The Princeton Seminary Bulletin

,

THE

PRINCETON

SEMINARY

BULLETIN

Speaking in Tongues

David’s First City
Sermons:

The True Prophet
Thanksgiving

Integrity in Pastoral Care

James N. Lapsley
John H. Simpson

Philip C. Hammond

James I. McCord
Robert R. Spears

Seward Hiltner

VOLUME LVIII, NUMBER 2
FEBRUARY 1965

PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

James I. McCord
President

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Peter K. Emmons, President John M. Templeton, Vice-President

Frederick E. Christian, Secretary William E. Lawder, Treasurer

Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, New York, N.Y., Assistant Treasurer

Clem E. Bininger
Eugene Carson Blake
Ernest T. Campbell
Allan M. Frew
John T. Galloway
Ralph Cooper Hutchison
Miss Eleanor P. Kelly
Bryant M. Kirkland
Harry G. Kuch
Robert J. Lamont
Raymond I. Lindquist
John S. Linen
J. Keith Louden
Thomas M. MacMillan
John W. Meister

W. Beverly Murphy
Luther I. Replogle
William H. Scheide
H. D. Moore Sherrerd
Laird H. Simons, Jr.

W. Sherman Skinner
James E. Spivey
George E. Sweazey
Mrs. Olive W. Switz
James N. Tunnell, Jr.
Samuel G. Warr
David B. Watermulder
Irving A. West
George S. Young

TRUSTEES EMERITI

John G. Buchanan
Richard J. Dearborn
Benjamin F. Farber
Henry Hird

Weir C. Ketler
Mrs. John J. Newberry
Albert J. McCartney
Mrs. Charles O. Miller

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
Donald Macleod, Editor Edward J. Jurji, Book Review Editor

The Bulletin is published quarterly by the Trustees of the Theological Seminary
of the United Presbyterian Church at Princeton, New Jersey. Numbers I, 2, and 3 of
each volume are mailed free of charge to all alumni and on an exchange basis with
various institutions. Number 4 in the series is the annual academic catalogue of the
Seminary and may be obtained by request to the Office of the Registrar.

Second class postage paid at Princeton, NJ.

The Princeton Seminary Bulletin

VOL. LVIII FEBRUARY, 1965 Number 2

Donald Macleod, Editor Edward J. Jurji, Book Review Editor

Speaking in Tongues James N. Lapsley and John H. Simpson 3

David's First City— The Excavation of Biblical Hebron

Philip C. Hammond 19

Sermons :

The True Prophet James I. McCord 29

Thanksgiving Robert R. Spears 34

Integrity in Pastoral Care Seward Hiltner 39

Reminiscences Gwilym 0. Griffith 49

Book Reviews:

Theology

The Systematic Theology of Paul Tillich, by A. J. McKelway James I. McCord 53
Paul Tillich in Catholic Thought, ed. by T. A. O’Meara & C. D. Weisser 54

The Christian Faith, by F. W. Dillistone 54

The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, by H. Berkhof 55

Biblical

The Second Isaiah, by Christopher R. North Charles T. Fritsch 56

The Canaanites, by John Gray 56

The Old Testament, by Robert Davidson James Barr 57

The Pioneer of Our Faith, by S. V. McCashland Otto A. Piper 57

St. John’s Gospel : An Exposition, by W. Luthi 57

Luther’s Works: Lectures on Galatians, Vols. 26 & 27 Edward A. Dowey, Jr. 58

History

The Sufficiency of God, ed. by R. C. Mackie & C. C. West Robert S. Bilheimer 59
The English Reformation, by A. G. Dickens Norman V. Hope 60

The Reformation, by Hans J. Hillerbrand 61

Practical

The Pulpit Speaks on Race, ed. by Alfred T. Davies Donald Macleod 62

Minister’s Annual 1965, by D. A. MacLennan 62

Administering Christian Education, by R. K. Bower D. Campbell Wyckoff 63

Pastoral Care in the Church, by C. W. Brister James N. Lapsley, Jr. 63

Hymns in Christian Worship, by Cecil Northcott Donald Macleod 64

General

Sacred and Profane Beauty, by G. Van Der Leeuw Edward J. Jurji 64

The Trial of Jesus, by James C. McRuer Donald Macleod 65

IN THIS ISSUE

he first article, “Speaking in Tongues” is a careful study of the current

religious phenomenon generally known as glossolalia. The authors at-
tempt jointly to explore its origins, character, and implications within an
historical perspective and to assess its effect upon individuals and groups
involved in the movement. This article appeared initially in Pastoral Psy-
chology (Vol. XV, No. 144 and 146) and is reprinted here by permission of
the editor. James N. Lapsley, Jr., assistant professor of Pastoral Theology
at Princeton, is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary (Richmond, Va.)
and holds the Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Chicago.
John H. Simpson, assistant to the Dean of Field Service, is a graduate of
Princeton Theological Seminary and is a candidate for the Master’s degree
in Christianity and Society.

A very descriptive and informative archaeological report on “David’s
First City — The Excavation of Biblical Hebron” by Philip C. Hammond
outlines Princeton Seminary’s involvement in an important project in Biblical
research. Dr. Hammond has been assistant professor of Old Testament at
Princeton since i960. He holds the doctoral degree from Yale University,
was on the faculty of Lycoming College, 1957-1960, and is the author of
Archaeological Techniques. In 1961 and 1962 he was director of the Ameri-
can Expeditions to Petra.

The first of two sermons, “The True Prophet,” was delivered by James I.
McCord, the President of the Seminary, at the service of worship in the
orientation program for the Junior Class on Sunday evening, September 20,
1964. The second sermon was given at the annual community Thanksgiving
Service in Princeton University Chapel by the Reverend Robert R. Spears,
rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Princeton.

The lecture, “Integrity in Pastoral Care,” was delivered by Seward Hilt-
ner as part of the sesquicentennial program presented by the Practical
Department in June 1963. Dr. Hiltner, one of the nation’s leading authorities
in Pastoral Theology and Counselling, is professor of Theology and Per-
sonality at Princeton, a doctor of philosophy graduate from Chicago, and
author of a dozen books in Practical Theology and related fields.

A short article, “Reminiscences,” consists of quiet reflections upon “old
Princeton,” written by a member of the Class of 1909, and sent originally to
President McCord. The charm and wistful character of the piece commended
it to your editor for publication and to the interest of the wider circle of the
alumni. Gwilym O. Griffith, the author of ten books, is retired and is now
living in Sutton, Coldfield, England.

D.M.

SPEAKING IN TONGUES

James N. Lapsley and John H. Simpson

I. Token of Group Acceptance and
Divine Approval

The outbreak within mainline
Protestantism of “speaking in
tongues,”1 or glossolalia, and other phe-
nomena usually associated with those
churches whose heritage may be traced
to the Pentecostal movement, has begun
to attract widespread attention and to
generate strong feelings — positive and
negative. Although there are no accu-
rate figures as to the size of the recent
outbreak, it has gained enough impetus
to be the subject of official ecclesiastical
concern.2 The movement appears to be
particularly strong among certain
churches of the Far and Mid-West,
and to be gaining in strength on the
East Coast. Clergy and laity of the
liturgical churches, Lutherans and
Episcopalians, appear to be most heav-
ily afifected by the movement. Baptists,
Presbyterians, Methodists, and Re-
formed churchmen have also received
the “baptism of the Spirit” and spoken
in tongues.

It is the intent of this article to throw
some light on the nature and function of

1 The term “speaking ivith tongues” has
also been often used to refer to the same phe-
nomenon. This term may be traced to the
King James Version, which translates “with
tongues” (plural) and “in a tongue” (singu-
lar). The Revised Standard Version uses
“in” for both singular and plural references,
and we are following that usage.

The original Greek had a prepositionless
dative case, and it is not clear whether
nuances suggested by "with” or “in” better
represent biblical meaning.

2 See “On ‘Speaking With Tongues’ ” Pas-
toral Psychology, November, 1963, p. 53.

the small glossolalic groups located in
mainline churches and educational insti-
tutions, which are the heart of what has
been called the neo-Pentecostal move-
ment. A second part will attempt to
probe the labyrinth of meaning this
strange speech has for the individual
person.

What Is Glossolalia?

Glossolalia may be defined as speech,
which, though unintelligible both to the
speaker and to most hearers, is pur-
ported to be understandable by those
who have the gift of interpreting such
speech. Although glossolalia has been a
part of many religions, and of non-
religious activity such as mediumship,
it is best known to Christians in its New
Testament manifestations, to which we
shall briefly turn.3

There are two principal clusters of
references to glossolalia in the New
Testament. The first occurs in the Book
of the Acts, where it is one of the ac-
companiments of the Holy Spirit’s com-
ing at Pentecost. It also accompanied
subsequent “descents” of the Spirit at
Caesaria, Samaria, and at Ephesus. No
mention is made of interpretation in
these instances ; and in the Pentecost
experience, at least, the language was
said to be intelligible to Jews of the
Diaspora. Whatever else may be the
meaning of glossolalia at Pentecost, it

3 For a fuller treatment of the Biblical ma-
terial, see Section V of the “Preliminary
Report of the Study Commission on Glosso-
lalia,” Division of Pastoral Services, Diocese
of California.

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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

appears that the author intended it to
have the symbolic meaning of the “un-
babbling of tongues,” signifying the end
of the era of confusion and ignorance.
It also apparently came to have the
meaning of the “sign” of the individ-
ual’s reception of the Holy Spirit,
though evidence from Acts indicates
that it was not universally regarded as
a necessary sign.

The second principal cluster of refer-
ences to glossolalia is found in I Cor-
inthians 12-14, where Paul undertakes
a lengthy and involved discussion of
the relative merits of various spiritual
gifts. In Chapter 14, he focuses on
speaking in tongues, which, while clear-
ly regarded as a gift of the Spirit, is
treated with what we would today call
a markedly ambivalent attitude. We
shall not attempt to treat Paul’s argu-
ment in detail. Suffice it to say that he
recognized both public and private glos-
solalia as legitimate, but the former was
to occur only three times in succession
without interpretation. Further, he
clearly subordinated glossolalia to the
gift of prophecy — the intelligible com-
munication of messages from God. In
14:20 there is a hint that he regarded
glossolalia as childish, and in the pas-
sage that follows one almost senses,
though it is not clearly stated, that Paul
would really like to have told turbulent
Corinthians to cut it out altogether, but
checked himself because of their in-
firmity.

One question which is of interest is
whether the phenomenon in Acts and
that in I Cor. are the same. In the Acts
accounts, the implication that the speech
was an “unknown” or foreign tongue
is indicated by its having been under-
stood by multilingual Jews who re-
quired no “interpretation.” Yet Paul

warns against glossolalia without inter-
pretation in I Cor., as though it would
be wholly unintelligible without this.
This has led some responsible scholars
to assert that two phenomena are in-
volved. However, others hold that the
evidence points more in the direction
of there being only one.

' Turning now to the manifestations of
glossolalia today, we find that the three
kinds of glossolalic experience found in
the Bible are also the three types iden-
tified by the “neo-Pentecostals.” These
are the sign-tongue, given at the “bap-
tism of the Holy Spirit,” the tongue
spoken in a meeting, which is usually
interpreted by someone else who is
present, and the tongue spoken in pri-
vate devotions.4 Understood from with-
in the movement, these are all forms of
praise to God, though edification of the
group may come from interpretation,
which is usually a commonplace scrip-
tural injunction.

In the “warm-up” stage of a “prayer
and praise meeting,” glossolalia sounds
like inarticulate “oh’s” and “ah’s” which
may be interspersed with ejaculations
such as “Oh, Jesus !” The overall effect
is not unlike that of an orchestra com-
posed of exotic instruments tuning up.
When fully articulated, however, glos-
solalia does have a speechlike sound and
frequently a lyrical quality as though it
were alliterative poetry in some lan-
guage full of “1,” “r,” and round vowel
sounds. This is not a mere babble of
sounds ; it has an almost artlike quality.

These two forms, the warm-up and
the “singing” glossolalia, appear to be
the principal manifestations among neo-

4 “Preliminary Report of the Study Com-
mission on Glossolalia,” Division of Pastoral
Services, Diocese of California, op. cit., Sec-
tion IV.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

5

Pentecostals.5 It is the latter, or sing-
ing variety which has often been claimed
to be in reality an unknown foreign
tongue. (One leader of the movement
avers his to be “Old Basque.”) To our
knowledge, no examples of glossolalia
during the current outbreak have been
so verified by competent linguists,
though some have been offered for their
study.0

Seen as a form of psychomotor be-
havior, glossolalia appears to be like
trance states, somnambulism, medium-
ship, and automatic writing, in that the
conscious centers of the psyche are by-
passed in production of these behaviors.
It is thus a kind of automatism, and
will be further analyzed as such in the
second part of this article.

5 With regard to the second type of speech,
the articulate “seeming” language which we
have called singing glossolalia above, George
B. Cutten, in his Speaking with Tongues
Historically and Psychologically Considered
(Yale University Press, 1927), rather irrev-
erently suggests that the children’s counting
game : “Enee, menee, minee, mo,” may origi-
nally have been a case in point. Cutten, whose
work is the most responsible full-length treat-
ment of glossolalia in English, further main-
tains that there is another form, that of the
manufactured or coined word type, in which
the speaker employs neologisms, which may
be related to foreign words which come to
him through a cryptomnestic, or hidden
memory, source, to stand for words in his
own tongue, or these neologisms may be re-
lated to nothing more than syllabification in
the speaker’s own tongue (p. 175O.

6 Frank Farrell, “Outburst of Tongues:
The New Penetration,” Christianity Today,
VII, 24, pp. 3-7. Farrell also states that these
linguists were of the opinion that the glosso-
lalia they heard did sound like a language
structurally. This position has been chal-
lenged by W. E. Wilmers, Prof, of African
Languages at UCLA, who contends that it
cannot be a language, but is related to the
native tongue of the speakers (Letter to the
Editor, Christianity Today, Nov. 8, 1963).

Historical Background

There have been sporadic manifesta-
tions of speaking in tongues throughout
Christian history. Notable among these
in fairly recent times are the outbreaks
among the persecuted Huguenots of
the Cevennes at the close of the seven-
teenth century and in the Irvingite or
Catholic Apostolic Church during the
1830’s.

So far as we can tell, the first speak-
ing in tongues in America took place in
the early days of Mormonism, where it
apparently enjoyed considerable vogue,
and became an integral part of worship,
being sometimes uttered on direction of
the leader.7 However, the traceable his-
tory of the Pentecostal movement be-
gins with Holiness revivals in the
1870’s. Sporadic outbursts occurred
throughout the country from that dec-
ade until after the turn of the century.
In 1900, students in a Holiness bible
school in Topeka, Kansas, spoke in
tongues. Three years later the phenom-
enon broke out in Galena, Kansas, and
from there it was carried to Orchard
and Houston, Texas.8

These occasional sparks became a
continual and spreading flame as a re-
sult of the revival held during 1906 by
William J. Seymour, a Negro preacher,
in the Asuza Street Mission of Los An-
geles. On April 9, 1906, a few days be-
fore the disastrous San Francisco earth-
quake and fire, the Spirit “fell” upon
Seymour and a few followers.9 Soon the

7 Cutten, op. cit., p. 70 ff.

8 See Brumback’s Suddenly from Heaven
and Kendrick’s The Promise Fulfilled : A
History of the Modern Pentecostal Move-
ment, both published by the Gospel Pub.
House, Springfield, Mo., 1961.

9 The earthquake is mentioned because of
the doctrine among Pentecostals that the gift

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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Asuza Street Mission was the site of a
continuous demonstration of speaking
in tongues. Undoubtedly the occurrence
of sustained glossolalia in a large center
of transportation and communication
facilitated the rapid spread of the
movement.

During the period from 1906 to 1914,
the initial thrust of the Pentecostal
movement took place. It culminated in
the United States in the formation dur-
ing 1914 of the Assemblies of God, the
largest Pentecostal denomination in
North America. The movement spread
rapidly to other countries, and the
World Pentecostal Conference, formed
in 1947, is said to have more than 10
million persons affiliated with member
churches.

The Perfectionist and Holiness
movements, off-shoots of Methodism,
provided the milieu from which Pente-
costalism sprang.10 The history of the
Holiness movement in America during
the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury reveals a succession of groups
which extracted from the Wesleyan
ethos an emphasis upon a crisis experi-
ence subsequent to the attainment of
salvation. It was believed that during
the crisis the Spirit fully dwelt in the
believer. There was no necessary motor
behavior associated with this experi-

of tongues is a sign of the coming end of
the age, which will be attended by like nat-
ural and man-made calamities.

10 Wesleyan theology from its inception
contained an emphasis on Christian perfec-
tion, i.e., the belief that a life free from will-
ful sin is possible after a believer experiences
sanctification or the “second blessing,”
through which the eradication of wayward
tendencies is effected. (John Wesley, “A
Plain Account of Christian Perfection,”
Works, Miscellaneous, II, pp. 483-531.) This
emphasis never became firmly entrenched in
either British or American Methodism.

ence; the believer knew in his heart
when it was accomplished. Believing
strongly that God would sanctify, he
simply waited for the feeling of assur-
ance to come.11 It is important to note
that in Holiness religion, crisis experi-
ences in the believer’s life usually ter-
minated after sanctification. However,
this sanctification could be lost, since
it was a momentary attainment, and
regained again.

In Holiness religion, the proof of
having received the full measure of the
Spirit was found in the believer’s own
testimony to that effect and his pattern
of holy living. Thus Holiness religion
did not give the believer complete cer-
tainty that he had been filled with the
Holy Spirit. For life styles were sub-
ject to interpretation and inner feelings
were elusive.

By the turn of the century, the orig-
inal fervor of the Holiness movement
was spent and the time was ripe for yet
another movement. The craving for
religious expression which resulted in
Pentecostalism suggests that inherent
in the Holiness ethos and its predeces-
sors was the need for ever new expres-
sions of unmistakable, emotionally re-
leasing, religious experience. The
groups and individuals who spoke in
tongues early in the first decade of the
twentieth century were Holiness in
background. William J. Seymour was
himself a Holiness preacher.

Pentecostalism thus succeeded in
doing what the Holiness movement
could not do. The gift of tongues which
came during the crisis of the “second
blessing” provided the believer with a
repeatable and unmistakable motor ex-

11 A. M. Hills, Holiness and Pcrwer for the
Church attd Ministry, Cincinnati : M. W.
Knapp, 1879.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

7

pression which, in effect, guaranteed
his possession of the Spirit. The Pente-
costal— whom two recent empirical
studies have shown to be more emotion-
ally unstable and more anxious than
other “non-enthusiastic” religious peo-
ple of similar socio-economic situation
— needed only to repeat, or point to the
initial expression of the gift to be as-
sured that he was in the fullest possible
relationship with the deity.12 It was a
token of group acceptance and the talis-
man of divine approval.

Although the phenomenon of speak-
ing in tongues was doubtless “caught”
from Pentecostalism by the “neo-Pen-
tecostals” in mainline churches, it was
not a case of organic development as
was Pentecostalism’s emergence from
the Holiness movement. Sometime in
the mid-i95o’s the spark began to strike
fire, but the precise time and place are
difficult to trace. By i960 the move-
ment was firmly established among
certain Episcopalians on the West
Coast and in the Mid-West and had
taken hold among adherents of the
Reformed tradition, in both its conti-
nental and British branches, on the
East Coast.

Why did this happen? Although it
must remain for church historians of
the future fully to establish the causes,
the following factors seem to be defi-
nitely involved. ( 1 ) Upward social pres-
sure from the Pentecostal groups led
to contact with members of mainline
churches. This is epitomized in an
organization called the Full Gospel

i 12 Vivier, L. M. Van Eetveldt, Glossolcilia
(U. of Witwatersrand, unpub. diss., i960),
and William W. Wood, Culture and Person-
ality Aspects of the Pentecostal Holiness
Religion (U. of North Carolina, unpub. diss.
1961).

Business Men’s Fellowship Interna-
tional. Founded in 1953 by Pentecostal
laymen, it has headquarters in Los
Angeles and is now supported by lay-
men of all denominations. The FGBM
FI attempts to adapt Pentecostalism to
the American middle class business
ethos through popular speakers at re-
gional breakfasts and national conven-
tions.

(2) The presence within the main-
line churches of many “fringe” people,
whose needs for personal security and
emotional expression were not being
met by these churches, provided a pool
of potential adherents. Whether there
are more such persons in the churches
today than there have been in the past
is debatable, but personal observation
and objective studies indicate that there
are many “seekers” of this kind now.

(3) The increasing discontent and
disaffection of some clergymen in the
mainline churches is now a well known
fact. Though some studies and reports
have tended to exaggerate the numbers
of men so affected, it appears beyond
dispute that significant numbers of
Protestant ministers find themselves
frustrated and anxious about their
function and purpose. Of this group,
a small minority has sought and found
both personal and professional satisfac-
tion in neo-Pentecostalism. They pro-
vide the crucial factor of leadership,
which had been missing until the last
decade.

The Neo-Pentecostal Group

In order to provide a basis for under-
standing the function of the small neo-
Pentecostal group, a brief description
of an actual group meeting will be pre-
sented.

This meeting was observed by one of

8

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

the authors in a home on the West
Coast. This type of meeting is one of
the two principal kinds in the move-
ment— the other being the somewhat
larger more “open” meeting frequently
held in the church school rooms or even
the sanctuary. Participants in both
kinds of meetings are usually members
of one church with which the group is
identified, though some may be from
other churches.

About 35 people were present in this
meeting — half men and half women.
Some were teenagers and older youths
but the majority were couples in the
35‘55 a£e range. When the leader, a
clergyman, arrived, he assumed a
prominent position in the room where
he was plainly visible to all. He began
the meeting talking about the spon-
taneity of the group and how he did not
want to dominate it. He stressed par-
ticularly the necessity for spontaneity
when speaking in tongues. He went on
to say that what comes from praying in
the Spirit, i.e., speaking in tongues,
is strength and edification. He said that
he did not approve of what had hap-
pened recently after one of the “prayer
and praise” meetings — a small group
after the regular meeting had discussed
at some length “intellectual problems.”
“But,” he said, “God is not interested
in our intellectual problems. We must
accentuate the positive.”

Having made the introductory re-
marks, the leader asked for some testi-
monies of “good experiences” during
the past week. There were about ten
testimonies. Three persons were con-
cerned with economic situations which
had been recently improved. Three
other testimonies were examples of
how the Holy Spirit was working in
mysterious ways. They amounted to

explanation of events which were as-
sumed to be the workings of the Holy
Spirit. More testimonies dealt with
how the movement was spreading, the
“joy in the Lord” a man had despite
his illness, and simply re-telling of
commonplace events which had oc-
curred during the past week.

