appeal?

Though these criticisms first arose largely from the ranks of liberal Protestants, they have also become part of the Catholic case against historic Protestant methodology. For example, when Rahner points out that sola scriptura is self-contradictory because the old doctrine of verbal inspiration on which it rested has been shown to be untenable, he is identifying with a liberal view of the Bible that is as opposed to the traditional Catholic understanding as our own. Thus, there seems to be a common cause uniting the best Catholic and liberal Protestant theologians in wishing to undercut classical Protestant theology.

Their critical questions can be answered. But if we are to continue responsibly to follow a scriptural method in theology, it will be necessary to work harder than before. An alliance between more classical Catholics and Protestants appears to be shaping up precisly to meet this new development.

At the outset we posed the question of how one remains evangelical without becoming liberal in the face of the Catholic challenge. The answer is the same one the Reformers nearly always gave: We must maintain the supremacy of Scripture in balance with a healthy respect for the interpretive transmission that is tradition—that is, keep the norma normans in close proximity to the norma normata.

The Challenge Of Religious Liberalism

At the opposite extreme from Catholicism, religious liberalism is characterized by a revolt against tradition. Far from absolutizing it, liberals tend to minimize and depreciate tradition in order to free themselves from its bonds, preferring instead to follow the best in human light. Religious liberalism thus represents a revision of practically the whole of traditional theology. Its rapprochement with modernity requires it to break with the classical Christian mind and its teachings about God, Christ, and the Bible, and to reconceive theology in nondoctrinal terms, viewing the history of dogma as the history of the changing views of Christians, which are not binding upon us today. Jan Walgrave, in Unfolding Revelation (Westminister, 1971), politely refers to the liberal position as a “transformist” theory of dogma. It could more accurately be called a revolution against it.

The effect upon evangelicals of this liberal challenge is to awaken what the Catholic challenge made dormant: a deep respect for tradition as an interpretive guide and doctrinal safeguard. The distilled wisdom of tradition offers a social check upon one’s own biases, and it helps prevent our twisting of the biblical text into novel and speculative interpretations. If Catholicism makes us aware of tradition as a possible source of doctrinal corruption, religious liberalism makes us appreciate it as a source of wisdom and insight. Thus, in my theology, Scripture stands against the threat of traditionalism, while tradition stands against the threat of neology. This latter threat has always existed, but never to the extent, or with the force, of religious liberalism.

Many factors have led to this revolution against tradition: (1) the view of the Bible as human tradition; (2) the existentialist notion that truth is subjective in nature and not intellectually objectifiable; (3) the cultural relativism that announces a great chasm between ancient convictions and modern possibilities of belief; (4) the superiority of praxis over theory.

Of course, few scholars would agree with Adolph Harnak’s History of Dogma. He argued that early dogma perverted the “original,” simple gospel of Jesus. Yet, there are many who still share his antipathy to traditional doctrinal standards as incredible and outdated. They believe it may be possible to honor Jesus in some functional way, but not in the way the church fathers did at Nicea since such ideas are historically conditioned and require constant modification and updating.

Again, not many would follow Alfred Loisy’s lead and announce their disbelief in all articles of traditional Christian doctrine except for the one referring to Jesus’ crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. The current fad instead is to affirm the ancient formulas but support them with a quite different theory, calling it a “dynamic equivalent.” By this means one can deny the old formulation itself while claiming to uphold the truth of it.

This liberal challenge has brought the catholic side of conservative Protestant thought into focus. In their appeal to the Bible, Protestants never dreamed of forsaking the great doctrinal traditions about the nature of God, the Person of Christ, the sin of man, or the sacrifice of the Cross. They agreed with Catholics that the creeds were landmarks of sound theology. The Lutherans, Calvinists, and Baptists all drew up their own confessional documents in order to keep both biblical and traditional convictions from being washed away in a flood of private interpretations.

Signs of this “catholicizing” of evangelicalism can be seen in a number of areas: (1) another convocation of Catholics and evangelicals meeting to discuss common concerns; (2) the Chicago Call; (3) the founding of the Evangelical Orthodox Church; (4) new journals like the New Oxford Review; (5) the statement on biblical inerrancy by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy.

These developments indicate that evangelicals are returning to the idea of a rule of faith and to forms of ecclesiastical authority for the same reason the church did so in the early centuries: they are responding to what they perceive as a menace. Authors like Robert Webber and Thomas Oden are calling evangelicals to look to the early church for resources to use in countering apostacy, and urging us to seize the threefold cord of Scripture, rule of faith, and church authority to meet these challenges.

Now the reason for the second part of the dilemma becomes apparent. Can one remain evangelical without becoming Catholic in light of the challenge of religious liberalism? Biblical criticism has uncovered such pluralism in the teaching of the Bible that it is much harder to support the evangelical confession by simply appealing to Scripture. James Dunn, in Unity and Diversity (Westminster, 1977), has predicted that in order to have the Bible teach the “right things,” orthodoxy will have to state those convictions in documents appended to it—a canon beyond the canon. In this regard it would appear that evangelicalism is very catholic.

Looked at differently, however, this evangelical catholicity is neither surprising nor inconsistent because it has existed all along. Protestants have always seen their confessions of faith as protective barriers to save the flock of God from undue stress and to preserve the church from strange teachings—in this case, the new world of Bible theories. The great creeds, which reiterate the basic intellectual pillars of the classical Christian consensus, serve to insulate the church from the firestorms of theological speculation, giving its teachers time to devise defensive strategies and work out appropriate replies. Tradition cannot ground the evangelical faith, but it can help protect it.

The specific challenges must eventually be answered. For example, is Harnack right or wrong about the importance of doctrine to original Christianity? We must be able to make good our claim that true Christianity is a doctrinal religion based upon revealed truth. Is Dunn right or wrong in saying that the New Testament teaches a variety of contradictory theologies, making orthodox understanding impossible? We must take up the challenge and show that the message is more unified than he allows. Answering these challenges will tend to nourish the catholic side of evangelicalism. It will tend to make us more interested in church history than we are at present, and make us more respectful of traditions that we have not thought much about. It may even result in a few crossing over to Rome, though probably not in large numbers.

To a conservative Protestant, it is essentially the same challenge that comes from both Roman Catholicism and religious liberalism. It is a challenge to the supremacy of scriptural truth and to the apostolicity of the church. Both Catholicism and liberalism replace the teaching of Scripture with human tradition, whether ancient or modern. The truth of Scripture must be protected in the face of Catholicism by opposing the Bible to traditionalism, and in the face of religious liberalism with the aid of tradition. Scripture and tradition are part of a dialectic, mutually serving one another. In this dialectic the Bible is the paradigm and tradition is the distillation of the church’s reflections upon it. The Bible is not a magic talisman to be invoked easily to resolve deep controversies in the church. But the Bible is a source of truth and life in the church, guiding, correcting, and liberating us. It will continue to be that source until Christ returns.

Clark H. Pinnock is professor of systematic theology at McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. His several writings include Reason Enough (IVP, 1980).

The senior senator from Oregon shows keen discernment between the power of politics and the power wielded by the Holy Spirit.

What makes Sen. Mark Hatfield so different? Newsmen and radio commentators find it difficult to place him in a neat pigeonhole. As the New York Times puts it: “Mr. Hatfield does not fit the mold.” He is a Republican, but is known as a liberal in politics. He is against nuclear war, but he is not a pacifist. He supports all sorts of programs to aid the poor, but he is a diehard fiscal conservative. He is a friend of Billy Graham, and he cosponsors a resolution with Sen. Edward Kennedy. He has never been a “wheel” of the Senate’s power structure, but he has become chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee. He antagonizes his Oregon constituency by voting flatly against a measure 90 percent of them badly want, and they turn right around and reelect him to office. He is a devout evangelical and an active member of Georgetown Baptist Church, but no fundamentalist or evangelical organization has him in its pocket.

What makes that kind of man? We believe this interview will reveal his secret: it is his deep commitment to Jesus Christ and a conscience structured and refined by Holy Scripture as his own final rule of faith and practice.

