Page 5084 – Christianity Today (2024)

Where is evangelicalism headed?

The Washington, D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center brought 25 Christian scholars together last month to debate the rather bleak outlook offered by University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter in his book Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation (University of Chicago Press, 1987). Based on a three-year study of evangelical students and faculty in nine Christian colleges and seven seminaries, Hunter’s book concludes that the coming generation may be moving away from the key beliefs that once defined evangelicals.

Pessimists at the colloquium agreed with Hunter. They say future evangelicals are accommodating “the world” and, in a spirit of pleasant civility, are backing away from “intolerant-sounding” evangelical orthodoxy. But the optimists said the younger evangelicals are not discarding their heritage but rather reinterpreting traditional wisdom.

Hunter agrees that young evangelicals remain conservative on most issues. Nevertheless, he reports that future evangelicals are less likely to abide by the social mores of their ancestors. And, he writes, many younger believers are uncertain about difficult doctrinal questions, such as biblical inerrancy and the exclusivity of Christ as the only path to salvation.

Hunter’s book had the conference participants wondering whether evangelical colleges and seminaries are doing enough to instruct students in the theological tradition to enable them to stand firm against the pressures of today’s culture.

Theologian Carl F. H. Henry charged that Hunter’s research “points to noteworthy concessions” by the evangelical movement to the secular culture. He worries that “even on some of the best evangelical college campuses,” some professors “have taught that Jesus Christ is not the sole ground of human acceptance by God.” Henry said in some instances, “neo-orthodox” attitudes toward Scripture, “which accept the Bible’s fallibility at the expense of its comprehensive authority,” are becoming more acceptable.

Henry insisted evangelical institutions must boldy interact with contemporary intellectual theory while instilling prospective alumni “with an articulate Christian world view.” If they fail in this, Henry said, “then they have not identified or taken seriously their academic priorities.”

Under Siege

But David Winter, president of Westmont College in California, asserted that “Christian colleges are under siege,” while desperately trying to realize these objectives. Carl Lundquist, president of the Christian College Consortium, raised concerns that the academic environment remain open so that students can grapple with contending ideas in order to strengthen their own beliefs. “We need to find room between rigid indoctrination and a wholly open campus atmosphere,” he said.

Other participants claimed that Hunter’s study was too melancholy in its assessment of the younger generation. Grant Wacker, religion professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said Hunter’s concerns were “overdrawn.” Wacker believes evangelical attitudes about sin and virtue change because of changes in cultural context. At one time, he noted, evangelicals believed wearing neckties and jewelry was an accommodation to the world. That this is no longer the case does not necessarily reflect moral compromise, Wacker said.

George Marsden of Duke University Divinity School asserted that the things Hunter identifies as “slippages” in the evangelical tradition may simply be restatements of earlier evangelical ideas. Some of the changes may be for the better, he suggested. “The good old days of evangelicalism weren’t perhaps as good as we think,” he said.

All the participants agreed that the new generation of evangelicals will continue to confront significant cultural pressures. Recognizing the need for civility in a pluralistic world, they nonetheless concluded that evangelical orthodoxy must refuse to compromise its fundamentals in an attempt to be accepted by the culture.

By Amy L. Sherman, in Washington, D.C.

Poverty, civil war, and political persecution are sufficient reasons for thousands of Central Americans to leave their countries and come to the United States. But not all are sufficient reasons for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to let them stay. And while they await their fate, churches are trying to help them.

In order to receive political asylum, refugees must demonstrate well-founded fear of persecution or life danger facing them upon their return. Desire for a job and a better life are not sufficient grounds for asylum.

More than 50,000 Central Americans immigrated to the United States last year, mostly from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. They continue to come at a rate of at least 200 each day, exhausted and nearly penniless after bribing Mexican officials and paying the “coyotes” who guide them to the United States. Some tell stories of beatings and rapes.

