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HE

PRINCETON

SEMINARY

BULLETIN

VOLUME XI, NUMBER I NEW SERIES 1990

Always in Need of Reform	EDITOR
What is “Reformed Theology”?	JANE DEMPSEY DOUGLASS
The End of the Modern World:
A New Openness for Faith	DIOGENES ALLEN
Josef Hromadka and the Witness of
the Church in East and West Today	CHARLES C. WEST
' A Understanding J. Gresham Machen	GEORGE MARSDEN
The Gospel is Not for Sale:
Mission Parameters and Dynamics	RAYMUND FUNG
Sermons
So, We Are Called?	EUGENE G. TURNER
Freed to Follow	YVONNE V. DELK

On Doing Something Beautiful

DANIEL L. MIGLIORE

PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Thomas W. Gillespie, President James I. McCord, President Emeritus

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

David B. Watermulder, Chair	Johannes R. Krahmer, Vice-Chair
Clarence B. Ammons	Robert M. Adams, Secretary Frederick F. Lansill, Treasurer	Henry Luce III
Eve S. Bogle		Karen Turner McClellan
Robert W. Bohl		M. Scott McClure
Stuart Cummings-Bond		David M. Mace
John H. Donelik		Donald C. McFerren
James G. Emerson, Jr.		Earl F. Palmer
Peter E. B. Erdman		George T. Piercy
Rosemary Hall Evans		Jean M. Rech
Sarah B. Gambrell		Thomas J. Rosser
Francisco O. Garcia-Treto		Laird H. Simons, Jr.
Helen H. Gemmill		Frederick B. Speakman
C. Thomas Hilton		William P. Thompson
David H. Hughes		Jay Vawter
Jane G. Irwin		Samuel G. Warr
F. Martin Johnson		George B. Wirth
Louis Upchurch Lawson		Charles Wright
James H. Logan, Jr.		Ralph M. Wyman

Clem E. Bininger	TRUSTEES EMERITI/AE	Raymond I. Lindquist
Frederick E. Christian		J. Keith Louden
Margaret W. Harmon		William H. Scheide
Bryant M. Kirkland		John M. Templeton
Harry G. Kuch		Irving A. West

THE

PRINCETON

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BULLETIN

VOLUME XI NUMBER I

NEW SERIES 1990

Daniel L. Migliore, editor

Jane Dempsey Douglass, book review editor

CONTENTS

Always in Need of Reform	Editor	I
What is “Reformed Theology”?	Jane Dempsey Douglass	3
The End of the Modern World: A New Openness for Faith	Diogenes Allen	1 1
Josef Hromadka and the Witness of the Church in East and West Today	Charles C. West	32
Understanding J. Gresham Machen	George Marsden	46
The Gospel is Not for Sale: Mission Parameters and Dynamics	Raymund Fung	61
Sermons So, We Are Called?	Eugene G. Turner	71
Freed to Follow	Yvonne V. Del\	77
On Doing Something Beautiful	Daniel L. Migliore	OO c/1
Book Reviews
Weaving the Sermon: Preaching In A Feminist Perspective, by Christine M. Smith	Don M. Wardlaw	90
Walter Rauschenbusch: American Reformer, by Paul M. Minus	James H. Moorhead	92
American Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A History from the Early Republic to Vatican II, by Gerald P. Fogarty	James H. Moorhead	94
An Evolutionary Approach to Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 5 of Jesus of Nazareth Yesterday and Today, by Juan Luis Segundo	Mark, Kline Taylor	95