Senator, would you describe your spiritual and religious roots?

I am convinced that a person carries the imprint of his environment. I had the advantage of being raised in a small community. From that experience of knowing neighborhood and neighbors came a real sense of community. You knew the doctor, the merchant, the groceryman. If the fire whistle blew, you could call central and find out where the fire was. If the doctor was on a house call, you could call central and the operator knew where he was—at Mrs. Jones’s house, say—and if you called the Jones house, he would stop to see you on the way back to his office. This was in the little town of Dallas, Oregon.

It was a marvelous experience as a child growing up to sense the relationship to relatives, neighbors, community. Sunday school and the Methodist church were very much a part of our lives. My parents were Baptists but since there was no Baptist church in Dallas we were part of the Methodist congregation. A very important part of my early life was the fact that when I was five my mother left home to complete her education and my father and I moved in with my grandmother. I was the only child in our family.

We moved to Salem when my mother graduated from Oregon State University. She got a job teaching school just as the depression hit. My father was a blacksmith on the railroad and traveled a great deal, living in outfit cars. We united as a family in Salem and returned to the Baptist church. I was exposed to the teaching of the Bible in Sunday school, and learned the catechism pretty well—the Baptist catechism. Some people would react to my using the term “catechism.”

I remember vividly that I did not feel a part of the Baptist culture. There was a great deal of legalism in that church that created a sense of separation. I had always gone to movies; my parents felt good movies were good movies and there was nothing wrong with good movies. In high school I learned to dance and went to dances, which further isolated me.

In 1935, my parents subtly—not in any arm-twisting way—suggested that I was at the age when I should be making confession of Jesus Christ. Part of the objective my Sunday school teachers had was to lead me to some kind of confrontation with the question, “Who is Jesus Christ and what is his relation to my life?” The church had the traditional evangelistic invitation each Sunday morning and evening, and I responded in April 1935. It was a very serious thing. In my heart I knew what I was doing—that Jesus Christ was very real, and that he was my Savior. I was baptized, but I don’t recall that it made any major difference in my lifestyle or routine. It was one part of the growing-up process in that culture. I really believed. But as time went on, I had less and less interest in the church.

Then I went to Willamette University, a Methodist school in Salem, where we had to attend chapel every day. Three days a week it was a religious service. I didn’t pay much attention, except the time E. Stanley Jones came. He was a marvelous speaker and made Christ relevant to the world, India, and to us.

I also remember the day Bishop G. Bromily Oxnam came to talk about “slaughterhouse” religion (fundamentalism). I was offended by his demeaning of those very sacred things like the Blood Atonement and the Virgin Birth. In fact, I was offended whenever religion came into the conversation. I identified with the fundamentalists, and was proud of that term because we had the true faith.

When I joined the navy in 1943 and went to midshipman school, my parents gave me a little New Testament, which I still have. I had never paid much attention to it, but I began to read it because this was my first time away from home. I got up early in the morning and read the Psalms and got a sense of strength and support. Out of necessity I began to pray. I wanted to finish and get my commission. I felt as close to the Lord as I had ever felt before and for the first time in my life also felt an intimacy with the Word. I needed it badly, and the Lord was there with his faithfulness to give himself to me.

After the war, when I was dean and teaching political science at Willamette, some Christian students came and asked if they could have a room for a meeting. A man by the name of Jim Rayburn (founder of Young Life) was coming to town and they wanted him to speak on campus. The leader of the group, Doug Coe, brought Rayburn into my office. He talked about Jesus Christ like I would talk about Herbert Hoover or Calvin Coolidge or one of my political interest subjects. I thought to myself, “He does that with such ease and grace. I don’t feel defensive.”

Then Doug brought Carl Henry on campus and invited me to his lecture. By this time I had developed a disdainful attitude toward fundamentalists, but I went anyway. Doug and Carl came to my office later, and in our conversation I struggled to stay with him intellectually. I thought to myself, “This is the first time I have ever met a preacher or seminary professor who exhibited any intellectualism.” I worshiped intellectualism at the time. I was fascinated with Henry’s lecture because he talked about Jesus Christ and the Scripture in a way that gave me a whole new perspective about religion. I had come to think it was only for the masses, not the elite.

Student after student then began coming into my office and saying, “I want to tell you about something. I have found Jesus Christ.” I knew these students. They were some of the top leaders on campus. I observed their lives. Their statements to me were being lived out. This really hit me between the eyes.

In my political science courses I told my students, “Know what you believe, establish your own identity, find your own political philosophy. Don’t just inherit your philosophy or reflect your environment; define it.” One day Doug Coe put the question to me. “You know,” he said, “I think you are absolutely right. I have been struggling with trying to find my political philosophy. Tell me, what is your personal philosopy of life?”

I was absolutely stunned at the audacity of this student asking what my personal philosophy was. I said, “What do you mean, personal philosophy?”—as if to say, I am not a heathen, you know, but a sophisticated educator. He didn’t push me too hard at that point, but I knew the track he had started me on. I had to confront the faith I had accepted and taken for granted. Although I had never questioned my conversion, I had never adopted it as a way of life.

Finally, I reached a point where I knew I either had to get on or get off. I had to make some kind of commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Master as well as Redeemer. Salvation was not just a historic thing that happened back there once, but a continuity that had to be reflected in my own life. That commitment was my real encounter with Christ. I learned more from those Christian students than they learned from me.

I soon realized my illiteracy, my lack of maturity, and my poverty in the spiritual realm. So I began to arm myself with knowledge and read J. B. Phillips, C. S. Lewis, and D. R. Davies. Their style of writing was very provocative and specific, so I read and read and read.

I next felt the need to become part of a community of believers. I went back to the same church with a more tolerant attitude than I had when I was less active in church. Soon I was elected moderator. One day Doug Coe asked me to speak at a public Young Life meeting. I had never witnessed publicly, and I knew I couldn’t play games. I wrestled with this because it was in my own community.

That old banquet hall had mirrored posts. I can recall vividly, as if it were yesterday, the point in my speech when I had to say something more than “the Galilean” or “the Master.” When I finally used the phrase “Jesus Christ,” I felt the Devil was there. I really did. If I ever had an encounter with the Devil, it was then. That name Jesus Christ resounded off every post. I got the most piercing headache that I ever had, like hammers hitting the back of my head, pounding me from every angle—Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. When I finished and sat down I was almost nauseated.

You have a clear reputation throughout the country as a committed Christian. Does this commitment significantly guide your work as a U.S. senator?

It guides my life. Being a senator is only one part of my Christan experience in terms of establishing my values, building relationships, being sensitive and loving to other people, and reflecting the truth of the gospel in the Incarnation. God’s grace is continually exercised through our lives to other people, and whether I am on the Senate floor or here with you, I try to live my life consistently with the gospel.

Do you encounter situations where what seems to be your duty as a senator in a pluralistic society conflicts with your Christian convictions?

Yes. The question I face is, How far can I go in applying my Christian convictions in a society that is not wholly Christian? For example, in matters of war and peace, I may be willing to risk my own life—but do I have the right to risk the lives of others?

You might come to a place where you have to choose between what you personally think is right and what is clearly the view of the majority of the people you represent.

Yes, that happens frequently, though not in terms of my Christian convictions. More often it is my political convictions that run contrary to the very constituency that I represent. That was true in the Vietnam period. At the Governors’ Conference in 1965, when polls indicated 70 to 78 percent of the people from Oregon supported President Johnson’s Vietnam policy, I cast the only negative vote. I said I would continue to fight against the war even if 99 percent of my constituency favored it. That statement was used against me in the campaign.

I belong to the Edmund Burke school of thought. We owe it to our constituents after we have engaged in debate, discussions, hearings, and all the other legislative processes, to give them the best of our judgment. Of course, it would be the height of arrogance if we stopped at that point. We are accountable to our constituents, and must defend the position we have taken. We may face the consequences in the next election, but we can’t wait until then to make ourselves accessible to them.

