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Reflective Theology

I Believe in the Creator, by James M. Houston (Eerdmans, 1980, 287 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by William W. Wells, associate professor of church history and historical theology, Wheaton College Graduate School, Wheaton, Illinois.

James Houston explains in his foreword that originally he was asked to write “I Believe in Creation.” He chose instead to write a book entitled I Believe in the Creator. In so doing, he shifted the focus of our attention from discussions on how God created the world, how long ago this may have happened, and how science and religion can be reconciled, toward reflections on the God who created. The word “believe” ceased to be a confession of what is believed and became rather a statement of faith in the Creator. I applaud his shift of focus. In discussions of this topic in particular, evangelicals tend to forget that in the Protestant tradition, the primary significance of the word “believe” is “trust,” not “assent.”

Having done that, Houston proceeded to write a book that will delight some and frustrate others. First of all, he is a poet, not a logician. The book has hardly a page without some kind of literary allusion, and the author often supplies a few stanzas of poetry to illustrate his point. This literary style may make the author’s ideas more accessible to some; the poetry will intrude for others.

But the book is unusual for a second reason. Houston believes in an integrative approach to learning and teaching. As a consequence, he feels obliged to reflect not only on the doctrine of the Creator, but also on the implications of that doctrine for related doctrines. As he points out, the God who creates does so through his Word, and hence reflection on the nature of God entails Christological reflection as well. God created man, and that fact leads to a discussion of theological anthropology; we created beings find ourselves in a created world where we create culture, and that too requires some reflection. As the author says (p. 143), “Creation and redemption cannot be isolated.” In short, Houston asserts that our understanding of God the Creator and his creation affects our understanding of all of life and culture.

Because of the book’s broad theological coverage and its literary character, students will find this a hard book to master. One needs to be somewhat familiar with the doctrinal material before reading Houston’s work. It is not a textbook. It will be useful elsewhere. I suspect that most copies of the book will be read reflectively, in the morning along with the Scripture, a page or two at a time. In that way, it will teach a good deal of theology by pointing to the Creator. And that, I think, is what the author had in mind.

God And Science Reconciled

Brains, Machines and Persons, by Donald MacKay (Eerdmans, 1980, 114 pp., $4.95), is reviewed by Gord Wilson, a free-lance writer living in Bellingham, Washington.

Donald MacKay is a foremost authority in the field of cybernetics, which its founder Norbert Wiener defined as “the study of control and communication in animal and machine.” As a practicing Christian engaged in experimental brain research, MacKay is uniquely equipped to comment on the relationship between science and religion—something he has done in two previous books. Carefully distinguishing between mechanism and determinism, he found no contradiction in The Clockwork Universe between biblical faith and a mechanistic universe. Human Science and Human Dignity grew out of MacKay’s debates with behaviorist B. F. Skinner over behavior modification and covers a wealth of controversial topics that included genetic engineering, cloning, and the basis of freedom and dignity, ideas hotly disputed by behaviorists.

But MacKay is at his best in his latest offering, where he is on his home turf: brain science. Here he takes his place as a humanizer of science, translating abstract ideas at the forefront of research in an engaging, popular style with relevant, everyday examples. Each of MacKay’s books benefits from his own research, but here he includes explanatory diagrams and footnotes referencing his own technical papers and those of his colleagues. Unlike his previous works, this book does not presume a Christian audience and is thus more accessible to many readers.

MacKay sees the Bible as authoritative and the scientific enterprise as valid; the two are complementary, not contradictory. Biblical religion occupies a unique place with regard to modern science, affirming, as it does, both an orderly, consistent universe (the basis of scientific method) as well as a whole spectrum of supernatural realities outside the scope of scientific inquiry. But MacKay’s purpose is not simply to persuade the “cultured despisers of religion”; it is also finally to settle the conflict of science versus religion, in favor of religion.

Excitement positively seethes from the book, and it must surely come as a breath of fresh air to know that biblical faith is no way damaged or debunked if the brain should be found to obey entirely physical processes. And surely it is bracing to know that no part of us need remain inexplicable to science in order to justify the biblical view of man—that we need not posit a “God of the gaps” to explain what science cannot at present, and that we need not hope and pray, like Descartes, that some organ called the “soul,” which disobeys physical laws, will be discovered.

Our dignity, MacKay insists, consists not in our being made of a special substance as distinct from other animals, nor in our being inexplicable in terms of physical processes. Rather, our worth is found in our capacity for relationships with God and others and in realizing our potential capability to be what God intended each of us to be as a uniquely endowed member of his body.

MacKay is on the cutting edge of cybernetics research. His most engaging discussion concerns artificial intelligence and consciousness, in which he reaches the pitch of science fiction. Can robots be conscious? If so, would that jeopardize human significance? Would artificial intelligence undermine the biblical view of human uniqueness? MacKay’s analysis is as interesting as his sometimes startling answers, and for all that. Brains, Machines and Persons just exceeds 100 pages of snappy and informative writing. As a popularizer, MacKay girds up heart and mind, compassion and courage, disarming both the skeptical scientist and the befuddled believer in one area in which, in fact, they do not disagree.

An Errant Guide

The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach, by Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim (Harper & Row, 1979, 484 pp., $20.00), is reviewed by W. Robert Godfrey, associate professor of church history, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Jack Rogers and Donald McKim have written a book that deserves careful examination. This book is important, for it speaks to a vital issue before the church, and appears to be a careful, scholarly investigation—and it has attracted a great deal of attention.

Rogers and McKim make their goal clear in the introduction: they want to discredit the doctrine of the Bible’s inerrancy. They maintain that inerrancy is a result of rationalistic scholasticism in the history of the church and is not the historical position of the “central church tradition” (p. xxiii). It was not, they argue, the position of Origen, Chrysostom, Augustine, Bernard, Anselm, Luther, Calvin, and the Westminster divines. They contend that inerrancy was the invention of scholastics like Francis Turretin (the seventeenth-century Swiss Reformed theologian), who passed the doctrine to America through men like Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, and B. B. Warfield. They further charge that the doctrine of inerrancy has been very harmful to the modern church.

The authors assert that this position recognizes that the authority of Scripture lies in its function, not its form. It is the message of salvation in Christ that is infallibly present in the Bible. The form—the words, the historical or scientific observations—of the Bible is open to scholarly investigation and may err without affecting the central message of the Scripture. Christians accept the Bible as God’s Word, not because it is inerrant, but because the Holy Spirit testifies that it is God’s Word of salvation in Christ. In speaking to man, God accommodated himself. This accommodation did not obscure the message of salvation, but it did lead to peripheral errors in the Bible, “weak and imperfect human speech” (p. 78).

Rogers and McKim support their thesis with a survey of church history, analyzing traditional attitudes toward the authority of Scripture. They argue that support for their thesis is found in the best ancient, medieval, and Reformation theologians. They trace a deviation from their position particularly in the seventeenth-century Lutheran and Reformed scholastics and in the theology of old Princeton Seminary. Their interest is focused on more recent eras of church history, with only about 70 pages on the first 1,500 years of the church, about 190 pages on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and about 200 pages on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book has a scholarly appearance, with indexes, bibliographies, an appendix, and 1,977 footnotes.

On careful analysis, however, this reviewer must conclude that the book fails to prove its central thesis. Indeed, it is apparent that the course of the argument is controlled by the authors’ goal to reject inerrancy. Rogers and McKim reveal historical myopia even in the introduction. They say, for example, “In this century both fundamentalism and modernism sometimes took extreme positions regarding the Bible” (p. xxiii). Such a characterization seriously underplays the reality of the threat posed to true Christianity by modernism’s attitudes to Scripture. Their treatment of Hodge and Warfield especially shows little historical sensitivity to the destructive attacks by biblical critics that the theologians of old Princeton faced, and they undervalue the importance of Princeton’s scholarship.

Beyond these problems of perspective are problems with the method Rogers and McKim use to define their thesis. They never grapple significantly with the problem of how function or message is to be separated from the form or words of Scripture. For example, they do not analyze the nineteenth-century developments that led many who criticized the form of Scripture ultimately to deviate from its message and to adopt another gospel. Further, the authors neither examine nor demonstrate their assertion that God’s accommodation to man in Scripture must involve error. Nor do they distinguish between the doctrine of inerrancy and the arguments for holding to that doctrine. They proceed as if all inerrantists were committed to a Thomistic methodology, ignoring non-Thomists like Cornelius Van Til.

Rogers and McKim might be forgiven for a lack of theological clarity if their historical survey were convincing. But it is not. They present arguments that are really non sequiturs and seriously misuse evidence both in presenting representatives of their “central church tradition” like Luther, Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, and Herman Bavinck, and in presenting their key representative of scholasticism, Turretin. There is no space to document this charge fully, but some instances can demonstrate the weakness of their method.

Contrary to these authors, Luther did say that the Scriptures are inerrant: “… Scripture, which has never erred” (cited by Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, p. 6). Their examples of Luther attributing errors to Scripture (pp. 78, 87) are inaccurate. Luther says Scripture lacks Ciceronian eloquence in its style and that there are difficulties in harmonizing aspects of gospel accounts, but that is not a recognition of error in the Bible.

Calvin also recognizes the inerrancy of the Bible: “Let us, then, be assured that an unerring light is to be found there” (commentary on Ps. 119:105). He acknowledges that biblical writers paraphrase Old Testament verses, and wrote as theologians, not as scientists. But for Calvin, a paraphrase is not an error, and popular, nonscientific descriptions of natural phenomena are not errors. Indeed, in presenting Calvin, Rogers and McKim have made a serious error of their own. They state, “In his commentary on Acts 7:16, Calvin declared that Luke had ‘made a manifest error’ …” (p. 110). But Calvin does not say Luke erred. Calvin says “it is obvious that an error has been made.…” In context, Calvin is ascribing the error to a copyist in transmitting the text, not to the gospel writer.

The authors also see Kuyper and Bavinck as representatives of the central church tradition, presenting them as theologians who do not hold to inerrancy. But none of their evidence demonstrates that Kuyper or Bavinck ever identified errors in the Bible.

For Rogers and McKim, Turretin is the representative scholastic who developed a doctrine of inerrancy because of excessive concern for the form of the Bible. They present Turretin from the first sentence of the introduction as the key influence inspiring American inerrantists. They argue that Turretin loses sight of the central saving message of Scripture, along with the Reformers’ stress upon the role of the Spirit. They repeatedly insist that the idea of accommodation “was entirely absent from Turretin” (p. 177). But Rogers and McKim show no firsthand study of Turretin. They do not quote him directly, but appear to depend entirely on a Th.M. thesis from Princeton Seminary.

A cursory reading of Turretin, however, reveals quite a different picture from the one Rogers and McKim draw. For example, with respect to accommodation, Turretin said. “When he [God] speaks, he speaks not to himself, but to us, i.e., in accommodation to our capacity …” (Institutes, II, 19, 8). He taught that “the Spirit is the Teacher, Scripture is the doctrine which he teaches” (Institutes, II, 2, 9). His concern for the inerrant form of the Bible does not undermine his clear presentation of its saving message.

In their final chapter, “Recent Efforts to Recover the Reformed Tradition,” the authors reassert their thesis that there is a third alternative to dead conservatism and liberalism. They offer three recent examples of this alternative: Karl Barth, the Dutch theologian G. C. Berkouwer, and the Confession of 1967 of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Rogers and McKim seem uncritically favorable to these efforts to restore the true tradition of the church. Yet they do not examine the impact of these efforts. They do not look at the theology of the disciples of Karl Barth or the deteriorating state of theology in the Reformed churches in the Netherlands or in the UPCUSA.

Rogers and McKim’s book contains some interesting information, but its misinformation makes it unreliable as a whole. Beyond too many errors of fact, the book fails to be a trustworthy analysis of either the theology or the history of the doctrine of the Bible’s authority. Not only does it fail to recognize that a properly safeguarded doctrine of inerrancy is the historic position of the church, but neither does it show how the church can long maintain the message of salvation in Christ apart from confidence in the inerrant Word of God.

Recent Books On Church Ministry, Part Ii

The minister and his task continue to occupy the interest of publishers. In the last issue we looked at four categories of books relating to the ministry. Six additional categories that are ministry related are treated in this survey.

The Minister. Three new books are basically minister’s handbooks that cover task and relationships: Pastoring the Smaller Church, new printing (Zondervan), by John C. Thiessen; The Christian Minister: A Practical Approach to the Preaching Ministry (Standard), by Sam Stone; and A Minister’s Opportunities (Baker), by Ralph G. Turnbull. All are readable and helpful. There are some specialized works as well. Too Many Pastors? (Pilgrim), by Jackson Carroll and Robert Wilson, is a study of 12 denominations where there is an oversupply of pastors. Can I Make It One More Year? (John Knox), by Edgar M. Grider, offers advice on how to overcome the hazards of the ministry.

The Minister’s Wife.Who Is the Minister’s Wife? (Westminster), by Charlotte Ross, and What’s Happening to Clergy Marriages? (Abingdon), by David and Vera Mace, can be discussed together. Those two books represent a healthy new trend in Christian publishing: responsible treatment of the wife’s role in ministry. In the past it was easy simply to ignore the marital stress that a minister and his wife face, or even to glamorize the role of the wife. These books both remove the façade that those in the ministry know only too well hide some serious problems. The value of the books is not that they take away the illusions; it is rather in that they offer helpful observations, drawn from the practical experience of those who struggle and care. Hope is to be found here, which is what really matters in such sensitive areas of concern.

Leadership. Lawrence Richards and Clyde Hoeldtke have written a perceptive and practical textbook in A Theology of Church Leadership (Zondervan). Wheel Within the Wheel; Confronting the Management Crisis of the Pluralistic Church (John Knox), by Richard G. Hutcheson, Jr., is a challenging and powerful book that looks at management techniques and the Holy Spirit as solutions. Robert E. Bingham writes of Traps to Avoid in Good Administration (Broadman).