After the testimonies the leader in-
dicated that there would be a service
of prayer. This amounted to the leader
reading the appointed lesson for St.
Stephen’s Day ( Book of Common
Prayer) and the group’s verbal repeti-
tion of the Gloria Patri.

Following the evening prayer, hands
were laid on for healing. During this
exercise the leader, accompanied by at
least one other member of the group,
laid his hands on the head of a person
who said he was in need of healing. A
short, audible prayer was spoken over
the “patient” asking God to drive out
the evil spirit or power of Satan which
was causing the malady. Before and
after this prayer the healers prayed
silently in tongues. After the last prayer
in tongues, some indication was awaited
as to the efficacy of the treatment. A
smile or nod of the head was the ac-
cepted sign that something had hap-
pened.

After the healing episode the group
sang a few chorus-type songs. The
leader read a portion of scripture and
announced that the group was going
to “praise God.” The leader started the
praising of God by closing his eyes
and repeating scripture quotation with
injunctions to “praise God.” During
this period of praising God, the entire
group closed their eyes and alternated
between softly spoken prayers and cer-
tain phrases such as “Praise God” and
“Alleluia” which were repeated again

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

9

and again by the same person. The
leader, himself, was given to repeating
“Father, thou art glorious” again and
again. The singing of choruses was in-
termixed with the praise behavior. Sud-
denly during the praise behavior, a
man spoke loudly in tongues. Then a
hymn and chorus were sung, the latter
accompanied by the clapping of hands.

By this time the meeting had been
in progress about one hour. After the
chorus the leader began a lengthy in-
struction period during which he ex-
horted the people about their lives. The
theme of the talk was that participating
in meetings such as the present one
and practicing prayer and praise in the
devotional life is the real heart of the
Christian faith. He concluded with the
statement : “Is there anything which
is more fun than praising God? We
have to go further and deeper — clear
away the clutter so we have more time
for praising God.”

Upon finishing his talk the leader
spoke in tongues. He also prayed for a
sick person. Then the praise behavior
began to operate once again. Tongues
were spoken and choruses were sung.
Prayer requests were heard and prayers
offered. Another person asked for heal-
ing and hands were laid on his head.
Then a man who was evidently one of
the leader’s lieutenants spoke in tongues
after reading a passage of scripture.
The leader prayed repeating the phrase
“praise the Lord,” again and again.
Then the leader gave the closing prayer
exhorting the group members to “go
forth in power.” He pronounced the
benediction and all crossed themselves.
The meeting was over.

Though it is not claimed that all
groups which practice glossolalia have
exactly the same pattern of behavior

as that described above, it is hypothe-
sized that despite minor variations
in expression depending on locale and
leadership, all glossolalic groups have
basically the same functions. Likewise,
there appears to be a structural uni-
formity from one group to the next.
Furthermore, by maintaining the regu-
lar pattern of church life, and adding
to its glossolalic groups, the identifica-
tion of the local parish as a part of the
denomination is maintained.

At such a meeting as the one de-
scribed, there are at least five distinct
roles : the charismatic leader, the sec-
ondary leadership, the initiates, the
highly interested, and the curious.

Group members characterize the
leader in various ways. He is described
sometimes in semi-messianic terms — a
wonderful bearer of assurance of divine
favor and liberation from the powers
of darkness. Again, he may be thought
of as an extraordinary teacher — “he
really feeds us.” Or the leader may be
seen as the father of a spiritual family.
There is no doubt that the leader has
a very exalted position in the group,
which he readily accepts. Some of the
observed ministerial leaders of glosso-
lalic groups appear to have a past
history of frustrated vocational experi-
ence in which they failed to be per-
ceived as a spiritual leader or so to per-
ceive themselves. There are evidences
to suggest that without the devotion of
the group, the leader would lack a di-
mension of self-fulfillment which is
present in his role as charismatic leader.

The secondary leadership partici-
pates in the charisma of the leader and
may, upon direction of the leader, as-
sume his functions. When the glossola-
lic groups are operative, the secondary
leadership is distinct from the rest of

10

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

the group — they are called upon to per-
form such acts as healing and exor-
cism. They may serve as the master
of ceremonies during “initiation” —
i.e., when a person speaks in tongues
for the first time, usually after hands
have been laid on his head. The second-
ary leadership is directly under the con-
trol of the charismatic leader.

The initiates include all who have
exhibited glossolalia and attached them-
selves to the group. They do not assume
leadership functions, but may frequent-
ly testify in the meeting, and interpret
glossolalia for the group. Since they
have received the gift of tongues, their
claim of the powers of prophecy, inter-
cession, and interpretation are thereby
recognized by the group.

The highly interested correspond to
the “anxious seekers” of yesteryear’s
revivals. They attach themselves to the
groups, hoping to receive the gift of
tongues and become initiates. Some
persons in this category appear to de-
rive comfort from the group and re-
main in it, even though they are unable
or unwilling to speak in tongues.

The curious are definitely on the
groups’ fringes. After one or two con-
tacts with a glossolalic group, they
either depart or move into the category
of the highly interested. Some of the
curious who are verbally hostile toward
the movement quickly become initiated
after exposure to the phenomenon.
Glossolalics, themselves, say that the
best “candidates” are persons who
come to their meetings with the specific
intent of opposing all that is happen-
ing and exposing the group. They soon
speak in tongues.

The act of speaking in tongues is
then a distinctive part of the rite of
initiation into a small charismatically

oriented group, and further serves to
maintain one in good standing in the
group. Once admitted to the inner
circle of such a group, one is qualified
for certain benefits. First and foremost
the speaker in tongues considers him-
self to enjoy a superior relationship to
God — more intimate and direct than
those of persons who have not received
the gift. The group itself is conceived
to have a better and deeper relationship
to God than other religious organiza-
tions. Because of this unusual relation-
ship, the individual and group possess
extraordinary power of healing, exor-
cism and speaking directly for God, as
did the Old Testament prophets. Thus
equipped, the group is felt to be capable
of assisting in the solution of a wide
variety of personal problems, including
especially health and financial difficul-
ties (little of what is usually termed
social concern is observed).

In the second part of this article, to
be published in an early issue, psycho-
logical factors involved in the speaking
in tongues movement will be examined
and assessed in the context of the his-
torical and social factors discussed in
this issue.

II. Infantile Babble or Song of
the Self?

W hat Is the Glossolalic Like?

All the evidence points to the conclu-
sion that Pentecostals are uncommonly
troubled people. Though differing
widely at other points, the two em-
pirical investigators of Pentecostalism,
Vivier and Wood (to whom we alluded
in Part I), agree that Pentecostals who
speak in tongues exhibit more anxiety
and personality instability than non-
Pentecostals of the same socio-eco-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

ii

nomic background. Vivier, working in
South Africa, found that they tended
to come from much more disturbed
home situations than did non-Pente-
costals, or even than Pentecostals who
did not speak in tongues.1 They are
problem oriented people who consume
much time and energy in attempting to
cope with life, which appears to be a
storm-tossed sea in which it is all one
can do to keep one’s head above water.
Further, they are persons who have
enough credulity to be able to reduce
all their problems to the one global
problem of the battle between good and
evil, and to view its solution uniformly
in terms of supernatural intervention.
In addition to the healing of illness and
the solving of personal adjustment
problems (which is more common
among groups of younger people),
everyday events such as the finding of
a parking place for one’s car, and be-
ing able to ride on an elevator with
some “key” person, are often attributed
to the direct intervention of the Holy
Spirit.

Although the neo-Pentecostal shares
the same basic outlook as the Pente-
costal, he is likely to be somewhat more

1 Vivier, L. M. Van Eetvelt, Glossolalia, U.
of Witwatersrand (unpub. diss., i960), and
William W. Wood, Culture and Personality
Aspects of the Pentecostal Holiness Religion,
(U. of North Carolina, 1961). Vivier, al-
though interpreting his findings in such a
way as to minimize suggestions that glosso-
lalics are “sicker” than other people, never-
theless concludes that frequent speakers in
tongues are more unstable and anxious, on
the basis of their higher scores on the Cat-
tell 16 PF Test. The data on the home situa-
tions were obtained by Vivier from a ques-
tionnaire developed by him. Wood bases his
conclusions on a significantly higher “vista”
score on the Rorschach Test, which is as-
sociated with defense against anxiety.

sophisticated in his interpretation of
his experience. For instance, the neo-
Pentecostal may see both the problem
and the solution in quasi-mental health
terms. Moreover, he is likely to attrib-
ute healing power to the act of speak-
ing in tongues in itself, which is not
characteristic of Pentecostalism. One
minister has held it to be a catharsis
experience far deeper than psychiatry
can offer. As such, it has been claimed
to be a cure for homosexuality and
dope addiction. In the case of the nar-
cotics addiction, the claim has been
made by a Pentecostal minister, the
Rev. David Wilkerson, in his book,
The Cross and the Switchblade } It is
not clear whether Wilkerson regards
glossolalia as the medium of cure, or
only an accompaniment, but neo-Pente-
costals have hailed his report as a
demonstration of its power as a heal-
ing agent.

In connection with the mental health
emphasis among neo-Pentecostals it
may be noted that some of them, in
contrast to Pentecostals, have attempt-
ed to understand their experience psy-
chologically. Some of the ideas of Carl
G. Jung provide the basis of what is
apparently the most widespread view,
that glossolalia is a manifestation of
the collective unconscious — that great
underground reservoir of common hu-
man experience. They point out that
Jung has held that it is necessary for
each individual in some way to bring
his higher centers of consciousness in
touch with the collective unconscious
for sound mental health, and claim that
glossolalia is a fulfillment of that con-
ception. This view has also been taken
by some sympathetic students and ob-

2 New York: Bernard Geis Associates,

1963.

12

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

servers of glossolalia. Among these are
Vivier, whom we have mentioned, and
Morton T. Kelsey, who is rector of an
Episcopal Church with 30 parishioners
who speak in tongues, and who has re-
cently published the first full length
study of the movement.3 Glossolalia is
thus understood as a song of the depths
of the self, bursting the barrier of the
unconscious. From the foregoing dis-
cussion it will have become evident to
the reader that a further difference
between Pentecostals and neo-Pente-
costals is that many persons of intel-
ligence and station have become a part
of the neo-Pentecostal movement, dis-
pelling the idea, formerly taken for
granted among students of glossolalia,
that it was to be found almost exclu-
sively among the ignorant and the poor.
The authors recently heard a research
chemist employed by a world famous
chemical company describe how Jesus
had provided the solution to a knotty
chemical problem just in time to save
the company a lot of money.

Jean Stone, editor of “Logos,” the
official organ of The Holy Trinity So-
ciety, the neo-Pentecostal organization
corresponding to the Full Gospel Busi-
ness Men’s Fellowship, has said that
neo-Pentecostal meetings tend to be
less emotional and that neo-Pentecos-
tals tend to use glossolalia more in
their private devotional living. On the
whole it does appear that neo-Pente-
costals are less volatile and more con-
trolled than Pentecostals, though there

3 Tongue Speaking : An Experiment in
Spiritual Experience, New York: Double-
day, 1964. Cited by McCandlish Phillips,
“And There Appeared to Them Tongues of
Fire,” Saturday Evening Post, May 16,
1964, p. 36.

are many exceptions to this general
statement.

The Intra-psychic Function
of Glossolalia

We have noted that persons who
speak in tongues describe their experi-
ence as bringing them joy, peace, and
release. It is, as one minister put it,
“uttering the unutterable in the power
of the Spirit.” We have also discussed
the social function of the phenomenon
in the first part of this article, that of
providing proof of spiritual experience.
There too, we briefly noted that from
a psychological viewpoint glossolalia
appears to be a motor automatism, like
automatic writing which is done with-
out conscious control of the pen. Now
we must attempt to analyze the mean-
ing of this automatism in the psychic
economy of the individual. In so doing
we fully realize the speculative char-
acter of such an attempt, and hope that
the reader will receive it as a stimulus
to his own thinking rather than an at-
tempted final word.

A motor automatism is defined by
Gardner Murphy as “performance of
acts normally requiring attention with-
out the apparent supervision, or even
knowledge of the performer.4 In his
discussion of automatisms, Murphy
states that they result from conflict
within the personality, and serve as a
genuine escape from conflict. An au-
tomatism is thus a form of dissociation
within the personality, in which a set of
voluntary muscles respond to control
centers other than those associated
with consciousness. In saying that glos-
solalia is an automatism, we must note

4 Personality : A Bio-Social Approach to
Origins and Structure, New York: Harper,
1947, P- 981.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

13

that it does not quite fit Murphy’s defi-
nition, in the sense that it is not an act
normally requiring conscious attention.
Rather the reverse is more nearly the
case; it appears “normally” to require
no conscious attention at first, but later
may become partially under conscious
control. In this sense it more nearly re-
sembles a second form of dissociation
— the massive dissociation of all, or
nearly all the voluntary muscles from
conscious control, as in sleep walking
and trance states. In these states just
mentioned conscious awareness is in
abeyance, but in other massive dissoci-
ative states, such as the fugue — in
which the individual “forgets” his
identity and performs complex actions
such as going on a journey or even
starting a business, only to “wake up”
in astonishment — consciousness is not
in abeyance, but altered. Glossolalia is
thus like an automatism in that it only
involves a specific set of muscles, but
like a massive dissociation in that it
seems to come from “beneath” without
ever having been consciously learned.

At this point it is relevant to recall
one of the more striking features of the
current glossolalia revival. This is the
apparently universal concern with de-
mons and demon possession which
characterizes the movement. In Part I
we described one group meeting in
which healing always took the form
of the exorcism of a demon held to be
responsible for the malady. This prac-
tice extended even to relatively minor
problems such as an earache. Although
probably not all groups go quite this
far, our observation indicates that at-
tribution of all kinds of difficulties, no
matter how trivial they may seem, to
the activity of satanic power is quite
widespread. This suggests that the em-

phasis on the demonic is not a periph-
eral accompaniment of Pentecostalism
and neo-Pentecostalism, but is very
close to the dynamic center of these
movements.

When this fact is contemplated in
relation to our observations regarding
the conflict reduction function of glos-
solalia as automatism, a line of think-
ing is suggested which leads to a plau-
sible, though partial, explanation of
what is going on “inside” the tongues
speaker. If we regard the conflict as
being due genetically to an unconscious
attachment to parental figures charac-
terized by strong feelings of both love
and hate, neither of which can the in-
dividual express directly, thus produc-
ing tension, the glossolalia may be
viewed as an indirect, though powerful
expression of primitive love toward the
parent and the demonology a projec-
tion of the hate and fear in that child-
hood relationship.

The total experience of being in the
glossolalia group thus enables the in-
dividual to regress sufficiently to ex-
press his feelings without ambivalence,
and it is to this that the great sense of
joy and release is due. For the time be-
ing the person is released from the
tyranny of the old love-hate relation-
ship which colors all his relationships
in the present. By “uttering the unut-
terable” expression of primitive desire
(perhaps even oral incorporative
wishes, which would be related to the
muscular region employed), displaced
onto the deity as praise, the speaker
finds peace. Since the hostility normally
bound to these wishes is then released
also, it must find an object. The de-
mons provide this.

The hypothesis that demon posses-
sion is the result of unacceptable de-

14

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

sires gaining control of the personality
either totally or in part, is, of course,
not a new one. The mass witch and
devil hunts of the middle ages and of
the seventeenth century have been often
attributed to “hysteria.” Aldous Hux-
ley’s The Devils of Loudun 5 is a su-
perbly written narrative of one of the
most notorious — the outbreak of pos-
session among the nuns of the Ursuline
Convent at Loudun, France, early in
the seventeenth century. By pains-
taking research into the childhood of
several of the protagonists, Huxley has
shown that possession enabled them to
utter through the mouths of the demons
blasphemies and lewd phrases spawned
by frustration which would otherwise
have been entirely unutterable. Jean
L’hermitte, the distinguished French
Catholic neurologist, in his True and
False Possession, reaches the same
conclusion.8

As a means of dealing with inner
tension, glossolalia has a great advan-
tage over classical paroxysmal demon
possession, in that it is not painful and
exhausting physically. In the glosso-
lalia groups the demons are more
pursued and attacked by the group
members than they are pursuing and
possessing them. The demon functions
more as deus ex machina (in reverse),
who is brought in to absorb the hostil-
ity freed by the glossolalia. In this con-
nection it may be noted that possession
among glossolalia groups is usually a
pale phenomenon which would not be
noted by an objective observer, though
one case of exorcism of a paroxysmal
possession of classical proportions is
known to the authors.

5 Harper, 1952.

6 Trans. P. J. Hepburne-Scott, New York:
Hawthorn, 1963.

In a credulous age it is not so diffi-
cult to see how many persons could be-
lieve in devils, but in our secular day
there must be a powerful inner motiva-
tion which leads persons not only to be-
lieve in demons, but also to attune their
lives to combatting them. Our hypothe-
sis is that this motivation is supplied
by the need to find a suitable object
for the hate released in the unravelling
of the ambivalence through glossolalia
which occurs in the security of the
group. If this hypothesis is correct,
glossolalia will seldom, if ever, be
found without accompanying demons,
though these need not be constantly
present.7

To sum up, glossolalia is understood
to be a regression “in the service of the
ego,” to use Hartmann’s phrase. That
is, a regression controlled by the ego
and for the purpose of maintaining per-
sonality, rather than a disintegration
of personality. It is a genuine escape
.from inner conflict, but contrary to the
position held by William Wood, whose
work we have cited, and others ; of it-
self it does not bring a further perma-
nent integration of personality, which
would usually require insight into the
roots of the conflict. Neither is it a
simple regression to infantilism, as
John B. Oman, writing in pastoral
psychology (December, 1963, pp. 48-
51) holds. Viewing glossolalia as in-
fantile babble expressive of the megalo-
mania of infancy, Oman can see no

7 One of the paradoxes of this association
is that one of the classical signs of demon
possession is the ability to speak in tongues.
Glossolalics are aware of this, and listen care-
fully to any “unusual” sounds, especially if
these have a pained quality, which may indi-
cate that the speaker is possessed, not by the
Spirit, but by the devil.

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

constructive purpose in it. While we
disagree with him about the kind of
regression, Oman is correct, we think,
in noting the self-aggrandizing, narcis-
sistic component. We regard this as
being of secondary significance to its
function of conflict reduction, however.
By reducing inner conflict, glossolalia
may contribute to the enhancement of
the social interaction and productivity
of the individual, even though it does
not act directly as an integrative agent.

Some Unanswered Questions

Admittedly the foregoing discussion
raises many questions, and we can at-
tempt to answer only a few of the more
important. In the first place, should
glossolalics be considered mentally ill?
We have said that they are uncom-
monly disturbed, and that the intra-
psychic function of speaking in tongues
probably is to reduce conflict brought
on by developmental “fixation” at an
early age in their relationships with
parental figures. This way of thinking
about the problem is obviously related
to psychoanalytic concepts developed
in clinical settings, beginning with the
work of Freud, and the general picture
is that associated with hysterical per-
sonalities— emotionally labile, easily
swayed persons who are prone to bod-
ily ills which come and go without ap-
parent organic cause. Indeed in this
connection, it may be noted that hys-
terical conversion symptoms, in which
inner psychic tension is “converted”
into a bodily dysfunction, such as pa-
ralysis of one of the extremities, palpi-
tation, breathing difficulties, or vague
abdominal pains — which are symbolic
of the conflict and an attempt at a
solution, are often the objects of the
healing in glossolalia groups. Such

IS

symbolic dysfunction represents still
another form of dissociation in addition
to the automatism and massive dissoci-
ative states discussed earlier, and is a
third type of solution to developmen-
tally generated conflict.

While all this suggests that the dy-
namic out of which some mental ill-
ness develops is quite similar to that
involved in the glossolalia movement,
it would not be useful to regard most
glossolalics as mentally ill in any clin-
ical sense. In some cases the glossolalia
experience may be a preventative of
mental illness. In recent years dy-
namically oriented psychiatrists have
been insisting that mental illness is not
a discrete “state” that is discontinuous
with “normality,” but that there is
rather a continuum of function and
dysfunction, so that it is difficult to say
just when the “threshold” of mental
illness is crossed. Viewed with this
model in mind, most glossolalics usu-
ally manage to stay mainly on the func-
tional side, rather than the dysfunc-
tional side of that threshold, though
they resort to tactics which appear
bizarre to most persons in attempting
to do so. There is also some evidence
that some young persons may pass
through a glossolalic episode, which
helps them to get through a late ado-
lescent developmental crisis. When the
crisis is passed, they lose interest in
glossolalia.

Another question is that of the re-
lation of the interpretation which we
have given the phenomenon, which is
based primarily on psychoanalytic
thought, to the Jungian approach taken
by some participants and observers,
which we mentioned earlier. In our
view there is no necessary incompati-
bility between these two, since in

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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Jung’s view the collective unconscious
is always filtered through the personal.
That is, glossolalia may be expressive
of “archetypes” from the collective un-
conscious, but these are shaped and
given added power by the familial re-
lationships which give rise to conflict.
We do not necessarily hold that this is
the case, but only that there is no
incompatibility. Further, it may be
pointed out that from Jung’s point of
view, glossolalia could not be a final
solution to the problem of relating con-
scious and unconscious regions of the
personality, since there is no symbolic
integration of the archetypes with the
real world, but only projection.

A further question which arises
when anything presumed to be beyond
conscious control is discussed, is
whether the phenomena observed are
due to the person’s “faking” them,
rather than to any process properly
termed unconscious. While undoubted-
ly some glossolalia is “fabricated” in
this way (Cutten in his Speaking in
Tongues makes this point well in con-
nection with the early Mormon glos-
solalia, p. 74f.), this does not appear
to be the case with the fully developed
“singing glossolalia” (which we de-
scribed in Part I). This musical speech
seems beyond the conscious capacity
for control, except for the ability to
start and stop at will, which is devel-
oped by many proficients. While glos-
solalia is transmitted from person to
person in social settings, it appears
more correct to say that it is “caught”
rather than learned, if by learning we
mean a consciously directed trial and
error process.

Finally, the question may be raised
regarding possible negative or harm-
ful effects which glossolalia may have.

In the strictly psychological sense, as
we have indicated, it is likely to be of
benefit to emotionally labile, disturbed
persons who have internalized their
emotional conflicts, in that it provides
a unique kind of release. For persons
whose conflicts have been partly intel-
lectualized, and who are, as a con-
sequence, prone to have grandiose
ideas concerning themselves and their
place in the scheme of things, the ex-
perience of the glossolalia group may
be so stimulating and exciting that they
either seek to impose themselves on the
group as leaders or have great diffi-
culty in functioning outside the group,
or both. Such persons present severe
problems for glossolalia groups, as
they are frequently attracted to such
groups, and are likely to be divisive in
the effect they have on the group.