After I voted in the Governors’ Conference, I went from village to village and took a lot of abuse from hostile audiences. I faced people who said, “My son is fighting over there and you are undermining him.” Or, “I lost my son in that war and you are giving support and comfort to Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi.”

My own pastor was so disgusted that he practically excommunicated me. Most Christians think that when you are in Washington you can cop out on your Christian convictions, but I think the real temptation is power, not immorality.

Since politics is the art of compromise, could you give us a recent example of where you had to compromise your basic convictions in order to accept the lesser of two evils?

I have consistently supported the Hyde Amendment on abortion. But one year, when I came in as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, we were not able to get an appropriations measure from June to December because an antiabortion amendment had been put on the appropriations bill. My strategy was to keep the Senate bill clear of any such legislation, even though it was already on the House bill. We could then go to conference with the House. So I made the motion that there not be an antiabortion amendment to the appropriations package, and pushed it through the Appropriations Committee. But we lost it on the floor. I had to compromise the procedure, but not the issue. There is a way to compromise on procedure, timing, and quantitative factors without sacrificing the principle.

Generally, what are your goals as a senator?

My goal as a senator is the same as my goal in life. Whatever role I may have, it is all part of my goal of helping build the kingdom. I am striving to help trigger a spiritual revolution. As a senator, I am dealing with political, economic, social, military, and international problems. Fundamentally, these are spiritual problems. The attempt to find a political or economic answer to a spiritual problem will never work. Therefore, in whatever role I play in life, as a senator, as a husband, as a father; in my social life, in my economic life—whatever—I have a single objective: to help create spiritual understanding.

Do you feel you have accomplished that? Do you have a sense of satisfaction in the strides you have made toward that goal?

Yes, I have great satisfaction, not in terms of achievement, but in the sense of peace of mind. I haven’t changed the world or transformed American society, and I doubt if I will. But I think there has been an impact, a voice raised when maybe other voices have not been raised, and an ability to stand in the breach, make up the hedge on occasion.

You’ve been known as a liberal Republican. One of the things that puzzles us is your vote for the Administration’s cutting back of many programs for the poor. Why do you go along with the Administration?

There is a difference between substance and perception. The perception is based on the fact that I’m chairman of the committee that has made the reduction in some of the welfare programs. The substance is that we have salvaged far more than we have reduced. I am fighting to keep programs, and have been able to retain many that otherwise would have been excised by lowering their levels of funding, levels that will be absorbed primarily by reduced overheads.

For instance, education and welfare both average a 40 percent overhead in administrative costs. With a block grant program the overhead is reduced to 20 percent. Therefore, when we reduce a program by 25 percent, we are only reducing it by about 5 percent in terms of the recipient, because 20 percent of the 25 percent would be absorbed by the change in administrative structure. In cutting some of these programs we are putting additional pressure on removing waste and abuse. I cannot tolerate that in the name of the poor or anyone else.

I also have sought to change eligibility criteria. Last year the federal government paid out over a billion dollars in Medicare payments to people who earned more than $30,000 a year. Spreading that entitlement to such a broad base of people is really weakening the whole program. By tightening the criteria we’ll have sufficient resources to help those who have desperate needs and no alternative. The appearance is that I’m trying to take away from the poor, but in effect, what I’m really doing is building strength into the programs so they reach the poor and are not wasted.

You’ve said that welfare programs may keep body and soul together but destroy the person. What are our alternatives?

I would like to get the federal government out of welfare programs entirely. The federal government has little capacity to act in a compassionate way; it creates dependencies instead. Therefore, resources should be made available through federal grants to institutions and agencies that are already in place, starting with the private ones. I would like to see welfare programs administered through the churches and synagogues and through local governments. Of course, we must maintain a federal role in criteria—such as civil rights and nondiscrimination.

You are sometimes referred to as a pacifist. Do you consider yourself a pacificist?

I consider myself a nuclear pacifist, not a pacifist in general. I’m not a unilateral disarmament person either. I am willing to risk the first step, but that has to be responded to before a second step can be taken.

I could easily say to the Soviet Union, “We have 9,000 warheads, you have 7,000 warheads. We’re willing to dismantle 500 (an arbitrary figure) of our warheads as a first step to disarm the world of nuclear weapons. What are you willing to do?” The most dangerous thing President Reagan can say to the Soviets about rejecting our proposed nuclear weapons freeze is, “You go ahead with that new submarine—go ahead with that new land-based missile, that new bomber that puts us on the brink of doom—while we build 17,000 more missiles. Then we’ll try to talk.” He is opening the door for the Russians to build a whole new generation of missiles.

To me, that’s the most dangerous thing of all. My freeze proposal would stop them before they start developing and employing these new missiles. A freeze, mutually agreed to, would be the first step. Then we could negotiate the second step.

Could we consider the problems in Central America. Do you see any way of getting justice and democracy there?

Yes, we already have a model. Costa Rica is a marvelous example of a democracy that has functioned well without an army. The resources that would have been going to the military went to establish literacy, productivity, and a free enterprise system.

Secondly, [former] President Duarte of El Salvador launched land reform, which was the key to stability. But it has gone nowhere because of opposition from wealthy landowners and the security forces. I introduced a resolution to cut off all our military aid unless the leaders will come together and work toward a political settlement. The new president could turn to all these military right-wingers and say, “Look, we’re not going to get any more arms from the United States. We’d better go to that conference table.” We could give him leverage against his own military.

You have said that when Christians organize politically they lose the real power of their Christian witness. Is this necessarily the case?

I think so. I don’t know of any profession or pursuit in life that is more seductive than politics, because it deals primarily with power.

Shouldn’t we have Christian organizations to take positions and then disseminate literature propounding them and defending them?

I don’t think so. Let me tell you my alternative: it is the living presence of Christ in the life of the believer in every facet of society. Christ calls us to be the leaven, the light, the salt. Those elements are known for their capacity to make an impact, to influence, to transform their environment. The infusion of the institutions of society with the presence of Christ, lived out through the lives of Christian people, brings the impact.

Christian political action tends to pull apart. When we try to form a new force, we’re imitating the world and its means of exercising power. We have a greater power, the power of the Holy Spirit working within us, expressed in love, compassion, and the other fruit of the Spirit. Why should we reduce that power, thinking we’re enhancing it through organizations? At times we need to mobilize ourselves, to speak out as bodies. But when we say, in effect, that if we can get enough people out to vote and get enough Christians elected to public office we’ll have the levers of power, we are reflecting a cultural, not a spiritual, bond.

In view of your alternative to organized Christian political action, how would you attack such areas as pornography and abortion?

There was never a greater political animal in my lifetime than Lyndon B. Johnson. He wanted to be president of the United States more than anything else in the world. He sought political power; he loved it. And he was very, very capable in the political realm. What brought him down? There was no organization as such that said, “President Johnson, we don’t like this war any longer.”

But there was a peace movement. It really wasn’t much, and it turned more people off than it turned on to the issue. No matter. Lyndon Johnson got the mood of the public. He got the communication just as clearly as if it had been written to him in brilliant lights: “Johnson, we’ve left you; our opinion as a public is now totally against you.” That literally drove him out of the White House. It wasn’t an organization. It wasn’t the Republican party—the Republican party didn’t have enough sinews to drive a person out of city hall, let alone the White House at that particular moment.

I’m using this to illustrate the fact that if there’s enough sentiment, opinion, and feelings against these evils, things will change. Pornography exists today because the people are tolerating it and aren’t willing to challenge it. How did they get the prostitues off Logan Circle in Washington? It happened when some of the neighbors got so fed up that they took pictures of people in cars stopping and making deals.

These social evils exist largely because people tolerate and accept them. Even good churchmen who profess to be concerned expect solutions to come from the top. They want an imposed moral or ethical regulatory action. But effective changes come only from within.

Is there any way out of the legislative impasse on abortion?

I don’t think there’s going to be any action taken via the Constitution, even though I introduced the first constitutional amendment on abortion. I’m introducing a bill in the Senate, and Congressman Hyde is introducing it in the House. It prohibits the use of federal funding to perform abortions unless the life of the mother is at stake.

