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THE

SEMINARY

BULLETIN

“The Teaching Office in the Reformed Tradition” Ronald C. White, Jr.

Editorial

The Ministry of God Thomas W. Gillespie

Opening Convocation, September 18, 1983

And He Called Them His Disciples Marvin McMickle

Opening Communion Service, September 19, 1983

Education, the Gospel, and the Marginal Craig Dykstra

The Empowering Gospel: D. Campbell Wyckoff s

Concept of the Guiding Principle Donald B. Rogers

The Black Presbyterian Church and Its Rural

Ministry James H. Costen

Emile Cailliet: Christian Centurion Richard J. Oman

Princetoniana

Memorial Tributes

John Alexander Mackay (1889-1983)

Norman Victor Hope (1908-1983)

VOLUME V, NUMBER 1

NEW SERIES 1984

PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Thomas W. Gillespie
President

John M. Templeton, President

Robert M. Adams
James F. Anderson
Clem E. Bininger
Robert W. Bohl
John H. Donelik
Peter E. B. Erdman
Rosemary H. Evans
Milton A. Galamison
Sarah B. Gambrell
Francisco O. Garcia-Treto
Helen H. Gemmill
Carl H. Geores, Jr.
Margaret L. Harmon
Alexandra G. Hawkins
C. Thomas Hilton
J. Roger Hull, Jr.

Bryant M. Kirkland
Johannes R. Krahmer
Henry Luce III

Eugene C. Blake
J. Douglas Brown
John G. Buchanan
Frederick E. Christian
Allan M. Frew
John T. Galloway
Henry E. Hird

BOARD OF TRUSTEES
David

Robert M. Adams, Secretary
William E. Lawder, Treasurer

TRUSTEES EMERITI

James I. McCord
President Emeritus

i. Watermulder, Vice-President

Donald C. McFerren
Dale W. McMillen, Jr.
Earl F. Palmer
George T. Piercy
William A. Pollard
Clifford G. Pollock
William H. Scheide
Laird H. Simons, Jr.
Frederick B. Speakman
John M. Templeton
William P. Thompson
James M. Tunnell, Jr.
Karen L. Turner
Jeffrey R. Wampler
Samuel G. Warr
David B. Watermulder
Charles Wright
Ralph M. Wyman

Weir C. Ketler
Harry G. Kuch
Raymond I. Lindquist
John S. Linen
J. Keith Louden
Irving A. West

The Princeton Seminary Bulletin

VOL. V NEW SERIES 1984 NUMBER 1

Ronald C. White, Jr., Editor

J. J. M. Roberts, Book Review Editor

CONTENTS

“The Teaching Office in the Reformed Tradition”

Ronald C. White, Jr.

Editorial

The Ministry of God

Thomas W. Gillespie

Opening Convocation, September

18, 1983

And He Called Them His Disciples

Marvin McMickle

Opening Communion Service, September 19, 198 3

Education, the Gospel, and the Marginal

Craig Dyjstra

The Empowering Gospel: D. Campbell WyckofPs

Concept of the Guiding Principle

Donald B. Rogers

The Black Presbyterian Church and Its Rural

Ministry

James H. Costen

Emile Cailliet: Christian Centurion

Richard J. Oman

Princetoniana

Memorial Tributes

John Alexander Mackay (1889-1983)

Norman Victor Hope (1908-1983)

Sermons

The Tacit Dimension of Ministry

Thomas W. Gillespie

Christian Unity in a Wounded World

Paul A. Crow, Jr.

5°

Spirituality of the Struggle

John W. de Gruchy

Bible Study on Peace: Ephesians 2:11-3:21

Cullen I K Story

Book Reviews

The Faith of the Old Testament: A History, by Werner H.

Schmidt Ben C. Ollenburger 67

Women Recounted: Narrative Thinking and the God of Israel,
by James G. Williams

Elizabeth Gaines 68

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Colossians, Philemon, by Petei T. O’Brien

Otto Reimherr

7°

The Church, by Wolfhart Pannenberg

David J. Bryant

Message and Existence: An Introduction to Christian Theology,
by Landon Gilkey

Mar\ Kline Taylor

Romantic Idealism and Roman Catholicism: Schelling and the
Theologians, by Thomas F. O’Meara

Walter Sundberg

Birth and Death: Bioethical Decision-Making, by Paul D.
Simmons

William DeVeaux

Christian-Marxist Dialogue in Eastern Europe, by Paul Mojzes

Charles C. West

Pastoral Theology, by Thomas C. Oden

H. Dana Fearon III

Discovering the Church, by Barbara Brown Zikmund

William D. Howden

The Twentieth Century Pulpit, ed. by James W. Cox

Donald Macleod

Biblical Preaching: An Expositor’s Treasury, ed. by James W.
Cox

Thomas G. Long

The Light Within You, by John R. Claypool

William D. Howden

Stained Glass from Medieval Times to the Present, by James L.
Sturm and James Chotas

Donald Macleod

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

The Bulletin is published three times annually by the Theological Seminary
of the United Presbyterian Church at Princeton, New Jersey 08542.

Each issue is mailed free of charge to all alumni/ae and on exchange
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Editor Book, Review Editor

Ronald C. White, Jr. J. J. M. Roberts

All correspondence should be addressed to the Editor and accompanied
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The policy of the Bulletin is to publish lectures and sermons by Princeton
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“The Teaching Office in the Reformed Tradition”

by Ronald C. White, Jr., Editor

The Teaching Office as an integral ministry of the church needs to be redis-
covered and affirmed. In recent years many other aspects of ministry have been
accented. Emphasis has been placed on the minister as enabler or administrator.
There has been increased interest in developing skills in counseling and organ-
izational development. Interest in preaching is bursting out all over. But where
have all the teachers gone?

Many have gone to the academy — colleges, universities, and seminaries. And
there the good students are spotted and encouraged to teach — but in the academy,
not in the church. This cloistering of the Teaching Office in an academic en-
vironment has not always been the case.

The subject of the Teaching Office has special poignancy for those within the
Reformed family. In The Institutes of Christian Religion John Calvin set out four
offices for the church: pastors, doctors, elders, and deacons. On returning from
his Strasbourg sojourn, Calvin presented to the Genevan city council a schedule
of ecclesiastical organization calling for a fourfold public ministry of the Reformed
churches. The second order, the doctor, was charged with “teaching the faithful
in wholesome doctrine.”

Despite this historical foundation, the second office somehow atrophied in the
intervening centuries. It did not die. One place where it lived on was in New
England. For example, in 1632 the Boston First Church ordained John Cotton
as teacher to serve alongside the ordained pastor, John Wilson. The next year
the newly organized Church of Cambridge selected Thomas Hooker as its pastor
and Samuel Stone as its teacher. The landmark Cambridge Platform of 1648
included provisions for the Teaching Office based not in the school but in the
parish.

Today I am discovering in many places persons aware of the tradition of both
Calvin and various followers and eager to translate the Teaching Office into
contemporary models. People are often working creatively in their own contexts
but in isolation from each other. These doctors of the church may have something
to say to all of us.

It is critical that we be clear about what is being commended. “Teaching
Office” can be abstract or amorphous. I am speaking concretely about a teacher.
The Association of Theological Schools sponsored a series of conferences recently
on the Teaching Office. The ecumenical dialogue was informative as we examined
the Teaching Office in the church, whether it be resident in pope, bishop, or
theologian. We talked a lot about the movement of information from the top
down, but we had a harder time envisioning teaching from the bottom up, with
the teacher hard at work at the local or parish level. Teaching is a high calling;
but if it is reserved only for the higher ecclesiastical or theological echelons of
the church, it will not finally do the job of “teaching the faithful in wholesome
doctrine.”

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

A persistent problem is that many conversations about education never quite
get to the teacher. Yes, it is important to think through educational philosophy,
but we need to set apart persons to teach. Yes, we need to coordinate Christian
education programs, but potentially gifted teachers are often consumed in ad-
ministrative responsibilities. In the course of preparing this editorial I have talked
with numbers of able persons who want to exercise a teaching ministry but find
themselves hamstrung by multiple other duties.

Perhaps this Teaching Office is beginning to sound like a new elitism. But to
be set apart is only to recognize the imperative of the task. We so often find
ourselves apologetic about teaching and learning. We can count the number of
people we see in a busy afternoon, so counseling and calling can be measured
in terms of usefulness, but how can we justify closeting ourselves away in our
studies? To speak about the Teaching Office really involves the redefinition of
our ministries.

To learn more about the teaching ministry and to encourage its practice, a
continuing education seminar was convened at Princeton. Individuals were in-
vited who were trying to work out the implications of the Teaching Office in
their various ministries. The group included ministers in both single and multiple
staff churches, a college teacher who is a ruling elder, a clergy couple sharing
an educational ministry, and a person with teaching and training responsibilities
in a paraparochial youth ministry. One participant with the title “teaching minister”
was set free by his congregation lor an extensive ministry which included Bible
study groups in the parish — several utilizing Greek and Hebrew exegesis — and
discussion groups for professionals in several center city locations.

Over the course of four days together we probed the historical background
of the Teaching Office, shared in Bible study, explored the relationship between
preaching and teaching, and struggled toward strategies for implementing a
teaching ministry. Out of our time together emerged a covenant to support each
other in the teaching ministry. One participant decided to return and renegotiate
his call if the teaching ministry was to be fulfilled in his congregation.

Finally the group decided to meet again in one year. In between we set ourselves
some assignments. In almost every session we were pushed back again and again
to the nature and meaning of the church. We realized that our understanding
of the church will determine whether or not learning and teaching are central
or peripheral. For the coming year we decided to study Ephesians and several
theological studies on the church. Each person will also teach Ephesians in his
or her own context as part of the effort to work with our people in exploring
both the nature of the church and the teaching ministry. In between our Princeton
meetings we would pair ourselves by regions so that we could be accountable in
both our frustrations and accomplishments.

III

In this second year a primary focus will be on the dynamics of teaching. If
teaching is an office, it is also a gift. We have all learned from good teachers.
But what makes them good?

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

We are convinced there is a dynamic relationship between teacher and content.
If Phillips Brooks defined preaching as “truth through personality,” we need to
keep in mind both sides of the equation in teaching. There are many personalities
out there who seem to exhibit more charisma than content. At the same time,
who has not come away from a meeting convinced that the content was solid,
but the communication of the material never made it from teacher to class or
congregation. There is a critical if difficult to define process of transmission that
makes learning lively. The learner needs to trust the teacher both in terms of
personal integrity and mastery of subject matter.

We agreed that central to the teaching ministry is biblical teaching. For the
church reformed, the process of re-forming comes from a people in intimate
conversation with the scriptures. In our meetings we did not want simply to talk
about what we need to do but rather to do it. So we began each day with Bible
study. The format this year promises to be rich with the background of our joint
teaching of Ephesians as our catalyst.

“Teaching the faithful in wholesome doctrine” is a high calling. The call here
is not so much to restore an office as to encourage a ministry. We need a wider
conversation about the shape of that ministry in the contemporary tapestry of
ministerial forms. But whatever the form, people are eager for ministers who
can teach so that the there and then of Christian truth and love intersects the
here and now.

The Ministry of God

by Thomas W. Gillespie

Dr. Thomas W. Gillespie began his tenure
as President of Princeton Theological Semi-
nary on September i, 1983.

Opening Convocation, September 18, 1983

Dean Massa, faculty colleagues, ad-
ministrative associates, fellow stu-
dents, and honored guests: Permit me
a personal word of reminiscence.

The last time I stood in this pulpit,
I was preaching my Middler sermon
here at the Seminary. The assigned text
was John 16:33, * the world you have
tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have
overcome the world.” Even a charitable
memory recalls a homiletical effort that
generated more tribulation than cheer.
My concern was to expound and ex-
plain precisely how and under what
conditions Jesus had overcome the world.
The result was accurately stated in the
critique which followed.

Professor Macleod said to me: “Mr.
Gillespie, if your name were not on this
manuscript, I would have sworn that
it had been written by George Adam
Smith and preached to Queen Victoria.
Mr. Gillespie, come down from your
theological high horse and preach to
Aunt Fannie in the front pew.”

That was wise counsel, and for the
past thirty years I have tried to honor
it. Tonight, however, it is not Aunt
Fannie who is sitting in the front pew
or, for that matter, in any of the pews.
Given this special congregation and oc-
casion, perhaps it is permissible for me
to mount my horse again in an en-
deavor to speak theologically on the
theme of the ministry of God.

For a decade now I have served as
a member of our Presbyterian delega-
tion to the Consultation on Church
Union. It has been a rich and rewarding

experience. With it, however, has come
a big surprise. I have discovered that
the most divisive issue among the par-
ticipating churches is not our theology
of Scripture and Tradition. Neither is
it our understanding of Creeds and
Confessions, nor our theology of the
Sacraments. It is not even our diverse
liturgical practices. The most divisive
issue among us is the nature of the min-
istry in the church.

Traditionally, in ecumenical conver-
sations and elsewhere, this theme has
been approached at the formal level of
offices, orders, and ordination. In Ro-
man Catholicism, for example, the point
of departure until recently has been the
priesthood with its clerical and hier-
archical orders. In our Reformed tra-
dition, despite its lip-service to the
priesthood of all believers, the starting
line has been the ministerial orders for-
mulated by Martin Bucer at Stras-
bourg, implemented by John Calvin at
Geneva, and modified a century later
by the Westminster Assembly at Lon-
don. Thus when a Presbyterian speaks
of “the ministry” of the church, the
usual reference is to our threefold ec-
clesiastical order of pastors and elders
and deacons.

Let me state categorically that the
traditional approach is the wrong ap-
proach. The ordained offices of the
church are not the proper point of de-
parture for a theology of the ministry.
In support of this denial, I submit to
you three considerations.

First, beginning our theology of
ministry with the offices of the church
leads inevitably to an unhealthy cleri-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

calism. The “clergy” are defined as that
group within the church which by or-
dination has “a part” (Greek: /{lews) in
the ministry. The rest of the church is
defined as the “laity” (Greek: laos),
meaning the unordained “people” who
have no part in the ministry. The church
is thus divided into two distinct classes
of believers it not into two separated
castes. There are the ministers and there
are those to whom these ministers min-
ister. Where this ministry is conceived
in terms of priestly functions, the peo-
ple of God live in a two-story house.
The clergy occupy the “upstairs” and
the laity the “downstairs.” A non-
priestly version of the ministry, like our
own, results in a “split-level” living ar-
rangement. Here the staircase may be
shorter, but the “upstairs/downstairs”
mentality remains. What is ironic about
all this is the fact that a theology of
ministry is transformed into a sociology
of status. I would argue that any the-
ology of ministry that turns upon the
question of status is by definition false
doctrine.

The second consideration follows
from the first. If beginning our theol-
ogy of ministry with the offices of the
cburch is an invitation to clericalism,
the acceptance of this invitation results
in a part where only a few are asked
to dance. Without question, the scope
of the church’s ministry is severely lim-
ited to the work of ordained officers.
No matter how strongly we may ad-
vocate a “trickle down” philosophy of
“Christian service,” the impression is
given that the ministry belongs to the
ordained. One layman put it graphi-
cally, “My task in the church is to show
up, sit up, pay up, and shut up.” His
name, I fear, is Legion — for he is many.
Such a consequence “short-stops” the
work of the Spirit, “short-sheets” the

work of ministry, and “short-changes”
the laos of God who are called to this
task.

The third consideration is the cri-
terion by which the two previous ones
are viewed negatively. Put simply, it is
this. Beginning our theology of min-
istry with the ordained offices of the
church is not where the Bible begins.
Our traditional doctrines of ministry
have certainly appealed to the scrip-
tures of the New Testament. Whether
Episcopal or Presbyterian or Congre-
gational in commitment, all ecclesias-
tical orders claim biblical warrant. Cal-
vin, for example, assumed that the New
Testament sets forth a discernible pat-
tern of offices that is both unified and
binding. In order to discern this unity
amid the bewildering variety of the tex-
tual data, however, he was compelled
to engage in exegetical procedures that
are highly questionable by our present
standards. Yet Calvin believed he had
faithfully represented the binding or-
der established by God. Others from
different traditions have shared Cal-
vin’s assumption but have drawn con-
flicting conclusions. How do we ex-
plain this? New Testament scholars
today argue that the conclusions are
conflicting because the assumption is
false. There is no unified and binding
order of ministerial office in the New
Testament. They point instead to the
evidence of diversity in this area and
to the traces of development within the
period represented by the canonical
documents. In other words, diversity
and development are the key terms in
any consideration of ministerial orders
and offices within the canon. If we seek
unity and continuity in a theology of
ministry, we must begin where the New
Testament itself begins.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Where that is may be stated clearly.
The New Testament begins with the
empowering of all believers by the Holy
Spirit from baptism for participation in
that ministry which belongs to the triune
God. It is perhaps a sign of the times
that we find a growing ecumenical con-
sensus on this perspective. The two
Tubingen theologians, Hans Kiing and
Jurgen Moltmann, may be cited as evi-
dence. Kiing, the Roman Catholic, be-
gins his discussion of ministry precisely
at this point in his volume on The Church.
Moltmann, the Reformed theologian,
follows the same line in his monograph,
The Church in the Power of the Spirit.
The ministry of the church is grounded
in the ministry of God who shares it
with the whole church for the sake of
the entire world.

Let me illustrate the point by some
exegetical remarks on i Corinthians 12.
Here, if anywhere, we have Paul’s full-
est single treatment of ministry in the
church. The crux of the matter is set
forth in vv. 4-1 1. I cite it from the Re-
vised Standard Version (with a few
Greek terms thrown in for free):

Now there are varieties of gifts ( cha-
rismata), but the same Spirit; and there
are varieties of service (< iiakpnia ) but
the same Lord; and there are vari-
eties of workings ( energemata ), but it
is the same God who inspires ( ener -
gein) them all in every one. To each
is given the manifestation of the Spirit
for the common good. To one is given
through the Spirit the utterance of
wisdom, and to another the utter-
ance of knowledge according to the
same Spirit, to another faith by the
same Spirit, to another gifts of heal-
ing by the same Spirit, to another the
working of miracles, to another

prophecy, to another the ability to
distinguish between spirits, to an-
other various kinds of tongues, to
another the interpretation of tongues.
All these are inspired ( energein ) by
one and the same Spirit, who ap-
portions to each one individually as
he wills.

The material theme of this passage
is established in verse 7 as “the mani-
festation of the Spirit.” The question is
where in the world the Spirit is man-
ifest. Paul’s answer is that the Spirit is
manifest in the Spirit’s wor\. That is
why the verb energein is used twice in
seven verses. The R.S.V. translates it by
the English word “inspire,” but that is
too weak. What the Greek verb means
literally is “to work,” that is, to effect
by action. Ministry is here defined in
terms of the activity of the Spirit in and
through the church.

But not the Spirit alone. This activity
is the work of the Spirit, the work of
the Lord, and the work of God. This
clear trinitarian formulation anchors
ministry in the work of the triune God.
There is no place for a “unitarianism”
of the Spirit or of the Son or of the
Father in the apostle’s understanding
of ministry. For it is grounded in the
action of the triune God.

How Paul characterizes this divine
activity is depicted by the three Greek
nouns that I gave you in the reading
of this text. Consider them in the re-
verse order of their appearance. There
are “varieties of workings” {energe-
mata). Of course! Energein is mani-
fested in its energemata , the work in its
workings, the act in its activity. What
the apostle is telling us here is that when
the triune God ministers something ac-
tually happens. And it happens because
God is at work in the world.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

There are also “varieties of service”
(< diakpnia ). Here our description of God’s
working in terms of “ministry” finds
its expression. It meets a genuine hu-
man need. And it does so at the price
of self-abasement. That is what the term
diakpnia meant in the first century. If
it signified social status, it was a lowly
status, the status of the servant who
waits on tables. Any theology of min-
istry that connotes any other kind of
status cannot claim to be Christian.
Ministry that is not diaconic is by def-
inition not ministry.

Finally, there are also “varieties of
gifts” {charismata). The working of God
is not only energetic and diaconic. It
also is charismatic. Much mischief in
the church of late has been perpetrated
under the banner of this term. And it
has been encouraged by the way cha-
risma has been translated. Our English
term “gift" suggests that something is
given, turned over, or entrusted by one
person to another. That, however, is
not the meaning of charisma. Students
of Greek will recognize that the word
is formed by adding a mu-alpha suffix
to the term charis, the word for “grace.”
Grammatically, mu-alpha suffixes are
used to convey the idea of the actual-
ization of something. Here it is used to
signify the actualization of grace. That
is what a charisma is — an actualization
of the power of grace. In this context
it means that God's unmerited, unde-
served, unearned love is actualized in
the ministry of the triune God. And if
we are to use these three terms as ad-
jectives, then they are properly ascrib-
able to God. It is the triune God, ac-
cording to Paul, who is energetic,
diaconic, and charismatic in ministry to
and through the whole church.

Yes, the whole church. The mem-
bership becomes the medium ol God’s

ministry. “To each is given the mani-
festation of the Spirit for the common
good” (12:7). “All these are worked by
one and the same Spirit, who distrib-
utes to each one individually as he wills”
(12:11). Through this distribution of the
Spirit’s ministry, every member be-
comes a co-worker with God. Every
member stands in the service of God
as a servant to the others in the church.
And every member needs the ministry
of the others. For this distribution of
ministry in the freedom of the Spirit
clearly implies that the Spirit works
everything through no one person or
group. If the apostle’s vision of ministry
can be reduced to a slogan, surely it is
this: “To each for the sake of all.”

Ill

This raises, of course, a crucial ques-
tion. Does such a theology of ministry
eliminate the need for orders and of-
fices of ministry ? Not according to Paul.
For he proceeds in this passage to ground
his theology of ministry in his theology
of the church. The text continues:

For just as the body is one and has
many members, and all the members
of the body, though many, are one
body, so it is with Christ. For by one
Spirit we were all baptized into one
body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or
tree — and all were made to drink of
one Spirit (12:12-13).

Paul’s point is that the context of the
ministry of God is the church as the
Body of Christ. The basis ot this met-
aphor is the reality of the human body,
a reality constituted by the unity of its
diverse members. Each member serves
a different function in the body and
thereby serves the body as a whole. The
coordination of these diverse functions
Paul attributes to the genius of the body's

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Creator. “For God has arranged the
organs of the body, each one of them,
as he chose” (12:18).

The Greek verb translated here as
“arranged” is tithemi, and it is not ac-
cidental that it appears again in the
summary statement of this chapter
where the reality of the human body is
applied analogically to the reality of the
church:

Now you are the body of Christ and
individually members of it. And God
has appointed ( tithemi ) in the church
first apostles, second prophets, third
teachers, then workers of miracles,
then healers, helpers, administrators,
speakers in various kinds of tongues
(12:27-28).

In other words, as God has ordered the
organs of the human body in the free-
dom of his creative activity so also he
has ordered the ministry of the church
in his redemptive activity.

The order envisioned here gives a
certain priority to the work of apostles,
prophets, and teachers. The use of or-
dinals (first . . . , second . . . , third . . .)
make that clear. The other ministries
are important but follow in no partic-
ular order of importance. Why this
should be so is evident from the com-
mon task of apostles, prophets, and
teachers. They all share in the ministry
of the Word, of the Gospel that creates
the church and continues to create it.
No doubt the apostles, prophets, and
teachers enjoyed a certain status in the
primitive Christian communities, but
the emphasis here as elsewhere falls upon
their function (their “ministry”) rather
than upon their person. Like the vital
organs of the human body, they are the
vital organs of the Body of Christ. But
a vital organ has no status apart from

its function. Its service to the body is
what makes it vital.

Now this embryonic ministerial or-
der of First Corinthians undergoes de-
velopment in the New Testament pe-
riod. Ephesians declares that “grace was
given to each of us according to the
measure of Christ’s gift” (4:7). Specif-
ically, however, “his gifts were that some
should be apostles, some prophets, some
evangelists, some pastors and teachers,
to equip the saints for the work of min-
istry, for building up the body of Christ”
(4:11-12). Here the initial threefold or-
der of apostles and prophets and teach-
ers has been expanded to include evan-
gelists and pastors. Those who are
convinced of the deutero-Pauline au-
thorship of Ephesians would go fur-
ther. Noting that the author speaks
honorifically of “the holy apostles and
prophets” (3:5), they argue that by this
time the apostles and prophets are ac-
tually a memory of the past. The func-
tioning order is now that of the evan-
gelists, pastors, and teachers. However
you may judge that opinion, two points
are indisputable. Here we have a de-
velopment of ministerial orders, and here
again the orders arise out of the grace
given to the entire community of faith
and serve “to equip the saints for the
work of ministry.”

A more dramatic change, at least in
terminology, appears in the Pastoral
Epistles. Tbe author of the two Letters
to Timothy and the one to Titus speaks
no longer of the apostles, prophets,
evangelists, pastors, and teachers. He
speaks rather of bishops, elders, and
deacons. Moreover, these functions are
now clearly offices that require filling
when vacated. We are looking in
through the Pastorals at that transi-
tional period which New Testament
scholars refer to as “early Catholicism.”

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

For here the foundation is laid for that
division of official labor in the church
which became the classical model in the
second and third centuries. Roman Ca-
tholicism built its orders of bishops,
priests, and deacons upon this foun-
dation. And it was this development
which was reinterpreted in the six-
teenth century by the Reformed Church
in terms of pastors, elders, and deacons.

Such developments should neither
surprise nor dismay us. For it is the
nature of bodies to develop. Change is
the order of life in the body. What mat-
ters is not the continuation of certain
descriptive titles of offices, but the
maintenance of those functions which
are vital to the life of the body. Thus
Moltmann writes of “special charges as-
signed by the community and directed
toward it,” special charges that “are
necessary and of essential importance.”
Without order of precedence or value,
he lists the following:

(i) The charge to proclaim the gos-
pel; (ii) the charge to baptize and
celebrate the Lord’s supper; (iii) the
charge to lead the community’s as-
semblies; (iv) the charge to carry out
charitable work.

In other words, “What are essential for
the community are: \erygma, kpinonia,
and diakpnia. For these the congrega-
tion needs preachers, presbyters, and
deacons” {The Church in the Power of
the Holy Spirit , p. 307).

But if the ministerial orders of the
church are variable, both historically and
situationally, the theology of ministry
which informs those orders remains
constant. The ministry of the church,
properly speaking, belongs to the triune
God who distributes the work of the
Spirit to each and every member of the
Christian community. Where God or-

ders certain functions of that ministry
for the sake of the Body of Christ, the
resultant “special charges” represent the
ministry of the whole church and serve
to make the whole church effective in
ministry. But where this ordering of
ministry results in a class or caste sys-
tem, where it divides the community
into “clergy” and “laity,” where it sep-
arates those who have “a part” in the
ministry from those who have no part
in it, there the theology of ministry au-
thorized by the New Testament is for-
saken.

What then is the significance of or-
dination within such a vision of the
ministry? The answer to this question,
I think, is twofold. On the one hand,
ordination has no significance with re-
gard to prestige. On the other hand, it
has great significance with regard to the
promise of God. Let me explain.

The term “ordination” does not oc-
cur in the New Testament with any
reference to our understanding of it as
an ecclesiastical rite. What we do find
in the Acts of the Apostles and in the
Pastoral Epistles are a few references
to “the laying on of hands” in connec-
tion with the undertaking of certain
tasks and the assuming of certain of-
fices. Two of the relevant verses in the
Pastorals do, however, provide us with
a theological connection between this
rite that we now call ordination and
the theology of ministry set forth by
Paul in 1 Corinthians. One is 1 Tim-
othy 4:14.

Do not neglect the gift {charisma) you
have, which was given you by pro-
phetic utterance when the council of
elders laid their hands upon you.

The other is 2 Timothy 1:6-7.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Hence I remind you to rekindle the
gift of God {charisma) that is within
you through the laying on of my
hands; for God did not give us a
Spirit of timidity but a Spirit of power
and love and self-control.

Here the Spirit’s empowering for min-
istry is associated with the ancient Jew-
ish practice of “the laying on of hands”
as an act of authorization for ministry.
The question, however, is whether the
rite confers the charisma or rather con-
firms the evident work of the Spirit.

Calvin appears to be ambivalent on
this point. On the one hand, he says:

It is clear that when the apostles ad-
mitted any man to the ministry, they
used no other ceremony than the lay-
ing on of hands. I judge that this rite
derived from the custom of the He-
brews, who, as it were, presented to
God by the laying on of hands that
which they wished to be blessed and
consecrated. . . . The apostles, ac-
cordingly, signified by the laying on
of hands that they were offering to
God him whom they were receiving
into the ministry (. Institutes , IV, III,
1 6).

On the other hand, he follows this by
stating:

However, they used it also with those
upon whom they conferred the vis-
ible graces of the Spirit (Ibid.).

What Calvin means by this “confer-
ring” of “the visible graces of the Spirit”
comes to expression in a very surprising
passage late in the Institutes. There he
designates ordination as an extraordi-
nary sacrament. Yes, I said a sacrament.
Here are his words:

The imposition of hands, which is
used at the introduction of the true

presbyters and ministers of the
Church into their office, I have no
objection to consider as a sacrament;
for, in the first place, that ceremony
is taken from the Scripture, and, in
the next place, it is declared by Paul
to be not unnecessary or useless, but
a faithful symbol of spiritual grace.
I have not enumerated it as the third
among the sacraments, because it is
not ordinary or common to all be-
lievers, but a special rite for a par-
ticular office (IV, XIX, 28).

Calvin’s definition of a sacrament should
be remembered at this point: a divine
promise of spiritual grace confirmed by
a visible sign. Quite evidently he views
“the laying on of hands” as the sign
which confirms “the grace of the Holy
Spirit” that God promises to those whom
he calls to ministry.

To the extent that we permit Calvin
to influence our understanding of the
Reformed theological tradition, we rec-
ognize a very high view of ordination
here. But what exalts this view is the
conviction of Calvin that ordination is
“a faithful symbol of spiritual grace”
for the work of ministry. Its purpose is
not to convey the ordained person a
special status within the community of
faith but to confirm to the ordained
person a special promise of the Spirit’s
power for the ministry to which he or
she has been called.

The reason why even such a high
view of ordination confers no special
status upon the ordained is the simple
fact that our only status as Christians
has already been conferred on us in
baptism. Jurgen Moltmann puts it this
way:

Even ordination, which takes place
once and for all and determines the
whole of life, makes no difference

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

here, for the “call” event of baptism
is already once and for all and de-
termines the whole of life. Ordina-
tion, with its conferring of a partic-
ular charge, cannot enter into
competition with baptism and can-
not outdo it (Ibid., p. 308).

