Page 5489 – Christianity Today (2024)

Martin luther was insane.

That is the verdict of some, at least, who would practice psychoanalysis. There is much available for the probing mind doing a case study in retrospect concerning Luther’s strange and abnormal personality. His own writings, as well as anecdotes and legends that surround him, bear testimony to the complexities of the Reformer’s psychological profile.

First of all, consider Luther’s intemperate speech patterns. Though he wrote in an age accustomed to a polemical style, Luther exceeds his own contemporaries in acerbic rhetoric. When his opponents spoke against him, he said, “The dogs are beginning to bark.” He said to Erasmus, “Your book struck me as so worthless and poor that my heart went out to you for having defiled your lovely, brilliant flow of language with such vile stuff. I thought it outrageous to convey material of so low a quality in the trappings of such rare eloquence; it is like using gold or silver dishes to carry garden rubbish or dung.” One pundit remarked of Luther that he didn’t call a spade a spade, but a manure shovel!

But salty speech is hardly enough to convict a man of lunacy, even when the expletives are left undeleted. The apostle Paul occasionally was given to biting criticism, and Jesus himself likened some persons to members of the animal kingdom—Herod, for example, as “fox,” and the Syrophoenician woman as a dog (certainly by implication).

Luther’s phobias qualify him at least for classification as neurotic. How many times did he predict his own imminent demise from various maladies only to be proven wrong by Providence? His own obituaries were as exaggerated as those reported about the still vibrant Mark Twain. But Luther was clearly phobic about disease and death. His alleged moment of terror when thrown from a horse spooked by a bolt of nearby lightning produced the anguished cry—“Saint Anne, I will become a monk” and the subsequent implementation of that vow. How unlike golfer Lee Trevino, who, when asked his reaction to a close call with death by lightning on a golf course, quipped, “I learned from that experience that if the Almighty wants to ‘play through’ you’d better get out of the way.”

Luther’s “stage fright” at his ordination has been fodder for some critics. When the sacred moment came for the prayer of consecration, during which it was believed the miracle of transubstantiation took place, Luther, noted as an eloquent public speaker, was paralyzed. His legs moved, but no words came out as he trembled at what he thought he was holding, the veritable body and blood of Christ.

His behavior at Worms signals again an uncommon, indeed rare, style of individualism: that Luther would stand virtually alone against the power centers of his time—the princes of the church and the princes of the state—has provoked charges of monomania and megalomania. The accretions of the apocryphal have obscured the events of that time. When Luther was asked to recant before the Diet we are usually led to believe that he responded with the bold “Here I stand” recital, ending with a triumphal departure from the hall with fists raised in the air like “Rocky” at the top of the steps to the Philadelphia Museum. In reality, his not-so-heroic reply was simply, “May I have 24 hours to think it over?”

Luther’s agony between the first day at Worms and his appearance on the following day may be seen by reading his prayer penned in the interim.

When the assembly reconvened and the question of recanting was put again to Luther, the exact words of his reply are uncertain. The traditional version is this: “Unless I am convinced by Holy Scripture, or by evident reason, I cannot recant. My conscience is held captive by the Word of God, and to act against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me.”

Luther’s apparently staged “kidnapping” after the Diet led to his period of underground “exile” at the castle of Wartburg. There he worked furiously on the translation of the Bible into German. During this period he assumed a disguise, wearing the garments of a knight and acquiring the pseudonym “Sir George.” This episode has raised questions of an acute identity crisis, possibly even manifestation of a schizoid personality.

Luther’s tempestuous behavior was evident later at Marburg, where, in the midst of dialogue on the Lord’s Supper, he pounded his fist on the table, stridently repeating again and again, “Hoc est corpus meum, hoc est corpus meum.” His behavior at this meeting calls to mind the shoepounding antics of Nikita Khrushchev at the United Nations.

And there’s more. Luther’s love for his bride, Katherine Van Bora, produced a host of Luther quotes, some of them quite offensive to the modern feminist. One such comment reads, “If God wanted me to many a meek woman, He’d have to hew one out of stone!”

But all these facets of Luther’s personality and behavior are but trivia when compared with the most bizarre episodes of his career development. It was during the days of his tenure in the monastic society that he exhibited the most unusual symptoms. He was a man of extraordinarily troubled conscience, a man with a morbid sense of guilt with which he was preoccupied. Noteworthy are his repeated outbursts of borderline blasphemy such as, “You ask me if I love God? Love God? Sometimes I hate him!” Or, “I see Christ as a stern Judge,” or “To the gallows with Moses!”

His days of penance were matched in rigor only by the intensity of his torments by night. Some reports declare that Luther would wear out the patience of his confessors by staying hours in the confessional, reciting the number of his sins for one day. Most monks completed the daily ritual in minutes and were off to complete the tasks assigned them for the day. After all, how much trouble can a monk get into inside a monastery? Confessions of coveting another monk’s food or daydreaming during chapel didn’t consume much confessional time. But Luther’s approach was far more exact and far more intense. At first his superiors suspected him of “goldbricking”—of being a priestly malingerer seeking to avoid his daily tasks. But the countenance of the young cleric revealed a genuine terror that would be freshly kindled when he returned to his cell and would recall a sin he forgot to confess.

This morbid guilt syndrome is the favorite target of the critics. His troubled conscience could not be explained by the oppression of a Victorian ethic or Puritan morality. Luther’s struggle antedated both the queen and the New England divines. Hence some have sought probable cause not in culture but in lunacy.

The cliché states that there is a thin line between genius and insanity. Perhaps Luther had a round trip ticket on that line. What is often overlooked is that young Luther, before distinguishing himself as a theologian, had already reached prominence as an acute student of European jurisprudence. He was an expert in law. When the legal mind was turned to the Old Testament Law it approached the divine commands stripped of the fuzzy interpretations most mortals use to fend off the demands of God. Luther took the law of God seriously and it was driving him crazy. At this point he manifested rational madness—a normal abnormality, as insanity is the only appropriate destiny of a man naked before the law without the benefit of Christ.

It was out of the law that Luther was driven to Christ. It was out of this agony that he rediscovered the gospel of justification by faith. His sanity was saved—his genius resolved when, in preparation for lectures at Wittenberg, he pondered the text, “The just shall live by faith.” As the full import of the words from Romans dawned on him he cried out, “The doors of paradise opened … and I walked through!”

Everything and nothing!

Nothing separated us from our Roman Catholic charismatic brothers as we sat together at dinner sharing the good things of Christ. Rarely had we sensed such a oneness in Christ, even with other evangelicals. Their whole-souled commitment to Christ as the all-sufficient Savior brought a unity of faith and piety that transcended all else. As we discussed the meaning of the gospel and what Christ meant to us, it became abundantly evident that we shared a common faith. The same Lord and Savior was the object of our one faith, the source of our mutual hope, and the single focus of our love that bound us together as one in the fellowship of Christ.

Evangelicals And Roman Catholics Have Much In Common

Nothing separates evangelicals from Roman Catholics in their common loyalty to the great ecumenical creeds of the ancient church. This noble heritage that gave framework and direction to the church across the centuries does not separate, but serves to draw evangelicals and Roman Catholics together in mutual support and strength.

Not even the Reformation with its great reaffirmation of central biblical truths continues to separate evangelicals from many Roman Catholics. An increasing number of Catholics are recognizing the essential truth of those biblical themes to which the Reformers in their own way sought to bear witness and thus to preserve the gospel from suffocation in a decadent era of the church. This warmer acceptance of evangelical doctrine and greater willingness to reexamine what Protestants are really saying has broken down many a barrier.

Neither are we separated from our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters by their recent emphasis upon Bible study and its importance for their faith and life. One quarter of all Roman Catholics do not turn first to the church to settle religious questions, but to Holy Scripture. And the church now exhorts its people to read the Bible and to apply it to their lives.

Again, the necessity of a personal incorporation into Christ, insisted upon by many Roman Catholics, does not separate them from evangelicals, but rather draws them together in a unity of a shared Christian experience. One quarter of all Roman Catholics claim to be born again, and 20 percent insist that their only hope for heaven and eternal life is to be found through faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

Evangelicals Need To Learn From Roman Catholics

None of these things separates evangelicals from the many Roman Catholics with whom they share these precious elements of their faith. On the contrary, evangelicals have much to learn from Roman Catholics. One such lesson is reverence. Catholics exemplify a mystical awe and wonder at the greatness of God that is strangely lacking in most Protestantism, and especially among evangelicals. This is a needed corrective against the all-too-frequent attempts by some evangelicals to reduce God to a sort of heavenly pal whose chief function is to provide spiritual entertainment.

Again, evangelicals have much to learn about the nature of worship and its appropriate forms. They have acquired such a phobia about “liturgy” that they have lost the art of bringing dignity and beauty to the worship of God.

Roman Catholic can also teach evangelicals something about the nature of the church as a body of mutually dependent believers. Too often evangelicals are Christians in isolation. Each individual believer builds the Christian life on his own private relationship to God. There is a crucial piece of truth in this, of course. In the final analysis, every person is responsible to God for his own acceptance or rejection of the gospel. But God also deals with man through his church, and on biblical ground, the role of the body is neglected only at great peril to our souls.

Finally, with no attempt to be complete, we must note the Roman Catholic stress not only on divine authority, but also on the importance of acknowledging the legitimate role of human authority under God. When an evangelical is disciplined, his typical reaction is to pick up his marbles and head for another church. But Scripture stresses the necessity of the Christian’s submission to the authority of the body. In home, in church, and in every legitimate structure of society the Christian is dependent, being submissive to others.

Evangelicals have much to lose by walling themselves off from all Roman Catholics. Instead of being turned off by strange vocabulary and unaccustomed ways, we evangelicals should be open to dialogue with Roman Catholics and be willing to listen to them—not merely to wait until they stop speaking so we can resume our own witness. If we are truly willing to listen, we can discover the essential values that lie beneath many of the positions we deem unbiblical. Even in areas where we must clearly disagree, usually (one is tempted to say invariably) a basic motif or theological conviction underlies the error and gives it its justification in the minds of those who propound it. We need to learn what this basic truth is and incorporate it into our own faith. We grow richer in our faith as we appropriate more and more of the biblical revelation, thereby making our own witness to biblical faith more attractive. In all these areas, nothing should separate evangelicals from Roman Catholics.