Conclusions

The neo-Pentecostal movement ap-
pears to be still spreading and grow-
ing among the mainline Protestant
Churches, but this growth is not likely
to assume such proportions as to
threaten the basic outlook and structure
of those churches. Both resistance to
the disturbing influence of neo-Pente-
costalism by the churches and the basic
antagonism between the extreme na-
ivete characteristic of the movement and
the scientific secularism of our age will
serve to check it. Further, if our hy-
pothesis concerning the connection be-
tween glossolalia and dissociative tend-
encies is correct, the movement will
have an appeal to only a limited, if
sizable, group.

For most who are attracted to the
movement it has very definite benefits,
which we have described as temporary
relief from intrapsychic conflict, en-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

17

hanced by the security of the group
and the assurance of divine approval.
Many persons who formerly managed
barely to cope with inner and outer
stress have been enabled to take a
more adequate stance toward the inter-
personal aspects of life as a result of
the glossolalia group experience.

On the negative side, it must be said
that in addition to the danger of psy-
chopathology for a few, the isolation
from the rest of society which is in-
volved in participation in the group is
a problem for all. For they must still
somehow function in the larger social
context of mid-century America, and
the rigid distinction between the “in-
siders” and the “outsiders,” which is
characteristic of neo-Pentecostalism,
makes it difficult to relate without
hostility to those outside. Too, the
credulity demanded by the movement
is incompatible with modern life and
its empirical orientation, which means
that the neo-Pentecostal must either
compartmentalize his life (which sur-
prisingly many persons appear able to
do), or constantly expose himself to
the pangs of doubt. In either case func-
tioning in the world outside the group
would be jeopardized, since even in a
compartmentalized mind the barriers
are apt to break down at crucial mo-
ments.

If the movement is not likely to take
over Protestantism, neither is it likely
to die out in the immediate future. Al-
though the experience will probably
begin to pall for some, like the potency
of a “wonder” drug on the market for
several years, there is doubtless a pool
of potential adherents which is barely
tapped, and adequate leadership seems
assured by the continuing uncertainty
and frustration experienced by some

ministers. Eventually some groups may
become more or less permanently toler-
ated within the life of the mainline
denominations. Those for whom this
entails too much domestication may
well move toward spiritualism, with
which, as we have indicated in Part I,
glossolalia has been associated in the
past.

We have indicated that speaking in
tongues and its associated behavior,
especially the belief in demon posses-
sion and exorcism, appear to resemble
some aspects of the phenomena called
“hysteria” from a clinical point of
view. This does not mean that all, or
even most, who speak in tongues would
be called hysterical in a clinical setting,
but we have suggested that their psy-
chodynamics may be similar to those
of a person with hysterical symptoms.
More specifically we have hypothesized
that glossolalia represents a temporary
undoing of the tangle of love and hate
involved in a fixated object relation-
ship, with the unconscious positive
feelings being expressed in the tongues
speaking, and the negative feelings
projected outward and displaced onto
the devils. Although the evidence is
not conclusive, this appears to be the
most powerful hypothesis available.
This means that the movement, both
in its Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal
manifestations, tends to “select” per-
sons with a good capacity for dissoci-
ation for initiation, from those who
came as “seekers.”

Toward the movement, our attitude
is then, like St. Paul’s, ambivalent. A
sign of changing, and often frustrating
and frightening, times for the Church,
the movement has brought succor to
many in distress who found none in
more traditional expressions of Chris-

i8

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

tianity. However, if the Church turns
to this movement for answers to its
pressing questions, it will have given
up its task to change the world for
that of only coping with it. For glosso-
lalia is neither mere infantile babbling
nor a song of the inmost self, but is

rather a dissociative expression of
truncated personality development. Yet
through it, many have found release
from inner strife, and some have been
able to transcend their former isola-
tion and brokenness, at least for the
time being.

THE EXPOSITORY TIMES

With the October issue, THE EXPOSITORY TIMES celebrated its 75th birthday
Founded by James Hastings, then a young and unknown country minister, this monthly
magazine has maintained an unfailing reputation for high scholarship and has done much to
enrich the mind and work of countless ministers in the English-speaking world. Each issue
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28s. 6d. (U.S.A. $4.10).

DAVID’S FIRST CITY-THE EXCAVATION
OF BIBLICAL HEBRON, 1964

Philip C. Hammond

Princeton Theological Seminary
has become part of one of the most
important projects in basic Biblical re-
search being conducted in the Holy
Land — the excavation of Biblical He-
bron. Beginning last summer, for the
first time, modern scientific archaeo-
logical methods have been brought to
bear upon this major site in the life
of Hebrew religion. For the first time,
therefore, data relevant to the inter-
cultural background of the Patriarchal
Period, to the growth of the Hebrew
monarchy, and especially to the entire
matter of the theological developments
in the earliest days of the Davidic
period, have been made possible. No
other site played a greater role in the
southern Israelite area than Hebron —
resting place of the Patriarchs and
David’s first capital !

Jericho, possibly the Near East’s
most ancient city, was destroyed by
Israelite or other conquerors, and not
rebuilt until after the disruption of the
Kingdom. Shiloh, Israel’s earliest cult
center, fell before the monarchy was
firmly established. Jerusalem, the place
where Israel’s political and religious
life reached its zenith, was only heir to
that which had gone before, and inno-
vator of that which came to be. Hebron
alone remains the place where the Da-
vidic political and theological perspec-
tives were originated and basically
formulated.

Biblically, Hebron began its impor-
tance with the Patriarch Abraham. It

was in the area of this city that Abra-
ham pitched his tent, bought a tomb
site for his wife Sarah, and was, him-
self, finally buried. Isaac was likewise
said to have been buried in the cave of
Machpelah by Esau and Jacob, as was
Jacob also.

In the days of the Exodus, Hebron
again appears in the Biblical account,
but as a military objective. The spies
sent out to reconnoiter the land of
Canaan returned with mixed emotions
concerning the agricultural lushness of
the “valley of Eshkol” — and the mighty
“giants” who inhabited it.

The wandering was punishment for
the timidity of the people, and capture
of Hebron remained a task for Joshua,
who “utterly destroyed it,” and gave it
to the venerable Caleb as a legacy.
Later on, when the law of blood re-
venge was being mitigated by humani-
tarian legislation, Hebron became a
“city of refuge” and a sinecure of the
Aaronic priesthood. Before that time,
however, the hero Samson carried
thither the gates of the town of Gaza —
and set them up on a hill overlooking
Hebron.

After Saul’s disastrous defeat at the
hands of the Philistines, David sud-
denly returned to his people and estab-
lished himself as king of Judah, with
Hebron as his capital for seven and a
half years. The whole course of Isra-
elite history was changed there, as well,
when Joab somewhat ungraciously
took Abner aside “and smote him so

20

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

that he died” at Hebron’s great pool.
That act precipitated the downfall of
the house of Saul in the north, and en-
voys from all the tribes of Israel came
to David at Hebron — and anointed him
king over Israel. David soon showed
his political acumen by moving his po-
litical capital to the yet unconquered
city of Jerusalem, and Hebron drops
from the Biblical record until the abor-
tive revolt of Absalom chose the ancient
capital of Israel as its rallying point —
“as soon as you hear the sound of the
trumpet, say: ‘Absalom is king at
Hebron !’ ”

Josephus assigns Solomon’s vision
to that site, as well, but the Bible
knows it again only in the lists of Reho-
boam’s fortified towns. Archaeology
has long known this period of the city’s
existence from the evidence of jar
stamps bearing its name found on many
sites throughout the land. The book of
I Maccabees picks up the historical
skein once more, as it records the
ouster of the Idumeans and the de-
struction of Hebron’s fortifications,
about 164 b.c. The New Testament
makes no mention of Hebron, but evi-
dence of Herodian masonry attests to
its continued existence as a religious
center in that period. Simon bar-Gioras
took the city, during the First Jewish
Revolt in a.d. 68, but Vespasian quick-
ly regained control through the prompt
action of his general Cerealis. Hadrian
built a road to Hebron and established
a locally famous market at its end.

Not until the Prophet Mohammed
ceded the town to the Tamin-ed-Dari
in the 7th century a.d. does it again
merit the attention of history’s record-
keepers, and then only in passing. Is-
lam had arrived, and Hebron, with its
famous Mosque over the tombs of the

Patriarchs, became once more a reli-
gious pilgrimage center. The Crusaders
occupied it briefly, as the Castle of St.
Abram, but the Horns of Hattin was
not far off, Islam repossessed Hebron’s
walls, and the fief of Gerhard of Aven-
nes once again heard the muazzin’s
call to prayer.

So has it been, for almost eight hun-
dred years, that Biblical Hebron has
remained a Moslem sanctuary — under
the far more “Biblical” name of El-
Khalil, “The Friend (of God),” in
honor of Abraham.

Hebron, too, is a unique site archaeo-
logically. Almost every other major
Biblical location — Jericho, Shechem,
Jerusalem, Megiddo, Lachish, Shiloh,
Bethel, among others — was excavated,
at least in a preliminary way, before
the advent of modern techniques. He-
bron, alone, withstood the excavator’s
spade because of its location, its sanc-
tity for Islam, and the notoriously bad
reputation of its inhabitants concerning
non-Muslim foreigners. Thus, the
archaeological activity begun there is
both without the preconceptions of
previous excavators — and without their
littered dumps.

Still further, Hebron appears to be
one of the Holy Land’s earliest cities.
The Biblical tradition recognized that
fact when it attributed the city’s found-
ing to a date “seven years before Zoan”
in Egypt. The first extra-Biblical refer-
ence to the site is from the 14th cen-
tury b.c., when a local prince named
Shuwardata ruled there. Mader, who
excavated at Mamre, nearby, saw He-
bron as flourishing in Hyksos times,
but this past summer’s excavations at
Hebron have established its existence
centuries earlier. Materials recovered
in the excavations now firmly date

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

21

habitation at Hebron during the Proto-
Urban “C” era (i.e., Late Chalcolithic
c. 3,200 b.c.), with further evidence
pushing its origin back to the Neolithic
period. Strategic location, plentiful
water supply, excellent agricultural
conditions, and other factors all point
to occupation in the area, now con-
firmed, archaeologically, at the very
dawn of Near Eastern sedentary habi-
tation. Although probably not as an-
cient as Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) in the
Jordan rift, Hebron may well challenge
even that historic mound’s claim to
antiquity as an occupied site. That,
only future excavations will determine.

The Hebron project, however, was
more than merely an exercise in bibli-
cal archaeology, gathering broken pots
and dusty remnants of ancient civiliza-
tion. The expedition also served as a
field training ground for students and
faculty concerned with all facets of
Biblical interest and research. Twenty-
two American staff members were not
only given the rare opportunity of see-
ing Biblical history emerge beneath the
picks and shovels of their workmen,
but were also given the equally rare
opportunity of being able to learn how
to assess that history. By participating
in the work of pottery classification,
stratigraphic drawing and surveying,
recording, photography, and analysis,
the participants of the expedition
learned the positive — and the nega-
tive— facets of this method of Biblical
research. By weekly trips throughout
the Holy Land, they became acquainted
with the work and techniques of other
expeditions, and with the geography of
the area through which the great pano-
rama of the Judeo-Christian heritage
was enacted. In the cities and towns of
Jordan, they came to grips with the

sociological life of the Near East to-
day— but in the black tents of the
Bedouin, they travelled back to the days
of Abraham and Isaac, and were given
glimpses of Near Eastern culture still
preserving resemblances in everyday
experiences of life as it was lived five
thousand years ago.

The American Expedition to Hebron
was an association of five leading
American institutions — Princeton Sem-
inary, University of Southern Cali-
fornia, Southwestern Baptist Theologi-
cal Seminary, Luther Theological
Seminary, and Virginia Theological
Seminary. In addition to those spon-
soring bodies, grants were received
from the American Council of Learned
Societies, the Peter C. Cornell Trust,
the American Friends of the Middle
East, and private patrons. The twenty-
two member staff, directed by the au-
thor, was ecumenical both in theologi-
cal orientation and in individual back-
ground of scholarship and training.
Margaret Hammond, who served as
Administrative Director, had a public
accountancy background and combined
it with twenty years of sharing her
husband’s archaeological training. This
combination brought her the job of
maintaining the camp, food supply,
financial records, medical treatment
and a host of other tasks at Hebron.
Dr. John H. Hayes, the director’s as-
sistant, had dug at the Theater in Petra
in 1962. As a newly graduated Th.D.
from Princeton Seminary, his academic
interest in the Old Testament was bol-
stered by the opportunity to unravel
its history. The expedition’s Recorder,
Constance B. Sayre, who had also dug
at Petra, had just completed one of
Columbia University’s top graduate
courses in Near Eastern archaeology

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

22

and had been part of the preliminary
survey of the site of Hebron in 1963.
Her archaeological career was fur-
thered by the responsibility of record-
ing and drawing the actual materials
uncovered by excavation. Dr. Harold
Stigers brought the unique qualifica-
tions of a graduate Biblical degree from
Dropsie College and the professional
training of a licensed architect. Miss
Joan Van Brunt of Princeton, served
as the expedition’s photographer, pro-
ducing (and processing) almost fifteen
hundred photographs in the sixty-two
day season. Two young undergradu-
ates, from Mt. Holyoke College and the
University of Southern California,
Miss Margaret Conkey and Miss Ruth
Hindman, served as pottery assistants.
Theirs was the task of processing the
thousands of potsherds excavated each
day. Some twenty-eight packing cases
of materials from the expedition attest
to their zeal — and the productivity of
the site.

Each participating institution was
represented, officially, by at least one
staff member. The University of South-
ern California’s Dr. Gerald Larue had
participated in previous excavations in
the Near East and brought four stu-
dent members to the expedition with
him. Dr. Robert Boyd, a graduate of
Princeton University’s Oriental Lan-
guages Department, represented Lu-
ther Theological Seminary. Dr. Robert
Coleman (SWBTS) a veteran Ameri-
can Indian archaeologist, contributed
his anthropological background, along
with his Biblical orientation. Virginia
Theological Seminary was represented
by two senior professors, Dr. Robert
Kevin and Dr. Murray Newman. Dr.
Kevin’s long-time religious journalistic
talents helped publicize the work of the

expedition, and Dr. Newman’s specific
interest in Israel’s early history found
itself quite at home. Princeton Semi-
nary was represented by Mr. Frank
Garcia, Instructor in Old Testament,
whose command of Arabic and (since
removed) handlebar mustaches charmed
the local inhabitants, as much as his
archaeological talents upheld Prince-
ton’s scholarly reputation.

Equally hardworking were the other
male participants, including students in
every field of endeavor from theology
to architecture. Serving with the Insti-
tutional Representations as site super-
visors, it was the task of these men
actually to bring about the removal of
the debris of history from the indi-
vidual sites. Stephen Orson, Merle
Smith, and Timothy Young came from
the University of California; James
Eyer, Ronald Blom, and Norman Lille-
gard were from Luther Seminary ;
Ervin Brown was from Virginia Theo-
logical, James Herrington from Prince-
ton Seminary, and Donald Mott, most
recently at Lake Forest.

Prior to the beginning of the exca-
vations, a great deal of doubt was ex-
pressed, far and wide, by academic
colleagues, American governmental of-
ficials, and others, as to whether any
excavation could be successfully carried
out at El-Khalil, the modern name for
the site of Biblical Hebron. The pres-
ence of the Mosque of Ibrahim, over
the traditional site of the Cave of
Machpelah, the burial place of the Pa-
triarchs, had brought Muslim ortho-
doxy to an unusually high pitch in the
community. Tales of violence, upris-
ings, fanaticism, and the like, had al-
ways circulated about Hebron. Even
native Jordanians found the city inhos-
pitable for trade or residence, unless

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

23

they were of local origin. In addition,
the hostilities of 1948 and following
had put Hebron at the end of the old
road which once led to Gaza and
Egypt — somewhat out of touch with
the westernizing progress of the rest
of Jordan. No large group of foreign-
ers had ever lived there — hence suspi-
cion, religious and political, was di-
rected against those who visited the
site.

This concern was put to flight by
almost two years of careful planning,
however. After formal negotiations had
been completed with the Department
of Antiquities of Jordan, through its
Director, Dr. Awni Dajani, and a per-
mit secured, “negotiations” began with
the local people. The director made a
preliminary survey of the area in 1963,
during which time, almost a week was
spent living in the city with a local
family. It was then that the people of
El-Khalil disproved all the stories
about them — over coffee in the market-
place or hot tea sipped beneath olive
trees in the fields, and by friendly con-
versation. With the assistance of local
governmental officials, local land-
owners, and the people of the city,
specific sites were chosen for excava-
tion. Following that, His Majesty,
King Hussein, graciously offered the
use of a local school building in Hebron
for the expedition’s accommodation.

As a result, when the full comple-
ment of the expedition arrived, the re-
action of the local people was grossly
different from that which had been
darkly predicted ! Local interruptions
did occur in the workday — but by visi-
tors coming to proffer invitations to
their homes. Altercations did occur —
as workmen vied with each other in
bringing melons and grapes from their

gardens for their new-found friends
overseeing the work. Two local dry-
goods merchants assumed the task of
procuring any and all of the dig’s neces-
sities— from ten-penny nails to recom-
mending a tailor. The local barber ar-
ranged rental of furniture; the District
Governor handled land contracts —
while one of his clerks arranged bus
transportation for side trips. The
mayor’s office gave a party — and the
Civil Engineer came to the rescue when
the dig’s cisterns ran dry ! This whole-
hearted reaction of people to people was
one of the most gratifying results of the
expedition’s stay on the site — and per-
haps one of the most valuable bits of
American “ambassadorial” action in
Jordan on the part of private citizens
thus far achieved.

But what were the results? “What
did you find?” is the usual question —
and one of the most difficult to answer
in a non-technical sense. Pottery, coins,
artifacts of daily use, weapons, walls,
floors, and all the other things of ar-
chaeological and anthropological im-
portance were brought to light. No one
artifact, no one architectural “find,” no
one period of history can be singled out
as the most significant discovery, simply
because all data secured must be seen
as a totality. The only scientific answer
which might be given to the query of
“What did you find?” is possibly the
simple one — “History.”

Here, for the first time, the history
of this major Biblical site could be
traced without hesitation — based on
the thousands of broken bits of pottery,
dozens of artifacts, endless drawings
and technical photographs, and histori-
cal connections drawn from their
analysis. For most people, “archaeol-
ogy” is the actual excavation, but for

24

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

the professional archaeologist, the
work really begins when the digging is
over, the staff has returned home, and
the “results” begin to be sent to labora-
tories, the pottery classified, the strata
phased into periods, the historical rela-
tions made definite and the reports
written. Conclusions are tentatively
drawn when this is all done — at a site
such as Hebron these will be checked
and rechecked as succeeding seasons of
excavation contribute further refine-
ment to chronology, classifications, and
historical relationships.

But a great deal can be said, in an-
swer to the question of “What have
you found?” — enough as a result of this
initial season to justify the view that
this site is one of the richest, and one
of the most promising ever to be under-
taken in the Holy Land.

The American Expedition began its
work in three main areas: on Jebel
Batraq (a corruption of “Patriarch”),
to the north east of the city; in Wadi
Tuff ah (“the Valley of Apples”), due
west of the city, along the main com-
munication line; and on Jebel er-
Rumeide, across the valley from the
Mosque of Ibrahim. These sites were
beyond the thousand metre perimeter
of that building agreed upon with the
Department of Antiquities to preclude
infringement on holy ground.

The first two areas did not produce
significant data, and were closed fairly
soon, in order to concentrate upon the
increasingly productive sites opened on
Jebel Rumeide. It was this area which
was designated “Area I,” and the site
designations described below are in
terms of that area.

“Trench I.i” was opened just below
the eastern summit of the hill, against
the remains of an old wall. Two months

and some 96 strata later, the site re-
vealed 19 phases of the area’s history,
seven of them structural. On bed-rock
rested what appeared to be the rem-
nants of a mud-brick wall from the first
part of the Early Bronze Age, about
3,100 b.c. Not far above these remains,
there appeared a stone-built wall, from
the Middle Bronze Age, eleven cen-
turies later. Some trace of the inter-
vening periods was found, but dis-
turbed by the later building operations.
After the wall fell into disuse, the area
was used for burial and two flexed
burials, with the shattered remains of
the pottery of their day beside them,
were recovered from graves marked
with a layer of stones. These burials
appear to have been from the latter part
of the Middle Bronze Age (MB II),
in the period of the Hyksos. The site
was abandoned to casual camping, as
fire marks upon later surface levels
show, until the second half of the Iron
Age. In that period sometime after
c. 900 b.c., the natural location of the
site became the choice of a householder,
who built his home with sturdy outer
walls, a thick plastered clay floor, and
a second story. By now, the Israelites
had learned enough about civilized
sedentary living to part company with
their sheep and goats, leaving them on
the ground floor while they, themselves,
moved upstairs ! The height of the
stubby floor pillar, a monolith, indicates
this shift of human residence. Floor
jars provided storage space for the an-
cient housewife — and one complete jar
about a yard high, provided a complete
specimen for the excavators. In the
debris relating to this house were found
typical Iron II sherds — especially the
ubiquitous curved-sided bowl, with ex-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

25

ternal burnishing, which marks the
period elsewhere.

But again the site was abandoned,
probably for some little time, until a
wall was built over and next to the
house walls, and some other purpose
was served. Once more came abandon-
ment, followed again by new walls and
new obsolescence, until, in the Byzan-
tine or Late Roman period a heavy
pavement was laid in the area. Old
olive trees in the near vicinity pre-
vented further exploration of the struc-
ture to which this pavement belonged,
but it, also, was eventually no longer
used, and the site passed into disuse
until “modern” terracing, for agricul-
tural purposes, began in the Islamic
period. Today gnarled olive trees send
down their roots into the age of David’s
sons — and their patriarchal ancestors.

Dr. Murray Newman and Dr. Rob-
ert Boyd supervised the excavation of
this particular site, which provided the
clearest Iron Age remains excavated
this season.