Is there any way to help Christian schools financially without atthe same time bringing government control?

Once you accept a favor or something that is to your benefit—no matter what it is—you have immediately put yourself under obligation. You can’t ask for tax exemption or tax credit on one hand without expecting the government eventually to set certain controls and regulations on the other. I’m fiercely independent in many ways, but I’m especially for private schools. We have to be very wise and cautious about accepting favors from government. I feel very strongly that there is a role for Christian schools, but I do not support tax credits for elementary and secondary education.

I do support tax credits within restricted income areas for higher education. I delineate between the two because one is compulsory and one is not. I strongly support public schools, as well as private; I believe in the dual system. I want to see the independence of Christian schools, but if they come here with their hands out to the federal government, and they begin to accept favors, with that comes greater possibilities of intervention.

You are known as a political leader, but you also are a spiritual leader. What advice do you have for spiritual leaders?

Any leadership role carries with it certain dangers as well as advantages. Concerning the dangers, leaders have a tendency to think that they are now in a position to give out, that such giving comes from an unlimited supply. They reach the point where they don’t realize the need for intake, and so they tend to get fatigued—mentally, intellectually, spiritually, or physically. Our political society teaches us that to confess need is a weakness. But a leader must recognize that need to be vulnerable.

On top of the hill the wind blows harder, and we are more vulnerable to that wind in all directions. In church work you can be so busy for Christ that you take no time to be with Christ. You can be so busy telling people how to study the Bible that you do not take time to take in the Word for your own needs.

Frequently a leader becomes possessive of the role—it’s his position, his office, his title. Leaders must contribute something out of their experience to help others assume leadership roles. There is also the need to evangelize in whatever you’re doing. I use that term broadly. We fall into such a routine that we assume everyone has the same interests or priorities. We grow less sensitive to other people because we’re so committed to our own causes or organizations. We have to look beyond our own walls and our own little group consciousness and see what we can do to share, to make a better world, and to help other people.

One of the most disastrous fates that could befall a leader is to become the embodiment of a cause or issue. When the ego and the issue are so fused that one is no longer able to delineate between them, honest disagreement is taken as a personal attack, and that in turn produces counterattack and ultimately ruptures the relationship. That comes basically out of ego.

When do you think you’ll come to a decison about seeking another term?

I’ll put it off as long as I can. But let me be frank: reelection is an issue that all politicians play to a certain advantage. When I made my commitment to Christ, I said in effect, “Christ, I want to live my life for you, I want to be in your will.” From the standpoint of that commitment, I don’t know what the future holds for me, but I do know it’s the Lord’s will that I’m here now. I’m in a business where you are constantly tempted to think ahead to the next term, to wonder what impact your vote is going to have on your reelection. It’s easy to succumb to this political culture that says you have to commit yourself for 30 or 40 years because if you don’t, the world will fall apart.

William Jennings Bryan went around telling people that the Lord had called him to be president of the United States. But the Lord wasn’t a smart enough politician to get the voters to affirm that. When I let myself get into that kind of situation, I become totally imprisoned to my career and all I’m saying is, “Lord, I have a blueprint here. Will you ratify it and make it your will for my life?”

I’m totally liberated; I have no obligation to the political future because I have only run and been elected to this term. I don’t want my staff even to think of what impact my votes will have on the next election. Because I am liberated I can make the best judgment call based on facts, conferences, and discussions. Even if 150 percent of the people are opposed to it, I still have the freedom to make it. It’s the most exhilarating way to play politics.

One of my colleagues said to me, “There’s a correct vote and there’s a political vote. Mark, I just want you to know I’ve been making the political vote because I’m running for reelection.” That’s imprisonment. I pray for the integrity, justice, and courage to vote the correct vote, not the political vote. It’s a reckless style of politics, but it’s the only style I know.

Are you modeling someone in this regard?

No, I learned it in the political science classroom. You can’t stand before a group of students for seven years and play games with them. They sense it immediately. When they ask a question they want an answer, not a lot of double talk.

When I came to know the Lord, I sensed a liberation from enslavement to intellectualism, to cultural acceptability, to being socially debonair. Having sensed my liberation from those false gods, why should I imprison myself again in any area of life?

Are objections to unity silly or based on substance?

The visit of Pope John Paul II to the United Kingdom brought hopes for ecumenical union to its highest point yet. No doubt his reception in Protestant England was overly drawn by the news media, which tended to be pro-Pope and denigrate “extreme Protestant” objectors. Apparently everyone else accepted the Pope as leader of a sister church, to be welcomed with open arms. Ecclesiastical divisions suddenly seemed anachronistic if not a little silly.

The Pope was conciliatory, even toward protesters. He called for peace, measures to reduce unemployment, and other humanitarian actions. He referred to Protestants as “brothers and sisters in Christ,” avoiding John XXIII’s more patronizing term, “separated brethren.” He embraced the archbishop of Canterbury and, appropriately, discussed with him the desirability of reunion between their two churches.

Behind it all lies the exciting idea that now is the time for the reunion of Christendom. This is the “true ecumenism,” as some clergy have called it, for which we have waited 400 years since the so-called Reformation, and others have waited since East separated from West in 1054. Bit by bit the pieces are falling into place. The day for which Christ prayed is at hand: “That they may all be one.”

Where does the evangelical fit into this theological puzzle that seems to be coming together? The call to Christian unity dare not be ignored. Yet the current surge towards it raises anew many issues that have never been settled. For example: Has the Church of Rome changed from what it was in the 1530s? Have the causes of the Protestant Reformation really been removed? Or is it that Protestants are giving up their basic principles? Of course, those who hold “high church” views have long been favorable to reunion with Rome. But what about the rank and file of Protestants who claim the Reformation heritage of evangelical Protestantism?

First we ask: Has Rome changed? We recall that John XXIII was conciliatory toward Protestants at Vatican II, and that Roman Catholics are now reading the Bible on their own. Is the Catholic church turning back, then, to the source of Protestant thought and belief? This is a particularly appealing interpretation in the light of pronouncements by leading Roman Catholic theologians. Think of Hans Küng’s defense of justification by faith, and Edward Schillebeeckx’s case for a Calvinistic doctrine of the sacraments.

Yet an examination of Rome and its official doctrines today reveals that its teachings have changed relatively little since the sixteenth century. In fact it prides itself that its doctrine never changes. What is infallible may develop, but it never changes from wrong to right. And the Roman church has never rejected the doctrines set forth in the Canons of the Council of Trent (1563). These were specifically propounded in opposition to Protestant teaching, anathematizing such doctrines as justification by faith alone and the sole authority of the Scriptures. At the same time, they asserted the doctrines of transubstantiation, baptismal regeneration, and justification by faith and works. The Roman church repeatedly celebrates Mass according to the historic rites and in accordance with the doctrines of Trent.

Subsequent additions to the latter have only strengthened the Roman Catholic position. In the Middle Ages, for example, the Virgin Mary had been given a special place in the heavenly hierarchy, and her image was venerated. In 1854 the church declared she had been born without sin, that she did not die, but was “assumed” into heaven, and is now co-mediatrix with Christ. In addition, the pope has been exalted to the position of infallibillity when speaking ex cathedra. Since 1877 all those making the Tridentine profession of faith must subscribe to his authority and that of the Roman Catholic church, outside of which there is no salvation.

Rome also claimed certain political powers in the sixteenth century that it has never surrendered. Popes, as the vicegerents of Jesus Christ upon earth, claimed to be lords over all governments and states. In 1535 the pope damned Henry VIII for breaking with the church, and released all his subjects from their allegiance to him. In 1570 there was papal reiteration of universal lordship, and such decrees have never been withdrawn.

All of this may pose no problem for friendly relations. But any evaluation of the present situation will show that on many crucial points Rome has not officially changed since the sixteenth century. Protestants must keep this in focus if they are to remain true to their Bible-centered faith. For their part, Roman Catholics must recognize the dilemma they pose for evangelicals. Quite apart from the personal beliefs of Roman Catholics today, the church still stands officially committed by its creeds to doctrines evangelicals cannot accept—and some of them lie at the very heart of biblical faith.