Most enter the United States through Brownsville, Texas. This city on the Mexican border is the focus of a new detention policy on the part of the ins. Previously, once newcomers filed political asylum papers at INS border centers, they could attend their court hearings in the cities of their final destination. Most newcomers traveled to Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Miami, or Houston. Miami remains the most popular destination, especially among the recent wave of Nicaraguan refugees.

The new policy calls for a one-day, while-you-wait adjudication for asylum applicants. But shabby paperwork and a shortage of legal counsel limit refugees’ chances of proving political persecution.

Since the new policy went into effect last December 16, more than 90 percent of the asylum applicants have been turned down. The result: a shortage of immigration judges to hear months of backlogged appeals.

“The current detention policy in Brownsville is inappropriate,” explained Don Hammond, World Relief’s director of refugee resettlement in the United States. “There needs to be a proper adjudication of these people’s cases. Now everything is being done quickly, and they are just not getting a fair hearing. I don’t think everyone who comes across the border should be allowed to stay, but there has to be a good faith effort made for these people.”

The biggest headache: those denied asylum as well as those awaiting an appeal are not eligible for work permits under the new policy. While some Salvadorians are being deported, thus far Nicaraguans, for political reasons, are not.

“This is not the humanitarian way to deal with this issue,” continued Hammond. “Because they can’t work, there are people in Miami and Brownsville who are basically being starved out of our country unless voluntary agencies, churches, and humanitarian agencies get involved in paying their rent, getting them fed, and clothing them.”

Help From Churches

When a temporary restraining order suspended the detention policy for five weeks in January and February, thousands of immigrants left south Texas for their final destination. For most, that destination was Miami, and churches in the Miami area did their part to help.

For six weeks, the city of Miami opened Bobby Madura Stadium to 250 refugees. Church volunteers brought food and shared their faith. When the Baltimore Orioles arrived for training, churches provided vans and buses to transport refugees.

“This was a very small number of the thousands of Nicaraguans that we have in the community, but it dramatized the situation and brought it out into the open,” recounted Tom Willey, director of World Relief’s Miami office.

When Bill Iverson, pastor of the Shenandoah Presbyterian Church, learned that the stadium had to be vacated, he offered temporary accommodations for some refugees at his church. Since the session had not yet met to give permission to use the church, all 53 guests spent the first night at the Iverson home, where furniture was crowded into the corners to make room for cots. In the course of the next two weeks, other churches helped Shenandoah Presbyterian with meals and provided odd jobs for the visitors.

As a result of cooperative efforts in moving people from the stadium, area church leaders formed an evangelical task force. Coordinated by World Relief, churches and community agencies are sharing information and extra resources where possible.

But extra resources are rare. “There is no funding,” lamented World Relief’s Willey. He explained that due to a drop-off in the numbers of Cuban refugees, they are able to handle the current situation. “But the number of Cubans is beginning to pick up again.” He said the Southern Baptists and Nazarenes are especially involved in assisting refugees.

For many the situation remains tenuous. Willey recounted a phone call from a pastor who came upon a newly arrived family with only $200 among them. “The pastor went to the Baptist Home Mission board; they gave him another $300, and they were able to get them into an apartment. The church provided food and furniture and clothing. They have the first month’s rent paid; but how is this family going to pay the second month’s rent if they can’t work?”

By Dan Maul.

A desire to change society for the good has led many Christians to look favorably at Reconstructionism.

Although Pat Robertson failed in his bid to become U.S. President, the effects of his campaign remain evident. Recently Robertson backers in the Arizona Republican party joined with supporters of the state’s former governor, Evan Mecham, to pass a controversial resolution declaring the United States “a Christian nation,” and stating that the U.S. Constitution created “a republic based upon the absolute laws of the Bible, not a democracy.”

To create such a republic is the goal of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, which in the last few years has accelerated its emergence from obscurity. Generally, the movement’s proponents hold that the civil laws of Old Testament, theocratic Israel are normative for all societies in all times. Under such a system, such crimes as hom*osexuality and adultery would be capital offenses, punishable by death, according to some theonomists.