A few hundred yards to the SE of
this site Dr. Gerald Larue began exca-
vation next to a massive ancient wall
line, showing a great gap patched with
terracing fill along its face. But excava-
tion only continued a few inches below
the surface before another, far more
massive, frontal wall appeared. This
wall was over 15 feet thick — a defen-
sive addition to the more ancient verti-
cal wall still visible above the modern
surface. Both rested firmly upon bed-
rock, as it sloped down and away from
their outer surfaces. In this site
(“Trench I.3”), a veritable dump of
Middle Bronze II pottery, from the
Hyksos period, was found in situ. But
in the 101 strata which finally com-
prised the excavated area, 12 phases of

the sites’ history were recovered. From
deep pits in the bed-rock, over seven
metres from modern surface, came
sherds from the Early Bronze Age once
more — and a few earlier than those.
The history of this part of the site was
mainly that of the walls, however, with
periods of use and fall, rebuilding and
strengthening, giving mute testimony
to the troubled days of the incoming of
the Hyksos invaders of Syro-Palestine
and Egypt in the 18th century b.c.

Farther down the eastern slope of
the mountain, a wide, level, unculti-
vated field, overlooking the city and
the Mosque in the distance, became
“Trench 1.2.” Proton magnetometer
readings suggested sub-surface re-
mains, while pottery sherds strewn
about the surface gave some hint of
the period involved.

It was this site which provided the
American Expedition with one of the
most potent weapons against prejudice
that could have been hoped for — a mag-
nificent Islamic house from the Omma-
yid through Ayyubic periods. Any
questions as to “what” the American
group was “looking for” now became
academic, as the local people realized
that all periods of Hebron’s history
were treated with equal scientific care.

Local history thus became an item
of interest, and spectators gathered to
watch Dr. Robert Coleman uncover a
maze of house walls, a beautifully tiled
bath (which, it was hinted by col-
leagues, he, as a Baptist, had unearthed
on purpose), ancient plumbing, cook-
ing hearths, and a splendid cistern.
Over a hundred strata went into the
10 phases of the life of this site, most
of them related to the rather long
period of use of the house. Series of
floors, rearrangement of the interior,

26

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

modification of the cistern top, and
other features marked the changing
tastes of the inhabitants, and the pass-
ing of years. Out of this excavation
came a daily bounty of Islamic pottery
fragments, painted plaster, carved
stone decorations, coins, and articles
of common use.

The change of periods within the
span of the use of the house could be
marked by the pottery changes, and a
real contribution to the chronology of
Islamic pottery types appears to have
been made here. Beneath the floor of
one room appeared a burial, probably
of Byzantine origin. This was a sec-
ondary interment, with the bones of
the deceased neatly stacked in a wooden
coffin nailed together with huge iron
spikes. The coffin had disappeared
with the passage of centuries, but its
outlines, still bound by the iron nails,
was clearly discernible.

Still deeper beneath the floor levels
was evidence of the earlier occupation
of this wonderful location, with frag-
ments of pottery from many periods
jumbled together as the builders of the
house had sunk their wall lines to bed-
rock through the debris of bygone
times.

One particularly fine item recovered
from this site was a unique triple ves-
sel, carefully made and finished on the
outside with a rippled decoration. Only
two other such vessels have been found
in Jordan, both in Amman. Now He-
bron’s example rests with those to de-
clare that city’s Islamic heritage to
those who pass through the national
museum in the modern capital city.

Immediately below “Trench I.i,”
another, smaller site was opened to at-
tempt to trace wall lines further down
the slope. James Herrington supervised

the digging there and disclosed n
phases in the 48 strata excavated. In
an area of about 60 square metres,
Herrington uncovered ten separate
walls, until he was almost boxed in by
their overlapping and interconnection.
The main period involved in this site
was parallel to the earliest phase of the
Islamic house in 1. 2, with later addi-
tions paralleling later developments
seen there. But beneath this major
building phase, below earlier walls, on
bed-rock itself, came the sherds of a
large vessel from the end of the Chalco-
lithic period (Late Proto-Urban “C” —
c. 3,200 B.C.).

It cannot be said that Trench 1. 4 did
more than hint at such early habitation,
however. Rather, another equally com-
plex area, one of three opened in a
search for tombs, provided in situ evi-
dence of Hebron’s early history. Frank
Garcia spent most of the season un-
scrambling the intricacies of “Tomb
Test No. 1,” just across the main track
up Jebel er-Rumeide from Robert Cole-
man’s “Trench 1.2.” A deep sounding
pit was first sunk from the surface of
a modern olive grove until the top of a
stone-built structure was hit. Then the
slope was cut into from the side where
modern excavators had dug previously
in search of a tomb. Well beyond the
limits of their work the actual complex
was reached — and was not a tomb at
all!

On a wide ledge of bed-rock ap-
peared a wall, the remnants of a vault-
ing arch, and a domed structure. As
the wall area was being excavated,
stratum by stratum, it was discovered
that the bed-rock ledge dropped sud-
denly, letting into two extremely deep
tunnel entrances. As work progressed
in depth, the area of the excavation

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

27

had to be increased in order to preclude
shift and slide of the earth and rock-
fill above. But as the tunnel entrances
were cleared, more rock fall was en-
countered. As this was broken up by
hammers, each blow brought a shower
of soil from the trench walls fifteen or
so feet above. Finally the decision was
reached to close the lower area as a
safety measure, filling it with loose
rubble which could be removed easily
in the future for further excavation.

Meanwhile, the wall complex above
was being cleared, and beneath the
dome at its west end appeared the
mouth of a cave, deep in bed-rock. Fall
and silt clogged its mouth, but clearing
continued until staff and workers could
slide down into the cave, itself.

Clearing of the interior debris soon
revealed two platform-like ledges. On
one, just as it was left over 5,000 years
ago, was a complete bowl from the
same Late Chalcolithic period as the
broken jar in “Trench I.4.” Fire marks
on the walls gave further evidence that
a residential cave had been found, stem-
ming from the dawn of Hebron’s his-
tory. Centuries after the cave had
ceased to be tenanted, Romans and By-
zantines reused the area, building the
walls and vault, presumably over the
mouth of the two subterranean tunnels.
The purpose of this later complex is
uncertain, but may be related, finally,
to other similar underground tunnels
on the site — and perhaps even to the
water system leading from Ain Jedide
at the foot of the mountain.

Equally thrilling to archaeologists’
hearts was “Tomb Test No. 3,” slightly
higher on the mound and toward the
south. Proton magnetometer survey
disclosed the presence of something be-
neath the surface — but the beats of its

accelerated signal could not define what
it was that interrupted the earth’s mag-
netic force field. Still further, the owner
of the field recalled stories of caves his
grandfather had once seen. As a result,
excavation began with great enthusi-
asm, until bed-rock appeared virtually
beneath the first shovelfull ! The five
metre sector of bed-rock which resulted
looked discouraging, although the rock-
surface did slope slightly at the far
perimeter of the square. A “dog-leg”
was opened at an angle to the main line
and a single course wall emerged, but
it, too, rested solidly on bed-rock.
Again, however, science and local lore
urged a continuation of the investiga-
tion, so another “dog-leg” trench was
opened. Some depth was encountered
here — but it, too, soon disclosed bed-
rock.

The entire area was about to be
closed when, near the end of a work-
day, a pocket of earth emerged in the
bed-rock, and, when removed, broken
rock was encountered. Still other pock-
ets of soil emerged, in and around
“bed-rock.” Now the soil and broken-
stone mixture deepened, as actual bed-
rock dropped sharply into a vertical
face and the higher material became
obvious as earthquake debris. The
trench was widened against the side of
the rock face to allow workmen room
to trace its line — and the mouth of a
cave emerged. Another day’s work en-
larged the opening, badly clogged with
large chunks of fallen stone.

When the cave was entered strati-
graphic excavation continued, linking
the known levels outside with those
within. Three floor levels were encoun-
tered, with fire marks indicating
hearths — and complete pieces of pot-
tery on the floors, indicating hasty

28

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

flight — the rumbling of the earthquake
which destroyed the “home” of the last
residents. Other vessels were found
smashed beneath huge pieces which had
fallen from the cave’s ledge — supplying
the expedition with more evidence.

The pottery forms and decorations
were “classic,” and a date for the last
use of the cave could be set during the
Early Bronze I period, c. 3,100-2,900
e.c. The forms, in particular, suggest
the earliest part of the period in ques-
tion, close to the end of the Late Chal-
colithic period found elsewhere. Con-
tinuation of certain decorations, poor
quality of ware, crudeness of paint,
shapes, and other criteria seem to place
this phase of Hebron’s history in close
connection with the period before —
indicating little, if any, change in the
local culture inhabiting the area. Thus
another era of the site’s chronology
was distinctly established in a closely
stratified context.

As in almost every season of archae-
ological excavation, however, there was
“the one that got away.” About eight
months before the expedition arrived,
an industrious householder on Jebel
er-Rumeide began digging in the base-
ment of his new house — and discovered
a tomb. Clandestine digging continued,
and a rumored 5,000 pieces of pottery,
scarabs, metal objects, and other arti-
facts passed into the hands of antiqui-
ties dealers. The loss of such a prize
to scientific knowledge about the site
was enormous, yet by excavating the
dump and discard heap of the illicit
diggers, a large number of pottery

specimens were recovered, and the re-
mains of approximately 23 burials. Al-
though completely unstratified, and
thus of little scientific value, the recov-
ered pottery, discarded by the original
excavators because of breaks or dam-
age, did contribute some knowledge of
another period of the site’s history,
namely, the Late Bronze Age. Still
further, the presence of one tomb, espe-
cially one obviously reused over a long
period, suggests the probability of a
necropolis nearby. A magnetometer
grid was laid in the householder’s vege-
table garden, and its results promise
more tombs for future (controlled)
excavation.

Thus in one season, evidence of He-
bron’s ancient history led the expedi-
tion down through the centuries from
the days of the Latin Kingdom, in the
1 2th century a.d. back to the Chalco-
lithic period, a span of some forty-four
hundred years. If the American Expe-
dition to Hebron can be adequately
financed in the days ahead, the possi-
bility of far greater discoveries may be
realized. Potentially, court records of
the early Davidic period, business
documents from the Hittite period,
Canaanite literary remains, new data
of every sort on Palestine’s earliest
history, and many other comparable
glimpses of the past, are all awaiting
excavation. The initial season met not
only the challenge of excavation, itself,
but also made clear the fantastic archae-
ological richness of the site for pre-
Biblical, Biblical, and post-Biblical
history.

THE TRUE PROPHET

James I. McCord

**'T-vake him all in all,” a contempo-
JL rary might have said of John
the Baptist, “I never saw his fellow;
nor can I see any indication of him on
the stocks.” John was no reed shaken
with the wind, Jesus told the multitude.
He was “a prophet . . . and more than
a prophet !”

John is the shadowy figure with
whom the New Testament opens. For
a time he appears out of context, like
a mailed knight in the jet age. He
seems an Old Testament figure. He is
the mouthpiece of Jehovah, at one with
Elijah and Amos, demanding repent-
ance and justice. Then his unique role
begins to emerge. Like a colossus, he
bestrides the two Testaments, linking
the Old and the New. He is the ap-
pointed messenger, the forerunner who
cries, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.” Now it can
be seen that John does not exist for
himself. He bears witness to another,
to the Holy One of Israel. When he
saw Jesus coming toward him, John
greeted him with these words : “Be-
hold, the Lamb of God, who takes away
the sin of the world !”

Today as you begin your formal
theological training, let us turn our
attention to the nature of the ministry,
and examine through the example of
John the characteristics of the true
prophet. It is through the ministry of
men that the word of God has been
proclaimed in every age. Armed only
with this weapon, men have confronted
kings and challenged tyrants, while the
same Word has brought comfort to the

weak and courage to the dying. The
prophet himself has been nothing. The
Word which he speaks is everything.
He is not a propagandist, whose me-
dium is empty words. He is a prophet,
whose word always points to God’s re-
deeming love in Jesus Christ.

I

It should be clear, then, in the begin-
ning, that a prophet is not a gazer into
a crystal ball or a soothsayer. He is,
first of all, one who has been confronted
by the living presence of God and who
has committed himself to his purpose.
John, like every prophet, was inter-
ested in more than religion in general.
He was aware of the long history of
God’s interest in man. He knew that
God had dealt graciously with his peo-
ple, Israel, beginning with their de-
liverance from the bondage of Egypt.
Moreover, he knew that God’s interest
in man had not diminished, that God
would act decisively again in his own
time, and that he stood on the thresh-
old of a new era.

This tells us something about the
nature of the God of the Bible. He is
not known apart from the world. He
does not demand that we withdraw
from all relations and deny all responsi-
bilities in order to seek him in isolation.
The religions of the East have explored
this. Nor again is the God of the Bible
known to us simply by looking within,
as if he could be identified with the
reflection of our own ego. Instead, he
comes to meet us in the most common
situations of life and makes his presence

3»

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

known to us in those things which are
most human. In Jesus Christ he became
man, as we are men, sharing the temp-
tations and anxieties that we experi-
ence. God stands with us in the midst
of time and accepts us as his own. He
addresses us, “Son of Man, I have
called thee by thy name ; thou art
mine.”

But God’s coming into the life of a
man is not the end but the beginning.
It is not for us to respond neutrally, to
remain aloof and uncommitted, to adopt
the role of a spectator of history’s cen-
tral drama. John understood this. He
knew that the God of history requires
that men choose for or against his pur-
pose. This is why the Danish genius
of the last century, Kierkegaard, in-
sisted that the individual is truth and
the crowd is un-truth. In the moment
of decision man stands alone before
God. He is the individual, named by
God and the object of God’s interest
and concern.

The decision to be God’s man is the
starting point of a man’s ministry. It
furnishes the dominant motif to his life.
It gives him his sense of direction and
defines the meaning of his witness. In
the United Church of South India, an
island in the midst of a Hindu culture,
this is understood by every Christian.
Whenever a convert comes for baptism,
at one point in the ceremony he places
his hand solemnly on his own head and
repeats these words : “Woe is me if I
preach not the Gospel.” This is his
witness to the Lordship which Jesus
Christ now exercises over his life.

II

Consider, for another thing, that
John was a true prophet because he
made his faith relevant to every di-

mension of life. He understood that
faith is not an “aside” or an “above,”
something to be professed in private
but neglected in the world of human
affairs. To those who streamed out of
Jerusalem to the banks of the Jordan
his meaning was clear. When they
asked him, “What then shall we do?”
he answered : “He who has two coats,
let him share with him who has none ;
and he who has food, let him do like-
wise.” To the tax collectors he said
that justice is required, and to the sol-
diers he counselled, “Rob no one by
violence or by false accusation, and be
content with your wages.”

John differed from his contempo-
raries in the extension that he gave to
faith. He took it out of Jerusalem into
the Jordan, out of the temple into the
midst of the people. Is it not because we
fail to do this, because we shut God up
within some narrow area that we call
“holy” that the church has so little in-
fluence today? Why are sensitive spir-
its saying that the West has entered a
post-Christian era? They claim that
the age begun with Constantine in the
fourth century when Christianity was
made the official religion of the empire
has now ended. From one standpoint
this case is difficult to make. Business
is good in the church ; statistics have
never been better. But in the face of
all this, has the church’s witness on the
crucial issues facing us as a nation ever
accounted for less? Who would claim
that the arsenal of democracy in time
of war has become the arsenal of spirit-
uality in time of peace? Where is the
moral robustness, the luminous faith,
that should characterize the leader of
the free world ?

If these qualities are absent, what is
the reason? Is it because Christianity

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

3i

is so irrational that sophisticated mod-
ern man can no longer believe ? I doubt
it. After all, it was the Western nation
most advanced technically that in our
generation followed Hitler and invented
the big lie. I agree with Professor Nie-
buhr that the problem is not Christian-
ity’s irrationality so much as it is its
seeming irrelevance to the common
issues of life. We have tried to make
out of the Christian faith something
other than was intended, and have pro-
duced a deep chasm between religion
and life. We have given up the Bible’s
prophetic concern for the life of men
and nations. This is why in Western
Europe since the close of World War
II an heroic attempt has been made to
break down this barrier and to rein-
state the centrality of faith. In France
pastors and priests have gone from
their churches six days a week to work
in harvest fields alongside harvest
workers, or to labor in industry along-
side industrial workers, or to dig in
the bowels of the earth alongside coal
miners, hoping to take the church to
the people on weekdays in order to
bring them back into the church on the
Lord’s day.

This accounts, too, for the work of
George MacLeod and the Iona Com-
munity in Scotland. Why has this ex-
periment captured the imagination of
so many? Iona was born in Glasgow
in a slum parish during the heart of
the depression. MacLeod found that his
church was empty and that congrega-
tions were to be found queued up in
bread lines, unwanted men for a re-
luctant government to feed. Once, he
said, as he stood on a curbstone ad-
dressing such a group on the text,
“Seek ye first the Kingdom of God,
and his righteousness, and all these

things shall be added unto you,” a man
interrupted and insisted that the
preacher was not speaking to their
needs. MacLeod met the man later on,
now a patient on a cot in a charity
ward, dying slowly from malnutrition.
This man insisted that he was not anti-
clerical. His outburst had been occa-
sioned by the grim conclusion that the
church was no longer ministering to
human need.

Out of this came Iona, an experi-
ment in making Christianity relevant
to every area of life. In the early his-
tory of the church Iona, a tiny island
in the Hebrides, had been used by St.
Columba of Ireland as a springboard
for converting the Druids on the main-
land of Scotland to Christianity. Now
MacLeod determined to use it to re-
convert the mainland, to reintroduce
Christianity into Christendom. Each
summer he brings young men and
women from college campuses, profes-
sors from chairs, men from business
and professions, laborers from guilds
and unions, to live together, work to-
gether, and worship together. It is an
attempt to show that worship is work
and work is worship, that there is a
wholeness to the Christian faith.

A true prophet will understand this.
He will be interested in nothing less
than a whole Gospel for the whole man
in his total life situation. And no other
Gospel has any chance of playing a
significant role in the lives of men to-
day. In our own land we must stem the
tide of disillusion that has produced a
failure of nerve and paralysis of will
at the very moment when we face our
greatest tasks both at home and abroad.
The Church has belatedly entered the
struggle for civil rights, to be sure,
but this is not enough. We dare not be

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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

content until human rights are vouch-
safed in all lands and men everywhere
have the opportunity to grow up into
the full potential that God has given
them.

Ill

Consider, finally, a third character-
istic of the true prophet. John is willing
to dare, to pioneer, to do things differ-
ently for the kingdom’s sake. Of course,
he was unconventional. He appeared
suddenly, his dress was different, his
diet was different, and human approba-
tion meant little to him. He was not
intimidated by clergy or political lead-
ers. He had a higher loyalty. But John
was more than unconventional. He saw
in Jesus Christ something new, some-
thing that would break out of the old
mold and ultimately cover the earth.

It was this quality of “new-ness”
that gripped the early Church. A part
of my summer’s reading was Hans
Lietzmann’s volumes on “The Begin-
nings of the Christian Church,” and I
was impressed afresh by the way the
Church was convinced that something
absolutely novel had occurred in Jesus
Christ, something that shattered all old
forms and unleashed in the world a
new power that would transform all
life.

The late Dean Sperry of Harvard
Divinity School once said that “all
progress is made on the opposite side
of conformity.” His judgment is sound
wherever it is tested. Who is the leader
in business? Is he the one who does
business as his grandfather did? Is he
the man whose firm is in a rut? No, he
is the person who is ever seeking new
markets, new techniques, and new
products, who honestly tries to meet

new needs as they arise. The same is
true in the life of the Church. Where
there is daring and venturesomeness
for the Gospel’s sake something is hap-
pening, people are excited, and failure
of nerve and paralysis of will are dis-
pelled.

The true prophet knows that Jesus
Christ is the Lord of history. Because
he believes in God he believes in man
and is willing to give himself in the
service of God and man. This faith will
lift him above the petty and the trite,
above himself and his own little con-
cerns. Brooks Atkinson has written of
a shabby season in the theater. But the
rest of us, he contended, have reflected
the same temper. “If any other groups
of people were dealing effectively with
the basic problems of the world, the
dramatists might be charged with dis-
honoring their franchise,” Mr. Atkin-
son wrote. “But they are not unique.
They are citizens of a world that can-
not cope with its troubles, and, accord-
ingly, become increasingly morbid, in-
grown, and trivial. The little Freudian
maladies that preoccupy the play-
wrights represent a common state of
mind. When a civilization lacks the
vigor to deal with big problems, it
becomes fascinated with the small.”

But must this be? Are we compelled
to become ingrown and morbid, cynical
and disillusioned, in the face of the
world’s tragedy and the world’s need?
The thing that impresses me most
about a John or a Paul is that they did
not allow themselves the luxury of
feeling sorry for themselves. They had
another center of reference, God’s pur-
pose embodied in Jesus Christ. He
claimed their allegiance, gave direction
to their lives, and enabled them to be

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

33

pioneers in the work of the Kingdom.
He redeemed them from the tyranny
of the trivial.

You have come to Princeton to en-
gage in theological inquiry in prepara-
tion for a life of Christian service.
What we covet most from you is that
you, like John, will be willing to take

seriously the frontiers of the world’s
need and to relate yourselves to God’s
purpose to redeem the world in the
midst of time. For, make no mistake
of it, there is One who has come, who
is the Lord of life and of death, and
who wills to involve us in his ministry
of reconciliation.

THANKSGIVING

Robert R. Spears

Text: And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the Lord thy God hath
given unto thee and unto thine house. Deuteronomy 26:11

The bread of God is he which came down from heaven and giveth life
unto the world. John 6:33

IN speaking to you on this Thanks-
giving Day in the year of our Lord
1964, I propose to raise with you the
following questions, to which I freely
admit having no definitive answers,
but to which I am sure God the Holy
Spirit does.

Does our annual Thanksgiving Day
national celebration have any reality or
any necessary relationship to God who
was and is and is to be from everlast-
ing to everlasting?

Have we so relegated God to the
background of our existence that we
have in us no longer either the love or
the fear of the Lord?

Whose task is it to bear witness to
this condition if it exists?

For what then shall such witnesses
give thanks, and how shall they sustain
their thanksgiving?

In the light of these questions, re-
flect for a moment on the traditional
scriptural passage read as the Old
Testament lesson this morning, at my
request, Deuteronomy 26:1-11.

When I stop to think about the im-
plications of the whole passage I am
intrigued by two things :

First, that its setting, like that of
Thanksgiving Day itself, is an agrarian
economy where the majority of the
people eat and are nourished by pro-
duce of the earth which they either

have grown themselves or have seen
growing in the fields adjacent to their
home or village.

The vision rises in the mind of the
farmer who now returns thanks for the
grain stored in his barn, for this loaf
of bread on his table, made from flour
he ground from grain he grew ; of the
housewife preparing the banquet meal
by visiting her root cellar or opening
jars of carefully preserved fruits and
vegetables over whose growth she pre-
sided ; of the hunter-father who now
carves meat from the carcass of the
animal he raised or pursued and then
killed and dressed for cooking and
serving.