Pastoral Care. Well over a hundred books have appeared in this general category. All cannot be mentioned here; those that deal with the basic issues from a pastor’s point of view are listed. Four books have appeared under the rubric of healing. Blessed to Be a Blessing (Upper Room), by James K. Wagner, shows how to have an intentional healing ministry in the church. Christian Healing Rediscovered (Inter Varsity), by Roy Lawrence, is a guide to spiritual, mental, and physical wholeness. Whole Person Medicine (InterVarsity), edited by David E. Allen, Lewis P. Bird, and Robert Herrmann, is an excellent series of papers that looks at healing and the whole person. Howard W. Stone examines Using Behavioral Methods in Pastoral Counseling (Fortress), and Douglas A. Anderson looks at New Approaches to Family Pastoral Care (Fortress). Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work (John Knox), by Eugene H. Peterson, draws on the Old Testament to meet counseling needs and develop pastoral effectiveness. Pastoral Counseling and Preaching (Westminster), by Donald Capps, is a theological quest for an integrated ministry. On a specific and neglected topic, Harold H. Wilke offers some guidelines for ministering to the handicapped in Creating the Caring Congregation (Abingdon). Westminster Press has continued its valuable “Christian Care Books” series with volumes 7 to 12 covering these topics: Mid-Life Crises, by William E. Hulme; Understanding Aging Parents, by Andrew and Judith Lester; For Grandparents: Wonders and Worries, by Myron and Mary Ben Madden; Coping with Abuse in the Family, by Wesley Monfalcone; Parents of the hom*osexual, by David and Shirley Switzer; and Parents and Discipline, by Herbert Wagemaker. Wayne Oates has written a handbook to cover this set, titled simply Pastor’s Handbook, Vol. II (Westminster). Not everything is equally helpful, but that the subjects are dealt with is itself beneficial.

Church School. Three interesting historical books are now available: The Big Little School (Abingdon), by Robert W. Lynn and Elliott Wright; 200 Years—and Still Counting (Victor), by Wesley R. Willis; and B. W. Spilman: The Sunday School Man (Broadman), by C. Sylvester Green. Church growth methodology has reached the church school in Growth: A New Vision for the Sunday School (Church Growth Press, 150 S. Los Robles #600, Pasadena, Calif.), by Charles Arn, Donald McGavran, and Win Arn. The Super Superintendent (Accent), by Harold S. Westing, is a very fine book on church school management.

Career Opportunities. An excellent book listing many hundreds of job opportunities, complete with addresses and advice, is Career Opportunities in Religion (Hawthorn) by William Gentz.

BRIEFLY NOTED

Critiques of Secularism. Malcolm Muggeridge writes in his own inimitable way of The End of Christendom (Eerdmans). Ernest Gordon’s Me, Myself and Who? (Logos) is a vigorous attack on humanism. Illusions of Faith (Kendall/Hunt, Dubuque, Iowa), by Carlos G. Prado, is a critique of noncreedal religion. The Secularist Heresy (Servant) and Where Do We Stand? (Servant), both by Harry Blamires, are excellent reading. If you haven’t discovered Blamires yet, do yourself a favor and read these books. Ronald B. Mayers tries to defend Religious Ministry in a Transcendentless Culture (Univ. Press of America), but he appears to have sold out (or almost) too soon. Still, there are some good things here. Sacred Cows (Zondervan), by J. A. Walter, is a trenchant attack on contemporary idolatry that compels one to look again to the Christian alternative. Saint Hereticus is present again in The Hereticus Papers, Volume II (Westminster), edited by Robert McAfee Brown, who is to be thanked for keeping such treasures from oblivion.

Baptism. In Baptizo-Dip-Only (distributed by Primitive Baptist Library), W. A. Jarrel argues strongly that—naturally—baptizo means dip only. Klock & Klock has reprinted Johannes Warns’s excellent Baptism, which is a doctrinal and historical defense of believer’s baptism. Both Edmund Fairfield, Letters on Baptism (American Presbyterian Press, Columbus, N.J.), and W. A. Mackay, Immersion and Immersionists: A Refutation (American Presbyterian Press), disagree. These two reprints defend the pedobaptist position.

Theology. Lutheran:We Believe and Teach (Fortress), by Martin J. Heinecken; Presbyterian:The Westminster Confession for Today (John Knox), by George S. Hendry, and Our Presbyterian Belief (John Knox), by Felix B. Gear; Pentecostal Free Will Baptist:Pentecostal Doctrines, a Wesleyan Approach, Vol. I (The Heritage Press), by Ned D. Sauls; Methodist:Essentials of Wesleyan Theology (Zondervan), by Paul A. Mickey; Anabaptist/Mennonite:A Third Way (Herald Press), by Paul Lederach; and Roman Catholic:The Credo of the People of God (Franciscan Herald), by Candido Pozo. All of these books are well done and worth reading.

Revisions and reprints have also appeared. Henry C. Thiessen’s perennial favorite, Lectures in Systematic Theology (Eerdmans), has been neatly revised by V. D. Doerksen. Klock & Klock has published W. G. T. Shedd’s 1889 Dogmatic Theology in four volumes. Thomas Nelson has also made it available, but in three beautiful volumes. Shedd’s standard work, History of Christian Doctrine, two volumes, is available from Klock & Klock.

The Word of Truth (Eerdmans), by Southern Baptist Dale Moody, is a very fine summary of Christian doctrine. It shows thorough acquaintance with modern thinking and is biblical rather than dogmatic in focus. Ingredients of the Christian Faith (Tyndale), by Keith Hardman, is a layman’s guide to Christian doctrine. It is clearly written and free from denominational bias, a very good introduction for someone who knows little about the faith. John Carmody in Theology for the 1980s (Westminster) looks at a series of topics (nature, society, church, self, God, Christ) primarily as they were discussed during the 1970s and projects where the discussion will lead in the 1980s. This is a helpful survey. The Seed of the Woman (Doorway Publications), by Arthur C. Custance, is a detailed theological statement arguing for the necessity and unity of fundamental (and conservative) theological principles. Asian Christian Theology (Westminster), edited by Douglas J. Elwood, looks at theology as practiced by Eastern believers. The creativity and ingenuity of some of the thinking is challenging, and this is a fine survey.

The higher the temperature of revival, the stronger must be the scriptural caldron in which the medicine is prepared.

What does the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture have to do with revival? In the contemporary evangelical scene, there are those who would see little relation between the two, either because of pietistic discomfort with interconnections between Word and Spirit, or because of rationalistic dissatisfaction with the very idea of an errorless revelation. If one has such negative feelings, a good antidote is provided by a close look at the great French revival of the nineteenth century.

That movement—still referred to simply as “Le Réveil” (The Revival) in francophone Europe—swept across Switzerland, France, and Belgium more than a century ago, revitalizing formalistic, dead churches wherever it touched them. Thousands of souls were saved, lives were transformed, and missionary outreach to French colonies and settlements all over the globe became a matter of first priority. Even today, local European churches where the revival centered are palpably different from those that stood aside from it: in Strasbourg, for example, St Pierre-le-Vieux, which had little to do with the revival, is without any real dynamic, while its companion in name, St Pierre-le-Jeune, a focus of the revival, displays vital, gospel-centered preaching.

The origin of the Réveil reads like the plot of a romantic novel. (Perhaps Romans 8:28 permits the generalization that all Christian history will one day be seen as just such a romance.)

The story begins in Scotland before the French Revolution. One David Bogue (1750–1825) attended Edinburgh University while still a teen-ager and received a license as a preacher of the gospel. He later developed a plan for foreign missions that led to the creation of the London Missionary Society—among whose missionaries were Robert Moffat and David Livingstone—and was a key figure in the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Religious Tract Society. His missionary zeal stemmed very directly from his high view of the Scriptures: in 1801, he published An Essay on the Divine Authority of the New Testament; its popularity was attested by rapid translations into French, German, Italian, and Spanish. In 1815, he received an honorary doctorate of divinity from Yale, whose president at the time was the scholarly revivalist and hymn writer, Timothy Dwight (“I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord”).

Bogue had a profound personal influence on the spiritual development of Robert Haldane (1764–1842), who, after a brief time as a student at Edinburgh University and in naval service against the French, came under Bogue’s tutelage. Haldane sold his family estate to provide funds for a plan to do missionary work in India, but the East India Company refused to sanction the scheme. (Interestingly enough—again the curtains of eternity are briefly pulled aside—a massacre of Europeans later occurred on the very spot where this missionary settlement would have been located.) Haldane then devoted his inheritance to building churches and seminaries in Scotland and in conducting personal evangelistic efforts on the Continent. His three most influential publications were The Evidences and Authority of Divine Revelation, The Authenticity and Inspiration of the Scriptures, and his Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans.

Haldane’s Romans commentary had appeared first in a shorter French version. The reason has been well set forth by Martyn Lloyd-Jones in his foreword to the 1958 reprint edition of the English version:

“In 1816 Robert Haldane, being about fifty years of age, went to Switzerland and to Geneva. There, to all outward appearances as if by accident, he came into contact with a number of students who were studying for the ministry. They were all blind to spiritual truth but felt much attracted to Haldane and to what he said. He arranged, therefore, that they should come regularly twice a week to the rooms where he was staying and there he took them through and expounded to them Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. One by one they were converted, and their conversion led to a true Revival of religion, not only in Switzerland, but also in France. They included such men as Merle D’Aubigné, the writer of the classic ‘History of the Reformation,’ Frédéric Monod who became the chief founder of the Free Churches in France, Bonifas who became a theologian of great ability, Louis Gaussen, the author of ‘Theopneustia,’ a book on the inspiration of the Scriptures, and César Malan. There were also others who were greatly used of God in the revival. It was at the request of such men that Robert Haldane decided to put into print what he had been telling them.”

Thus did the Book of Romans—in the hands of one who believed every word of it—produce another great series of conversions, this time commencing with rationalistic theological students. (One thinks of Wesley’s conversion on hearing Luther’s Preface to Romans read at Aldersgate, and Karl Barth’s shift from liberalism to at least a modified orthodoxy by way of his studies of Romans.)

French clergyman Reuben Saillens refers to the Réveil as “Haldane’s Revival” and gives as one of its “main characteristics” that “it maintained the absolute authority and Divine inspiration of the Bible.” Gaussen’s Theopneustia—displaying on every page the influence of Bogue and Haldane—remains a classic treatment and defense of the inerrancy of the Bible.

Some years ago, Scandinavian Bishop Bo Giertz, long irritated by those who set personal evangelism in opposition to great liturgy, showed their compatibility—indeed, interdependence—in his essay, Liturgy and Spiritual Awakening. The time has surely come to recognize an even greater interrelation between revival and the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. It is no accident that the great revivalists (Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Moody, Graham, etc.) have been unqualified Bible believers. The higher the temperature of revival, the stronger must be the scriptural caldron in which the medicine of immortality is being prepared. This is the overarching lesson of the French Réveil.

JOHN WARWICK MONTGOMERY¹An attorney-theologian, Dr. Montgomery is dean of the Simon Greenleaf School of Law, Costa Mesa, California, and director of studies at the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France.

One could answer this question rationally, with the cool detachment of statistics. There are 4.3 billion inhabitants of planet Earth, and one-fifth are destitute. Every day, 10,000 succumb to starvation, and die. Meanwhile, more than another one-fifth live in affluence, consume four-fifths of the world’s income, and contribute to Third World development the derisory annual sum of $45 billion, while spending 21 times that amount on armaments.

Or one could approach the question emotionally, with the hot-blooded indignation aroused by the sights, sounds, and smells of poverty. Arriving in Calcutta a few weeks ago, I found the city enveloped in a malodorous pall of smoke from a myriad fires fueled with cow dung. An emaciated woman clutching an emaciated baby stretched out an emaciated hand for baksheesh. A quarter of a million people sleep on the city’s sidewalks, and human beings are reduced to foraging like dogs in its garbage dumps.

There is a third way of approaching the question of the poor—one that should stimulate our reason and emotions simultaneously—and that is through Scripture. Consider Psalm 113:5–8: “Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down upon the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes.…”

What is distinctively characteristic of Yahweh, the psalmist writes, is not just that he reigns on high, or that he condescends to our depths, but that he actually “raises the poor from the dust.” That is the kind of God he is. Hannah quoted this after the birth of Samuel; Mary alluded to it when she learned she was to be the mother of the Messiah. Jesus kept repeating that “he who exalts himself will be humbled, while he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Who, then, are “the poor” whom God “raises from the dust”?

First, and economically speaking, there are the indigent poor, deprived of the basic necessities of life. God commanded his people in the law not to harden their hearts or shut their hands against the poor, but to maintain those who could not maintain themselves, taking them home and feeding them without charge. If an Israelite loaned money, he was not to exact interest. If he took a pledge, he was not to go into the poor person’s house to fetch it, but to wait outside until it was brought. If he took as pledge the person’s cloak, he was to restore it before nightfall, because a cloak by day was a blanket by night. Employers were to pay wages to their workers on the same day. Farmers were not to reap a field “to its very border,” or gather the gleanings of the harvest, or strip a vine or olive tree bare; the leftovers were for the poor, the alien, the widow, the orphan.

The wisdom literature underlined this: “Blessed is he who considers the poor.” Why? Because “he who mocks the poor insults his Maker,” whereas “he who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord.” No wonder our Lord fed the hungry, made friends with the poor, and promised that if we do likewise we shall find ourselves ministering to him “in this distressing disguise” (as Mother Teresa puts it).

Second, and sociopolitically speaking, there are the powerless poor, the victims of human oppression. The Old Testament recognizes that poverty is sometimes due to laziness, gluttony, or extravagance, but usually attributes it to the sins of others. Moreover, injustice tends to deteriorate because the poor are powerless to change it. Yet if the poor have no human helper, God “stands at the right hand of the needy” and “maintains the cause of the afflicted.” So the law contains strong prohibitions against perverting the justice due to the poor, the wisdom literature requires kings and judges to “give justice to the weak and fatherless” and “maintains the rights of the poor and needy,” and the prophets fulminate against national leaders who “trample the head of the poor into the dust.” Thus, the concern of the biblical writers goes beyond philanthropy to social justice.