Everything Separates Roman Catholics From Evangelicals

Yet sometimes everything seems to separate evangelicals from Roman Catholics. In spite of their staunch creedal defense of biblical authority, Roman Catholics often lose the force of that authority for their faith and life in a morass of tradition and in the teaching ministry of the church. And in spite of their faithful commitment to an orthodox doctrine of the person of Christ and his objective atonement for human sin, even the biblical way of salvation is lost in the footnotes of history. We do not detect a clear witness to the gospel of salvation through repentance and personal faith in Jesus Christ as divine Lord and Savior. Rather, the gospel becomes muffled in concessions to the pride of man.

Yes, so we hear, we are saved by grace and on condition of our faith, but not on condition of faith alone. Good works are also necessary. Churchly works and Christian love represent the divine condition for our justification and forgiveness by God. Water baptism with no personal appropriation becomes the means of entrance into the kingdom of God, and we are preserved in God’s good grace by our union with the Roman church and its power to work the miracle of transubstantiation, in which the bread and wine are miraculously transformed into the body of Christ. Only thus can we nourish our souls unto life everlasting.

For daily guidance, we are instructed not to turn to Holy Scripture and there expect the Holy Spirit of God to illuminate its truths and apply them to our lives, but we are to ask the teaching church (the local priest, the bishop, and finally, the pope) to tell us what we are to believe and what we are to do. Mary and the saints become objects of personal adoration. Call it worship, or give it Latin labels of doulia and hyper-doulia, it makes no difference: Mary and the lesser saints become the center of personal devotion and get in the way of God. And that is idolatry. Fear of purgatory becomes a dominant motif of the Christian life. The believer must wait for the final judgment to be assured of the forgiveness of God, and he lives in suspense and agony of doubt.

For evangelicals, all of this represents a wholly warped understanding of biblical religion.

Roman Catholics Are Not All Alike

But not every Roman Catholic espouses this perversion of biblical faith—certainly not the Roman Catholic charismatics with whom we shared a living faith as we rejoiced together in the gospel around the dinner table. Clearly everything depends on which Roman Catholic one is relating to. The fact is, like Protestants, some Roman Catholics are evangelical and some are not. Some Roman Catholics affirm and others deny every foundational truth of traditional Roman Catholic and Christian theology. To confound the matter even more severely, some Roman Catholics today will affirm and others will deny every aspect of biblical faith precious to the heart of a traditional Protestant.

Roman Catholics have never been as monolithic as most Protestants assumed. Even before Vatican II, wide divergences prevailed within traditional Roman Catholicism. For some uninstructed lay devotees of the church, baptism was the entrance into the kingdom of God, and good standing depended upon the faithful observance of the sacraments, obedience to the local priest, and the avoidance of mortal sin. But alongside such uninstructed Roman Catholicism were the church’s creeds, its formal decretals, and the teaching office of the church. These were far less restricted, but much more complex. And even beyond them stood the theologians who taught that all who intended to do right were in reality members of the true Roman Catholic church whether they knew it or not.

Since Vatican II, moreover, there has been a widespread movement away from traditional doctrines. The Roman church has become like the Protestant churches—a vast Noah’s ark of beasts clean and unclean.

Four Kinds Of Roman Catholics

It is as difficult to classify neatly the Roman church today as it is to classify Protestant churches. Any classification is bound to lump together those who feel uncomfortable at the association; we must allow for much overlapping and various combinations of viewpoints. It is useful, nevertheless, to group contemporary Roman Catholics into four types.

Still vigorous, and, under the administration of Pope John Paul II, continuing strong and influential within the Catholic hierarchy, are the traditionalists. This important segment of the church, specially powerful among the laity of the national churches, the older clergy, and the bishops and upper level of the hierarchy, adheres to the whole of creedal Roman Catholicism and obedience to the church as interpreted by the pope. In recent years, these traditionalists have come to assume less and less importance in the church, yet Pope John Paul II has certainly sought in some ways to nudge the church back in this direction.

A second group is often identified with the charismatic movement. It tends to be more evangelical and lays great emphasis upon faith as a personal commitment, the New Birth, personal piety, and loyalty to the Scripture. Particularly, it stresses the necessity for a conscious “actualization” or personal appropriation of one’s faith, and an active acceptance of the Bible not just as divine revelation, but also as the means of grace by which the Holy Spirit guides one’s thought and action.

A third group is composed of liberals. These vary greatly in the degree to which they have departed from the traditional position of the church. From the Protestant perspective, naturally, some of these departures seem to be good because they are moves in the direction of evangelical doctrine. When Hans Küng wrote a book in defense of justification by faith and another against the infallibility of the pope and of the church councils, Protestants recognized a voice proclaiming the truth. However, when he went on to cast doubts upon the infallibility of the Bible as well, and even questioned the traditional Christology of the church, evangelical Protestants regretted his move as an unnecessary and unwise concession to modern rationalistic unbelief stemming from the Enlightenment, not from his biblical roots.

No doubt the majority of Roman Catholics fall within a loose fourth category often labeled cultural Roman Catholics. They were born into the church. They are committed emotionally to their “mother church,” but do not understand its doctrine and are not really obedient to its ethical instruction. They remain within it more because of convenience than because of religious conviction. Their values and lifestyle do not flow from their understanding of the gospel, but are molded by the predominant culture around them. In the U.S., Roman Catholicism is their way of being an American and of finding their own identity in modern society.

The Crux Of The Matter That Separates

Traditional Roman Catholics and evangelicals fall apart right at the very heart of the gospel: how can a sinful, guilt-ridden human being find acceptance with a just and holy God? Here the traditional Protestant doctrine of justification by faith is that we are justified or brought into forgiveness and acceptance with God solely on the basis of faith. Salvation is by faith alone—not that saving faith ever stands alone, but that faith viewed as a personal commitment and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is the only condition for our being forgiven for our sins and being received into the mercy and favor of God.

Roman Catholics traditionally have taught that we are saved on condition not simply of faith, but also of an infused righteousness. God first changes us to make us better and then “justifies” us or receives us into his forgiveness and favor. Both faith and good works—good works of an ecclesiastical sort, and works of love—are the prior conditions of the divine justification of the sinner.

Protestants often misunderstand the traditional Roman doctrine because they think that salvation by grace alone rules out a divine justification of the sinner on the condition that God first makes him good (infuses righteousness). Not so. Traditional Roman Catholics accept the doctrine of grace alone because they believe that it is only by God’s grace that anyone can meet this condition. God requires that the sinner become righteous before he is willing to forgive him and to receive him back into his favor. Yet, since it is only by the grace of God that man meets this condition of becoming righteous, they can say that salvation is by grace alone, but not by faith only.

Has The Contemporary Roman Church Found The Gospel?

In recent years, many Roman Catholics have made a shift to a more Reformation like and biblical understanding of faith and justification. Hans Küng, for example, has argued that the Reformers were right: biblical teaching is that salvation or justification is on condition of faith and only faith and not on the condition of infused righteousness or good works. Some have even argued that this is consistent with the teachings of the Council of Trent and of the Roman church since that day. But according to the most thorough poll of American clergy yet made, over three-quarters of Roman Catholic priests reject the view that our only hope for heaven is through personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. They hold instead that “heaven is a divine reward for those who earn it by their good life.”

This represents the sharpest cleavage separating Roman Catholics from Protestants, for it is the focus of the gospel. Other matters are important in other contexts, but this is the gospel itself and is crucial. Where the gospel is adhered to and we find personal faith in Jesus Christ as the all-sufficient Savior of sinners—Roman Catholic or Protestant, it matters not—there we have true unity. There is the gospel, and there is power to overcome all other forces that would make for disunity. The gospel brings Roman Catholics and Protestants together. They share the promise of the Father that they have been accepted by him, and so they, his children, had better accept each other.

Where the gospel is preserved intact in all of its fullness, there is nothing that separates evangelical Protestant from Roman Catholic, for they share together in the life of faith and in fellowship with Christ and each other. Unity in the gospel surmounts all other problems, and is basic for a truly ecumenical fellowship.

Unfortunately, many Roman Catholics, like many Protestants, do not adhere to the gospel. They may give mental allegiance to the creeds and the encyclicals of the church, but they have not entered into an experience of the New Birth and have not really committed themselves to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And even when evangelicals share with individual Roman Catholics a new-found faith and delight in their fellowship in Christ and in the gospel, they find the official teaching of the church an insurmountable barrier to formal ecumenical unity.

A Second Barrier That Separates Evangelicals And Some Roman Catholics

Second only to the gospel in importance is the closely related doctrine of the authority of Holy Scripture. Historically, Roman Catholics have defended the authority of the Bible. For them, it is the infallible (inerrant) revelation from God. Given to us in the words of men, it is, nonetheless, God’s Word and never wanders from the truth.

But this high view of the infallible authority of Holy Scripture is compromised seriously by the role Roman Catholics give to tradition and the teaching office of the church. On the basis of its tradition, it adds the apocryphal books to the Old Testament accepted by the Jews, by Christ, and by his apostles. More disturbing to most Protestants than these additions to the biblical canon is the fact that Roman Catholics also accept as revealed truth the supposed oral teaching of the apostles handed down outside Scripture. Evangelicals question whether everything the apostles said orally should be placed on the same level with Scripture as the word of God; they are not convinced the apostles really taught these tenets that have been handed down, and they find in them accretions that are not only unauthentic, but actually contradictory to the written teaching of the apostles as set forth in Scripture. Most decisive of all, evangelicals reject the idea that the Roman church can decide infallibly what must be accepted as divinely revealed.

A final aspect of this barrier over the authority of Scripture is that the church decides through its teaching office what is the true meaning of the Scripture as well as what traditional revelations are truly genuine. This authority of the church to decide what is true doctrine resides infallibly in the universal councils of the Roman church and in the pope when he speaks ex cathedra (in his role as bishop of Rome and teacher of the entire church). But to Protestants, as often as not, it seems that what the church teaches to be the meaning of the biblical revelation is clearly not what they can readily see to be its true meaning. And Protestants are convinced that the only time the pope has availed himself of his apostolic teaching office, since in 1870 he declared himself to be infallible, he taught what is clearly false.

Although most Roman Catholics obviously do not reckon themselves morally bound by the teaching of the pope (as, for example, his teaching on birth control), it is still true today that nearly four-fifths of all priests reject the Bible as the first place to turn in deciding religious questions; rather, they test their religious beliefs by what the church says.

What Then Separates Roman Catholics From Evangelicals?

Here we have the second of the two areas of Roman Catholic teaching most troublesome to evangelicals. The first was the nature of the gospel: How does man become rightly related to God? The second is, How do we tell what is right and wrong—the principle of authority?