The Deuteronomy passage does pre-
sume all this as the preamble to a
Thankful offering; and Thanksgiving
Day still has this colorful background
for us.

The trouble with it today in America
is that most of us haven’t been near a
working farm in years, don’t know
wheat from barley, couldn’t grow either
of them very successfully in large
quantities, and wouldn’t have the nerve
to wring a turkey’s neck and clean the
beast if one were presented to us. /

Therefore, in a land which is ^iow
eight per cent agrarian — with ^'very
highly organized scientific food .grow-
ing process at that — and 92 per cent

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

35

urban, most of us are several steps
away from the ability to produce the
food on which we live. The old style
concept of Thanksgiving Day as praise
of God by the planters and reapers of
harvest is just plain nostalgia or irrele-
vant nonsense.

If there is a farmer or two present
this morning, he is more realistically
likely to be giving thanks not for the
particular foodstuff on his own table
today, but for the fact that the potato
market did not sag too badly, or that
the federal and state control over the
dairy produce industry left him a few
dollars after the real estate taxes and
trucking and processing and middle-
man costs were paid.

For us urban dwellers to bow our
heads and thank God for turkey and
dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy,
cranberry jelly and pumpkin pie is
about as close to reality as would be the
sight today of a Pilgrim father chasing
a wild turkey through the campus with
a flint and steel blunderbuss !

The second thing that interests me
is whether in fact God is really being
praised by a nation which will sit down
to food-laden tables as it enjoys a
holiday from work and waits in front
of the television for the Thanksgiving
Day football classic to begin, or
whether in fact the god who is being
praised is American pride in the ability
to maintain and enlarge the gross na-
tional product. To the extent that this
latter attitude prevails — and I suspect
this is a majority attitude — then
Thanksgiving Day is not so much an
act of humble gratitude for the order
oLa created universe whose Lord cares
fc£'i is inhabitants, as it is an exercise
in self-preening satisfaction with ac-
companying proud back-patting.

Furthermore, because most of us are
indeed removed from the agrarian life,
it becomes increasingly difficult for us
to thank God with much understanding
for that which we have not personally
witnessed or experienced, and, by
parallel reasoning, it becomes increas-
ingly easier to substitute a thankful
satisfaction in material well-being for
a grateful dependence upon the Lord
who sustains all life. The further we
move from the Pilgrim’s grim struggle
for existence, and the Old Testament
farmer carrying the first fruits of his
land in a basket as a thank offering,
the harder we must work to make a
national day of thanksgiving mean
very much.

Now this is not intended to be a
cynical criticism of a national festival
which has a great deal to recommend
it. Neither is it the ironic commentary
of an annoyed parson who sees a mas-
sively materialistic apostasy operating
at many levels in our supposedly Chris-
tian nation. Rather, it is an attempt to
be somewhat realistic about a national
custom which originates from motives
which are good, and is intended to be
an act of worship of Almighty God.
For if we as a nation were pressed for
an explanation of Thanksgiving Day as
an observance, we would justify it as
a day when we return thanks for God’s
benevolence and dedicate ourselves to
his service.

The point of raising the question as
to what Thanksgiving Day really rep-
resents in practice is to help us see
whether, in fact, our stated intentions
make sense and therefore whether God
is thanked or whether he is mocked.
We all need to remember that God is
not fooled!

There really is a question about the

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36

religious significance of Thanksgiving
Day — and an increasingly sharp con-
flict between national purpose and the
service of the Lord. We are much bet-
ter off to be as honest as human beings
can about our national motives with
respect to God, if not because we love
him and would serve him fully, then at
least because we are aware that ulti-
mately we are truly dependent upon
him.

We are not the first nation or group
to make the mistake of equating our
purpose with God’s purpose for us and
for his world, instead of laboring and
praying to know his purpose and
moulding our intentions accordingly.

There is the long, hauntingly moving
section of the Lamentations of Jere-
miah which records the sensitive aware-
ness of a nation which looked up from
the ashes of its destruction to ask just
when it was that God became an
enemy.

“How lonely sits the city that was
full of people! How like a widow
has she become, she that was great
among the nations ! She that was a
princess among the cities has be-
come a vassal.” Lamentations 1 :i
(RSV)

“The Lord has become like an ene-
my, he has destroyed Israel ; he has
destroyed all its palaces, laid in
ruins its strongholds; and he has
multiplied in the daughter of Judah
mourning and lamentation.” Lam-
entations 2:5 (RSV)

“The Lord has done what he pur-
posed, has carried out his threat;
as he ordained long ago, he has
demolished without pity.” Lamen-
tations 2:17a (RSV)

It is not just possible, but inevitable
that the Lord become as an enemy to
those who so misunderstand him as to
make him a ceremonial figurehead, the
one to whom we turn and bow for-
mally as the banquet begins as though
he were the last surviving member of a
decadent royalty whose presence is no
longer needed when we settle down to
get the work done.

There is about so many of the refer-
ences to God in our national life just
exactly that flavor of the toastmaster
turning at the speaker’s rostrum to-
wards the location of a familiarly en-
throned figure and saying, “We will
now have a few words from our friend,
God.”

God is indeed our friend, but not in
that way or in that context. So often
these days it would seem that we turn
to God, when it seems to suit our po-
litical or national purpose, and ask him
to stretch out benevolent hands over
his successful children, give them a
blessing, and then retire from the scene
while we go on our way content to
know that he approves of what we do.

But can he approve of our conduct
when, as the Thanksgiving Day procla-
mation acknowledges, “our storehouses
bulge with the bounty of the land,” a
bounty which we will store and hoard
so that our plenty is increased while
around the world there are people
whose stomachs bulge not from excess
but from the distention of starvation?

There are more than enough signs
to indicate a prevailing national tend-
ency to turn to God only when he will
be useful to us and almost never as a
people who would be used by him^.

The broad answer to the first ques-
tions I posed as to the relevancy of a
national Thanksgiving Day and the

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37

relegation of God to a place as benev-
olent grandfather is that we have
indeed exhibited a strong running tide
of activity away from granting God any
worth — any worth-ship — on Thanks-
giving Day or at other times.

At this point it might be said that
these conclusions are being addressed
to the wrong people, and that those
who do assemble in a place of worship
are not to be scolded for the sins of
their absent fellow citizens.

Obviously, however, if I agreed with
that conclusion, I would not be here —
or would not speak as I have.

Rather, I prefer to assume that we
who are here do indeed understand that
God has food for men of value far
beyond the material wealth of which
this nation is so dangerously proud,
and that in his self-giving love he calls
us to more than occasional lip service
and to rewards of joy and peace which
are to be found in areas quite apart
from our size or strength as a nation,
and to a life in which meaning is dis-
covered not in mastery but in serving.

If I am correct in this assumption,
then we are exactly the people who
need to ponder the unhappy situation
of which we are a part in a nation whose
apostasy can only result in loss of
purpose and place in a world of God’s
own making and saving.

We need to relate as closely as we
possibly can our thankful response to
the purposes for which God’s grace is
given.

We need to understand that the true
“bread of God is he which came down
from heaven and giveth life unto the
world” and not waste our energies
either straining to get or to give value
to the bread which truly does not
nourish.

We need to work out a purpose for
our life which is a true reflection of the
purpose of life as seen in Jesus Christ,
“who came not to be ministered unto
but to minister.”

We need, in short to be such wit-
nesses to God that this point is not
overlooked forever and unto destruc-
tion by a great nation which is creating
God in its own image, and thus run-
ning counter to the one thing it most
needs, the true purpose and being of
the God who is.

This is the task which falls to those
who are trying to be thankful to God in
terms which he has already shown in
the thankful, offered life of Jesus
Christ.

If we do understand this and refuse
the task of being the light set on the
hill, or the little leaven that leaveneth
the whole lump or the salt of the earth,
then we have indeed lost the savor
given us by God and will stumble and
fall in thick darkness, and no bread will
be brought to perfection.

But if we do understand that real
thanksgiving is to be involved in the
loving and serving of God by loving
and serving those for whom he gave his
only begotten Son, and if his love wins
ours in return, then we shall be nour-
ished by the bread that gives life unto
the world.

It may be that you will conclude
from what has been said that America’s
Thanksgiving Day ought to be a day of
fasting rather than feasting. If fasting
would serve to inject a note of realism
into the observance and help us all see
a greater purpose in God than many of
those to which our energies are de-
voted, then let it be so, since real
thanksgiving might then rise from the
ashes of our pride.

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But at least let those of us who
would give God thanks in fuller aware-
ness of the real gifts he offers us — the
grace to serve, the strength to share,
the power to love one another — let us
incorporate into our Thanksgiving Day

observance that note of reality which in
turn will make us into persons whom
God can use as he will.

And this in turn will be our joy and
strength and food, for which we praise
and thank God daily.

The image of the Church as the Body of Christ fulfills the meaning of a human body at
its best, and fits into the scheme of apostolic thought, when all that the Body is, together with
all its attributes, healthful unity, appealing beauty, perfect functioning, proven strength, are
subject to the Head and responsive to his command. It is not allegorization to contend that
both the natural image of the body and the Biblical use of that image to symbolize the Church
as the Body of Christ, rule out the legitimacy of exalting that image into a position where it
would become a pure object of admiration or a recognized center of power. The Body of
Christ exists for action in some form, for action consonant with its nature for action inspired
by the Head.

What form does that action take? How significant and thrilling it is that Paul the Apostle,
after he has descanted on the Body of Christ and described its members and the gifts they
should “earnestly desire,” exclaims, “And I will show you a still more excellent way” (I
Corinthians 12:31), or, as his words might be rendered, “a still higher path” (Moffatt).
That path is the way of love. After he has enshrined that “way” in one of the Bible’s most
loved and challenging prose poems (I Corinthians 13), he says to the Body, its officers and its
members : “Make love your aim.”

John A. Mackay in Ecumenics (Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964), p. 90.

INTEGRITY IN PASTORAL CARE*

Seward Hiltner

In this discussion I shall consider the
integrity of pastoral care, and the
threats to that integrity, in two prin-
cipal dimensions: first, its skill and
technical competence ; and second, its
orientation to the Church and its
theological basis. I shall then consider
newly emerging issues that may prove
to make for or against integrity in
pastoral care, depending upon how they
are dealt with.

I. Levels of Integrity

Some preliminary remarks, however,
are needed about the notion of integrity
as applied to pastoral care. Of course
“integrity” means simply oneness, and
thus implies that parts work together,
in some kind of harmony, in a whole.
But especially in a field like pastoral
care, we are immediately reminded that
integrity is only as commendable as it
is complex. Let me illustrate.

Kurt Lewin told of a very small
child who was asked to draw a picture
of a man running. The child drew a
circle, and then all around the circle
drew right angles. When viewed by a
sympathetic adult, this drawing con-
tains both unity and movement. The
fact that the running man has no dis-
tinguishable head, arms, or chest does
not negate the unity of the drawing,
and even contributes to the impression
of movement. The analytical adult will
say, of course, that the unified im-

* This article was originally presented at
the Sesquicentennial Conference of Princeton
Seminary’s Department of Practical Theol-
ogy in June, 1963.

pression given by the drawing is false
since parts necessary to a human being
are not depicted. He is thus contending
that a unity is proper only if it includes
the component or necessary parts.

Some years later the child who made
the original, impressionistic drawing
may be asked again to make a picture
of a man running. He has now become
sophisticated. He knows that people
have heads and arms as well as bodies
and feet. But by the time he draws these
parts, the chances are strong that he
will be powerless to solve the problem
of having the man run. His picture
will be fairer to the component parts,
separately considered, than the origi-
nal. But he will not be able to solve
the problem of motion. Give him an-
other two years, and a good art teacher,
and he may have both unity and move-
ment, including head and arms. But
from an impressionistic point of view,
he may never excel his original draw-
ing.

In every kind of development from
the biological on and upwards, it would
seem that unity or integrity must be
viewed in similar fashion. There is a
kind of primal unity which, however,
achieves its integrity by unconscious
neglect of component parts. Then comes
differentiation, attentiveness to neces-
sary parts ; and, temporarily, either
unity or movement, or both, are lost.
But then they are regained at a more
complex level. The resulting unity is
more faithful to more facts, and the
resulting movement is a bit more faith-
ful to the human pace. Thus the com-

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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

mendability of integrity is proportional
to its dealing with actual complexities.

For the criteria we may use in exam-
ining integrity in pastoral care, I draw
three conclusions from this parable.
First, the significance of integrity is
proportional to its uniting of relevant
factors. Thus levels of integrity may be
distinguished. It is insufficient to inte-
grate the obvious if the more significant
but less obtrusive factors are ignored.
It is not enough to integrate motives
while ignoring ineptitude in perform-
ance ; and it will not do to integrate
skills but be unaware of what one
represents as he exercises them.

But second, we may respect an in-
tegrity at any level so long as it is
prepared to let itself be broken up by
new perceptions of differentiation in
order that a more complex unity may
be achieved. No one comes to the com-
plex unity straightaway. He finds a
unity at one level ; then, in chagrin, he
becomes aware of what his first unity
had overlooked, and for a time is “all
thumbs.” He integrates at a more com-
plex level, and so on. He must be for-
ever relinquishing former integrities ;
but in doing so he need not be ashamed
of them. There is nothing wrong with
any level of integrity unless it becomes
fixated. But fixation is not the fault of
the unity itself.

Third, it is impossible to appraise
the significance of any integrity without
reference to its movement. Even if
unified at a complex level, it is suspect
if it is static. In contrast, even if its
integrity is at a relatively primitive
level, that is not reprehensible if the
movement is through more complex
differentiations toward a new level of
unity.

II. The Integrity of Competence

The first American textbook-like
work on the theory of ministry, includ-
ing pastoral care, was not published
until almost 1850. Such works, with
some American novelties of a minor
character, tended to follow the outlines
of their German predecessors, and
reached their peak in the 1880’s. The
last one of this type was issued just
after the turn of the century. The main
thrust of all these works was that a
theory of ministry could somehow help
actual ministering. Most of them were
dull, for they contained no cases and
often no illustrations. Their authors
knew quite well that novelties and
variations would be encountered in
actual experience that no amount of
classroom teaching could predict.
Hence they confined themselves to gen-
eral principles, not realizing that cases,
rightly analyzed, could lead to prin-
ciples. Today the main body of these
works seem unutterably dull, for they
did not know how to link theory and
practice. But their underlying convic-
tion— their primitive unity, so to speak
— should not be forgotten. They be-
lieved that theory was important. They
disdained practice without theory. Here
they were right.

Before the turn of the century an-
other tendency had assumed a com-
manding position, what I have called
the “hints and helps” school of pastoral
care. Such works did contain many
lists of do’s and don’ts ; but at their
best, their contribution was in convey-
ing, as Richard Baxter had done in the
seventeenth century, something of the
dedication of their authors. Commonly,
they included stories of an anecdotal
type. They were not cases in our mod-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

4i

ern sense, since they did not provide
sufficient data for a reader to make an
independent interpretation. Very quick-
ly they became “inspirational.” They
testified that the wearing out of shoe
leather was indispensable in order to
preach, thus suggesting indirectly that
pastoral calling was a chore not a privi-
lege. The stories told were invariable
successes, not because the authors were
dishonest but because it became the con-
vention to tell only what would inspire
more pastoral work. The dreadful thing
about this period in pastoral care was
that it simply threw all theory of all
kinds out the window. But the primi-
tive unity within it was the beginning
of a feeling for concrete situations. It
had no idea that there was theoretical
gold in the anecdotal hills. Thus this
period very nearly swung the pendu-
lum on the previous one. Neither period
was concerned to relate pastoral care
in theory and practice. But each had its
own kind of integrity.

The new movement in pastoral care,
that began in the 1920’s, would not have
been possible without several factors in
its background. Time permits me here
only to name some of the most prom-
inent and not to discuss them. There
was the so-called social gospel move-
ment discovering and lifting up such
things as the breakdown in family life.
There was the pioneering work of
church sociologists, working in both
city and country, who lifted up the re-
lationship between types of need, and
church structures, that had not previ-
ously been clear. There was the re-
ligious education movement, with its
deep conviction about making religion
relevant and a beginning knowledge of
developmental stages. And there was
so-called liberal theology which, in the

hands of so competent an interpreter,
for instance, as Harry Emerson Fos-
dick, took the people of the Bible off
Mount Olympus (where they had been
in a kind of Hellenic captivity), and
reminded us that they were real people
with problems and resources not so
different from ours.

The most important precipitating
cause, however, of the new approach to
pastoral care was clinical pastoral
training. In 1923 William S. Keller, a
Cincinnati physician, invited a group
of Episcopal theological students to
spend the summer with him. By day he
sent them two by two to social case
work agencies, hospitals, prisons, and
other centers of special human need.
In the evenings they returned and
chinned over their day with Dr. Keller.
Two years later Anton T. Boisen, a
Congregational minister who had re-
covered from a severe mental illness,
invited theological students to spend
the summer with him at Worcester
State Hospital in Massachusetts, where
he had become chaplain. Once I asked
the hospital superintendent who had
been bold enough to take on this ex-
patient as chaplain, William A. Bryan,
on what ground he had done so. His
characteristic reply was, “If I thought
a horse doctor could help my patients,
I’d invite him into the hospital.”

Keller’s theory of this education was
pragmatic — enable green and sheltered
theological students to come into con-
tact with some of life’s severe suffer-
ings, and work as aides to those pro-
fessional persons who try to relieve
such suffering, and their ministry will
be humanized. This was also the theory
of Richard C. Cabot, who aided Boisen
in the start of his movement despite
disagreeing with his theory. Boisen

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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

really had a theory. He agreed it was
a good idea for students to encounter
concretely persons in special need. But
he argued that these very persons could
not only touch compassion but also the
understanding. In mental illness, he
argued, there is laid bare, for the alert
eye to see, the very same forces that
motivate all of us, only more so. Boisen
argued further (and has subsequently
been substantiated) that mental illness
is not to be understood as just negative
in a simplistic sense. Some forms of
such illness, he contended, are akin to
the eruptive and transforming types of
religious experience such as St. Paul,
George Fox, John Bunyan, and many
others went through. Students were,
therefore, to study not just human suf-
fering but also certain forms of religious
experience.

How, according to Boisen, could
chaplains and students help mentally
ill persons ? His answer grew out of his
conviction that the root evil of mental
illness was isolation and estrangement.
Whatever could be done, especially as
representative of God and the con-
cerned religious community, would help
to relieve that isolation, and hence work
in the direction of improvement. For
that reason the understanding that edu-
cated the students was also felt to be
the best therapeutic agent for the
patients.

I was caught up early in this move-
ment and, give or take a point here
and there, I still hold and am prepared
to defend Boisen’s main thesis. He was
not, he said, introducing anything new
into the theological curriculum or the
pastoral armamentarium, if by new one
meant some previously absent content.
What was new, he said, was the meth-
od, which he described as learning from

“living human documents.” I have often
since those early days pondered the
paradox that it was concern for men-
tally ill persons which set us to re-
thinking all our ministry of pastoral
care; and that the new pathways to
service were corollaries of a concern to
understand the depths of religious ex-
perience. It was of immense importance
that Boisen’s Calvinistic heritage was
so pro-intellectual. Service vitalized
learning, and learning vitalized service.
For the first time concrete instances of
pastoral care became interesting in their
own right, both as relief of human suf-
fering and as revealing the complexities
of the human soul. What we study, said
Boisen, is “the problem of sin and
salvation.”

Boisen’s focus was the person in
trouble ; his principal method, the case
history. What factors and forces pro-
duced his present plight, and what
subterranean forces are currently at
work in the direction of healing as well
as of pathology?

Russell Dicks and others who fol-
lowed became interested in another di-
mension, the actual relationship be-
tween pastor and parishioner. This in-
terest gave rise to so-called “verbatim
reports,” recollected accounts of what
actually took place in any pastoral en-
counter, subjected subsequently to
critical analysis. From here it was only
a step to analysis of the work and atti-
tudes of the pastor himself. Did he
represent himself to the other person
as he intended to do, or did he intend
one thing and convey another? The
case history was not lost, but it was
added to by a kind of professional
cross-sectional inspection of the pastor
in his encounter with the parishioner.

In the 1930’s teaching of this kind

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

43

began to enter the theological schools.
World War II, with its great demands
for a ministry of pastoral care both
inside and outside the armed forces, saw
a great, if improvised, extension of such
learning. After World War II there
was a great increase in such teaching
within the schools, much of it related
to clinical training. Perhaps no field
has been so much sought after by pas-
tors as a form of continuing education.
Two journals devoted to this interest
have been published for nearly fifteen
years, Pastoral Psychology and The
Journal of Pastoral Care.

Has all this still-growing activity in-
creased competence in pastoral care?
The answer is undoubtedly yes to some
degree, but still on not much more than
a token basis from a quantitative point
of view. Certainly less than ten per
cent of ministers in active service have
had anything which, by any stretch of
the imagination, can be called super-
vised clinical pastoral training. True,
the situation is a bit more favorable for
men currently in seminary. At Prince-
ton all of our current graduating class
have had at least a small taste of criti-
cized verbatim interviews, but only
about 35 per cent have had anything
in this area beyond the bare minimum,
and only about ten per cent have had a
basic course of supervised clinical train-
ing. Our situation is rather better than
most seminaries.

During the past two years we have
had another program at Princeton
which, if it can be extended through
proper leadership and financing, prom-
ises to do as much for training in pas-
toral care as the clinical movement has
done. James G. Emerson, Jr., of
Bloomfield, New Jersey, had three
students in his church this year. Having

had extensive clinical training himself,
and with a doctor’s degree in this area,
Emerson designed a sixteen-hour a
week field education experience for
these men along the basic learning prin-
ciples evolved in clinical training. He
has the skills, and took the time, to give
adequate supervision to the work and
study of these men, not just in general
but in relation to concrete instances of
their work and contacts. To say that
the students are enthusiastic about this
is to put it far too mildly. To be sure,
this field education was not confined to
pastoral care. It also included preaching
and other forms of communication,
evangelism, social outreach into the
community, the conduct of worship,
group leadership, and church adminis-
tration. But pastoral care was promi-
nent in the student experience, and the
necessary knowledge and skills were
directly considered and analyzed. Such
programs offer great promise for the
future. But they require highly compe-
tent leadership, and they cost money.

By this time nearly every minister
has heard of the finding made in con-
nection with the study of the Commis-
sion on Mental Health and Illness, that
of the random sample of persons que-
ried who said they had had personal
problems and consulted some one about
them, 42 per cent said they went first
to their clergyman. But when we re-
flect that more than 90 per cent of these
clergymen have not had clinical train-
ing, that probably about 50 per cent of
them have never had courses aimed at
improving their competence, and that a
very high proportion have never read
any modern literature in this field, then
it is to be wondered whether “pastoral
instincts” have not sometimes done
more harm than good with this great

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number of Americans who consult their
pastors first.