It was a summer morning in London. The usual crowd of tourists in Hyde Park was watching a detachment of the Household Cavalry trotting past on its way to a guard-changing ceremony. In a moment the whole colorful scene changed. As the riders passed a parked car, a bomb packed with nails was set off by remote control. It killed three soldiers and seven horses. Twenty-two people—soldiers, policemen, and civilians—were injured.

Two hours passed. A military band in nearby Regent’s Park was giving a lunchtime concert to an appreciative audience of tourists and business folk taking their midday break. Suddenly a bomb with a timing device exploded beneath the bandstand. Eight musicians were killed, 24 musicians and civilians were injured. Hundreds of onlookers were subjected to scenes of indescribable horror. A section of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) claimed credit for both incidents.

Earlier this year the movement’s militant wing had threatened to carry the battle to Britain after it failed to achieve its aims in Ireland with guns and bombs. “The war against the Brits,” said a spokesman, “should be carried directly into their homeland, particularly their beloved London.” Hitler in 1940 had made a similar declaration in launching his war planes against the British capital.

The six counties that comprise Northern Ireland are predominantly Protestant with a large segment of evangelicals. The much larger 26-county Republic is Roman Catholic and very loyal to the church. For centuries Britain ruled Ireland with a rod of iron, building in the Emerald Isle a deep and bitter hatred for all things British. After World War I there emerged the Irish Free State, and subsequently a republic was proclaimed. The six northern counties, however, preferred to remain British, and in recent times voted 2 to 1 to remain so. Nonetheless, the constitution of the Irish Republic asserts a claim to govern the six counties also, but suspends application of its rule “pending the reintegration of the national territory.”

Extremists on both sides of the border have meanwhile worked to achieve by violence what democracy refused. Innocent people are murdered or mutilated. Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, 79 (uncle of Prince Philip); the British ambassador in Dublin; members of Parliament and other notables have been assassinated. Sporadically the “loyalists” retaliate.

Typical of the victims was Robert Bradford. A Methodist minister and Belfast South’s representative in the British Parliament, he opposed social reforms that contributed to the permissive society, advocated the reintroduction of capital punishment, and urged that terrorists should be shot as spies and saboteurs. Last year the IRA killed him as he talked with some constituents in Belfast.

The Dublin administration deplores the violence. All four national newspapers condemned the London bombings. “What did the people of this country do,” asks an editorial, “to deserve such barbarians?” In the Dail (Irish Parliament), an Independent Socialist member, lamenting the absence of an extradition treaty with Britain, exclaimed: “If the perpetrators of this outrage ever return to Ireland they can walk around as free men.”

Yet emotions run high in support of the terrorists. A club singer will speak of the IRA with an evangelical fervor. “Give them your hearts, give them your hopes, give them your homes,” he cries. A roar of applause follows. “The strength of traditional militant Irish Republicanism,” notes one study report, “does not lie in reasoned arguments for independence from Britain or for a particular form of government, but in the strong emotions evoked by the memories and legends surrounding past leaders. There is a religious-style overtone in the whole movement, and people have described joining it in terms of a spiritual experience and offered if a degree of devotion, commitment and self-denial which would be appropriate to someone in a religious order.”

It is difficult to cope with a movement that so bizarrely feeds on its dead and lives off its martyrs. The necessary emotions of hate and anger have to be kept burning from generation to generation. Many reasonable people would like to see a united Ireland, but they repudiate the terrorist tactics as evil and counterproductive. Said one man about the IRA: “They want to intimidate rather more than a million people—the pro-British Protestant majority in Northern Ireland—into submission to a State to which they do not wish to belong, and then to bomb that State into submission to a regime which it does not wish to have.”

Sometimes the death-dealing process goes wrong, and the bomb intended for others destroys its makers. In such cases, comments an Irish Protestant pastor, a strange thing happens. “The potential murderers suddenly hurled into eternity are given a full Roman Catholic funeral with a requiem mass … Roman Catholic priests continue to recognize as Christians those who bear the guilt of human blood.” Such extremist clergy, it may be said, are untypical, but their distortion of true religion helps to explain why two Irishmen, one Protestant, one Catholic, in a moment of rare agreement, can say that what Ireland needs is 20 years of atheism. Such is the peculiar vocabulary of Ireland, however, that a declaration of atheism is likely to elicit a further question, only half in jest: Are you a Protestant or a Catholic atheist?

Ireland has a long and sad history of injustices. Happily, many of them have been put right. The nature of the problems still unresolved, and how to deal with them, are open to very different interpretations and projected courses of action. All but a misguided few will agree that the way not to deal with them, indeed the way to leave the whole civilized world reeling with shock and revulsion, is by blowing people to bits on a summer morning in a London park.

Is there no solution? We believe there is, but it rests on a reversal of the roles for all the major parties involved—including Americans. Britain must frankly confess the past injustices that spawned the present tensions. The first step in any solution is to understand the deep roots in history for Irish hatred of all things British. If Britain, including the Northern Ireland majority, insists upon its pound of flesh for each atrocity committed, there will be no end to violence. A final solution may eventually mean a united Ireland with dual citizenship for the six northern countries or some similar recognition of their British loyalties.

The Southern Irish, on the other hand, must see that the IRA is their worst enemy. Every bomb drives home to Northern Ireland Protestants the conviction that a united Ireland would utterly destroy them. The way to win a united Ireland is not to bomb the Protestants into submission. This only confirms their deepest fears and drives them to more desperate efforts to preserve their separatism. Nor does the path to true peace lie in placing pressure on Britain to force Northern Ireland to join a nation they are convinced would destroy them. That would be to repudiate the basic commitment of all Western powers to the right of self-determination. People should be free to choose their own government and national allegiance.

The way for the Irish Republic to get a united Ireland is not to force a tyrannical unity but to convince Northern Ireland Protestants they have nothing to lose by agreeing to a united Ireland. They will do it by creating a better justice—especially by guaranteeing justice and religious equality to Protestants in the Irish Republic. They will win them by ceasing to make the Irish Republic a domain of the Roman Catholic church that follows the most archaic forces in that church in rejecting contraceptive devices, abortion even to save the life of the mother, and divorce on any ground. They will win them by eliminating the disabilities under which Protestants still exist in the Irish Republic, and which Northern Ireland Protestants think will be their portion also under a church-dominated government, were there to be an enforced union.

As for Americans, we have no consistent policy, but only what some call an Irish-American policy. American politicians with Irish-American constituencies, for reasons not difficult to understand, play upon ancient resentments against British and Protestant repression of Catholic Ireland. Instead of fostering ancient prejudices, American leaders would further the cause of peace and justice and remove one of the festering sores of terrorism destroying Western society if they would stop placing misdirected pressure on Britain to force Northern Ireland into a shotgun wedding with the Irish Republic. Rather, they should place pressure on the Irish Republic to create a society of justice and liberty so as to remove the fundamental obstacle to a United Ireland.

But the final note must be left where it was put by an Irish Presbyterian study document in 1976. It says: “Gangsters and terrorists are still people for whom Christ died, even those whom the natural man is not prepared to forgive. Christians must indeed be firm and fair toward offenders, loving but not indulgent or callous, and they should always be on guard against the spurious sense of self-righteousness which can come from indulgence in denunciation of the crimes and sins of others.” That lesson is not limited to those who live in a little unquiet province on the Irish Sea.

The massacre of some 600 men, women, and children in the already bombed-out Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut last month is a blot on the conscience of mankind.

It has sullied the name Christian because the Lebanese gunmen who did the slaughtering, venting years of nursed frustration and hate, claim that label. They thus defiled the name of their professed Lord who instructed his disciples to love even their enemies.

It has tarnished the image of Israel’s Jews who, claiming to be peacekeepers, are said to have blocked efforts of the Lebanese Army to take control of West Beirut after the PLO evacuation. Instead, they sealed off the camps and then arranged Christian militiamen to move through their lines into the camps. The victims of Nazi pogroms were thus accomplices in a monstrosity fully as reprehensible.