Leading Reconstructionist spokespersons are quick to add that the establishment of such a republic would have to be achieved through democratic means, and would, by virtual necessity, be accompanied by mass spiritual revival, including large-scale conversions to Jesus Christ.

The debate over Christian Reconstructionism, also referred to as theonomy, addresses the fundamental principles of how Christians ought to influence the societies in which they live. Some predict this will be the most important debate among evangelicals well into the 1990s.

Increasing Influence

One point on which both advocates of and detractors from Christian Reconstructionism agree is that the movement’s influence is rapidly on the rise. According to theonomist author Gary Demar, this is reflected by the increased demand for Reconstructionist literature and speakers among Christian colleges. Publishers, including Nashville, Tennessee-based Wolgemuth and Hyatt, are increasingly supplying outlets for authors who tend toward theonomic analysis.

Theonomist Joseph Kickasola, professor of international studies and Hebrew at CBN University, believes the perceived increase in Reconstructionist influence is better understood in terms of a “Biblical Law of Revival,” of which theonomists are a part. This revival, says Kickasola, has been accompanied by a “diminishing of dispensationalism,” especially among charismatics who, he says, are coming to see that “charismatic dispensationalist” is “a contradiction in terms.”

John Muether, professor at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, said that while doing research for a book on theonomy, he found the movement’s influence within Reformed theological circles “far more pervasive” than he had anticipated. Muether is one of some 15 professors at Westminster seminaries (East and West) working on a book whose goal is to provide an analysis of Reconstructionism from a Reformed theological perspective.

Muether suggests the widespread perception of unprecedented crisis in America has given rise to theonomy’s attractiveness. Noting theonomy’s postmillennial emphasis on preparing the world for Christ’s return, he notes, “Historically, millenarianism [an emphasis on the end times] has always risen in times of perceived crisis.”

Lutheran theologian Richard John Neuhaus, an opponent of Reconstructionism, maintains the movement’s growing popularity is due to the “false perception of certainty” it offers. “There is a felt market need for specific answers that come from God, not from somebody’s judgment,” he says.

Hazy Picture

One reason for divergent opinions of Christian Reconstructionism is that the term is variously understood. According to DeMar, anyone who believes that the entire Bible “applies to every facet of life” is in some sense a Reconstructionist. He suggested it is ironic that Prison Fellowship’s Charles Colson, a critic of theonomy, relies on the Old Testament for his positions on prison reform.

Determining which people and organizations should properly be considered theonomist is far from an exact science. The organization Coalition on Revival (COR), for example, counts among its supporters avowed theonomist leaders R. J. Rushdoony, considered the patriarch of Christian Reconstructionism, and prolific theonomist author Gary North.

But among those who have signed the COR manifesto (which does not reflect uniquely theonomist positions) are theologian J. I. Packer and Robert Dugan, director of the National Association of Evangelicals’ Office of Public Affairs, both of whom maintain they oppose theonomy.

COR founder and director Jay Grimstead, when asked if he is a theonomist, replied, “I don’t call myself one.” He added, “A lot of us are coming to realize that the Bible is God’s standard of morality … in all points of history … and for all societies, Christian and non-Christian alike.… It so happens that Rushdoony, [theonomist Greg] Bahnsen, and North understood that sooner.”

Grimstead added, “There are a lot of us floating around in Christian leadership—James Kennedy is one of them—who don’t go all the way with the theonomy thing, but who want to rebuild America based on the Bible.” He said the question of how much of the Old Testament ought to be applied is “absolutely unsettled” among COR members.

On Forming Coalitions

Jay Grimstead was the original executive director of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI), which held three major consultations over a ten-year lifespan that ended in 1987 by ICBI’s own design (CT, Nov. 6, 1987, p. 42). Grimstead founded the Coalition on Revival (COR) in 1982, partly, he said, to take up the battle against liberal theology where ICBI left it. Though he felt the ICBI could have been more aggressive, his respect for them remains high.