By contrast, with these two essential areas of difference between evangelicals and traditional Roman Catholics, all other matters are surely secondary. In other contexts, no doubt, these secondary matters can become important—matters such as the worship of Mary, the worship of saints, prayers to the saints, the worship of images, the veneration of relics, purgatory, the seven sacraments, and the exact role of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. But they are clearly secondary to the two fundamental principles: the gospel, and authority. They are secondary because they have secured their place in Roman Catholic doctrine and popular piety in dependence upon these more fundamental doctrines. Our deepest concern, therefore, must not be over the peripheral matters, but over the two principles that lie at the heart of what separates a true evangelical from some Roman Catholics. On these two principles, the evangelical cannot budge. With them, his religious life is at stake.

What then separates evangelicals from Roman Catholics? For some Roman Catholics, it is the same as that which separates evangelicals from many who call themselves Protestants. The gospel itself is the barrier: salvation by personal faith in Jesus Christ as the divine Lord and Savior.

For others, nothing at all separates evangelicals from fellowship with Roman Catholic believers in Christ. Beyond this, the matter varies from Roman Catholic to Roman Catholic, as it does from Protestant to Protestant. Many doctrinal divisions are important to the evangelical, but none is so crucially important as these two basic doctrines of his faith: first the gospel, and second the authority of Scripture (and it is important to keep them in that order).

Although other doctrines insisted upon by traditional Roman Catholics may be relatively unimportant, the evangelical often cannot accept them. The mere fact that the Roman church has taught them is not sufficient grounds for him to believe they are true. They remain, therefore, a barrier to full union so long as the Roman Catholic insists upon adherence to them or retains them officially in the creeds and confessions of the church.

The Value Of Evangelical/Roman Catholic Dialogue

The evangelical sees much danger in contemporary ecumenical dialogue and movements. Dialogue in itself, of course, is good so long as it is not based upon deception or doctrinal indifference. Evangelicals have much to gain by fellowship with evangelical Roman Catholics who have accepted the gospel and have placed their trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. They have much to learn from Roman Catholics who can teach them about worship and about the mystery of God, and the importance of the visible church and authority.

But contemporary ecumenism is often a union without regard to truth. It represents on the part of both Roman Catholic and Protestant a dissolving of the wonderful heritage of faith that each possesses. It represents a disregard of biblical revelation and the instruction that God himself has given for his church.

But the evangelical has high hope. His hope is based on the increasing openness of the Roman Catholic to reexamine ancient positions of the church. And most of all, his hope is nourished in the renewed concern on the part of Roman Catholics to turn to the Bible as the place from which we draw our spiritual resources and determine our doctrine and our lifestyle. The Bible is a dangerous book for anyone seeking the truth—dangerous for Roman Catholics. Yes, and dangerous for evangelicals, too.

O Lord!

This is your almost-humble servant, Eutychus X, coming to you with a problem. Lord, it is getting harder and harder to obey your Word because of the energy crisis.

Consider, for example, your promise about giving a cup of cold water to a thirsty pilgrim.

I was in a restaurant the other day and I asked the waitress for a glass of water. “This will help me and also give her a blessing,” I said to myself with much satisfaction. When she put the glass of water on the table, she also handed me a printed card encased in plastic. It was entitled “Energy and a Glass of Water.” It read as follows:

“A simple glass of water is important in the energy crisis. By asking for this glass of water, you may have set back the President’s energy program by several days. It takes energy to pipe the water in. It also takes a lot of energy to make ice cubes. After you have drunk the water, we must use up even more energy to wash and rinse the glass. We hope you will remember this the next time you ask for a glass of water. It is possible to go for days without drinking any water.”

O Lord, your almost-humble servant began to feel guilty. In fact, I was unable to drink that water. Yet, I could not send it back to the kitchen for that would be a greater waste, and the waitress would have had to use additional energy. What could I do?

Then I remembered your servant David, how he poured out the water that his brave men brought from Bethlehem’s well. I could not pour out the water on the floor, so I walked across the restaurant and knelt before a planter, carefully pouring the water into the soil. Though several people snickered, and one lady said something about “Druids worshiping bushes,” I persisted in my sacrificial act. It removed my guilt, but I was still thirsty.

O Lord, what do you suggest I do in these trying days?

Your almost-humble servant,

EUTYCHUS X

“Jumping Ship”

The charge that “The Major Denominations Are Jumping Ship” [Sept. 18], is not only seriously overstated but inexcusably lacking in that it does not present the total picture of what is happening in missions today. It obviously omits some facts that I am certain Dr. Lindsell knows and understands.

Most of the major American sending boards have fewer missionaries than they did 20 years ago. But the reason is related to the style of mission such boards have employed. They have concentrated upon developing indigenous leadership. They have founded institutions for educating persons who can witness in their own culture. To adequately evaluate and report the mission ministries of these major denominations, one must also report the number of indigenous churches, pastors, and institutions that have already emerged from their witness and are now not only not receiving American missionary personnel (or at least fewer), but who have themselves become sending churches.

Reaching the unreached will “be the major task of those who once were unreached but now have been reached and must therefore assume responsibility for their own people.” Some missiologists are now saying that. Many major denominations have been saying that for years—not because they lack missionaries but because they believe it is the way mission should be conducted. The total missionary programs of most major denominations are truly international ventures with overseas nationals serving on their headquarter staffs, support money going to non-American missionaries, and a amazing cross-national and cross-cultural sending and receiving taking place.

The truth is that the major denominations are not “jumping ship,” but rather are launching newer and better missionary “vessels”!

RAYMOND P. JENNINGS

Educational Ministries

American Baptist Churches

Valley Forge, Pa.

Inaccurate And Unbalanced Portrayal

Kent Hill’s account of the Siberian Seven [“After Three Long Years: Glimmers of Movement in ‘Siberian Seven’ Impasse,” Sept. 18], fails to give an accurate and balanced portrayal of a complex problem and advocates unwise action. I, too, was involved in the translation and publication of early documents by the Seven. Christians in the West should act with extreme caution in this matter.

While I pity these devout Siberians, I regretfully cannot defend their fanatic religious expression. They are not simply Pentecostals, as that designation is commonly understood. They are very different from the three or four million Soviet evangelicals who, despite difficulties, are able to find a way of living as Christians within the society where God has placed them. Unfortunately, Western attention to the Seven, to the extent that it is couched in terms of evangelical solidarity, aggravates the conditions of life for the biblical Christians.

As Western belligerence toward the Soviets has intensified in the past two years, the repression of Soviet evangelicals has correspondingly increased. Identification with the Siberians is, in my opinion, a particularly unwise course for evangelicals to follow. The particular issue with the Seven is that they totally refuse to submit to the government God has ordained for them. Moreover, if they are consistent, they will refuse subjection to any government, wherever they may live. When Western Christians identify with the Siberians, they confirm the slander of the Soviet Communists who portray evangelicals as traitors and pariahs.

PAUL D. STEEVES

Stetson University

DeLand, Fla.

Total Abstinence?

No one should disagree that alcoholism has reached epidemic proportions, but I cannot agree that abstinence is “in our society the only truly responsible position” [“A Sickness Too Common to Cure?” Sept. 18].

First, alcoholism is not the real problem, but a symptom of spiritual disintegration, which is the problem.

Second, to shame Christians into abstinence by invoking 1 Corinthians 8:13 invites hypocrisy and forgets that a brother might stumble on an abstinence ethic not taught in Scripture.

Third, I believe studies have demonstrated that churches that preach abstinence or have a tradition of abstinence produce among their adherents who imbibe a higher proportion of problem drinkers than those that don’t.

Fourth, the fruit of the vine is a gift from a gracious God. It can be misused, but so can higher education, sex, and a host of other things.

REV. MICHAEL T. VAHLE

Trinity Lutheran Church

Cantonment, Fla.

Your editorial is courageous, perceptive, scholarly, and sensitive.

Has any evangelical organization taken the lead in organizing a committee of concern? The problem is too big for any individual or organization.

I think you may have started something—and I’m glad!

WARREN W. WIERSBE

“Back to the Bible” Broadcast

Lincoln, Nebr.

Inerrancy Arena

The editor’s call for unity [“Rhetoric About Inerrancy,” Sept. 4], based on the alleged “conversion” of Jack Rogers, is premature. Let’s let Rogers rewrite his own view. And let us not forget that he is only one person in a broad drift toward Berkouwer’s deviant view.

NORMAN L. GEISLER

Dallas Theological Seminary

Dallas, Texas

The editorial report and comment on the Toronto conference on inerrancy was encouraging. I suspect, however, that the reconciliation between inerrantists and their critics may not be as deep as could be wished. Essentially the same problems are likely to arise again, for something that troubles inerrantists very deeply was apparently not dealt with.

Until the proper role of human judgment is clarified, and until we have more agreement about what it means to say that God speaks or reveals something, disputes over inerrancy are unlikely to be resolved in a satisfactory way: they grow out of those other, and deeper, differences.

GEORGE I. MAVRODES

University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Inaccurate Report

CT’s report on the Australian parochiaid court ruling [News, Sept. 4] was inaccurate. The case was decided by the High Court, the equivalent of our Supreme Court. The High Court ruled that the “no establishment” clause in the Australian Constitution not be interpreted as comprehensively as the similar clause in the U.S. Constitution. Six of the seven justices on the Australian High Court rejected the plaintiffs’ contention that the Australian “no establishment” clause was patterned by its authors after the U.S. clause and means more or less what the U.S. Supreme Court has rather consistently held the U.S. clause to mean.

EDD DOERR

Americans United for

Separation of Church and State

Silver Spring, Md.

Tabloid Format?

Your coverage entitled, “Unmasking Jerry Falwell and His Moral Majority” [Sept. 4], made me wonder if you are preparing to go to a tabloid format. I think this issue would sell well at the supermarket.

JOHN W. PEREBOOM

Carmi, Ill.

We are delighted with the extensive and provocative coverage of Jerry Falwell and deeply appreciate your timely review of The Fundamentalist Phenomenon. We are most grateful.

EVY HERR ANDERSON

Doubleday and Company Incorporated

New York, N.Y.

It was a misrepresentation to write that I had been “twice” invited to see Falwell but did not go. The fact is that I wrote a personal letter to Dr. Falwell which he did not answer. I then contacted Cal Thomas, vice-president of communications for Moral Majority, a number of times during the writing of my manuscript. I sent him the first draft, which he read and returned with a number of suggestions, most of which I followed. Cal suggested several times that I visit Lynchburg and see the work firsthand, but never extended a specific invitation.