If you were a candidate for surgery,
even of the tonsils, you would surely
hesitate if your surgeon had never pre-
viously done any cutting under super-
vision. If you found he had never had
a class in which the ways of snipping
were discussed concretely, your hesita-
tions would increase. And if you dis-
covered he had never read a book on
incisions, and indeed thought such data
were modern and unnecessary, it is my
strong conviction that the tonsils would
remain in statu quo. And it would be
cool comfort to find that five to ten
per cent of surgeons had done cutting
under supervision, and nearly half had
considered procedures in medical class-
rooms.

Seen in terms of extending to all
ministers what is now known about
competence in pastoral care, therefore,
it is quite clear that the incidences of
integrity by competence are the excep-
tion rather than the rule.

But if we recall that competence, in
this modern sense, is a creature of the
last generation, then the achievement
to date is not inconsiderable. Statisti-
cally speaking, the integrity of compe-
tence in pastoral care is still a primitive
unity. But it is slowly being extended.
As with the child’s picture of the man
running, we have nothing to be ashamed
of provided we are not holding fixedly
to the status quo.

III. Theological Integrity

The great excitement in the early
modern study of pastoral care lay in the
growing conviction that people could
be helped because, somehow, their prob-
lems could be understood. Sometimes
the enthusiasm for understanding and

helping was so great that few questions
were asked about the theological con-
text or the Christian resources of the
helping and understanding.

In those days, a generation ago, a
brief case history that had been told by
psychiatrist Bernard Hart about 1915
provided a kind of paradigm for many
who were concerned with the new
movement in pastoral care. A young
man in his twenties, reported Hart,
came for help to someone (I cannot
recall whether he went to a doctor or a
minister) because he had lost his be-
lief in God and life seemed listless to
him. He had been a church school
teacher and active in the church. Upon
listening to him, and drawing him out,
it was soon discovered that his girl had
recently thrown him over. Q.E.D., his
problem was not atheism but adjust-
ment to being jilted. The implication of
the story was that dealing with the
young man on a theological basis would
have been forever fruitless.

There was never a time, in this move-
ment, when there was not a serious
search for theological dimensions. But
it must be admitted that the demon-
strable helpfulness of understanding
and acceptance did not immediately
lend itself to interpretation in theologi-
cal terms. If you do not believe this,
search the theological literature of that
period, whether liberal or conservative ;
and you find much talk of what to say
to people, but almost nothing about
seriously listening to them. Most of the
ministers and theological students who
became involved in the new pastoral
care movement had been exposed to a
theology which, whatever its content,
did not say much about listening, ac-
cepting, and engaging in dialogue as
being themselves theological in charac-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

45

ter. We tend to forget that most of this
emphasis, or rediscovery, in Biblical
theology, systematic theology, and
ethics has emerged since the early
1930’s. It was not initially available to
aid the pastoral experimenters to inte-
grate their findings with theology in
the general sense.

Even when the emerging trends in
theology became more clearly rela-
tional, as in Brunner, they were not
immediately appropriated by the pas-
toral frontiersmen. The principal reason
for this, I believe, is that ministers who
were most influenced, at first, by such
theologians as Brunner, noted that no
specific instances were included. The
important thing seemed, then, to be the
abstract statement, not checking up on
it through study of concrete instances.
They, therefore, looked upon the pas-
toral students as mere appliers of some-
thing the principles of which were not
understood. The pastoral men, in con-
trast, regarded such theologizing as
removed and remote, and at first failed
to see the intimate connection.

Nor was the situation helped in
America by the rise to prominence in
Europe of persons like Eduard Thur-
neysen. His essentially Barthian theol-
ogy could have been, give or take a
point here and there, of real help to a
theological domestication of pastoral
care in America if he had not assumed
that cases of any kind were irrelevant
to the basic principles. In this country
we knew that, without cases, we could
not understand the principles. Hence
this cavalier and one-way conception of
method impeded the assimilation of the
otherwise interesting theological in-
sights. Fortunately this situation is
changing. There are growing move-
ments in Europe and the British Isles,

even including some clinical training,
that are profiting from our American
experience but which are more sophis-
ticated theologically than we were in
the i93o’s.

Meanwhile, we have had some in-
digenous leadership in re-examining
the theological context and basis of
pastoral care. Recent works by Daniel
Day Williams, Wayne E. Oates, my-
self, and others all attempt seriously to
grapple with this subject, supplement-
ing earlier attempts by Lewis J. Sher-
rill, David E. Roberts, Albert C. Out-
ler, and William E. Hulme. But we
are not yet out of the woods. Some
teaching of pastoral care still proceeds
as if it were social case work, for in-
stance, with theological questions posed
only at the end in terms of special re-
ligious resources — and as if the moti-
vation to do it, the church context in
which it is done, and the evaluation of
the persons to be served were not in
themselves crucial in theologizing.

There is, furthermore, a sign that
some regrettable reaction against pas-
toral care in its theological context is
taking place. This may be seen, for
instance, in a recent work on guilt by
David Belgum, a Lutheran minister.
In a sophisticated way, Belgum, who
should know better, implies that in-
sights like those of Freud into mis-
placed guilt feelings tend to mislead us
and are therefore hardly necessary
equipment for the minister in pastoral
care. Although several aspects of Bel-
gum’s thesis deserve serious considera-
tion, his attempt to get theological
integrity by over-simplifying modern
psychological findings, and thus seem-
ing to render them misleading and un-
necessary, is a plain step backward.

I believe firmly that the work of

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Biblical, systematic, historical, and
moral theologians in the past thirty
years has led us closer to a proper un-
derstanding of the Christian revelation.
But the systematics people would lose
part of their motivation if they thought
they were only applying what the bibli-
cal people found out, and so on. By
similar reasoning, I think that pastoral
care can understand its proper theolog-
ical context only if its practitioners are
convinced that their reflection may con-
tribute to theological understanding as
well as profit from it. I have of course
argued this case at book length. I can
hardly report that I have been knighted
as a result of it. But at least some
people seem to be taking it seriously.

Does this man or this school possess
a wholly adequate and fully articulated
theological context for every aspect of
pastoral care ? The answer to that ques-
tion is, universally, no. But if my earlier
parable is recalled, it can be seen that a
different question needs to be asked. Is
pastoral care searching open-mindedly
for all relevant orders of data that need
to be included in a new unity, or is it
sitting behind some kind of barricade
whether that is seen in theological or
psychological terms? Is pastoral care,
despite its real indebtedness to the
medical and psychological arts and
sciences, nevertheless seeking a theol-
ogy-based unity that makes its activity
part of the work of the church itself?
The answer to both questions is, I
think, very slightly on the positive side,
but only very slightly.

IV. Some Emerging Issues

There are several issues now appear-
ing which may make for or against a
new level of integrity in pastoral care,
depending on how we shall deal with

them. I shall not profess to being ex-
haustive in mentioning these, but shall
try to deal with those that are most
important.

For one thing, questions about pas-
toral ethics, including pastoral confi-
dentiality, are arising in a new way. So
long as the problem of confidentiality
was conceived only as in the Roman
Catholic confessional, holding secret
information received through some con-
fessional procedure, the relevant ethical
principle was theoretically simple, how-
ever difficult it might be always to
practice. But just as medicine made
progress by de-identifying its cases and
then submitting them for wider inspec-
tion, so we have found a comparable
procedure in pastoral care useful to
help these particular people and indis-
pensable in improving our principles
so as better to help the next person.
But the integrity of these procedures is
still, at best, in an experimental state.
Generally speaking, we believe that no
information given confidentially by a
person may be revealed to anyone else
without the consent of the person. But
suppose the person is mentally de-
ficient, or is a child, or has paranoid
trends? The point is that, even though
some basic principles of confidentiality
may be clear, they can not have integ-
rity unless we continue to try to ap-
praise them in the light of the enor-
mously complex cases that arise. One
sure way to defeat the proper objective
is to become legalistic ; but another way
to do it is by such immersion in par-
ticulars that general questions are never
asked.

There are other aspects of profes-
sional ethics than confidentiality. What
a hospital chaplain could do would be
severely limited if he could not consult

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

47

doctors, nurses, social workers, and
others; and whether they know it or
not, their function is impeded if they
cannot consult the chaplain. But on
what basis is such interprofessional dis-
cussion carried out? Granted that the
need for consultation may be more ob-
vious in the hospital than in the com-
munity generally, the difference is of
degree rather than of kind. What are
the ground rules for such cooperation?

Closely related to this first issue is
the second, which arises from the grow-
ing number of “expert laymen,” that
is, of Christians who, in the course of
their professional work, help people
about many kinds of matters that are
close to the personality center. It is
often deplored that many psychiatrists
and psychologists, for instance, are not
church members. But how do we con-
sider, from a pastoral point of view,
those who are? Suppose that, tomor-
row, all such persons joined the church-
es? Would we in the churches simply
put them in the pigeonhole of “lay-
man,” wholly ignoring the pastoral
dimensions of their work, that which
makes them “expert laymen”? We
talk a lot about the ministry of the laity,
but can we recognize it when we see
it? Or do we privately believe that no
form of pastoral care is being rendered
unless there is a salary check from the
church ?

A third issue appears in the fairly
rapid emergence of some ministers as
special experts in pastoral care and
pastoral counseling. So long as such a
person joins the staff of a church, or
a church agency, and his specialization
is simply in terms of function, no new
theoretical problems are raised. But if
he starts something called a “center,”
a “clinic,” or some other designation

taken from a non-church context ; if he
gets a privately selected board for his
operation ; and if he regards his opera-
tion as “pastoral” simply because he is
ordained — then he runs risks of not
genuinely operating in the representa-
tive sense that is necessary for pastoral
care. Such a movement is on the in-
crease. In appraising and, hopefully,
guiding it, we should be extremely
careful to distinguish between func-
tional specialization, which is desirable,
and evading representation of the
church, which is not. Skill in helping
people is desirable, but in itself it is
not sufficient to maintain integrity in
pastoral care ; for pastoral care emerges
from a concerned community which is
explicit that its motive for such con-
cern is the Lordship of Christ.

At least in principle, work in home
missions, in chaplaincy, and in welfare
agencies has demonstrated that true
pastoral care by the church cannot be
confined to the local parish even though
that may be its principal habitat. But
the rapidly changing fabric of commu-
nity organization demands a good deal
more than we have achieved. We are
now finding it possible to give pastoral
care to persons who are temporarily
under care that is primarily medical, in
hospitals and similar institutions. But
the foci of medical and psychiatric care
are going to alter in the years ahead.
Can we devise proper ways to continue
cooperation, so that we meet persons at
the points of special need? We were
very slow with hospitals. Can we be
less Johnny-Come-Latelies in the situ-
ation that is emerging?

I am sure that more than one of you
has been thinking that my remarks
have thus far been biased in favor of

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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

one-to-one relationships, and that I
have not been explicit about pastoral
care through groups. Certainly pastoral
care through groups is just as poten-
tially important. But the fact is that we
are years behind in our study of it,
especially in terms of a theory of groups
that is indigenous to the churches.
There is not yet a single thorough and
sound book on group work in the
churches, which links theory and prac-
tice in integrated fashion. Pastoral care
requires such a dimension. Yet I would
caution that, just because a group may
have ten people and a counseling rela-
tionship but two, does not mean that
groups can do more. What observation
we now have suggests that some func-
tions can be performed in one way, and
others in another, and that statistics

favor neither the one kind nor the
other in general.

Let me, in conclusion, return to my
original parable, of the small child who
drew the picture of the man running —
with a fine primitive unity, and wholly
missing details. Every form of the theo-
logical enterprise should, I think, for-
ever be about the business of breaking
up its primitive unity — no matter how
nice an impression it makes — in order,
first, to include relevant factors it has
previously been unaware of, and sec-
ond, to bring these into an integrity
that is more complex. As some kind of
branch of theology, and function of the
church, pastoral care should follow this
procedure. Integrity is not something
that is possessed once for all. It exists
only as it is forever being born anew.

REMINISCENCES

(Gwilym O. Griffith, Member of the Class of 1909)

At the age of eighty-two a man is
likely to find that time has played
odd tricks with his memory. The
Princeton section of my own mental
album remains, however, fairly clear.
More than half-blind so far as physical
sight is concerned, I can still finger
these leaves of memory and enjoy the
mental snapshots of close onto sixty
years ago.

As a Britisher — a Welshman —
wholly ignorant of the ways of Ameri-
can college life, my first impression of
the Seminary was startling. I had ex-
pected to see, against the background
of “grey and reverend walls,” a group
or two of meek and studious young
men, most of them be-spectacled and
attired in becoming “blacks.” But when,
with my bags and hat-box (for of
course I had brought my silk hat), I
hired a horse-carriage at the station
and drove up to Alexander Hall, I
could see no students on the campus,
but only two or three roughly dressed
men whom I took to be college porters.
I called one of them, handed him my
bags, and told him to take them to
Room 5. At the door I offered him a
tip, but he fled, laughing. He was a
student — in fact, a Senior !

How well I deserved to be ragged !
But I was not. I was regarded with
amused but friendly curiosity and
“shown around.” Seminary students,
I found, dressed as they pleased, like
business men on holiday, and if their
sartorial styles were various, so were
their accents and manners of speech.
This, too, was surprising, for in the

old country we spoke of “the American
accent” as if it were one distinctive
phenomenon common to all Americans.

In those days the social life of the
Seminary revolved around its elective
clubs — the Benham, Friars, and Can-
terbury. It was not, perhaps, an ideal
system, for the hapless student who
was not voted into any club missed
much of the rich fellowship which the
Seminary had to give. Like most of
the old country students of that time —
Billy Megaw, Billy Cargin, W. E.
Montgomery, Alfie Fee, John C. Greer,
and S. J. M. Compton — I gravitated to
the Canterbury. But the tone of our
club, like that of the others, was of
course predominantly and bracingly
American — frank, extroversive, and
what Bunyan would have called “fel-
lowly.”

My first interview with a member of
the Faculty was with Dr. William
Brenton Green. How well I recall his
rather tall spare figure, his guileless
blue eyes, his mild countenance elon-
gated by a drooping beard, his gentle
manner! In those days the Seminary
allowed generous grants to students
from overseas, and Dr. Green passed
me the usual application form for my
signature. I noticed that I was required
to subscribe a declaration that the grant
was necessary to me. Rather priggishly,
I objected that, in my own case, the
word “necessary” conveyed an over-
statement. I like to record Dr. Green’s
reply. “Mr. Griffith, the word ‘neces-
sary’ has more than one connotation.
If you sign this form, we shall not

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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

understand you to have stated that if
you are not allowed the grant you will
die.” And this, I recall, was not the
only occasion for the Doctor to counter
a protest of mine by alluding to my
(hypothetical) demise. In my final
year I was brought down by scarlet
fever and spent some weeks in the iso-
lation ward of the hospital. During this
period my mother, who had come to
Princeton, was not allowed to see me.
I thought that, in her case, the general
rule might have been relaxed. When,
later, I mentioned this to Dr. Green,
he replied, “But, Mr. Griffith, if you
had died, she would have been allowed
to see you.” But I recognize that only
those who knew “Brenty” (as his stu-
dents affectionately called him), and
can recall his bland and rather subtle
innocence, can savor the humor of
such anecdotes !

“Brenty” held the chair in Apolo-
getics. His lectures, apart from their
content, were memorable for their ana-
lytical divisions, sub-divisions, and sub-
sub-divisions. It used to be said that
his ordinary gesture was a slight incli-
nation of the right forefinger at the top
joint. On the rare occasions of more
violent emphasis, the finger would be
bent at the second joint. But his lec-
tures were models of logical coherence
and lucidity, and I can still hear that
familiar high pitched voice ending a
dialectical passage with the satisfying
conclusion, “All arguments to the con-
trary serve only to strengthen our
position.”

A very different lecturer was Dr.
Dick Wilson, who held the chair in
Hebrew. Certainly no chair could hold
him. As he warmed to his subject (say,
linguistic clues to the date of the Book
of Daniel) he would spring from his

chair, pace up and down, and then,
leaving the platform, drive home his
points by pounding the desks of one
and another of the students who caught
his eye. “Dr. Dick’s” linguistic and
textual erudition was fabulous, and to
watch and hear him pulverizing the
Higher Critics was a memorable ex-
perience. But he had nothing of the
aloofness which sometimes character-
izes the scholar and pedagogue. He
was (in the British sense of the word)
homely and accessible and liked to dine
with us at our clubs and regale us with
his stories and shrewd counsel.

Undoubtedly our chief “Rabbi” was
Dr. Benjamin Warfield, and how well
he looked the part ! With his noble
head, his impressive profile, his patri-
archal beard, he exhaled authority.
Perhaps he was more impressive when
sitting, for his stature was not com-
manding; but, gowned and seated at
his lecture-desk, he inspired something
akin to awe. His utterance was marked
by a slight — very slight — lisp, which
was by no means an impediment ; oddly
enough, it lent character and distinc-
tion to his speech. Obviously, his sub-
ject was Systematic Theology: no
other subject could have suited him so
well. His mind moved within an ambit
of fixed ideas formulated and systema-
tized in massive congruity. Introverts
like myself, whose mental habit was to
grope for ideas and certitudes in a maze
of unformulated “experience,” sat wist-
fully and admiringly at his feet.

I recall now his way of meeting the
contention that the inspiration of Holy
Scripture and the revelation of divine
truth which it contained were condi-
tioned and limited by the inspired but
human and fallible writers — that in fact
the revelation was colored, and some-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

5i

times distorted, by its human media.
Warfield replied with the analogy of a
pictorial stained-glass window through
which the light, as it passed, was col-
ored by the pieces of brittle glass of
varying tint and shape which embodied
the artist’s design. And wasn’t this pre-
cisely what the artist had intended?
And wasn’t every bit of tinted glass
specifically chosen and prepared to ful-
fil that design and make up the many-
colored picture? When, therefore, God
designed his window of revelation
through which the eternal light of
truth was to pass, were we to suppose
that he overlooked the coloring media
of the fallible human minds that went
to the fashioning of that window? Did
he not foreknow and choose each tint
and type to subserve his own infallible
purpose and make his window perfect
and complete ? — This was fairly typical
of the way Dr. Warfield reacted to
theological liberalism in those days.

But I cannot go on like this. Time
would fail me to speak of Professors
Vos, Davies, C. W. Hodge, Armstrong,
Erdman, “Gimel” Macmillan, Boyd,
and Machen (not all of them full-
blown professors in my time). But a
word about President Patton himself.
Tall, lean, clean-shaven, reserved, he
“dwelt apart,” and I doubt if any of us
exchanged a word with him socially.
He devoted an hour a week to lectur-
ing to us on Theism, but his lectures
were for the most part inaudible solilo-
quies. And yet, somehow, he radiated
a personal influence that was pervasive.
Once in my time he addressed an in-
formal gathering of our class. He was
still soliloquial, but audible ; he pleased
and teased us with pawkily humorous
asides, and won our hearts by describ-
ing himself as “a hardened old sinner.”

One bit of advice that he gave us I
recall. We should not, he said, over-
load our sermons with lengthy quota-
tions from the poets. A line or two was
enough. Among the Swiss Alps the
merest bell-tinkle, floating down to the
valleys, was signal enough that the
herd-leader had been grazing in high
pastures.

And now the turning of one more
page in this album brings me to the
cherished picture of Professor Henry
van Dyke. For, like other Seminary
students, I took courses in Philosophy
and Literature at the University, and
Dr. van Dyke was our lecturer on the
English Poets. The course was popular,
the lecture hall was crowded, and the
lectures were superb. The Doctor was
a slight, diminutive figure; but, with
his erect bearing, his expression of la-
tent severity, and his close-cropped
moustache and “imperial,” he had an
almost military air. But when he was
delineating his poet or expounding his
message, voice and mood and manner
were perfectly adapted to his theme,
and his interpretative readings from the
lyrics of Keats, Shelley, and Tennyson
were memorable. I remember a word
of counsel which he once gave me. “Be-
ware of becoming too adjectival in your
style. Adjectives can give color to what
you say, but it is your verbs that give
it strength.”

And so, in 1909, we left the Semi-
nary to face a world soon to be shaken
to its foundation; and today, in 1964,
as I write these lines, we are still being
alerted by tremors that could portend
new earthquaking upheavals. And what
of the Faith in which we were in-
structed in those relatively carefree
Seminary days? It is well for us that
it is a faith which, from the very be-

52

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

ginnings of its earthly history, has
been conditioned to shock, upheaval,
and change — a faith enured to crisis.
Some of us, it may be, have had to re-
examine some of the peripheral forms
and interpretations which we were
taught : but even that has been a salu-
tary experience and has thrown us
back upon central verities and inner

certitudes. And if once more we could
meet for a confessional session, what a
time we should have ! But, as Harold
Gaunt says in his Class letter which I
have just received, if we had our choice
to make all over again, we should
choose the Gospel ministry — and wish,
I would add, to be trained at Prince-
ton Theological Seminary.

BOOK REVIEWS

Theology

The Systematic Theology of Paul
Tillich: A Review and Analysis, by
Alexander J. McKelway. John Knox
Press, Richmond, Virginia, 1964. Pp.
280. $5.50.

This volume is a revision of Dr. McKel-
way’s doctoral dissertation prepared under
the direction of Karl Barth. Dr. Barth him-
self has supplied an introductory essay, hail-
ing this study as “a useful, and perhaps in its
way indispensable, means of orientation for
all future debate with Tillich,” while Dr.
Tillich has called it “a very fair and clear .
presentation of my work and an excellent
introduction to my theology.” With these
verdicts this reviewer agrees. The author has
performed his task well, subjecting Tillich’s
system to a careful and penetrating analysis,
attempting always to be fair to Tillich’s in-
tention, and leaving no doubt about areas of
disagreement or the nature of the questions
that remain to be answered.

Dr. McKelway’s introductory chapter is
designed to orient the reader to Tillich’s life
and thought. It traces his wide influence in
America to the catholicity and depth of Til-
lich’s interest and erudition, and to the vac-
uum which he filled in the American theo-
logical scene which had never experienced
the full force of nineteenth century liberal-
ism. It goes on to analyze Tillich’s relation
to the inceptor of that tradition, Schleier-
macher, to point out resemblances between
Tillich’s system and that of Biedermann, to
compare and contrast Tillich’s thought with
that of Bultmann’s, and to show how as early
as 1923 it was evident that the positions of
Tillich and Barth were antithetical. The
author notes the vast influence on Tillich of
Schelling and Tillich’s place in the great
tradition of German philosophical idealism.