Third, and spiritually speaking, there are the humble poor. Oppressed by men, they look to God for help, and put their trust in him. So “the poor” came to be a synonym for “the pious,” and their condition a symbol of and stimulus to the dependence of faith. This is specially clear in the Psalter; for example, “this poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles” (Ps. 34:6).

In these ways God “raises the poor from the dust,” for he lifts them out of the dust of penury, oppression, and helplessness. God concerns himself both with the materially poor and powerless, and with the morally humble and meek. Yet his attitude to these groups differs, for the former is an outward and sociological condition which he opposes, while the latter is an inward and spiritual condition which he approves.

The only community in which these concepts are combined is a church that is witnessing to the kingdom of God. The Old Testament expectation was of an ideal king who would “judge the poor with righteousness,” “decide with equity for the meek of the earth,” and grant these blessings to the “humble and lowly.” The fulfillment in Jesus corresponds to this, for he spoke of the righteousness of his kingdom and at the same time said that the good news would be preached, and the kingdom given, to “the poor.” These can be neither the sociologically poor (or salvation would be limited to the proletariat), nor the spiritually poor (or the facts of Jesus’ ministry to the poor and hungry would be overlooked), but to those who are both. To them the kingdom of God is proclaimed as a free gift of salvation and as a promise of justice.

The Christian church should exemplify these truths. On the one hand, it consists entirely of the spiritually poor, who acknowledge that they have no merit to plead, and so receive the kingdom as a gift. On the other hand, the church should not tolerate material poverty in its own fellowship. If there is one community in the world in which justice is secured for the poor and need is eliminated, this should be the church.

The church, if it exemplifies both ideals of the kingdom, will bear witness to the paradox of poverty. If we want the new community of Jesus to offer a radical alternative to the world around us, then we must set ourselves simultaneously to eradicate the evil of material poverty (because we hate injustice) and to cultivate the good of spiritual poverty (because we love humility).

If we ask how we well-to-do Christians should express solidarity with the poor, it seems that the first option, to “become poor,” is the vocation of some but not all. The selling and giving of the early Jerusalem Christians was clearly voluntary. The opposite extreme, to “stay rich and ignore the poor,” is not an admissable option.

The rich cannot ignore the poor of this world, but must do something for them. A rich Christian is not a contradiction in terms; but a Christian who lives richly, spending his wealth upon self and family, is a contradiction. The third option, to which all of us are called, is to live a life of generosity and of simple contentment. “We brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world; but if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content” (1 Tim. 6:7–8).

JOHN R. W. STOTT¹Mr. Stott is rector emeritus of All Souls Church in London, England.

The twentieth century allowed painting to become purer, less literary.

“Painting Is the music of God, the inner reflection of his luminous perfection.” And so it was—400 years ago when Michelangelo penned those words. But is it today? Christianity, for most painters, has lost the ability to stimulate. Religion is no longer a driving force in Western culture, or so some say.

Does this mean there is no religious art now being produced by important painters? No. Acknowledged or not, the Creator remains behind all forms of positive artistic expression. Though no longer at the service of a specific dogma, artists still respond to their “religious” impulses.

The most significant body of religious art in the last 30 years has been produced by a trio of artists belonging to a branch of abstract expressionism. Known as “color-field” painters (so-called because of their use of enormous canvases covered with fields—or “flames” or “clouds”—of usually solid pigmentation), Clifford Still, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman forged a new kind of art that distinguished them from their gesture-painting, existentially minded cousins (Jackson Pollock et al.).

Innovative as their compositional styles were, these painters seldom discussed formal matters. Paramount in their thinking was subject matter—ironic as that may seem to the uninitiated viewer of their abstract paintings. Rejecting the forms and symbols of organized religion, Still, Rothko, and Newman sought to thrust themselves into the transcendental realm of experience through their art. In 1948, Barnett Newman declared:

“We are reasserting man’s natural desire for the exalted, for a concern with our relationships to the absolute emotions. We do not need the obsolete props of an outmoded and antiquated legend. We are creating images whose reality is self-evident.… We are freeing ourselves of the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have been the devices of Western European painting. Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man, or life, we are making [them] out of ourselves, out of our own feelings.”

Turning their backs on the quest for beauty that preoccupied most Western artists for centuries, these painters reached out to grasp what seemed to them a more primordial, simpler emotion. It was as if they hoped to drive modern man—and his sophisticated sensibilities—back to a time, long past, when primitives stood in raptured silence before stone idols. Such a goal explains their use of huge canvases as a device to swallow up the viewer in the work itself (unlike most large pictures, these paintings are designed to be seen close up).

The power these paintings exude is undeniable. Recently in New York, Rothko (who, along with Newman, died in 1970) and Still have had major retrospectives. Still especially retains the ability to overwhelm the viewer. Despite one critic’s objection that “the artist does not impress one as an outsize talent,” these canvases, with their leaping, pulsating flames of color, do evoke emotions in the onlooker.

But what emotions? With his gruff—even sloppy—application of paint to the canvas, Still is apparently attempting to reject beauty in his work. Yet he fails—some of his paintings are quite beautiful. Color is, after all, one of God’s loftiest inventions. Rothko, Newman, and Still, because of their dependence on color, cannot avoid an inherent beauty in their paintings. Herein lies the tragedy: these artists, like so many contemporary painters, have rejected the source of their inspiration. Having renounced the biblical explanation of their longing for transcendent truth as irrelevant, they “sat in darkness and the deepest gloom, prisoners suffering in iron chains, for they had rebelled against the words of God” (Ps. 107:10–11, NIV).

Yet Christian artists must explain why these paintings are so effective. Could it be these artists are correct in their assumption that the old forms of religious art no longer communicate to modern men? Perhaps Jacques Maritain is right when he advises us that “the distinction between ‘church art’ or ‘sacred art’ and an art that is religious not by virtue of its intended purpose but only by virtue of the character and the inspiration, is only too evident, for what is most lacking nowadays in a great number of works of sacred art is just precisely a truly religious character.”

Can christian artists use the compositional discoveries of the color-field painters and infuse them with new content, or even redeem the original meanings these artists sought to convey? Perhaps not. Perhaps it is necessary to move beyond this stage.

One thing, however, is clear: Christian art cannot go backwards. Philosophers like Francis Schaeffer and the late H. R. Rookmaaker seem to be pointing artists back to the Reformation period and earlier for models. Rookmaaker particularly laments the painter’s shift from craftsman to apostle of “High Art.” In his last pamphlet, Art Needs No Justification, Rookmaaker argues that nineteenth-century painting marked the decline of subject matter as the primary concern of the artist, “leading in our century to the rise of nonfigurative art.” Chronologically he is correct. However, he explains this shift almost totally in terms of the rise of humanism and the Age of Reason—in other words, philosophically. Though acknowledging the invention of photography “may have played a part in this,” Rookmaaker totally underestimates the impact photography had on the painter. Freed from his social responsibilities as a recorder of history, the artist explored new techniques and avenues of expression.

Actually the Christian painter had begun to lose his distinctive function even earlier. Before the invention of printing when handwritten copies of Scripture were scarce, and people who had the ability to read them even scarcer, the artist was compelled to depict biblical stories in a literary fashion. Is it coincidence that religious art began to flounder as the distribution of Scripture increased? Too many Christian artists today are attempting to fill the outmoded and unnecessary role Pope Gregory the Great enunciated centuries ago: “Painting can do for the illiterate what writing can do for those who read.”

Like it or not (and, as a painter, I like it), the twentieth century allowed painting to become a purer, less literary, more direct vehicle of the artist’s emotions. Nostalgically evoking a lost age of innocence does not help the contemporary Christian artist communicate to his fellows. It is imperative that we speak in the language of our time, a task that challenges the best in any artist. As Maritain concludes: “Do not say that a Christian art is impossible. Say rather that it is difficult, doubly difficult—fourfold difficult, because it is difficult to be an artist and very difficult to be a Christian. Say that the difficulty becomes tremendous when the entire age lives far from Christ, for the artist is greatly dependent upon the spirit of his time. But has courage ever been lacking on earth?”

MARK MARCHAK¹Mr. Marchak is himself a painter. He is New York City coordinator for the Conservative Baptist Home Mission Society.

Sider and North spar over issue at Gordon-Conwell Seminary.

Should Christians be pushing civil government to take an active role in the reduction of worldwide poverty? Two Christian scholars met April 6 at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, to debate the biblical evidence of civil government’s role in relief of the poor.

Ronald J. Sider, author of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and professor of theology and ethics at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, charged that the biblical concept of justice demands that Christians work politically to break down the structural causes of poverty. Gary North, president of the Institute for Christian Economics and a staff member of the Chalcedon Foundation, agreed Christians do have a duty to feed the poor. But he argued that efforts should be made through the church, not civil government.

Sider laid out the biblical foundation for the argument that Christians should be concerned for the poor; North agreed with his main point.

The two men were far from agreement, however, on the critical question of what all that means to the church today. Sider argued that while charity and volunteerism are necessary, they are not enough in themselves. According to the prophets, he said, it is not just the individual poor person God is concerned with; it is also the social system that contributes to his poverty.

The prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and others condemn the rich for either gaining wealth by oppression and treachery or for turning a deaf ear to the cries of the poor, Sider said. God never intended there to be a wide social gap between rich and poor, he contended. The jubilee concept laid down in Leviticus is proof that “God does not want such a disadvantage.” When the Hebrews first occupied the land of Canaan, God divided the land equally, and “he wanted that arrangement to remain and to continue,” said Sider, to be sure every person “had an equal share in and means of providing wealth.” The legal return of land every 50 years to its original owner insured that equality, he noted.

The jubilee underlines the biblical basis for an “institutionalized mechanism” for the relief of poverty “rather than haphazard handouts by wealthy philanthropists,” Sider claimed. The Christian’s duty then, he said, is to “demand that civil government design programs” to provide the poorer members of society with the resources they need to earn their fair share of the wealth.

But North charged that the state cannot be trusted with the task of reducing poverty. Confessing he held the Puritan view in a four-centuries-old debate between Puritans and Anabaptists on this issue, North cited atrocities in American history as proving foreign aid often “leads to imperialism internationally.” Money sent to help the poor in the fields, he said, is used instead to build up urban complexes 40 stories high and to create large bureaucracies (e.g., the Bureau of Indian Affairs) where government employees end up absorbing the money intended for the poor.

When Old Testament prophets came upon nations that had strayed from God’s standard, they directed rulers back to the law. The church today must do likewise, North stated. “Christians are to serve as salt,” and, he said, salt had two purposes in Bible times: it was used for flavoring and for destruction. “If we do our task well,” said North, “we’re going to replace the prevailing civil order.” Then Christians can establish a new government that would be “unquestionably geared to justice.”

Meanwhile, the church is to be a model to the nation in working for the relief of the poor and hungry. Christians should tithe a tenth of their income and a portion of that should go to the alleviation of poverty.

But Christians need to be freed from the tyranny of taxation so they can give more freely to charity, North continued. “And the Bible has just the solution. 1 Samuel 8 sets a limit on the amount the state can tax its people according to God’s law, at 10 percent; and that is how it should be done today.”

North also challenged the idea that redistribution of the wealth would benefit the poor for more than one or two years and charged the motivating force of its proponents is envy. Envy, or “tearing down the rich just to get even,” he said, originated with Satan.

Many Christians today feel guilty for having wealth, but if they are tithing, they have no reason to feel guilty, North stated. “If Christians began to tithe, they would change the face of the earth.” God blesses those who follow his law, and his law demands giving 10 percent of one’s earnings to God’s work.

But the models North chose to illustrate this point raised a few eyebrows among his audience of 200 seminarians and professors. He praised the Mormons for building churches without going into debt, and Herbert Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God for its obedience to the required tithe. Of Armstrong’s church, North said, “Look at the blessings God has given to that church. It’s incredible.”

In his summary, Sider said Christians should use “reasoned, intelligent analysis” to make social changes “in light of what the Bible says we should be doing.” But North disagreed. He argued the Bible indeed is specific, and that what was good enough for the Old Testament prophets is good enough for him.

The Legislative Scene

Abortion Factions Skirmish Over Koop Appointment

Congressional supporters of C. Everett Koop are confident they can overcome a legislative roadblock that is threatening his appointment as U.S. surgeon general. Koop, chief surgeon at Philadelphia’s Children’s Hospital, is a well-known evangelical. Those who oppose him are doing so because of his strong stands against abortion and hom*osexuality, and they have found a technicality to use against him.

The technicality is that Koop, 64, is six months over the age limit for the surgeon general’s job, making it necessary to pass a bill exempting him. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) attached the legislation onto an unrelated bill (dealing with credit cards), and the Senate passed it. When it got to the House, however, Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill (D-Mass.) found an obscure procedure to strip the amendment and deposit it in the House Health and Environment Subcommittee.

The chairman of that subcommittee is Henry Waxman (D-Cal.), one of the sponsors of a national gay rights bill, who differs with Koop’s conservative positions. Waxman called a subcommittee hearing to open a broad-range attack on Koop, and was further annoyed when Koop did not appear to defend himself. Waxman said last month that “Dr. Koop frightens me. He does not have a public health background, he’s dogmatically denounced those who disagree with him, and his intemperate views make me wonder about his and the administration’s judgment.”

There was plenty of opposition to Koop at Waxman’s hearing. A spokesman for the American Public Health Association said that although Koop was “a distinguished pediatric surgeon,” he was untrained in public health. A spokesman for the National Gay Health Coalition said, “Koop appears to have strongly held beliefs about hom*osexuality which are not supported by established medical thought, practice, or science.” A spokesman for a women’s proabortion group also criticized him.

Because the House passed the credit-card bill without the age exemption for Koop (as well as five other amendments the Senate added to the bill), a House-Senate conference committee, composed of members of both houses, will meet to reconcile the differences. Koop supporters hope the age exemption will be put back during the conference; if not, they have another strategy. Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) has introduced the age exemption as a separate bill. Although it has also been sent to Waxman’s subcommittee. Koop partisans hope to use a discharge petition to spring it out of the subcommittee directly to the House floor, where they believe it would pass easily. The discharge petition, however, is a cumbersome procedure that does not usually work.