Another way of saying it that is faith-
ful to the Pauline language tradition is
that our lives are justified by grace
through faith. Therein lies both our

identity and our status. “The Spirit bears
witness to our spirits that we are the
children of God” (Romans 8:16). Be-
cause our identity and status are given
to us through our believing, we do not
need to seek either through our min-
istering. In our ministry we are free to
serve the other. For this ministry be-
longs to God who is at work in the
world through lives that are open to
the power and presence of the Spirit.

The Rev. Marvin McMicfle, a native of
Chicago, has received degrees from Aurora
College and Union Theological Seminary, and
is currently enrolled in a D.Min. program. He
is pastor of St. Paul’s Baptist Church in Mont-
clair, New Jersey, and is also a Visiting Pro-
fessor of Preaching at Princeton Seminary. He
has taught New Testament and Blac\ The-
ology, and preaches frequently in area semi-
naries. This sermon was given at the Opening
Communion Service for the 1983-84 school
year.

Opening Communion Service, September 19, 1983

Text: “ In these days he went out into the hills to pray; and all night he continued
in prayer to God. And when it was day, he called his disciples, and chose from
them twelve, whom he named apostles; Simon, whom he named Peter, and
Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and
Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was
called the Zealot, and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became
a traitor." (Luke 6:12-16)

I want to suggest to you today that
we can learn much about the will of
God for the nature and composition of
the church in this country and around
the world by being attentive to the con-
figuration of personalities among the
twelve disciples of Jesus. In a good many
instances, our perceptions about those
twelve men are quite limited and nar-
row. Many of us might have difficulty
even remembering who they were. We
would know Peter, James, and John.

We might know Judas and Thomas
and Andrew. But beyond that our
knowledge becomes rather vague.

When we think of them, we think
of a group of fishermen who lived in
the same region, shared the same life-
style, and looked out upon the world
from the same perspective. The fact is
that the group assembled by Jesus was
not a homogeneous unit that was sim-
ilar in vocation or values or viewpoint.

It was a group with wide diversity. And
at two points, that diversity was literally

scandalous and startling. As we ex-
amine that diversity among the earliest
followers of Jesus, we are challenged to
give a new shape to the church in our
day; all the way from denominational
programs and personnel to the com-
position of our local congregations.

The first disciple I want us to meet
is a man named Matthew. His nation-
ality is Jewish and his vocation is tax
collector. Meet a man who serves as an
agent for the Roman Empire, perform-
ing a task that has earned him the hatred
and contempt of the Jewish people.
Matthew gathered tax money from the
Jews that was used primarily to support
the Roman army that was occupying
the land of Palestine. Other Jews looked
upon Matthew as a collaborator — one
who contributed to the oppression of
his own people at the hands of Rome.

There was, of course, another reason
why Matthew and men like him were
objects of scorn among the people of
Israel. Tax collectors worked with an

And He Called Them
His Disciples

by Marvin McMickle

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

extra-ordinary incentive. Each tax col-
lector was responsible for gathering a
certain amount of revenues from each
district. Anything he was able to gouge
out beyond that amount was his to keep.
Therefore, it was to Matthew’s personal
benefit to be as ruthless and relentless
as possible in gathering the taxes. So in
the eyes of other Jews, Matthew was
not simply contributing to their oppres-
sion at the hands of Rome, he was get-
ting rich in the process. It was for this
reason that tax collectors like Matthew
were a hated and despised group.

Yet, Matthew was one of the men
that Jesus chose to be one of his dis-
ciples. What a scandalous selection that
was. The average Jew would have no
association, public or private, with a tax
collector. For the average Jew, a tax
collector was Persona non Grata in the
synagogue, in the home, at all social
gatherings. For the average Jew, tax
collectors were always unwanted and
unwelcome. And yet, Jesus calls a tax
collector to be one of his disciples.

This raises a serious problem. Once
you select a man that everybody hates,
who else can you get to work and walk
by his side? What self-respecting Jew
in all of Palestine would follow Jesus
if he knew it meant walking along with
Matthew the tax collector? According
to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus did find some-
body who would work along with Mat-
thew: Simon the Zealot. What an un-
likely pair of co-workers they were:
Matthew the tax collector and Simon
the Zealot. After all, a zealot was a
fanatical, left-wing, revolutionary who
opposed anyone and anything having
to do with the Roman Empire, and I
would imagine that a tax collector would
be high on that list. Hundreds of Ro-
man soldiers had been killed by zealots,
and hundreds of zealots had been cru-

cified throughout Palestine as a result
of their attacks upon Roman authority.
And now Jesus calls his disciples, and
among them are Matthew the tax col-
lector and Simon the Zealot. And the
miracle is not just that Jesus called them,
but that they came together, and worked
together, and stayed together, and turned
the world upside-down together.

Why would Jesus settle upon this
pattern of personalities among his twelve
disciples? It is like having members of
the Black Liberation Army and the
Weather Underground become co-
workers with Jerry Falwell and the John
Birch Society. Jesus surely knew how
wide the socio-political gap was be-
tween Matthew and Simon, but he asked
them to bridge that gap, to come to-
gether despite all of their outward dif-
ferences, and to be his disciples. I am
sure it required a lot of patience and
forgiveness and love for Matthew and
Simon to build that new relationship.
And yet they did it, because that is what
Jesus asked them to do. And may I now
suggest to you that Jesus is asking no
less from you and me today. He is call-
ing upon his church to set aside all of
the man-made and self-imposed socio-
political divisions among us, to take one
another by the hand, and make every
phase of the church today just as di-
verse in its composition as it was when
Jesus called his first disciples, among
whom were Matthew and Simon.

It is to the everlasting shame of the
Christian community that we stand as
one of the most segregated and ho-
mogeneous institutions in society. The
phrase from Liston Pope remains true
after all of these years: Eleven o’clock
on Sunday morning is the most seg-
regated hour of the week in this coun-
try. In 90% of the cases, at least, when
Christians gather to worship and pray

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

they do so comfortably and conven-
iently clustered around a homogeneous
racial, cultural, or economic group. In
my own town of Montclair we have 40
churches. All of them are structured
around one homogeneous unit that rep-
resents at least 95% of the congregation.
The only exceptions are a handful of
blacks who have left black churches and
joined white congregations for one rea-
son or another. In my years in that
town, it has never occurred in reverse
order, with a white person seeking to
join a predominantly black congrega-
tion. And the way it is in Montclair is
the way the church is structured all
across this nation. People gathering to
serve God in the company of those who
look like them, live like them, think
like them. But is that the will of him
who established the church and who
called his disciples and chose Matthew
the tax collector and Simon the Zealot?

I know that Peter Wagner and Don-
ald McGavran are saying that the key
to church growth is homogeneity: ra-
cial and cultural sameness. I know that
they say that people like to come to
church without having to cross over too
many lines of social divisions. But do
you hold the Church Growth Move-
ment to be in tune with the will of
God? Is God pleased when you have a
large black congregation here and a large
white congregation there, who are out
of touch with one another? Is God
pleased when some congregations are
little more than extensions of the coun-
try club and the corporate boardroom,
while others are composed of people
who meet each other during the week
in the unemployment lines and welfare
offices? Is God pleased when we offer
our endless round of excuses and apol-
ogies for our continuing segregation in
the life of the church? Of course, we

all sing with much energy: “In Christ
there is no east or west, in him no soutn
or north, but one great fellowship of
love throughout the whole wide earth.”
But virtually every time we sing that
song, we are standing in a sea of racial
and cultural homogeneity. What a far
cry that is from that early fellowship
that included Matthew the tax collector
and Simon the Zealot.

If only Jesus had just called Peter,
James, John, and Andrew. They were
all from the same town, had the same
job, spoke in the same accent. And if
Jesus had meant for the church to be
parcelled out along homogeneous lines,
then he would have called only those
who had much in common. But the
church was never meant to be an in-
stitution shaped along the lines of
“Walton’s mountain” where everybody
is a carbon copy of the mind and ex-
perience and perspective of everybody
else. Jesus declared that clearly when
he picked that homogeneous unit of
Peter, James, John, Andrew, and added
to them Matthew the tax collector and
Simon the Zealot.

What is it that 1 am asking of the
Christian church in America? I am
calling for the full and final integration
of the church in every phase of her life
and work, and especially at the level of
local congregations. I am not calling for
any more Brotherhood Sundays or pul-
pit exchanges or symposiums on the
black church. Those things may be con-
structive, but they are not conclusive.
They are like a temporary cease-fire
during a prolonged war. For a short
period of time the shooting stops, but
not the war. After a time, the hostilities
resume, the fighting continues, and the
list of casualties steadily grows. Instead,

I am calling upon the church to join
hands across all of our man-made social

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

divisions and to tear down the remain-
ing forms of institutional racism and
economic injustice and sexual discrim-
ination that continue to frustrate the
will of God for his creation and for the
church. I am asking you to be faithful
to Jesus Christ. The will of God was
declared by Jesus in Luke’s Gospel in
two places. In Luke 4, Jesus was lit-
erally thrown out of the synagogue in
Nazareth, not because he claimed to be
the Messiah, but because he declared
that in the days of Elijah and Elisha
God’s love did not remain within the
borders of Israel, but in the days of
Elijah and Elisha it extended to a widow
in Phoenicia and a leper in Syria. In
Luke 18, the will of God was again
made known when Jesus said that peo-
ple would enter the Kingdom of God
from the north and the south, the east
and the west.

Shouldn’t the church be as bold and
courageous as the larger society around
us? NASA is sending black men into
space. General Motors put a black man
in charge of all of their legal affairs.
Why, even the Miss America Pageant
has discovered that “Black is Beauti-
ful.” Meanwhile we Christians con-
demn segregation in South Africa from
churches that are just as segregated as
South African society, in fact, if not by
law.

I know how hard a task this now
seems to appear. Many black Christians
are not anxious about serving God in
an integrated congregation. Their at-
titudes are based upon history. There
would have been no black church at
all, if white Christians had not turned

away our ancestors at the door of their
churches. And over the years, black
churches have become havens of rest,
relief, and renewal from an oppressive
white American society. Many black
Christians see the church not as a place
to work with white people, but as a
place to escape from them. I know how
hard the job now appears. White rac-
ism has not abetted, and as a result
black insecurity about their place in so-
ciety is also high.

So here we are with many white
churches that are dangerously close to
the words of Harry Emerson Fosdick:
“Rich in things and poor in soul.” And
with most black churches effectively
isolated from the life and work of the
majority of Christians in this country.
What shape will we give to the church
in this generation? Will it be integra-
tion at every level of the life of the
church or another 25-40 years of iso-
lation? Will we be informed by the so-
cio-political currents of this society, or
by the bold and decisive example of
Jesus who defied socio-political divi-
sions and distinctions and numbered
among his disciples Matthew the tax
collector and Simon the Zealot?

Let me close with this paraphrase of
a line from William Shakespeare: “To
be the faithful church of Jesus Christ
or not to be. That is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suf-
fer the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune, or to take arms against a sea
of troubles, and by opposing end them? "
It is this question that confronts the
church in the days to come.

Education, the Gospel,
and the Marginal

by Craig Dykstra

I would like to organize this essay
around two texts. The first comes from
Cam Wyckoff s book, The Gospel
and Christian Education (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1959), where he says
that “the aim of education is that we
may become persons who see things as
they are and who come to grips with
life” (p. 54). The second is a quotation
of Rabbi Hanokh that is used by Dor-
othee Soelle in her book, Choosing Life
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981). The
quotation is: “The real exile of Israel
in Egypt was that they had learned to
endure it” (p. 1). Soelle amplifies this
by saying that “the real exile of Chris-
tians in the First World is that we have
learned to put up with . . . exile” (p. 1).

In Choosing Life, Soelle provides what
seems to me to be a very illuminating
(and frightening) cultural analysis of our
condition as Christians in an affluent
society:

We do not look on our life in the
affluent society as if we were in Egypt.
On the contrary, we have adapted
ourselves to it to such an extent that
in the very midst of Egypt ... we
feel quite at home. We Christians in

The following two articles were delivered
as part of a colloquium to honor Professor
D. Campbell Wyckoff in May 1983. Dr.
Wyc\off retired as Thomas W. Synnott Pro-
fessor of Christian Education on August 31,
198^.

A native of Grosse Point, Michigan, Dr.
Craig Dykstra is currently Associate Professor
of Christian Education at Louisville Theo-
logical Seminary. He completed his under-
graduate work at the University of Michigan
and received the M.Div. and Ph.D. from
Princeton Theological Seminary. His books
include Vision and Character (Paulist Press,
1981). In 1984, Dr. Dykstra will join the
faculty of Princeton Seminary as Thomas W.
Synnott Professor of Christian Education.

the First World have adapted our-
selves to the Egyptian way of life,
and we have taken over the Egyp-
tians’ fundamental outlook — the as-
sumption, for example, that individ-
ualism is the highest stage of human
development; or the assumption that
history is a senseless seesaw; some-
times one group is up; sometimes —
after a revolution, perhaps — it’s an-
other. We have learnt very success-
fully to endure our exile — so suc-
cessfully that as Christians we no
longer see ourselves as being in exile
at all, or as strangers in a foreign
country. In fact we are more con-
cerned to Egyptianize the whole
world. . . . The Egyptian way of life
seems to us the natural one. We don’t
remember that once upon a time there
were people who preferred the des-
ert to our cities, and conflict to our
peace; that they chose hunger instead
of the meat we eat — meat produced
from the corn which the hungry lack.

In the First World we have learnt
to put up with exile, and that means
that we have even forgotten the thirst
for justice and righteousness. We have
become one with the objective cyn-

«4

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

icism of the prevailing culture (pp.
1-2).

Soelle goes on to describe the “Egyp-
tian" lifestyle as one which is centered
in what she calls “hedonistic fascism"
or "consumismo. This means that
meaning in life is essentially derived
from our consumption of goods — goods
which we do not need in any primary
sense, but which we are brought to need
only secondarily by a technological so-
ciety whose ultimate goal is simply to
keep the cycle of production and con-
sumption moving at whatever cost for
the sake of profit. Such a culture man-
ifests itself in the routinization and
trivialization of work, competition,
estrangement from one another,
achievement compulsion, militarism,
pleasure and enjoyment only through
having, exploitation of the nature world,
and finally mistrust of self and other
and fear of life. Our fear of life can be
seen most clearly in our desperate de-
sire to escape suffering — which, of
course, cannot really be done if we are
really to be alive.

To avoid suffering has advanced to
the position of a major strategy in
the consumer culture, whether phys-
ically by means of diversion, or po-
litically through blindness. We have
developed techniques of all kinds in
order to avoid suffering, but what
we are really avoiding is life itself.

. . . Apathetic freedom from suffer-
ing, from privation, from pain, and
from involvement has advanced to
the position of highest value. . . . Pre-
venting, avoiding, pushing away,
getting out of the way are becoming
the essential activities of life (pp. 16-

*7)-

This, for Soelle, is what life in exile
involves. And the tragedy is that for

the most part, we do not know it. We
have become so accustomed to it that
we think this is the only possibility.
Nonetheless, we do not find this form
of existence fulfilling. We feel it as a
kind of living death. But not really be-
lieving that there is any other way, we
have surrendered to cynicism. In exile,
we are all cynics.

There is, in fact, another way, how-
ever. There is, in fact, life. And the life
of faith is most fundamentally choosing
life: “ ‘Choose life’ presupposes that ‘life’
in this emphatic and absolute sense really
exists, and that we can choose it and
lay hold of it, or can throw it away or
miss it completely.” “Choosing life in
the face of death means chiming in with
the great ‘Yes’ to life.” It is “a ‘Yes’
without any conditions. It applies in
sickness and dying as well. It applies
above all to the people who have felt
themselves to be denied and without
dignity for so long that they have
come to terms with the situation. . . .
[Cjhoosing life is the very capacity for
not putting up with the matter-of-course
destruction of life surrounding us, and
the matter-of-course cynicism that is our
constant companion.” “Choosing life is
what the Christian tradition calls ‘faith' ”

(p. 7)-

Now w'hat does this have to do with
Wyckoff s definition of the aim of ed-
ucation and his theory of Christian ed-
ucation as he lays it out in The Gospel
and Christian Education ? Without
wanting to impute to Wyckoff Soelle’s
rather despairing analysis of contem-
porary first world culture, I do want to
maintain that Wyckoff s theory of
Christian education has significant
compatibility with Soelle’s understand-
ing of the place and function of Chris-
tian faith in relation to our culture.

Recall that Wyckoff s book begins
with a rather extensive analysis of “the

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

process and condition of culture.” His
analysis of the present culture con-
cludes that ours is a pluralistic, dy-
namic, complex, secular, and scientific
culture.

It is pluralistic in that there are no
generally agreed on foundations and
values undergirding it. It is dynamic,
however, since it is in search of such
foundations and values. Because this
search for unity of spirit is far from
consummation, the fabric of society
is held together by a highly complex
organizational structure, a sort of
culture-substitute which perhaps
should be recognized realistically as
all the common culture we have. The
very fact of this complex organiza-
tional structure as the symbol of our
culture makes it clear why as far as
we have a prevailing authority it is
secular, and why as far as we have
a prevailing hope it lies in science
(p. 27).

Wyckoff describes both the positive and
negative sides of this cultural situation,
but he does not miss our alienation from
nature, the fragmentation of the world
community, “the manipulation of small
nations by the larger powers, cynicism
in human relations, and an assumption
that the good life can be organized into
existence” (p. 22). All in all, his reading
of at least the negative side of our cul-
ture is very much akin to that of Soelle.
He does not see it as “a situation to be
bewailed,” as Soelle clearly does, but
one “to be seen for what it is, and dealt
with for what it is” (p. 27). Nonetheless,
it is a culture basically alienated from
the gospel (p. 45), and one “that is in
many ways hostile to” the Christian life
(p. 46).

For Wyckoff, the aim of all educa-
tion is that we may become persons
who see things as they are and who

come to grips with life. And what he
calls technical, liberal, and moral and
religious education are all necessary for
this. But really seeing things as they are
and coming to grips with life (can we
understand this now in what Soelle calls
the “emphatic and absolute sense”?) are,
for Wyckoff, terribly difficult and ul-
timately impossible outside of Christian
faith. He asks, rhetorically, “is this pos-
sible except from a fully Christian per-
spective?” (p. 54). His answer is clearly,
“No!”

Seeing things as they are implies
realism — realism in viewing history
and its meaning, realism in viewing
the contemporary scene, realism in
self-understanding. (These are so easy
to say, yet so unbearable to the hu-
man spirit in many of their impli-
cations.) The realism of seeing things
as they are means the recognition of
God’s sovereignty and judgment; the
recognition of man’s freedom, sin,
responsibility, and need; the recog-
nition of the significance of revela-
tion and redemption; the recognition
of and the incontrovertibihty of hope.
Seeing things as they are leads to
clarity of idea and attitude, and to
the clear motivation of completely
realistic intention.

Coming to grips with life implies
man’s action within the context of
things as they are, within the context
of his culture. It means the acquisi-
tion of the personal and social skills
needed for full and responsible par-
ticipation in the work of the church
and the world at every level. . . .

Education with such aims inevi-
tably implies a fully Christian per-
spective. To avoid a Christian per-
spective leads on the one hand to the
substitution of secular religious val-
ues, whose fate is to stand outside

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

the door of Biblical faith yearning
for what lies within but unwilling to
enter. Or it leads, on the other hand,
to limitation of aim and even to bit-
terness and cynicism (pp. 54-55).

The fundamental question, then, for
Christian education for Wyckoff is the
question of how it is we are to come
to see what is going on in us and around
us realistically given a culture which in
many ways blinds or distorts our vision,
and of how we can come to grips with
life. Put in Soelle’s terms this is the
question of how we can come to rec-
ognize when we are in exile and have
become so adapted to it we do not know
that we are, and of how we can choose
life instead of death. For neither Wyck-
off nor Soelle is there an option of es-
caping culture. For both, the question
concerns “the redeemed life — the life
transformed by . . . God” (Wyckoff, p.

53)-

If this is the task, its enormity and
difficulty become immediately appar-
ent. Wyckoff lays his finger on one part
of the problem when he says that
“Christian education reflects the nature
of the culture as it has affected both
the church and education” (p. 42). The
church “is a social institution, and . . .
as such it always tends to mirror its
culture” (p. 43). Our problem is that
our theologies tend to be theologies of
what Walter Brueggemann calls “royal
rationality” — a rationality based in the
presumptive life-world, vested inter-
ests, social structure, and authority hi-
erarchy of the dominant culture (cf. The
Creative Word [Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1982], ch. 3). And our problem
is also that our educational processes
tend to be processes that are themselves
consumeristic, technological, competi-
tive, and specialistic (cf. Wyckoff, p.

42). In other words, both in what we
believe and in the way we communicate
it, we are in danger in the church and
in its educational ministry of simply
saying what the culture says in the same
way in which the culture says it. And,
as Wyckoff warns, “Any education, re-
ligion, or religious education that the
culture devises and uses in this situation
is not only a party to that sin, but suc-
ceeds in compounding it” (p. 49).

Wyckoff s answer to this difficulty is
to argue that, even so, the church is still
the church and it has a gospel to pro-
claim. The church, he says, “is the body
of Christ, and as such tends to resist
cultural inroads and to work for the
redemption of culture” (p. 47). The gos-
pel, defined as “God’s redeeming ac-
tivity in Jesus Christ” (p. 98), is the
“heart and point of God’s Word” — a
message given to us for us to proclaim,
our clue to the meaning of history and
of existence, and the reason for and
power of the church’s existence (see pp.
98-108). The work of the teaching min-
istry of the church is to deliver the gos-
pel message, help people prepare for
response to it, show them how to re-
spond, and help them to see and work
out the fullness of its implications (see
p. 108). So long as the church carries
out this ministry, we can trust that we
will not be entirely overcome by the
culture and that the way to redeemed
life will remain open.

I believe that all of this is true, but
I am not sure that it goes far enough.
The gospel, as Wyckoff makes plain, is
good news. But what happens to it in
a church where it is no longer really
news ? What happens when the story
and the message have been told so often
and have become so domesticated that
the gospel can no longer be heard as
gospel , as something new at all? Fred

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Craddock points to this problem in his
book, Overhearing the Gospel (Nash-
ville: Abingdon Press, 1978), where he
discusses at great length Kierkegaard’s
dictum: “There is no lack of infor-
mation in a Christian land; something
else is lacking.” It is true, of course,
that it is impossible to say that ours is
a Christian land in any deep sense. But
it is also true that much of the Christian
message has, at least on its surface, been
proclaimed, told, taught, preached. Why
then is our culture still so blind — and
more, the church still so captive?

Almost everyone in the church knows
the story of Abraham and Sarah and
the journey of the household. In the
fall quarter of 1982-83, a unit on Abra-
ham and Sarah appears in the curric-
ulum material for young children that
is sponsored by the Presbyterian churches
and other denominations. The key verses
are Genesis 11:29-12:2. The children
are told the story of Abraham’s and
Sarah’s journey. The session is devel-
oped by asking the children how they
feel when they are moving (family trips,
moving to a new house, etc.), and then
about how they think Abraham and
Sarah might have felt. Finally, the chil-
dren take a simulated trip through the
church — a “long” journey — until they
reach their destination, set up a tent,
talk over the journey, sing a song they
have learned, and thank God for caring
for them.

What is going on here? It seems quite
innocent. Abraham and Sarah moved.
What better way to help the children
understand this story than by getting
them to recall their own experiences of
moving and by simulating a trip? But
there is a problem. The problem is that
this story becomes a story about mov-
ing. I move, you move, we all move —
even Abraham and Sarah. It is a com-

mon human experience. And the gospel
in it is that we can depend upon God
to grant us safe journey in whatever
kind of move we make. God loves us
and cares for us — so if you have to move,
do not be afraid.

Unfortunately, the biblical story is
not about this at all. Abraham and Sarah
are not just anybody moving. They are
immigrants called to a frightening
journey, not only physically but cul-
turally. They are, from the point of
view of the Yahwist writer, writing in
Jerusalem to a people who have suc-
cumbed to urban, royal culture, the
progenitors of Israelite faith who dare
to walk right straight out into the wil-
derness', right straight out of their own
settled life, on the basis of a call and a
promise from God. What has happened
in this lesson is that a gospel which calls
us to risk the desert rather than suc-
cumb to cultural death has been do-
mesticated into a “gospel” of trust in a
God who will care for us wherever we
move. It speaks to little children who
are moved around from one place to
another year after year because their
parents are transferred by corporations
that care not one wit for family roots
and the building up of personal and
social networks so that communal life
can be sustained and nourished. It tells
them that all this is all right, when in
fact it may not be; that God will com-
fort them, and that the turmoil they
feel each time they have to leave their
best friends and home should be suf-
fered quietly and forgotten when in fact
God’s word may be a word of protest
against this whole pattern of life.

My point in all of this is that it is
very hard to proclaim the gospel in a
cultural situation which turns that gos-
pel toward a justification of its own
ways. When we tell the story, we too

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

often tell a different story using the
narratives of the Bible to do so. And
we see so little of this when we do it.
It seems to me that if the gospel is to
be proclaimed and heard, it will depend
not only on what is proclaimed, and on
how it is proclaimed, but also upon the
context in which it is proclaimed. And
that context, I want to argue, cannot
be the context of the predominant cul-
ture. It will have to be at the margins
of that culture.

Brueggemann provides us some as-
sistance here in his discussion of the
prophetic dimension of the church’s ed-
ucational task:

The prophet speaks God’s alterna-
tive word, which stands free from
and over against the dominant com-
munity. That free word, however, is
better understood as reflective of a
community not fully contained by
the royal rationality. There is a sur-
prising affinity between the word of
Yahweh and the community of the
marginal ones in which the prophet
lives and from which he/she speaks.

This is a most important resource
for education. Though it may be ed-
ucationally difficult, an important
implication is that the texts we re-
gard as authoritative and canonical
are in fact marginal in their origins
and claims. Education may require
reexperiencing that kind of margin-
ality both in terms of social power
and in terms of rationality (p. 50).

What does this suggest for Christian
education? It suggests that the gospel
is most likely to be proclaimed and ap-
propriated in those contexts in which
the enculturation processes have bro-
ken down. It suggests that Christian
education which enables us to see things
as they are and come to grips with life

must lead people to and raise their con-
sciousness of the culturally marginal in
social and personal life in order for the
gospel proclamation to have its re-
demptive power.

There is such a thing as unsuccessful
enculturation. This happens in the cases
of “social outcasts.” One may be a social
outcast for biological reasons. One may
be, for example, physically “deformed”
or mentally “retarded.” Or one may be
outcast because one has broken signif-
icant social norms. In all cases, the so-
ciety will label such persons — give them
a marginal place in the social structure
and a self-conception against which there
is virtually no subjective defense. He
or she is what he or she is supposed to
be, to him- or herself, to significant
others, and to the community as a whole.
To be sure, one may react to this fate
with rage or resentment, but it is as an
inferior and marginal being that one
resents and rages.

But suppose that such outcasts begin
to congregate in enduring groups. And
suppose a new counter-reality is offered
to them which they begin mutually to
affirm. In this case, counter-definitions
of reality and self-identification now
begin to arise, and persons in that group
may come to discover “hidden depths”
within themselves that they never re-
alized before. Who am I? Society says
that I am a “nigger,” an “idiot,” a “crip-
ple,” a “drunk” — but that is essentially
wrong. No, what I really am is a child
of God, a disciple. When this happens
a cleavage appears between “appear-
ance and reality” in the individual’s and
in the group’s self-apprehension. She is
no longer what she is supposed to be.
She looks like and acts like a “cripple,”
but really she is a child of the covenant.
When this claim begins to be made
known in the larger social structure,

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

disequilibrium begins to take place and
the set of cultural definitions begins to
be upset. In the end, such cultural def-
initions become permanently unstable
for it is no longer possible to “nail down”
everybody’s place and identity — even
one’s own. After all, if it is possible for
“cripples” to refuse to be what they are
supposed to be, it is possible for anyone
to make that refusal.

In this light, it is extremely impor-
tant to underscore Brueggemann’s point
that our canonical texts emerged from
situations like this. Christianity began
as a religion of the socially marginal
and of those who were not so marginal
but who were for some reason willing
to make common cause with the mar-
ginal. Now, of course, it is possible to
re-enculturate all the new language so
that “Christian” comes to mean a mem-
ber of the church, understood primarily
as a social organization, “disciple” be-
comes one who performs certain roles
in certain institutions, and in-groups and
out-groups form all over again. What
I am arguing, however, is that the place
where really new seeing may very well
take place is in the “cracks” of the en-
culturation process — ever transform-
ing it, ever renewing it, ever upsetting
it — and not so much in it or as a result
of it.

Furthermore, one does not have to
be a member of a socially outcast group
in order to have this kind of experience.
There are always elements of our per-
sonal, subjective lives which have not
been socialized, or which have been re-
pressed or controlled for the purposes
of maintaining ourselves in the cultural
system, but which keep returning to us
and haunting us nonetheless. Subjec-
tive life is not completely enculturated.
Every person can and does often ap-
prehend himself or herself as being both

inside and outside the culture. This
means that even when the world of
everyday life retains its massive and
taken-for-granted reality, it is threat-
ened by the marginal situations of or-
dinary human experience that cannot
be completely handled culturally. One
of the most crucial such marginal ex-
periences, one which can never be com-
pletely socialized because we must ul-
timately face it alone, is our own death.
But there are others: intense suffering,
physical isolation, and even such strange
experiences as the shock of non-rec-
ognition of one’s own face in front of
the mirror, the unsettling suspicion that
one’s spouse and children are myste-
rious strangers, or the dreams and fan-
tasies we dare not reveal to anyone.

There are two ways of handling such
situations. One is to return as quickly
as possible to the everyday social reality
of firm and culturally approved roles
and identities. But the other is to stay
in and with such experiences long
enough to allow the question to arise
as to whether there is some other way
of experiencing and seeing reality than
the one our present culture gives us.

The gospel becomes “news,” I think,
at points of marginality. For those of
us who live in the “royal household”
as effective, respected, accepted mem-
bers in the dominant culture, that mar-
ginality may first be experienced only
at the point of our internal “strange-
ness” to ourselves. But if this inner
“strangeness” is met by the gospel, it
has the potential of opening one to the
estranged other — the stranger, the one
who is marginal to my own culture or
the one who lives in another culture
altogether.