And every American citizen should feel a twinge of conscience. Our nearly unrestricted aid to Israel has made it the dominant armed force in the Middle East. It, in turn, subsidized and armed the Phalangists, and trained, equipped, supplied, and paid the militia force under Major Saad Haddad. The weapons of massacre came indirectly from Americans who did not insure that the awesome power it bestowed on its client state would not be abused.

Christians everywhere must respond to this tragedy by demonstrating that their name cannot be identified with narrow self-interest and bigotry.

Jews must stop crying “anti-Semitism” whenever the ethics of Israel’s political and military activities are questioned. Such self-righteous posturing will no longer wash. And Americans must instruct their representatives to withhold further aid of all kinds from Israel until assurances are forthcoming that its delegated power will be used responsibly.

Gil Beers has been well prepared for the challenge he faces.

When V. Gilbert Beers was first approached about possibly serving as CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s next editor, he was not eager to seek the post. But Gil has taken several abrupt right-angle turns in his career, turns that uniquely prepared him for the role he now assumes.

Gil’s roots are typically Americana. His father ran a grain farm in central Illinois. His mother made sure he and his sisters and brother attended Sunday school and worship services in the tiny Indianola Baptist Church.

When Gil was 17, his sisters presented the gospel to him clearly. He went forward to register his conversion decision at evangelistic services in nearby Fairmont. The preacher was Harold Lindsell, later CT’S second editor.

After high school, Gil enrolled in Northern Baptist Seminary’s college division, transferring to Wheaton College at midpoint (where this editor was among the professors). In 1950 he married Arlie Felten, one of three sisters who formed the trio in the women’s glee club.

Gil’s sights were now set on the pastorate, and he subsequently enrolled at Northern Baptist Seminary with a major in Christian education. He reasoned that C.E. would provide a valuable supplement for a pastor to the practical theology he next took at the M.Div. level. In his senior year he served as student mentor for his senior preaching class.

The first right-angle turn occurred toward the end of that school year when Northern President Charles Koller asked Gil to join the faculty and teach Christian education and speech. Gil agreed, and he and Arlie moved into the staff apartment that had once housed CT’S first editor, Carl F. H. Henry. Gil continued to teach at the seminary and also served as chairman of the college division department of Christian education. Along the way he completed Th.M. and Th.D. degrees in homiletics at Northern Baptist Seminary. He climaxed his formal academic preparation with a Ph.D. in the rhetoric of public address from Northwestern University.

Gil thus continues the tradition that CHRISTIANITY TODAY editors are selected from the ranks of academes and seminary faculty. His call to teach in a theological seminary gave a decisive turn to his life’s ministry. Gil’s deepest commitment is to the communication of biblical truth. His career as a seminary teacher laid that foundation permanently and well.

The second right-angle turn came when a former Northern Baptist professor invited Gil to join him at the David C. Cook Publishing Company as editor of its senior high publications. Gil was impressed with the breadth of the audience he could influence, and signed on. After a year he got the job of developing the publisher’s Bible-in-Life curriculum. Within three years, he was editorial director for all of Cook’s publications.

By 1967, Gil had groomed two managing editors, and his interests were increasingly turning to developing Christian education materials for the home. He then contrived his own right-angle turn, resigning from Cook and beginning 15 years of working out of his home as a free-lance book author and developer.

He produced prolifically, writing 42 volumes and orchestrating the assembling and production of 23 others. His career became a family venture. Arlie managed the office work flow and processed the manuscripts. Son Doug (who was killed in an automobile accident last year) became the graphics expert. Son Ron became researcher, writer, editor, and indexer. Daughter Kathy built a research file of archeological materials for the Book of Life set and the Victor Handbook of Bible Knowledge. Daughters Jan and Cindy, still in school, helped to organize the 30,000 photos drawn on for these books.

In some ways Gil’s long stint with Cook followed by the writing and editing for his own company represents an interlude between his academic career at Northern Baptist and his new post as editor of CT. But it also makes its own unique contribution to prepare him for his new duties. Like C. S. Lewis, he was first an academician speaking to scholars. But Lewis, too, made a right-angle turn when he was asked to give the “Broadcast Talks” that later became the volume Mere Christianity. The challenge of his new audience made Lewis write a crisp, clear style. Something like that occurred in Gil Beers’s career. He comes to CT with an impressive academic record, but also with proven skills of communicating the Christian message.

Gil eventually agreed to accept the CT editorship because of the challenge of another important audience, “CT,” he says, “is a strategic Christian publication, with very deep influence.” He sees it as a unique forum for confronting Christian leaders with Christian thought and action, and spurring them to respond. The goal he has set for himself is to deliver content commensurate with the magazine’s reputation and its readers’ current expectation, and to anticipate, and move to meet, their future needs.

He has been well prepared for the challenge he tackles.

There are great names in church history whose confidence and example mark us all. But their names set against evangelical understanding only seem to confuse us. They sound remote and too “Catholic” to be practical. Thomas Aquinas sounds like a kind of medieval medicine used to treat malaria. Saint Bernard was a big dog that guarded an alpine monastery; Saint Benedict was either an early Christian traitor or conceived of a new way to cook eggs. And didn’t Ignatius of Loyola start a university? Translated from the Spanish, the names of the saints become even more confusing. San Diego was either an apostle or a friend of Zorro. Santiago invented chili, and Santa Ana was either the mother of Santa Maria or the alcalde at the Alamo.

This confusion has robbed evangelicals of a certain cultural richness and spiritual heritage. I myself was once impoverished in my own understanding. I saw the names of saints here and there and knew they must have something to add to my life, but never really guessed the spiritual power they would afford me once I studied their lives and contributions.

The key for me was Saint Francis the Sissy. I knew he was really Saint Francis of Assisi, and could even quote his famous prayer. But when anyone said anything serious about his life and witness, I would always chuckle and say, “Oh, you mean Saint Francis the Sissy!” It was not until the Zeferelli film, Brother Sun Sister Moon, that my interest was piqued enough to begin a thorough reading of the life and work of that brother. The more I learned, the less flippant I became.

From Saint Francis I moved on to the Carmelites, whom I once declared made candy in central Spain. But after reading Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa, I once again grieve penitently over my flippancy. I once quipped that Thomas à Kempis, Thomas à Becket, and Thomas Aquinas were Catholic triplets. Now I see each as separate, with his own special impact on my life.

So great is the contribution of these saints to my inner life that I publicly repent. Now I call churchmen I know to a new realization. As we read the ancient words, we are more alive and confess in a new enlightenment of joy. The substance of their lives has replaced ignorance with power. As for the Catholic triplets, Aquinas’s impact on the church and in our own day has been abridged as My Way of Life, a spiritual journey rich in practical insights. À Becket was a martyr whose life and example instructed the Norman king, and à Kempis was the author of the second-best seller of all time: The Imitation of Christ.

Now I am made wiser by those I ignored: Saint Bernard was not a dog, nor Teresa the Carmelite a Spanish confectioner—and certainly Saint Francis was not a sissy!

EUTYCHUS

Yes—But!

I write in reference to an item on Underground Evangelism [News, Sept. 17].

A serious mistake (an honest one) was made by a writer in our publications office who was not directly involved with a literature project. The writer assumed that certain events had taken place when in actuality they had not. This resulted in a financial appeal being written which was based on erroneous information about a proposed project for printing Christian children’s books in several East European languages. That appeal appeared in the June issue of Underground Evangelism magazine. An editorial policy has been implemented to prevent this in the future.

The errors were corrected at the earliest possible time. Funds raised for the project will be used as designated. Suitable children’s literature is being selected, and the books will be translated and printed in 1983. All editions of Underground Evangelism magazine have already printed, or are in the process of printing, a correction of the information contained in the June appeal.

M. DALE SMITH

Underground Evangelism

Camarillo, Calif.

Perceptive Editorial

I am writing to affirm your perceptive editorial, “Does Religion Belong in School?” [Sept. 3].