It was reported that I would change my approach to Moral Majority had I waited six months to write the book. The implication is that I would be more supportive of Moral Majority. I made it clear to CT that the change would be in the opposite direction. I would be more critical of Falwell’s argument that God’s role for America is to bring spiritual renewal to the world. He confuses America with the church.

The point is that despite Falwell’s insistence that Moral Majority “Americanism” is separate from the church, it is in fact a movement largely among the fundamentalist churches and represents a fundamentalist political ideology. Consequently, it alters the fundamental nature and mission of the church away from evangelism, education, worship, and fellowship. Instead, Falwellian fundamentalism tends to turn local churches into political power bases, special agents of capitalist economics, champions of liberty, moral legislators, defenders of messianic Americanism, and advocates of militarism.

ROBERT WEBBER

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

No Reformation issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY would be complete without an article on justification by faith in Jesus Christ, the divine Lord and Savior. Donald Bloesch clears away some confusion and misunderstanding regarding this central doctrine of Protestantism and shows its solid grounding in the biblical text. Although often shunted to the background in the interests of current ecumenical discussion, it remains the watershed between Christ and the Pharisees, the apostles and Judaizers, the Reformers and legalists in the Roman church, and the evangelical gospel and all humanly contrived religions, in and out of the nominal church, that cater to the pride of the human spirit.

Along with Richard Dinwiddie’s perceptive analysis of current hymnody, be sure to note the announcement of CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s contemporary hymn contest. Urge your friends whose hearts the Lord has deeply moved to share their faith to test their skill at creating a hymn text. The church needs the spiritual rejuvenation of a new song to sing. Who knows what hidden talents lie half-buried and uncultivated, but which, once employed, could bless God’s people with untold spiritual riches as did the hymns of Ira Sankey or Fanny Crosby, or Isaac Watts or Charles Wesley in a former day?

Several news items in this issue illuminate some secular news stories. There was more behind the late Anwar Sadat’s crackdown on troublemakers in Egypt than met the eye. Ostensibly coming down hard on Christians and radical Muslims alike, Sadat in reality directed his blows against “fundamentalist” Muslims. (By the way, “fundamentalist,” as used by the secular press, has come to mean followers of any religion or political or social group that is conservative of traditional positions, and dogmatic and militant in its propagation of them.) Sadat’s persecution of Christians (so Christians in Egypt agree) was largely window dressing so as not to place Sadat in the awkward position of directing his ire merely against the militant Muslims. He could thereby preserve his image of even-handed justice and appease the larger Muslim community. Like the providence of God, political rulers move in mysterious ways their wonders to perform—but not always with the evidence of divine holiness that gives us ground for trusting providence.

Should We Fear The New Right?

The Moral Majority, Right or Wrong?, by Robert E. Webber (Cornerstone, 1981, 160 pp., $8.95), and The Politics of Moralism: The New Christian Right in American Life, by Erling Jorstad (Augsburg, 1981, 128 pp., $4.95), are reviewed by Richard V. Pierard, professor of history, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana.

Now that the dust is settling from the 1980 elections, evaluations of the new Christian right are rolling off the presses. Two such books, by a Wheaton College theologian and a Saint Olaf College historian, try to grapple with the phenomenon commentators agree had an impact on the campaign.

Webber seeks to bridge the gulf between the religious right and left, epitomized by the Moral Majority and the World Council of Churches, by advancing the concept of “the church of the prophetic center.” The centrists, he insists, will reject the notions that a particular economic or political system is sanctioned by biblical teaching; that America or any other nation is chosen by God to be his special people; and that God works through the revolutions of history to bring about his kingdom, affirming instead that he operates through his people, the church, to mediate his values to a fallen world.

Webber criticizes Moral Majority for propagating a moralistic, conservative secular humanism that glorifies capitalism, portrays America as a Christian nation, and draws its ethic from the American civil religion. At the same time, he faults the World Council of Churches for its views of economic socialism, America as the oppressor nation, and liberation theology as counterparts to the right’s capitalism, Americanism, and moralism. The left distorts Scripture, baptizes Marxist social theory, politicizes the gospel, and regards violence begetting goodness.

The “world view” of the centrist position includes a renewal of classical Christian theology, an emphasis upon simpler lifestyle and community, and a desire to apply one’s faith to all aspects of life. He urges right and left to move toward the center and suggests the church can function as a transforming presence in four areas that “beg for Christian responsibility”: the sanctity of human life, order of existence (family, church, state), stewardship of creation, and moral structure.

Webber’s stance is attractive, but some will undoubtedly see it as excessively idealistic. To me, a vital question is how the church can achieve a modicum of genuine social justice in a fallen world. If all our beautiful theology, gospel preaching, and changed lives of individuals do not transform an unjust social order, what then? Evangelical activists of the center must address this matter more carefully.

Further, the book’s definition of the centrist world view contains problems. A “second wave of evangelical scholars, leaders, and social workers” in the 1960s and 1970s supposedly went beyond the individualistic program of the new evangelicalism’s fathers and sought to restore a Christian faith that spoke to the public sector of life as well. But can the new breed be fitted into the mold cast for them? I am not so enamored of the churchmanship and sacramentalism exemplified in the Chicago Call of 1977, and I find the communitarianism allegedly flowing out of the Anabaptist tradition utopian and maybe even oppressive. These are not necessarily harmful, but far more diversity in lifestyle and pluralism in belief and practice exist within the amorphous entity labeled “center” than one might gather from Webber’s discussion.

Jorstad traces the emergence of the new Christian right, showing how it turned from expressing moralism through preaching and church activities to actual political involvement. The key role was played by the television preachers, commonly referred to as the “electronic church.” He devotes much of the book to a detailed analysis of the messages and actions of Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, Jerry Falwell, and James Robison. Jorstad does this similarly to the way he handled the figures of the “old” Christian right in his competent study The Politics of Doomsday (Abingdon, 1970). After specifically focusing on the 1980 election, he presents a balance sheet on the new right and suggests ways the church through positive action can preserve the blessings of religious freedom.

His treatment of the new Christian right will alert evangelicals to the genuine threat posed by the political gospel. Nevertheless, Jorstad neglects the crucial element of civil religion in shaping rightist thinking and overlooks the Bicentennial observance that provided the occasion for an unthinking American nationalism to reseat itself in evangelicalism after the debacles of Vietnam and Watergate. Surprisingly, he says that in 1980 the new Christian right contributed the call for a “Christian America,” something that “had not been present in earlier years.” In reality, this was a hallmark of conservative evangelical preaching in 1975–76. He appears struck by the novelty of Falwell’s “theme text in 1980,” 2 Chronicles 7:14; yet five years ago it was suggested in the Reformed Journal that this passage was the “John 3:16 of the evangelical civil religion.”

By concentrating on the spectacular TV evangelists, Jorstad misses somewhat just how deeply rightist thinking has penetrated the ranks of American evangelicalism. A perusal of the 1980 catalogue of conservative organizations, Family and Freedom Digest (Family and Freedom Foundation, Rochester, N.Y. 14619), reveals there are literally dozens of groups working to advance a wide variety of rightist causes. To his credit, I must add that he brings home forcefully how much we need more precise knowledge about the direct influence of the new Christian right in the last election.

Both volumes show signs of having been written in haste, but thoughtful readers will profit from them. Jorstad correctly exposes the shallowness of the electronic church and warns of the dangers of moralism. Webber’s call for Christians to move to the center is a welcome sound in an age of extremism.

Psycho-Fascism Unmasked

Institute of Fools, by Victor Nekipelov (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980, 257 pp., $15.00), is reviewed by Lloyd Billingsley, a writer living in Poway, California.

In 1937, when Victor Nekipelov was nine, Malcolm Muggeridge wrote: “Perhaps a new literature will come to pass in Russia, as one did in the darkest days of Tsarist repression. If so, it will be a literature of revolt and so anathema to the Soviet Establishment. Perhaps it is being furtively scribbled even now in concentration camps and other dark corners.”

Victor Nekipelov’s gripping Institute of Fools fulfills this prophecy. The Serbsky Institute, where he was briefly detained in 1974, is one such “dark corner.”

A pharmacologist, poet, and twice-arrested dissident, Nekipelov lucidly describes the denizens of the Serbsky Institute where what he calls psycho-fasicism is practiced, “a curious hybrid of Soviet terror and medicine.” Its narcoticized captives he sees as mainly “victims of an immoral society in which faith has been crushed, concepts of good and evil perverted, where everyone steals, conceals, slanders, schemes, informs and lies.” He describes the unforgettable women orderlies as “ignorant old girls who held our fate in their hands” who also administered hefty doses of drugs to quash any dissent. He is hardest on the “concentration-camp doctors” who “deliberately collaborate with a system of terror.” Such ones he holds “responsible for their crimes in knowingly committing sane people to psychiatric hospitals for beliefs or ways of thinking that do not conform to government formulas.”

Since the Serbsky Institute will never be probed by television’s “60 Minutes,” Institute of Fools is valuable for the rare and eloquent glimpse it offers of this squalid corner of the gulag. Equally important is its alert to the disastrous consequences of professional disciplines toadying supinely to terrorist regimes. Medical professionals will derive the most benefit from this important work, but it merits reading by all who love great writing and truth—something the dictatorship of the proletariat has been unable to extinguish.

All God Wants Us To Be

Rainbows for the Fallen World, by Calvin Seerveld (distributed by Radix Books, 1980, 254 pp., $14.95 hb, $9.95 pb), is reviewed by Douglas C. Campbell, Department of Art, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon.

Calvin Seerveld’s book is a plea for Christian openness to the beauty of God’s world and to the unfolding roles of men and women within their God-given lives. The author wants all of us to become aware of the call to live the “aesthetic life” he finds in Psalm 19 and other Scriptures.

But by “aesthetic life” he does not mean to imply that all men and women should become artists.

For Seerveld, “Christian art chartered by the Bible may bring to canvas and book and modulated tones anything afoot in the world, in a way that shall expose sin as … waste [condemned by God] and show obedient life as a joy forever, thereby building up the faithful and making strangers to the faith curious and desirous of joining in such reconciling fun in our Father’s world!” (p. 39). He proceeds to assert after this opening that an “aesthetic life” is an integral part of full obedience to God. Further, he demonstrates how this aesthetic approach can lead to fuller understanding of the Scriptures, using a segment of Proverbs as an example.