In the case of the Bible study de-
scribed above, it may be that children’s
powerless but natural protests against

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

being uprooted time and again for the
sake of economic mobility provide clues
to more fundamental meanings of the
wilderness journeys than our own rather
optimistic interpretations. Farley ar-
gues that one of the characteristics of
redemptive existence is “the trans-
formed status of the stranger.” Here
the stranger is seen for what he or she
is: not primarily as threat, but as “fel-
low-sufferer and potential participant
in redemptive existence” ( Ecclesial Man
[Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975], p.
170). When the stranger is thus under-
stood, it becomes clear that “no type of
human being is excludable, no race,
lifestyle, age group is excluded” (p. 171).
Indeed, it may easily be that precisely
the stranger, the one who comes from
the margins of my dominant culture,
is the one who can most help me to see
the meaning of the gospel. As Fred-
erick Herzog tells us, “It was the poor
with the Bible in their hands who taught
us liberation theology in the South”
(Justice Church [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books, 1980], p. 3).

When one makes actual contact with
the “stranger,” the culturally marginal
other, and begins to learn from him or
her, then something else may begin to
happen. Because of one’s identification
with the stranger, one actually becomes
in some senses culturally marginal. One
begins, in at least some small degree,
to suffer with the stranger the suffer-
ings which social marginality brings.
One begins oneself to feel the power of
the dominating culture as alien through
this suffering. As a result — and again
through the power of the gospel — one
may begin to resist the authority, vision,
images, language, and power of the
dominant culture. And in this activity
of resistance, the clarity and life-giving

power of the gospel becomes most ap-
parent and most needful. For here, if
we are to see and live at all, it will only
be because of the vision which the gos-
pel gives us and the power that the
redemptive activity of God in Jesus
Christ provides. The power and vision
of the culture will not do, because we
now stand over against it.

The teaching ministry of the church,
understood as the work of enabling
people to see things as they are and
come to grips with life from the per-
spective of the gospel, is done, then, in
contexts where we sense our inner
“strangeness,” where we make contact
with others who are strangers to us by
virtue of their cultural marginality,
where we suffer with and for the other,
and where we engage in resistance to
the suffering that the dominating cul-
ture brings. As Brueggemann pointed
out, educationally this may all be very
difficult. Nonetheless, it means that
Christian education can no longer really
be done in highly parochial, culturally
segregated enclaves. The educational
ministry must break open the doors of
its congregations to bring its people into
contact with people who are different
from themselves — politically, econom-
ically, socially, linguistically, racially,
even religiously. Furthermore, even
within our congregations, those who are
mentally “retarded,” physically “de-
formed,” “enfeebled” by age, “imma-
ture” in their youth, or otherwise so-
cially deviant can no longer be kept
separated from the rest of us. In the
context of contact with these “others,"
there is a chance that the gospel may
be proclaimed and heard, that we may
see things as they are, come to grips
with life, and choose it.

The Empowering Gospel:
D. Campbell Wyckoff s
Concept of the Guiding
Principle

by Donald B. Rogers

Michael Cardew talked with hands
and voice as he shared with the
workshop potters gathered around him
the knowledge gained from years of
making stoneware pottery in England
and Africa. He had spent a long career
exploring the intricasies of clay and glaze
and fire, and the subtle relationship be-
tween function and form and beauty.
A workshop participant, hearing a
comment on stoneware glazing, asked
if that would also be true of porcelain.
Cardew replied, “Ah, that I do not know.
You see, porcelain is another lifetime.”
The years of that famous potter had
been spent mastering one area of the
larger field. His technical knowledge is
immense, but the persistent problem,
the enduring challenge was to produce
cups, pitchers, tea pots, and the like that
served their intended purpose. That did
not allow him time to learn porcelain,
too. The task of the potter is, to Car-
dew, to penetrate through the mastery
of technique to the wedding of form
and function. He commented, “I am
not very good at making coffee mugs
because I drink tea from cups.”'

Danielle, blond and proud, stands
comfortably before a group of stran-
gers, adults, in an unfamiliar setting,
and plays Schumann’s “The Two
Grenadiers” on the violin. When asked
to play she had responded, “What would
you like to hear?” She knows the first

1 Michael Cardew, Pioneer Pottery (London:
Longman Group Ltd., 1969). Cf. chapter 12,
“The Product,” pp. 237-254.

Professor Donald B. Rogers is a native of
Colorado. He received a B.A. from the Uni-
versity of Colorado and both the M.A. and
Ph.D. degrees from Princeton Theological
Seminary. Dr. Rogers currently serves as Pro-
fessor of Christian Education at United Sem-
inary in Dayton, Ohio. He is the author of
In Praise of Learning ( Abingdon , 1980).

26 pieces of the repertoire. Her mother
and/or father will be watching with in-
terest when she plays. They, although
not violinists, have been her teachers
along with Connie Rogers, her primary
teacher.

Danielle has been playing the violin
for 4 years. She is now 7 years old. She
will have completed the standard rep-
ertoire of the Talent Education Method
in about 8 more years if her current
progress continues at the same rate.

She is not a prodigy. She does not
work under the pressure of pushy par-
ents. She works at her own pace with
enjoyment, knows her progress, plays
with excellent technique, makes music.
Her tone is rich and full. She is not
unusual for there are thousands like her
all around the world. She, like those
thousands and thousands, have been for
many years the debtors to Sinichi Su-
zuki, the founder of the method.

With a few simple assumptions at
his feet, Sinichi Suzuki has added to
the lives of many children and their
parents, as he worked to help them know
the enriching quality of beautiful mu-
sic. One such assumption is that the
natural process by which the mother-
tongue is taught and learned is a sound
model for many other educational tasks.2

The Talent Education Method re-

2 Cf. Sinichi Suzuki, Ability Development from
Age Zero (Athens, OH: Ability Development
Associates, 1981). Cf. also Sinichi Suzuki, Nur-
tured by Love: A New Approach to Education
(Smithtown, NY: Exposition Press).

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

quires teachers to understand the tech-
nique of playing the instrument so well
that the curriculum can move in simple
steps from a variation on a Mozart tune
(Twinkle, Twinkle) to the Mozart D
Major Violin Concerto. The method
requires such a mastery of technical
knowledge that technique becomes the
quiet servant of the music, the teaching
of musical ability, the enhancement of
life.

“Thus Christian education reflects
the culture in which it lives. But Chris-
tian education is also concerned with
the culture creatively. . . . Christian ed-
ucation participates in rebuilding the
culture in which it lives.” This point is
that of D. Campbell Wyckoff writing
in 1959 in his book The Gospel and
Christian Education A The analysis of
culture proceeds as four questions are
raised, questions which cover the areas
of foundation and values, way of life,
authority, and source of hope.3 4

At that point in time Wyckoff s own
analysis is put in a summary form in
these words:

[Our culture] is pluralistic in that there
are no generally agreed on founda-
tions and values undergirding it. It
is dynamic, however, since it is in
search of such foundations and val-
ues. Because the search for unity of
spirit is far from consummation, the
fabric of society is held together by
a highly complex organizational
structure, a sort of culture-substitute
which perhaps should be recognized
realistically as all the common cul-
ture we have. The very fact of this
complex organizational structure as

3 D. Campbell Wyckoff, The Gospel and Chris-
tian Education (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1959), pp. 13-14.

4 Ibid., p. 21.

the symbol of our culture makes it
clear why as far as we have a pre-
vailing authority it is secular, and
why as far as we have a prevailing
hope it lies in science.5

The relevancy of that analysis is ex-
trapolated in the later work of William
Barrett, The Illusion of Technique: A
Search for Meaning in a Technological
Civilization .6 That work, too complex
to summarize in brief fashion, arrests
our attention. He addresses a fear. “We
can thus imagine a technical society of
the future that had conquered its ma-
terial problems but was afflicted with
a loss of meaning that its own technical
thinking left it unable even to grasp.”7
He speaks of a reliance on technique
among philosophers, one that has largely
waned today, but then says, “Yet the
belief in the decisive role of technique
has not vanished; it has passed from
the philosophers into the culture at large.
It has become a general faith, wide-
spread even when it is unvoiced, that
technique and technical organization
are the necessary and sufficient condi-
tions for arriving at truth; that they can
encompass all truth; and that they will
be sufficient, if not at the moment then
shortly, to answer the questions that life
thrusts upon us.”8

Wyckoff asks if we must not mirror
and critique our culture. Barrett asks
us to see a fascination with technique
as a major cultural entity. The next
question seems to be, have not we in
Christian education, thought and prac-
tice included, mirrored the technical
fascination without sufficient aware-

5 Ibid., p. 27.

6 William Barrett, The Illusion of Technique
(Garden City, NJ: Anchor Press/Doubleday,

•978)-

7 Ibid., p. xix.

8 Ibid., p. 8.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

ness of the danger there involved and
without adequate attention to the mov-
ing beyond technique in the practice of
creative nurture?

We are helped by Barrett in the anal-
ysis of technique. In its strictly tech-
nological sense, he says, it involves two
factors, “(i) There must be a clear and
distinct separation of the subjective and
objective components in any situation
in order for us to take rational hold of
the problem. (2) The objective problem,
thus isolated, is to be dealt with by a
logical procedure that seeks to resolve
it into a finite number of steps or op-
erations.”9

Dr. Wyckoff has helped many in the
field of Christian education to engage
in orderly thought about the tasks of
developing theory, curriculum, evalu-
ation, and practice. He has brought ob-
jectivity and logical procedure to the
field. A major continuity of reference,
both explicit and implicit to his work,
is through the use of his carefully stated
categories. In the vein of this paper the
received contribution of this major fig-
ure in the field has been one of assisting
the process of thought at the level of
technique. He has called for and dem-
onstrated the need for careful thought
in the responsible intertwining of the
contributions of the foundation disci-
plines and the development of a full
and comprehensive set of principles in
coherent theory. He has fostered giving
studious attention to the implications
for practice as well as the implications
of practice for the development of the-
ory and the questioning exploration of
the foundation disciplines.

Wyckoff demonstrates the technical
thought process in his article “Christian
Education Redefined.” Note this proc-

9 Ibid., p. 22.

ess description: “This preliminary def-
inition is treated analytically and com-
paratively, and criticized historically,
educationally, theologically, and behav-
iorally, and in terms of Christian ed-
ucation theory. The intention is to bring
out possible alternatives, and to provide
a basis for deciding among them. The
definition is then reformulated in ac-
cordance with the results of the eval-
uation, with comment on its technical
adequacy as a definition.”10

His contribution to the ongoing
process of Christian education has, in
a similar fashion, placed him in the role
of consultant to curriculum developers,
to the efforts to state and re-state the
objective for theory, and to other theory
and program efforts in a wide variety
of denominations and ecumenical
groups. What is not as evident is the
manner in which his technical precision
responds to the Barrett thesis and moves
the enterprise beyond technique.

The usage of Wyckoff s work is not
unlike the cultural tendency that can
be seen in the response to Cardew, the
level of interest in Suzuki, and the pro-
liferation of efforts among Christian
educators in recent decades to look for
technical assistance and little more. It
appears to be reflected in the attraction
of Christian educators to human sci-
ence data, to social science models, and
the patterning of education on technical
scaffolds of theology. In this we see
Christian education reflecting the cul-
tural inclinations laid bare by Barrett.

Yet in Wyckoff s own work, in its
fullness, lies the impetus to move be-
yond technique to the rooting of the
education task in what lies before,

10 D. Campbell Wyckoff, “Christian Educa-
tion Redefined” in George Johnston and Wolf-
gang Roth, The Church in the Modem World
(Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1967), pp. 203-204.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

within, and beyond technical thought
and technologically informed models of
practice. That impetus is seen in his
development of the concept of the
Guiding Principle.

This concept is described in these
words:

The guiding principle, in differen-
tiation from all of the other princi-
ples of theory, would suggest, infuse,
and steer the whole matter: it would
be at the heart of the setting of ob-
jectives; it would guide and check
every procedure and method em-
ployed in the curriculum; it would
serve as a guide to the selection of
curriculum content; it would suggest
how Christian education should be
set up, run, and improved; it would
serve as a guide to pruning out any
administrative system and device that
was not really germane to the church’s
faith, life, and work."

The criteria for such a principle are
then detailed:

it should be theologically adequate,
educationally adequate, integral to
the elements that make up Christian
education, at the heart of the process
of coming to grips with the Christian
faith, at the heart of the teaching
process, simple and clear.12

The power of the Gospel in this cen-
tered fashion in Wyckoff s life and work
is kin to the intensity of the words of
William Gayley Simpson, quoted in the
curriculum text To Know God which
Wyckoff wrote for publication in 1972,
“But here you have an exquisite sense
of value by which you know intuitively

" Wyckoff, The Gospel and Christian Educa-
tion, p. 86.

11 Ibid., pp. 87-88.

what is light for you and darkness; what
food and what poison; what true and
beautiful, strengthening, enlarging, and
full of life and what is false and ugly,
fettering, narrowing, and deadening.
Here is your central sun, illuminating
for you all that you look out upon, re-
vealing it at its true worth; and around
it your whole life is meant to swing”
(from Toward the Rising Sun).li (In this
curriculum piece Wyckoff illustrates the
manner in which the Gospel as Guid-
ing Principle is translated into practice.)
Another demonstration of the manner
in which the Guiding Principle informs
the task of Christian education can be
seen in Wyckoff s text for missionary
education for senior high youth.14

It is in this conceptual contribution
where, within his contribution to the
technical, Wyckoff moves beyond tech-
nique in a manner instructive to Chris-
tian educators today. The particular
statement concerning the gospel as
guiding principle may be moot. What
is not dismissable is the need to find
the means by which we can cling to the
standards of technical excellence he ad-
vocates, be it in theory or practice, with-
out losing ourselves and the church’s
primary educators, the laity, in a mael-
strom of complexities or a retreat into
simplistic refuges.

The echoing of Cardew and Suzuki
is in this respect. Neither of these two
ignores the contribution of excellence
in technological matters.

Cardew knows his craft. He has
committed himsell to a life-long explo-
ration of technique. Yet, he sits at the
wheel anew each time to fashion one

15 D. Campbell Wyckoff, To Know God (St.
Louis: Christian Board of Publication, 1972), p.
98.

M D. Campbell Wyckoff, In One Spirit (New
York: Friendship Press, 1958), pp. 16-22.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

of the basic raw materials of our earth
into the objects of everyday life. His
attention is riveted on the delicate shap-
ing that changes the clay in every di-
mension to the useful product. The end
result is not only functional adequacy,
but beauty and a certain intuitive en-
riching of one who uses the piece in
everyday life.

Suzuki, likewise, by his attention to
the detail of technique, in matters that
range from the placement of the feet
and holding the bow to the understand-
ing of the music and the joyful inter-
action of teacher and student, frees
teachers and students alike to the ex-
perience of the beauty of the great com-
posers of the ages.

The functioning of something very
similar to the guiding principle for
learning is described by W. T. Jewkes
as the contribution of critic Northrop
Frye. “In order for a student to grasp
an intellectual subject, there must be a
point of view from which he can see
the whole subject as one thing. There
is enormous value for him, once he has
seen his subject in that way, in being
able to relate everything he studies in
it thereafter to the subject as a whole.
It is this perspective that has been so
sadly lacking in the subject of criticism
until now, and it is Frye who has pro-
vided us with a way to do it. It is this
kind of approach that makes criticism
centripetal rather than centrifugal.”'5

None of these is simplistic, none of
these is content with technique. Wyck-
off completes the group by joining in
their ability to keep technique firmly
before us without making the technical

15 W. T. Jewkes, “Mental Fight: Northrop
Frye and the Teaching of Literature” in The
Journal of General Education XXVII, 4 (Winter
1976) Pennsylvania State University Press, p.
293-

thought process or the technique of ed-
ucational practice an end in itself.

The context in which Wyckoff in-
troduces the concept of the Guiding
Principle is that of being responsible
communicators to the laity. It is all well
and good, even admirable, for Chris-
tian educators to engage in sophisti-
cated thought. It is appropriate to wres-
tle with the refinements of language
that allow direct conversation with the
doings of the scholars in the relevant
fields. In short, a commitment to tech-
nique in Barrett’s sense is more than
an unknowing capitulation to a cultural
inclination. It is desired. Christian ed-
ucators can be criticized, in fact, for
moments of superficial appropriation of
the current fad in a related field with-
out a true disciplinary understanding
of the technical refinements of that field.

Wyckoff s model presses for a broad
and responsible technical conversation
for the sake of making the best possible
theory, grounded on the best possible
principles understood as precisely and
objectively as can be. But just as firmly,
Wyckoff requires that the end result of
that technical conversation and con-
struction be placed in the hands of the
bulk of Christian education practition-
ers without degrading the theory in im-
proper simplification. It is the Guiding
Principle which maintains the tension.

An emphasis similar to this appears
in Wyckoff s unpublished article on
“Religious Teaching — Art or Sci-
ence?” He says, “We have a clear re-
sponsibility for planning, conducting,
and evaluating our work as knowl-
edgeably and intelligently as possible.
For us, in this sense, religious education
can be a science. At the same time we
are dealing at profound levels with feel-
ing, belief, and commitment. We are
religious, in ways that require the

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

expression of these feelings, beliefs, and
commitments through the creativities
of music, speech, literature, drama, ar-
chitecture, and the other arts. For us,
in this sense, religious education can be
an art.”'6

Cardew’s adoption of the form-func-
tion principle serves potters in this way.
If one will think through the intended
use of a pitcher, then one will know
how to sift through the array of tech-
nical knowledge about clay and throw-
ing and glazing and firing to produce
a good pitcher. Is this to transport and
deliver lemonade to tall glasses on a hot
summer’s day? Is this to trickle out rich
cream into a cup of coffee? Size, weight,
handle placement, throat, lip, texture,
and even color begin to “have reasons.”
Even the potter who must ask the stu-
dio teacher for the final answers to each
question is empowered by knowing the
questions.

Suzuki’s use of the mother-tongue
model serves the Talent Education
Method in the same way. The novice
teacher, the parent, eventually the stu-
dent, can become conscious of the nat-
ural rhythms of teaching the language
and begin to see through the refine-
ments of musical and educational the-
ory the answers to questions about
modeling, hearing, repetition, affir-
mation, stepped progression, and never
ending refinement. In this instance, too,
the assistance of the trained teacher will
be needed to flesh out the implications
of theory, the development of the rep-
ertoire, the mysteries of technique, but
the empowerment of the non-technical
participant occurs.

As far as I know Wyckoff does not
talk of empowerment, but it would ap-

,6 D. Campbell Wyckoff, “Religious Teach-
ing— Art or Science?” unpublished, pp. 7-8.

pear that such a phrase is consonant
with his intent for the Guiding Prin-
ciple. The gospel is a viable candidate
for Christian education theorists be-
cause it is at the center of Christian
experience. It is central to all levels of
knowledge of the Bible, to all levels of
theological reflection. It is unique to the
Christian faith and yet open to the
variation of interpretation that is char-
acteristic of the whole of the Christian
community. It will not in a trite and
simplistic manner supply all of the an-
swers to the questions of Christian ed-
ucation. The Guiding Principle is not
intended to do that. The resources of
the trained educator will still be needed.
But it will serve the novice teacher, the
parent, and the technician as common
ground for raising the appropriate
questions, and it will do so in a manner
that enhances a conversation among
peers.

The concept of the Guiding Princi-
ple is a technical solution to the prob-
lem of overcoming the limitations of
technical concentration. It is a step to-
ward the simplification of the technical
for the sake of enhancing communi-
cation and empowering the laity. The
Gospel as guiding principle extends that
empowerment as we take Paul’s words
to heart (Romans 1:16) and see that the
Gospel is not a witness to God’s power,
nor a descriptive reminder of the ex-
ercise of that power in the redemptive
event, Jesus Christ, but is the power of
God. Thus the empowerment that arises
Irom Wyckoff s choice for Guiding
Principle is simultaneously an empow-
erment of “technical excellence made
available” and an openness to the pro-
found presence of God in the education
ministry of the church.

While this is not a return to Pesta-
lozzi’s Gertrude, it is an attitude that

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

would appreciate the intent of that 1 8th-
19th century educator. We can sense
the “rightness” of a simple mother being
the bearer of wisdom as she says, . .
it is all well and good for them to learn
something, but the really important thing
is for them to be something — for them
to become what they are meant to be.
. . .”‘7

In a time when cultural patterns
threatened dehumanization, an edu-
cator called his culture into question.
Is this Pestalozzi? Yes, as he sensed the
impact of the industrial revolution. Su-

17 Johann Pestalozzi, Leonard and Gertrude
(New York: Garden Press, 1977 edition), p. 152.

zuki? Yes, as he sensed the impact on
the children of Japan of the Second
World War. Cardew? Yes, as he sensed
the state of mind as well as economy
of an African people who had lost their
craft inheritance and needed to become
again the potters they once had been.
Wyckoff? Yes, as he has faced in quiet
resolution the cultural chaos of our time
and with his deep commitment to peace
and justice and steady humility reached
for scholarly excellence and practical
relevance through his own commit-
ment to and search for the implications
of the redeeming action of God in Jesus
Christ for the education ministry of the
Christian Church.

The Black Presbyterian

Church and

Its Rural Ministry

by James H. Costen

Before beginning a discussion of the
rural Black church and its ministry,
especially the Presbyterian church, we
need to be aware of those qualities and
historical features that have made the
Black church the unique institution that
it is today.

Gayrand S. Wilmore, in his book
Blac\ Religion and Blacky Radicalism, has
written, “The religious beliefs and rit-
uals of any people are inevitably and
inseparably bound up with the material
and psychological realities ot their daily
existence.” This is a true statement. The
experiences of Black persons in this na-
tion have been unlike that of any other
group or race. Stripped of an ancient
heritage, divested of family and root-
age, dehumanized by the heinousness
of slavery, and systematically brutal-
ized by discrimination — the Black per-
son has had to run a treacherous ob-
stacle course toward full personhood,
full humanity.

The Black experience in America has
been one of slavery and oppression,
prejudice and injustice, racism and the
denial of basic rights. It has been an
experience of toilsome and burdensome
labor. Though victimized, the victim is

In September 198 3 Princeton Seminary
hosted a Conference on the Small Church.
This paper was delivered by James H. Costen
on September 13.

A native of Omaha, Nebraska, the Rev.
James H. Costen is an alumnus of Johnson C.
Smith College and Seminary in Atlanta, where
he later served as Dean. On December 1, he
became president of the Interdenominational
Theological Center in Atlanta. He has served
on committees at the Presbytery and Synod
levels, and most recently was Moderator of the
194th General Assembly (UPCUSA). Mr.
Cos ten’s experience with the small church in-
cludes having organized the Church of the
Master in Atlanta in 1965.

now called upon to bear the weight of
society’s inhumanity. And yet, in the
midst of such a dehumanizing experi-
ence the slave, and generations of his
ancestors, developed a faith that gave
strength and courage for the struggles
of each stage of the journey and un-
relenting hope for the future.

The Black church, then, is unique
because of the uniqueness of the Black
experience in America which shaped it.
Any human life may be thought of as
a story, a sequence of experiences in
which a person lives out his being as
fully human within a world of other
people and things. To isolate a self from
its experiences is as impossible as iso-
lating the core of an onion from its
layers. Therefore, in order to truly un-
derstand the Black church and its min-
istry, one must first of all know some-
thing about the Black experience in this
land. Such experiences as Blacks have
gone through can never be abstracted
from a history of meaning which shapes
them and lends them their particular
significance. Thus, in addition to un-
derstanding God as holy love, seeking
to redeem man from his fallen state
through the grace of Jesus Christ, the

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Black church images God as the Lib-
erator who sets his people free from all
kinds of captivity and, indeed, as the
One who stands on the side of those
who are oppressed. Thus, the Old Tes-
tament stories of liberation are basic to
the life of the Black witnessing com-
munity.

From its inception the Black church
has endeavored to remain faithful to
the gospel of Jesus Christ through its
articulation of the meaning and pur-
pose of Jesus’ life. It has closely iden-
tified itself with the “servant” image of
Jesus Christ, and sees Jesus, the “Suf-
fering Servant,” as having identified
himself with the hopes and aspirations
of oppressed people. Having identified
itself in such a way has greatly influ-
enced the Black church’s style and tech-
nique in ministry. Thus, the Black
church is temple and academy, gym-
nasium of spirit and body, sanctuary
for the learning of God’s love and cen-
ter for dispensing that love. Its mission
and ministry defy easy sacred-secular
labels. Life there is not codified in such
ways.

The focal point for ministry in the
Black rural church, like that of the Black
urban or city church, has been the gos-
pel of Jesus Christ. This genesis point
has informed the ministry of these
churches, often when the realities of life
in America made such loyalty to Christ
hard to imagine and irrational.

Active worship among slaves was
generally prohibited by slavemasters.
Large gatherings were denied because
of the fear of insurrection such as that
with Nat Turner. In spite of the refusal
to allow for the worship of the slaves,
ways were found to get around these
restrictions. Spirituals and other uniquely
Black songs of that period are replete
with the code words for gatherings to

nurture the spiritual life in this strange
and alien land. Some of these spirituals
were “Steal Away to Jesus” and “There’s
a Meeting Here Tonight.” Distant fields,
riversides, and brush arbors were em-
blazoned with God’s glory and became
places fit for worship.

During the years following the
emancipation proclamation, the Black
rural church played a pivotal role in
helping newly-freed slaves adjust to their
new status. Made up primarily of poor
people, landless people, and those with-
out basic personal resources, the Black
church, from its inception, encouraged
cooperation, including the founding of
mutual aid and burial societies. Out of
these societies came the great Black
banks and insurance companies which
still exist today.

The purpose of these societies was to
help the church member through crises
of life — such as sickness and death. In
writing about these benevolent societies
which grew out of Black rural churches
in the late 1800’s, E. Franklin Frazier,
in his classic book The Negro Church in
America , states:

They were supported by the pennies
which the Negroes could scrape to-
gether in order to aid each other in
time of sickness, but more especially
to ensure themselves of a decent
Christian burial.

Historians will long applaud the work
of kindly, benevolent, White Presby-
terian benefactors who came to the ru-
ral South following the Civil War and
helped establish schools and churches
among freedmen. Coupled with the ef-
forts of many unlettered but deter-
mined former slaves, the wonderful
balance of educating both head and spirit
was begun, a process that has grown to
enormous proportions. The Presbyte-

3°

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

rian church became known for its work
among rural Blacks in the South. Al-
though the Congregational, Baptist,
Episcopal, and other mainline White
denominations — including the Catho-
lics— were at work in the South, the
Presbyterian church made the greatest
and most diverse contribution. Inez
Parker, in her book The Rise and De-
cline of a Program of Education Among
Blacks in the Presbyterian Church , ver-
ifies that at one time there were one
hundred fifty -eight schools in the South
associated with the Presbyterian church.
These were colleges, seminaries, sec-
ondary, and elementary schools, all de-
signed to advance the cause of the re-
cently freed Black man.

These schools grew out of a ministry
envisioned by the small Black Presby-
terian congregation in a given com-
munity. The minister’s wife quite often
was head mistress. These institutions
were highly respected. The pastor and
the school personnel exerted tremen-
dous influence in most communities.
Role models for effective leadership, in-
cluding ministerial leadership, was
gained in these settings. It is no accident
that an overwhelming percentage of
Black leadership in the Presbyterian
church today came out of these South-
ern rural churches and schools. Addi-
tionally, a significant number of Amer-
ica’s past Black leadership in all fields
came from this Presbyterian back-
ground. Carter G. Woodson, a preem-
inent historian, felt that the masses of
Black people were repelled by the wor-
ship and order of the Presbyterian church
but drawn by the quality of its edu-
cation, often the only educational op-
portunity available in many commu-
nities.

It was the leadership provided by the
minister that lifted the sights of Black

sharecroppers in the South to become
land and home owners, to register and
vote, to educate themselves and their
children, thereby influencing their own
destinies. Organizations of farm work-
ers were initiated and land ownership
was encouraged. By 1920, 925,000 Black
persons operated farms in the South.
In 1978 this number had dwindled to
58,000 — a loss of 94%. At stake here,
according to a resolution from the Ad-
visory Council on Church and Society
to the last meeting of the General As-
sembly, is:

1) the survival of Black-owned land
and the future participation of
Blacks in agriculture;

2) the survival of what has been the
longest single equity resource in
minority hands in the South, and
the possibility of utilizing minor-
ity-owned land as a foundation
for greater participation in the
dramatic development activities
occurring in the Southern region,
the Sun Belt.

The Black rural church, while
undergoing some significant demo-
graphic changes, still maintains many
of its historic characteristics. While
having to compete with television, the
availability ot the automobile and the
nearness of city life, the breakup of
family solidarity, among many other
features, it still maintains a hub rela-
tionship with significant numbers of its
members. Much of their social, politi-
cal, and religious life still evolves around
the church. Many of these churches have
strong youth-oriented programs. They
have vibrant church and Vacation Bible
Schools. Many of them still retain or-
ganizations such as Westminster Fel-
lowship. In fact, many predominantly
Black presbyteries in the South still

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

sponsor youth rallies, a feature which
we had developed to a science as a de-
nomination and then dismantled.

A demographic change that has given
the rural ministry a shift in direction
is the availability of industrial jobs within
easy driving range of most communi-
ties. Few congregations would still have
a majority of farmers within their
membership. They work for the grow-
ing number of industries that are mov-
ing South. Those who continue to farm,
however, have a median income of
$7,584 as compared to $17,323 for com-
parably situated White farmers. Re-
cently, the Census Bureau reported that
for the first time this century the ma-
jority of persons who moved were mov-
ing South rather than to the North or
West. Many of these persons have re-
tired and are returning to their land
and to their roots. It remains to be seen
what opportunities and challenges this
will present the Black rural church in
the years ahead. I contend it has po-
tential for tremendous membership
growth.

The concerns of Blacks who live in
rural areas today are much the same as
those who live in urban areas. Unem-
ployment, poor housing, crime, drugs,
economic inequities, poor and inade-
quate education are problems that call
for and demand the church’s attention.
The response is mixed as to the effec-
tiveness with which churches have met
these needs.