11

The Wrath of Jonah, by Rosemary Radford Ruether and Herman

J. Ruether	Nicholas Wolterstoiff	98
The Bible Tells Them So: The Discourse of Protestant
Fundamentalism, by Kathleen C. Boone	Stephen L. Stell	100
Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, ed. Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ	Christine M. Smith	101
Understanding the Christian Faith, vol. 1 of Cod Encountered: A
Contemporary Systematic Theology, by Frans Joseph van Beeck, S.J.	Byron David Stuhlman	103
Unapologetic Theology: A Christian Voice in a Pluralistic Conversation, by William C. Placher	Jeffrey C. Eaton	105
Christian Ethics in the Protestant Tradition, by Waldo Beach	Charles C. West	106
Family Intervention: Hope for Families Struggling With Alcohol and Drugs, by Joe Vaughn	Christie Cozad Neuger	107
Suffering: Its Meaning and Ministry, by James G. Emerson	James N. Lapsley	108
Ministry Through Word and Sacrament, by Thomas C. Oden	Donald Capps	109
The “I” of the Sermon, by Richard L. Thulin	Donald Macleod	in
If I Had One More Sermon to Preach, by Ansley Gerard Van Dyke	Thomas G. Long	"3
Educating in Faith: Maps and Vision, by Mary C. Boys	Freda A. Gardner	"4
The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 5 of Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (since
1700), by Jaroslav Pelikan	David Dawson	"5
Realism and Hope in a Nuclear Age, by Kermit D. Johnson	Ronald Cole-Turner	117

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

Each issue is mailed free of charge to all alumni/ae and on an exchange basis with various insti- tutions. Back issues are not available.

All correspondence should be addressed to Daniel L. Migliore, Editor. Princeton Seminary Bul- letin, CN 821, Princeton, NJ 08542.

Because the policy of the Bulletin is to publish lectures and sermons by Princeton Seminary faculty anil administration, and presentations by guests on the Seminary campus, we cannot accept unsolicited material.

Always in Need of Reform

Are we witnessing a renewal of interest in Reformed theology in the Presbyterian church today? There are at least a few signs that point in this direction. One could mention the new brief statement of faith that was commissioned by the General Assembly several years ago and that will soon come before the church for final discussion and action; the rising expecta- tions of many Presbyteries that candidates for ordination be well-versed in the Reformed theological tradition; and the growing awareness that as we enter the final decade of this century the social, cultural, and spiritual crises of our world are so formidable as to compel us all to take up the theological task with new seriousness.

Preoccupation with a particular theological tradition can of course be more problematic than promising. It could signal retreat to a romanticized past; it could mean that the church is anxious, defensive, uncertain of itself and its future, and hence eager to find safety and security in what is familiar and provincial. But we venture to hope that the new interest in the Presby- terian church in what it means to be Reformed has a very different basis. Anxiety for a narrow denominational identity has never been what the Re- formed theological heritage has stood for at its best. Neither Calvin nor Edwards nor Barth, giants of the Reformed tradition, construed his theolog- ical responsibility in narrow terms. Their major writings — Institutes of the Christian Religion, The End for Which God Created the World , and The Church Dogmatics — intended to serve the Word of God that gathers, nour- ishes, and commissions the whole church. For Reformed theology it is this Word of God decisively spoken in Jesus Christ that again and again sum- mons the church and theology to reform of faith and life. Willingness to let God begin anew with us, openness to God’s transforming and reordering judgment and grace — this is Reformed existence.

As is well-known to readers of this journal, the spirit of the Reformed tradition is enshrined in the motto, Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda: the church reformed, always in need of reform. This motto covers every aspect of the life of the church, including and especially its theology. Sovereignty of God, elect people, salvation by grace alone, authority of Scripture, the sanctification of every dimension of life — these and other great motifs of the Reformed tradition are not slogans to be mechanically repeated but themes that require fresh interpretation in concrete situations. Reformed theology needs to be continually liberated from routinization and misuse for the

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faithful proclamation and service of the living Word of God. Perhaps the astonishing movements of political and social reform sweeping Eastern Eu- rope today will help to remind us of the global importance of the witness of the Christian church to a w'ay of life that is always ready to be reformed.

In different ways the articles in this issue display the vitality and promise, the diversity and tensions, of Reformed theology today. Describing what is distinctive about Reformed theology, Jane Dempsey Douglass underscores the point that it represents not a fossilized but a living and growing tradition of faith. Diogenes Allen explores the new openness to faith in our “post- modern” situation and calls the church to a new confidence in presenting the full wealth of Christian conviction. Charles West reexamines the life and legacy of the influential Reformed Czechoslovakian theologian, Joseph Hromadka, who taught theology and ethics at Princeton from 1939 to 1947. George Marsden reconsiders the work of a very different but no less contro- versial Princeton theologian, J. Gresham Machen. Finally, Raymond Fung contends that the world-wide Christian mission needs to show the spirit of continuing reform since it can no longer be carried out in a one-sided, im- perialistic manner but must be a mission in “waiting" as well as in “reaching out.”