Carl Anderson, an assistant to Senator Helms, said, “We’ll do whatever has to be done to get this thing.

Mennonites after Smoketown

A Call To Move Beyond The Peace Issue To Evangelism

Signals keep coming from Smoketown. This was observable at a recent Mennonite gathering in Berne, Indiana, where some 200 pastors and lay leaders talked and prayed about restoring the Mennonite tradition to a firm evangelical footing.

They reaffirmed most of the concerns coming out of the so-called Smoketowr Consultation two years ago (held in Smoketown, Pennsylvania): reaffirmatior of the authority of Scripture, need for renewed evangelistic emphasis, and a reexamination of priorities, with the emphasis on the saving power of the gospel.

A five-member convening group (four of them pastors) planned this second inter-Mennonite meeting, or “Consultation or Continuing Concerns,” as a way to spreac the vision of the earlier one, and to share new concerns. The meeting, in the Berne First Mennonite Church, was open to anyone, whereas Smoketown was a small, by-invitation-only gathering of about 20 pastors, educators, and lay leaders.

A general feeling underlying both meetings was that Mennonite bodies have overemphasized their historic peace and social emphases at the expense of evangelism and discipleship, among other things. Several well-known Mennonite leaders echoed this in Berne, and touched on the broader issue of secularism. Some spoke to the grassroots criticism that Mennonite colleges have lost accountability to the local churches, and are being affected by liberalism.

Albert Epp, Henderson, Nebraska, pastor who, with host pastor and fellow convener Kenneth Bauman of Berne serve the two largest congregations in the 60,000-member General Conference Mennonite church, opened the two-day session with a devotional, pointing out the power of prayer at Pentecost.

When people become affluent or educated, warned Epp, one of the first casualties is prayer. “We have not because we ask not. Prayer can rescue the Mennonite brotherhood from shipwreck. The Holy Spirit can do in a minute what you and can’t do in a lifetime.”

Theologian Myron S. Augsburger, immediate past president of Eastern Mennonite College and presently a scholar-in-residence at Princeton Theological Seminary, was concerned that “academic and cultural pseudo-sophistication not rob us of the freedom to share Christ.” Later in the meeting, speaker Benjamin Sprunger, past president of Bluffton (Ohio) College, was asked what he sees as the redeeming factor for the Mennonite church. He responded: “The Scripture speaks for ancient times, present times, and future times. Out of that presupposition we must find our way and not let that get diluted by secular and contemporary thought. We cannot ignore psychology, sociology, and science, but we cannot let those replace God’s Word.”

In the third major address, moderator Vernon Wiebe of the Mennonite Brethren church praised his denomination for being “unashamedly evangelical and Anabaptist.” He noted, however, that sometimes “we have been afraid to join together in spiritual exercises. We are comfortable with relief sales, but not the study of the Word.”

Eugene Witmer of Smoketown chaired the findings committee, which arrived at a list of 15 concerns. Witmer, also a convener of the Berne meeting, cited in an interview “sharp lines” of concern that prompted the meeting—for instance, the desire to address Mennonites “who place so much attention on the peace issue, but are strangely silent on abortion and alcoholism.”

Conveners said attendance was about 150 percent better than expected, with many persons coming at their own expense. In many respects, the meeting mirrored developments in other denominations, where conservatives are trying to restore traditional, evangelical emphases.

North American Scene

Parents of John W. Hinckley, Jr., the man charged with the presidential assassination attempt, made a Christian commitment in 1978. Since then they have given heavily to overseas relief and development projects, including those of World Vision. Jack Hinckley is a water resources consultant for World Vision, and reportedly had expressed concern about his son to some of the organization’s staff and requested special prayer for him.

Called a devout fundamentalist Christian by acquaintances, Edward Michael Richardson, 22, of New Haven, Connecticut, was indicted last month on two counts of threatening the life of President Reagan. Federal investigators were checking similarities between Richardson’s alleged threats and a letter received by TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. He turned over to the FBI a note he received March 25 with the message scrawled on the back of a ministry fund-raising envelope: “Ronald Reagan will be shot to death and this country turned back to the left.”

An interfaith forum was organized last month in Jefferson City, Missouri, with some observers calling it a new breakthrough for interfaith relations. Missouri leaders of 11 Protestant denominations, and four Roman Catholic bishops, announced formation of the so-called Missouri Christian Leadership Forum. Its purpose will be dialogue and possible cooperation on mutual concerns, such as issues before the Missouri legislature. The forum includes groups such as the Missouri Baptist Convention, and Catholics. The latter had refused membership in the Missouri Council of Churches, which they saw as too liberal and structured.

Groups have a constitutional right to pass out literature at airports without notifying authorities in advance. So ruled the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month. The court called unconstitutional a Portland, Oregon, ordinance that required groups to give one day’s notice before picketing or distributing literature at the city’s airport, and to provide names, addresses, and telephone numbers of those sponsoring the distribution. The decision reversed a U.S. District Court ruling upholding the ordinance, which was challenged by Jews for Jesus chairman Moishe Rosen. He had been arrested for violating the ordinance while distributing literature at the Portland terminal.

A week of prayer emphasizing a call to national confession of sin and repentance is scheduled May 31 to June 7 as a prelude to this summer’s American Festival of Evangelism in Kansas City, Missouri. Festival spokesman Norval Hadley explained, “We are urging Christians to unite in prayer for America. We want God to help us see our condition as he sees it.” Hadley suggested churches provide opportunities for organized prayer during the week: prayer groups, prayer with sister churches, prayer partners, 24-hour prayer and fasting chains, and so on. The prayer week culminates on Pentecost Sunday, the day designated for the annual prayer effort for world evangelization sponsored by the Lausanne Comittee for World Evangelization.

Personalia

War hero and sportsman Joe Foss was appointed international chairman of the billion-dollar evangelization campaign, Here’s Life, World, sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ International. Foss, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient during World War II and the first commissioner of the old American Football League, succeeds Wallace E. Johnson, cofounder of Holiday Inns, who asked to be relieved after suffering a mild heart attack last fall.

Asia missions veteran Samuel H. Moffett, 65, accepted a three-year appointment as professor of ecumenics and mission at Princeton Theological Seminary. Moffett currently is vice-president of Presbyterian Seminary in South Korea, and a long-time missionary there. He has spent the last several years doing research for a book that will chronicle the history of the Christian church in East Asia.

Academia: Ronald Youngblood, dean of Wheaton College Graduate School, has resigned and will join the Old Testament department at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, next fall; James Plueddemann, chairman of the school’s Christian ministries department, was named acting dean effective July 1. Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary profesor David M. Scholer, Wheaton College and Harvard Divinity School trained, was appointed dean at 200-student Northern Baptist Theological Seminary near Chicago, succeeding Gerald Borchert, now at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

World Scene

Four out of fifteen Protestant churches in Lyon, France, have been destroyed by arson this year. The latest, a Pentecostal assembly structure that seated more than 500, was set ablaze in the early morning hours of Sunday, March 29. An outdoor baptismal service to have been held on the premises had been publicized for that evening. After the three January burnings, police increased surveillance of the evangelicals’ properties. So far they have no suspects in the acts of destruction, which evidence a common pattern of sabotage.

Pope John Paul II will visit World Council of Churches headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, next month. The June 5 visit to Philip Potter, WCC general secretary, and other council officials is the second papal visit. Pope Paul VI paid a visit to the ecumenical center in 1969.

The Helsinki follow-up conference in Madrid has failed to inhibit Soviet authorities in oppression of religious believers. Orthodox priest Gleb Yakunin’s appeal of his 10-year sentence has been rejected, and presumably he has been transported from prison to a labor camp. Boris Perchatkin, a spokesman for the Pentecostal emigration movement who contacted foreign journalists in Moscow, has been sentenced to two years of labor. Eight Baptists arrested last June while operating a clandestine printing press have received sentences ranging from three to five years each, and the press has been confiscated. Keston College also reports sentences for five other believers.

One in every two refugees in the world today is African. This shift may come as a surprise to many who grew accustomed to associating “refugee” with Southeast Asian “boat people.” Poul Hartling, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, points out that Africa, with only 12 percent of the world’s population, has almost 50 percent of its refugees—some five million. Four out of five African refugees have found asylum in countries that are themselves among the least developed in the world. Host countries, says Hartling, have responded with traditional African hospitality. “The problem,” he says, “is that their hospitality is being offered from an empty table. Help from outside is crucial.”

An official Protestant delegation from China took part in an Asian Christian consultation in Hong Kong last month. It was the first such visit outside the People’s Republic since the Communist takeover 32 years ago. The delegation was headed by Bishop Ding Guanxuan (K. H. Ting), president of the China Christian Council and chairman of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (CT, Jan. 2, 1981, p. 46). Among Ding’s statements, as reported in the South China Morning Post:

Only a minority of Chinese are Communists and the majority are both patriotic and theistic. Even though currently unable to meet the demand, the TSPM will not accept help in making Bibles available. The movement’s long-term policy, he said, is to enable every Protestant to own a copy of the Bible, many of which were burned during the cultural revolution. Religious broadcasts into China not approved by the TSPM would be considered unfriendly.

Liberation theology is at issue in school’s year of evaluation.

President Carmelo Alvarez speaks almost proudly of 1981 as being “our year of evaluation.” At the invitation of the school’s board of directors, a seven-member team of theologians visited Latin America Biblical Seminary in San José, Costa Rica.

This commission, selected to represent a broad spectrum of national and theological backgrounds, launched a full inspection in a week’s time. They talked with three former presidents of the school, with faculty who have recently resigned, students, and current school administrators. They are studying the school’s curriculum and facilities.

Commission member Garth Rosell, academic dean of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, explained there is no accrediting agency in the Latin American world, such as the Association of Theological Schools. The seminary’s board of directors therefore “is very interested in input.”

Yet Rosell would be the first to admit the reasons for the study (the seminary avoids the term “investigation”) go far deeper. The school’s alleged overemphasis on so-called liberation theology has earned it sharp verbal attacks since the middle 1970s. Some observers, even former president Plutarco Bonilla (1975–78), question its academic credibility, as well as its educational slant. The school hit a financial crunch when many conservative churches withdrew their support.

When the commission releases its full report next month, the many nonbinding recommendations may appear uncomplimentary to the school. Commission head Cecilio Arrastía, a Hispanic programs official with the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., acknowledged “there are problems … theological problems.”

Still, even many of the most severe critics assert their concern is to help the school, not hurt it. Established in 1923 by Latin America Mission founders Harry and Susan Strachan under the motto “For Christ and Latin America,” the interdenominational seminary (in Spanish, “Seminario Biblico Latinoamerica,” or SBL) for years held the reputation as providing the finest theological education for Latin American evangelicals. The school took the lead in providing pastoral training, which was taught by Latin Americans, and relevant to the Latin church and culture.

But in its creditable efforts to relate theology to the troubled Latin American society, the seminary apparently upset a majority of its conservative, Protestant constituency. These grassroots evangelicals feel the seminary traded its historic emphasis on evangelism and building up the local church for a left-wing, political one.

The seminary is small by North American standards—presently there are about 80 students in on-campus bachelor’s and licentiate (master’s) programs in theology, and another 100 or so in the “theological education at a distance” program. Yet its actual, and potential, influence is strong. Students come from practically all Latin American countries. The growing Latin American Protestant church needs trained leaders, and there are not all that many schools to choose from. If Latin America’s evangelical churches can’t send pastoral candidates to SBL, where can they send them?

The Central American Mission’s seminary in Guatemala City is highly regarded, although some Latin theologians regard it as too conservative and dispensationalist. The U.S. Southern Baptists have seminaries in Cali, Colombia, and Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Evangelical Alliance Mission and the Evangelical Free Church of America jointly operate one in Maracay, Venezuela. If there is a criticism of these, it is that too few nationals serve on the respective faculties. The interdenominational ISEDET in Buenos Aires has top-flight academicians, but most Latin conservatives would feel uncomfortable there. One evangelical called it “the Union Seminary of Latin America.” Good Baptist, but Portuguese-language, seminaries in Brazil are also cited.

But aside from these, many Latin evangelicals see only the separatist and conservative Bible institutes (many of these are tiny Pentecostal or fundamentalist schools) and liberal mainstream denominational schools. Theologian John Stam, who recently resigned from the SBL staff, sees a need for a good “third alternative,” somewhere between these conservative and liberal extremes. In his eyes, such a school would be “radical evangelical”—progressive in its approach to social issues, and evangelical in theology.

Whether SBL will assume a leading role remains a question mark. Conservative evangelicals right now are skeptical. (Latin Americans frequently use the term “evangelical” to describe any Protestant.) But many do feel something can be learned by studying events there, which highlight key trends in the developing Latin American theology. A central question is: Can the Latin church address crucial social issues—such as poverty and political unrest—and at the same time be biblically sound and evangelistically active?

Some missionaries and educators trace many of the school’s criticisms to North America evangelicals who do not really understand the Latin scene, and who air knee-jerk suspicions when something does not exactly fit their U.S.-formed concept of what a seminary should be and teach. Seminary officials frequently remind others that SBL is not a U.S.-owned or-operated school. It is owned and administered by an association of Latin American Christian leaders, and is responsible for its own financing and personnel.

Because many North Americans think the Latin America Mission in the U.S.A. somehow controls the seminary, LAM-USA officials have spent a lot of their time denying responsibility for what goes on there. While LAM-USA missionaries may serve on the school’s faculty, the seminary functions independently of the U.S.-based mission.

In 1971, the Latin America Mission was totally restructured and its many departments of ministry, including the seminary, became autonomous. Now, LAM-USA, LAM-Canada, and the seminary are among the some 25 separate entities that are members of the Community of Latin America Evangelical Ministries (CLAME).

Independence from U.S.-based controls meant development of programs and ideals not always in line with those with which U.S. missioners feel comfortable. In the case of SBL, U.S. missioners became increasingly unhappy with the school’s drift toward liberation theology. The seminary rumbled through some troubled times in the middle 1970s, with ideological conflicts and numerous faculty changes.