Some of these churches have activi-
ties going on seven days a week. In
addition to Sunday School, Sunday
worship, Bible study, Vacation Bible
School, youth fellowship, and camping
programs which are geared primarily
toward one’s spiritual growth, other
programs include tutorial projects which
attempt to increase the reading and math

skills of elementary and high school
students. Many churches have estab-
lished senior citizens centers and neigh-
borhood service centers, using their ed-
ucational units or other church-owned
facilities. These centers give the rural
elderly a place to go and engage in ed-
ucation and leisure time activities. Nu-
trition programs for the elderly provide
balanced meals for those who are shut-
ins, handicapped, or living alone. Food
and clothes closets provide emergency
assistance for individuals and families
in need. Black rural churches were some
of the pioneers in day care centers in
the South. In some areas rural churches
have facilitated the efforts of Black
farmers and vegetable growers to form
agricultural cooperatives. Like their
ministerial predecessors, many Black
ministers are the primary motivators to
start youth thinking about a college ed-
ucation.

It must also be said that where Black
rural churches are engaged in viable
ministries, the leadership has made the
difference. Those churches that employ
full-time pastoral leadership are the ones
that have developed relevant and ex-
citing ministries. Traditionally, most
Black rural churches have not been able
to support a full-time minister. The
majority of these churches have a pastor
who is also the pastor of one or more
additional churches. In the 1930s and
1940s the presbyteries sought to address
the problem of small, clustered rural
churches by organizing larger parishes
for the sharing of personnel and the
better development and utilization of
lay leadership. This parish model is no
longer in vogue and yet nothing has
emerged to take its place.

Finding a way to address the lead-
ership needs of these small rural churches
is a frontier for the church in the years

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

ahead. With the reunion of the two
largest Presbyterian bodies, there
are about 475 predominantly Black
churches. Approximately two thirds of
these churches are in the South, mostly
in small towns and rural hamlets. About
100 of these churches are too small and
isolated to justify the calling of a full-
time minister, assuming one were
available. They vary in size from five
or six members to seventy or eighty.
Their members are often quite active
in presbytery and pillars of the local
community. A plan to address this need
is one of the glaring opportunities we
will face in the very near future.

Ministry among Blacks in the rural
South will prove to be the modern fron-
tier of the Presbyterian church. To meet
this challenge we will have to:

1) Increase the number of theolog-
ically educated men and women
w’ho can provide visionary lead-
ership in the pulpits, classrooms,
and community circles. They need
to be a selfless variety.

2) Move away from a cultural ori-
entation that places the minister
at the center of church life to one
that fosters the minister’s role as
being the enabler of ministry.
While still significant as a role
model, the image has shifted
slightly and power and authority

is gained through selfless ser-
vanthood.

3) Create a climate where lay people
are aware of their need to be ed-
ucated for their ministries and are
willing to sacrifice to attain the
necessary training.

4) Return to a value-oriented life-
style in which standards are once
again emphasized, an environ-
ment where community expec-
tations are high and where people
are lovingly helped to attain high
goals.

Historically, the Black rural church
was a cocoon-like community. There
was nurture there. There was a great
deal of love and encouragement. There
was a willingness to allow for an oc-
casional fall, but an intolerance toward
sanctioning wallowing in the mud.

There was a mirror for viewing one-
self realistically, yet there was also a
reflector pointing toward what one
might become.

There was a deeply rooted, deeply
understood biblical base that informed
all its activities. God’s love and grace,
made manifest in Jesus Christ, was cen-
tral, sustaining when all else failed.

This is the church that challenges me
today. These are the qualities I would
like to see developed further for the
good of those still to come.

Emile Cailliet:
Christian Centurion

by Richard J. Oman

The eminent writer and teacher,
Emile Cailliet, has left the Church
and the world a legacy of practical, in-
spirational, and learned books. While
he was perhaps best known for his au-
thoritative Pascalian studies, his mind
and pen roamed the Christian land-
scape of reality from science to litera-
ture, from philosophy to theology.

Dr. Cailliet was born at Dampierre
(Marne), France, on December 17, 1894.
Following service on the faculty of the
University of Pennsylvania (1926-31),
he held professorships at Scripps Col-
lege and the Claremont Graduate School,
Claremont, California (1931-41); the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences,
University of Pennsylvania (1941-45);
Wesleyan University, Middletown,
Connecticut (1945-47); and at Prince-
ton Theological Seminary (1948-59),
where he was Stuart Professor of Chris-
tian Philosophy.

A layman, Dr. Cailliet had pursued
advanced studies in anthropology and
philosophy, and received doctorates from
both the Universite de Montpellier (1926)
and the Universite de Strasbourg (1938).
He died in Santa Monica, California,
on June 4, 1981.

It was my privilege to be his student,
colleague, and friend for over thirty
years. Without question he was the one

An alumnus of Macalester College, the
University of Minnesota, Princeton Theolog-
ical Seminary, and New College, Edinburgh,
Dr. Richard J. Oman is currently the Howard
C. Scharfe Professor of Homiletics and In-
terim Director of the D.Min. Program at
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He is the
author of several articles and is a member of
the Academy of Homiletics and the North
American Academy of Liturgy. While at
Princeton, Dr. Oman served as Dr. Cailliet' s
Teaching Fellow, and later spent three years
as his staff instructor.

person who held the greatest influence
over my own life, shaping my thinking
and ministry. The debt I owe this mar-
velous and unique man can never be
measured or weighed in merely human
terms.

Dr. Cailliet had described the “cen-
turion type of Christian” as a Christian
with but one concern — “to do the Lord’s
will in joy and simplicity ot heart. . . .
It is a life of love and power, because
it is a completely surrendered life, and
therefore a life in line with the will of
God. As such it abides forever” ( The
Beginning of Wisdom [New York:
Fleming H. Revell, Co., 1947], p. 182.
Cf. journey Into Light [Grand Rapids:
Zondervan Publishing Co., 1968], p. 98).
No better words could depict the life
journey of this contemporary pilgrim.

Following in the footsteps of his be-
loved Blaise Pascal, Cailliet, too, wres-
tled with such questions as the nature
of man, the source of authority in re-
ligion, the seeming hiddenness of God,
the relation between faith and reason.
In both prophetic and practical ways,
he spoke to many of the issues which
plague and perplex the lives of count-
less moderns, both within and without
the Church.

In a world increasingly broken and
fragmented, Cailliet sought to bring to-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

gether a viewpoint which sees life as a
whole. Three examples serve to illus-
trate his search for meaning.

Philosophy in Relation to Theology

Every human being is, in fact, a phi-
losopher. If we think of philosophy as
a meditation upon life, then each per-
son has some outlook on life which mo-
tivates us whether we realize it or not.

The question is: Are we Christian
philosophers? Cailliet observed that
“Christian philosophy appears when-
ever and wherever a Christian begins
to think. The possible alternatives to
this could only be either a thinker who
was not a Christian at all, or a Christian
wrho did not think at all. And then it
should be of uttermost concern to the
Church to have people think as Chris-
tians, and to see to it that Christians
actually think, and do think as Chris-
tians” ( The Christian Approach to Cul-
ture [Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury,
!953]> P- 59)-

This means that there is a Christian
view of nature, a Christian outlook on
history, a Christian approach to psy-
chology— and “a Christian epistemol-
ogy preparing the way for constructive
Christian metaphysics” (Ibid., p. 77).

Because, as Cailliet observed, philos-
ophers are impatient by nature, in their
anxiety to solve problems they pre-
maturely cease debate, and are often
tempted to fill in the unknown by
“spinning out of their mind some on-
tological entity” (Ibid., p. 177).

Theology Cailliet defined as “that
scientific discipline which concerns it-
self with the human aspects of both
general and special revelation” (Ibid.,
p. 262). Theology deals with the theme
of the light going out into the world.

while Christian philosophy deals with
the theme of the world going to the
light. Philosophy in this sense is the
servant of theology, hopefully a helpful
one.

In examining the long history of the
relationship between philosophy and
theology, Dr. Cailliet singled out Im-
manuel Kant and Karl Barth as being
representative of influential thinkers in
the making of the modern religious
mind.

Kant’s views stand like pyramids on
our horizon, casting their shadows upon
all our thinking. Much of our philo-
sophical and theological reflection re-
mains a running commentary on Kant.
He is a great divider in the history of
human thought, for better or for worse.

The point of departure for Kant was
the knowing mind. When we look at
the universe or ourselves or think of
God, what we are doing in fact is put-
ting with our minds an imprint of the
reality we perceive. We never get to
know things as they are; higher realities
are definitely beyond our reach. Met-
aphysics are ultimately impossible. In
placing such a ceiling on our thinking,
and making us prisoner of our own
minds, no wonder that some called Kant
“the greatest disaster that ever hap-
pened in philosophy.”

But if we live in the long shadow of
Kant, the atmosphere for philosophy
was further clouded by the work of
Karl Barth. “No one has ever chal-
lenged the relevance, validity, and even
the advisability of Christian philosophy
as has Karl Barth in our day” (Ibid., p.
50). He would have theologians turn
away from any philosophical approach
to theology. There is no need to study
philosophy, for these are the arguments
of a darkened mind.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Cailliet acknowledged that we owe
an eternal debt to Barth for restoring
the perspective that true thinking must
begin with God — His sovereignty, His
Word. But Barth intervened at a time
of tremendous crisis, and as is often the
case, like a pendulum, he went to ex-
tremes. The image of God was not to
be found in persons at all.

For Cailliet, the ultimate question
became: In our thinking should we give
priority to what is, or to our knowledge
of it? The answer to this particular
question holds the key to theology and
philosophy. The “or” part of the ques-
tion is the special burden of modern
philosophy.

It was Augustine who had laid his
finger on what Cailliet felt was the
greatest truth of Christian philosophy:
Nostra Philosophia. “I believe so that I
may understand” — this insight points
to nothing short of a scriptural notion
of truth: when everything has been said
and done, truth proceeds from the
trustworthiness and reliability of God.
To Augustine, the way to understand
the world of nature and of man is to
view it in the light of general revelation
(God-bathed) as a means of leading to
special revelation; to view time as du-
ration with meaning under God. Cail-
liet later confessed that he had lost in-
terest in the distinction between general
and special revelation— for where, in-
deed, should the dividing line be drawn?
Better that the view of Christian phi-
losophy be that of a seamless robe—
i.e., be seen as a whole.

Cailliet’s judgment of what he learned
from Pascal is germane to the issue:
“That Christianity is essentially a mat-
ter of commitment; that theology is a
matter of authority; and that in the last
analysis the supreme authority in the-

ology is that of the Incarnate Son, the
Supernatural Christ” ( Pascal : Genius in
the Light of Scripture [Philadelphia: The
Westminster Press, 1945], p. 363).

Science and Religion

Cailliet was very much at home in
the arenas of scientific inquiry. In his
writings he sought to provide the world
view suggested by science in our day,
against the broad picture of the rise of
scientific research as a background, with
special attention to the present day need
for a Christian recovery of a sense of
purpose.

While inspired by a candid intellec-
tual honesty, at the same time Dr. Cail-
liet approached the question of a
philosophy of science in a constant
awareness that by birth and by right
our Reformed tradition is called upon
to develop a good-neighbor policy with
the new science. In so doing without
appeasement or compromise, Cailliet
was convinced that the churches and
institutions of learning issuing from the
Reformation would keep in touch with
the world which is their mission field.
They would be in a better position to
speak to the condition of contemporary
men and women. By the same token
theology and Christian philosophy
would gather from scholars of science
a great deal of information, with ref-
erence to both methods and subject
matter, that would prove useful at a
time when “reconstruction” is the or-
der of the day.

A word used often by Cailliet was
“mystery.” A mystery, as he saw it, was
an invitation to pilgrimage — to study,
explore, search for meaning — and
should never be allowed to degenerate
into a mere problem.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Such an approach to mystery he at-
tested to be the attitude of the true sci-
entist, “this expectant faith, this spirit
of submission to fact coupled with a
readiness to proceed upon the resulting
situation, however, perplexing it may
be" (Journey Into Light , p. 51). Such an
attitude was bound to “expose the de-
ception of all attempts on the part of
New Testament Christianity to save its
life by sacrificing its objectivity, or even
satisfy its imagination at the expense of
a committed intellect” (Ibid., p. 49).

What makes for the greatness of the
modern scientific method at the same
time proves its stumbling block! Sci-
ence today is characterized by brilliancy
of achievement and obscurity of un-
derstanding. The consequence of all this
is that the scientist is lost in a maze of
facts — and facts need interpretation.

Can science produce the necessary
faith principle? Cailliet was aware of
two ever-present dangers in approach-
ing this question. One was the danger
of reductionism, always evident in our
age of specialization. The second dan-
ger was the false faith-principle of ide-
ology. Ideologies are subtle and dan-
gerous because as a rule they appear at
the apex of a scientific or philosophical
quest, and become in fact substitute re-
ligions.

To Cailliet the universe of science is
not the universe of creation. The con-
fusion between these two is responsible
for a great deal of our trouble. We are
not observing two universes on the same
scale. It is the scale of observation which
creates phenomena.

Thus, the universe of science may be
seen as a construction of the human
mind, and the question becomes, how
much does this construction have to do
with the actual world of God’s crea-
tion? Cailliet believed there was no basic

conflict between science (construction)
and religion (interpretation), that the-
ology should not be afraid of science
per se, and that when the scientist re-
covers his/her humanity, it makes all
the difference whether the scientist is
a Christian or not.

When the core of truth touches hu-
man situations, it immediately raises
questions of a scientific nature. The key
to keeping the truth whole is to be found
in the distinction between the “actual
world of creation” and the “construc-
tion” which the scientist puts upon in-
vestigation. The former is the perennial
proclamation; the latter, the hierarchy
of sciences.

Theology, in the realm of the sci-
ences can do much for the scientist as
a scientist and as a person: it can dem-
onstrate how the fact of “construction”
needs, and actually calls for, a “higher.”

Sciences, as constructions, are always
changing. Reality (truth) is rooted in
the very nature of the Divine: God’s
reliability.

Ill

Presence and Purpose In the Midst
of Solitude

Following his retirement from active
teaching in 1959, Dr. Cailliet devoted
a considerable amount of his thinking
and writing to one of the most pressing
issues of modern life, loneliness — and
its Christian antithesis, a transfigured
solitariness. Intimations of this concern,
of course, are scattered throughout many
of his earlier works, but his retirement
years became the crucible for reflective
meditation, culminating in his volume.
Alone At High Noon (Zondervan: Grand
Rapids, 1971).

“Thou, O Lord, hast made me pow-
erful and solitary.” These words serve

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

as pointers to the nature of the life of
a servant of God. Such a life is one of
power and one of solitude. Solitude it-
self is a state of mind and of soul.

To Cailliet, there was a world of dif-
ference between being alone and being
solitary. While being alone or living
alone is neither good nor bad in itself,
aloneness can become painful, even vi-
olent. Like a disease, it threatens to in-
vade and destroy our true self. “A di-
vided soul soon turns into a lonely soul
. . .” (Ibid., p. 35).

The answer to such an enervating
possibility? To capture a sense of the
Presence of God and to recover a sense
of cosmic Purpose in life.

In words reminiscent of Pascal’s great
“Fire in the Night” experience, Cailliet
pointed to his first encounter with a
Bible at the age of twenty-three, his
plunge into its depths, and his emerg-
ing from beyond the words to the Word,
the Living Word, Jesus Christ. It was
this Christ who now became alive to
him. This event proved to be his ini-
tiation to “the notion of Presence which
later would prove crucial to my theo-
logical thinking” (Journey Into Light , p.
18).

Note that Cailliet here is not talking
about the existence of God — a question
he called “a metaphysical matter ulti-
mately beyond verification” (Ibid., p.
88). The Presence refers to the in-
dwelling of the spirit of the living Christ
in power. It is that indwelling Presence
which brings certitude to the believer,

“certitude” being that which endures,
things which do not change, the abid-
ing things of God. Such a person in the
midst of solitude finds oneself moving
in the direction of both sanctity, which
is health of spirit, and sanity, which is
health of intellect.

Those who would know with cer-
titude are persons in position to do the
truth— which brings Cailliet to the
problems involved in the recovery of a
sense of purpose in life. Lack of purpose
according to him is at the root of sol-
itude. How many persons, for example,
use the phrase “killing time” as evi-
dence of the fact of a loss of purpose?
If we are to reach any meaningful con-
clusion regarding the meaning of sol-
itude, it is by coming to grips with the
issue of Cosmic Purpose. Here is the
clue to the solitary life. Authenticity in
solitude demands the sense of reality
which purpose makes possible.

As the Presence enters the human
soul, so the Promethean departs, the
Promethean being that which is finally
responsible for the loss of purpose in
every being.

Personality as the crown of life finds
its fulfillment, receives its full stature,
when a person becomes an act of God.
Such a person truly learns to live and
savor life at its fullest. And physical
death — when it comes — may be com-
pared to the blinking of the eye which
does not interrupt the vision. So it was,
I believe, for this Christian centurion,
Emile Cailliet.

Memorial Tributes

John Alexander Mackay

1889-1983

The Faculty and Administrative Staff of Princeton Theological Seminary,
meeting in regular session, wish to pay tribute in this Memorial Minute to
our former President, John A. Mackay, who died June 9, 1983, in his ninety-
fourth year. With gratitude to God, we here record our esteem and admiration
for our colleague’s life among us and his witness to the whole church of Jesus
Christ throughout the world.

John Alexander Mackay was born in Inverness, Scotland, May 17, 1889, and
like a true-blue Highlander was graduated from the University of Aberdeen
with First Class Honors in Philosophy. “A raw youth,” as he later described
himself, he ventured across the ocean to Princeton Theological Seminary. It was
the first of many extended voyages that during his life took him several times
around the globe.

Graduating from the Seminary in 1915 with a fellowship for graduate study,
he had hoped to go to Germany. Central Europe was then into the first years
of World War I, and John Mackay decided to go to Spain to study with Miguel
de Unamuno, the Spanish existentialist who, before most, had discovered and
written about Kierkegaard. It was the beginning of a love affair with the Iberian
Peninsula and Hispanic culture to which he would be devoted throughout his
life. Later, he wrote of Unamuno that “he incarnated Spain in much the same
way as the soul of Russia was incarnated in Dostoyevsky.” Though divergent in
many ways, the Highland Celt and the Spanish mystic converged in a vision of
existentialist missionary witness to the living Christ.

In 1916, John Mackay and Jane Logan Wells were married, and they set off
as educational missionaries for Lima, Peru. There they founded a Protestant
school, now known as the Colegio San Andres. While in Peru, John Mackay
was invited to occupy the chair of Philosophy in the National University of San
Marcos. The first Protestant to be appointed to such an academic position in this
renowned university, founded in 1551, it was an honor equalled only many years
later by an award of the “Palmas Magisteriales” by the Peruvian government
for John Mackay’s contribution to education.

Step by step, and country by country, John Mackay was making his way,
providentially we may believe, to Princeton. Under special assignment with the
South American Federation of the YMCA, he began to lecture and write first
in Uruguay and then in Mexico. He was appointed a member of the Board of
Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church with general oversight of Latin
America and Africa. Through this association, he began a lifelong friendship
with Robert E. Speer who, at this time, was President of the Presbyterian Board
and a Trustee of Princeton Seminary.

John Mackay was called in 1936 to the presidency of Princeton Seminary,
where he served for twenty-three years not only as President, but as Professor
of Ecumenics, the first such designated chair in an American seminary. It was
a time of theological disruption, and a few years earlier several reactionary

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

trustees, faculty, and students seceded during the fundamentalist controversy,
which was then dividing churches and denominations across the country.

John Mackay came into this unpromising situation with his eyes open and
with missionary zeal. In short order, he restored stability to the campus, tran-
scending the arid debates that had split the Seminary and enlarging and strength-
ening the faculty. He began overtures with the University toward mutual rec-
ognition of academic programs, raised the morale of the campus with his ecumenical
enthusiasm, insisting all the time that theology must be an intellectually respect-
able discipline.

The chronicle of John Mackay s life during the following two decades reveals
a series of eminent positions to which he was appointed. His long and distin-
guished ecumenical career began at the Oxford Conference in 1937, where he
headed the Commission on the Universal Church and the World of Nations.
This occasioned his often-quoted directive, “Let the Church Be the Church.”
He was a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches
(1948-1954), President of the American Association of Theological Schools (1945-
1950), Chairman of the International Missionary Council (1947-1958), and Pres-
ident of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (1954-1959). He was elected
Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the USA in
1953. After his retirement from Princeton, he taught at the American University
in Washington as Adjunct Professor of Hispanic Thought.

In all these church and official positions, John Mackay was governed by the
interdependence of what he liked to call “Order and Ardor.” He argued for
balance between ecclesiastical unity and evangelical mission, between the ecu-
menical and the confessional, between the structure of doctrine and the freedom
of the Spirit. Those who heard him speak remember his impassioned contrasts
between “The Balcony and the Road,” “Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe,"
“The Badge and the Banner,” “The End and the Beginning,” “The Way to
Tomorrow Leads Through Yesterday.”

A prolific author, John Mackay was always in the process of writing articles,
editorials, reports, dedicatory inscriptions, and books. He published thirteen
books, three of which he wrote in Spanish. In 1944, he founded and edited the
religious quarterly Theology Today. The review, he hoped, would carry on and
extend the tradition of earlier Princeton reviews going back to the days of Charles
Hodge and more recently to the co-editors, Benjamin B. Warfield and Charles
A. Briggs. The first “Aim,” as he formulated it for the journal, read, “To
contribute to the restoration of theology in the world of today as the supreme
science, of which both religion and culture stand in need for their renewal."

In 1953, John Mackay, disturbed not only by the so-called “McCarthy Hear-
ings” and other allegations of unpatriotic trends in this country, but also by the
silence and timidity of ecclesiastical and educational institutions, drafted “A Letter
to Presbyterians,” calling for reasonable reflection. In one of his favorite phrases,
he urged leaders in church and culture “to take the lead." The “Letter" was
widely distributed and acclaimed as a lone voice crying in the wilderness.

In the same vein, he repeatedly advocated open dialogue and summit meetings
of political leaders for China, Russia, and the troubled areas of Latin America.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Many remember a dramatic community meeting in the Auditorium of the Cam-
pus Center when John Mackay, with an emotional introduction, welcomed J. Robert
Oppenheimer, then the Director of the Institute for Advanced Study and at the
time under a cloud of suspicion because of his association with the atomic bomb.

At the time of his retirement in 1959, a special issue of Theology Today, against
his better judgment, carried a series of tributes to John Mackay from some of
his friends and associates. Among those who wrote were John Baillie, Walter
Lowrie, Emil Brunner, Harold Dodds, Eugene Blake, Nathan Pusey, James Pike,
and F. W. Dillistone. But high-sounding praise was not to his liking, for John
Mackay was in many respects a plain man with simple tastes and frugal ways.
If to many he seemed at times austere, to a few intimates, such as his Seminary
roommate, Peter K. Emmons, he was always “Jock,” and on rare occasions he
was known to demonstrate his soccer footwork on the front campus to an
astonished group of seminarians.

Coming out of a small sectarian Scottish church, John Mackay became a world-
recognized ecumenical ambassador. He liked to say that no one could teach him
anything about divisive sectarianism or rigid orthodoxy. A born missionary, for
whom personal piety provided the spark for his relentless drive, he hated prose-
lytism, sentimentality, and piosity. An essentially reflective person, he had un-
limited confidence in the persuasive power of the spoken and written word. His
public addresses were delivered with dramatic eloquence, punctuated not only
with rhetorical flourishes, but with imaginative and symbolic language. He would
have made a distinguished Secretary of the United Nations or a superlative
Shakespearean actor; but John Mackay ’s ruling passion was in “bringing into
captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ,” in words which he invoked
when granting diplomas to graduating divinity students.

In 1932, and the date is significant, for it was mostly a time of theological
wasteland, John Mackay was invited to give the Merrick Lectures at Ohio Wes-
leyan University. He titled the series “Prophetic Thinkers.” He dealt, prophet-
ically as it turned out, with Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Unamuno, and
Barth. These early lectures set the tone for later titles, all hinting at what he
called the dimension of “Beyondness.” The following captions are typical: “The
Endless Journey Starts,” “Keep Moving Beyond,” “Heritage and Destiny,” “An
Ecumenical Era Calls for Missionary Action,” “Let the Church Live on the
Frontier.”

On the tombstone for Sir Christopher Wren in St. Paul’s Cathedral which he
had designed, we can read the Latin inscription Si Monumentum Requiris Cir-
cumspice. So, too, of John Alexander Mackay, as we survey his life and work on
this campus and around the world, and as we try to calculate his continuing
influence upon this place he loved so well, we can say that if anyone searches
for a monument to his memory, all we need do is look around us.

To his widow, Jane Logan Wells Mackay, and to their children, Isobel, Duncan,
Elena, and Ruth, and their families, we extend our heartfelt sympathy, our high
regard, and our Christian greetings.

Norman Victor Hope

1908-1983

The teacher peered around the lectern with a mischievous twinkle in his eye
as he spoke of the barbarian invasion of the British Isles. With straight face
he told his students, “When the tribes of Angles crossed the channel the obtuse
Angles turned south and became the English. The acute Angles turned in the
opposite way and they became the Scots.” Once again Dr. Hope had lightened
learning with laughter and captivated his class.

In a style uniquely his own, Norman Hope excelled as a teacher and scholar,
and endeared himself to us as colleague and friend. His was a first-rate mind,
a cosmopolitan consciousness, and an enviable sensitivity in the use of language,
not only in theological discussion but also in historical and literary settings. Born
in Edinburgh, Scotland, he was the son of Alexander and Margaret Duff Symons
Hope. He attended the George Herriot School and then won high honors at the
University of Edinburgh in history, economics, and ecclesiastical pursuits. After
study at the University of Berlin, he earned a doctorate at his alma mater. Then
in the years 1935 to 1938 he served as pastor of the Busby West Parish in Glasgow.
What a lively time that congregation must have had!

At the age of thirty Dr. Hope came to this country to teach Systematic Theology
at the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, first as lecturer and later as James
Suydam Professor. In 1946 Princeton Seminary called him to the Archibald
Alexander Chair of Church History, a post he held until retirement as Professor
Emeritus in 1978. Ordained a minister of the Church of Scotland, he was enrolled
as a member of the Presbytery of New Brunswick during his years in this country
until his death. He was predeceased by his wife Isabella Logan, known to friends
as Shumi. In 1967 he married Wanda Swoll Christiff, who survives him. We
pray that our gracious God will be her refuge and strength, comforting her and
sustaining her in this time of her loss.

A committed and gifted teacher, Professor Hope was a marvel in the classroom,
a witty and learned lecturer who was popular not only with students on this
campus but also in many other academic institutions, and with many congre-
gations. His prodigious memory enabled him at will to call forth dates, figures,
quotations, information, and illustrations with amazing accuracy and uncanny
relevance. This ability served him well in his role as a constant reviewer of books
and also as a qualified author himself. He contributed material to The New
Schaffer -Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge and to A Dictionary of Prac-
tical Theology , and he had several books to his credit. Norman Hope succeeded
eminently as a creative, dynamic member ot this faculty and chairman of the
Seminary’s History Department. With his rare talents and unmistakable elan,
he attracted many admirers and brought much credit to this institution which
he loved and served so faithfully and well.

Like Zaccheus, he was a wee man in stature, but he was a great man in mind
and heart and soul, kindled with boundless energy. It was in his walk, in his
talk, in his schedule. Whether speeding across the campus pathway or across a

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

century of church history, there was a transparent vitality. It came through at
the most ordinary moments as he answered the telephone “Hope speaking” or
as he asked successive generations of students in his eagerness to plunge into the
lecture, “Has the bell not rung? Oh, there it goes. Let us pray.” It came through
at the holiest of moments, too, when, as he did almost every Sunday of every
year, he came to the pulpit to preach.

Norman Hope brought the enriching illustrations of his homiletical care to
his lectures, whether the source was from biography or poetry or history. He
brought the clarifying summary gifts of his teaching to the pulpit— “My three
points are these.” And always, everywhere, there were the punctuating forceful
gestures of his hands and head, the twinkle of mirth in his eye and raised brows,
the delight in humor and the affection for people.

He preached in hundreds of pulpits. Thousands of people knew him and
considered him their friend. In their appreciation of his sermons — their clarity,
their conviction, their memorability and their brevity — his congregations iden-
tified Norman Hope clearly with Princeton Seminary. As a good Scot and a
concerned member of the Seminary community, he often challenged them to be
generous in their stewardship and in support for Princeton. Chiefly his preaching
was a vivid witness to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and an enthusiastic
encouragement to follow Him in faithful service. His attentive congregations
knew he was speaking to them thus because of his personal concern for them.

In the sadness of the speed with which the disease took his strength and his
mobility, his alert caring concern for students, alumni, and friends continued,
and he became increasingly aware too of the care both human and divine that
surrounded him. In a very memorable moment Norman was parked in front of
the Administration Building. He could not leave the car. The window was rolled
down. He would wave as he could, but the voice was weak. Professor Geddes
Hanson came over and inquired for him and then said, “Norman, there is one
thing in all this you can be sure of. You are not alone. You know that.” And
with a voice that reclaimed its old strength, and speed of deliverance, and a
matching gesture of hand and nod of head, Dr. Hope replied, “That I know,
that I know.”

Norman Hope was a faithful servant of the One who was with him in the
valley of the shadow of death. His life and teaching reflected his faith, and many
of us on this campus and across this land have been influenced by him in our
pilgrimage and service. To him we give our gratitude, thanking God for our
encounter with this exceptional friend, colleague, and mentor, and giving to
Norman the accolade of the prophet of old, “They that be teachers shall shine
as the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever
and ever.” Amen.

The Tacit Dimension
of Ministry

by Thomas W. Gillespie

Until last October, I had never met
a leper. The only lepers I knew
were the ones 1 read about in the Bible.
Something of their wretchedness came
home to me in the motion picture, Ben
Hur. The scene depicting the helpless-
ness and the hopelessness of the lepers
in the Valley of Gehenna was unfor-
gettable. Yet, until last October, I had
never met a leper.

Then, with sixteen members of our
church in Burlingame, we visited United
Presbyterian mission stations in South-
east Asia. One of our stops was in
Chiengmai, a city in the north of Thai-
land. There we were introduced to the
ministry of the McKean Leprosy Hos-
pital. It was founded seventy-four years
ago by Dr. James W. McKean, a Pres-
byterian medical missionary who went
out to Thailand in 1889. The hospital
is located on an island in the Mae Ping
River, away from the city. This land
was given to Dr. McKean in 1908 by
the governor of Chiengmai. It was con-
sidered haunted by evil spirits, and that
apparently was a fitting place for a lep-
rosarium.