Daniel L. Migliore Editor

Jane Dempsey Douglass is the Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Historical Theology at Princeton Seminary. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, Radcliffe College Graduate School, and Harvard University where she received her Ph.D. A Reformation scholar, her most recent boo\ is Women, Freedom, and Calvin. Last summer Dr. Douglass was elected Vice- President of the World Alliance of Re- formed Churches at its meeting in Seoul, Korea. The following lecture was pre- sented at a meeting of New Brunswick^ Presbytery in September, 1989.

I have been asked to talk briefly this evening about what is characteristic or special about Reformed theology. In preparing this presentation, I have reflected especially on two experiences.

1. In recent years I have been serving on the committee preparing a pro- posed Brief Statement of Reformed Faith. Our final draft was presented to the General Assembly in June and is now being studied by a special com- mittee. As you can imagine from the title assigned to us, much of the com- mittee’s initial work was to identify what “Reformed faith” is. We presented a statement which we believed was an example or model of contemporary Reformed theology. We hoped that churches working with it and reflecting on it would develop a sense that they hold a common Reformed theology. So I will draw upon that document in my remarks.

2. Last month I participated in the General Council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), held in Seoul, Korea. Here Reformed peo- ple from all over the world were doing theology. Delegates came from about 170 churches in very different contexts, two-thirds of them in the third world. The theme of the Council was one very central to our faith: “Who do you say that I am?,” Jesus’ question to Peter. Our Bible study focused on the confessions of Peter in Matthew 1 6 and of Martha in John 1 1 ; the agenda of many working sessions was explicitly theological, concerned with com- mon witness, mission and unity, and the program on peace, justice, and the integrity of creation. Therefore I had a splendid opportunity to listen to a variety of Reformed voices and to check my own perceptions about Re- formed theology.

Since the thirty minutes at my disposal correspond more to a sermon period than an academic lecture hour, I shall make three points:

I. Reformed theology is catholic reflection focused on what God does in the world and how God calls us to participate in God’s work.

What is

“Reformed Theology”?

by Jane Dempsey Douglass

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II. Reformed theology is done in, with, and for confessing Christian com- munities and for the world. Though individual persons contribute to it, it is not intended to be solitary, private work but rather belongs to the commu- nity.

III. Reformed theology is not a body of writing completed in the past but a tradition of doing theology in a Reformed mode, certainly in continuity with the classical Reformed theologians of the sixteenth century like Calvin and Bullinger, for example, and with the confessions of that tradition, like those in our Boo\ of Confessions. But Reformed theology is still in the mak- ing, still unfinished, and will be till the end of time.

Now let me elaborate a little on each of these points.

I. Reformed theology is catholic reflection focused on what God does in the world and how God calls us to participate in God’s work.

A. At the heart of Reformed theology is the biblical faith we hold in common with the whole Christian family of all times and places: belief in one God in three persons, who created all that is, who was incarnate in Jesus Christ our redeemer, who in the Holy Spirit is still acting to recreate the world; belief in one church and its sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; belief in life beyond death as part of the new creation God is already preparing among us.

The proposed Brief Statement of Faith is such a catholic confession, trin- itarian in structure, though following the order of the Apostolic Benediction rather than the more familiar one of the Apostles’ Creed. This order, begin- ning with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, is particularly congenial to Reformed people who have so often declared the central importance of Jesus Christ for all our knowledge of God. If the statement did not clearly confess the faith catholic, it would not be a Reformed statement.