Seerveld’s definition of art posits “art as suggestion-rich knowledge” (p.78), a section that may be difficult reading for some. He applies this definition of art to teaching imaginatively in a way that creates within the student a joyful, learning attitude toward God’s world. From this he proceeds to the realm of Christian art as an alternative to mainstream culture. The poetry of Gabriela Mistral and the paintings of Henk (Senggih) Krijger are evaluated positively as models for those seeking to work within a Christian minority culture. Appendixes provide further historical examples of art that fit within the author’s definition. He has no easy, formula answer to artists.

The author’s Reformed background permeates his work. More important, his knowledge of languages and philosophy make his presentation authoritative (Seerveld is presently a senior fellow at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto). Since his aesthetics are not limited to the “fine arts,” this book provides thought-filled reading for a general audience, though it will be of special interest to artists and teachers. A book of this sort has long been needed by those who struggle to integrate their art and Christian faith in a society that is not often supportive or sympathetic.

What Life Is All About

Love Is Stronger Than Death (Harper & Row, 1979, 121 pp., $7.95 pb) and Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing (Harper & Row, 1980, 152 pp., $8.95 pb), both by Peter J. Kreeft, are reviewed by Michael H. Macdonald, professor of German and philosophy, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington.

Love Is Stronger Than Death is in one sense a very practical book, for it treats the terminal illness we all have: death. We may have lost all our absolutes today except this one. The relevancy of the death phenomenon cannot be denied. Granted, some good books have been published lately on the medical, psychological, and sociological aspects of death, but none I am aware of comes close to penetrating the meaning of death.

In his exploration, Kreeft notes a progression in the masks of death. The first face is that of an enemy. Subsequently death can appear as stranger, friend, mother, and lover. In the beginning, one must stress death as loss, the reduction of one kind of material being to nonbeing. If there is a life after death, it is necessarily different.

Kreeft argues that life is a series of deaths. To be born, we die to the womb; to go to school, we die to the home; to marry, we die to the family we came from. Life seems to be meetings as well as partings. Therefore, he asks, isn’t it probable that this principle will hold true in our last exit, that death will be a door from one world to another? In the end, death would seem to be the fulfillment of our deepest, noblest, and purest desire, the desire for infinite joy. Paradoxically, death would seem to be the whole point of life. Was not then Augustine absolutely right to confess that we remain restless until we find our rest in God?

In Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing Kreeft argues, again persuasively, that our core, our hearts, long for eternity. We may not realize that, because we keep ourselves busy 24 hours a day with scores of diversions. Yet, if we really understand ourselves, we know we want something more than time and death. Kreeft demonstrates that this desire or longing we all have also moves irrepressibly through the world’s greatest myths, religions, and philosophies.

Heaven explores the search for total joy and for the ultimate reality that grounds it. Kreeft pursues this joy in human faces, romantic love (the latter always promising more than it can possibly deliver: “it promises ecstasy; it delivers only intense pleasure”), pictures, stories, and music. In fact, “all the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it—tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear.”

In a very real sense, Kreeft’s Heaven is a “Critique of Pure Heart,” after the mold of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. So far as I know, there is no book in print whose main intent is the exploration of man’s search for joy. Previous high water marks were C. S. Lewis’s “hope” chapter in Mere Christianity and his autobiography, Surprised By Joy; but these are not book-length studies.

Kreeft’s books are musts for the serious student of life and death. He has penetrated to the roots; his sensitivity and wisdom on the nature of heaven and hell are more significant than any book I have seen since Lewis’s The Great Divorce.

The author, professor of philosophy at Boston College, is a careful scholar who has read many of the great books of philosophy, theology, and literature and gotten the right things from them. He is many times challenging, often clever and comprehensive, even comforting. But something more lasting and rarer is also found in his books—truth. And they are short. Kreeft’s advice to his reader is also mine: “Don’t rush; relish, savor, pause, explore, poke around. Enjoy.”

The Day Of Rest And Gladness

Divine Rest for Human Restlessness, by Samuele Bacchiocchi (Pontifical Gregorian University Press, Rome, 1980, 319 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Joseph M. Hopkins, professor of religion, Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania.

The author, a Seventh-day Adventist, teaches theology and church history at SDA-affiliated Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan. The first non-Catholic to graduate (summa cum laude) from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, his published dissertation, From Sabbath to Sunday (1977), has sold 70,000 copies and enjoyed favorable reviews by Protestant and Catholic, as well as SDA, scholars.

This latest work, which continues the earlier theme, is comprehensive (319 oversized pages) and fully documented with interior Scriptures and 57 crowded pages (in small print) of notes. Hardly a volume for the “average layman,” it is recommended for pastors and religiously oriented libraries as a definitive treatment of Christendom’s most-neglected commandment, even if one does not agree with Bacchiocchi’s point of view. Its value lies in the research that was done.

Bacchiocchi defends the view that Saturday is the Sabbath. Patristic testimony affirming the early substitution of first-day for seventh-day worship is dismissed as resting “more on fantasies than on facts.” The difference between Sunday and Sabbath, he asserts, “is the difference between a man-made holiday and God’s established Holy Day.” But this Sabbatarian bias is offset by much solid Scriptural exegesis and extensive extrabiblical documentation setting forth the historical, theological, and practical significance of the Christian Sabbath.

Beginning with its origin (creation in six literal 24-hour days is seen as essential to the seventh-day doctrine), the author develops the meaning, purpose, and value of the Sabbath in Christian thought and practice throughout church history. Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Barth, and Bonhoeffer are cited, as well as SDA “prophetess” Ellen G. White. The SDA teaching that “the Sabbath is designated as ‘a perpetual covenant’ or a ‘sign’ between Yahweh and His people” is articulated, but non-SDA readers are spared the corollary that seventh-day observance is a hallmark of the remnant (i.e., SDA) church—and that Sunday worship is the mark of the Beast by which apostate church bodies are identified.

Bacchiocchi defines the Sabbath as “Good News of … human roots … perfect creation … God’s care … divine-human belonging … redemption … service … [and] divine rest for human restlessness.” A chapter is devoted to each of these themes. Perhaps inevitably, there is redundancy and belaboring of points of emphasis. Nevertheless, there are many helpful insights: for example, “By enabling us to detach ourselves from our daily tasks, the Sabbath gives a sense of completion to the work of the previous six days and to life itself.” And, “What an amazing divine concern the Sabbath rest reveals! It epitomizes God’s care and plan for human freedom: freedom from the tyranny of work; freedom from pitiless human exploitation; freedom from over-attachment to things and people; freedom from insatiable greediness; freedom to enjoy God’s blessings on the Sabbath in order to be sent forth into a new week with renewed zest and strength.”

Although (to nonmembers) SDA Sabbath keeping appears legalistic, the author eschews Pharisaism for a positive, New Testament approach that stresses spirit instead of letter. The Christ ideal of service is also emphasized: “Inner peace and rest are to be found not in egocentric (selfish) relaxation but rather in heterocentric (unselfish) service.”

BRIEFLY NOTED

Bibles and books directly related to the Bible are considered.

Bible Versions. Seabury offers The Vineyard Bible. It consists of the central narrative (select portions or condensations) plus a gazetteer and key word index. May Your Name Be Inscribed in the Book of Life (Messianic Vision, Box 34462, Washington, D.C.) is a Jewish New Testament with Jewish words, keys to O.T. prophecy, and footnotes by Jewish-Christian scholars. Kregel has reprinted Arthur S. Way’s older work along with Psalms (for the first time in an American edition) in Letters of Paul and Hebrews and the Book of Psalms. The Four Gospels and the Revelation is newly translated by Richmond Lattimore, available in hardback from Farrar, Straus & Giroux and in paperback from Washington Square Press. George Barker Stevens’s well-done but well-nigh forgotten The Epistle of Paul and Hebrews: Paraphrased is available again from Verploegh Editions, Box 984, Wheaton, IL.

The Washburn College Bible (Oxford Univ.) is something of a tour de force. Massive and magnificent, weighing over 10 pounds, it is the KJV, newly phrased, with masterpieces of religious art, gold stamping, and special prints. It is a beautiful family Bible.

Picture Bibles.Bible Stories for Children (Macmillan or Benziger) contains select stories retold by Geoffrey Harnard and Arthur Cavanaugh, with beautiful illustrations by Arvis Stewart. The Living Bible Story Book (Tyndale) is selections from the Living Bible, illustrated by Richard and Francis Hook. Stories from the Bible (Eerdmans) are newly retold by Sipke van der Land; illustrations are by Bert Bouman, not all in color.

Three works with comic-book style illustrations are: Picture Stories from the Bible (Scarf Press); Pictorial New Testament: The Acts of the Apostles: NIV Version (College Press, Joplin, Mo.); and The Living Picture Bible (David C. Cook).

Concordances. Zondervan makes available The NIV Complete Concordance, with over a quarter-million references in 1,039 pages. It should prove to be a great help in Bible study for NIV users. For NASB users, Holman has produced the New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, with over 400,000 entries. It contains a separate concordance of numbers as well as a Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek dictionary to which all the words of the NASB are keyed.

For students of the New Testament, the long-awaited Computer Konkordanz Zum Novum Testamentum Graece (deGruyter), based on the twenty-sixth edition of the Nestle-Aland text and the third edition of The Greek New Testament, has appeared. Beautifully done, it will no doubt become the standard reference work for the next generation of scholars.

Two smaller works are also available. New Testament Pocket Concordance (Nelson), by Charles J. Hazelton, crams 27,000 references into 640 pages only a half-inch thick. The Bible Index Pocket Book (Harold Shaw) has a thousand carefully chosen topics, subdivided into helpful categories, in 192 pages. All the important ideas seem to be present.

Study Bibles/Reference. The NASB Cambridge Study Edition (Cambridge Univ.) has study helps that include a concise dictionary, concordance, gazetteer, and maps. The Worrell New Testament (Gospel Publishing House) is available again. Originally written in 1904, this KJV-based edition contains Worrell’s introductory comments and notes, and is dispensational, pretribulational in focus. Bethany Fellowship offers a new printing of The Reese Chronological Bible, also KJV-based. The text is arranged with dates in the supposed order of occurrence, and it advocates a “recent earth” theory that puts creation on Sunday, March 27, 3976 B.C. The Lindsell Study Bible (Tyndale) contains helpful introductions, notes, headings, and indexes based on the Living Bible text. It is nondispensational and open on the question of the Rapture of the church. The NIV Pictorial Bible (Zondervan) is a beautifully done study Bible with more than 500 full-color features, and helpful notes.

The NIV Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament (Zondervan), edited by John R. Kohlenberger III, continues with volume 2, Joshua—II Kings. Volume 3 is expected later this year.