The basic question on abortion, school prayer, and other controversial “social issues” is not whether values will be “imposed,” but whose values will be reflected in our public policy and institutions.

Too many evangelicals are confused by the muddled thinking your editorial so articulately refuted. As one who has been involved in both the legal and political aspects of these value-laden social issues, I have grown weary of evangelicals neutralized by (largely undefined) phrases like “legislation of morality,” “pluralism,” and “civil religion.” Unfortunately, what primarily seems to motivate many evangelical thinkers is the desire to hold on to hard-won social acceptance—wanting above all else not to be mistaken for fundamentalists who see so many issues in black and white terms. However, we have learned to make so many subtle distinctions that an impartial observer often has difficulty knowing what it is for which we do stand.

Your editorial gives hope that evangelicals may yet wake up to the urgent need for distinctively Christian involvement in the making of our law and public policy.

CARL HORN III

Wheaton, Ill.

I am considerably troubled when religious advocates give careless or incomplete accounts of the legal record in advancing their perspectives. There is both more and less to the two cases you cite than your editorial suggests.

McCollum v. Board of Education (1948) reviewed not merely Bible classes but an extensive program of religious education conducted by clergy on school premises in Champaign. Significantly, in 1952, the Court upheld in Zorach v. Clausen a New York release-time program in which religious instruction was given off school property, thereby making the constitutional test dependent on the setting of the instruction.

Each of three rulings on prayer and/or Bible reading in public schools came in the 1960s. Engel v. Vitale (1962) dealt with considerably more than a “22-word prayer prepared by the New York Board of Regents for voluntary use.” While use was voluntary, the 22 words constituted the only prayer allowed, a circumstance that weakened the meaning of “voluntary.” It was those words or nothing, an important point in considering either the No Establishment or Free Exercise implications of state involvement in school-based religious observances.

Murray v. Curlett (1963) was decided in a joint decision with Abingdon School District v. Schempp, the latter generally considered the more precedentially weighted. Schempp dealt with state-required Bible reading and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in Pennsylvania, Murray with nonstatutory rules in which Baltimore school officials mandated what they defended as a “secular” exercise of morning Bible reading and prayer. By its letter, the ruling outlawed governmentally required religious services.

From McCollum through Schempp, the Supreme Court emphasized the importance and the constitutionality of the study of the Bible and religion in schools, and it has not decided a case dealing with truly voluntary prayer, or the voluntary exercise of religion in debates, private meditation, Bible study, moral instruction, (instructional) Bible reading, or religious clubs.

ELLIOTT WRIGHT

National Conference of Christians and Jews, Inc.

New York, N.Y.

Troubling Report

I was troubled by your report on the recent Evangelical Women’s Caucus [News, Sept. 3]. In their desire to spare Paul the embarrassment of opposing a need for identical roles in the church for men and women, some “evangelical feminists” have engaged in questionable exegeses of 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 11. An appeal to the urgency of the situation in Ephesus as an explanation for Paul’s remarks in I Timothy is no solution to the problem. One wonders if such exegetical subtleties would have ever been conceived among evangelical “inerrantists” had a humanist elite not brought feminism to the sociological fore in the last 60 years. And this causes one to wonder, in turn, both whether such a humanist elite should be setting the agenda for evangelical Christians and, more important, whether twisting Scripture to fit the feminist mold will only serve to further discredit evangelical biblical scholarship among other theologians not of our persuasion.

FRANK THEILMAN

Montreat, N.C.

Aggressive Outreach Program

I read with great interest “The Evangelism Explosion in Quebec” [Sept. 3] after I received word that the Canada East Conference of this denomination had doubled the number of congregations in Quebec at its meeting this summer. For a number of years the Free Methodist Church in Canada included only one pastor serving as many as two or three groups. As the first step in an aggressive outreach program, two additional projects have been opened in and around Montreal.

JOSEPH D. RISER

Free Methodist Church of North America

Winona Lake, Ind.

As I sit down to pen this note, I find it difficult to believe that I am writing you my last editor’s note—just as I find it impossible to believe that I have reached the hoary age of 65. It seems only yesterday that I finally agreed, under a little brotherly arm twisting from Billy Graham, to leave my former post and become the editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. But since then, five-and-a-half years have sped swiftly by.

These have been rich and exciting years for me. I have found many new friends among my colleagues on the staff of the magazine. Not least, I have made a host of friends among you who are readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. When I first began to sketch these notes, I confess I was somewhat awed of you. You represented hundreds of thousands of leaders in the religious world, but only strangers to me. Across these years, I have come to think of you as my very dear friends. I shall miss you. “Parting is such sweet sorrow,” the poet said. And it is true.

Some of you have been kind enough to ask what I will do in my retirement. I shall be teaching systematic theology full-time at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I am also delighted that my successor, Gil Beers, has invited me to assist him in a minor way in the editorial work of the magazine. It will be a joy to share with him in this significant ministry for Christ and his kingdom.

As I leave the editorship, I experience some feeling of regret over unfinished tasks and dreams not realized. Far more, however, I am excited about the future—my own future—as I anticipate working once again with students and writing projects long sitting on the shelf. And I am also excited about the future of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. God has singularly blessed this magazine in its 26-year ministry. And with Gil Beers’s dual background in academia and journalism, I am confident that under his guidance it will have an even greater impact upon the leadership of the church than it has had in the past.

Why Stop Here?

The New King James in perspective.

The Irishman tells of his axe, which had had four new blades and five new handles, but was still the one he brought over from Ireland. The New King James Version (NKJV, Thomas Nelson, 1982) is advertised with the extravagant claim that it is the greatest publishing event since 1611. This raises the question of how much something can be changed and still be accepted as the same. The producers of the NKJV note that there were 24,000 changes made in the text and punctuation of the KJV between 1611 and 1769, and that current printings differ from one another in hundreds of instances.

Reacting to the assertion that the KJV is “erroneous and misleading,” the NKJV people have the avowed purpose “to preserve the 1611 King James for 20th-century readers without violating the theological integrity, the majestic grandeur, and the lyrical cadence of the original.” These NKJV producers (said to be 130 in number, all of whom signed a statement of belief in the plenary and verbal inspiration of the original autographs of the Bible) desire out of their seven years of work to make a market for the new Bible by capitalizing on the KJV name, on widespread continuing preference for the KJV, and on the reaction in some circles to the many translations now available.

The nkjv ought to be evaluated as a new translation in the same way as all the others on the market. It has the same rights in the marketplace as they do. However, the gulf between it and the old King James (even in its current printings) is considerable.

On the positive side, there are many changes for the better:

• Old English pronouns and verb forms are dropped throughout. (Those who insist that use of these forms is more reverent than current English forms will find no solace here. They will be reading: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done …” [Matt. 6:10]).

• Verse numbers that begin paragraphs are in black type.

• Direct quotation is enclosed in quotation marks.

• OT quotations in the NT are set in italic type.

• Poetry is printed in poetic lines.

• Ussher’s chronology, the Christological headings to the Song of Solomon, to some of the Psalms, and to some chapters of Isaiah are all gone.

• Communication has been improved by the effort to eliminate archaic words and those with a different meaning from what they had in 1611. The mythical dragon, unicorn, and cockatrice have all disappeared. No one can question that “Jacob cooked a stew” (Gen. 25:29) is an improvement over “Jacob sod pottage”; “helper comparable to him” (Gen. 2:20) over “help meet for him”; “demon” (Matt. 11:18; John 8:48) over “devil”; “Holy Spirit” (Matt. 1:18) over “Holy Ghost”; “precede” (1 Thess. 4:15) over “prevent”; and “food” (John 4:34) over “meat.”

• Passages describing the functions of the human body have been recast to be suitable for public reading (1 Sam. 25:22, 34; 1 Kings 14:10; 16:11; 21:21; 2 Kings 18:27).

• Names have been spelled consistently so that “Joshua” (Heb. 4:8) is used in the NT for the OT character, Elijah is used instead of “Elias,” and “Jeremiah” instead of “Jeremy” and “Jeremias.”