Developments to Watch in Today’s Latin Church

Several trends characterize today’s church in Latin America, according to CLAME general secretary and CHRISTIANITY TODAY correspondent Paul Pretiz of San José, Costa Rica:

• Continued growth of the charismatic movement, which has brought new vitality to the Roman Catholic church, and a crop of first-time Bible readers. Catholic charismatics often meet in house prayer groups, and, while many are rejected by the Catholic hierarchy, prefer keeping their Catholic identity rather than forming a Protestant one.

• Sprouting of the small, grassroots worship communities, or base communities, among Catholics. There are 150,000 to 200,000 of these (an estimated 100,000 in Brazil) in Latin America. The groups have grown spontaneously, without a linking network, and generally are composed of the poor, who are reading the Bible and seeing its social implications.

• Consolidation by the Catholic hierarchy, boosted by recent visits to Brazil and Mexico by the conservative Pope John Paul II. They are seeking to reaffirm traditional doctrine and bring offshoot groups “back into the fold.”

• New ecumenicity among Protestants. Certain key Latin evangelicals are establishing a continent-wide fraternal body, CONELA (Consultation of Evangelicals in Latin America). They see their group as the conservatives’ alternative to the fledgling Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) with its World Council of Churches ties. This group formed out of a meeting of 40 Latin Americans attending the 1980 Consultation on World Evangelization in Thailand. Executive secretary Marcelino Ortiz cited CONELA goals, including a transdenominational meeting in early 1982, an information network, and pastors’ retreats.

• Development by local congregations of new worship models that are non-Western, and fitted to the Latin context. Experiments in evangelistic programs and theological education by extension also characterize many Protestant groups.

Concerns refocused when LAM-USA decided 18 months ago no longer to endorse the seminary publicly. LAM-USA board initiated a year-long study in February 1979 to determine what should be the mission’s continuing relationship with SBL.

In the report, issued a year later, LAM-USA noted its freedom to declare any of its theological or ideological differences of conviction or emphasis with the seminary. The mission also said it would continue sponsoring missionaries on the faculty. Finally, LAM-USA declared it “may also choose not to promote the SBL and to exercise its own criteria as it continues to engage in the communication of Latin American realities.”

The mission communicated this report to certain key supporters and, as it has worked out in practice, said LAM-USA spokesman John Rasmussen, “we are no longer endorsing the seminary.” The mission no longer endorses the SBL in its publications, or raises funds for the school.

Another recent development involves the Association of Costa Rican Bible Churches, which is composed mostly of congregations started by LAM missionaries. The association is starting its own Bible school in order to provide an alternative for the majority of the association’s 56 churches who do not support the seminary, said association administrator and LAM-USA missionary Bill Brown.

Also, the resignation of Professor Stam shocked many observers, because Stam had identified so closely with the seminary’s push for a theological slant that more closely identified with the Latin American context.

Stam, a professor at the school for 24 years, emphasized in an interview that his resignation was not meant as a statement against the seminary’s theological stance. Rather, he wanted to devote more time to grassroots pastoral work in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, as well as teach religion at the National University in Heredia, Costa Rica.

However, he did admit his resignation was intended as an “alarm clock” for those who would allow the seminary to drift farther from its evangelical moorings.

He also noted questions about lifestyle, such as standards now allowing students at the seminary to smoke, even though many conservative Latin churches would never accept a pastor who smoked and feel this would be the “kiss of death” to a student’s ministry. Stam’s resignation is one of at least five by faculty members who left during the past year for a variety of reasons.

Richard Foulkes, who heads the seminary’s department of Bible and Christian thought, and his wife, Irene, Greek professor and director of the theological education “at a distance” program, are the last LAM-USA missionaries on contract with the seminary. LAM-USA associate Thomas Hanks teaches Old Testament there apart from his duties with a student ministry, but without a contract. He resigned from the faculty six years ago in disgust over a cutback in Bible courses, but stayed on, while working to strengthen and add to those that are offered. Mennonites Laverne and Harriett Rusch-man are the only other North Americans on a full-time staff of 14.

Richard Foulkes and Hanks, while they agree certain evangelical doctrines have been neglected at SBL, presently intend to stay at the seminary and see it through its crisis period. They praise the school’s efforts to relate to crucial social issues in Latin America. They would not agree with all the views of certain liberation theologians on the faculty, but affirm the professors are evangelicals.

One professor who left, Kenneth Mulholland, cautions North Americans against judging the school through their own filters. “This isn’t the old modernist controversy like we had in the U.S.,” he said.

Mulholland, who left SBL last August for Columbia (South Carolina) Graduate School of Bible and Missions, believes all staff members affirm “classical, evangelical theology,” and would not quarrel with such key doctrines as the Virgin Birth. In fact, SBL in 1974 approved a conservative faith statement, “Affirmation of Faith and Commitment,” for its faculty. But what sets certain Latin scholars apart from others, Mulholland says, is their areas of emphasis.

At the seminary right now, the main emphasis is social ethics, Mulholland believes. Problems come if an emphasis like this distorts biblical doctrines, such as the nature of man, he said.

Liberation theologians with a Marxist slant “view man as inherently good, and corrupted by social structures, while Christians view man as fallen, and with evil proceeding from the inside out. Structures only magnify that evil,” he noted.

He believes the seminary could “turn itself around” with renewed commitment to evangelism and the local church. “If those concerns came pressing in, with the school’s biblical evangelical heritage, it could regain the balance it has lost.”

Questions about SBL always gravitate back to the so-called liberation theology, since this is the subject on which many believe it has gone off the deep end.

Liberation theology works generally from identification with the poor, oppressed, and alleged victims of exploitative societies. Because the term means different things to different people, a better term is said to be “theologies of liberation.” Latin theologians often call it Latin American theology, calling it the first attempt since the early church to develop a systematic theology outside the European context.

Evangelicals rebut those liberation theologians who view Christ as a political messiah, and who use Marxist thought as the starting point for their ideology. Most cite as redeeming factors its emphasis on faith practice, and its push to better the plight of the poor.¹Protestant treatments of liberation theology are found in: J. Andrew Kirk’s Liberation Theology: An Evangelical View from the Third World (John Knox, 1980); Orlando Costas’s The Church and Its Mission: A Shattering Critique from Ihe Third World (Tyndale, 1975); Carl E. Annerding’s Evangelicals and Liberation (Baker, 1977); Robert McAfee Brown’s Theology in a New Key: Responding to Liberation Theologies (Westminster Press, 1978); chapters from Tensions in Contemporary Theology, edited by Stanley Gundry and Alan F. Johnson (Moody Press. 1979); and the W. Dayton Roberts article in ct. Oct. 19. 1979. “Where Has Liberation Theology Gone Wrong?”

Seminary professor Hanks, for instance, believes the emphasis on the poor is a key issue that North American evangelicals are ignoring. He says North Americans generally blame poverty on “underdevelopment,” or a person’s laziness or lack of education. However, he cites more than 120 biblical texts naming “oppression” as the cause of poverty. The church’s responsibility is locating those sources of oppression, and then denouncing them in the mode of the biblical prophets, he believes.

The central complaint against SBL has been its alleged overemphasis on the left-wing political aspects of liberation theology, and a weak and flawed theological perspective on the subject.

George Taylor, who left the seminary last December to accept a teaching post at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary near Chicago, says the seminary is right in teaching liberation theology. Such teaching is needed in the Third World because of its “identification with the poor,” he said. However, Taylor, a Panamanian who taught for 18 years at the seminary and was its interim president in 1974–75, adds that “maybe I was not in agreement with its heavy emphasis on politics.” He believes poverty must be addressed in the political arena, as well as the theological, but that the seminary now gives greater emphasis to the political aspect.

Former seminary president Bonilla criticized the trends of the seminary more blatantly. Bonilla, a native of the Canary Islands who resigned last year from the faculty but is teaching a preaching course there without a contract, says the faculty and students are wrapped up in “political sloganism.” The theological course work has been diluted so much that the school lacks academic respectability, he asserts.

Bonilla adds: “It seems to me that justification by faith is no longer one of the main themes at the seminary. I’m not saying the faculty don’t believe it, but they take for granted the theology and ignore it. The courses in theology are very weak.”

Foulkes sees his continued role at the seminary as “keeping the biblical content high.” He laments the loss of Stam, a skilled New Testament theologian, but he is optimistic about the skills of new faculty members brought in to fill recent vacancies. He relies on Hanks to provide expertise in the Old Testament courses. Hanks complains of a “brain drain” of Latin American scholars; some of the most talented Latin theologians accept teaching posts in the States, such as Taylor, and Orlando Costas (whose resignation from the seminary in the middle 1970s over the liberal drift created tensions that some seminary sources say are still felt).

Hanks and Foulkes both agree the seminary should attune students to the political realities of Latin America. Hanks did note problems can result if impressionable students get a one-sided view in the process. He describes a hypothetical SBL student as one who may be a new Christian and “may have read the Book of John and not much else.” The student may attend one class under an outspoken liberation theologian at SBL, and also classes at the University of Costa Rica (as many SBL students do) under a Marxist professor. With no counterbalancing explanations, before long the student “doesn’t know where he’s at,” Hanks notes.

SBL president Alvarez, from Puerto Rico and the Disciples of Christ, says, “We want to help students understand what is going on in their own countries,” adding that the seminary can’t tell anyone what to believe.

Alvarez, 33, a doctoral candidate in church history who has done graduate study in the U.S., criticizes North American Christians as “playing the church business and not taking seriously what it means to proclaim the kingdom.”

People close to the seminary cite the election of a successor to Alvarez—whose three-year term expires in November—as crucial to the seminary’s future, and are hoping for a conservative evangelical. Former president Bonilla said he was asked to seek the post but turned it down because the seminary faculty “don’t show a willingness to change.”

The seven-member commission’s report may provide direction to the seminary’s board. The team—not all members being conservative evangelicals by North American definition—has divided the work, each member focusing on a certain aspect of SBL. Besides Arrastia and Rosell, team members include Thomas Liggett, president of Christian Theological Seminary (Disciples of Christ) in Indianapolis; SBL alumni Julia Esquivel of Guatemala and Rodrigo Zapata of Ecuador (with HCJB in Quito); Aníbal Guzmán, a Bolivian Methodist; and Francis Ringer, of Lancaster (Pa.) Theological Seminary (United Church of Christ).

When the team reports back to the SBL board with its full report in late June, commission head Arrastia hopes the results will be given a good hearing. The idea was that the report be used for SBL’s long-range planning through the next 10 to 15 years.

Hanging in the balance, he says, is whether SBL “stays an evangelical seminary, or takes the full route of liberation theology.”

Guatemala

Guatemalan Pastors: Between A Rock And A Hard Place

The Guatemalan pastors interviewed by CHRISTIANITY TODAY asked that their names be withheld for their personal safety.

“We are trapped between right-wing and left-wing terrorists,” reported Guatemalan pastors recently. “Please ask Christians all over the world to pray for Guatemala, and for the believers here.”

Violence has stained this emerald green Central American republic many times in its 160-year history. But rarely did the violence become as savage and sustained as it has during the current right-left battle for domination. Up to 25 violent deaths are reported daily in the national press, and many citizens believe the toll may be greater.

Leaders of the Guatemalan evangelical church have tried to maintain a neutral position in the current political shooting match. But neither side seems content with the evangelicals’ neutrality.

“First the leftist guerrillas come and want us to give them food and information, or they ask to use our church buildings for political meetings,” said one pastor. “If we refuse, they accuse us of supporting the right-wing terrorists. Then the rightists come and ask us for information or want us to preach against the leftists. If we don’t cooperate with them, they accuse us of defending the leftist guerrillas.”

When a church leader does give in to the pressures, he is immediately marked by the other side for harassment, threatening letters and phone calls, or death. One informed source reported that three lay pastors were killed in Huehuetenango in late January. The same source also said that up to 10 local church leaders died violently during the first two months of 1981. Specific figures are hard to secure because some deaths have occurred in isolated indigenous areas, and local people are afraid to report the deaths because of possible reprisals.

A climate of violent revenge has moved into some sections of the country and is a factor in many killings. An assassin will eliminate a client’s personal enemy for as little as $50. Some pastors have received anonymous threatening letters, presumably from disgruntled church members, which alarm them and their families.

In other cases, right or left elements engage in “cleaning the record” operations. If any citizen has in the past belonged to or participated in political movements of either stripe, his adversaries may eliminate him for past actions, no matter what his current political attitude may be. Scores of Guatemalans have been shot in such “cleaning” operations. Church leaders who learn that their names are on a cleaning list will often leave the country hastily.

Rightist officials are attempting to bring evangelicals into government programs to reunite Guatemala’s people. There is, however, the fear that joining such a program may create a leftist backlash against the evangelical church.

Meanwhile, and in spite of the tension, churches are full. One pastor related, “We are seeing a harvest of conversions. The situation has awakened interest in the gospel, and people are coming to Christ.”

“Christ is the only solution for Guatemala,” he went on. “As people repent of their hate and fear, and are reconciled by the Lord, they become new creatures.”

Evangelist Luis Palau carried out a nationwide mass media crusade in Guatemala during April, using radio, television, newspapers, and thousands of specially prepared booklets.

They are well dressed, and most are professional people. These members of a house church in suburban San José, Costa Rica, sang some choruses, then moved into Bible study, and concluded with a sharing of prayer needs. Afterwards, many stayed around to discuss the movie, The Late Great Planet Earth, over sandwiches and chocolate cake in one of the group’s periodic “film forums.”

The attenders look and talk like North American evangelicals, but the group leader explains something that might break that mold. While most come from conservative and Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship backgrounds, he explains, “it might come as a surprise to you that probably all of these people would vote for Marxist candidates in the Costa Rican elections.”

It is becoming increasingly difficult to put Latin American Christians into North American boxes. In fact, most Latin American Christians say one shouldn’t even try.