Here’s Life Publishers has two “Four Spiritual Laws” editions available: the Here’s Life New American Standard New Testament and the Here’s Life Living New Testament. Both are pocket-sized with an introduction to the Christian life.

The Bible Prayer Book (Ave Maria), edited by Eugene S. Geissler, contains all the prayers, songs, hymns, canticles, psalms, and blessings in the Bible, neatly arranged for handy reference. The Apocrypha is included.

The Victor Handbook of Bible Knowledge (Victor), by V. Gilbert Beers, is a very well-done run through the Bible, section by section, with over 1,300 illustrations and valuable comments. It is an excellent study tool.

RET can be an emotional life line.

Evangelicals have not had a particularly soft spot in their hearts for psychoanalysis. The revivalistic preacher has castigated psychotherapy from its beginnings as a substitute for conversion. But the believer who reasons in such a fashion becomes a kind of Christian Scientist, expecting God to heal emotional difficulties immediately and transcendentally—even when the believer would not presumably expect a sinner on conversion automatically to receive a cure for diabetes along with salvation.

On a deeper level, evangelicals have been profoundly offended by Freud’s atheistic materialism. When Freud explains God away as the projection of the “father image” on the universe, evangelicals retort by explaining Freud away as a product of his own neuroses. Though the father of psychoanalysis certainly did have a few screws loose—no reader of Ernest Jones’s authorized biography of Freud can doubt it—one must be careful not to throw out the baby (genuine insights into egotistical, fallen human nature) with the bath water (Freud’s personal religious philosophy). After all, C. G. Jung, Freud’s greatest disciple, developed an analytical psychotherapy so open to religious and mystical phenomena that orthodox Freudians (and some theologians!) are appalled by it.

What disturbs evangelicals most about Freud, however, is his root theme of pervasive unconscious motivation. If (as traditional psychoanalysis holds) all our conscious decisions are motivated by unconscious factors, then no “decision for Christ” is necessarily what it appears to be. How could one ever be sure that his conversion experience was not really something very different—for example, an adolescent “identity crisis”?

The pervasive unconscious is the central tenet of orthodox psychoanalysis, and much of the humor and satire directed at psychotherapy focuses at that point. Thus, the story of the two Freudian analysts who meet on the street in Vienna: Says the first, “Good morning, Herr Doktor”; the second, after the first has walked by, murmurs to himself, “Ach, I wonder what he meant by that.”

Analytical philosophers have rightly pointed out that such stories touch the Achilles’ heel of Freudian theory: if no conscious thoughts or actions mean what they appear to, then one could never arrive at any certainty about anything—including psychoanalytic theory. Concretely, the analyst himself would never know that his own analysis was not the product of his own unconscious. And if the reply is given that he has come to understand himself through analysis, that answer simply begs the question: how did the first analyst (Freud?) know that his theory was not really a projection of irrational factors bubbling up from his unconscious?

In most instances our anger or depression is not due to external factors.

Add to this weighty epistemological problem the very practical fact that Freudian analysis has not succeeded very well in the curative realm. After discussing several reputable studies of the results of psychoanalytic treatment, Andrew Salter concluded: “Psychoanalysis failed somewhat more often than it succeeded”; as a therapeutic method, it is “time-consuming and expensive.… I think it is of tremendous importance that we develop sounder forms of therapy” (The Case Against Psychoanalysis [1952]; cf. Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Psychotherapy [1978]).

Among alternative forms of therapy, one particularly deserves a close look from evangelicals. The method, “Rational-Emotive Therapy” (RET), was developed by Albert Ellis (b. 1913), a psychologist and author of some 35 books in the field. The best popular introduction to RET is A New Guide to Rational Living, by Ellis and Robert A. Harper (Wilshire). Another basic title is Ellis’s How To Live With—and Without—Anger (Reader’s Digest).

The fundamental premise of RET is that one can—and indeed, for happiness, must—achieve rational control over his emotional life. Stress is placed not so much on dredging up the childhood sources of present irrational behavior, but on understanding the nature of the current irrationality, and then training oneself to handle stress situations differently. An analyst versed in RET normally brings a neurotic patient to a self-motivating level of rational behavior within six months—as compared with interminable “depth analyses” that often reach the bottom of the patient’s bank account before they plumb the depths of his psyche. In Los Alamitos, California, Christian psychologist Ronald Rook emphasizes that the method keeps him from becoming a crutch to his patients: they learn new behavior patterns—and he can go on to help new patients.

The key to the method is a concept which Ellis, who is not a Christian, derived from classical Stoicism, but which is entirely compatible with biblical teaching: that the vast majority of our emotional problems derive from irrationally imputing to external conditions what in fact comes from within us (cf. Mark 7:15). Examples: the pastor who gets depressed and preaches badly “because of” the small attendance the previous Sunday; or blows up in anger and leaves parish after parish “because of” criticism; or fights with his wife and children “because of” their lack of appreciation for him and his value system.

In all these instances the real reason for the anger or depression (call it the behavioral consequence) is not the external factor (the activating event—insensitivity, criticism, maltreatment from others), though we invariably attribute our neurotic behavior to what “life” or “the system” or “others” do to us. In reality, our anger or depression stems from a linking factor (our own irrational belief system) that says “life” or “people” ought to treat us in accord with our desires and needs.

But in a fallen world, such a pollyanna philosophy is utterly irrational! RET can help the believer not to let his own expectations of how he “ought” to be treated irrationally reduce his productivity, mar his relations with others, and poison his joy in living. When coordinated with Matthew 10:29–31 and Romans 8:28—verses assuring us that God himself in Christ holds the external circ*mstances of our lives in his hands—RET can serve as a rational life line for evangelicals struggling to stay emotionally afloat in the turbulent waters of a sinful society.

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.

Expository preaching systematically saturates people with the whole Word.

While evangelistic preachers across the country count the notches on their guns and the angels in heaven rejoice in the salvation of souls, the Holy Spirit grieves at the scarcity of mature, victorious Christians. In every corner of Christendom we hear the plaintive cries of saints encroached upon by worldliness. Like those described in Hebrews 5, they continue dull of hearing, needing to be taught when they should be teaching.

But this condition need not exist. God has equipped us with a weapon, his Word, and he has implanted in us his Spirit to provide the power to use that Word. That so few possess God’s gifts to live strong, victorious lives can only owe to the paucity of Bible-teaching ministries. Yet, hope still blazes on that “mount that burns with fire.” The Word of God may still burn within us as it did the disciples at Emmaus. Furthermore, a practical solution is within the grasp of every minister: the pathway to churches populated with strong, mature Christians is paved with sound, expository ministry.

Unfortunately, misconceptions hinder expository work. In the first place, preaching Christ or the Bible does not, in itself, qualify as expository preaching. The misconception is mistaking content for method. All preaching should expose Christ and issue from the Bible, yet the technique may leave people hungry because both Christ and the Bible may be preached with painfully inadequate references to the Bible. Even a message impregnated with the Scriptures may fail to be expository.

The basis of expository preaching rests on exposure of a single body of Scripture. But this, too, can fail over superficial treatment. Without depth, a sermon is little more than a survey of impressions that offer little assistance toward holiness. No matter how extensively the Bible is used in evangelism, that cannot substitute for nourishment. A diet emphasizing soul winning produces babes suffering spiritual malnutrition. The growing Christian needs exposition.

True expository ministry systematically saturates people with the whole Word. It dissects, discusses, digests, and disseminates the multiplicity of truths permeating the Word. It plumbs the depth as well as the breadth. It exposes the Word as God presents it, not as man picks and chooses.

The body of Scripture composing the text may encompass a small book or a few verses. Read it repeatedly until one central message presents itself. Take as an example Hebrews 12:1–15: converting the trials of life into spiritual maturity. Now express this generality in your own terminology. Next, analyze: go through the text again, looking for main divisions. Certain words or phrases should appear as key ideas. What action should we take? As we study our text, “lay aside” and “run the race” (v. 1), “looking unto Jesus” (v. 2), and “despise not the chastening of the Lord” (v. 5), stand out as four main points.

Always keep the focus on the central message; don’t digress. Keep asking, “what can we do to mature?” Verse 2 could sidetrack a careless or inexperienced preacher; it does not contain sufficient Scripture for a sermon. Similar digressions will compete with the central message, but the expository preacher refuses to be led astray.

You have here a four-point sermon that explains what actions and attitudes will contribute to Christian maturity. In other cases the main points may answer the questions why, how, who, or even when. Each needs precise exposition.

A third examination of the text will yield details to expand the main points. It will require some thought and perhaps considerable practice, but many tidbits of advice lurk in the shadows.

Take the first point. Lay aside what? Weights and sin. Later research will interpret their meaning, but for now they are details. Are there more? The fact that they beset us offers potential; but how about “hanging hands” and “feeble feet” (v. 12)? These picture the results of carrying great weights, and instruction to lift them. Verse 13 reveals the result of laying aside weights and sins: making straight paths for the race. Now repeat the process for “running the race.” A race implies vigorous activity, but the second detail, patience, seems to complement it. Taking things set before us establishes the third detail, while “looking diligently” (v. 15) also offers promise.

Details for the next point are similarly unearthed. If we look to Jesus, we can trust him to work in us because he is the author and, equally important, the finisher of our faith (v. 2). In the same verse, his sacrifice shows the extent of his interest in us. Verse 3 presents the likelihood of fainting if we struggle on our own. You might conclude by moving to verse 14 to deal with the goal of maturity—Christlike holiness and peace. The final point, the chastening of the Lord, shapes up in a similar manner.

Now, with a central message and four main points supported by details all taken from a single body of Scripture, we have the skeleton of a sermon. But skeletons need flesh. The details need clear explanation, which can only come from research. That comes by using dependable commentaries. With their assistance, a deeper understanding of God’s Word is harvested. In this case, commentaries by Ellicott, Davidson, and Delitzsch throw light on word meanings and give insight into the customs of the times. For example, we learn that “weight” describes anything that exceeds the proper extent. It includes body flesh and such mental things as love of ease, self-esteem, wealth. Anything that disturbs the mind or turns away the heart weights us down, hindering our progress. But carefully selected commentaries not only provide a more vivid understanding of specific implications, they also keep us from mistakes. If we interpreted “author and finisher” as “originator and sustainer” of our faith, Davidson points out that the Greek means “leader and perfecter.” Jesus has set a perfect example for us to follow. Verse 2 takes on a different meaning; the commentary kept us from misinterpretation.