In the COR “Manifesto for the Christian Church,” the organization is described as “a network of evangelical leaders from every major denominational and theological perspective who share a vision for and a commitment to revival, renewal, and reformation in Church and society in America.”

The document contains no teaching unique to theonomy, though it is signed by most of the acknowledged Christian Reconstructionist leaders in America. Among signatories not identified with Reconstructionism are theologian J. I. Packer; urban ministry specialist John Perkins; Ralph Winter, director of the U.S. Center for World Mission; Robert Dugan, director of the National Association of Evangelicals’ (NAE) Office on Public Affairs; and former World Vision International president Ted Engstrom.

Lutheran theologian Richard John Neuhaus said coalition building in general is a “dicey proposition.” He advised against entering coalitions wherein disagreement with some members “cuts to the bone,” stating that such a determination is a matter of an individual’s “prudential judgment.” Neuhaus added that coalitions tend to be dominated by the “hard-nosed ideologues” who are most committed to obtaining their goals.

The NAE’s Dugan said he has had very little involvement with COR, but that he signed the COR manifesto because it is a “consensus document” with which he agrees. “If [COR] adopts a more specific [Reconstructionist] agenda,” Dugan said, “I’d take my name off of it.”

Theonomic “Impulse”

Despite the uncertainty over how to define Reconstructionism, CBN’s Kickasola cites what he says is the major unifying element in the Biblical Law Revival movement: its doctrine that the kingdom of God on earth was inaugurated by Christ. He contrasts this with the dispensationalist view that the kingdom will be inaugurated after Jesus’ second coming.

According to COR’s Grimstead, an entire generation of Christian leaders has been “wrongly influenced by a less-than-biblical theology coming out of the Scofield Bible.” He says this misguided theology includes a view of the world as Satan’s world. “Now,” he says, “we’re seeing that it’s God’s world, and he wants us to be its stewards, the conscience of society.” He adds, “We believe the church is to blame for the terrible state of Western civilization.”

Thus the tone of the current movement, however it is labeled, is active, not passive, with an emphasis on changing society by taking control of its institutions. Westminster seminary’s Muether sees such a “theonomic impulse” in Christian activist groups such as Operation Rescue (though Muether does not suggest Operation Rescue leadership is theonomist).

And Christians are becoming more politically active in their states, in addition to those in Arizona. Theonomist Joseph Morecraft, pastor of Chalcedon Presbyterian Church in Dunwoody, Georgia, recently said that believers in that state are working through the Republican party to declare the Bible the source of civil law. An associate of Morecraft said the political activists regard the question of who, technically, is a theonomist as irrelevant.

Potential Dangers

Westminster seminary’s Muether fears the church’s mission is being unduly politicized by the movement. Indeed, several scholars have said they regard Christian Reconstructionism as the “liberation theology” of the political Right.

Ronald Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action and a favorite target of theonomists’ attacks, maintains the Reconstructionist movement is damaging the already tainted image of evangelicals in American society. He noted that, according to research done by the Williamsburg Charter Foundation, nearly one-third of those in the academic community regard evangelicals as a threat to democracy.

Sider affirms that biblical values ought to influence public policy, but he said this must happen within the context of pluralism. “It’s absolutely crucial,” he says, “that evangelical Christians take the lead in insisting there be freedom of religion for everybody.”

Lutheran theologian Neuhaus cites what he calls the “ominous possibility” that the resurgence of evangelical involvement in the public arena of the last decade will be co-opted by theonomy, because theonomy offers “the appearance of a coherent rationale.” He maintains, “To turn the Bible into a code book or a blueprint for societal reordering is to deny what the Bible itself presents itself to be, which is the story of God’s salvation of a sinful world in Jesus Christ.”

Neuhaus said he is encouraged that some Christians are “rediscovering the classic Christian, biblically and theologically grounded understanding of the relationship between salvation and the right ordering of society.”