Because Reformed people begin with this assumption about the catholic nature of Reformed theology, we have been deeply engaged in ecumenical encounter. Since the last General Council meeting of W ARC in 1982, at the world level WARC has been engaged in bilateral dialogues with Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox churches, and especially those of other traditions stemming from the Reformation: Lutheran, Baptist, Mennonite, Methodist, Disciples of Christ. Reports are available and are studied by our church at the national level; the WARC General Council expressed its con- cern that they need to be studied also by presbyteries and local congrega- tions. In each case the reports call on us to take some new steps in life together, steps which finally must involve local congregations. Our convic- tion about our catholicity is not merely an intellectual recognition of past

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consensus but an imperative to be engaged in the creation of new consensus and new life together.

B. Our Reformed focus within that catholic tradition is on God’s action, God’s initiative, God’s self-revelation to us, God’s calling us into the com- munity of faith. It is not a self-centered tradition, primarily concerned with making ourselves happy or comfortable. In the short run it may make us very uncomfortable, land us in prison, and set us in tension with our culture. But we believe that life according to the will of God shown to us in Scrip- ture, participating in the work God is doing in the world, is joyful freedom and finally the only source of security and comfort.

Focusing on God’s action, out of the various historical streams of Chris- tian theology we have emphasized the Reformation themes which are im- portant to us but not unique to us: “by Christ alone” — the once-for-all re- demptive work of Christ, God in human flesh; “by grace alone,” “by faith alone” — faith and justification as a gift of God, not by our own efforts; “by Scripture alone” — the unique authority of God’s Word coming to us through the record of a believing community’s experience of God’s work in its midst. This history of God’s work in the world is the foundation of our theological reflection and the standard by which finally we judge all theol- ogy-

Mention of “scripture alone” may evoke concern about how little some of our American church-goers really know about the Bible and its contents. What could “scripture alone” possibly mean to them? But I was struck at the WARC General Council by the vivid experience of many of our churches of living by authority of Scripture. In a group discussing the mis- sion of the Church, delegates were asked what role the Bible played in shap- ing their vision of that mission. Some Asian delegates spoke of how their church had been changed from a rather pietistic community with mostly otherworldly concerns by serious confrontation with the parable of the last judgment, Mt. 25. As they heard Jesus speak of being hungry, thirsty, in prison, Jesus was asking them, Where were you? Their churches had to broaden their sense of mission to include work lor social change and support for those in every kind of need. A delegate from an Asian united church spoke of how Jesus’ prayer that all may be one in John 17 had led his church into an ecumenical union. The sense of the transforming Word of God at work in our midst by the Holy Spirit, so powerful in the sixteenth-century Reformation, is still very much alive today in many of our Reformed churches.

To serve one sovereign God is to recognize the profound reality of sin in our world as a distortion of God’s intent for human life, and to work against

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all evil and resist all idolatry. Ours is the tradition which quite literally felt itself called to pull down what it believed to be the symbols of idolatry of church and state in the sixteenth century: the religious statues and stained- glass windows. Today most Reformed people find those attacks on religious art to be evidence of misdirected zeal. Still, we understand that they were part of a much broader reform of church and society and respect the under- lying intent: to refocus the church’s attention on the authority of the Word of God and its call to reform all of human life according to a scriptural vision of God’s will for the world. Grateful obedience involves a reordering of values and priorities in the life of the church as well as the world. The Holy Spirit is continually at work reforming the church by opening our hearts so we can really hear the Word of God. (See echoes of this tradition in the proposed Brief Statement of Faith, lines 5-6, 26, 48-50, 55-59.)

Today one example of this continuing tradition of Reformed struggle against idolatry is the deep engagement of many of our churches in work for human rights against idolatrous claims of states. At the General Council 1 met the Rev. Chung Ming Kao, former moderator of the Taiwanese Pres- byterian Church, for whom many of us prayed during the seven years he spent in prison as the result of his involvement in the struggle for human rights in his country. He speaks quite simply and gratefully of the new and much broader vision of the mission of the church which God gave him and his church through this experience of suffering. Our WARC President, Allan Boesak, has been detained by civil authorities at least twice since the Council meeting for his role in the movement of defiance of apartheid, a struggle against an idolatrous view of the state. He and his colleagues there understand that God is calling them to participate in God’s peace-making and justice-making work in their part of the world. I hope you are praying regularly for them.