The frequently heard criticism of the church to the north is that Christians here too often judge and criticize without bothering to listen to their Latino brothers, while at the same time they are painfully ignorant of the Latin American culture and church.

Latin America Biblical Seminary professor Richard Foulkes explains, “Sometimes people from North America will just have to sit back and listen.”

Many Latin American Christians are asking how to live scriptural Christianity in difficult living situations—in countries that may have oppressive governments or thousands of poor with no chance of bettering themselves. The answers they are coming up with sometimes appear radical to those persons who, for instance, believe that the U.S. democratic and capitalist system is God-ordained, and that if it works in the U.S., it has to work in Latin America and anywhere else.

In El Salvador, an estimated 5 percent of the population own 80 percent of the land Even in Costa Rica, the most stable and affluent Central American republic, roughly 65 percent of the wage earners make less than $100 per month. In examining the options for improving such conditions, one prominent U.S. evangelical leader and long-time worker in Latin America commented, “It would be almost impossible for a U.S. missionary to work in Latin America and not become favorable toward socialism.”

Protestants in Latin America form a small minority—perhaps 25 million members. However, the church is growing: a recent survey showed that Protestant memberships in the Central American republics doubled or even tripled during the last decade. (PROCADES, a ministry of the Institute of In-depth Evangelization of Costa Rica, headed by LAM-USA associate Cliff Holland, is finishing an exhaustive study of Protestant membership in Central America. Through World Vision, PROCADES will publish English versions of its profiles of countries, which list Protestant churches, pastors, and organizations in the five Central American Republics, Panama, and Belize.)

There has been an explosion of new church bodies that are completely separate from North America mission ties. A recent survey showed 190 groups in Nicaragua, 41 of which list no U. S. or Canadian links.

At the same time, increasing tension is evident between U.S.-based missions and the churches their missionaries started. Many national churches want greater autonomy, and missionary agencies are not sure how they should (or if they should) relinquish control.

A small ad hoc committee, “Puente” (“Bridge”), composed of Latin American evangelical leaders and U.S. missions officials, functions to work through differences of this sort and to prevent conflicts of the kind that occurred in Costa Rica last January. Southern Baptists there went through a painful and messy split—some churches voting to sever all relationships with the U.S. church, and others choosing to maintain mission ties.

Generally, the grassroots Protestants in Latin America are theologically and politically conservative—explained partly in that 75 to 80 percent of Latin American Protestants are Pentecostal. (Latin Americans frequently use the term “evangelical” to describe any Protestant.) However, theologically conservative does not necessarily mean politically conservative, or vice versa.

Many pastors and churches strive to remain politically neutral, but are finding it increasingly difficult to do so because of pressures from the right and left (see p. 43). Others have felt conditions demanded their direct involvement. Believing violence the only way to halt the Somoza regime, allegedly responsible for widespread atrocities against Nicaraguans, some evangelical pastors there fought alongside the Sandinistas. Others, who did not fight, found themselves having to counsel teen-aged Christian young people who wanted to know if God would approve of them running to the mountains to join the Sandinistas. Most observers agree the revolution would not have succeeded without evangelicals’ support, and attribute the new Marxist-leaning government’s toleration, even support, of evangelical Christianity to that. At the same time, many evangelicals warn this toleration could cease when the Sandinistas no longer “need” the believers.

There are cases in which certain Latino Christians feel participation with Marxists or other non-Christian groups is the only way to present a strong enough force to fight a social or political evil. The house church members in San José, for instance, while knowing pure Marxists to be anti-God, may vote for a Marxist candidate if his election would mean improving conditions for the poor or stopping a corrupt right-winger.

In an address to a meeting of presidents of North American evangelical seminaries last January in San José, Dominican Republic educator J. Alfonso Lockward noted it is “almost impossible to avoid limited cooperation with Marxists in Latin America.” At the same time, he cautioned against evangelicals being “instrumentalized by Marxists without their knowledge.”

Lockward, a former presidential candidate in his own country, mentioned that attitudes toward political involvement among Latin American Christians range from the “ivory tower” approach (no involvement) to militant activity. He also complained that over the years, U.S. missionaries have exercised a double standard—forbidding their parishioners’ political involvement, while ardently supporting the political positions of the U.S. As an example, he cited a U.S. missionary to the Dominican Republic who became a decorated war hero in World War II, but who forbade his church members’ political action against the brutal Trujillo regime, which, Lockward asserted, committed atrocities just as awful as those by Hitler.

U.S.-based missionaries in Latin America also face difficult decisions regarding their own political involvements (or lack of them) and those of their Latino constituents. Earlier this year, at the Institute of the Spanish Language in San José—the chief language school for appointees of evangelical missions in the U.S.—missionaries encountered some of these issues. Two Mennonite college students attending the institute were ordered out of the country by the Costa Rican government; they had violated a little-used law forbidding foreigners’ political involvements by participating in a demonstration against Costa Rican and U.S. involvement in El Salvador.

Also, the murder in Colombia of Wycliffe missionary Chet Bitterman (a student at the institute just two years earlier), impressed the seriousness of the Latin situation upon many students—some of them headed for Colombia, and others, Wycliffe appointees.

The institute’s student government organized a round table discussion on the Christian’s approach to politics. While the consensus was that a missionary’s first task is presenting the gospel, several mentioned the impossibility of living isolated from one’s political context.

The missionaries realized that tough questions now facing some Latin American Christians are: When should a Christian seek to change corrupt systems, not only sinful man? Should expatriate missionaries support the cause of social justice?

How can such a small country have such immense problems? That is a question of observers who are trying to understand the complex situation in El Salvador. The Central American nation of 4.5 million has experienced tremendous upheaval and no little bloodletting in recent months.

There are civilian and military leaders struggling for control within the current government, leftist elements that would like to overthrow that government, and appeals being made from both sides—the leftists and the government—for popular support. Sadly, many of the people they would profess to help are being killed.

U.S. officials estimate 10,000 people were killed last year, most of them by members of that nation’s security forces acting on behalf of rightists. People also are victimized by violence from guerrillas. The result is that literally thousands of Salvadorians are fleeing the country, or living there in fear (see below).

But as is often the case in troubled nations, the Christian church has grown. The small Protestant population, about 150,000 or 3 percent, is having an impact on the society—even on some of its leaders.

At least three of the four members of the ruling civilian-military junta have had Bible study and prayer with their staffs. Junta president José Duarte, a graduate of Notre Dame University and close friend of its president, Theodore M. Hesburgh, and Col. Jaime Gutiérrez, junta vice-president and representative of the military, reportedly have made evangelical professions of faith. Duarte and José Morales Ehrlich, a liberal Christian Democrat who heads the country’s agrarian reform programs, have met on occasion with Assemblies of God and independent Baptist missionaries. (Little publicized is the report that former president Romero and his wife made professions of faith with evangelical pastors just prior to their ouster from the country.)

Current Protestant growth indicates something of a revival. For instance, churches affiliated with Central American Mission (now CAM International) boast of a 30 percent growth rate during the past year, compared to a 4 percent increase the year before.

Converts are coming from all levels of society. One CAM pastor describes the guerrilla who entered his office holding a beat-up tract he had been reading. The man said, “I’ve been in the field for eight months, and I have no peace in my heart. I would like to know more about Jesus Christ.” A number of army officers and soldiers also reportedly have made professions of faith and been baptized in churches in the capital city.

Pentecostal churches probably make the biggest impact in El Salvador, if for no other reason than numbers. The Assemblies of God has an estimated 75,000 members, or half the Protestant population. Other large Protestant groupings include independent Baptists, United Pentecostals, Apostolic Pentecostals, and the CAM churches. All are evangelical and conservative.

Other signs that the Salvadorian church is surviving—even thriving—despite the nation’s turmoil:

• An especially active San Salvador Baptist church reports a membership of 200 university students and over 100 professionals, along with a strong evangelistic outreach.

• More than 169,000 people were contacted, and 60,000 professions of faith made during last year’s Here’s Life program of Campus Crusade. That campaign continues, with decisions reported weekly.

• Assemblies of God evangelist Jorge Raschke from Puerto Rico attracted more than 80,000 people to the national stadium in San Salvador last November. In his April rally in Santa Ana, more than 70,000 people came. Raschke mixed fervent evangelism with a healing ministry, and numerous healings were noted—even reportedly documented cases of filling of teeth with silver.

• Christian literature is booming. An Assemblies of God literature missionary says sales are up 600 percent over last year. The Bible Society sells Bibles as fast as it can stock them.

• Churches are getting involved in education. The Assemblies of God have created a school system in San Salvador, which enrolls more than 5,000 children, mostly from poor homes. The Baptists and CAM churches also have school systems, which enroll some 15,000 to 20,000 additional students.

• An evangelical university of El Salvador is in formation and now ready to open its doors. The faculty includes Christian doctors, engineers, agronomists, and other professionals who will teach courses in their specialities. The government and general public greeted the university beginnings with enthusiasm.

Because of the violence and social upheaval, the churches have entered into relief activities and are looked to for more leadership in this area. The interdenominational group CESAD (Evangelical Salvadorian Committee for Relief and Development) was organized about two years ago to foster rural and agricultural projects, but the worsening situation forced it into mostly refugee work.

CESAD has sought to aid the more than 300,000 people that have been temporarily displaced at one time or another by the fighting. The committee provides food, clothing, medicines, and spiritual counsel. Its policy is to help anyone who does not bear arms.

In its struggle to find enough funds to carry out its responsibility, CESAD has obtained assistance from several U.S. missions, including the Christian Reformed church, the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, the Missouri Synod Lutherans, the Mennonite Central Committee, and World Vision.

CESAD was originally slated to receive funds from Church World Service ($79,000 during this year, according to the correspondence CESAD has in its files). CESAD was cut off from assistance by the National Council of Churches agency when (according to informed sources) it refused to become politically active against the present government.

The North American missionary presence has dropped more than 75 percent during the past year in El Salvador. The Assemblies of God, American Baptists, Christian Reformed, and many independent missionaries have been withdrawn. Interviews with these missionaries showed that few left voluntarily, but did so because mission boards under pressure from their constituencies ordered them to return home.

Some ministries have suffered or stopped because of the violence. An Assemblies of God pastor who had a successful farm cooperative was killed by Marxists who apparently felt he undercut their support among the people. Two young Pentecostal evangelists carrying electric megaphones were mistakenly shot by police who thought they were political terrorists. A Campus Crusade volunteer worker disappeared during an evangelistic campaign in a village. A Baptist pastor and three youths were kidnapped by a leftist group. Other pastors report visits from leftist organizers who demand they join up or be killed.

Several large evangelical churches in San Salvador have been forced by leftist elements to give up their morning offerings on threat of their buildings being burned. Whole congregations have fled the villages of heaviest fighting and have relocated elsewhere. Sources indicate that a few pastors and lay people (primarily from the American Baptist-related church) have been arrested or forced to flee the country by the government because of alleged involvement with the Marxists. Overall, most evangelical churches are reluctant to support the left since a disciplined core of Marxists controls it.

Generally, the political wranglings are too complex even for seasoned observers to understand. What the thousands of poor campesinos (or farm laborers) do know is violence and unrest; the churches are finding out that many would rather know Christ. Under difficult conditions, the churches are being called on to provide a ministry for both the physical and the spiritual needs.

Refugess

The Salvadorians’ Agony Spills Over Into Honduras

The refugee situation on the Honduras border was escalating daily last month as thousands of Salvadorians continued to flee their country. In the wake of the ongoing political and military conflict in El Salvador, some 40,000 peasants and day laborers have already entered Honduras and are scattered along the border in scanty camps and numerous villages.

In an effort to assess the needs of the refugees, the World Relief Corporation of the National Association of Evangelicals visited the border area with an inspection team headed by Jerry Ballard, executive director. Ministers of the Honduran government invited World Relief’s reactions and suggestions for solving the growing refugee crisis.

On April 2, the inspection team entered the border town of Colomoncagua. Nearby, 300 refugees had just arrived from El Salvador. Fleeing their country by night, these refugees traveled as many as 21 days to reach safety. In personal interviews, the refugees reported that some of their homes and possessions were burned and entire families caught in mortar attacks. Food was scarce and some people had not eaten for three days.

One father, who was holding his dead five-month-old baby in the middle of the huddled group of refugees, represented the countless personal tragedies. In contrast to the grieving father was a mother who had given birth to a child the night before, just 200 feet inside the Honduran border.

Andy Bishop, World Relief overseas ministry official, said at the border. “Prompt recognition of the problem and action by the Honduran government, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and voluntary agencies have averted a disaster.”

U.S. officials estimate there are 75,000 to 80,000 refugees living in various camps inside El Salvador. These are operated by the government, the Red Cross, and the Catholic church. United Nations official Ingemar Cederberg told a reporter that the UN is aware of the presence of about 50,000 Salvadorian refugees in various parts of Central America, but that there could be three times that many.

MARY WHITMER

The healthy practice of communal discipline can reestablish our churches as holy refuges from the world.

Consider the term, “church discipline.” For many evangelical Christians, these words cast nightmarish images on the back of the mind—images of excommunication, inquisition, and witch-hunting. For others, it is a loving, positive term, a reminder of a time when they were brought back into the fold after they had been involved in sinful practice. For still others, it is a foreign term; it is something they have never encountered in a church.

Whatever pictures the expression calls up, Scripture makes it clear that church discipline exercised under the leadership of godly pastors, elders, and church members is a mark of a God-glorifying fellowship of believers (2 Cor. 5; Gal. 5:1–2).

Scripture clearly delineates the process of church discipline in other passages: Matthew 18:15–17; Matthew 5:23–26; James 5:19–20; and 2 Thessalonians 3:14–15. The steps of discipline might be summarized as follows:

If a Christian sins, he is to be restored through a personal confrontation by one who is spiritually mature. If no change results, two or three others are to accompany the original spokesman and again confront him. If there is still no change, the matter, along with the errant one, is to be brought before the church, and the offender is to be reprimanded publicly. If the problem persists, the church is to regard the sinner as a Gentile and tax gatherer.