While Tillich has produced a host of books
and articles during his long and productive
career, the author wisely limits his analysis
to the Systematic Theology, now complete
in three volumes. His method is to give a
detailed exposition of each section, followed

by a summary and analysis. His attitude
toward Tillich is always respectful, and he
is properly awed by the logic, clarity, beauty,
and sheer magnitude of his system of thought.

The first section deals with the nature of
theology and the method of correlation. Here
theology is seen as having an anthropological
starting point, as being apologetic in charac-
ter, and as performing an “answering” func-
tion, and here Dr. McKelway raises one of
his basic questions. “Where finally must
Christian theology find its interpretation of
man?” he inquires. His answer, developed in
detail as the book progresses, is not in philo-
sophical analysis of the human situation but
in the Gospel message of God’s self-mani-
festation in Jesus Christ.

The same question is raised in the second
section, reason and revelation, where Tillich
is applauded for his “description of the con-
flicts of reason and their healing under the
impact of revelation,” but questioned con-
cerning reason’s ability to initiate the search
for revelation and revelation’s being forced
to conform to the human question. In the
third section, being and God, dealing with
the ontological situation, Tillich is accused
of being betrayed into a natural theology and
of deducing his knowledge of God from an
analysis of being rather than receiving it
through the revelation of God in Jesus
Christ. The next section contains an exposi-
tion of existence and the Christ. While the
author rejects Dr. ‘Ferre’s attack on Tillich’s
Christology, he does deplore “the lack of a
consistent focus on the revelation of God in
Jesus Christ” and finds a certain docetic
quality in his thesis “that the New Being
as an eternal principle of salvation somehow
exists apart from, even though ‘completely
expressed in,’ the Cross of Jesus.” The final
sections contain a critique of life and the
spirit, and history and the kingdom of God.

While this book is not a substitute for
reading Tillich’s own writings, it does pro-
vide a compact and clear introduction to and
summary of his system. It is to be highly
commended for accuracy and fairness.

James I. McCord

54

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Paul Tillich in Catholic Thought, ed.
by Thomas A. O’Meara, O.P., and
Celestin D. Weisser, O.P. The Priory
Press, Dubuque, Iowa, 1964. Pp. 323.
$5-95-

Today the possibilities for ecumenical the-
ology are virtually limitless. Eastern Ortho-
doxy, whose several constituencies add up
to almost one half of the membership of the
World Council of Churches, is increasingly
a partner in the dialogue among the churches,
while Roman Catholicism now displays an
interest in and openness to the thought of
other traditions that are unparalleled since
the Reformation. Each tradition is, to a large
extent, busy probing its own past, attempt-
ing to recover and re-realize in the present
emphases that have been obscured or neg-
lected or elements that reflected its thought
and life at their purest and best. Hence each
tradition is now exhibiting a new willingness
to listen to criticisms from outside and to
take seriously theologians from other camps
in an effort to see more clearly its own
image and to comprehend more adequately
the nature of the Gospel.

This volume of essays on various aspects
of the theology of Paul Tillich grows out of
the new climate among the churches. For
years now Roman Catholic theologians have
followed closely the progress of the ecu-
menical movement and have studied the writ-
ings of contemporary Protestant leaders. The
theology of Karl Barth, for example, has
been subjected to careful analysis by such
eminent scholars as H. U. von Balthasar and
Hans Kueng. Now Tillich’s thought is elicit-
ing the same attention. It is highly appropri-
ate that he should have been introduced to
Catholic America by the late Father Gustave
Weigel, a pioneer who did so much to break
down barriers of misunderstanding between
traditions.

After a short introductory essay in which
the course of Tillich’s career is traced, Dr.
Weigel attempts in the first chapter to assess
the theological significance of Tillich. He is
impressed by his originality and by his all-
embracing system, calling it “a great syn-
thesis of Protestantism, better than anything
this reporter knows,” but remains dubious
about the role of symbols in Tillich’s theol-
ogy and the way his phenomenology is

written theologically. To these charges Til-
lich himself has penned a reply, which is
printed at the end of the Weigel chapter.
George Tavard has furnished three essays
dealing with Tillich’s existential philosophy,
Christology as symbol, and Christ as the
answer to existential anguish. Other signifi-
cant chapters are written by Avery Dulles,
Erich Przywara, and the editor, Thomas
A. O’Meara. O’Meara concludes that “Til-
lich and Barth place themselves in the fore-
front of Protestantism’s ecumenical approach
to Catholicism by their respect for theology
as it has been understood by the Western
and Catholic tradition over the past cen-
turies.” Tillich reappears in the final chap-
ter, “An Afterword : Appreciation and

Reply,” in which he answers some of the
criticisms of the contributors.

The study of Barth and now the study of
Tillich by Roman Catholic theologians have
done much to dissipate the false notion that
Protestant theology is chaotic and individu-
alistic, the product of free-thinkers, and
devoid of any continuity with the past. Real
dialogue does take place and will continue
to take place when theology is taken seri-
ously by Protestants, Romans, and Ortho-
dox. Only in this way shall we move beyond
the level of protocol to mutual understand-
ing and mutual edification.

James I. McCord

The Christian Faith, by F. W. Dilli-
stone. J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadel-
phia, 1964. Pp. 188. $2.95.

This volume is the first in a projected
series under the editorship of Professor
William Neil of the University of Notting-
ham, that will bear the general title of
“Knowing Christianity” and that is intended
to provide for laymen scholarly but non-
technical works on various aspects of the
Christian religion. The first author has been
wisely chosen, for Dr. Dillistone brings to
his assignment a deep understanding of Bib-
lical faith and an acute awareness of the
contemporary situation.

In an effort to present the Christian faith
as a comprehensive whole and to avoid the
errors of dogmatism and vague ethical ex-
hortations, the author centers his interpreta-

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

55

tion in the Trinity, “God beyond us: God for
us : God within us,” which he finds a com-
mon element in the Church’s confession in
all ages. He then raises the issue of the rele-
vance of such a faith to modern man, who
is beset by the questions of security, freedom,
order, and meaning. He goes on to describe
in successive chapters how the four definitive
patterns of Biblical imagery, the family of
God, the redeemed society, the Heavenly city,
and disciples of the truth are related to the
needs and hopes with which man has had to
struggle in all times and places. The final
chapter, “I believe in God,” contains a dis-
cussion of the early Church’s creeds and a
summary statement of the Christian faith
in the classic triadic form.

The author’s style is fresh and provocative.
His language is straightforward and clear.
And his Christian devotion is evident in all
that he writes. The result is both informa-
tion and inspiration for the reader.

James I. McCord

The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, by
Hendrikus Berkhof. John Knox Press,
Richmond, Virginia, 1964. Pp. 128.
$3.00.

This volume consists of the Annie Kinkead
Warfield Lectures given in Princeton Theo-
logical Seminary in February, 1964, by the
Professor of Dogmatics and Biblical Theol-
ogy in the University of Leiden, Holland.
Dr. Berkhof, who is a member of the
Central Committee of the World Council of
Churches and a leader in the World Alliance
of Reformed and Presbyterian Churches,
chose to deal with the topic of the Holy
Spirit in the year that the Alliance had for
its theme, “Come, Creator Spirit.” His con-
cern, as the Alliance’s, is the renewal of the
Church, her re-creation by the Spirit, and
her recovery of a sense of mission within
the context of God’s mission to the world.

Like anyone who writes about the Holy
Spirit today, Professor Berkhof begins by
lamenting the neglect of the Third Article
of the Creed. He traces this neglect to two
causes, the way the Spirit works, hiding
himself by directing attention to Christ, and
the Church’s reaction against the chaos
caused by enthusiasts and pneumatics in all

ages. However, the author is convinced that
the time is now ripe for serious study of the
Spirit, not only because of the almost ex-
clusive concern for Christology in the past
generation but also because of the present
theological discussions with Roman Catholi-
cism. Older controversial issues between
Protestantism and Rome are no longer
central ; “the remaining problems, in my
opinion, all point to the nature of Christ’s
presence here and now, i.e., to the nature
of the work of the Holy Spirit.”

Throughout the six chapters of this study
the author is interested in reconciling the
traditional and the spiritualistic types of
pneumatology. He begins by defining the
Spirit as “God’s inspiring breath by which
he grants life in creation and re-creation,”
and goes on to discuss the double relation
between the Spirit and Christ, with Christ
as the One on whom the Spirit rests and
from whom the Spirit goes forth. “The
Spirit is the new way of existence and ac-
tion by Jesus Christ,” reaching out to the
whole of mankind and creation, to conform
us to Christ’s image. At this point is intro-
duced what is perhaps the most valuable and
certainly the most illuminating chapter in
the book, “The Spirit and Mission,” in which
the whole sweep of the divine drama of re-
demption is set forth in terms of the Spirit’s
execution of the missionary task.

Subsequent chapters deal with the Spirit
and the Church, the individual, the world
and the consummation, and with the relation
between God, Christ, and the Spirit, but this
material is in the main an unfolding of the
meaning of the Spirit’s mission in the world.

Much should be said in praise of Dr.
Berkhof’s treatise. It is compact, clear, and
well reasoned. It deals helpfully with such
questions as the nature of the Church, the
nature of the Christian life, the Pentecostal
movement, and the nature of prophecy. The
principal question to be raised is not in any
of these areas but in the relation of the Spirit
to the Son in Berkhof’s analysis. Has his
attempt to go beyond the patent tri-theism
of much Christian theology and to fashion a
fresh statement of this relationship out of
the insights gained from Biblical theology
betrayed him into a new modalism?

James I. McCord

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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

Biblical

The Second Isaiah: Introduction,
Translation and Commentary to Chap-
ters XL-LV, by Christopher R. North.
Oxford Press, London, 1964. Pp. xii
+ 290. $5.60.

According to Professor North, this “all-
purposes” Commentary was written to meet
“the needs of the specialist but most of it
should be intelligible to preachers and teach-
ers who know little or no Hebrew.” It may
be considered as a supplementary volume to
the author’s very useful work, The Suffering
Servant in Deutero-Isaiah (2nd ed., 1956).

The Introduction discusses the literary
structure of the prophecy, the theology of
Deutero-Isaiah, and the problem of Salvation
History. The translation is the author’s own
rendition of the Hebrew text in a fairly
literal style. Each section of the Commentary
proper begins with the discussion of textual
problems and the more difficult points of
grammar. In the exegetical notes, which fol-
low, the Hebrew words are transliterated.
The comments are exceedingly full and ju-
dicious. Cautious use of the Qumran Isaiah
Scrolls is made in the commentary. No
mention is made, for instance, of the unique
Qumran reading in 52:14, or the light that
the Qumran texts throw on the difficult verb
“sprinkle” in 52:15. Also the author does
not accept the interesting Qumran reading
of the difficult Hebrew term, translated “in
his deaths,” in 53 :g.

Although nothing new is presented in this
volume, it will be found both useful and help-
ful by those who desire to understand more
adequately this important portion of the Old
Testament.

Charles T. Fritsch

The Canaanites, by John Gray. Fred-
erick A. Praeger, New York, 1964. Pp.
244. $6.95.

A definitive work on the Canaanites has
long been a desideratum in the Old Testa-
ment field. The last substantial volume on
the subject, Canaan d’apres l’ exploration
recente, was written by Pere Louis Hugues
Vincent, O.P., in 1907. Since that time

archeological discoveries at Byblos, Megiddo
and especially Ras Shamra, with its wealth
of epigraphic material dealing with the eco-
nomic and religious life of the Canaanites in
the Late Bronze Age, have made a synthesis
of the evidence imperative.

Professor Gray, of Aberdeen University,
who has also written a detailed study of the
texts from Ras Shamra — The Legacy of
Canaan (2nd ed., 1964) — has now given us a
comprehensive treatment of the history, daily
and social life, religion, literature and art of
the Canaanites during the second and early
part of the first millennium B.C. Canaan was
the stepping-stone between Egypt, Meso-
potamia and Anatolia, as well as the bridge-
head of Europe in Asia. The interaction of
these diverse ethnic and cultural elements is
clearly reflected in the life, literature and
art of the Canaanites. Although they never
achieved a distinctive art of their own, they
imitated new forms and styles, suggested by
Egypt, Mesopotamia, Mycenae and other
cultures, with a high degree of technical
skill. Their interest in trade and commerce,
as the middlemen of the ancient Near East,
led to their greatest contribution to human
progress — the alphabet. The medium of the
ledgers of the Canaanite merchant-princes
became the script in which the annals of the
Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were written,
and which was carried by the Phoenician
traders overseas to Greece.

Professor Gray’s book is handsomely il-
lustrated with 61 photographs, each one of
which is carefully explained, 54 line draw-
ings and 3 maps. A selected bibliography is
appended in which one fails to find, mirabile
dicta, the classic article on the Canaanites by
Prof. W. F. Albright, published in Studies
in the History of Culture (Menasha, Wis-
consin, 1942, pp. 11-50). The author’s dis-
cussion of the etymology of the word “Ca-
naan,” limited to one sentence, is quite
inadequate. One would also wish that his
discussion of the various Canaanite alpha-
bets had been more detailed, and that more
bibliography had been cited in this area.

Despite these objections, this book is a
significant contribution to Old Testament
scholarship, and is indispensable for our
understanding of certain Old Testament texts
and the background of Israel’s religion.

Charles T. Fritsch

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

57

The Old Testament, by Robert Da-
vidson (Knowing Christianity Series).
J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia &
New York, 1964. Pp. 236. $2.95.

This is a well-written and well-balanced
book to introduce the layman to the history,
criticism, and theology of the Old Testa-
ment, mixing the various approaches in such
a way as to provide something thoroughly
interesting. Well related to modern scholar-
ship, and arguing little that is particularly
new, jt interweaves the contribution of
different forms of study in a way which
should attract those who have fears of the
Old Testament and give them positive rather
than negative lines for their thinking. Thor-
oughly to be recommended.

James Barr

The Pioneer of Our Faith, by S.
Vernon McCashland. McGraw-Hill
Book Co., New York, 1964. Pp. x -j-
210. $4.95.

Albert Schweitzer’s categorical condemna-
tion of the “Lives of Jesus” resulted in a
dearth of that literature in Germany, but
was little heeded by Anglo-Saxon theolo-
gians. Recently, however, the growing inter-
est in Bultmann has led to a re-appraisal of
the problem in this country. According to
the Marburg professor, a distinction has to
be made in the Gospels between the kerygma,
which is the saving message of God as
understood by the early Church, on the one
hand, and the historical Jesus, on the other.
The Jesus of history, we are told, was a
Jewish rabbi, whom his disciples revered,
but who neither claimed messianic dignity
nor was he originally regarded as the Christ.
While Bultmann’s disciples in Germany are
reluctant to follow their master the whole
way, they retain, nevertheless, his distinction.
They reject the kerygma, however, as a
secondary work of the Church.

American scholars, while admitting the
role which the early Church played in the
formation of the Christian tradition, have in
the whole held that the text of our Gospels
is historically reliable and that the historical
Jesus and the Christ of faith are identical.
Dr. McCashland sees in the Jesus of the

Gospels, the man who through the depth of
his religious insights and his outstanding
trust in God has enabled all succeeding gen-
erations to believe in God with the same
fervor. It is true to say that the way in which
the New Testament writers describe the
ministry of Jesus sounds alien to us. Rather
than following Bultmann in his denial of the
reality of the supranatural, we should rather
realize that it operates inside of us. The
author suggests that more credence be given
to the evidences of faith healing and that
parapsychology is apt to explain certain
strange aspects of Jesus’ mind.

One can heartily agree with the writer’s
insistence upon the fact that modern in-
tellectualism is unable to comprehend Jesus’
mode of thinking and his way to the knowl-
edge of God’s purpose and nature. But one
wonders, whether the author really penetrates
the depth of the conflict which the evangelists
have in mind, when they refer to Jesus’ fight
with Satan. Furthermore, while the parallels
between events in the Old Testament and
similar ones in the ministry of Jesus are very
instructive, the author does not succeed in
pointing out why the life of Jesus as de-
scribed in the Gospels should have a decid-
edly higher significance than the Old Testa-
ment antecedents. The reader will also
gratefully acknowledge Dr. McCashland’s
efforts to bring out the extraordinary and
strange features in Jesus’ ministry. Yet such
characterization is still far from the unique-
ness which the evangelists ascribe to Jesus.

Otto A. Piper

St. John's Gospel: An Exposition,
by Walter Liithi (Trans, by Kurt
Schoenenberger). John Knox Press,
Richmond, Virginia. Pp. vii -f- 347.
$5.00.

Walter Liithi is one of the best known
preachers of the Reformed Church in Swit-
zerland. Deeply influenced by Karl Barth, he
has created a new type of expository preach-
ing, of which this volume is an impressive
witness. Preached originally in the early
years of World War II, these sermons have
not lost their original freshness and rele-
vance. In his exposition of the Fourth Gospel,
Dr. Liithi continues the work that Barth

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

58

had inaugurated in his Epistle to the Ro-
mans. Like his teacher, the author wants to
expound the Bible in such a way that the
personality of the expositor, far from block-
ing the spiritual view of the audience, be-
comes the vehicle through which the Holy
Spirit does his work in the Church. Conse-
quently the congregation will become aware
and certain of the divine origin and the
spiritual relevance of the text.

Here is strictly expository preaching. The
audience is not distracted through more or
less irrelevant stories or stirred up to unholy
warmth of emotions by brilliant oratory.
Rather they are enjoined to follow the text
itself and to learn both what it says about
Jesus, and how the listener, or the reader,
may appropriately react to Jesus’ works.
Unlike Barth’s commentary, however, the
preacher does not cover every verse of John’s
Gospel. Rather, from pericopes which are
often of considerable length, the author will
select a few points which in his judgment
form the most important aspects of the text.
Particularly impressive and helpful is the
author’s leitmotiv of the positive value of
life. Dr. Liithi is a realist, who is familiar
with the miseries and weaknesses of the
human heart. But in Jesus’ miracles he finds
also the guarantee that the present distor-
tions and frustrations of life will be over-
come by God’s power. This realism adduces
a welcome freshness and originality to
familiar texts.

In his treatment of the Biblical text the
preacher is at a considerable advantage as
compared with the exegete. The latter has
to follow the argument and the way of
reasoning of the Biblical writer. In the case
of the Fourth Gospel, that means that the
exegete has to confront each passage with the
total theme of the Gospel. It is the preacher’s
right to deal with each section of the text as
a complete entity. This does not mean, how-
ever, that Dr. Liithi is completely losing
sight of the general theme of John’s Gospel.
He emphasizes the Christo-centric character
of John’s message. Perhaps, this fact could
be stated in a different way, however. Ac-
cording to the author, Jesus is the earthly
manifestation of the eternal work of the Son
of God and thus he is the presence of God
himself. Here, as in Barth, this reviewer
notices a tendency to transform the trini-

tarian character of the Gospel into a kind of
divine monism.

Thus Dr. Liithi can introduce the Baptist
as saying that “God bears the sins of the
world” (p. 15 ff). Such a statement is cor-
rect in a certain sense, but made without
qualification, does it exhaust what the Fourth
Evangelist wants to proclaim? Does he not
continuously stress the fact that it is only in
the light of the Incarnation and the historical
ministry of Jesus that the meaning of the
Old Testament becomes clear? And is not
John anxious to show his readers that the
ministry of Jesus adds something new and
essential to the eternal work of the Son of
God? It is only through his earthly life that
God is glorified. These critical remarks are
not destined in any way to detract from the
significance of Dr. Liithi’s exposition. Rather
they are made in recognition of the merit of
his manly wrestling with the central problem
of Johannine exegesis, namely the unity of
John’s message.

Otto A. Piper

Luther’s Works, Vol. 26. Lectures
on Galatians (1535), Chapters I-IV
(Trans, by J. Pelikan). Concordia
Publishing House, St. Louis, Mo.,
1963. Pp. x + 492. $6.00.

Luther’s Works, Vol. 27. Lectures
on Galatians (1535), Chapters V-VI
(Trans, by J. Pelikan) and Lectures
on Galatians (1519), Chapters I-VI
(Trans, by R. Jungkuntz). 1964. Pp.
x 441. $6.00.

Martin Luther’s Lectures on Galatians
(J535) is one of the finest works in the
history of Christian exegesis and theology.
It issues from Luther’s mature reflection on
the Pauline themes that in his earlier years
had created the Reformation. These appear
in the form most appropriate for Luther’s
thought, namely biblical commentary.

Luther is amusingly blunt about the im-
portance of the main theme of the epistle.
“Whoever knows well how to distinguish
the Gospel from the Law should give thanks
to God and know that he is a real theolo-
gian.” Then he adds at once, “I admit that
in time of temptation I myself do not know

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

59

how to do this as I should” (on Gal. 2:14).
By Luther’s standard, admitting the exis-
tential difficulty, there are few “real theolo-
gians” in American pulpits. It is nonetheless
a good standard, as well for the twentieth
century as for the sixteenth, and there exists
no work comparable to this one for exposing
a contemporary reader to this crucial issue
of theology and ethics.

The commentary contains classic state-
ments of Luther on Christ the Lord of Scrip-
ture, on being righteous and a sinner at the
same time, on the relation of faith and love,
on doubt and temptation, on “truly good”
works, on Christ the victor, on the “masks”
of God, and other important themes. Some
major subjects such as the sacraments, the
state, or predestination, are either missing
or touched only in passing; hence the com-
mentary is not a complete presentation of
Luther’s thought. The book is repetitious,
but is so rich in nuance as major conceptions
return again and again that any abridgement
is an impoverishment.

Luther’s brilliant imagination illumines
Pauline teaching in unforgettable ways. Once
one has encountered his distinction between
“white” and “black” devils, or between
“physical” and “spiritual” witchcraft, or his
story of the death of poor Dr. Krause, or
how Christ “came once” and “comes every
day,” or the meaning of “Abba! Father!” —
one may be tempted to borrow his expression
for contemporary use in the pulpit. At least
this is a common response of seminary stu-
dents. It is a temptation to be resisted apart
from a firm grasp on Luther’s insights as
developed through the entire length of the
commentary.

Luther’s exegesis contains practices that
should not be followed by others. But when
read along with the epistle itself and a
modern commentary, his guidance is an in-
dispensable help for understanding the Epis-
tle to the Galatians. It might be a means for
the true reformation today of many theo-
logically trained people who are farther from
being “real theologians” than they realize.