Sider acknowledged, however, that Christian scholarship by and large has not adequately addressed the question of the relevance of the Old Testament for Christian living. “The focusing of that question,” he said, “is [Christian Reconstructionism’s] greatest contribution.”

By Randy Frame.

After declaring war on Universal Pictures over its release of the controversial movie The Last Temptation of Christ, Christian leaders have claimed victory in boycott efforts against the filmmaker and its parent company, MCA. But while the movie apparently did lose money during its theater run, the actual dollars-and-cents impact of those efforts remains unclear.

Last August, after Christian protests failed to prevent Universal from releasing The Last Temptation, leaders such as Jerry Falwell called for “an all-out effort to cripple Hollywood.” Other prominent Christian groups, including Focus on the Family, Campus Crusade for Christ, and the National Association of Evangelicals, joined in a boycott campaign that targeted Universal films, Universal Studios tours, Cineplex-Odeon theaters, and all business interests of MCA, which include MCA and Motown Records, the USA Cable Network, and Spencer gift shops. Leaders also asked concerned Christians not to buy the video E.T., a Universal product.

Tell-Tale Ticket Sales

Film industry observers agree that The Last Temptation was a box-office loser. Estimates of Universal’s gross income on the film range from $10 million to $12 million, while estimates of the total cost to make, distribute, and promote it run from $16 million to $20 million. (Universal has not released any figures.) But interpretations of those numbers differ.

“I don’t see how [the boycott] could have been any more successful than what it was,” said Don Wildmon, executive director of the American Family Association, citing the film’s losses. He also pointed to the fact that the movie ran in only about 130 of the nation’s 130,000 theaters.

Veteran Hollywood producer Ken Wales, however, believes that viewing profit-and-loss figures does not give an accurate picture of the movie’s failure or the boycott’s success.

“The film was not a financial success in any way,” said Wales, whose many screen credits include The Tamarind Seed and the Billy Graham film The Prodigal. “But money was not the issue.”

According to Wales, Universal signed director Martin Scorsese to a three-film deal, which allowed him to make one film of his choice. Scorsese chose his pet project, The Last Temptation.

“It was an art film,” Wales said. “It was made on a fairly low budget—about $6 or $7 million, compared with the average of $19 million. But [Universal] didn’t expect it to be a big commercial moneymaker.” The payoff for the studio, Wales explained, will come from the other two films, which are supposed to be more attractive to broader audiences.

Wales feels strongly that Christians should have objected to The Last Temptation. In fact, he was one of the speakers at a Los Angeles protest rally on August 11 that drew 25,000 demonstrators. But he was distressed by the antagonistic tone of other protest leaders.

“The protests probably added some to the box office, or at least made people go to see the film sooner,” Wales said. “That was an unavoidable side effect. But after that, we should have just let it go. Fait accompli. Done.”

Boycott efforts have only “perpetuated the confrontational spirit,” Wales said. They have not been successful in putting any financial pressure on Universal, and their spirit has further alienated Hollywood from conservative Christianity. “We’ve dug some deep holes,” he said.

Remembering Universal

Boycott efforts have been moved to the back burner in recent months by most groups. “We are not actively promoting [the boycott],” said Wildmon, whose AFA mailed 3.5 million packages of protest letters and petitions to Christians last fall. “But we hope that people will remember Universal.” He dismissed claims that The Last Temptation box office shortcomings may be irrelevant. “How long would a company be in business if they put out products they didn’t expect to make money on?” he said.

Measuring the impact of such a wide-ranging boycott is next to impossible, said Buster Holmes, director of special projects for Mastermedia International, a Southern California ministry to media leaders. Mastermedia continues to promote the boycott, but Holmes believes it has had only limited success because other events, such as the prolife protests of Operation Rescue, the national elections, and the Christmas holidays, have diverted Christians’ attention and energy away from MCA/Universal.