The basic content of the proposed new Brief Statement of Faith is a nar- rative of what God has been doing: in creation, in the covenant with Sarah and Abraham, in the incarnation, in Jesus’ earthly ministry— proclaiming the reign of God, in his death and resurrection. But these actions of God continue into the present. The Holy Spirit assures us that we belong to this God, calls us into a redemptive community formed by Word and sacrament, and gives us courage to engage in mission in the world:

to witness to Christ as Lord and Saviour to unmask idolatries in church and culture to work for justice, freedom, and peace, and to claim all of life for Christ, (lines 55-59)

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We see that the focus on God’s action does not imply a denigration of human capacity and activity. On the contrary, Reformed theology has stressed the power of the Holy Spirit to transform and strengthen sinful human beings so that they become more fully human, bearing the image of God more visibly, able to do God’s work in the world more boldly.

Finally, a focus on God’s action has led Reformed people to a profound worship of God who can never be fully known by a human being, but who reveals to us divine power and righteousness, compassion and forgiveness, inspiring in us grateful praise. To God alone be the glory!

II. Reformed theology is done in, with, and for confessing Christian com- munities and for the world. It is not intended to be solitary or private work, but rather belongs to the community. Very briefly, I think this thesis has several important roots and implications.

A. All our life, as human beings and as Christians, is marked by inter- dependence. The image of God given at creation is a corporate one, shared by all humanity, a reflection, perhaps, of the community within the divine Trinity. In recreating us the Holy Spirit draws us into the one church, the body of Christ. (See Brief Statement of Faith, lines 26-29, 45-47-)

B. A theological education is not a personal possession but rather a trust for the work of the whole Christian community. An essential part of the pastor’s calling is to enable lay people, too, to become good theologians. All Christians need the tools of theological reflection to make decisions about the life of the congregation or the General Assembly and about their per- sonal lives. Our Reformed tradition is not one of a hierarchy, but of collegial ministry where leadership and theological skills must be shared. This shar- ing, however, cannot be one-sided; lay people, too, have gifts from the Holy Spirit and from their human experience to share. If pastors are open to learning from lay people about their particular experience of God and of the world, and lay people to sharing their pastors’ theological education, if both men and women from all racial and ethnic backgrounds can reflect theologically together on their different life experiences, a wonderfully strong foundation for the church’s mission could be built.

C. Reformed people explore together their understanding of the Scrip- tures and its claim on their lives. They know that every human being is fallible and that the church is both holy, because the Holy Spirit lives in it, and also sinful, because of the fallibility of even the most faithful Christian. Therefore in congregations, in presbyteries, in General Assemblies, and in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, we feel accountable to one an- other, struggling together to know the will of God, challenging one another

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when we feel it is necessary. Today we respect the fact that there is pluralism in all our churches; our people do not all express themselves theologically in the same way. But there come times — the sixteenth-century Reformation, the Barmen Declaration in the days of Nazi Germany, and the 1982 suspen- sion by the World Alliance of Reformed Churches of the membership of churches teaching a theological justification of apartheid— when decisive choices must be made; the people of God must be willing to hear God’s word to us from our brothers and sisters even when it is painful and costly.

A new theological project was undertaken by the WARC General Coun- cil in Seoul: a theological study of the nature of legitimate and illegitimate government and the grounds on which resistance to government would be justified. In this project WARC will be picking up again a major theme of Reformed theology in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Though obedience was one of the greatest virtues in the minds of sixteenth-century people, and Reformed theology valued it, still the question of resistance to tyranny became an important issue in Reformed thought. Today our churches in South Africa, eastern Europe, and militantly Islamic countries are particularly concerned about these questions. But even in America and western Europe the questions are being raised, though in different ways. It will be important for Reformed Christians in very different situations to face together the theological issues involved in our relations to governments today.

III. Reformed theology is still in the making, still unfinished, and will be till the end of time. Let me suggest a few examples.

A. We have mentioned the issue of apartheid. Certainly many of our own ancestors did not understand slavery and racial discrimination to be evil. Today we believe the Holy Spirit leads us to read the Bible very differently than they did. Today, when we say in the proposed Brief Statement of Faith that everyone, male and female, of every race and people is equally made in God’s image to live as one community (lines 26-29), we are giving needed new shape to the tradition of Reformed theology, building on a profoundly biblical understanding of human nature which, by the grace of God, is being seen more and more clearly.