The new translation of the lectures of
1535 by Professor Pelikan of Yale appears
in a two volume set which contains also a
translation by Richard Jungkuntz of the
much briefer Galatians lectures of 1519. The
text of the longer work is made from the
first Latin edition, which had Luther’s ap-

proval, although based on notes made by
George Rorer as Luther lectured. The trans-
lation is excellent, if occasionally bland. One
might complain that a facet of meaning was
overlooked here and there — for example the
difference between “sensus” and “affectus”
in 4:6 and in 5:5. But occasions for objection
are extremely rare. The indices are elaborate,
if sometimes arbitrary and mechanical. Cross
references to other works of Luther, unhap-
pily, are given only by volume number. They
are useful only for those fortunate enough to
possess the entire Luther’s Works. While
the policy on introduction and notes in the
series at large is to be commended, a much
larger amount, both historical and analytical,
would certainly have been justified for the
Lectures on Galatians and for several other
key works. Numerous classical and scholastic
allusions need fuller attention than they
receive.

Edward A. Dowey, Jr.

History

The Sufficiency of God (Essays on
the Ecumenical Hope, in honor of
W. A. Visser ’t Hooft), ed. by R. C.
Mackie and C. C. West. The West-
minster Press, Philadelphia, 1963. Pp.
240. $5.50.

One of the most interesting aspects of this
festschrift for Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft
issued on the occasion of twenty-five years
of service in the ecumenical movement is its
historical depth. The authors who deal
mainly with the history of the ecumenical
movement — Josef Hromadka, Suzanne de
Dietrich, Bishop Sherrill, Martin Fisher and
Kathleen Bliss — are people who do not write
academically, but rather from their own long
experience. That is, first of all, an experience
in their own countries in which the struggles
of the churches in the past twenty-five years
has been notable. A variety of forms of
Christian witness has made up the ecumenical
movement. These are as different as the
Confessing Church in Germany was from the
Christian frontier in England and as the
early Christian student movement was from
the witness of Professor Hromadka in
Czechoslovakia of the present time. The point
is that these witnesses within a nation could

6o

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

not have been made without a simultaneous
witness in the ecumenical movement. Ecu-
menical history has depth because it stretches
back into the history of the churches which
compose it. M. M. Thomas writes an able
analysis of ecumenical witness in Asian and
African revolutions thereby reminding us
that rapidly moving history in these parts of
the world contains its own depth. The fact
that the ecumenical movement is young does
not mean that it is shallow. As writers in
this volume testify, it has grown rapidly in
part because it rests upon the depth of the
church’s witness in their own land and
culture.

As might well be expected, the volume
reflects theological variety. The most notable
theological articles are by Father Florovsky,
Father Congar, Nikos Nissiotis, Reinhold
Niebuhr and Hans Reudi Weber. Those
familiar with ecumenical theological writing
will expect from this group of authors con-
cern with ecclesiology, with ecumenical social
ethics and with the laity in the life of the
people of God. The articles, however, are by
no means a rehash. They contribute sub-
stantially to present discussion. Father Con-
gar’s treatment of “ecumenical shock” is a
good shock treatment. It is to be noted that
the book, to its credit, contains representative
contributions from the churches and the
continents involved in the ecumenical move-
ment.

This reader was especially attracted by the
fact that the book is made up of those who
have been and still are pioneers. Some have
represented their churches in the ecumenical
movement ; some either have been or still are
staff members of the World Council of
Churches. Some of them are Young Turks;
some of them were Young Turks and have
become older, but are still as “Turkish.” To
these and others like them, the ecumenical
movement owes its beginning and rise and
upon such its future depends. It is eminently
fitting that a book in honor of W. A. Visser
’t Hooft should be written by people who
have stood way out and yet have been able
to lead the churches as well.

The unity of the volume does not consist
in style and organization. Who cares about
these matters? A symposium that is smoothed
down in these ways usually turns out to be a
bore. The depth of unity is stated in the

title and is evident in every article. It is
supplied by well tested and deeply held
Christian faith. The book contains direct
tribute to Dr. Visser ’t Hooft in particular
in the introduction by Robert Mackie which
is sensitive and skillful writing by a life-
long friend; and it contains tribute in the
thinking that it sets forth on matters of
ecumenical interest. The deeper tribute of the
book, however, is at its point of unity. Visser
’t Hooft has embodied and proclaimed the
faith which underlies in the deepest unity of
the ecumenical movement. That faith is in
The Sufficiency of God.

Robert S. Bilheimer
Central Presbyterian Church
Rochester, New York

The English Reformation, by Arthur

G. Dickens. Schocken Books, Inc. New
York, N.Y., 1964. Pp. 340. $8.50.

This book by Arthur G. Dickens, who is
Professor of History in the University of
London, King’s College, is a study of the
English Reformation, which the author de-
scribes as “a process of Protestantisation
among the English people, a process not al-
ways favoured by the State, a process exert-
ing a mass of direct and indirect influences
not only upon English history but upon the
whole of western civilisation” (p. 325). Dr.
Dickens is, of course, very familiar with the
work of previous historians who have dealt
with this subject — men like A. F. Pollard,

H. Maynard Smith, T. M. Parker, Philip
Hughes and J. E. Neale. But he has also
carried out original research in various
aspects of the history of this period, and has
assimilated the findings of numerous masters’
and doctors’ theses on special problems in the
general area. On the basis of such varied
and extensive knowledge he has written a
careful and authoritative analysis of the Ref-
ormation movement in England from Henry
VIII’s “National Catholicism” to the more
pronounced Protestantism of the Elizabethan
Settlement.

In the course of his luminous exposition
Professor Dickens brings out certain matters
hitherto only imperfectly, if at all, realized
and understood. For instance, he presents a
careful appraisal of the place of Wycliffian

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

61

Lollardy in preparing the way for the 16th
century Protestant movement in England.
Again, he gives reasons for assigning a high-
ly important place to that “administrative
virtuoso,” Thomas Cromwell, who not only
headed up the dissolution of the monasteries,
but also laid the legal foundations of the
National Church during those eight years —
1532-40 — in which he was Henry VIII’s prin-
cipal advisor. Again, though Dr. Dickens is
not a professional theologian, he acutely
points out that the Forty-two Articles of
1552-53 — which, with some modifications,
became the Thirty-nine Articles of 1563 —
“are in very large part directed against the
Anabaptists, the fashionable menace of 1552”
(p. 252). “The Forty-two Articles leave no
doubt as to the medial position of the ‘new’
Church, yet it is chiefly medial between
Rome and the Anabaptists, rather than be-
tween Rome and the Calvinists or between
Rome and the Lutherans” (ibid.). Once
more, he has this to say about the Eliza-
bethan Settlement of 1559, “It soon became
fashionable to regard the Elizabethan Settle-
ment as running a middle course between
Rome and Geneva, but so far as concerns the
very decisive contest of 1559 both these great
powers were non-starters. It would be vastly
more accurate to call the Settlement a middle
way between the personal prejudices of
Queen Elizabeth and those entertained by
Dr. Richard Cox and his ebullient friends
in the House of Commons” (p. 305).

To the qualities of extensive knowledge
and perceptive judgment Dr. Dickens adds
the grace of a pleasing literary style. His
book therefore is one of the highest value for
the study of the critical period in English
history with which it deals, and seems cer-
tain to take rank as a leading presentation
of the subject.

Norman V. Hope

The Reformation: A Narrative His-
tory Related by Contemporary Ob-
servers and Participants, by Hans J.
Hillerbrand. Harper & Row, Inc., New
York, 1964. Pp. 482. $7.50.

This volume, as its Preface explains, “un-
dertakes to relate the story of the Reforma-
tion with the help of contemporary sources.”

Its author, Dr. Hans J. Hillerbrand, of Duke
University Divinity School, has organized
his materials in the following roughly chron-
ological sections : Restlessness Before the
Storm, The Gathering Storm, Zwingli and
the Reformation in Zurich, Calvin and the
Reformation in Geneva, Radical Reform
Movements, The Reformation in England and
Scotland, The Political and Organizational
Consolidation of the Reformation in Ger-
many, and Catholic Response and Renewal.
Each of these eight sections begins with an
introductory essay, short but perceptive and
illuminating, by Dr. Hillerbrand; it con-
tinues with a selection of contemporary docu-
ments illustrating leading features of the
movement with which it deals ; and it con-
cludes with a bibliography and footnote ref-
erences for the sources quoted.

Dr. Hillerbrand in his Preface explains
the principles which have governed his
selection of documents. He has not thought
fit to include the theological treatises au-
thored by Reformation leaders — such as
Melanchthon’s Loci Communes or Calvin’s
Institutes — for these are readily available
elsewhere. Because of pressure of space he
has confined his selections to strictly ecclesi-
astical developments, rather than seeking to
cover the general history of the Reformation
age. And — again because of limited space —
he has concentrated on the leading figures —
Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, etc. — omitting men
of lesser importance such as Martin Bucer
and Jan Laski.

This book inevitably includes selections
from such official pronouncements as the
laws of the Reformation Parliament of 1529-
36, which cancelled the allegiance of the
Church of England to the Roman pope. It
also quotes from such public documents as
Beza’s Life of Calvin and John Knox’s His-
tory of the Reformation. In addition, how-
ever, it draws upon less formal documents
like the sermons of John Colet and Hugh
Latimer, and the letters of Zwingli, Calvin,
and Ignatius Loyola. The result is a collec-
tion which makes fascinating reading, and
which gives the reader the “feel” of the
Reformation and Counter Reformation in
such a vivid and compelling manner as no
textbook, however well-informed and able,
can do.

In 1911 Dr. B. J. Kidd published his well-

62

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

known and useful Documents of the Conti-
nental Reformation. But valuable as this
book is, it suffers from two limitations: it
omits all reference to England, and much of
it is in Latin and French. This book of Dr.
Hillerbrand’s covers all phases of the six-
teenth century religious revolution, Roman
Catholic as well as Protestant, and all of it
is in English. Dr. Roland H. Bainton rightly
says that “Hillerbrand has placed all students
of the Reformation in his debt by providing,
for the first time in the English language, a
sourcebook of the movement as a whole.”

Norman V. Hope

Practical

The Pulpit Speaks on Race, ed. by
Alfred T. Davies. Abingdon Press,
Nashville, Tenn., 1965. Pp. 191. $3.95.

This volume is made up of twenty sermons
delivered in the United States on the contro-
versial theme of race. They are edited by
Alfred T. Davies, a young Presbyterian min-
ister in Hilliard, Ohio. Like every symposium
the general quality is bound to be uneven
and with so many sermons on the same
subject the ultimate effect is apt to give the
impression of over-exposure. Yet as such
compilations go, this particular one rates
rather well. Indeed one could scarcely expect
its being otherwise with such contributors as
Blake, Ferris, Kennedy, King, Marney, and
others of equal capacity, although maybe
not so well and favorably known.

These sermons are well written, vigor-
ously contemporaneous, and marked by a
genuinely crusading spirit. To single out
any one or two of them would render a
reviewer guilty of odious comparisons —
whether the authors be named or not — and
certainly none of us cares to be homiletical
critic turned cutting reptile. On the positive
side, this book is of real value mainly as a
contribution to the history of preaching ;
some future generation of research students
will want to know what was said from the
pulpits of America during these crucial years.
Moreover, these sermons have good sub-
stance and represent able writing by men
who are competent in a knowledge of theol-
ogy and life and who have a sensitive aware-
ness of the deep social, political, and religious

under-currents of this mid-century revolu-
tion.

There are some ways, on the other hand,
in which this collection of sermons and the
theme may have been handled more accept-
ably and effectively. First, and simply, there
are too many contributors — twenty in all.
With a theme that has been misrepresented
frequently through half-truths and unfounded
exaggerations, it would have been better to
include maybe fifteen sermons and thereby
permit each preacher to develop his ideas
more fully. Especially is this true in the
use of scripture texts where, with the excep-
tion of only several, the Biblical verse serves
the sermon. Moreover, one cannot suppress a
sharp caveat : why do sermons on race have
to be so negative? Even the editor in his
foreword deplores the contemporary “pulpit
record” on the race issue. Definitely there
are also some bright and spectacular pages
in the record of these years, yet it is trouble-
some to note how consistently they are
omitted by the sombre scribe or smothered
by the voices of doom. Apart from these few
adverse evaluations, this book represents a
job that needed to be done and will continue
to be a testimony to high truths most cer-
tainly believed.

Donald Macleod

Minister’s Annual 1965, by David
A. MacLennan. Fleming H. Revell Co.,
Westwood, N.J., 1965. Pp. 383. $3.95.

Few contemporary ministers have at-
tempted more assiduously to enhance the
fortunes of preaching than has David A.
MacLennan, senior minister of the Brick
Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New
York. Apart from his books — now ten in
number — and his teaching at Yale and
Rochester, he has put such qualitative sub-
stance and creative thinking into certain
types of homiletical aids and helps that he
has been able to lift them above the level of
“canned goods” into respectable resources.
Such is this first volume of Revell’s Minis-
ter’s Annual 1965, a compilation of worship,
sermonic, and study materials for a full
year. Among the extra features in this
volume are a Lectionary (adopted from the
Church of South India), a Calendar of the
Christian Year 1965, 1966, and 1967, a list

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63

of basic books for the minister’s library, and
four indexes.

The major part of this book, however, is
devoted to materials — including digests of
sermons — for morning and evening services
for every Sunday in 1965, with the complete
data of scripture lessons, hymns, and full
length prayers. These occupy 250 pages ;
then follow ten Communion Meditations,
four funeral talks, fifty pages of Midweek
messages, suggestive excerpts for bulletins,
and topics for sermon series. Altogether this
is an unusual assembly of materials and
among its commendable features is that it
comes as the fruit of the ministry of a man
whose service to the Church has been marked
by constant growth and sober strength. Here
one can find germinal ideas, illustrated aptly,
and processed through the crucible of a
dedicated mind. Moreover, one does not read
far in this volume without concluding that
the preaching ministry lays a demand upon
one’s academic and devotional resources to
an extraordinary degree and that even in
digest form a year’s output reaches 400 pages.
Those who will buy this book and handle it
rightly will experience the challenge its
quality and substance imply.

Donald Macleod

Administering Christian Education,
by Robert K. Bower. Wm. B. Eerd-
mans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids,
Mich., 1964. Pp. 227. $3.95.

Most books on the administration of
Christian education consist of practical hints
and tried and true rules on how to do it, but
are rather useless from a theoretical point of
view. Bower’s Administering Christian
Education provides a startling and welcome
contrast. Within his concept of the church
and its mission, he has made the results of
administration research and theory from the
social sciences, business, and education
available to the Christian educator. The book
exemplifies the principle that reasoned theory
provides the basis for considered and sound
practice. I am enthusiastic about this ap-
proach, and the way Bower has used it.
Although clearly written to and within an
“evangelical’’ ethos, there are few of the
usual limitations of that ethos evident here.

D. Campbell Wyckoff

Pastoral Care in the Church, by C.
W. Brister. Harper & Row, New York,
1964. Pp. 262. $5.00.

This is a comprehensive outline of pastoral
carq, really the first to appear in the modern
era. It is in the best sense of the word a
solid book which brings together between
two covers much of the best thinking about
pastoral care and pastoral theology which
has been done in the past three decades. It
is literally saturated (perhaps even super-
saturated) with references to all sorts of
relevant materials, and hence is practically
worth the purchase price for the bibliographi-
cal material alone.

The author states that “it is designed to
serve as a primer in pastoral work.” As such,
it succeeds very well, but those who are
looking for “new things” in pastoral theol-
ogy will not find too much of interest in this
volume, except for some pioneering ma-
terials on the pastoral ministry of the laity.
Although the author has not dealt with this
question comprehensively, he can scarcely
be held responsible for that, since no one
else has dealt with it at all.

There are some matters of taste and per-
spective with which I find myself in dis-
agreement with Dr. Brister. First, there is
the suggestion, particularly in the theological
sections of the book, that theologians of all
persuasions may serve as compatible re-
sources for the pastor. My own thought
about this is that the pastor may have to do
more choosing among theologians than
Brister seems to imply by his multiple ref-
erences. It must be said, however, that he is
not incapable of offering a critique of a
theological position in season. Another point
at which the book could have been stronger,
I think, is in the use of case material, which
as Brister acknowledges, often shows less
than optimal pastoral care. Although medi-
ocrity does have its illustrative uses, in an
avowed primer, perhaps exemplary cases
would have been more to the point.

Again let me emphasize the usefulness of
this book for pastors who want a sound and
knowledgeable guide for pastoral care in
their total ministry.

James N. Lapsley, Jr.

64

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Hymns in Christian Worship, by
Cecil Northcott. (Ecumenical Studies
in Worship, No. 13). John Knox
Press, Richmond, Va., 1965. Pp. 83.
Paper, $1.75.

Those familiar with the writings of Cecil
Northcott have learned to expect from him
material that is definitive, scholarly, and
orientated towards good sense. This mono-
graph, which is Number 13 in the series
“Ecumenical Studies in Worship,” is a high-
ly useful contribution to a succession of
studies by such distinguished writers as
Oscar Cullmann, J. G. Davies, A. S. Herbert,
J.-J. von Allmen, and others.

In the short span of some eighty pages Dr.
Northcott discusses the place of the Christian
hymn in the pattern of the Church’s worship
under such chapter headings as “The Nature
and Function of Christian Hymns” ; “The
Hymn in History”; “The Hymn in Litur-
gy” ; and “Hymns in the Life of the
Church.” In all these the author attempts to
“look more broadly at the place of hymnody
in the Christian church, and what its func-
tion is in worship, rather than only at the
supposed shortcomings of a particular col-
lection of hymns” (p. 6). His broad eccle-
siastical and liturgical viewpoint and his
sensitivity to the proprieties of hymnody
equip him admirably for making stringent
observations and drawing good conclusions.
He deplores the modern tendency to water
down the wording of hymns (what John
Wesley called “mending of them”) and to
confuse the peculiar nature of them with
poetry and theology. A hymn, he maintains,
is “a salute in song to the events of the
Gospel both in the Old and the New Israel”
(p. 9). His familiarity with authors and
composers adds interest to his accounts of
the development of the hymn in Christian
worship especially since the Reformation, of
the contributions of such pivotal figures as
Watts and the Wesleys, and of the original
sacred collections that are tributary to the
ecumenical hymnals of today. Especially
helpful are his comments upon the place and
use in the sanctuary of “pop” music, “beat
tunes,” and other forms of contemporary
music which, he concludes, are not “a break
through to a new style of hymnody” (p. 75).
He acknowledges the fact that the modern

hymns have not caught on and chiefly because
their promoters fail to realize that “we sing
because we believe, and hymns enshrine the
fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith
and convey them to the believer in a personal
manner” (p. 77).

In such a compact treatment, naturally it
is not possible to deal with every aspect of
hymnody or to resolve all contingent prob-
lems. However, the author might have en-
lightened us regarding how the hymn does
become “more integral to the whole wor-
ship.” Apart from the relevance of its theme
and its setting in the theological shape of the
act of worship, what other directives are
there? Also, even though we grant the
author’s thought of a hymn as “singable
praise,” yet the canons of poetic criticism
ought not to be ruled out entirely in our es-
timate of the total quality of sacred song.

Donald Macleod

General

Sacred and Projane Beauty: The
Holy in Art, by Gerardus van der
Leeuw (Trans, by David E. Green;
preface by Mircea Eliade). Holt, Rine-
hart and Winston, New York, 1963.
Pp- 357. xx- $6.50.

Gerardus van der Leeuw, who died in
1950 taught at Groningen and was a recog-
nized philosopher and theologian. As a young
man he studied Oriental languages and wrote
a doctoral dissertation on Egyptian religion.
Later he published two excellent books on
primitive religion and a classic on the phe-
nomenology of religion. He was besides a
poet, a musician, a man of the church. After
the liberation of Holland, for a brief period
he served his country as Minister of Edu-
cation.

In the study under review, van der Leeuw
tried to discover paths and boundaries for
anyone who sees a relation between the holy
and the beautiful. That is, for anyone who
says he understands something of the way
God speaks through beauty, anyone who says
that God’s word could never be without the
highest beauty. He admitted it was a first
and very incomplete attempt. No one has
dared more than a first step in this field, he

THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN

conceded. Religion and art, the author de-
clared (p. 333), are parallel lines which
intersect only at infinity, and meet in God.
If we continue to speak, however, of a re-
newed unity of influences whereby holiness
and beauty can meet, at a point at which
religion and art meet, in the world, we must
really mean a direction, a striving, a recog-
nition which ultimately must destroy itself.

The book is so organized that the different
arts are treated one after the other in six
chapters : the dance, drama, rhetoric, the fine
arts, architecture, and music. Each chapter
closes with a theological aesthetic. In it, the
search is pursued for the connection between
what the author considers, on the one hand,
to be the essential core of the art in question,
and God’s revelation on the other. The last
chapter is devoted to a general theological
aesthetic.

With Mircea Eliade who contributes an
illuminating preface, one is inclined to see
in this work the masterpiece of van der
Leeuw’s maturity. By the breadth of its
learning, by the audacity of its purpose, by
the gracefulness of its style, this is a unique
and highly significant book for the church-
man and educator.

Edward J. Jurjx

The Trial of Jesus, by James C.
McRuer. Clarke, Irwin & Company,
Toronto, Canada, 1964. Pp. 94. $2.50.

Through the centuries the trial of Jesus
has been discussed widely by theologians
and explored in depth in an exegetical con-
text by New Testament scholars. This latest
treatment, however, has the peculiar distinc-
tion of being done by a distinguished jurist

65

and outstanding Christian layman, the Hon-
orable James C. McRuer, the Chief Justice
of the Province of Ontario, who is also a
ruling elder in Bloor Street United Church,
Toronto. In the Foreword a recognized
Roman Catholic educator, Father Elliott
MacGuigan, writes : “Never have I seen the
evidence of injustice in the trial of Jesus so
well collated and united, and the cumulative
effect of violation after violation of injustice
and illegality is most profound” (vii).

This is not, therefore, simply a legalistic
essay. It reflects careful reading in back-
ground resources and discriminative use of
facts from Josephus, Edersheim, Klausner,
Schurer, David Smith, Perowne, and others.
Without taking time to demythologize the
synoptic accounts or to reckon with the form
critics, the writer re-presents the dramatic
stages of the trial and from his mature grasp
of ancient Jewish and Roman law, he evalu-
ates the transactions of the courts with skill
and clarity. His knowledge of the various
individuals and the role of each pressure
group in this parody of justice insures an
authentic complexion to the whole discussion,
while his organization of the materials leads
with cumulative effect to the climax of ig-
nominy he so well summarizes : “In all the
annals of legal history, it would be difficult
to find another case in which a prisoner who
had been declared not guilty by a court of
competent jurisdiction was delivered to the
executioner by the judge who had acquitted
him” (p. 72).

This book makes good Lenten reading. A
competent study group would find in it an
unusual amount of discussion materials.
Every church should have a copy in its
library.

Donald Macleod

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