Today it is a fitting place. It is a home
and a hospital for the lepers who are
“outcasts” of the Thai society. In Thai-
land, even those lepers who are cured
are not permitted to return to their vil-
lages and families. So McKean is a vil-
lage apart, a community of hope for
people who otherwise would know only
rejection and despair. The people who
live there with their leprosy are beau-
tiful in spirit but deformed in body. We
met men who have hands without fin-
gers, and women who have legs with-

On most Mondays President Thomas W.
Gillespie preaches to the Seminary community
in Miller Chapel. The following is his first
Monday sermon, given on September 26, 1983,
at the beginning of his presidency.

out feet. Many of them have suffered
terrible facial disfigurement. If you have
an ounce of compassion in your heart,
you are moved deeply by the condition
of these fellow human beings.

Now when I read a story like the
one told by Mark about Jesus and a
leper, I have a feeling for it that I never
had before. When the man is identified
as a leper, I can imagine what he looked
like. When he is portrayed as coming
to Jesus with his disease, begging Jesus,
kneeling at the feet of Jesus, and crying
out to Jesus, “If you will, you can make
me clean,” I can appreciate his desper-
ation. And when Mark tells us that Je-
sus was “moved with pity,” I can res-
onate to that because it corresponds to
my own feelings toward lepers at
McKean in Chiengmai.

There is only one small problem. It
is, of all things, a textual problem. Some
of the oldest and best manuscripts of
Mark’s Gospel do not say that Jesus was
“moved with pity.” They say instead
that he was “very angry.” Now because
I prefer Jesus to show “pity” and not
“anger,” I am tempted to dismiss the
variant reading. But my training in tex-
tual criticism will not permit that. For
I was taught in seminary and in grad-
uate school an important rule of thumb.
And this is the rule. When manuscripts
that are of equal vintage disagree on a
reading, the more difficult reading is
more likely to be the original. Applied
to this instance, it is easy to see why a
Christian scribe would change “he was
angry” to read “he was moved with
pity.” But it is not easy to understand
why a scribe would change “he was

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

moved with pity” to read “he was an-
gry.” So we are stuck with the difficult
reading. The emotional response of Je-
sus to the leper was not one of pity but
one of anger.

But this resolution of the textual
problem creates for me a theological
problem. Why was Jesus angry when
confronted by this leper? The context
of the story in the Third Gospel pro-
vides the answer. Mark introduces the
public ministry of Jesus by reporting
that “after John was arrested, Jesus came
into Galilee, preaching the gospel of
God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God is at hand;
repent, and believe in the gospel’ ” (1:14-
15). He then illustrates what it means
to repent and believe in the gospel by
the calling of the first disciples. Simon
and Andrew, James and John, leave all
they have and follow Jesus. This is fol-
lowed by an exorcism in the synagogue
at Capernaum and the healing of Si-
mon’s mother-in-law. Then comes a
Marcan summary statement which
sounds programmatic:

That evening, at sundown, they
brought to him all who were sick or
possessed with demons. And the
whole city was gathered together
about the door. And he healed many
who were sick with various diseases,
and cast out many demons (1:32-34).

But this is not a programmatic state-
ment. At least it does not represent the
focus of our Lord’s ministry as pre-
sented by Mark. What that focus was
becomes clear in the ensuing pericope.

The morning after the healing ser-
vice at the door of Simon’s house, Jesus
is missing. Finding him at prayer in an
isolated spot, the disciples announce that
everyone is looking for him. The peo-
ple want to see more of this wonder-

working power. But Jesus replies, “Let
us go on to the next towns, that I may
preach there also; for that is why I came
out" (1:38). This is Mark’s way of tell-
ing us that the focus of the public min-
istry of Jesus was his preaching of the
gospel of God. The healings and ex-
orcisms were a part of his ministry, but
they provided the tacit dimension. It is
also Mark’s way of explaining why Je-
sus is angry in the story of the leper
which immediately follows. Given the
focal intention of Jesus to preach the
gospel, the reason for his anger is evi-
dent. He is not angry at the leper. He
is angry because he is frustrated. Here
is a human need that cannot be avoided.
But if he meets this need it will frus-
trate his intention. Jesus evidently healed
by touching. If he touched a leper, how-
ever, he would be contaminated. And
that would make his preaching impos-
sible in the cities of Galilee. Yet he did
touch the man. “Moved to anger, he
stretched out his hand and touched him,
and said to him, ‘I will; be clean.’ ” In
that moment the leper became clean.
In that same moment Jesus became un-
clean.

According to the Revised Standard
Version, Jesus then “sternly charged”
the man to say nothing to anyone about
who effected his cure. According to the
Greek text, he “snorted with inward
rage” as he gave the command. His
command to remain silent was an
expression of his indignation. But the
cleansed leper was a blabbermouth who
could not keep the secret. As Mark tells
it, “he went out and began to talk freely
about it, and to spread the news.” The
result was inevitable: “Jesus could no
longer openly enter a town, but was
out in the country” (1:45). That is not
a reference to his fame. It is a reference
to his fate. As one who had touched a

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

leper, he could not enter the villages of
the people. By honoring the tacit di-
mension ot ministry, Jesus paid a price.
Yet the price had its dividends. Ac-
cording to Mark, the “people came to
him from every quarter” (1:45).

Today our crucified and risen Lord
continues his ministry through the
Church. You and I are the instruments
of his work in the world. And the focus
of his ministry remains normative for
ours. We are called to preach the gospel
of God, the good news of the kingdom
of God, the redeeming message of the
sovereign love of God that is not only
“at hand” but “on hand” in the person
of Jesus the Christ. Yet we dare not
forget the tacit dimension of this min-
istry. Not even when it seems to frus-
trate and sidetrack our focal efforts. Like
Jesus, we set out on our way to preach
the gospel to the cities of Galilee which
are now the cities and villages of the
world. But as we go we are confronted
by people who say to us out of desper-
ation: “If you will, you can secure jus-
tice for me.” “If you will, you can lib-
erate me from my bondage to poverty.”
“If you will, you can enable me to feed
my own hunger.” “If you will, you can
influence the world in the cause of
peace.” Like Jesus, we cannot avoid these
needs but we can be frustrated by them.
They are so deep, so broad, so monu-
mental that they require of us every-
thing we have and then some. More-
over, we cannot meet these needs
without touching them, without be-
coming involved with them, without
being contaminated by them in the eyes
of many. Is it any wonder that we, like
Jesus, are so often angry— angry with
ourselves, angry with each other, angry
with the world that we find at our feet?

What then are we to do? Are we to
allow our anger to immobilize us? Are

we to resolve our frustration by giving
up our preaching of the gospel in favor
of our ministering to the needs of the
world? Or are we to resolve our frus-
tration the other way, by ignoring the
cries of human need in our determi-
nation to preach the gospel? If the min-
istry of Jesus is our norm, the answer
must be: None of the above. Jesus calls
us to a ministry in which the focus and
the tacit dimension are integrated.

Many of you will recognize that I
am borrowing here the language of Mi-
chael Polanyi. Polanyi was a scientist
who turned philosopher and struggled
with the problem of human knowl-
edge. His insight was that knowledge
is the product of a process of integra-
tion. When we focus our attention upon
something, we are also aware of other
things within our field of vision.
Knowledge arises when we perceive the
connections and the relationships be-
tween our focus and this tacit dimen-
sion. The integration of our focus and
the tacit dimension of our awareness
produces knowledge.

I believe that what is true of knowl-
edge is equally true of Christian min-
istry. Our focus is proclaiming the gos-
pel of God. But within our field of vision
is the tacit dimension of genuine hu-
man need. Ministry is formed when we
integrate the focus with the tacit di-
mension. Such an integration is not easy
to achieve. It comes only by a concerted
effort, and even then there will be great
frustration and perhaps some anger. But
Jesus trees us for that by his own anger
and frustration. Yet his encounter with
the leper encourages us to believe and
to hope that our touching the needs of
the world will not divert us from our
mission. On the contrary, touching the
needy may just be the way of fulfilling
our task.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Presbyterian missionaries in Thai-
land have learned over the past hundred
years that the most effective way of
preaching the gospel is by addressing
the felt needs of the Thai people. It is
no accident that the gospel has been
heard and believed more among the
lepers than among any other social

group. There is more at McKean than
a hospital and a village. There is a
church. And the church was created by
the preaching of the gospel, the preach-
ing of the gospel by ministers and doc-
tors and nurses who became credible
witnesses to Jesus Christ by their will-
ingness to touch the lepers.

Paul A. Crow, Jr., has had a long friendship
with Princeton Seminary. While serving as
Director of the Consultation on Church Union,
with its national offices in Princeton, he was
also a Visiting faculty member at the Semi-
nary. This sermon has been made available to
the Bulletin and these introductory para-
graphs are printed here to set forth the context
in which the sermon was preached. Dr. Crow
is currently President of the Council on Chris-
tian Unity of the Christian Church ( Disciples
of Christ) and Visiting Professor of Church
History at Christian Theological Seminary in
Indianapolis.

May Day Sunday 1983 at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London was planned as a
two-event celebration of the church’s mission and unity. Anglican bishop
Desmond Tutu, General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches,
had agreed to preach at Matins that day on Christian Witness; I was scheduled
to be the preacher at Evensong on the theme of Christian unity. Instead, what
transpired was a far more dramatic encounter between the spirituality of that
historic cathedral and the racist government of South Africa.

Twelve months before this Sunday, Bishop Tutu accepted an invitation to
preach at St. Paul’s on May 1, to lecture at his alma mater — King’s College,
London — on May 3, and the next day to deliver the annual Drawbridge Lecture
on Christian Evidence at St. Paul’s. The Dean and the Chapter, as well as British
and American diplomats, had given the South African government longtime
notice and made clear that this was a pastoral and not a political visit. Such
invitations are nevertheless always surrounded by uncertainty, since the South
African government fears Tutu’s preaching and the lively way in which he brings
the Biblical message to bear upon today’s world.

On Thursday, April 28, Bishop Kenneth Woollcombe, formerly Anglican
bishop at Oxford and now the Canon at St. Paul’s who had set up this special
day, received word that Bishop Tutu, as often before, had been denied travel
papers to leave his country. On Friday, the Paris edition of The Herald Tribune
published the story. Strangely, the English newspapers delayed any word. At
this point it was decided that Bishop Woollcombe would preach in Tutu’s place
at the morning service. When a BBC radio operator came to interview Dean
Allen Webster, he asked if St. Paul’s invitation had not from the beginning been
a political gesture. Dean Webster’s reply was, “Bishop Tutu’s invitation was to
preach the Word of God and to celebrate the Eucharist. But even so, when
Christians witness to God’s justice and love it is not politics but spirituality at
its deepest level.” Later Dean Webster read a public statement at St. Paul’s
protesting the decision of the South African government to prevent Desmond
Tutu from flying to London. In part, the statement said:

To prevent a responsible South African church leader who is invited to speak
on academic and Christian occasions reveals an extraordinary failure to un-

Christian Unity in a
Wounded World

by Paul A. Crow, Jr.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

derstand the need for British understanding of South Africa. . . . The flow of
ideas especially from those who are denied the right to vote or address meetings
in their own country is vital for human understanding. . . . To deny the
possibility of responsible, moderate leadership from Bishop Tutu, who has
worldwide support, is tragic and foolish.

The Dean ended his public statement by saying, “May God bless Bishop Tutu
and may God keep him safe, keep him safe.”

The procession for Matins began with a sense of unusual drama even for
historic St. Paul’s. Before the service, Bishop Woollcombe placed the Queen’s
chair in the main aisle between the lectern and pulpit, symbolizing Desmond
Tutu’s presence even though he was physically absent. (This idea came from the
Disciples of Christ General Assembly at Anaheim in 1981, when Tutu was
supposed to speak but was denied a travel visa.) In the red velvet chair usually
reserved for a royal visit sat the Book of Modern Martyrs which normally is on
display in a side chapel. It was open to the page which commemorates Steve
Biko, a thirty-one-year-old black South African Christian whose work for free-
dom led to his 1977 murder in a South African prison. The empty chair, the
open martyrs book, and the nearby wooden crucifix above the high pulpit in St.
Paul’s — where Bishop Tutu was to have preached — were for me symbols of the
suffering of thousands of Christians whose faith and quest for freedom put them
at odds with the oppressive governments. These three were symbols of the power
of the powerless. When will the South African government and all other powers
realize that when the Spirit is present, an empty chair is as powerful, if not more
powerful, than a Bishop in the pulpit?

SERMON

Text: 11 He [God] has made known to us his hidden purpose-such was his will and
pleasure determined beforehand in Christ — to be put into effect when the time
was ripe: namely, that the universe, all in heaven and on earth, might be
brought into a unity in Christ .” (Ephesians 1:9-10)

The British novelist J. B. Priestly was
once invited to write an article about
his theological beliefs. He declined the
invitation, confessing that at the mo-
ment he was “perhaps better able to
deny than to affirm.” Then thought-
fully he added: “I regret this, because
now is the time for gigantic affirma-
tions.”

Priestly’s words are therapy these days
for the movement towards Christian
unity, a movement which in certain
places is caught in moods of disillu-

sionment, anger, uncertainty, and leth-
argy. Some church leaders might de-
scribe these as times when we are
“perhaps better able to deny Christian
unity than to affirm.” There are mem-
ories of broken covenants among the
churches, delayed theological consen-
sus, bruised egos, rejected love. But at
just this moment the Apostle Paul makes
his most “gigantic affirmation.” From
his prison cell Paul saw a tragically di-
vided and disordered world in which
the whole fabric of life was threatened.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

He saw walls of hostility dividing per-
sons of different races, cultures, nations,
and traditions. He saw alienation be-
tween persons and God, an alienation
which had to be healed before any of
the other divisions could be reconciled.

At that very moment, claims Paul,
God chose to make known “the mys-
tery of his will,” “his hidden purpose
for all humanity.” Through Christ, God
is fulfilling his original purpose, now
made clear, to overcome all rivalries,
all animosities, all divisions, and in their
place to establish unity. His design is
“to unite all things in him, things in
heaven and things on earth.” Paul’s
phrase of reconciling “all things” ( ta
panta) means literally the reconciling of
the whole of creation as well as of all
personal relationships. Despite what
many say, disunity is not God’s way.
Reconciliation and unity are God’s pur-
pose for humanity.

In this gigantic affirmation we hear
the voice of apostolic confidence. The
phrase “in the fullness of time” or “when
the time was ripe” is not lightly spoken
by Paul. Nor is it to be understood as
a time of glowing success or victorious
ecumenical campaigns. When many
doomsayers felt the new Israel was de-
feated, Paul wrote to those first-century
Christians: “Look! Now is the right
time for unity! Now is the day of rec-
onciliation!"

To work for Christian unity is to
learn about the weaknesses of Chris-
tians and churches. We are feeble, hu-
man, vulnerable vessels of God. Our
designs are not always the design of
God. Our achievements seem fragile and
short-lived. But this is the assumption
of the Gospel. Precisely at the moment
when we are most human, most vul-

nerable, most divided — when the power
of sin is so terribly strong — Christians
discover the hidden depths of their unity
and common faith. We discover that
the distances between us are being lifted
by grace in order that new intimacies
can grow. What a sign of God’s grace!
Despite our failures as Christians — our
disobedience and comfortable disuni-
ties— the Holy Spirit is still at work in
the church gathering its members and
ministers for common service in the
world. Despite our lack of love as
churches, God is at work in the world
raising up sons and daughters who cou-
rageously witness to peace and unity.

Christian unity is not just a dream
to be realized when church synods and
assemblies are inclined to do so. Unity
is the goal of all history, made possible
by the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus
Christ. For us, whether we be bishops,
clergy, or laity, to stand before a broken
and divided world and be silent or dis-
couraged about church unity is the same
as if we stood before the empty tomb
that first Easter morning and had noth-
ing to say but to express anger, disil-
lusionment, and tiredness. Today is the
fullness of time. We are empowered to
begin again the search for visible unity
because the reconciling power of Christ
unites all things, things in heaven and
things on earth.

Through Paul’s gigantic affirmation
we hear the voice of a divided, wounded
world. Disunity is the most dramatic
single fact of our world. This has been
illustrated in our midst at St. Paul’s
today when the racist government of
South Africa did not allow Bishop Des-
mond Tutu to come to this day of cel-
ebration. He and millions of others are
denied their human rights by govern-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

ments and parties which fragment the
people of God. When Paul joyously said
elsewhere, “God was in Christ recon-
ciling the world to himself and en-
trusting to us the ministry of reconcil-
iation” (II Corinthians 5:19), he was
saying something profound about God’s
love for this world of hurting people.

Whenever the call to visible unity is
taken so lightly these days or treated as
if it were dependent on the preferences
of different traditions, I believe we mis-
understand the relation between God’s
church and God’s world. The ecumen-
ical question is not whether we can dis-
cover a united church that pleases An-
glicans, Methodists, United Reformed,
or Roman Catholics. The ecumenical
question which the Gospel poses is how
we can be a church which manifests
the unity of God’s purpose to a frag-
mented, dying world.

The world is the creation of God’s
goodness entrusted to humanity for its
completion. The world is the object of
God’s deepest love. The world is the
place where sin and forgiveness, bro-
kenness and new beginnings are signs
of salvation. But where do warring na-
tions, classes in conflict, distrusting races
learn that God has made them one?
Where do persons whose differences
have led to alienation and hatred learn
that they are no longer strangers or those
outside love, but rather are common
citizens with the saints and members
of God’s household?

Such is the true calling of the church.
The church, according to God’s pur-
pose, is a sign of the coming unity of
all humanity. The church is the voice
of God’s “no” to the disunities of so-
ciety— the quarrels, the unhealthy na-
tionalism, the ancient biases which di-
vide. We are called to be those who
allow God’s love to shine through us

in such a way that the divisions between
peoples are overcome, and through
whom women and men of all sorts and
conditions are drawn together.

Ill

The apostle gave a clue to church
unity when he said: “If anyone is in
Christ he [or she] is a new creation” (I
Cor. 5:17), a new person. Unity is pos-
sible because persons are recreated in
the image of their own common Lord
Jesus Christ, who is the image of God.

Garfield Todd, the former prime
minister of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, was
asked several years ago what he thought
of the witness of the World Council of
Churches against apartheid and racism.
This Christian statesman replied: “Be-
cause of that witness Jesus Christ again
walks the villages of Zimbabwe.” That’s
what it means to be a sign against di-
vision. Whenever the churches together
bridge the divisions and bind up the
wounds, whenever we empower other
human beings to see the image of God
in themselves, then the oneness of the
people of God can be celebrated.

There is therefore a profound rela-
tion between the unity of the church
and the unity of humanity. As Pope
John Paul II said in his 1982 address
at Liverpool:

As Christians today strive to be sources
of reconciliation in the world, they
feel the need, perhaps more than ever
before, to be fully reconciled them-
selves.

Nowhere is this relation between the
unity of the Church and the brokenness
of the world more critical than in the
search for world peace. The reality of
a nuclear war makes clear that we will
become one Body of Christ or we will
become one destroyed earth. Who will

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

announce that judgment? Who will live
out the reconciling love which is nec-
essary for peace? Two weeks ago I at-
tended a Christian World Conference
on Life and Peace at Uppsala, Sweden.
In their message, church leaders from
thirty countries confessed the divine link
between unity and peace. “The poten-
tial causes of war,” said a Reformed
bishop from Hungary, “are supported
by a divided church.” Such a spiritual
insight led the Uppsala Conference to
celebrate all the movements toward
Christian unity as “a good sign of hope”
and to say: “At this precise moment in
history when division threatens the very
survival of the human race the Holy
Spirit is driving [God’s] people to dis-
cover and demonstrate a unity that
transcends all divisions.” If the churches
could recover the biblical symbol of one
living fellowship in Christ, they might
become a promise to nations and in-
ternational societies of that ancient vi-
sion of a New Earth where all nations

come together peacefully before the Lord
God and where hunger, hurt, and sor-
row are no more. Church unity is a
foundation of global peace because God
has united all things in Christ, things
in heaven and things on earth.

Towards the end of his life, Nathan
Soderblom, a Swedish Lutheran arch-
bishop and an architect of the modern
ecumenical movement, wrote:

In the Spirit I have seen a glimpse
of the united church, a distant goal
from which [the churches] cannot turn
away, and which [they] may not neg-
lect without thereby denying the
Christian faith” (Sundkler, p. 413).

So the Gospel speaks to the churches
of this land and elsewhere of their ecu-
menical pilgrimage. Because it is a pil-
grimage made during God’s f{ airos , a
pilgrimage of a healing community in
the midst of a wounded world, we can-
not leave it or neglect it without en-
dangering our salvation. Amen.

Spirituality of the Struggle

by John W. de Gruchy

Dr. John W. de Gruchy, a native of South
Africa, served at Princeton Theological Sem-
inary as a Visiting Lecturer in Theology dur-
ing the spring and fall semesters of 1983. He
is a senior lecturer and head of the Department
of Religious Studies at the University of Cape
Town. Dr. de Gruchy is an ordained minister
in the United Congregational Church of South
Africa. The author o/The Church Struggle
in South Africa, he is also editor of Apart-
heid is a Heresy (1983). This sermon is an
expanded version of one preached in the Chapel
of Princeton Seminary in spring 1983.

Text: “ Come to me and listen to my words, hear me, and you shall have life." (Isaiah

55G)

On passing through the security check
at Heathrow Airport in London
several years ago, my hand luggage
produced that suspicious “peep” which
suggests that you are trying to smuggle
a handgun on board. The security per-
son proceeded to examine my bag and
eventually pulled out a book, a book
with a zipper. “That,” he proclaimed,
“is the offending article.” “But that,” I
replied, “is only my Bible.” “Indeed,
sir,” he snapped back, “that can be a
very dangerous book!” Indeed, it can.

I thank God for all that we have
learned as a result of Biblical critical
study. As a student I started off rather
worried that such study would destroy
my confidence in the Bible. I knew that
this did happen, and still does, though
I suspect less frequently. But I increas-
ingly discovered as a student and as a
pastor, and still do today, that such study
properly done is an aid which helps us
to discover what God is saying to us in
the scriptures today. In any case, if it
does nothing else, proper critical study
prevents us from misusing the Bible to
support notions and ideologies which
in fact distort and undermine Christian
faith and witness. So I give thanks to
God for Biblical scholarship.

But I also know that sometimes our
study of the Bible ends up with us con-
trolling it instead of it challenging us.
This is true as much for those funda-
mentalists who reject critical study as
for anyone else. Biblical literalism is often
a way of manipulating scripture. But it
is true of all of us. How often we render
the Bible ineffective by boxing it up in
our own packages; domesticating it;
homogenizing it; yes, desensitizing it
because it has become a security risk!

Why is the Bible a “dangerous book?”
It is a “dangerous book” because it re-
minds us of those formative events in
our Judaeo-Christian tradition which
“turned the world upside down.” It is
full of what Johannes Metz has called
“dangerous memories.” Those liberat-
ing and prophetic deeds and words
which transformed slaves into the peo-
ple of God, and time and again called
them back to faithful obedience to the
righteousness and justice of God. But
it is a “dangerous book” especially be-
cause it constantly confronts us with the
“dangerous memory” of the “Word be-
come flesh,” the crucified and risen Lord,
who upsets the thrones of the mighty
and exalts the humble and meek of the
earth. It is a “dangerous book” because

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

it proclaims a “Kingdom not of this
world,” that rule and reign of God in
this world, in the midst of this world,
which does not derive its authority or
power from the “principalities and
powers of this world.” One of my fa-
vorite texts comes at the end of chapter
12 of the Acts of the Apostles. Herod,
we are told, “was eaten by worms and
died. But the Word of God grew and
multiplied!”

The church in South Africa is en-
gaged in an intense struggle, a struggle
within itself, and a struggle against an
unchristian ideology and political sys-
tem. It is a struggle for its own soul; a
struggle against racism, exploitation,
militarism; a struggle against the her-
esy of apartheid; a struggle against
compromising the Lordship of Christ
over the church; a struggle for the true
unity of the church which transcends
human barriers; a struggle for social
justice and peace.

But is that not the same for the church
in every part of the world? Is the church
struggle in South Africa as unique as
it seems, or is it but one example of
what is universally true? Indeed, could
it not be said that the church is only
being the church if it is engaged in
struggle — the struggle to be faithful to
the gospel of the kingdom in each and
every historical situation? A black
American student interrupted a lecture
of mine on the church struggle in South
Africa earlier this year, saying that I
was in fact describing his situation. Per-
haps the best way you can help the
church in South Africa is by being more
faithfully the church here in the United
States!

It is precisely when the church seeks
to do and be this that it soon discovers
the inadequacy of its own programs,
resources, and strengths. It discovers that

it is in fact quite impotent to make any
difference. It is precisely then, indeed,
only then that the church is able to
“hear the Word of God” and discover
the resources of God, the empowering
of the Spirit, which alone give life. There
is that awesome experience of the si-
lence of God to which many bear wit-
ness. The experience of Job and the
Holocaust. But quite differently there
is what some have called “the strange
silence of the Bible in the church” which
results from the church presuming it
can, in its own strength, with its own
resources, manage very well, thank you!
It feels no need to listen; it therefore
does not hear. Thank God, time and
again the Word, like a “two edged
sword” (Hebrews 4: 1 if.), cuts through
our guff, through our categories, through
our carefully designed plans and pre-
tense, and brings us through repent-
ance to life.

For that is what the Word of God
is about. It is the “Word of life,” the
Word which bears witness to Jesus Christ
who gives life even in the midst of death.
Our gospel reading reminds us that the
scriptures are testimonies to Jesus; their
whole purpose is to enable us to dis-
cover life in him. This is what the Word
does when we allow it to break into
our lives, and the life of our congre-
gation. The Word about which we speak
is not one which puts an intolerable
burden upon us. It is one which meets
our deep needs; it is a Word which
sustains and supports us once we have
set out in our weakness and impotence
and unrighteousness, to believe, to
struggle, to do justice.

But it is also a Word w'hich comes
to us in the midst of our lives wrhen we
have everything but are empty. I re-
member a young man from my first
congregation who, through hard work

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

and considerable effort, had acquired
wealth and civic power by the time he
was thirty. One night he told me, as
we played pool in his spacious home,
that he had decided to apply for the
ordained ministry. “You understand,”
I remarked, “that you will take a cut
in your salary!” “Yes, indeed,” was his
reply, “now that I have all I want, and
more, I realize that I have not got what
I really need.”

Come, all who are thirsty, come, fetch
water; come, you who have no food,
buy corn and eat; come and buy, not
for money, not for price. Why spend
money and get what is not bread,
why give the price of your labor and
go unsatisfied? . . . Come to me and
listen to my words, hear me, and you
shall have life.

These ancient words of Isaiah are
surely appropriate in our materialistic
culture — a culture which puts a pre-
mium on possessions, and seeks to sat-
isfy its soul on the abundance of things
which can be gathered and stored into
barns, barns which have to be enlarged,
and enlarged once again, because things
never satisfy. We find it awfully diffi-
cult to accept this lesson; I certainly do.
For many in our modern world, life
has no meaning because they have no
bread; for many of us, life has no mean-
ing because we have too much “bread,”
but have never really tasted the “bread
of life.”

But these ancient words apply not
only to those of us who try to satisfy
our souls on the abundance of the things
we possess, or the successes we are able
to achieve. It applies also to those of us
who are very busy trying to serve God.
How often ordained ministers discover
that they have been so busy “minister-
ing” that they have been closed to the

ministry of Christ. There is no greater
tragedy in the ministry. Busy about pre-
paring sermons, we fail to hear the life-
giving Word. The same is true for all
who seek to minister in the name of
Christ; all who bear office in the life of
the church. Spiritually inept or ex-
hausted, we remain closed to the em-
powering of the Spirit.

But it is not only true for such; it is
also true for all Christians struggling
to be faithful in the midst of the world.
How often have we not become in-
volved in the struggle for justice, and
discovered not only the paucity of our
resources, but also the emptiness of our
lives. Like Mary we have been busy,
intensely active, perhaps, but unlike
Martha we have failed to discover that
which gives life its meaning and service
its power. That anonymous 14th cen-
tury classic of the spiritual life, The Cloud
of Unknowing, reminds us that a person
“cannot be fully active except he be partly
contemplative, nor fully contemplative
without being partly active.”

Spirituality, it is true, can so easily,
as it does so often, degenerate into
something egocentric, where we mas-
sage our own souls in order to develop
our spiritual potential; or it can be a
way of escape from the challenge of life
in the world, the struggle for justice,
the struggle to be a good neighbor. The
spirituality of which we speak is the
spirituality which derives from silence
before the living Word in the midst of
the struggle, that spirituality which lis-
tens in order to live, that spirituality
which is a gift of grace, a gift of the
Spirit, not the product of a technique,
but the spirituality which is knowing,
trusting, and obeying Jesus Christ. It is
the spirituality of those, who in the midst
of the struggles of life, the struggles of
discipleship, study the scriptures, that

5»

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

“dangerous book” in order to discover
the sustenance which Jesus Christ alone
can give.

It is indeed a “dangerous book” which
has been entrusted into our hands. But
it is more dangerous not to hear and
obey it, than to listen and obey. For the
gracious demands and challenge of the
Word are not intended to destroy us,
but to set us free to discover God’s grace
in the midst of life; to set us free for
that costly yet joyous discipleship in
which alone we discover the One who
gives meaning to life. To be deaf to the

Word which God speaks means being
unable to hear the music which makes
sense of our experience and universe,
that music which alone gives us cause
to hope beyond hope and so live in
trust.

“There is a prophecy in Amos,” wrote
R. D. Laing, “that there will be a fam-
ine in the land, not a famine for bread,
not a thirst for water, but for hearing
the words of the Lord. That time has
now come. It is the present age.” “Come
to me and listen to my Words, hear me,
and you shall have life.” Amen.

Bible Study on Peace:
Ephesians 2:11-3:21

by Cullen I K Story

In biblical history, the “gospel of
peace” appears as a most fitting rubric
for God’s good news. Witness, for in-
stance, how — to an oppressed people —
the great prophet of Israel’s exile por-
trayed vividly a messenger moving across
the mountains announcing the good
news of peace (shalom, cf. Isa. 52:7 with
52:4-5). Or again, consider that, in the
face of the reign of a cruel Edomite
king whose value for human life was
sub-zero, the angelic evangel sang of
peace on earth (Luke 2:14). Two pow-
erful paradigms soliciting our reflection
today. Not only do they cry out in op-
position to a nuclear arms race threat-
ening the world with a holocaust that
defies description, but they also issue a
clarion call for evangelical messengers
who will proclaim preeminently Christ’s
peace.