B. Many Reformed theologians, from Calvin on, have had beautiful vi- sions of the significance of the created world. But Reformed confessions have had little to say about the non-human world and about the ethical responsibility of humanity to it. Perhaps partly as a result of that failure to develop more fully the doctrine of creation, human abuse of the world

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threatens its death. You will see in the proposed new Brief Statement of Faith that we confess failure to care for the planet entrusted to our care as one of our sins (line 34). This, too, is a needed new shaping of the Reformed tradition of theology. The World Alliance of Reformed Churches some time ago undertook a project on Peace, Justice, and the Integrity of Creation which has been taken up also by the World Council of Churches. Reformed churches worldwide, along with others, are now deeply invested in explor- ing more profoundly a Christian doctrine of creation.

C. Sometimes in our ecumenical partnerships we have to confess our sins against our neighbors quite particularly. Both we and the Lutherans have declared that our mutual condemnations in the sixteenth century are no longer applicable. In a dialogue of Reformed people with the Mennonites, the Reformed formally expressed their deep sense of shame and profound regret for their persecution, even putting to death, of the Anabaptists in previous times. Such confessions of wrongdoing are necessary to allow new relationships to be built on just foundations.

Today it almost seems easier to put aside old wrongs with other traditions than with our own. The WARC General Council considered at length the problem of Reformed divisiveness, the existence of many different unrecon- ciled Reformed and Presbyterian churches in the same country. In the USA we have several. Korea, we were told, has more than 50, of which only two are members of WARC. Reconciliation and unity within the Christian fam- ily and even within the Reformed family remain on the theological agenda.

D. Another theological issue much under discussion in Reformed churches around the world is the ordination of women. Our own PC(USA) church long ago agreed as a matter of polity that women could be ordained as elders and pastors. In the proposed Brief Statement of Faith, we now take another step and declare as a matter of faith that the Holy Spirit calls both men and women to all ministries of the church (line 53). There are Presby- terian denominations both in America and in some other countries which do not agree. Some cite “theological” objections, some “cultural” ones; but the relation between those two sorts of objections is itself a theological prob- lem.

The problem of bars to women’s ordination, either formal and official or informal and private, was a major concern at the women’s conference im- mediately preceding the WARC General Council. Since only one Korean church ordains women, Korean women were very eager for action by the Council which would support their efforts to change the other churches’ policies. In an extraordinary symbolic action, throngs of Korean women,

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some traveling many hours, attended a deeply moving communion service which concluded the women’s conference. A woman minister, Prof. Sang Chang, who was related to this presbytery during her years of doctoral study at Princeton Theological Seminary, presided over the service and preached the sermon. (Dr. Chang was later elected Moderator of the Department of Cooperation and Witness of WARC.) Other women delegates to the Coun- cil from different parts of the world shared in the leadership of the service and the serving of communion. For many women present, this must have been a first experience of women’s leadership in public worship and of re- ceiving the sacrament from the hands of women. A prayer vigil then contin- ued into the morning hours.

The Council did in fact strongly urge all its member churches which do not yet ordain women to move promptly toward removing bars to their ordination, and it urged all churches to work for more fair and full partici- pation of women in all aspects of church life. On the question of women's place in the Church, Reformed theology is taking new shape out of a differ- ent and, I believe, profoundly faithful reading of Scripture, focused on the new community in Christ where there is no male or female and where all human barriers fall.

In these ways and many more, the Holy Spirit continues to lead us to- wards new insight into the Word of God and towards ongoing reformation of our theology and our church.

The End of the Modern World: A New Openness for Faith

by Diogenes Allen

Diogenes Allen is the Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton Theological Sem- inary where he has taught since 1967. A member of the Center of Theological In- quiry in Princeton and author of ten boohs, he is an ordained Presbyterian minister and a frequent speaker in local congregations. This essay is adapted from his most recent boo/{, Christian Belief in a Postmodern World: The Full Wealth of Conviction. © 1989 Diogenes Allen and used by per- mission of Westminster/John Knox Press.