Simple and clear as this process is, many Christians find it difficult. The question is, Why? Furthermore, what are the implications of the reasons they find it difficult? And finally, what actions can church members and leaders take to begin making the process of discipline a reality in the local church?

Through interviewing several prominent pastors and church leaders, I have discovered five general problems that have made discipline cumbersome. By identifying these, perhaps we can gain insight into how to change the situation.

1. People wonder whether discipline will do any good. If someone confronts another about a spiritual problem and the latter doesn’t like it, he can always leave the church and go elsewhere. There is often little communication between churches in the average community, and the erring Christian thus can easily hide his secret. Haddon Robinson, president of Denver Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary, points out that, “Too often now when people join a church, they do so as consumers. If they like the product, they stay. If they do not, they leave. They can no more imagine a church disciplining them than they could a store that sells goods disciplining them. It is not the place of the seller to discipline the consumer. In our churches we have a consumer mentality.” The result is that confrontation often carries little clout except perhaps to drive people away.

2. No one is clear about what sins we are to discipline. One pastor related to me the story of an elder who left his wife and children for a divorced woman. When the pastor confronted the man about the situation and told him divorce was sin, the man disagreed and said, “I really believe this is God’s will.” (Because of the sensitiveness of many of the illustrations given here, most will remain anonymous, including those that are positive.)

In today’s church, sin is often a hazy issue. In some cases, it has been reduced to drinking, smoking, adultery, dancing, and swearing. On the other hand, if Christians began cracking down on each other for any and every fault listed in Scripture, the result might be constant nit-picking and fault finding rather than the building up of one another in the faith. Thus, it is difficult to find the middle ground where action against a sin is clearly required—that is, except in extreme cases.

3. People fear for the outcome. Many Christians have been burned when they offered constructive criticism by way of admonishment and thus they recoil from ever trying it again. Often there are hard feelings, grudges, and the taking of sides, resulting in splits and power plays. It’s just not worth it, because so much trouble inevitably results. John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, wrote me, “There is a fear of offending people and driving them away.… People are afraid that it will create problems and scare people off.” People naturally shy away from creating situations when they recall greater problems have resulted in the past.

4. People associate discipline with excommunication, church courts, and intolerance. For this reason we reject the idea of putting someone through disciplinary circ*mstances for a minor fault. We’ve all seen pictures of the Salem witch hunts, the Spanish Inquisition, and more recently, the Iranian theocratic purges. When the church begins to judge people and starts legislating all kinds of laws and regulations, we believe it is off limits, becoming too political and legalistic.

5. People have few models of positive discipline to reflect on and do not know how to“speak the truth in love,” or “admonish the unruly,” or “restore those caught in a fault.” An old Christian aphorism states, “The average church takes on the personality of its pastor and leadership.” If the leaders are evangelists, the church often becomes highly evangelistic. Where leaders concentrate on “body life,” this is the practice. But many of the pastors interviewed felt that because of the other problems mentioned, and the lack of models, discipline is often regarded as just too touchy to become a consistent practice.

What are the implications of this? What are we teaching or not teaching that has caused these departures from Scripture?

First of all, the practice of discipline is probably not being sufficiently taught and applied in daily life by church leaders. That is most obvious. But second, many of us may have unwittingly communicated the notion that the preaching of the Word of God is more an intellectual exercise than a guide for living righteously and justly in the world. We have been so caught up in the battle for the Bible that we have lost the battle to obey the Bible. Third, success through numbers and building a “big” church may be overshadowing the need to build a pure church. Fourth, sin is often regarded as a private matter rather than a matter of the body; American individualism may be at fault. Finally, there is often no strong sense of responsibility to one another as part of Christ’s body.

In many respects, this is a uniquely American problem. Recent reports from churches all over the world and behind the Iron Curtain tell us that especially in areas of heavy persecution there is much discipline going on. Whether they like it or not, persecuted Christians take purity very seriously, and their commitment is very high. Perhaps it is too easy to be a Christian in America.

Yet, none of these problems indicates that the situation is hopeless. All of the pastors with whom I spoke told me that disciplinary procedures from lay to leadership levels are being used with success and are even creating a holy, heathful attitude in the local church. There are at least five practices in these churches that create a healthy, disciplinary environment. These practices indicate the direction other churches need to go to establish proper discipline within their bodies.

First, discipline is successful when people have a clear understanding of what sin is, and a love for holiness, according to such passages as Psalm 5:4–6 and 1 Peter 1:13–16. The problem cited earlier was that few people have a clear idea of what sins are to be disciplined. In response to this question, Dave Krueger, recently pastor of a church in Florida and now a staff member with Search Ministries, a discipleship organization in the U.S., cited 1 Peter 4:8, “Love covers a multitude of sins.” He said, “Loving people, moved by a spirit of forgiveness, do not focus on every little sin. If they perceive a persistent pattern of sinful behavior over a period of time, then they act according to Matthew 8:15–17. The first time they see it, they don’t confront it.” Krueger referred here to less extreme sins than, say, adultery, witchcraft, and drunkenness.

Krueger cultivated this mentality in his church through making God’s attitude toward sin clear (he hates it, judges it, and forgives it) and through practicing body life, whereby people were taught to go to one another if they had disputes, grievances, and errors. John MacArthur told me that in many cases, because his congregation has been taught God’s view of sin, many were restored in the first step of the disciplinary process: personal admonishing and confrontation. Such sins as comtemplating remarriage on unscriptural terms, separating or contemplating divorce, cheating in business, deception, taking advantage of others, slothfulness, and perversion all were dealt with by spiritual members of the congregation who spotted the sin, confronted the sinner, and helped him toward change and restoration.

The question is often asked, What sins are sufficient reasons to break fellowship with a believer? It should be pointed out, first, that the person involved in the sin must be a professing Christian. We can’t break fellowship with someone who does not even profess to be in the fellowship. Second, the lists of sins in Galatians 5:19–21; 1 Corinthians 6:9–10; Mark 7:21, and 2 Timothy 3:2–7 are a starting point. However, fellowship is not broken until it has been established that the sinner has finally resisted all attempts to effect change according to Matthew 18:15–17. That includes pledges of support in the effort to overcome the sin, as well as encouragement and help along the way. Most of those pastors interviewed for this article indicated that only when a Christian continues in his sin, without any confrontation by his brothers, does it get out of control. When there is an effort made to effect change immediately after the sin comes to light, rarely is discipline by disfellowshipping necessary.

There is a further issue: What sins prohibit Christians from holding office in the church? Considering that Christ forgives all sin, should the church prohibit someone from serving in the church because of a past, forgiven sin? Some churches disqualify divorced persons. Such disqualification is not clearly mandated by Scripture, but it would take an additional article to outline the problems involved. Ultimately, if a person is walking with Christ and has demonstrated maturity, and meets the requirements of 1 Timothy 3 and other related passages, then there is no past sin that should bar him or her from office. If, however, the past sin has continuing ramifications, as in the case of a man who can’t control his family, then this should be considered in light of the leadership passages.

Second, discipline is successful when membership in a church is regarded as a responsibility to love, admonish, encourage, and build up one another (Rom. 12:4–5). One pastor experienced the following situation:

A couple had been members of the church for several years, were involved in ministry, and seemed to be growing. Then it was rumored that the wife was seeing another man. No one confronted her. Two years later, when it began to be rumored that a divorce was imminent, the pastor confronted the woman, telling her she would be taken off the church’s rolls if she went through with the divorce. The woman was understandably upset. She complained that during the two years of the problem, no one had come to her. Yet now the pastor tells her the guillotine is about to fall. The situation could have deteriorated from there, but the pastor reacted with godly integrity. He apologized to the woman for not providing the proper spiritual counsel and support, and he committed himself to helping the couple in every possible way. While the situation is still bad, there has been no divorce. But the change in the pastor and the results in the congregation have been positive. He has been teaching the biblical concepts of confrontation and discipline, and many in his church are beginning to practice them on every level.

Another pastor experienced a situation in which an alcoholic woman was sinking deeper and deeper into her problem with no hope for change. When he and several godly men in the church got involved, the woman began to respond. Through the work of Alcoholics Anonymous and those men, the woman has dried out and is growing in faith. In membership classes, this pastor emphasizes responsibility to one another, and says he sees results every week.

Third, discipline is successful in churches where believers practice the confession of sin to one another on the personal, small group, and sometimes corporate levels (James 5:16). In one church, an elder was involved in some clandestine business practices. The pastor became aware of this, and confronted the elder. The man was repentant but did not honestly know what to do. He was brought before the elder board, which advised him to take a leave of absence until the situation was worked through and corrected; when he had demonstrated a clearly repentant spirit through change he would be restored as an elder. He counseled with the pastor and with others. His attitude was most positive, and he quickly cleaned up his sinful business situation. Then he approached the pastor and asked for some form of church service—anything, even janitorial. Previously, he had been a major teacher in the church, but there still remained a problem. The whole church knew of his sin, but not necessarily of his repentance. What was to be done? The man conferred again with the pastor and together they decided a public confession was necessary. He made his confession and it was followed by worship and prayer. The pastor told me that this elder’s actions built up the church and resulted in growth, both spiritually and otherwise.

In one United Presbyterian church, the confession of sin is practiced as a regular part of prayer in small groups. Often, the group’s advice, forgiveness, support, and sense of responsibility for the sinner’s growth results in uplift for both the group and the erring one.

Pastor Thomas Graham of Aisquith Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland, preaches the practice of discipline and confession and has noted an influence even on the youth. In one case, a teen-aged girl was teasingly confronted by a leader about a small fault. She asked, “Am I forgiven?” The leader replied, “Sure.” Then she said, “Then will you forget about it and not talk about it anymore?” That teen had caught a glimpse of the freedom of forgiveness and, though the example may seem trivial, she demonstrated an understanding of real forgiveness after confession, an understanding she could only have gotten through seeing it exemplified in her parents, friends, and leaders.

Fourth, discipline is successful when people are taught how to admonish one another, to speak the truth in love, and to confront each other about sin (1 Thess. 5:12–15). Pastors who have taught the process note that only good has resulted for their churches, even when erring members have rejected the grievance and left. John MacArthur told me, “It seems to us that many, if not most of those who respond to the admonition by repenting become better, stronger, and more faithful Christians because of the experience.”

In Peninsula Bible Church, Palo Alto, California, where its pastor, Ray Stedman, is noted for his teachings on “body life,” the practice of admonishing one another and of church discipline is taught and applied. In one case, a hom*osexual was confronted about his problem. The church leaders went through the whole process of discipline without immediate results and the man was finally regarded as a non-Christian (which Stedman believes is the biblical admonition, not excommunication). Five years later, the hom*osexual repented and wrote a letter to the church acknowledging his sin and affirming his recommitment. The man wrote, “It is impossible for me to retrace my footsteps and right every wrong; however, I welcome the opportunity to meet and pray with any individuals who have something against me that needs resolution. I am looking and waiting for the further grace and mercy of God in this matter. What you have bound on earth has been bound in heaven, and I now know your actions were done in love for my own good and that of the body of Christ.” This is healing discipline.

It might be asked, What sins should a believer confront another about? Paul’s statement in Galatians 6:1, “To be caught in a fault,” actually covers all overt sins. In effect, there is no sin that we should consider out of bounds or beyond our spiritual maturity to admonish a brother about. What is out of bounds, though, is for a sinning Christian to confront another sinning Christian. Paul specifically says, “Let he that is spiritual restore …” His restriction is not on the kind of sin, but on the qualities of the confronter: he must be pure and upright.

Fifth and last, discipline is successful when there are follow-up and support for those who have sinned. In many of the cases cited, the disciplinary procedure was not simply a confrontation situation, but also a restoration process in which the sinner was helped through counsel and support to overcome his problem. Thomas Graham has even set up in his church a “nouthetic counseling center” expressly to help those who are caught in faults and need biblical advice to resolve their problems. He has personally seen many positive results from the work.

In light of all these principles, some action must be taken on the part of church leaders, pastors, and members. There are several efforts we can make to create a healthy church discipline environment and so restore purity and holiness to our churches. First, study Scripture to gain God’s view of sin and what he regards as sin, and inculcate it into your outlook on life. Second, recognize that you have a grave responsibility to the body of Christ and that you are called to admonish those who sin, and then to support them. Third, begin by being open yourself with your brothers and sisters in personal confession of sin, seeking their counsel and support. Fourth, study the pertinent passages on discipline (listed earlier) and begin to practice it on a personal level. Finally, never merely admonish someone; always assure individuals of your love and your help through the repentance process.

Practicing these principles as a way of life could break the power of the flesh over some in our churches, and make the churches more habitable, functional, and comfortable refuges from the world.

Wedding Dress

“… to him that worketh not, but believeth …”

You have your work clothes on, my Dear,

That simply will not do!

The Wedding’s near. Please will you wear

The garments bought for you!

(Romans 4:5)

Jane W. Lauber

Will man acknowledge who he is before he is able to alter what he should become?

Carrying with it both risk and benefit, the genetic age is upon us, and one thing is sure—“the future ain’t what it used to be!”

Arthur Kornberg, professor of biochemistry at Stanford University, says of recent advances, “We are on the verge of a revolution in the chemical basis of medicine that is as profound as the revolutionary developments in physics and chemistry early in this century that gave us quantum mechanics and a new understanding of the atom and its arrangements.

“We have already learned how to take apart and rearrange DNA—deoxyribonucleic acid—in which the chemistry of heredity is spelled out. As a result it’s now very simple to create new genetic arrangements, to make new chromosomes and new species.

“In many respcts, these discoveries will change the basis of modern medicine, much as antibiotics did several decades ago.” Perhaps, for instance, within the next two decades a chemical analysis of the brain will provide the first clear explanation of the broad scope of human emotions—a launching pad to the core of consciousness and thought, and their relation to brain structure and function.

We have reached an intersection in human destiny that rattles our complacency and asks, “Where are we going and do we really want to get there?”