But an expository sermon demands practical application. Devotional commentaries and the preacher’s personal insight into the existential situation provide ammunition to drive this home. The minister in touch with his congregation will find many real life illustrations to make the Word meaningful.

The pastor is the key. Wherever he touches his sheep, the impetus to grow must spread. Expository preaching cannot manipulate, but it must illustrate, influence, and instruct. It must set the church on fire, bringing that fire into the hearts of believers.

WALT WIGHT¹Mr. Wight is a former Baptist and Methodist pastor who currently teaches English in a Danielson, Connecticut, high school and does supply preaching.

His only props are two logs approximately 17 to 25 inches long and 10 to 18 inches in diameter: he uses them as a seat. His only companions on stage are an imaginary horse and an equally imaginary—and somewhat doltish—companion named Michael. But when Roger Nelson steps forward and begins his 120-minute portrayal of the founder of Methodism, he is John Wesley.

Nelson’s one-man dramatic vehicle, The Man from Aldersgate, is breathing new life into the idea that drama can communicate the gospel. The historical Wesley logged some 250,000 miles on horseback, delivering his message of freedom in Christ; Roger Nelson has logged over 175 performances that proclaim the eighteenth-century English evangelist’s message anew. And this play sends audiences away with the feeling they have met a man, not listened to a legend.

While there may be certain contemporary interest in one-man shows (for example, the currently successful St. Mark’s Gospel with Eric Booth; see CT, June 12, p. 53), the idea of watching and listening to such a performance sounds to some about as exciting as tepid tea. Roger Nelson makes the potion hot and sparkling, neither over- nor underacting the role.

An audience’s first glimpse of Nelson’s reincarnated Wesley is when he makes his way onstage looking—and for all the world sounding—like a man past 70. A colonial, tricorn hat crowns his thick mantle of white hair, completing the period costume. As the old man settles down on his logs and begins to reminisce, one is quickly drawn to a very human personality from an earlier age.

Wesley’s humor, for example, shines through dialogue with the invisible Michael: “Were you quite certain to draw this water upstream from where the horses were drinking and not downstream?… Does it matter?… It matters a great deal to me.… Never mind; I think it would be better if I didn’t know.” You learn something about his family: of 18 siblings, only 8 survived infancy. Of his six surviving sisters, “not one of them made a good marriage.” His impression of the preaching of the day that sought to emulate Lord Chesterfield is dismissed with a delightful example of obtuse Chesterfieldian prose.

The old man’s memories reach back to his childhood escape (at the age of 5½) from death in the manse blaze, calling himself “a brand plucked from the fire.”

But by far the most time is taken in a clear, lucid, and careful explanation of his conversion at the age of 35. Some 80 to 85 percent of the material in the play comes from Wesley’s own writings, and playwright Brad Smith has carefully crafted this section, revealing Wesley’s inner struggles as he recalls his discussions with Moravian Peter Boehler, and culminating with a description of the now-famous meeting in Aldersgate Street when the reading of Martin Luther’s preface to Romans opened the floodgates and he finally saw salvation as an instantaneous work of faith.

Actor Roger Nelson is no amateur. Though he followed other interests after active involvement in high school drama (appearing in five musicals at suburban Chicago’s New Trier High School with fellow student and friend, Ann-Margret), he did not turn to the stage again until after he had earned a B.A. in mathematics, served a hitch as a U.S. Army officer assigned to the Sentinel Project, and spent three years as a civilian mathematician at a military arsenal. But his acting urge was rekindled in 1970 and he moved to New York. There he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and began appearing in stock and repertory as well as off-Broadway productions. His credits include leads in Butterflies Are Free, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Forty Carats, and West Side Story. To supplement his income he also taught at Hunter College (N.Y.) and Fairleigh Dickinson University (N.J.)—and even managed to earn an M.S. in computer science.

In New York he met a man named Paul Moore, then pastor of a church located in what was once a theatrical club to which Nelson had belonged. At Moore’s request, Nelson helped the church develop a theater company, including street theater in Times Square. One night Moore had a dream: in it, Roger Nelson was John Wesley. But the dream was only that until the day Nelson met Brad Smith, a free-lance writer and playwright. Though there were no funds to develop a play to bring the dream to life, Smith accepted the challenge. For the next several months he researched Wesley’s life and writings, and by the fall of 1977 had a completed, two-hour script.

Nelson was excited with the results. He soon began performing bits and pieces of the play at informal gatherings around Colorado Springs, where he had recently relocated. His home church, Winnetka Bible Church near Chicago, also staged an early performance, and since the play was being financed out of Roger’s own pocket, their love offering was welcomed.

The first full-length performance took place in June 1979 at the University of Colorado; now, over two years later, the end is not yet in sight. The largest audience was at the International Sunday School Convention in Detroit a year ago, commemorating the two hundredth anniversary of the Sunday school. Some 5,000 watched a production that even included a live horse for the first time. Fall performances this year include such diverse institutions as the U.S. Air Force Academy and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

When Nelson took the play to a Wisconsin church last fall, he was not expecting to hear the performance followed by an evangelistic invitation. To his utter amazement, 40 people—10 percent of the audience—expressed a desire to receive Christ. Because the play can have that kind of impact, Nelson has no plans at present to quit what is an exhausting pace. Though he did not view the play as an evangelistic tool at the outset, he has become increasingly impressed with the way God can use this simple dramatic vehicle to communicate the gospel.

The play is also giving rise to other dramatic possibilities. The United Methodist Church has discussed with Smith and Nelson the possibility of a filmed version that would coincide with the denomination’s bicentennial in 1984. Smith’s mind is already running to a variety of possibilities that would bring Wesley alive on the screen in a different kind of adaptation. And the success of the Wesley work sent Smith off to research the life of hymnwriter Fanny Crosby. The resulting one-person play uses some 99 percent of Crosby’s own words in a format similar to programs the hymnist presented during her lifetime, as she sang and spoke while seated at a piano. Now if only a producer can emerge with a short, slight actress who can sing and play the piano and …

Nelson and Smith would agree that it was God who brought The Man from Aldersgate into their lives. Perhaps the closing lines Nelson speaks as Wesley are not so coincidental when one contemplates the idea of using drama to witness to others the force of God in one man’s life:

“Here’s a thought before I go that has kept me on the right path for many years now. ‘If we seek God in all things and do all for him, then all things are easy.’”

On our daily trips to check on the progress of our new house up the mountain, the children and I noticed a bulge in the pavement. The road was new, and the pavement fresh and unbroken.

What, we wondered, had the nerve and strength to push its way up and through six inches of road binding and four inches of asphalt? Each day the little mound rose noticeably, and the children were full of ideas.

“It’s an oak tree.”

“No. It’s a locust.”

“No, dummy, it’s a walnut.”

“I know,” I heard little Bunny exclaim, “it’s a morning glory—and that’s the glory coming up!”

You see that in people, especially baby believers in Christ. Or perhaps it is just more noticeable in them.

Anyway, Christ’s life comes through. And we, too, can say, “… it’s the glory coming up!”

Southern Baptists

Satellite To Beam To Low-Power Tv Network

Southern Baptists have signed a $2.1 million-a-year contract for use of a space satellite to beam Christian programming over a new television network it is planning. The satellite is to be launched in 1984 by the Southern Pacific Communications Company.

The network is being developed by the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission, whose headquarters are in Fort Worth. It has applied to the Federal Communications Commission for 105 “low-power” television stations nationwide, which would make up the network.

Low-power television is a new wrinkle in broadcasting, brought on by the federal government’s fast deregulation of the industry. The FCC tentatively plans to grant licenses for new broadcast stations capable of reaching from 3 to 20 miles, depending on terrain and antenna. The stations will be relatively cheap to operate: experts say a church could go on the air with its own station for about the price of a new parking lot. A station needs no expensive studio, just a videotape machine to broadcast what it wishes, plus a transmitter and antenna.

The FCC’s Fairness Doctrine, which tends to prevent television preachers from blasting away on such controversial topics as hom*osexuality and abortion, will be relaxed on low-power stations. Neither will there be lengthy and expensive hearings before broadcast licenses are granted. In fact, the FCC essentially intends to grant licenses on a first-come, first-served basis, with preference given to minority and nonprofit enterprises. That decision prompted a stampede about a year ago when the FCC unexpectedly announced it would allow low-power television. More than 5,000 applications have been filed.

The Southern Baptist network will be called ACTS—for American Christian Television System. It hopes to start broadcasting a year from now, eventually going to 12 hours of programs a day. The Baptists expect to offer preaching, Bible teaching, Christian growth shows, children’s entertainment, family programs, talk shows, music and variety specials, situation comedies, drama, sports, and some educational programs. The stations will not appeal for money on the air.

The Baptist Radio and Television Commission will also encourage local Baptist churches to install satellite receiver dishes so they can get ACTS programs for their own use, or where possible to feed it into a local cable TV system.

During a ceremony at which the contract was signed with Southern Pacific, the Baptists made a $175,000 down payment, equivalent to one month’s rental on the satellite. Bailey Smith, president of the 13.6-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, called the ceremony “a significant event in the propagation of the gospel.” The SBC is the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

Church of England

Bishop Dismayed By Shift To Right

A Church of England bishop has expressed dismay that the moderate party within his denomination is rapidly declining. Says Denis Wakeling, bishop of Southwell: “Central churchmanship, liberal in theology, tolerant in practice, which formed the hard core of Church of England membership … has been virtually eliminated by the idea that we should have ‘convictions’ of the Evangelical or Catholic kind.”

Wakeling, whose diocese includes the industrial city of Nottingham, was not happy about expressing the division as one between radicals and traditionalists. It was, he said in his Southwell Diocesan News, between “those who believe that clear-cut convictions are all important and must be proclaimed, and those who think that truth is less easily defined and is something we seek rather than a sword we brandish.”

In an age when missions are stressed more than mission (“even Billy Graham all over again”), liberal ordinands are being rejected because they are thinkers rather than activists. “Liberal-minded Christians,” asserts the bishop, “actually believe something as much as radicals do; they are not unconvinced or faithless, but just being as honest as they can.”

Turkey

Martial Law Hampers Gospel

The year-old military regime of General Kenan Evren, 62, imposed martial law and a three-hour curfew every night on Turkey. Evren curbed terrorism and inflation, strove to keep Turkey in the community of parliamentary democracies (albeit through a hand-picked constituent assembly), and simultaneously curtailed the abuse of freedom by extremists.