I

To have a faith to live by is a great comfort and support, especially in times when there is great intellectual disagreement and rapid change. But now and again I have met a person who has claimed that religion has nothing to offer. “Why should I go to church,” someone once said to me, “when I have no religious needs?” I had the audacity to reply, “Because Christianity’s true.” That may seem foolhardy when we live in a pluralistic world with any number of different views of reality and apparently no ra- tional means of telling which view is most likely to be true, and when it is said that all views are historically relative and mere reflections of social structures. Even scientific laws and theories are to be held tentatively. How can any educated person who is not simply dogmatic claim that a religion is true?

Nonetheless, I find myself driven to make this claim. The needs religion fills are relevant to an assessment of its truth, but were it merely a matter of finding religion to be helpful, then a religious commitment would not be essentially different from a personal preference. We would rightly say that just as some people prefer chocolate to other flavors of ice cream, some peo- ple prefer to be Christian rather than something else or nothing at all merely as a matter of taste. But when something is said to be true, we have a dif- ferent situation, especially when it is said of a religion. Christian, as well as other religious claims, are so serious and so demanding personally that ad- herence to them cannot be properly described as merely a matter of personal taste.

Many people today find they cannot ignore their religion’s claim to be true, and yet they are aware of various difficulties in affirming its truth. The modern world has driven a wedge between the mind and the heart, forcing Christians to lead a double life. On the one hand, there are more Christians in the world today and they are more widely distributed geographically than

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ever before. In spite ot immense increases in the world’s population during the past five centuries, the percentage of Christians has increased from about 19 percent in 1500 to more than 34 percent in 1900. Since 1900 the world population has tripled, and the number of Christians has virtually tripled as well, keeping up with the population explosion. You must combine the number of Muslims (17.1 percent), Hindus (1 3.5 percent), and Buddhists (6.2 percent) to surpass the number of Christians in the world in 1985. Such growth reflects immense vitality.1 In addition, of all the religions of the world none has been exposed to as intense and persistent critical examina- tion as Christianity.

On the other hand, in spite of these accomplishments, Christianity has been on the defensive intellectually. On the basis of physics, biology, philos- ophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, people have claimed again and again that its day is over. The attitude toward Christianity that has increasingly dominated the intellectual culture in modern times was nicely captured in a comment made in 1878 by Max Muller, a distinguished an- thropologist:

Every day, every week, every month, every quarter, the most widely read journals seem just now to vie with each other in telling us that the time for religion is past, that faith is a hallucination or an infantile disease, that the gods have at last been found out and exploded.2

The situation from the point of view of Christianity, however, is not as dire as it may seem. On the contrary, our situation is now far better than it has been in modern times because our intellectual culture is at a major turn- ing point. A massive intellectual revolution is taking place that is perhaps as great as that which marked off the modern world from the Middle Ages. The foundations of the modern world are collapsing, and we are entering a postmodern world. The principles forged during the Enlightenment

1 David B. Barrett, ed., World Christian Encyclopedia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 6.

1 As found in E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford: At the Clar- endon Press, 1965), 100. Pritchard, one of the greatest field anthropologists of all times, crit- ically demolishes the major theories in the social sciences that seek to undermine primitive and present-day religions with naturalistic accounts of the origin of religion, such as those to which Max Muller alludes and to theories formulated since Muller’s day, such as Emile Durkheim’s (1858-1917). Theologians, who are intimidated by Feuerbach's theory that divine beings are a projection of human nature, would do well to read Pritchard, as would philos- ophers of religion who refer uncritically to Sigmund Freud’s theories on the origin of reli- gion. Pritchard argues that these theories were bad science even in their own day.

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(c. 1600-1780), which formed the foundations of the modern mentality, are crumbling.

We do not yet know what the future holds, but it is clear that a funda- mental reevaluation of the Christian faith — free of the assumptions of the modern mentality that are generally hostile to a religious outlook — is called for. No longer can Christianity be put on the defensive, as it has been for the last three hundred years or so, because of the narrow view of reason and the reliance on classical science that are characteristic of the modern men- tality. Not only are the barriers to Christian belief erected by the modern mentality collapsing, but philosophy and science, once used to undermine belief in God, are now seen in some respects as actually pointing toward God.