Peace on earth was incarnation’s first
word for the world (Luke 2:14) and
what a word it was! It encompassed
the entire ministry of Jesus, for as he
moved in and out among all levels of
society, his word of peace implied
wholeness for the one who was sick
(Mark 5:34), forgiveness for the one who
had sinned (Luke 7:47, 50), restoration
for the one who had failed (John 20:19,
21, 26), and confidence in God’s ulti-
mate saving purpose for the one who
faced death (Luke 2:29-30). The im-

A native of Iowa, Dr. Cullen I K Story is
an alumnus of Johns Hopkins University, Dal-
las Theological Seminary, and Princeton The-
ological Seminary. He has been a member of
the New Testament faculty at Princeton for
over 20 years and is also Director of the Bib-
lical Language Program. His most recent pub-
lication is Greek to Me, which he co-authored
with his son. For eight years Dr. Story served
in Lebanon for the Board of Foreign Missions;
the need for peace is something he has wit-
nessed firsthand.

plication is clear. Twentieth-century
Christians are to join hands with Chris-
tians of the first century in that invisible
yet indissoluble bond of the gospel of
peace (Eph. 6:15; cf. Isa. 52:7).

In such confidence, we approach our
Bible study in Ephesians with its theme
of peace, a theme that permeates the
pivotal section of the letter (Eph. 2:11-
3:21). The passage is divided by a num-
ber of printed texts into two main di-
visions (2:11-22 and 3:1-21). I suggest
that the movement of Paul’s thought
in the two divisions is comparable to
the second and third parts of Handel’s
Messiah. Part two of the Messiah opens
with what may be termed the “golden
passional,”1 i.e., the chorus, “Behold the
Lamb of God.” It continues with a de-
scription of messengers on the moun-
tain who bring with them the gospel
of peace, and concludes with the “Hal-
lelujah Chorus.” Part three highlights
the triumph of Christ’s resurrection and
the resurrection ot his people, conclud-
ing with the “Amen” chorus. So, in
Ephesians — similar to the chorus, “Be-
hold the Lamb of God” — we find a
portrayal of Christ’s passion (2:13-15),
then a description of the messengers of
Christ’s peace (3:1-12), followed by a

1 The term is used by F. Delitzsch of Isa.
52:I3'53:I2-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

proclamation of Christ’s victory (3: 13-
17). Then, commensurable to the “Hal-
lelujah Chorus,” is Paul’s praise offered
tor the incomprehensible dimensions of
Christ’s love — its length and breadth
and its depth and height (3:18-19). Fi-
nally, similar to the concluding “Amen"
chorus of Handel, Paul also ends with
his own “Amen” following his ascrip-
tion of praise to God (3:20-21).

The letter to the so-called “Ephe-
sian” church is quite evenly balanced
between what “amazing grace” has done
for the people of God (chapters 1-3) and
what grace can do through them (chap-
ters 4-6). One feature that distinguishes
the two parts is the extensive use of the
indicative mood in chapters 1-3 over
against the imperative mood in chap-
ters 4-6. Chapters 4-6 are full of ex-
hortations or demands laid upon the
Christian body for a well-ordered life
among its own members as well as in
society. For example, the writer urges
readers to “put on the new nature” (4:24),
“speak the truth” (4:25), “be imitators
of God” (5:1), “walk in love” (5:2), “be
strong in the Lord” (6:10), and “put on
the whole armor of God” (6:1 1). There
are almost forty of these “imperatives”
in chapters 4-6, all indicating what the
people of God are to do.

In contrast, chapters 1-3 are char-
acterized by the “indicative” mood, i.e.,
what God has done. There is one im-
perative only — in 2:11, “remember.” It
relates to the past: remember what you
were and the change which God has
wrought in you. But as the lone im-
perative in the first three chapters, it is
one of the important keys for under-
standing the letter. It points us to the
basic need of the church today and like-
wise directs us to the heart of our con-
cern for “peace” in this study. For, the
apostle says, in remembering what you

were — strangers, alienated persons,
without hope, and without God — while
you remember all of these things, re-
member most of all, that

(a) Christ Jesus is our peace (2:14),

(b) He made peace through his cross
(2:15-16), and

Remember. The verb — ever so impor-
tant in the Bible — is the word which
Israel needed to hear. Remember that
you were slaves and that the Lord
brought you out of Egypt; remember
the days of old; remember what won-
ders the Lord performed on your be-
half. And how well Jesus knew that —
like the butler who did not remember
Joseph but forgot him (Gen. 40:23) —
His disciples and His church could and
would forget, and so He instituted the
holy supper, saying, “This do in re-
membrance of me.”

And now, two “pegs” may help us
to grasp the breadth of our passage:

Peace — the provision of Christ for
the world — Eph. 2:11-21.

Peace — the purpose of God in Christ
for the world, to be channeled to
the world through the church —
Eph. 3:1-21.

(1) Peace — The Provision of Christ for
the World. Christ breaks down the mid-
dle wall of separation between one peo-
ple and another, between one culture
and another, between one race and an-
other (2:14). In a succinct way, Robert
Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” has cap-
tured the meaning of barriers between
people. He describes a scene where he
and his neighbor, at an appointed time
each spring, walk down on either side
of the stone wall that marks the bound-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

ary between their respective properties.
They cut and bruise their hands as they
replace the stones that have fallen down
through the winter months. When his
neighbor blandly states, “Good fences
make good neighbors,’’ the poet rebels.
He says to himself, “Why do we need
fences? My neighbor has pine trees and
I have apple trees. Surely my apples will
not cross the wall and eat the pine cones
under my neighbor’s trees.” Then come
the famous lines:

Before I built a wall, I’d ask to know
what I was walling in or walling out,
and to whom I was like to give of-
fense. Something there is that doesn’t
love a wall, that wants it down.

Does Frost, unconsciously, capture
something of Ephesians 2? Does Paul
suggest that the “wall” is that which
divided the court of the Gentiles from
the Temple proper? Possibly. Over a
hundred years ago, the French archae-
ologist, Clermont-Ganneau, uncovered
an inscription that had once been writ-
ten on the temple wall, an inscription
that in clear, crisp terms forbade any
Gentile to enter the sanctuary under
penalty of death. Yet, by the “wall” of
Ephesians 2, Paul may provide us with
a flashback to the curtain of the holy
place in the temple — which curtain, at
Jesus’ death, was torn in two from top
to bottom (Mark 15:38). Whether either
of these ideas be Paul’s specific refer-
ence, the text summons us to face the
painful barriers of racial animosities that
have plagued the church from its very
inception. There was a sharp almost
impenetrable wall that separated Jew
from Gentile in the first century. We
are aware of the prayer of the Pharisee
in Paul’s day, “God, I thank thee that
I am not a Gentile” — a prayer echoed
pointedly, according to Jesus, by the

Pharisee in the temple: “God, I thank
thee that I am not like the rest ... or
even like this tax-collector” (Luke 18:11).
Think what it took to get Peter to go
to the home of the Gentile centurion
(Acts 10). Or consider the anxiety and
sleepless nights that Barnabas and Paul
must have had prior to the Jerusalem
council where they contended vigor-
ously for the equal standing and status
of Gentile and Jewish Christians in the
church of Jesus Christ (Acts 15). Today,
we remember that it was racial hatred
that ignited the fearful holocaust of so
many millions of Jews. We remember
too the fearless stand of Martin Luther
King, Jr., who aroused the conscience
of church and society alike to a re-
sponsible commitment to human rights
and human dignity for all races. The
tragedy of racism drives us back re-
lentlessly to Ephesians 2, where there
unfolds before our very eyes the soci-
ological miracle of the first century with
all of its tremendous implications for
the twentieth century. Jew and Gentile
are placed in one body in Christ. The
passage reverberates with the numeral
one.

He made us both one . . . that He
might create in himself one new per-
son in place of two . . . and might
reconcile us both to God in one body
. . . for through Him we both have
access in one Spirit to the Father (2:14-
18).

The church is called, not to mount
a peace “bandwagon,” but to some-
thing far more serious. The word “re-
member” (2:11) summons the church
away from a theological amnesia to a
renewed awareness of a peace that is
full and profound, rooted indelibly in
Christ’s cross. In essence, peace is the
provision of Christ for the world, for

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

He is the one who breaks down the
wall of hostility, who creates one new
person, thereby making peace.

Today, peace and the broken wall,
in the words of Markus Barth, mean
“the end of separation and segregation,
the end of enmity and contempt, and
the end of every sort of ghetto!” (The
Broken Wall , p. 43). But beyond what
Barth has said, there is a frank confes-
sional nature to our Scripture, “For he
himself is our peace ... so [he was]
making peace” (2:14-15). It is confes-
sional in the sense of Mark 8:29, “You
are the Christ,” or in the sense of 1 Cor.
12:3, “Jesus is Lord.”

“Christ himself is our peace.” The
confession is both clear and revealing.

First, it is comparable to the confes-
sions in Second Isaiah and in the Fourth
Gospel that express respectively the self-
revelation and self-declaration of God
and of the God-Man, Jesus:

I am he, I am he who blots out
your transgressions (Isa. 43:25).

I am the bread of life (John 6:35).

I am the way, the truth, and the
life (John 14:6).

And so if we should put the confession
of Eph. 2:14 on the lips of the risen
Jesus, it would be, “I myself am your
peace” (cf. John 20:19-23, 26) — imply-
ing that our own plans and programs
for peace must always be subject to our
confession of Jesus as our peace.

John Bunyan has described the point
so well in his other masterpiece, The
Holy War. The Prince of Peace, Em-
manuel, successfully conquers the town
of ManSoul and establishes his rule of
peace within. At first the inhabitants
visit the prince regularly and take de-
light in his love feasts. But then, be-
cause of the craftiness of a Mr. Carnal
Security, they begin to think of them-

selves— how impregnable is their town,
how' great are their heroic leaders — and
they take to feasting and sporting and
grow cold in their love for Emmanuel
until He withdraws from their town
and they do not even miss him. There
is, however, one ray of hope, the con-
tinued presence in ManSoul of a Mr.
Godly Fear wrho probes and warns and
preaches. Like a thorn in their side, he
calls to remembrance who they are and
who is the center of their lives. “I my-
self am your peace,” says the risen Jesus.
Armed with this assurance, as com-
mitted Christians we too are to probe
and warn, to proclaim to our people
and nation that Christ is our peace.

Second, there is a breadth to the
confession for the first century church
but no less for the church today. It is
a confession of Christians, but of Jewish
Christians and of Gentile Christians
alike. He himself is our peace who has
made the two one. The terms Jew and
Gentile in the first century embraced
all people, for if you were not a Jew
you were a Gentile and vice versa. For
us today, the confession is ecumenical.
I doubt seriously if we have begun to
explore its potential power in the
worldwide church — Malaysian Chris-
tians, Christians in Indonesia, China,
and India, in East and West Germany,
in Kenya, Lebanon, and Brazil, in Ar-
gentina and Great Britain, in El Sal-
vador and the United States. For Chris-
tians everywhere to recover or to discover
for the first time the timely meaning
of the confession — this may be our most
important task for the day.

Third, the confession ends with a
unique expression, “making peace.”
Ephesians finds its parallel so often in
Colossians, where we read similar words,
“he made peace through the blood of
his cross” (Col. 1 :2o). Apart from a brief

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

reference in James (3:18), a comparable
declaration is found only in the beati-
tudes of Jesus, from the sermon on the
mount: “Blessed are the peacemakers
for they shall be called the children of
God” (Matt. 5:9). As far as we know,
there was no written Gospel of Mat-
thew in circulation at the time Ephe-
sians was written. But can it be that
Paul was acquainted with the tradition
of the beatitudes and can it be that he
is consciously reflecting the seventh
beatitude in Ephesians 2? You are to
stretch your minds just a wee bit now
as you see the two similar expressions
in transliterated Greek and as you sense
the similar “ring” which they have.

poion eirenen

Eph. 2:14, “making peace”
eirenopoioi

Matt. 5:9, “peacemakers”
cf. eirenopoiesas

Col. 1:20, “having made
peace”

A link between the texts would imply
two things:

(a) It would imply that the one who
gave his special blessing to peacemakers
demonstrated in himself that peace-
making involved great personal sacri-
fice, for the peace that he made came
by way of the cross, as Eph. 2:16 affirms
(cf. Col. 1:20). That is to say, real hon-
est-to-goodness peacemakers who re-
ceive Jesus’ blessing, according to Matt.
5:9, are led in Ephesians 2 not only to
Jesus’ sacrificial example of peacemak-
ing but to the unique nature of his
“peacemaking” as well. His was indeed
the solitary sacrifice, the sacrifice of the
sinless one for us the sinners. He, the
just one, suffered for us the unjust that
he might bring us to God. He in his
own person bore our sins in his own
body on the tree. Our life in Christ is

completely dependent on his life that
was poured out for us. There is, in brief,
a deep indelible substitutionary quality
about the peace that Jesus made through
the blood of his cross. I say “made,”
and yet the verb tense used in Ephe-
sians is not past but present, as though
to describe what it is that Jesus contin-
ues to be about in the world. Unique
it is, then, yet Ephesians 2 suggests that
Jesus’ sacrifice is also exemplary. It means
that Paul’s word linked to Jesus’ saying
affirms that peacemakers who receive
the blessing of Jesus must be ready for
personal sacrifice — even to the extent
of death.

(b) A second implication emerges as
we join Eph. 2:15 to the beatitude in
Matthew 5. The peace that Jesus made
through his cross is far more than a
personal peace which you and I may
claim to have with God. It is more than
the peace that the church receives
through the preaching of the word or
the celebration of holy communion. The
blessing of Jesus on peacemakers, in
Matthew 5, does not mean a blessing
on those who merely claim to receive
and celebrate the peace and wholeness
that Jesus brings. No, it means a bless-
ing on those who are reconcilers wher-
ever there may be enmity, hostility,
hatred, and warfare. What Jesus
preached He practiced. He proclaimed,
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “He
made peace through the blood of his
cross.” Peace in Eph. 2:14-16, therefore,
has global consequences. Jesus be-
stowed his blessing on peacemakers. If
he were here, he would bestow no
blessing on our government which
spends more than a million dollars an
hour on military arms, a nation whose
peacetime military budget has escalated
to an all-time high. Whether it is known
or not, Ground Zero Week and the

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

clarion call that is being sounded in
many sectors of our nation for a halt
to nuclear arms production possess a
biblical base in Ephesians 2 that is lucid
and compelling. The agonizing ques-
tion presses in on us on every side, a
question that refuses to go away and
get lost: “To a nation that we love,
whose heritage we have appropriated
and much of whose heritage we ap-
preciate, how do we, as Christ’s wit-
nesses, bear effective and sacrificial wit-
ness to the Christ who made peace
through his cross and hence calls on us
to be peacemakers?” The question brings
us appropriately to the second part of
our study. Peace is not only the pro-
vision of Christ for the world, but —

(2) Peace is the Purpose of God in
Christ for the World, to be Channeled to
the World through the Church. The word
“peace” itself does not actually occur in
chapter 3 but, given the way in which
chapter 2 flows into chapter 3, we are
to understand, I believe, that to preach
the good news of peace (2:17) means to
proclaim “the mystery of Christ” (3:4),
and the “wisdom of God” (3:10) is
nothing less than the peace which comes
through Christ’s cross (2:15-16) or the
confession, “Christ Jesus is our peace”
(2:14).

The indication that Eph. 3:1-12 con-
stitutes one extended sentence2 points
to the difficulty we face in grasping
adequately the thought of the apostle.
Apparently, Paul’s intent is both to un-
fold the special stewardship of God’s
grace with which he was entrusted (3:1-
9) and to show no less the awesome
responsibility that is laid upon the church
to proclaim divine grace (3:10-12). Much
like the pretentious wrapping around
a gift that gives an aura of mystery to
the quality of the gift within, so, when
1 Thus the Westcott-Hort Greek text.

Paul mentions “the mystery of Christ,”
we wait in expectancy for him to unfold
the mysterious nature of the gracious
gift. He does so by using three rare
expressions that affirm the singular re-
lationship of Gentile Christians with
Jewish Christians: fellow-heirs, fellow-
members, and fellow-sharers of the
promise of Christ through the gospel
(3:6). If peace means a broken barrier
(Eph. 2), it also means a bridge built
between hostile peoples (Eph. 3). Jew
and Gentile come to realize that they
have become siblings, heirs of all that
their Father offers, that their life is or-
ganically and socially intricately inter-
twined much like the interrelatedness
of members of the human body, and
that they share in the promised Spirit
and thus experience the power that is
inherent in the good news of Christ (cf.
Acts 2:39).

But we dare not forget two other
items of great importance. First, the
very existence of this interracial body
of Christians springs from God’s pur-
pose of peace through Christ. That is
to say, Christ’s body, his church, ap-
pears in the text nestled between “the
mystery of Christ” on the one hand
(3:4) and “the free gift of God’s grace"
on the other (3:7). And second, it is
through this body as w'ell as through
Paul that God plans to carry the peace
of Christ to the world.

Paul stands in awe and amazement
before the gift of God’s grace (“less than
the least of all saints”), yet he moves
irresistibly to proclaim and interpret that
grace to all (3:7-9). Far more than his
own individual task, however, he is
concerned with the task of the churchd
It is through the church that God’s ul-
timate purpose of peace may be realized

3 The hina clause in 3:10 (“in order that”)
makes this clear.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

in the world (3:10-11). I say “in the
world,” though Paul speaks of the ob-
ject of God’s peace as “the principalities
and powers in the heavenly realm” (3:10).
The terms “principalities and powers”
occur in three places in the letter. They
are said to be, ultimately, under the
control of the risen Christ (1:21, cf. 1
Cor. 15:24), to be the adversaries of the
Christian church (6:12) and at the same
time to be the objects of her witness
(3:10). It is extremely doubtful that, by
these terms, Paul reflects a gnostic or
mythical view, as some have imagined.
After all, he uses one of these two terms
(i.e., “powers”) to describe the very
mundane Roman government of his own
day (Rom. 13:1-2). Given his own com-
mitment to evangelism of men and
women in all walks of life (cf. Acts
26:22), it cannot be that he encouraged
any less of a commitment for the church.
Yet it is indeed curious that the goal of
his own mission is “the nations” (3:8)
while the mission of the church is to
“principalities and powers” (3:10). Is
there indicated here part of the great-
ness of Paul in that he can sense that
the corporate witness of the church ex-
ceeds by far his own individual wit-
ness? But the basic question is whether
the church of Christ has caught the
vision of God’s goal that is indicated in
3:10. The phrase “principalities and
powers in the heavenly places” suggests
both demonic persons behind these rul-
ing forces (cf. 6:12-16) as well as the
pervasive nature of the power which
they wield (cf. 1 Cor. 15:24, “when he
shall render ineffective every princi-
pality and every authority and power”).
Markus Barth seems to be right on tar-
get when he explains:

Paul means by principalities and

powers those institutions and struc-

tures by which earthly matters and
invisible realms are administered, and
without which no human life is pos-
sible. The superior power of nature
epitomized by life and death; the ups
and downs of historic processes; the
nature and impact of favored pro-
totypes or the catastrophic burdens
of the past; the hope or threat offered
to the present by the future; the might
of capitalists, rulers, judges; the ben-
efit and onus of laws of tradition and
custom; the distinction and similar-
ity of political and religious prac-
tices; the weight of ideologies and
prejudices; the conditions under
which all authority, labor, parent-
hood, etc., thrive or are crushed —
these structures and institutions are
in Paul’s mind ( Ephesians , 1-3, p. 174).

There will be times when we sense that
these structures or powers are of God
(Romans 13), but, on the other hand,
we may often find them to be inspired
by the evil one. Ephesians 6 tells us of
the real spiritual warfare which men
and women of God are to wage against
principalities and powers, against the
world-rulers of this present darkness.
And, by the way, these Christian men
and women not only are to wear the
breastplate of righteousness but to have
their feet shod with the equipment of
the gospel of peace (Eph. 6:15). Appro-
priately now, as we come to the close
of our study, we discover that the wit-
ness of the church to the world (3:10-
12) is buttressed by Paul’s prayer that
the church be gripped and held (“rooted”
and “grounded”) in Christ’s measure-
less love (3:13-19). And, as a fitting con-
clusion to the passage, Paul ascribes all
praise to God (3:20-21). And so, enmity
between nations and the militarism of
any one nation can be countered effec-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

tively only by a people who are rooted
and grounded in the love of Christ (3:17)
demonstrated in his cross. A friend of
mine put it this way:

The cross is a declaration that there
is no violence so horrid, no despair
so comprehensive, no mindless bru-
tality so thorough-going that it is be-
yond the pale of God’s peace. The
cross is “the more excellent way.”
The cross with all its horror becomes
in fact our hope. God wills his peace
and the world cannot contradict it.
The cross — irony of ironies — is the
consummation of the angelic song,
“peace on earth” (Dr. John McCoy).

Here then, my brothers and sisters,
in Eph. 2:1 1-3:21, is the message of peace
which, I believe, God would give to the
world through the church today. Ours
is a world of which God has a purpose,
a world of axioms, of religion, of pol-
itics, of history, and of culture. And
what is that purpose? It is that the wis-
dom of God be made known to this
very world through the church. God’s
wisdom is nothing other than the peace
of Christ that comes through the cross,
for 1 Cor. 1:23 tells us, “We preach
Christ crucified . . . Christ the power of
God and the wisdom of God.”

The Revised Standard Version af-

firms that the wisdom of God is “man-
ifold” (3:10). The word occurs only here
in the whole New Testament. Does it
mean many-faceted, variegated, many-
sided? How would Paul intend for us
to describe it in English? The picture
which comes to my mind is the kalei-
doscope with its small cardboard tele-
scope. With each successive shake of
the hand you peer through the tele-
scope only to see ever-succeeding scenes
of ornamental beauty and arrangement
which point to some imaginative cre-
ator who put it all together. And so the
kaleidoscopic wisdom of God, the many-
faceted peace of God, is to be channeled
through the church to the principalities
and powers of our own day whose
growing stockpiles of weapons of de-
struction are designed to wipe out cities
and people en masse. To confess that
Christ Jesus is our peace in the face of
the devious and demonic militarism of
our day demands from us far greater
wisdom than you and I possess. And
yet to be called sons and daughters of
God means that we are inevitably
peacemakers who follow in the path of
Him who made peace and makes peace
through the blood of his cross for,
through us, God deigns to make known
his variegated wisdom which implies,
preeminently, his global peace through
Christ.

BOOK REVIEWS

The Faith of the Old Testament: A History ,
by Werner H. Schmidt, translated by John
Sturdy. Westminster Press, Philadelphia,
PA, 1983. Pp. x + 302. $24.95.

One of the more interesting debates in con-
temporary Old Testament scholarship concerns
the perspective from which that body of liter-
ature should be described. The debate normally
centers on the problem of reconciling histori-
cally oriented descriptions with the religious or
theological interests that most Old Testament
scholars have, either explicitly or implicitly, in
studying just this collection of texts. Werner H.
Schmidt, one of the more interesting of the
younger generation of German scholars, is among
those who believe that, at least in the case of
the Old Testament, historical and theological
interests tend to converge. Thus, according to
the foreword by J. R. Porter, Schmidt intends
this book to stand midway between a “history
of Old Testament religion” and a “theology of
the Old Testament.” I presume that this is the
reason for the somewhat awkward title, The
Faith of the Old Testament. People may have faith
(or a faith), but books cannot. Schmidt intends
his book to be a description of Israel’s faith for
our knowledge, of which the Old Testament is
the principal source.

Schmidt is careful to emphasize that he is
interested in Israel’s faith, and not only its re-
ligion. This means for him that a great deal of
attention is given to an account of what Israel
believed, on the presumption that its religion
was an expression of its beliefs and that Israel’s
beliefs, on the other hand, exercised a critical
control on the forms that its religion could take.
According to Schmidt the critical norm of Is-
rael’s faith is provided by the first two com-
mandments, with the first commandment pro-
viding the “integrating center” of the Old
Testament (p. 278). He argues not that the Dec-
alogue is early or that the first commandment
came to independent expression at the begin-
ning of Israel’s history, but that it is impossible
to conceive of Israel’s faith apart from Yahweh’s
exclusive role within it. At the same time Schmidt
recognizes that the way Yahweh was conceived,
and particularly the way Yahweh’s relation to
Israel and the world was conceived, changed in
important ways during the course of Israel’s
history. For that reason any adequate account
of Israel’s faith will have to be historical in ori-

entation, and will at the same time be theological
to the extent that it shows the way in which the
first commandment functioned to limit the kinds
of historical development which Israel could
permit.

The theological nature of this task is em-
phasized by Schmidt in the claim that the his-
tory of Israel’s faith is at the same time the
history of God. This is true not only because
Yahweh is conceived differently in different his-
torical circumstances, but because these histor-
ical circumstances are in part definitive of who
Yahweh is. Thus history becomes, together with
the first and second commandments, a critical
norm for Israel’s faith. Schmidt is careful to
explain that no one event can be picked out
which grounds these three norms. They are not
part of a description of Israel’s faith. Rather,
they are the antecedent conditions which make
such a faith possible and a description of this
faith must show how they functioned to give
Israel’s religion the character which distin-
guishes it from its environment.

The bulk of the book carries out this assign-
ment. Schmidt shows consistently how Israel’s
religion appropriated religious practices and
conceptions from its neighbors, particularly Ca-
naan, but also Egypt and Mesopotamia, and
modified them in accordance with the demands
of the first two commandments and Yahweh’s
involvement in Israel’s history. The book is es-
pecially helpful in that it does not present the
religion of Canaan, for example, as the negative
foil against which to portray Israel. Rather,
Schmidt shows how Israel accommodated a va-
riety of religious conceptions and imagery to its
own purposes which can be understood only if
Israel is considered in terms of the larger reli-
gious and historical milieu. Thus constant ref-
erence is made to texts from the environment
which Israel shared with its neighbors.

The book is divided into four parts corre-
sponding to four historical epochs: the period
before the conquest, the period prior to the mon-
archy, the monarchy, and “the late period.” The
largest of these sections is the first, which Schmidt
calls “Nomadic Prehistory.” He is in agreement
with traditional scholarship in explaining the
patriarchs as nomads who yearn for a settled
life in the land and who, having attained it,
combine their nomadic religion with the El cult
of Canaan. The appeal to nomadic origins, which
appears throughout the book, is particularly in
need of revision. Schmidt does not interact with

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

scholarship outside of Europe on this or any
other question, and it is a marked deficiency of
the book. Still, there is much that is worthwhile
in his discussion, particularly for students.

The most useful part of his treatment of the
pre-monarchic period is the discussion of “cov-
enant,” which is a subject still hotly debated
among scholars. Schmidt is skeptical of com-
parisons between Israelite “covenant” texts and
Hittite and other treaties. He argues that any
such comparisons must be preceded by tradi-
tional-historical investigation, and that such in-
vestigation shows that the covenant form ex-
hibited, for example, in Exodus 19-24 is the
product of later redaction of originally inde-
pendent traditions. In this conclusion he is surely
correct. He argues further that the form of Is-
raelite covenant texts can be explained more
profitably in terms of their own situation of legal
proclamation than in terms of borrowing from
international treaty forms. In fact, he claims,
such borrowing in later periods may have arisen
from the covenant character of Israel’s relation
to Yahweh. These points will continue to be
debated, but the debate will have to take into
account the points Schmidt makes persuasively.

Schmidt’s description of Israel’s faith in the
monarchic period is particularly concerned with
the changes that the transition to kingship brought
about. In my estimation this is the strongest
portion of the book. Particularly notable is his
discussion of prophecy in which he argues that
stronger connections should be seen among all
Israel’s prophets. Prophecy, he suggests, may
constitute a coherent tradition or institution of
its own and that future research should concern
itself more with establishing continuities among
the various prophets, rather than considering
prophets merely as individual spokesmen for
particular theological traditions. This is an ex-
tremely valuable suggestion.

The chapter on wisdom, which concludes the
section on the monarchy, is not particularly
helpful. Indeed, this chapter and the concluding
section on the late period, concerned especially
with apocalyptic, are the weakest parts of the
book. It is clear that Schmidt’s real interest lies
in the earlier periods of Israel’s history and the
later chapters often devolve into mere sum-
maries of the material. It is interesting that so
little attention is given to the period after the
monarchy, which produced such a large portion
of Israel’s literature, while the dubitable “no-
madic” period receives the greatest attention.

For the most part the book is clearly written
and well translated. There are, however, indi-

cations of hasty editing. In several places Schmidt’s
points are confused by the translation, and I can
make no sense whatever of the middle of page
139. Since the book is intended for students
more ample documentation of sources would be
especially helpful, as would references to works
in English translation — or even works written
by English speaking scholars! In spite of these
remarks I would highly recommend this work
to those interested in the Old Testament. Schmidt
displays an unusual degree of theological sen-
sitivity, exemplified especially in the eight ex-
curses on various subjects scattered throughout
the book. The book has gone through four edi-
tions in German; may it be as successful in Eng-
lish.

Ben C. Ollenburcer
Princeton Theological Seminary

Women Recounted: Narrative Thinking and
the God of Israel , by James G. Williams.
(Bible and Literature Series, No. 6, ed. David
M. Gunn.) Almond Press, Sheffield, Eng-
land, 1982. Pp. 150. $10.95 (paper).

Women Recounted is the second study by Wil-
liams to be published in the Bible and Literature
Series by Almond Press. His earlier work. Those
Who Ponder Proverbs (1981), examined aphoristic
discourse in biblical literature. In the present
volume he turns his attention to the narrative
mode of thinking, focusing specifically upon
biblical narratives that involve significant female
characters. The purpose of this study, he de-
clares, is both literary and theological. On one
front, he proposes to show that biblical narrative
represents a dynamic mode of thinking and at-
taining knowledge. On the other, he is con-
cerned to show the function of the feminine and
its theological significance.

Williams accomplishes his dual purpose with
limited success. His work shows greatest strength
when he is directly engaged in literary analysis
of the text. He reads the selected narratives with
special attention to key words, typic scenes, and
the nuances of dialogue. The methodology he
applies to the text closely follows that of Robert
Alter in his book. The Art of Biblical Narrative
(Basic Books, 1981). Indeed, much ot Williams’
work serves to reiterate or elaborate upon the
observations of Alter.