The power of Islam is the single unifying factor in a land that is ethnically and religiously divided. The tiny Christian minority (Syriac, Armenian, Arab Orthodox, Greek, Catholic) is often under attack by fanatical Muslims. At least two Christians leaders are in prison without charges being brought. Christian numbers are diminishing further as members leave the country.

The Evren takeover has hindered rather than helped dissemination of the Christian message. There is, however, a growing interest among university students, and some have recently been converted. Trans World Radio reports its Turkish broadcasts bring correspondence that reflects serious questions.

Two translations of the New Testament are in progress, and publication of these will help communicate the message.

Churches and agencies cooperate in Michigan program.

He didn’t ask, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” But it was obvious he had a hard-luck story. So when he walked into the Wednesday night prayer meeting, defeat tugging down the lines in his face, the brothers responded. They listened to his story, then counseled him into the small hours of morning. Only the love of Christ could heal this man and give him reason to live, for he had just lost his wife and children in a car accident. After a soul-wrenching 5 A.M. conversion, they gave him enough money to go north to the funeral.

The good brothers were had. The man they helped had used the car accident story before. It had worked then, too. He was an experienced panhandler; his special touch, churches.

Something new? Not to Virgil Gulker, director and founder of LOVE, Incorporated, a Holland, Michigan, program that is spreading into communities all over Michigan. In fact, “chronic dependents” are one reason Gulker originated LOVE.

LOVE’s stated purpose is helping needy people. But the way it helps them is by coordinating the efforts of a community’s private and public agencies as well as those of its churches. More specifically, LOVE reduces unnecessary duplication of agency services, develops an inventory of available community resources, increases agency responsiveness to needs making them more accountable to their sources of support, and identifies and screens out chronic dependents.

More than four years ago as director of the Good Samaritan Center in Holland, Gulker visited the area’s service agencies. He asked directors of the City Mission,

Salvation Army, Community Action House, Police Service Unit, and others to give him a list of 12 people they were helping who might be considered chronic dependents. Six agencies listed the same 12 people—convincing evidence that Holland’s helping hands were duplicating efforts and being duped in the process.

Gulker later visited Holland churches, discovering the familiar list of 12 had also done a number on them. The list grew to 80.

“Chronic dependents,” said the soft-voiced, clear-eyed director of LOVE. “I could tell you stories …” He said he ought to write a book on how to get freebies from the churches. “You make the rounds,” he said, “from church to church. You may only get $10 or $15 a stop, but after a while that adds up.”

Gulker said many of these “parasites” actually solicited help alphabetically from churches listed in the Yellow Pages. He always has strong suspicions, he said, about seeing those pages torn out of books in telephone booths.

Gulker worked to entwine Holland’s service agencies into a cooperative, non-duplicating community network that could help the truly needy while screening out roving panhandlers. Their goal was to de-institutionalize people—to urge all families receiving public assistance to become independent of it within a year, and to deny aid to any who would not meet certain self-help conditions such as budgeting, employment, parenting education, or job skills training.

The next phase of Gulker’s program was LOVE, Incorporated. It came about in response to a minister’s embarrassment at how well agencies were working to meet community needs that the churches ought to have been providing. Gulker marked out a four-square-mile area of Holland in zones, assigning responsibility for needs arising out of each zone to churches in that area. Acting on referrals from the Good Samaritan Center, people serving as contacts in 74 churches recruited volunteer help and material assistance from their congregations.

In 1980 alone, more than 377 needs for such services as budget help, baby-sitting, transportation, tax assistance, sign language, tutoring, and hospice care were supplied by LOVE churches. “I am convinced,” said Gulker, “that God will allow no need that Christ’s church does not have the resources to meet.” With gently persuasive sincerity he continued, “The body has all the gifts it needs to minister to its community. The key to changed individuals, even whole communities, is organization.”

Gulker’s talent for organizing is one of many. He came to the Good Samaritan Center with a Ph.D. in English literature and language from the University of Michigan and with six years’ experience in prison work implementing rehabilitation programs like “Books Behind Bars.” He also attended Western Theological Seminary for a year to round out his social concerns with some theology.

Gulker described church volunteers garnered by LOVE’s interdenominational network as a special kind of worker. “Their quality of care is higher,” he explained. “They expect no gain for their efforts. They aren’t paid. They have a selfless attitude, and want to take the time to help.”

At the heart of Gulker’s program is the Family Support System, a unique adoptive care model used by churches to provide residential and supportive services on a contractual basis for high risk, indigent, or abused families. Churches could use this “ministry model” to meet the needs of parolees, probationers, terminal cancer patients, disabled or handicapped persons, senior citizens, and others.

“Within each community one finds at least one church,” says LOVE, “with its own community of caring people who possess all the love, time, resources, and skills required to alleviate most needs. Multiply all those assets in one church by the number of churches in a community and you have created a helping network with the potential to significantly reduce mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional needs. All that is needed then is an organization plan to harness and direct that vast, largely untapped resource.”

LOVE is that plan—for Holland and surrounding communities of Zeeland, Douglas, and Saugatuck that have asked to be included in the program.

How do Holland area pastors regard LOVE? “My thoughts about LOVE,” said C. William Hoesman of Zion Lutheran Church, “are all positive. The strength of this program is that each church is responsible for its own geographical area, keeping it in its own bailiwick to answer to needs.

“Our community has good interdenominational cooperation,” he continued, “and LOVE has certainly fostered this nice atmosphere.”

Pastor Calvin Bolt of Faith Christian Reformed Church said, “LOVE has helped us as churches to coordinate our help within the community. Instead of each church doing its individual program, our efforts are now coordinated.”

Mark Mayou, First Baptist Church pastor, appreciates LOVE because “they have screened requests for help. They know who are professional panhandlers and who really have needs. That’s taken a lot of weight off my mind. I know I have a place to call to check people out who call me for help. And if they really do need help, LOVE can help me channel them to it.”

Mayou has had years of experience with the church freeloader. “I was in South Haven for awhile,” he said, “where there was no organization like LOVE. I really ran into some doozies. I was taken.

“They always call on the weekend,” he said, “late at night when everything’s closed. They ask for food, money, or a place to stay. So you give them a few dollars, and next week you find out you are about the fifteenth place they hit. They make the rounds of all the churches—then go back to a nearby town where they live.

“I’ve never run across anyone like Mr. Gulker before. He’s wise to who really needs help. He uses existing programs, organizing them and centralizing information, to channel requests and refer people to the right place for help.”

Gulker’s LOVE succeeded so well in Holland that 19 other Michigan communities asked for the program. Thus it was that in early 1981 Gulker, “with a dream in his heart, a knot in his stomach, and a step out in faith,” decided to resign from the Good Samaritan Center to take LOVE to other Michigan cities. Flint has already incorporated the program.

President Reagan’s budget cuts forcing cutbacks in federally funded community agencies are a direct mandate to the church; it no longer has the option to care about community needs, said Gulker. “It must care.” Moving forward in his chair with all the optimism and determination of a man who has already found the answer to his own question, he said, “What it must ask now is how it will care.”

North American Scene

An estimated 8,000 people gathered nightly to hear Argentine-born evangelist Luis Palau in his first full-scale, bilingual crusade in the U.S., in spite of warnings to San Diego Catholics about the dangers of fundamentalist evangelists. Although Palau, the “Billy Graham of South America,” expressed hope that San Diego would become the spiritual cornerstone of California, he said eight days were simply not enough to reach a city of more than a million people. His recent five-week effort in Glasgow was “more like it,” he said. “You really get a chance to become acquainted with the people and to find out what their problems are.”

If you give money to Maryland’s United Way, none has to go to an agency or beneficiary you disapprove of. Julie Henseley, director of communications for United Way, said complex new computer equipment now makes “donor options” possible. That is all well and good, since Archbishop William Borders urged Catholics to back the United Way’s fund-raising campaign only if contributions could be withheld from Planned Parenthood of Maryland. Said Borders, “Recently, on the local and national levels, Planned Parenthood has begun an active public campaign to lobby for legislation supporting abortion. This aggressive and public advocacy by Planned Parenthood demands a response.”

The cost of reaching the lost has surpassed even “700 Club” show host Pat Robertson’s ability to raise money for the Christian Broadcasting Network. For the first time, CBN will carry commercials, thereby reaching into the marketplace pocketbook for advertising dollars to reach the lost. Companies opting for a piece of the network’s projected audience of 15.5 million homes are Richardson-Vicks, makers of Vicks Ny-Quil, Formula 44, Oil of Olay, and Clearasil; Newsweek, General Mills, Time-Life, and Oscar Mayer.

Oral Roberts, Rex Humbard, and Jerry Falwell—watch out: the Catholics are coming to television. “With the deregulation of the broadcast industry and the mass purchasing power the electronic church has applied to the broadcast medium,” said Edwin O’Brien, director of communications of the New York archiodcese, “the Catholic church is being effectively shut out of over-the-air broadcasting.” The Roman Catholic church is therefore planning a nationwide television network, with headquarters in New York, that will link parishes, parochial schools, and colleges by satellite and cable. The Catholic network is expected to be operational by 1984.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be, said Shakespeare—and the California Supreme Court. Citing separation of church and state, the court ruled it is unconstitutional for the state to lend textbooks to private and parochial schools. Lost is a $3.6 million state program that annually provided 50 percent of textbook needs for participating schools, 90 percent of which are religious. The loan program had been challenged in a suit by the California Teachers Association and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. State officials said they would undertake an immediate review of other programs that involved private schools and students in an effort to see if they might be affected by the court’s decision.

Private charities now can expect an $18 billion drop in donations over the next four years. According to a study by the Urban Institute of Washington, D.C., tax cuts expected to spur investment by upper-income taxpayers, who usually pay some 40 percent of donations to charity, will also reduce their incentive to donate by placing them in lower tax brackets. In addition, what these taxpayers would have paid in taxes they are now able to save, providing even less incentive to give the money away. “It’s a triple whammy against the nonprofit organization,” said Brian O’Connell, president of the Independent Sector, a coalition of 320 foundations that commissioned the study.

The Devil made him do it, say two Connecticut lawyers defending 20-year-old Arne Johnson, accused of first-degree murder. Dubbed “the Brookfield demons” by local residents of the town where the crime occurred, the case has provoked national attention as the first in legal history in which demon possession will be argued as a defense. Johnson’s devils, say his lawyers, descended when he challenged the ones attacking his girlfriend’s 11-year-old brother, David Glatzel, saying, “Take me on instead; come into my body.” It seems they obliged. Murder resulted from his grotesque behavioral change.