Robert Sinsheimer of the University of California, Santa Cruz, notes that today is a time of “intense self-doubt, corroding confidence, and a crippling resolve; a time of troubled present and ominous future.… Hence, it is not surprising that so great a triumph as man’s discovery of the molecular basis of inheritance should provoke fear instead of joy, breed suspicion instead of zest, and spawn the troubled anguish of indecision instead of the proud relief of understanding.”

Science bristles at any interference with its right to freedom of inquiry. It is a camp divided; some say, “It’s our job to do the research, and society’s job to cope with what we do.” But others admit the wake of hazard left by the course of nuclear fission, and, like Alvin Toffler, caution, “If we do not learn from history, we shall be compelled to relive it. True. But if we do not change the future we shall be compelled to endure it. And that could be worse.”

We are developing ways to manipulate the genetic programming of the very structure of life. These methods hold promise for what geneticists call “an escape from the tyranny of inheritance.” This is good news for eliminating genetically based diseases. But, we ask, At what price? A society parented in a laboratory, controlled by scientists, robbed of humanity?

In our society, we develop our ethics by gathering information, discussing it publicly, deciding and acting individually, and, in time, by arriving at a consensus of what appears to be good for mankind. Our personal and social ethical codes are authorized by common consent, then implemented through legislation.

As push comes to shove, self-interest groups are jockeying for position to influence the age. It is imperative that we examine the issues and respond from a biblical understanding of the sanctity of God’s gift of life.

Creating To Specification

The issue of manipulating reproduction triggered public concern with the birth in 1978 in Oldham, England, of Louise Brown, the first baby conceived in vitro (in a test tube). Since that time, Dr. Mukherjec of Calcutta, India, has safely delivered a child fertilized from a frozen embryo, a technique that ushers in the potential of selective breeding from life placed “on hold.” Commercial exploitation of what is now being called the ultimate consumer trip has already been established through corporations such as IDANT in New York. It pays $20 for each “acceptable” ejacul*te from some 60 carefully selected regular depositors to its sperm bank. The frozen sperm units are then sold for $35 to subscribing doctors.

Gemetrics in Chicago offers gender selection through technologies capable of separating X chromosome- and Y chromosome-carrying sperm (male sperm swim faster, making separation easier) and has successfully engineered 10 full-term births, 7 boys and 3 girls.

The surrogate mother (advertised as womb for rent), receives a fee of between $10,000 and $20,000 per term. Dr. Richard Levine, a Louisville, Kentucky, physician, has 25 women under contract as surrogates. Five pregnancies are under way and he anticipates 100 or more babies delivered through his service by the end of 1981. The program hit a snag in January, however, when Attorney General Steven L. Beshear filed for a declaratory judgment on the ground that this violates the Kentucky adoption statutes. In Doe v. Kelley, the Michigan lower court has said surrogate mothering is illegal because a mother may not be paid money for giving up her right to her own natural child. Children may not be sold in Michigan.

Contracts covering parents and surrogate mothers have brought a new dimension into biolaw. Most states prohibit an exchange of money as payment for adopting children. Lawyers and jurists are now considering whether surrogate services violate statutes prohibiting prostitution. Possible arguments charging discrimination may be sounded if a man is permitted to sell his sperm, but a woman is not permitted to rent her womb!

The good news that parents desperate for a child of their own may get one by reproductive manipulation, must be balanced against the potential bad news.

Applications are now being sent to single men and women for these reproductive consumer services—launching yet another assault on the already shaky traditional family. Will in vitro fertilization, embryo transfer, and surrogate wombs for rent be available to single people? Will they be extended to the hom*osexual? Will laboratory-controlled bioparenting produce a quasi-orphaned society?

Science will reach the ultimate in reproductive manipulation when in vitro fertilization extends to incubation in an artificial womb for full-term laboratory delivery. Scientists have anticipated this technology for the very near future and have already achieved it in part by sustaining premature babies with increasing success—at Children’s Hospital, San Diego, one has been delivered 23 weeks from conception, weighing only one pound one ounce.

There is enormous appeal in the right of every child to be born free of genetic defects, and bioengineered to be the most productive human possible. But what are we to do with the substandard embryo, and who is qualified to decide the acceptable standards? Screening through amniocentesis, ultrasound scanning, and fetos-copy provides options that further complicate the already explosive issue of abortion.

Controversial theologian Joseph Fletcher even claims, “To deliberately and knowingly bring a diseased or defective child into the world injures society, very probably injures the family, and certainly injures the individual who is born in that condition.”

In 1979, a New Jersey court ruled that even though impaired (in this case, with Down’s Syndrome), life was more valuable than no life at all. It observed that the ability to “love and be loved and to experience happiness and pleasure—emotions which are truly the essence of life,” was more important than the suffering endured.

But on the opposite side, in a June 1980 decision involving Tay-Sachs disease, Judge Bernard Jefferson of the California Court of Appeals affirmed the “unbirthright” of a child when he ruled that not only parents, but possibly even a physician and laboratory, could be sued for negligently not having aborted the fetus.

Dr. Jokichi Takamine, president of the Alcoholism Council of Southern California, says research shows that genetics plays a classic role in predisposition toward alcoholism (10 to 20 percent on the mother’s side; 25 to 55 percent on the father’s side). Since alcoholism is a major sociological problem, this poses the serious question of whether genetic abortion will be called for on such frivolous grounds as predisposition toward alcoholism. Abortion for reasons of depression or gender might be next.

Does the fetus have the right, independent of society or even of its own parents, to be born? Such a question will generate strands in a tangled web that will keep courtrooms tied up in legal debate over many years.

Statistics on longevity show that the number of people living to reach 100 years or over has increased 43 percent in the last five years.

Biomedicine has given us artificial corneas and lenses, artificial intestines, and synthetic joints and limbs. At the University of Southern California, research continues toward developing an artificial pancreas—a device that will monitor the level of blood sugar in the body and, when necessary, automatically dispense corrective doses of insulin.

A nuclear-powered heart that will run continuously and automatically far longer than the average human lifespan is being tested in animals. Scientists at the University of Utah have produced an artificial kidney, to be carried in a backpack. Miniaturization will make it possible to implant surgically an electrodialysis unit. Synthetic blood is being studied, not to substitute completely for blood, but to augment massive transfusions in open-heart surgery and total blood recirculation.

Biochemists at George Washington University think that one day we will be able to regenerate arms and legs; they are encouraged in this by the chemical combination present in children (but lacking in adults) that permits spontaneous regrowth of fingertips. Studies in Philadelphia bring the possibility of regrowing damaged organs through cloning. One scientist at the Wistar Institute introduced hydrocortisone into the culture of “old” human cells, giving them the thrust to continue “reproducing.” Scientists may refine and expand this technology to induce the regeneration of organs.

Studies at Cal Tech and laboratories around the country are pushing hard toward a method of shutting off the body’s aging process. Once the genetic time clock is found, researchers can regulate it.

With the millions of possibilities from recombinant DNA and genetic surgery, scientists anticipate the eventual control of genetically based diseases. This alone might extend life to a length reminiscent of the patriarchs! Some futurists are even convinced that we are approaching what they call an “Impending Society of Immortals.”

Behavior Modification

Neurobiologists are discovering that memory, concentration, fear, aggression, joy, love, peace, and a long list of other human functions and emotions are directly linked to chemical and electrical transmitters in the brain. A few whiffs of vasopressin can stimulate memory in cases of amnesia and senility. Lithium is aiding the successful treatment of mental disorders. At Stanford, researchers have found that naloxone, a chemical known to block the action of endorphins in the brain, has brought relief to severely impaired schizophrenics who have auditory hallucinations.

Others, in test runs, are successfully stimulating the brain electronically to ease chronic pain, give back the use of paralyzed limbs, and, in some cases, to modify behavior.

All this is good news, but we may be given pause on learning that over one million school children in the United States are now on some type of drug that modifies behavior for the purpose of improving their function, both in and out of the classroom. Ritalin and Dexedrine arc those drugs most commonly used.

Research at the Tulane University School of Medicine shows that students injected with ACTH (adrenocorticotrophic hormone) and MSH (melanocyte-stimulating hormone) were better able to spend longer and more effective periods in concentrating on their studies and also to remember geometrical figures that were flashed before them.

Since calculators, computers, videotapes, and an increasing number of “external” aids are an acceptable part of the educational process, proponents of gene therapy ask why we should not program “internal” biochemical and biogenetic change for future generations. To a school system plagued with violence and deteriorating academic achievement, control through behavior modification and gene therapy is tempting. The great leap forward in scientific discovery has awakened public response. That we may eliminate the problems of retarded children and schizophrenics, empty our mental hospitals through genetic and chemical processes, and wipe out sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs, Gauche’s, and other genetic diseases to free our children from “the chromosomal lottery,” is all good news. But again, we ask ourselves, At what price?

Biohazard

How does scientific freedom intersect with social responsibility? A decade ago, international experts gathered together at a symposium in New York to consider “Ethical Issues in Human Genetics.”

At that time, Robert Sinsheimer of Cal Tech (he is now chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz) was a powerful voice of caution with his penetrating statements. “For what purpose,” he asked, “should we alter our genes? To whom should we give this power? To those who have already perverted physics into atomic weapons, chemistry into poison gas, or electronics into guided missiles? If we make men gods, are they to be gods of war?”

He further declared, “One of the greatest threats to the rational development of genetic modification will appear if it should become captive to irrational nationalist purposes. For this reason I think it is imperative that we begin now to establish international cooperation in, and regulation of, this entire enterprise.”

In June 1980, by a slim 5-to-4 margin, the U.S. Supreme Court applied the patent law written by Thomas Jefferson in 1793 to new forms of life created in the laboratory—living organisms. (The generally accepted definition of “living” is that a substance be capable of reproducing, a process such as occurs in cell division.)

The Supreme Court deliberately chose not to address what one might regard as the deeper issues, either of philosophy, or ethics, or biological hazard. In their opinion, that was not their job (but rather, the responsibility of Congress). Their job was simply to decide whether or not, under the terms of the patent laws of 1793 and subsequent modifications, living organisms were or were not included. They decided by a margin of one vote that they were included and could be patented.

In an interview with Dr. Sinsheimer, I asked, “Is this going to head us into a commercial exploitation of certain genetic consumer items?” He replied, “Sure—no question about it!” Such commercial development of biotechnology could well limit free exchange of information at the level of laboratory research.

On the critical subject of risk, or “biohazard,” Sinsheimer warned of advertently or inadvertently creating something we do not want: “Dangerous organisms already exist, but that doesn’t mean one couldn’t add new ones, or one that had particularly noxious qualities. I don’t think it’s likely, but it is possible.”

By its guidelines, the National Institutes of Health still forbids many experiments as too dangerous. This raises an old paradox: “If the research is safe, why will science agree to restrictions?” and, “If science agrees to restrictions, how can it claim the research is safe?”

In August 1980, the news broke that Ian Kennedy, a virologist at the University of California, San Diego, studying the sindbis virus, had cloned a rare African forest virus, semliki, which had a higher risk classification and was not approved for cloning under NIH safety guidelines. This was believed to be the first such violation of the federal government’s regulations on cloning and recombinant DNA. The university’s biosafety committee put the cloned material in a special “containment” freezer and launched an investigation. Kennedy has vacated his position.

Sinsheimer commented, “This illustrates one of the concerns people have had—that scientists do make mistakes, and accidents do happen. You don’t always accomplish what you set out to accomplish. That’s why some of us felt that’s a reason for maintaining more stringent guidelines. This is an illustration that all procedures are fallible.”

In waving the flag of caution, Sinsheimer is joined by many other internationally respected scientists. In a letter to Science magazine titled “The Dangers of Genetic Meddling,” Erwin Chargaff of Columbia University says, “You can stop splitting the atom; you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs, but you cannot recall a new form of life! Once you have constructed a viable E. coli cell carrying a plasmid DNA into which a piece of eukaryotic DNA has been spliced, it will survive you, and your children, and your children’s children.… The world is given to us on loan. We come and we go; and after a time we leave earth and air and water to others who come after us. My generation, or perhaps the one preceding mine, has been the first to engage, under the leadership of the exact sciences, in a destructive colonial war against nature. The future will curse us for it.”

On the other hand, Arthur Kornberg calls for a balanced response: “Any knowledge can be misapplied. Whether scientists engage in improper activity will ultimately depend on the ethics and morality of the community. But if you operate in a climate of fear in which you see only the unfortunate and evil developments, then you simply can’t make any progress.”

Christian Perspective

Some knowledge accumulates faster than the wisdom to manage it. Some have defined this as “dangerous knowledge.” Looking at some recent discoveries, we are tempted to exclaim, “We ain’t wise enough to be this smart!”

A Christian response to the good news/bad news on the biogenetic manipulation of life comes from Lewis Smedes, professor of ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California:

“Christians are given two ingredients that exist in tension. One of them is our belief in the supremacy of a sovereign God. He is a God who superintends life. But he superintends it in a way that is collaborative with human agencies. He even does this to the point of working out his divine providence through such radically new technologies as genetic tampering or genetic manipulation—or to use much nicer words, genetic surgery or genetic counseling.

“The second ingredient in the tension is the human propensity for evil. The potential for evil in this new technology is great. Are we going to live in a society where some people have the prerogative of basically altering the humanity of other people, whether it is still in the embryo stage of growth, or fully developed? The arrogance of that is enough to give us pause. Plain and simple common sense says, ‘Please go slowly, with all careful deliberation. We have at stake the future of the human race!’”

As those who survived the experiments at Auschwitz will attest, political control of scientific technology has etched its horror across history. It is a legacy we must remember.

The expanding dimensions of knowledge present the Pandora dilemma—promise in counterpoint with peril. We too may become the victims of our own unleashed curiosity. Will the decisions we make as a generation change not only the course of human destiny but the very structure of human life? To quote Chargaff, will “the future curse us for it”? We pray not.

As never before, it is crucial that Christians rise responsibly to defend a root of its biblical foundation—the sanctity of human life.

“In the beginning God created.… God created man in his own image, … male and female created he them.”

If man is to play God, then Genesis will need to be redefined.