Of less benefit to the reader is the nkjv’s insistence that reverence is shown by capitalizing all pronouns referring to deity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). The capitalization is used even where the speaker intends no reverence for Jesus (e.g., John 8:52).

The nkjv has retained doctrinal and theological terms like “propitiation,” “justification,” and “sanctification” as being “generally familiar to English-speaking peoples.” That claim might be truer were it to “religiously oriented English-speaking people.” Every society has its jargon. To the above list could be added “seed,” “saint,” “brethren,” “beloved,” “baptize,” “church,” “bishop,” and “deacon.”

Today’s reader is not likely to prefer “vehement flame” (Song of Sol. 8:6), “espousals” (Song of Sol. 3:11), “did not know her” (1 Kings 1:4) for refraining from the sex act, and “with child” (2 Sam. 11:5).

Some cases of reversed English style are retained: “but all their works they do …” (Matt. 23:5), and the dangling clause remains in “The elder and honorable, he is the head; the prophet who teaches lies, he is the tail” (Isa. 9:15).

One is not convinced that the change from “ships” to “sloops” (Isa. 2:16) and “mare” to “filly” (Song of Sol. 1:9) contributes to clarity.

The preparers of the NKJV seem to have less quarrel with the way OT textual study has gone than with that of the NT. They cite the Stuttgart Bible as their basic Hebrew text, but rely on the Textus Receptus for the Greek text. They would like to roll the clock back in NT textual criticism to undo what Westcott-Hort and their successors have done in relying on the early Greek manuscripts, especially on Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. As a purposeful challenge to prevailing theories of textual criticism, the NKJV champions the validity of the Greek text reconstructed by F. H. A. Scrivener as that underlying the KJV.

After 1633, the traditional text came to be known as the Textus Receptus. That text is contrasted with the Critical Text, which the NKJV notes designate the “NU-Text” (published in Nestle-Aland and the United Bible Societies’ texts), and with the Majority Text, which the NKJV notes identify as the “M-Text.” Asserting that the M-Text is similar to but not identical with the Textus Receptus, the NKJV has more sympathy with it than the NU-Text.

The NKJV, critical of translations that have omitted words occurring in the KJV, charges that in such translations words of the text of Scripture have been omitted. The significant textual question is whether these words are actually Scripture or are scribal insertions. If convinced that they were Scripture, no one would omit them. The NKJV revisers do not explain why the reader should continue to read words translated from Latin and inserted into the Greek text by Erasmus, and from that source passed into the KJV—words that are not represented in any known Greek manuscripts. Nor do they make clear why he should suppose the NKJV reading is superior in those many cases where its readings are opposed by both the NU-Text and the M-Text.

The notes of the nkjv give the reader an indication of just how much its text differs from the Textus Receptus, and it is estimated to be in the thousands. [For those who want the full story, the reconstructed Greek text is now available, also from Thomas Nelson Publishers.) This is quite a blow to those who assumed the Majority Text would vindicate their KJV against all rivals.

The NKJV is a step forward from 1769, but in textual questions it is an intentional step backward from 1901. One of the reasons the 1901 effort failed is that it did not use 1901 language. The NKJV makes that same mistake. Except for the initiated, it is not 1982 language. It will not satisfy those who feel that God’s Word can be expressed in both the style and vocabulary of 1982 English without loss of loyalty to the original languages.

The reader will benefit by prayerfully reading and studying the NKJV as he will by reading and studying any translation. The basic duties toward God and man are as plainly set forth as in other modern translations. But the question remains: “Why stop here?”

Communicating God’s Word in translation may be compared to journeying across the U.S. from New York to Los Angeles with intermediate stops along the way. The origin of the journey was the original revelation. The destination is not reached until we know as we are fully known (1 Cor. 13:12).

The 1611 effort, admirable as it was, served as just one of the intermediate stops along the way. Surely someone should ask concerning this revision, “Why start in 1611?” Other than loyalty to tradition, would it not be better to go back to the best available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts and translate them into current English, unshackled by limitations that the use of the 1769 KJV revision (the form of the KJV used by these revisers) imposes?

Reviewed by Jack P. Lewis, professor of Bible at Harding Graduate School, Memphis, Tennessee.

Basic Christian Doctrine

God and History, by James Montgomery Boice (IVP, 1981, 288 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Bruce Demarest, professor of theology, Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary, Denver, Colorado.

With this volume James Montgomery Boice, pastor of Philadelphia’s Tenth Presbyterian Church, completes his four-part survey of Christian doctrine. The series, Foundations of the Christian Faith, was originally given as sermons, but it follows the four-part structure of Calvin’s Institutes.

In God and History, Boice explores the implications of God’s working in history past (saving history that culminated in Christ’s redemptive work), history present (the church and temporal world kingdoms), and history future (the end-time coming of the Lord).

Part one contains a helpful overview of secular philosophies of history, followed by the Christian vision of history that centers on the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of our Lord. Christ is upheld as both history’s Lord and its goal.

In his extensive discussion of the church, Boice posits the origin of the Christian church at Pentecost (the larger people of God originating with the call of Abraham). There follows a refreshing delineation from John 17 of six virtues or “marks” that ought to characterize the Christian fellowship as it lives unto God and before the world. As for local church leadership, Boice argues that the office of deacon is open to both men and women, but that the New Testament restricts the office of elder to men.

Concerning the ordinances of the church, Boice denies that baptizō signifies immersion, but he sidesteps the issue of who (children or adult believers?) are the rightful recipients of Christian baptism. In a helpful study of spiritual gifts, Boice concludes that healings and miracles are bestowed on Christians only infrequently, and that tongues as a lesser gift of God cannot be denied. Moreover, the author pleads for a strengthening of cooperation among evangelical denominations, while he rues the results of mainline ecumenism.

Alloting less than one-fifth as much space to eschatology as to the church, Boice briefly discusses the great end-time issues upon which all Christians are agreed: the second coming of Christ, the resurrection of the body, the final judgment, and the Christian’s life in heaven. He avoids other events in the eschatological calendar that on occasion have engendered tensions among believers. For example, the reader will remain curious as to how the author understands the Bible’s teaching about Christ’s millennial reign.

Christians should be indebted to Boice for endowing the church with a helpful final volume in a valuable doctrinal series. Pastors will find in God and History fruitful seed thoughts for sermon making, and lay people will discover many fertile ideas for Bible studies and discussion groups. In short, this is a book from which all Christians can learn and be blessed.

Briefly Noted

Bibles. There seems to be a desire these days to simplify and shorten almost everything, including the Bible. The Narrative Bible (Enslow, Box 777, Hillside, NJ), edited by Alvin A. Boyd, is described as “condensed for easy reading.” It is short; Boyd gets through Job in four-and-a-half pages, and Galatians in two. The Compact Bible (Oak Tree, Box 173, Amboy, Wash.) is “the New Testament in fewer words”—one-third fewer, to be exact; it reads quite well. The Simple English Bible (Int. Bible Pub., One World Trade Center, Suite 7967, New York, NY), is offered as “contemporary American English.” It is not a paraphrase but a translation in the language of today. The Bible in Basic English (Cambridge) is a version that confines itself to the use of 1,000 English words—850 of which are called basic by C. K. Ogden of the Orthological Institute. Some believe it is possible to give the sense of anything sayable in English in these basic words.

Insight (Zondervan/Campus Life) is the niv New Testament with notes by Philip Yancey. The Living Picture Bible (David C. Cook) is the New Testament with the Living Bible text and comic-strip pictures as illustrations. While rather nicely done, it is too bad the book of Revelation was left out. The Master Study Bible (Holman) is the New American Standard text, with more than 100,000 notes or references. The study material covers over 1,000 pages and is very helpful.

Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company has made available Robert H. Countess’s The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New Testament, a critical and accurate analysis of the New Testament used by that cult. It is a helpful tool for anyone who has to deal with Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Gleason Archer’s Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Zondervan) is Bible related. All the problem texts you have ever heard about, and some new ones besides, are treated. It is a valuable resource for those who wonder what to do with difficulties.