The biblical narratives that involve the arche-
mothers of Israel serve as the starting point of
Williams’ study. By “arche-mother” he means

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

not only the wives and mothers of the patriarchs,
but all those women who affect the genesis and
destiny of Israel. These include the mother of
Moses, Pharaoh’s daughter, Zipporah, Hannah,
and the mother of Samson, as well as Sarah,
Rebecca, and Rachel. Williams examines the
narratives in which these women appear and
finds in them a series of typic scenes. These
involve scenes of betrothal, wife-sister ruses, the
struggles of the barren woman, and the birth
of a promised son. Within the context of these
scenes Williams demonstrates the role of the
arche-mother as a mediating agent who stands
between the chosen male and a frequently hos-
tile world. Her primary function in the biblical
narrative is to provide nurture and continuity
within the compass of the divine covenant with
Israel.

The paradigm of the arche-mother is not,
however, the only feminine role found in bib-
lical narrative. Williams also examines the sto-
ries of women who deviate to varying degrees
from the matriarchal model. Deborah and Ju-
dith are honored as leaders in Israel while Esther
and Ruth are held in esteem as heroines of less
militant action. Yet even in the characters of
these women Williams discovers traces of the
arche-mother’s role. Deborah, the warrior
woman, is also described as “a mother in Israel”
while Ruth, the Moabite woman, is named as
the ancestress of King David. So pervasive is
this matriarchal model that its imprint may be
discerned in reverse in the biblical figure of the
temptress, personified by Delilah and the wife
of Potiphar. These women represent counter-
order in that they turn their sexuality to de-
structive rather than generative purposes. They
thereby become a threat to the hero rather than
a source of nurture and protection.

Williams’ analysis of the narratives in which
these women appear does not attempt to deny
the patriarchal bias of the text. He readily ac-
knowledges that the arche-mother is not as closely
related to God as the chosen male, even though
she functions as life-giver to the elect one. Her
role is defined primarily in terms of her rela-
tionship to the male as wife and mother. When
she has performed her function vis-a-vis the
hero of the story, she disappears from the nar-
rative, not to be mentioned again unless it is to
note her death. Williams admits, furthermore,
that when women move beyond the confines of
the family to take up leadership roles within
Israel, their actions are frequently viewed as
contrary to the natural order. He argues that
the narrative of Judges is based upon the as-

sumption that the prominence of a woman such
as Deborah is intrinsically related to the social
upheaval of that period. The biblical writer im-
plies that women are in a position to affect the
course of history only when the times are out
of joint. Their positions of prominence within
Israel function as a divine reminder to men that
they do not rule by their own power or au-
thority.

Despite the patriarchal perspective from which
biblical history is narrated, Williams wants to
find in the stories of women some theological
truth that can transcend the cultural context in
which it is embedded. The radical difference
between the roles assigned to Israelite women
and those that are open to contemporary women
prohibits a simplistic appropriation of biblical
models. Unfortunately, Williams’ proposal for
drawing theological meaning across this vast
cultural gap provides few significant results. He
suggests that biblical interpreters proceed
aphoristically, drawing out of the culturally-
conditioned narratives some fragment of speech
or action that can transcend its context and speak
directly to the contemporary reader. By means
of this methodology, Williams claims that we
can comprehend and communicate something
about God and humankind. He admits, how-
ever, that the results may be limited; just how
limited is immediately apparent from Williams’
own application of the aphoristic method he
espouses. The results, which consume the space
of less than one page, may be judged meager at
best. If, as Williams maintains, he is not engaged
in literary analysis for its own sake but is seri-
ously concerned with the theological import of
biblical narratives about women, he is under
obligation to demonstrate the application of his
method at greater length. Although he has pro-
vided new insights into the literary motifs that
recur in biblical narrative, he has failed to con-
tribute to our understanding of the theological
significance of women's stories. Readers who
come to this book in hope of finding fresh the-
ological reflection upon the subject will find
themselves disappointed.

Elizabeth Gaines
Princeton Theological Seminary

7°

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Colossians, Philemon, by Peter T. O’Brien.
(Word Biblical Commentary, 44, ed. by
Ralph P. Martin.) Word Books, Waco, TX,
1982. Pp. liv + 328. $18.95.

If Ernest Best is right that commentaries are
basic in a minister’s library, then Peter T.
O’Brien's volume represents a worthy addition.
O’Brien, who is professor of New Testament at
Moore Theological College, Newton, New South
Wales, Australia, trained at the University of
London and of Manchester. His previous pub-
lications include Introductory Thanksgivings in
the Letters of Paul (1977). This new work, cov-
ering well trodden ground, invites comparison
with other commentaries available in English.
O’Brien’s book is far longer than the neat little
work of C. F. D. Moule (1957); less homiletical
and less theologically directed than E. Schweizer
(1981); and less interested in the abundance of
Hellenistic literature than E. Lohse (1971). Yet
he uses them all and more in developing an
extensive bibliographical base. The result is of
sizeable proportions, reminding the reader in a
quantitative sense of the Kaesemann, Commen-
tary on Romans , but treating Colossians from a
very different point of view, as one would expect
of a commentary in a series organized at Fuller
Theological Seminary.

Consistent with the best side of the conser-
vative tradition, primary attention is given to
the Greek text, supplemented by abundant ref-
erences to recent scholarly discussions of the text
itself. While O’Brien has his own positions, he
gives extensive reports of other possible inter-
pretations.

Fifty-four pages are devoted to discussion of
general topics on Colossians, followed by 261
pages of tightly packed commentary. In the in-
troductory pages he makes frequent use of
F. O. Francis and W. A. Meeks, Conflict at
Colossae (1975), a book, by the way, dedicated
to Paul W. Meyer of the Princeton Seminary
faculty.

O’Brien makes a case for Pauline authorship
of Colossians. He finds many parallels with other
letters of Paul as to language and style, sum-
moning W. Kuemmel for support (xliv, xlix).
He differs with E. Lohse, who centered the
christology of Colossians in 1:15-20. O’Brien
contends that the letter as a whole supports the
universal lordship of Christ, Paul’s theme in I
Cor. 12:12-27, Romans 12:4-5. Colossians con-
tains a realized eschatology, a position to which
Paul gradually moved late in his life (p. 171).

He rejects the view of Kaesemann that 1:15-20
is a pre-Christian Gnostic hymn, taken over by
the Christians for a baptismal liturgy. He denies
that Colossians is part of a post-Pauline tradition
when the apostolic office functioned as the
guardian of truth, a position shared by Lohse
and Kaesemann. For O’Brien, Colossians is clearly
an occasional letter written to address a specific
need in the church (xlvii). The wording of 3:22f.
and 4:9f. looks toward a relationship with the
letter to Philemon. Both are prison letters, writ-
ten not from Caesarea, but preferably from Rome,
since Colossians reflects the thinking of the later
Paul, which would rule out Ephesus.

The commentary proper follows a definite
pattern. Each section discussed opens with a
basic bibliography, then a translation, followed
by discussion of technical points in a section
called: “Form, Structure, Setting,” which is also
peppered with bibliographical references, and
finally two sections of a more expository nature
called “Comment” and “Explanation.” As one
might expect from a well schooled conservative
a firm foundation is formed by references to
works in grammar and lexicography, including
appreciation at many points of the work of

B. Metzger. Despite an affection for the works
of F. F. Bruce, J. B. Lightfoot, R. P. Martin,

C. F. D. Moule, and F. Zeilinger, O’Brien is not
above making use of the thinking of writers
whose presuppositions he does not share.

In the discussion of Colossians 3:18-4:1 he
would limit the use of Luther’s term “Haus-
tafel” to such exhortations as are found in this
passage, paralleled in Ephesians, with pairs and
reciprocal duties (p. 215). He also amplifies his
usual treatment to consider whether the back-
ground of this passage was based on a Hellen-
istic code, a Christian code, or a Hellenistic Jew-
ish code.

The book closes with 43 pages of discussion
ot Philemon, more space devoted to that letter
than one finds in the work of E. Lohse. O’Brien
interrelates the personal references at the close
of Colossians with those in Philemon, but he
does not accept the theories of John Knox, whose
position has been weakened by the almost
wholesale rejection of Pauline authorship for
Colossians.

Despite this reviewer’s admiration for the
enormous effort exerted by O’Brien, a few mi-
nor questions can be raised. Is his translation of
Colossians 1:5, 6 put in the best possible style
of English: “You have heard about this hope
before when the word of truth, the gospel, first
came to you.” On page 84 there is an error in

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

the spelling of the Aramaic word for ‘‘secret.”
Is page 216 complete? There appears to be some-
thing missing at the bottom of the page. One
printing of the book has a mixup in the last
pages of the indices, but we are assured by the
publisher that this error has been corrected. Fi-
nally while there are indices at the close of the
book, they could have been somewhat more ex-
tensive. After all his hard work, O’Brien de-
served the help of an editorial assistant.

Otto Reimherr

Susquehanna University

The Church , by Wolfhart Pannenberg,
trans. by Keith Crim. The Westminster
Press, Philadelphia, 1983. Pp. 189. $10.95.

This work, which is a translation of the sec-
ond half of a book originally published in Ger-
man in 1977, Ethi\ und EEklesiologie , is not a
fully developed ecclesiology. Rather, it is a col-
lection of essays that deals with some of the
major themes of ecclesiology in light of a strongly
articulated concern for the unity of the church.
In fact, all but chapters one and three were
previously published in other places. In spite of
this, however, these essays hold together very
well, mainly because of a consistent focus on
theological foundations and resources for unity
in the church.

The first essay sets the stage for those that
follow by underscoring the vital importance of
unity among the churches — its achievement, ac-
cording to Pannenberg, is “Christianity’s most
important task in our century.” Pannenberg then
turns to an examination of the theological foun-
dation of the church’s unity, Jesus Christ, and
explores how unity is both a reality and a goal.
The significance of eschatology for a proper un-
derstanding of Christian unity begins to emerge
in the next section, in which Pannenberg argues
that the common past of the churches has mean-
ing to the degree that it has its starting point
and final goal in Jesus and his resurrection. And
in the following essay this eschatological ori-
entation provides a fruitful perspective from
which to explore the apostolicity and catholicity
of the church. The next three essays deal with
denominationalism, the major contribution that
the Reformation can offer a unified Christianity,
and an ecumenical understanding of church of-
fices. These are followed by two rich essays on
the Lord’s Supper, the sacrament of Christian
unity. And a concluding essay widens the ho-

rizon to examine Christianity’s relation to other
religions and to society as a whole.

This book has many fine points, not the least
of which is the power with which Pannenberg
argues for the necessity of Christian unity. He
may have exaggerated the degree to which en-
mity between churches has contributed to the
secularism of modern society. But he is on the
mark when he suggests that our very identity
as Christians is threatened by the divided state
of Christianity. For, as this book points out so
well, the division among the denominations is
directly contrary to the church’s nature as a
symbol and instrument of the final unity of hu-
mankind in the Kingdom of God. A lack of
unity, therefore, represents the failure of the
church to remain faithful to its calling and to
make concrete the unity that God has already
created in Jesus Christ. Pannenberg also effec-
tively makes the point that the existence of sep-
arated denominations signals in a way the fail-
ure of the Reformation, since the goal of the
Reformers was to reform all of Christianity rather
than to create new churches. It indeed the fires
of ecumenism are beginning to flicker in some
quarters, a consideration of Pannenberg’s ar-
guments for the importance of Christian unity
should help to rekindle them.

Pannenberg’s discussion of the Lord’s Supper
is also good. He is concerned to stress the cen-
trality of this sacrament for Christian worship
and to highlight its significance as a symbol of
Christian unity. He also offers a brief but
thoughtful discussion of the concept of sacra-
ment itself — which he maintains should be de-
veloped only after a careful consideration of the
nature of the individual sacraments. And his
treatment of the recent interpretations of the
Lord’s Supper in terms of the concept of “tran-
signification” is lucid and suggestive. But per-
haps the most valuable aspect of this discussion
is the way in which he makes use of an escha-
tological perspective. He argues that, since the
Lord’s Supper represents the unity that God has
already created but will not bring to full flower
until the end, churches need not wait until they
have ironed out all of the differences between
them, even important differences, to celebrate
this sacrament together. On the contrary, such
a common celebration would be an expression
of faith in what God has done and will do to
bring humankind together in spite of its present
divisions. The Lord’s Supper would thereby bear
witness to a reality that precedes and always
transcends our understanding of the faith, a reality
that is ahead of us and yet already active among

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

us. On the other hand, Pannenberg also roots
the Lord’s Supper in |esus‘ practice of sharing
table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners.
In this way, he provides a solid theological
grounding not only for the practice of “open
communion” between denominations but also
for the admission to the Supper of all who sin-
cerely desire to take part in the meal offered by
Jesus Christ.

On the other side of the ledger, there are some
critical questions that must be raised about what
Pannenberg identifies as the core of the Gospel.
He rightly insists that every period’s under-
standing of the Gospel is limited and provisional
and that, nevertheless, the Gospel itself has an
enduring validity. In an attempt to identify this
enduring core, he turns to the eschatological
dimension of Jesus’ message and fate, especially
the resurrection and its proleptic disclosure of
the end of history. Here, according to Pannen-
berg, we have something that moves beyond the
age of the apostles, leaving behind features that
were conditioned by the times in which they
lived. Without denying that there is an enduring
truth in the eschatological motif of the apostolic
witness, there is reason to doubt that Pannen-
berg has actually managed to isolate the core of
the Gospel. For it is difficult to see how the
message of the coming “Kingdom of God” and
of God’s imminent “lordship” over the world
is not temporally conditioned. In light of Pan-
nenberg’s discussion of such matters in other
works, we should no doubt assume that he means
that these temporally conditioned images convey
a truth that transcends any particular time. The
reason for making these images, rather than
several other possible candidates, so central is
the resurrection of Jesus. But where does the
history of Jesus, especially the path to the cross,
fit into this schema? It is at this point that a
major weakness in Pannenberg’s argument be-
comes clear, namely, his inadequate apprecia-
tion of the enduring value and meaning of the
history of Jesus prior to the resurrection. This
history has an impact on the apocalyptic frame-
work within which the idea of resurrection has
meaning and gives shapes to the church’s mes-
sage and mission in a way that the resurrection
alone never could. Although Pannenberg does
not seem to be unaware of this, his discussion
tends to emphasize only the resurrection.

The question of what significance we should
accord to the history of Jesus becomes particu-
larly important when we speak of the coming
Kingdom of peace and justice, as Pannenberg
does throughout these essays. For, since peace

and justice are general terms that are easily ma-
nipulated, it is necessary to indicate how we are
to arrive at an understanding of their meaning
for our time. Christian faith affirms that the
history ol Jesus is crucial for our definition of
these concepts. But Pannenberg is far from clear
about how the path of Jesus to the cross should
be related to a contemporary Christian under-
standing of their implications for our situation.

Finally, Pannenberg’s last essay is disappoint-
ing for at least two reasons. First, he never de-
fines what he means by religion in his discussion
of the relationship between religions, on one
hand, and between the religions and contem-
porary society, on the other. As a result, this
discussion often lacks clarity. Second, his in-
sistence that contemporary society needs to draw
its values from faith in God never adequately
addresses the question of how a truly pluralistic
society, in which faith in God can hardly be
assumed, can actually have God as the foun-
dation of its values.

On the whole, however, Pannenberg’s essays
are lucid and well argued. In short, they will
reward whoever takes the time to give them
careful consideration.

Keith Crim’s translation is clear and readable.
However, I did find three places at which the
English text did not accurately reflect the Ger-
man (in each case it appears to be an error in
the printing rather than in the translation): i)
on p. 51 of the English text it says that the
apostles’ work was not done in the light of God’s
eschatological act, whereas the German says not
only, 2) on the bottom of p. 86, following the
mention of the Augsburg Confession, several
lines of the German have fallen out; and 3) on
p. 104 one finds the assertion that the Memo-
randum of the German University Ecumenical
Institutes presents the special offices of the church
in isolation from the general priesthood of be-
lievers, whereas Pannenberg’s real point is that
it does not do this.

David J. Bryant

The Graduate School

Message and Existence: An Introduction
to Christian Theology , by Landon Gil key.
The Seabury Press, New York, 1979. Pp.
257. $5.95 (paper).

Here is Langdon Gilkey’s "baby systematic,”
as he calls it — a mim-summa in which this the-
ologian at the University of Chicago Divinity

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

School aims to draw each central Christian sym-
bol into a coherent interpretation. Readers should
not expect from this text the elaborate treatment
of issues that Gilkey undertook in Naming the
Whirlwind (1969) or Reaping the Whirlwind (1977).
This work is “strictly for beginners and not for
professionals in theology.” Nor should we view
this book as a primer anticipating a later, more
massive summation of Gilkey ’s systematic the-
ology. An “unavoidable realism” about his own
personal interests and capacities limits him to
the more modest task of writing this general
introduction to Christian theology.

This text introduces readers to “systematic”
theology by ordering the Christian symbols ac-
cording to four main clauses of the Apostles’
Creed (I believe, in God the Father almighty,
in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord, and in
the Holy Spirit). Therefore, the symbols of the
faith are taken up in Gilkey ’s pages in a roughly
traditional order, beginning with doctrines of
faith and revelation, continuing on through the
doctrines of God, creation, providence, sin, Jesus
Christ, the church. Holy Spirit, and Kingdom
of God. I will return below to the issue of how
Gilkey further structures these symbols.

First, though, I want to stress that the really
“systematic” character of Gilkey ’s book rests not
so much in the way he relates the traditional
symbols to each other, but more in the way that
the symbols are correlated with dimensions of
human experience. In each of the book’s four
major sections based on the Apostles’ Creed,
Christian doctrines are correlated with human
existence. There are two subsections, then, for
each clause of the creed, one dealing with di-
mensions of human existence, the other with
the Christian symbols that can be correlated with
those dimensions. By this structural device, Gilkey
offers his portraits of human existence, probing
it for its religious dimensions and then moving
on to show how Christian symbols “represent”
or “thematize” religious dimensions. For ex-
ample, Gilkey meditates on human experiences
of person, community, and tradition to render
more intelligible the Christian doctrine of rev-
elation. Gilkey portrays experiences of human
dependence and finitude on the way to his dis-
cussion of a doctrine of God. So also, "estrange-
ment” is discussed in relation to doctrines of sin
and of Jesus as the Christ, and then he treats
“humanity as communal” in relation to doc-
trines of the Holy Spirit and the Kingdom of
God. Readers of Gilkey ’s previous works will
not be surprised by the persistently correlational
aim of this “baby systematic.”

Indeed, precisely because Gilkey’s long-
standing interests have been correlational, ne-
cessitating reflection in philosophy of religion as
well as in theology, we should also not be too
surprised that his corpus of personal works will
not include an elaborate system of Christian
symbols. His own primary focus of scholarship
has been and remains the correlation of symbols
with human existence — -what Gilkey, and Til-
lich before him, term a “theology of culture.”

To identify Tillich’s legacy here is not to say
that Gilkey merely works out in this book Til-
lich’s “method of correlation.” Gilkey’s own
method moves beyond Tillich’s correlation of a
questioning human existence with a predomi-
nantly “answering” theology. For Gilkey, hu-
man experience both questions and posits an-
swers, and theology does not only answer but
also prompts questions. In this book, Gilkey’s
correlations lead him to set theology in a varied
conversation with human experience. He pur-
sues what David Tracy has helpfully termed a
“mutually critical correlation” in which expe-
rience is allowed to assess and enrich traditional
theology, even as theology may criticize and
enrich human experience. What is more, in the
conversation between experience and theology
that Gilkey creates, each new occasion for cor-
relation takes a different form. Gilkey’s method
in this little book teaches that there cannot be
any predetermined forms of correlational think-
ing in theology. Rather, each correlation must
allow the particular subject matter or realm of
discourse in human experience to shape the cor-
relation. That is to say, Gilkey will relate ex-
perience to theology a little differently when
correlating human finitude with the doctrinal
symbol of God than he does when correlating
human estrangement with a doctrine of sin.
Gilkey’s correlations may come all too quickly
for some readers whose specialized disciplines
do not incline them to follow Gilkey’s discus-
sions of experience as disclosing a religious di-
mension with which Christian symbols resonate.
This small book does not allow Gilkey to at-
tempt a careful hermeneutic analysis of the dif-
ferent realms of academic discourse in which
theologians might discern religious dimensions.

Allow me now to shift back to the issue of
Gilkey’s systematizing of Christian symbols. We
cannot in this short review evaluate Gilkey’s
stances on various facets of the Christian symbol
system — how he understands doctrines of cre-
ation, atonement, the Holy Spirit, et al. But
conscious as we are now of Gilkey’s rigorous
focus on systems of correlation, we may return

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

to his view of this symbol system and find there
a structure that guides his correlational activity.
In other words, we may note how Gilkey’s cor-
relational impulse is rooted not just in some
contemporary need to be relevant, but rather
emerges from a structure that is intrinsic to
Christianity’s own traditional system of symbols.

What is this structure? For Gilkey, the unique
form of Christian symbolism is present in the
historical life and teaching of Jesus and then
stamped into almost all of the other symbols.
This unique form is a “dialectic of affirmation,
of negation, and then of a higher reaffirmation
that, in overcoming the negative, also trans-
mutes the originating positive” (p. 182). This
dialectic, in the Christian symbol system itself, leads
Gilkey (as he thinks it should lead all theolo-
gians) to a major task of correlation, one that
affirms the world of human experience, but that
also can renounce and negate that world. The
Christian symbol system says an original Yes to
the world in its doctrine of creation, says No to
it in its doctrines of sin and judgment, but then,
ultimately, says Yes again to all creation by way
of its doctrine of redemption. Theologians faith-
ful to this dialectic will pursue a correlational
method, mindful that they must acknowledge
the worth and value of human existence, ac-
knowledge also the need to negate insights of
human existence, in order to fashion a theology
that speaks to and renews genuinely human ex-
istence. Gilkey’s correlational method, rich in
nuances varying with the issues involved, is an
attempt to respond as theologian to this dis-
tinctively Christian dialectic.

This book, then, invites its readers to study
two kinds of systems and the ways they play
together: not only the system of coherence that
Gilkey fashions out of the diverse traditional
doctrines, but also the “system” of correlations
that Gilkey seeks between traditional symbols
and human experience.

This book is written for “the beginner” and
hence may appeal both to theology students and
to informed and diligent lay readers. Unfortu-
nately, as I think Gilkey himself admits in his
preface, the book is not written in a style always
accessible to the beginning student. To be sure,
Gilkey limits himself here to the basic compo-
nents of Christian theologizing, and his text is
rich in citing his own personal experiences in
ways that may interest the general reader. His
writing also, it should be granted, occasionally
breaks out with existential flair to stress how
Christian doctrines resonate to human experi-
ence. When speaking of the doctrines of creation

and providence, for example, he stresses that
these speak of the dependency on God of all
creatures — of “the nebulae, the amoeba, the di-
nosaurs, the early Piets and Scots, the Chinese,
the Kremlin, you, me, our two dogs, and even
the cat” (p. 87). Generally, however, the sen-
tences of this text are long and complex, fash-
ioned out of the writer’s sense of long-standing
issues that yet cannot be unpacked in this short
volume. Hence, the misgiving that Gilkey him-
self entertained in his preface, that this text may
not be readable and intelligible for the beginning
student, may prove accurate. This need not rule
out, as I have tried to suggest in this review,
the fact that this text is worthy of study for those
interested in theology’s dynamics of coherence
and correlation.

Mark Kline Taylor
Princeton Theological Seminary

Romantic Idealism and Roman Catholi-
cism: Schelling and the Theologians, by
Thomas F. O’Meara. University of Notre
Dame Press, Notre Dame and London, 1982.
Pp. 231. $20.00.

Thomas F. O’Meara describes his book as “a
history of the interplay between faith and cul-
ture in the first half of the nineteenth century”
(p. ix). This is an important period for Roman
Catholic theology because: “it was a time when
the Catholic spirit understood how to live in a
historical world and how to be faithful to tra-
dition while fashioning a theology that spoke to
a particular age” (ibid.).

O’Meara is correct in this assessment. Ger-
man Catholic theology in the first half of the
nineteenth century had a remarkably modern
character. There are many reasons for this, not
the least of which is the tact that political cir-
cumstances encouraged a new intellectual open-
ness. The reorganization of German lands caused
by Napoleon’s dissolution of the Holy Roman
Empire secularized former legal-religious
boundaries in Germany and produced the rel-
atively new phenomenon of contessionally mixed
states. Catholic and Protestant theologians sud-
denly found themselves on the same university
faculties. This stimulated thought. It particu-
larly benefited Catholic scholars for they were
able to explore in a direct way the advances of
Protestant theology made during the Enlight-
enment.

Fortunately Catholics were not discouraged

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

from such exploration by the usual hierarchical
control. The papacy did not exert the type of
strict authority that it had previously exerted or
would come to exert once again later in the
century. Free from ecclesiastical pressure, Cath-
olic theologians ventured new ideas in the class-
room and in print.

And new ideas there were! The Romantic
Age was a high point in modern German cul-
ture. Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Hoelderlin, He-
gel, and others were at work. It was a time for
imagination and intellectual fantasy. As O’Meara
rightly observes: “The mystical, the liturgical,
the panentheistic, the heroic, the Gothic, the
sacramental — these inevitably make Catholic
blood rush. Roman Catholicism breathes easy
and flourishes when the times are Romantic”
(p. 197).

The center of theological renewal was the
Catholic faculty at the University of Tuebingen.
Theologians such as Johann Sebastian Drey, Jo-
hann Adam Moehler, and Johannes E. von Kuhn
engaged the problematical question of the re-
lation of church tradition to historical change.
The Tuebingen theologians understood the sig-
nificance of modern historical consciousness. They
realized that Protestant scholarship in the En-
lightenment had exposed for the first time the
undeniable historicity of Christianity. They knew
that the aggressive dogmatism of post-tridentine
theology was no answer to this problem. They
feared, however, as faithful members of the
church, that a decline in the normative authority
of church tradition threatened to transform rev-
elation into a reflection of human self-under-
standing.

Attempting to steer a steady course between
historicism and dogmatism, the Tuebingen the-
ologians drew upon the insights of the Romantic
movement and philosophical Idealism. It was a
classic case of theology accommodating itself to
a dominant cultural milieu and finding advan-
tage in doing so. According to O’Meara the most
important cultural figure for Catholic theology
was Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling.
Schelling is asserted to be both “a symbol for
the culture of his time” and “the mentor of the
modern understanding of self and history” for
nineteenth-century Catholic intellectuals (p. 5).
Tracing Schelling’s development as a philoso-
pher and explaining his relevance to theology
are the two tasks O’Meara sets for himself. I
am uncertain as to how successful he is in either
task.

With regard to the task of explaining Schell-
ing, O’Meara knows the problem. “One is al-

ways in danger,” he writes, “of getting lost in
the mountains of Teutonic systems” (p. 13).
Schelling’s philosophy has an irreducibly vague
quality about it. This is helped neither by the
enormous volume of his writing nor by the am-
bitious scope of his various subjects: the self,
history, nature, the absolute, will and knowl-
edge, art and aesthetics, etc. To add to the prob-
lem, Schelling’s style is often aphoristic and hy-
perbolic.

O’Meara’s approach seems to be determined
by the fact that he wants to mention everything.
The problem is, however, that he is unable to
go into depth in anything. And the inevitable
result is that he leaves the reader with sketchy
summaries of Schelhng’s vast range of ideas.
The following passage is typical:

In 1800 at the Easter book fair, Schelling’s
first system appeared, The System of Tran-
scendental Idealism. . . . This system included
material from the natural sciences and from
painting and sculpture, sections which set it
aside from the works of Kant or Fichte.
Schelling’s system announced parallel worlds:
one of self, the other of nature. Idealism was
an objective idealism; the world of nature was
not a mental projection; the ideal needs the
real just as spirit needs nature for the ultimate
synthesis to occur. In this early work the two
paralleled histories of spirit and nature seem
to be joined by a predetermined harmony and
to lack the identity, ground, or godhead that
Schelling would later give it (p. 24).

The reader wants to ask: what sections of this
work set it aside from Kant and Fichte and in
what ways? What does it mean to “announce
parallel worlds”? What is their relation to “par-
allel histories of spirit and nature”? And so on.
O’Meara appears to assume that the reader knows
enough about Schelling to be satisfied with a
gloss. Yet he himself states that Schelling is little
studied in English. Perhaps a better method of
procedure might have been to select certain key
texts and analyze them in depth.

Second there is a problem with O’Meara’s
treatment of the Tuebingen School. I am not
sure, as O’Meara seems to be, that the use made
of Schelling by the Tuebingen theologians is the
essential feature of their various theologies.
O’Meara is content to show that these theolo-
gians used Schelling — which is certainly true.
But this usage clearly leads to some theological
problems. Particularly in the theologies of Drey
and Moehler, there is the tendency, encouraged
by idealistic categories, to identify the church

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

with the realization of the Kingdom of God in
history. There is also a fundamental lack of
clarity concerning the relation of grace to nature
which is related to Schelling’s panentheistic mode
ot expression. O’Meara tackles none of these
issues. And because he does not, he leaves the
impression of being uncritical.

Walter Sundberg
Como Park Lutheran Church
St. Paul, Minnesota

Birth and Death: Bioethical Decision-
Making, by Paul D. Simmons. Westminster
Press, Philadelphia, 1983. Pp. 276. $13.95
(paper).

Paul Simmons has made a significant con-
tribution to the field of medical ethics. His task
is to provide a systematic approach for employ-
ing the Bible as a means of reflecting on issues
involved in bioethical decision-making. Two basic
assumptions underlie this study. First, “that the
Bible not only is relevant, but is indispensable
for Christian ethical understanding.” And sec-
ondly, “that there is no irreconcilable tension
between the Bible and modern science.”

Simmons is forthright in contending that the
Bible must be appropriated in its totality as the
primary source for dealing with bioethical is-
sues. He warns that the “proof-text” method of
using the Bible will always be inadequate. This
means that ethical decisions must be based on
a central theme within the Bible rather than on
specific scriptural references. For Simmons, this
theme is personhood. He suggests that the main
features in the biblical understanding of per-
sonhood are: (1) the person is regarded as ani-
mated flesh; (2) the person must bear the image
of God, thus distinguishing him or her from
the rest of creation; and (3) a person must be
able to make moral decisions. To find these
three primary characteristics, Simmons need look
no further than the first three chapters of Gen-
esis. However, he extends his discussion by ex-
plaining how Jesus Christ is the paradigm for
full personhood in relationship to God.