The breakdown of the modern mentality is evident in at least four areas. First, it has been taken for granted in the intellectual world that the idea of God is superfluous. We do not need God to account for anything. Subject after subject is studied in our universities without reference to God, so that anyone educated outside church schools or colleges, is given the impression that religious questions are not among the fundamental questions which any person who uses his or her head has to confront sooner or later. It is not merely a matter of the separation of church and state, because the same thing exists in many countries of Europe and in Canada where there is no such doctrine of separation.

But today there are fundamental developments in philosophy and cos- mology that actually point toward God. It can no longer be claimed that philosophy and science have established that we live in a self-contained uni- verse. Hume’s and Kant’s philosophical arguments that it is pointless to ask whether the universe has an external cause have recently been seriously re- vised in secular philosophical circles.3 This radical change has been indepen- dently reinforced by recent developments in science, especially in cosmol- ogy. In both fields the questions arise, Why does the universe have this particular order, rather than another possible one? and Why does the uni- verse exist? These questions point toward God as an answer, but it is beyond the capacity of those fields of inquiry to make a positive pronouncement on the matter. All they can say is that the order and existence of the universe pose real questions that they cannot answer and recognize that God is the sort of reality that would answer them.

This is a complete about-face. Both science and philosophy have been

3 See, for example, William L. Rowe, The Cosmological Argument (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).

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used for several centuries to exclude even the possibility of God. On strictly intellectual grounds, this can no longer rightly be done. This is a fundamen- tally different cultural situation.

Once the embargo on the possibility of God is lifted, it is easy to show that the issue of divine existence is intellectually inescapable and important. For example, human beings are goal-seeking. Our goals are numerous and in some instances conflicting. To be rational we must order them into some priority. This is true of us as individuals as well as members of various social and political groups.

To order our goals rationally, we must make a match between our needs, interests, and desires, on the one hand, and what the physical and social environments permit us reasonably to hope we can achieve, on the other hand. Our estimate is greatly affected by whether we think this universe is ultimate or not. An estimate based on the conviction that the universe is ultimate is significantly different from an estimate based on the view that it is not. So the need to direct and order our lives as individuals and as societies is a reason to pursue the question of the status of our universe. Our goal- seeking behavior renders the question of what is ultimate inescapable for rational agents.

Furthermore, our needs, aspirations, and desires are far greater than can be satisfied should this universe be all that there is. If the universe is ulti- mate, then we must greatly reduce our aspirations and suffer the frustration of many of our needs and desires. To assume that we must pay this price is rational and sensible only if we have examined the status of the universe, and indeed examined it seriously and carefully. If people are sensible, they would want to know, earnestly want to know, whether this universe is ul- timate or not.

Christians, therefore, need not continue to be defensive. We, just as Soc- rates in ancient Greece, have a mission: to challenge the supposition that the status of the universe and our place in it have already been thoroughly set- tled by scientific and philosophic developments. On strictly scientific and philosophical grounds, we will show that science and philosophy do not explain everything. They do not establish what the status of our universe is nor our place in it. Both individuals and institutions, such as schools and universities, ought to consider and study anything that promises to shed light on our situation. We have the opportunity and task of turning people into seekers, as did Socrates.

The second breakdown of the modern mentality is the failure to find a basis for morality and society. A major project of the Enlightenment was to

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base traditional morality and society on reason and not on religion. It sought to show by reason4 alone that some things are wrong in nearly all circum- stances, that to become a moral person is of supreme importance for an individual and society, and that moral behavior is objective and not a matter of individual choice nor relative to society. The deepest of all our traditional moral convictions is that every person has intrinsic value. But it has been argued recently that all attempts to give morality and society a secular basis are bankrupt.5

When as individuals and as a society we chose a traditional morality, heavily influenced by the best in Greek culture and Christianity, the failure in secular philosophy did not matter for practical purposes. But today tra- ditional morality is being discarded, and we find