The concept of Christian personhood or full
humanity becomes the focus for understanding
how Simmons deals with the bioethical deci-
sion-making process. The issues he raises are
abortion, euthanasia, biotechnical parenting, and
genetic research. In the case of abortion, he sug-
gests that it is justifiable in some instances be-
cause the fetus is not fully a person. What we

have is a “conceptus” or a stage of life which is
“anticipatory personhood.” In a similar way, when
Simmons moves to the issue of euthanasia, he
sees no reason for sustaining life which no longer
meets the criteria of full personhood. He be-
lieves that extraordinary or heroic means of pre-
serving such a life fly in the face of a Christian
understanding of human existence, death, and
eternal life. He is not adverse to using the term
“sin" to make his point. He presents a case in
which a terminally ill patient requests that life
support systems be discontinued. The physician
refuses. Simmons argues that “the sin in this
case is twofold: first, in that the man’s request
was disregarded which is a breech of trust in
doctor-patient relations, and second, in that too
much was done in resisting the coming of death.”

Biotechnical parenting and genetic planning
are two closely related areas which are of special
concern for Simmons. In developing his posi-
tion, he disavows any dependence on “natural
law.” In an analysis of the creation stories, he
points out that human sexuality was meant as
something much more than a means of pro-
creation. Therefore, he believes that it is entirely
appropriate to assist couples when sexual inter-
course does not lead to the bearing of children.
In the case of genetic planning, Simmons sees
the scientist’s role as being twofold. On the one
hand, he or she is working against a potential
genetic crisis, and on the other hand, serving to
complete what God has set in motion through
creation. Protecting that which is human and
ensuring that full humanity continues to prosper
are not only important concerns for genetic
planners, they are areas consistent with the bib-
lical witness. Simmons has prepared his cases
with great care. In addressing the issues of abor-
tion, euthanasia, biotechnical parenting, and ge-
netic planning, he draws on the resources of
philosophy, theology, and law. The introductory
materials in each section serve as useful primers
for understanding the particular issues which
he is describing. It is only after having provided
sufficient historical and contemporary views that
Simmons moves to his own position.

This book will be of service for several rea-
sons. First, it is an important part of the dialogue
between theology and science. Second, it ap-
propriates biblical materials in a holistic way
and it avoids “proof-text” argumentation. Third,
it provides a point ot departure for a systematic
approach to using the Bible in analyzing ques-
tions in the field of biomedical ethics.

The major weakness in Simmons’ approach
is that he is sometimes guilty of overstating his

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

position. He not only makes his point about
certain medical procedures, he presents his case
with the fervor of an evangelist. Thus, while he
will open dialogue with many, he may also close
off discussions with others who take exception
to his conclusions. In addition, some Christian
ethicists will not see in the Bible the implicit or
explicit warrants for reaching the conclusions
Simmons finds unavoidable. Nevertheless, Sim-
mons has made a significant contribution. This
book should be read by teachers of ethics, pas-
tors, and concerned lay people alike. The anal-
ysis will be a valuable resource in addressing
critical problems in medical ethics.

William DeVeaux
The Fund for Theological Education

Christian-Marxist Dialogue in Eastern Eu-
rope, by Paul Mojzes. Augsburg, Minne-
apolis, 1981. Pp. 336.

Dialogue between Christians and Marxists is
usually understood to be primarily a Western
activity. In Italy, France, and Spain, where
Communist parties are strong but not in power,
a great deal of it takes place and both sides are
helped by it to clarify their basic points of view.
Some people are even converted in the process,
and the lines of conflict are softened.

All of this is much rarer and harder, however,
in Eastern Europe where Communist govern-
ments are in power. How can there be open
dialogue when an atheist ideology is official doc-
trine, where freedom of speech is curbed, and
where Christians face discrimination at every
point in public life? Paul Mojzes’ book shows
us with a wealth of perceptive detail that the
picture is not as simple as this.

Dr. Mojzes is himself the son of a Protestant
pastor, raised in Marxist Jugoslavia. He is now
a staunch Methodist teaching religion in a Cath-
olic college in Pennsylvania. From his childhood
he commands Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Rus-
sian, and German, and with this base can read
most of the other Slavic languages in Eastern
Europe. With these tools and this experience,
he has made the exploration of Christian-Marx-
ist relations in Eastern Europe a lifelong schol-
arly task. The first fruits of this task are in this
book.

Country by country, and type by type, Dr.
Mojzes examines the kind of talk that goes on
between the politically dominant Marxists and
the Christians in their churches, even in those

places where such talk is officially denied and
disavowed. Dialogue does take place in Eastern
Europe, not only in those few hopeful years of
detente before the Russian invasion of Czech-
oslovakia in 1968, but continually, despite
repression. Mojzes shows how and where this
is happening, and how much more of it there
is than we in the West have realized. He then
reflects upon dialogue itself, and on the chang-
ing Marxist and Christian perceptions of each
other which result from it, and finally about the
major issues which emerge in the encounter.

This story, told in substantial detail, is an
important part of the life history of Christianity
in Eastern Europe. It also belongs to the life
history of Christianity everywhere. North
Americans deceive themselves when they dis-
miss Marxism as irrelevant to Christian self-
understanding. Latin Americans dodge reality
when they condemn dialogue as an academic
separation of forces that should be working to-
gether. Conservative and revolutionary alike have
much to learn from the experience of Eastern
Europe. Mojzes’ work is an authoritative intro-
duction to this experience.

Charles C. West
Princeton Theological Seminary

Pastoral Theology , by Thomas C. Oden.
Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1983. Pp.
xxii + 372. $14.95.

Not long after I began reading Thomas Oden’s
Pastoral Theology I visited families in a new
housing development and saw the homeowners
shoveling away dirt which the contractors had
piled against the trunks of trees. Had the owners
not removed the dirt, eventually the trees would
have died.

In a similar fashion, Oden has exposed the
trunk and roots of pastoral theology with the
goal of revitalizing our ministries. This book
is for students preparing for ministry and those
navigating the rapids of pastoral demands and
the backwaters of burnout.

Oden, a professor of theology at Drew Uni-
versity with extensive parish experience, is aware
of the diffused sense of identity which comes
with the territory, and the possibility of losing
trust in the ground lines and going with the
winds. He grounds his analysis of pastoral work
in the event of Jesus Christ, in the early pastoral
shape of the church, in practical theological rea-
soning, and in experience. Throughout the book,

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

even as he faces the difficulties of pastoral iden-
tity and work, he rejoices in the access which a
minister has into human life, and the intimate
victories which honest, intelligent, and faithful
work brings.

The approach taken is to ask what Jesus did
and why, how the church (with special reference
to the early church fathers and Luther and Cal-
vin) developed its ministry, what is the contem-
porary need of each task. This lean approach
conveys the essential knowledge directly.

Pastoral Theology is divided into five sections.
In the first section, “Becoming a Minister,” the
author describes pastoral theology as theological
because it “treats the consequences of God’s self-
disclosure in history” and as pastoral because it
“deals with those consequences as they pertain
to the roles, tasks, duties, and work of the pas-
tor” (p. x). Then he moves to the question of
identity, focusing the minister’s self-esteem in a
life centered in Christ. In particular, Oden dif-
ferentiates the pastoral ministry from “secular-
ized, hedonically oriented, fee-basis ‘pastoral
psychotherapists’ who may or may not be com-
mitted to the ministry of word and sacrament”
(p. 5). Moving to a consideration of the call to
ministry, Oden balances the dynamics of the
inward call; the evaluation of gifts, health, and
character; and the guidance and support of the
historic church. He offers biblical evidence of
an early attempt by the church at theological
education and a rite of ordination which gives
us a dynamic sense of our apostolic heritage.
Oden closes this section with a chapter on women
in ministry, attacking both the Catholic and
Protestant opponents on the very grounds of
their resistance: continuity in tradition, fitting
liturgical representation, and faithful exegesis.

The second section, “The Pastoral Office,”
defends the shepherding analogy as still sugges-
tive and meaningful for modern, secularized
society. He explores the paradox of pastoral au-
thority wherein power is set in the context of
the servant messiah: “The pattern of authority
is that of the incarnate Lord, who expressed in
a single, unified ministry the holiness of God
amid the alienations of the world, the incom-
parable power of God that was surprisingly made
known in an unparalleled way amid crucifixion
and resurrection” (p. 53). The last chapter of
the section is an analysis of the ministerial temp-
tation to explain our message in purely human
social, or psychological, or political terms; and
he warns against so inflating the ministry with
an excessive sacerdotalism that human friend-
ship in ministry is lost.

In the third section, “What Clergy Do and
Why,” Oden uncovers the adventure and inti-
macy of ministry, especially as he describes the
“five incomparable days in the believer’s life”
(p. 85): birth, baptism, confirmation, marriage,
and death. His discussion on baptism and eu-
charist is solidly grounded in scripture and early
tradition. The chapter on equipping the laity
for ministry clarifies the purpose of administra-
tion, but its brevity regarding the various parts
of administration leave the reader wishing a
fuller treatment had been given.

At this point, a comment can be made about
the bibliographies at the end of each chapter.
The references cited are useful for the working
pastor who is not at home with the early fathers
of the church, or even with the pertinent sections
of Luther and Calvin, and Oden’s notes make
the references accessible. However, his refer-
ences to contemporary studies on church admin-
istration and the equipping of the laity are thin.

He summarizes the third section, “Preaching
can help shape the vision of the organization.
Worship grounds it in hope. Counsel enables
individual growth. Pastoral teaching can pro-
vide perspective and direction for members of
the body at various stages along life’s way. Pas-
toral leadership wants to show how faith can
become active in love. All these tasks intermesh
in the challenging work of ‘managing well,’ or
active governance (kudernesis), of the Christian
community” (p. 164).

The fourth section, “Pastoral Counsel,” be-
gins by addressing the opportunities and prob-
lems of visitation, grounding this task in Jesus'
ministry, exploring the obstacles, reviewing the
apostolic patterns, offering practical advice, and
emphasizing the duty and privilege of such ac-
cess to human life. In his chapter on the “care
of souls,” he rescues that concept from the me-
dieval dualism and helps pastors see the unique-
ness of their role. A long-needed review is given
of the role of the pastor in offering comfort,
admonition, and discipline. Since the turn ot the
century, mainline or middle sector pastors have
needed a dynamic and relevant way of working
for the “purity of the church."

The fifth section, “Crisis Ministry,” begins
with a theodicy, or vindication of the “divine
attributes, especially justice, mercy, and love, in
relation to the continuing existence of evil” (jj.
223). What pastor hasn’t been stunned into si-
lence by unwarranted suffering, and hasn't wished
for theological resources for his own spirit that
could be translated into pastoral use? Oden gives
ten thoughtful, classical yet contemporary pas-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

toral “consolations” for our thought and work.
Concluding chapters about ministry to the sick,
to the poor, and to the dying contain in brief
fashion excellent counsel from the field. In his
chapter regarding the poor, he summarizes
Richard Baxter’s penetrating counsels for the
rich, which is more applicable for most of us
than we like to admit. I did feel that he could
have developed more fully the need for a min-
istry to the poor which mobilized the congre-
gation to alter the institutional causes of poverty.

The reader will find the book easy to read as
an overview of pastoral theology, or as a resource
for re-thinking the particular tasks of ministry.
It is truly ecumenical in scope and Catholics and
Protestants of all traditions will find an exciting
commonality of ministry.

H. Dana Fearon III
Lawrenceville Presbyterian Church
Lawrenceville, New Jersey

Discovering the Church , by Barbara Brown
Zikmund. (Library of Living Faith). The
Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1983. Pp.

1 16. $5.95 (paper).

What is the church? The answer depends on
one’s perspective. Dr. Zikmund, dean of Pacific
School of Religion, guides the reader through
six different ways of looking at the church. She
begins by looking at the church as it appears
within popular culture, then proceeds to con-
sider the church as seen through personal tes-
timony, within biblical and theological tradi-
tions, from historical perspectives, in institutional
forms, and as disturbing promise.

Zikmund insists that all of these perspectives
are necessary to a full understanding of the church.
As she writes at the end of her chapter describ-
ing the church as it is seen in popular culture,
“Theologians do not like to admit the signifi-
cance of these perspectives on the church, but
they cannot be ignored. Indeed, it might be ar-
gued that only when a theology of the church,
or ecclesiology, begins to recognize the ways in
which average people understand the church
will it have an adequate foundation. Biblical,
historical, and theological factors aside, we fail
to understand something very basic about the
church unless we begin with these popular un-
derstandings held by many Americans.”

While this quotation makes an important the-
ological point, Zikmund is not writing for other
theologians — at least not for other “profes-

sional” theologians. Like the other authors in
The Library of Living Faith, she writes believ-
ing that lay people can be assisted to do some
theological thinking themselves. Zikmund ap-
pears to have achieved her objective, for this
book should guide lay people to a deeper un-
derstanding of the church.

In the chapter on the institutional forms of
the church, Zikmund gives the best brief de-
scription of the sources of denominationalism I
have ever read, using an outline of “theological,
political, cultural, and practical reasons” for di-
vision in the church. While some ecumenists
might challenge her largely positive evaluation
of denominationalism (“Why are there so many
churches? Because people experience the love of
God in Christ in different ways and in different
places”), she does not close her eyes to the dan-
gers of division, and she certainly helps people
get some grasp of how it all came about.

This is not, of course, a full-scale ecclesiology.
In places it is sketchy. While treating the images
and metaphors for the church, Zikmund limits
herself to the images of the church as the people
of God, the body of Christ, and a community
of the Spirit. This drastically reduces the rich
tapestry of biblical imagery for the church, but
it would be hard to think of a better way of
treating the subject in fifteen pages.

Brevity hurts some chapters more than others.
Zikmund’s treatment of the church’s history is
simply too sketchy to be of much help to most
readers, I am afraid. Her choice of themes is
interesting: “the adaptability of the church to
the changing political order, the ways in which
the church continually supports human creativ-
ity, the capacity of the church to reform itself,
and the drive of the church to witness to the
world.” Unfortunately, she simply doesn’t have
enough space to do them justice.

There are discussion questions and sugges-
tions for further reading for each chapter. These
make the book well adapted for adult study
groups in the church. The lists of suggested
readings are good, but they could have been
improved by brief notes about each book. For
example, in the list for the chapter on church
history, the first two books are Sydney Ahl-
strom’s A Religious History of the American Peo-
ple, and Roland Bainton’s The Church of Our
Fathers. The reader is given no hint that Bain-
ton’s book was written for children, nor is he
or she informed that Ahlstrom’s book is nearly
one thousand pages longer than Bainton’s.

Despite such quibbles, Zikmund has written
a book which deserves to be read and studied

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

by church people. Few could read it without
coming to understand their church better.
Moreover, the church itself might be better if
more of its members come to share Zikmund’s
conviction, “Unless the church disturbs us and
invites us into God’s future, we have failed to
discover the most important dimension of the
church.”

William D. Howden
Princeton Theological Seminary

The Twentieth Century Pulpit, Vol. II, ed.
by James W. Cox. Abingdon Press, Nash-
ville, 1981. Pp. 238. $8.95.

With the first volume of this two-part sym-
posium of sermons, James W. Cox had put us
all in his debt by providing us with a cross
section of the preaching of the twentieth-century
pulpit of the western world. This second volume
is intended (i) to introduce us to “a younger
generation of preachers”; (ii) to focus “more
sharply on social and ethical issues”; and (iii) to
include “worthy sermons” the editor was not
aware of when the first volume was published.
An anthology of this kind receives inevitably
some “off-the-cuff’ evaluations, chiefly — why
was so-and-so omitted, and this more often than
why was so-and-so included. Certainly a volume
of discrete selections is bound also to be uneven
both in form and quality. The editor, however,
is an experienced and competent homiletician
whose services as professor of preaching at
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, editor
of the Ministers Manual and of the Pulpit Digest,
author and translator, qualify him uniquely to
execute this enterprise for us.

With the exception of merely several names,
all of these younger contributors are known to
this reviewer (incidentally several of these — Til-
lich, Ford, and Robinson are scarcely youthful;
if he were alive today Tillich would be 97!).
The selection covers a reasonably wide spec-
trum, although it is predominantly Baptist (nine
out of twenty-seven). The score is as follows:
Baptist (9), Presbyterian (3), United Church of
Christ (3), Roman Catholic (1), Disciples (1),
Lutheran (1), Church of God (1), Anglican/
Episcopalian (1), and Reformed (2). All this aside,
the advantage of a pulpit anthology represent-
ative of an era is not discerned immediately; it
must be seen in the long run as a contribution
to the literature of the history of preaching to
which research students will turn some day for

indications of how mid-twentieth-century
Christian preachers handled critical issues in their
own generation.

It would be careless and unfair to evaluate
these sermons comparatively or to single out the
strengths and weaknesses of any one of them in
particular. More appropriate is it to make some
general observations as follows: (i) One is pleased
with the wide range of themes — many of them
with a basic theological focus — and the attempt
of these preachers to handle them contempo-
raneously. (ii) Their analyses and perceptions of
the nature of our humanity are generally ex-
cellent, although sometimes their prescriptions
for the way out are lacking either in positive
practicability of the Gospel or even downright
reality, (iii) Some of the sermons espouse a strong
evangelical thrust and most of them are marked
by a living-ness that is healthy. Wherever there
is dullness it is created by or is the result of
abstract idioms and the lack of concrete human
allusions. There are surprisingly few illustra-
tions and fortunately an absence of anecdotal
ones, (iv) If a third volume is projected, care
should be taken to include pulpit representatives
from Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Australia, the
Orient, and South America. Moreover, in this
new era of a globe-trotting Pope, maybe one of
his homilies could be secured as he passes by.

Donald Macleod
Princeton Theological Seminary

Biblical Preaching: An Expositor’s Treas-
ury, ed. by James W. Cox. Westminster
Press, Philadelphia, 1983. Pp. 372.

The phrase “biblical preaching” is both du-
rable and elastic. It is durable in the sense that
it periodically reappears with renewed power
whenever new developments in preaching and
biblical studies cause the romance between those
two fields to re-ignite. The phrase is also elastic,
however, in the sense that it has been used so
often in so many settings and to cover so many
different assumptions about the nature of both
the Bible and preaching that one can never be
exactly sure what is meant by it.

Biblical Preaching: An Expositor's Treasury, ed-
ited by James Cox, is one of several recent books
which have attempted to grapple anew with the
phrase. The volume stands both as an encour-
aging indication that yet another renewal of bib-
lical preaching is in progress and as a reminder
of the fact that the concept of biblical preaching

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

can be stretched to the breaking point over a
variety of sometimes competing, sometimes
complementary, perspectives, styles, and meth-
ods.

The volume contains twenty assorted chap-
ters by eighteen authors. The chapters cover a
spectrum of biblical topics and categories, some
concerned with broad literary groupings (e.g.,
wisdom literature, minor prophets, Pauline
epistles), others with specific genres (e.g., par-
ables, miracle stories, eschatological texts), and
still others with personalities (e.g., the patri-
archs) and events (e.g., the Exodus, the Resur-
rection). Although the format differs somewhat
from chapter to chapter, the basic chapter design
includes a brief essay on the exegetical and her-
meneutical issues involved in preaching on the
material at hand followed by some homiletical
notes and sermon ideas for several representa-
tive texts.

It is clear that the contributors share a sense
of the importance of the Bible for preaching and
a commitment to the methods of critical exegesis
as the means for encountering the claims of
biblical texts. Indeed it is exciting to see the ways
in which the authors combine historical, literary,
and sociological approaches to the biblical doc-
uments with sophistication and imagination.

It is also clear that the contributors, once they
have done their exegetical homework, do mark-
edly different things with the results, which is
to say that contrasting understandings of the
nature of biblical preaching are at work. Some
move toward sermons carrying central ideas,
doctrines, and themes from the biblical texts, while
others, Henry Mitchell and Dwight Stevenson
for example, are more attentive to the rhetorical
and literary forms of the texts and their power
to govern the form of sermons. Some contrib-
utors find in the Bible a radical and theocentric
word which gives an urgency to biblical preach-
ing, while others find there a more gentle, less
exigent “wisdom for living.” Krister Stendahl,
in his chapter, includes a helpful discussion of
the danger in setting up, in sermons, overdrawn
analogies between the text’s world and our world,
and he holds out tor analogies which are looser,
more creative and artful. Others in the volume,
however, seem to be searching for quite precise
correlations between text and contemporary sit-
uation, even pushing at times beyond analogy
to allegory. These and other differences are not
bad, of course, indeed they are potentially en-
riching. Consensus on this is neither attainable
nor perhaps desirable. It’s just that the reader
longs for the issues to be placed on top of the

table, for the several voices speaking in this book
to become aware of each other and of their
harmonies and discords. Otherwise the very
concept of “biblical preaching” tends to lose its
definitive power as it is stretched out of rec-
ognizable shape and draped over first this set
of methods, then that set of methods, in an
attempt to make “one size fit all.”

One of the stated purposes of the collection
is to provide provocative sermon ideas and sug-
gestions, and on that score the contributors surely
deliver. Some of the authors go so far as to
provide sermon outlines, “starters,” and ideas
for sermon series. Far more helpful and credible
are those contributors who work imaginatively
with the sample texts, building bridges toward
sermons, but who do not feel compelled to do
all the work for the reader. In the long run this
work “between” text and sermon — more than
a commentary but less than a sermon — is far
more stimulating to the preacher than some pre-
fabricated sermon requiring only touch-up fin-
ish.

There is a little uncertainty in this anthology
about the intended readership. Are they users
of the lectionary? Some contributors assume so,
some do not. Where do they stand on higher
criticism? Some writers exercise the kind of cau-
tion due a reader just minutes out of funda-
mentalism, while others toss out terms like “T rito-
Isaiah” and “history of tradition” without qualm
or apology. In the final analysis, this blurred
picture image of the “typical” reader is probably
a tribute to the diversity of people interested in
serious biblical preaching and to the editor’s
laudable goal of comprehensiveness. In short,
however elastic the scope of this book may be,
most readers will find enough here of value to
give the book some durability.

Thomas G. Long
Princeton Theological Seminary

The Light Within You , by John R. Clay-
pool. Word Books, Waco, TX, 1983. Pp.
216. $9.95.

The title of one chapter in this book, “What
Jesus Believes about You,” could almost have
served as the title of the whole. In this book of
sermons, revised to be devotional literature,
Baptist minister John Claypool writes power-
fully of God’s love for humanity and of the
dignity and worth of each person. In Claypool’s
words, “The wonder of the Christian gospel is

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

summed up in this primal fact — God’s will and
our joy are synonymous. All he wants for us is
that we become all he meant for us to be, and
to enjoy this forever.”

As devotional literature, this book has much
to commend it. Claypool’s recurrent themes,
God’s love and human worth, are indeed good
news, good news that many people desperately
need to hear. In the first chapter, Claypool re-
flects on the story of the fall in Genesis 3. He
interprets this account as a shift in the basic
assumptions of the first humans regarding the
nature of God and God’s creation. He correctly
notes that many folk today have wrong as-
sumptions about God and about themselves, as-
sumptions not shaped by the loving nature of
God as revealed in Christ. His purpose in this
book is to correct those wrong assumptions.

One must ask, however, if Claypool’s book
accurately reflects “what Jesus believes about
you.” The Christ of scripture preaches repent-
ance as well as comfort, and does not speak of
human potential without speaking of human
sin. Claypool says little of sin and repentance.
He writes of comfort and encouragement, but
says little of challenge and justice. There is a
chapter/sermon entitled, “A Ministry of Lib-
eration.” The text is the parable of the last judg-
ment from Matthew 25, specifically the sentence,
“I was in prison, and ye came unto me.” Lib-
eration theologians would be less than pleased
with this chapter; it is precisely the type of bib-
lical exposition they abhor. Claypool writes, “At
its deepest level . . . imprisonment occurs any
time an individual is stifled or prevented from
actualizing his or her potential.” As Claypool
tells the parable, one could please Jesus without
ever setting foot outside a country club.

As devotional literature, then, this book could
be very helpful for people who have trouble
believing that God loves them. It will do noth-
ing, however, to challenge the beliefs of those
people who are already altogether too sure that
God loves them just the way they are.

Despite that flaw, however, preachers who
read this as a book of sermons can learn much
from Claypool. A skilled craftsman is at work.
His approach is generally topical, rather than
expository. He seeks to probe beneath the sur-
face of life, and beneath the surface of scripture,
to raise up and discuss “one of life’s primary
concerns”; he is not satisfied with preachers who
just “moralize around the edges.” Often he is
quite insightful and provocative, as in the first
sermon when he uses the account of the fall in

Genesis 3 to raise the issue of our basic as-
sumptions about God and about life.

At other times, his interpretation of scripture
is open to question. Is it valid to use the miracle
story about feeding the five thousand to present
Jesus as an example of how to cope with problem
situations in three easy steps? Here, one must
ask if Claypool is probing beneath the surface
of scripture to find the basic issues in question,
or if he is reading into scripture what is not
really there.

Hermeneutics is not the only area in which
Claypool provides both positive and negative
examples for the preacher. Many a preacher,
after reading a helpful book, tries to distill the
book into a sermon. Such distillations are sel-
dom successful, but Claypool shows how it can
be done. In “Exiles in Time,” the preacher en-
ters into a conversation with a book he has read,
trying to see how the book fits with his own
faith and with scripture. It makes for a good
sermon. However, Claypool also shows how not
to use a book in a sermon. In “Walking in the
Light,” he claims I John 1:5-7 as his text, but
the real text for the sermon seems to be Eric
Berne’s Games People Play. (I hardly think John’s
injunction to walk in the light as God is in the
light means simply that we don’t play games in
our personal relationships, but that is what Clay-
pool claims.) Claypool doesn’t converse with the
book; he just repeats what it says. The latest
book the preacher has read can be a useful tool
for the preacher, but the preacher can never be
merely the tool of the book.

Claypool includes several biographical ser-
mons, sketches of characters from the Bible. His
treatment of Saul reveals two weaknesses com-
mon to such sermons: it lacks unity, and some
ot the interpretation of scripture seems forced.
On the other hand, his sermon on Thomas,
“The Presumption of Despair,” shows just how
perceptive and moving biographical sermons can
be.

Nearly every introduction is of superior qual-
ity. They are interesting, and quickly let the
reader or hearer know what the sermon is about.
The illustrations are equally good.

In some ways, this is a mixed bag of sermons.
I have discussed several with major flaws. On
the whole, however, most of the sermons in the
mix are good, and there is an explanation for
the others. Good preaching is always imagina-
tive. Imagination involves risks. Claypool is
willing to take the risks, and sometimes his gam-
bles tail. In a couple of sermons, he may have

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

taken risks which were irresponsible. Far more
often, however, the gamble pays off, imagina-
tion leads the reader/hearer into new insights,
and good preaching occurs.

William D. Howden

Stained Glass from Medieval Times to the
Present, by James L. Sturm and James Cho-
tas. E. P. Dutton, Inc., New York, 1982.
Pp. 152.

This is a beautiful and scholarly book, com-
piled and edited by two experienced and profes-
sional persons who combine artistry and au-
thority in an exceptional way. A professor of
history at the City University of New York,
Sturm became conscious of the neglect of glass
art in America, a discovery he made interest-
ingly enough in his research into economic and
sociological movements of the nineteenth cen-
tury. He gained practical experience and aes-
thetic appreciation of the craft as a glass artist
for some time in San Francisco. A free-lance

writer, editor, and photographer, Chotas served
with Bantam Books, New American Library,
and has contributed articles to fine arts journals
and other publications. He has become recog-
nized as a specialist in the color photography of
stained glass.

The focus of this volume is upon the treasury
of stained glass in the City of New York. These
authors indicate that there have been two great
ages of stained glass: the Middle Ages and the
Nineteenth Century. The latter period is of par-
ticular interest to us because through imports
from Europe and the activity of American im-
itators, New York City has become the world
center of stained glass art, an accomplishment
which owed much to the names of Tiffany and
La Farge. There are seven main chapters, in-
cluding such themes as “New York’s Medieval
and Renaissance Glass,” “The Gothic Revival,”
and “The Opalescent Era: Tiffany and La Farge."
The appendices include an annotated bibliog-
raphy, descriptive and identification notes for
every picture and diagram, and a complete index
for handy reference. The photography, how-
ever, is extraordinary and makes this volume a
gift to be treasured, studied, and admired.

Donald Macleod

THE SUMMER SCHOOL
and

BIBLICAL LANGUAGE PROGRAM
1984

JUNE 4— JULY 27
Biblical Hebrew
New Testament Greek

JUNE 4-22

J. J. M. Roberts, The Book of Job *
Charles Ryerson, Eastern Paths and
Christian Explorations * Edward
Dowey, Four Reformers: Erasmus,

Luther, Miintzer, Calvin * Thomas
Long, Preaching the Gospel of Mark *
Manford Saunders, Sexuality Ed. and
the Faith Community * Peggy Way,
Theological Contributions of the Local
Pastor.

JUNE 25-JULY 13

David Dorsey, Land of the Bible *
Henry Bowden, Main Themes in Amer-
ican Church History * Mark Taylor,
Theology of Schleiermacher * William
Carl, Preaching Christian Doctrine *
Martin L. Harkey, Developing Leader-
ship in the Local Church * Donald
Capps, The Bible in Pastoral Care.

JULY 16-AUGUST 3
David Balch, The Book of Acts *
Eduard Wildbolz, Reformed Theology
and Its Impact on Society * Marvin Mc-
Mickle, From Decision, To Design,
To Delivery: Approaches to Preaching
* David Weadon, Hymnology: Grego-
rian Chant to 20th Century * John
Savage, Lab I — Encountering the In-
active Church Member and Lab II —
Development of Trainers for Lab I.

JULY 16-27

Freda Gardner and Robert Jacks,

Drama in Worship and Education.

JULY 30-AUGUST 3

Charles Willard, Tools for Theolog-
ical Study * Maria Harris, Teaching
and Religious Imagination.

Each summer school course carries credit for three semester hours (each language
course, six semester hours) in M.Div., M.A., and Th.M. programs. Provision is also
made for unclassified students.

For full information write to Summer School Office, Princeton Theological Sem-
inary, CN821 , Princeton, NJ 08542 or phone (609) 921-8252.

Princeton Theological Seminary admits qualified students of any race, color and national or
ethnic origin and without regard to handicap or sex.

PRINCETON

THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

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