Boycott efforts appear to have had little impact on sales of the E.T. video; its 14 million copies set a record as the biggest-selling home video of all time. Wildmon and other leaders, however, say they continue to receive letters from individuals who report they are not patronizing MCA companies. And there have been several cases of industry professionals and businesses who have refused to work for Universal, including singer/songwriter Steve Gooden, who tore up a contract with MCA worth several hundred thousand dollars. After initially refusing to release Gooden from his contract, MCA allowed Gooden to buy back his contract for several thousand dollars.

Though Universal’s pocketbook may not have felt the effects of The Last Temptation protests, the studio apparently does not wish to revive any controversy. Reports that Universal would rerelease the film around Easter were quickly denied. And according to a report in Variety, Universal is negotiating with an independent distributor to handle the video version of the film.

By Ken Sidey.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY/April 21, 1989

The Palestinian intifadah highlights tensions for Christians in the Middle East.

Last month marked the tenth anniversary of the U.S.-brokered Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt, yet many around the world wonder how much closer to peace the Middle East has moved in the past decade. And although Christians make up a small minority of both sides of the Israeli/Arab conflict, they are players caught in the churning turmoil. Virtually every Christian in the region has been affected in one way or another by the 16-month-old Palestinian uprising, the intifadah.

Shaking Off

According to Samir Kafity, Anglican bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Jerusalem and the Middle East, intifadah literally means “shaking off” and in Arabic is the same word that Christ used when he instructed his disciples to shake off the dust from cities rejecting them. With the intifadah, the Palestinians are attempting to shake off 20 years of Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Although the news media generally paint the intifadah as being a bunch of unruly teenagers throwing stones and Molotov co*cktails, the tactics of the uprising are much more comprehensive. Since December of 1987, Palestinians have been on a partial strike, with all Arab-owned businesses in the Occupied Terrorities—including the once-lucrative souvenir shops in Jerusalem—shut down after noon. In addition, general strikes are called with increasing frequency, with all Arab activities ceased. Other strategies include the resignations of Palestinian police and municipal workers, a boycott of Israeli-made products, repeated protests and demonstrations, a general policy of noncooperation with Israeli authorities, a campaign of pro-Palestinian graffiti, and the flying of the Palestinian flag, which is illegal in the Territories.

As the intifadah has picked up momentum, particularly among Palestinian young people, the Israeli military has been increasingly frustrated in attempts to suppress the uprising. Earlier this spring, the U.S. State Department’s annual human-rights report criticized the Israeli military’s use of “unnecessarily harsh measures” in dealing with the intifadah. Measures cited included the closure of schools in the West Bank from kindergarten to university, poor treatment of Arab prisoners, the detaining of thousands of Arabs without charge or sentencing, and the destruction of Arab homes.

The army defends its conduct, noting there is a code of behavior that soldiers must follow. Acknowledging that abuses do occur, the army nonetheless says it does the best it can under conditions of a rebellion.

The intifadah has involved all segments of the Palestinian population, young and old, male and female, and, according to Bishara Awad, president of the evangelical Bethlehem Bible College in the Occupied Territories, “Christian Palestinians are also involved in the Palestinian struggles with Israel.” Currently, less than 10 percent of the Palestinian population is Christian.

Awad said that in the midst of the intifadah, the Bible college is attempting to be a model of Christian behavior. “We tell [our students] the ways of the Lord are different,” he said. “We do not throw stones, but we do other things with the intifadah, like visiting the sick and jailed, and observing the strikes.”

The uprising has taken a toll on the school, which has been officially closed, along with all schools in the West Bank, since December 1987. (Israeli officials say the schools in the area pose a “security threat” and claim that since the schools have been closed, the number of stone-throwing incidents, as well as the number of Palestinian deaths and injuries, has dropped.) The college has been attempting to hold classes in a nearby facility; however, classes are interrupted for strike days.

Awad said that because of the political unrest and difficulty of holding classes, the number of enrolled students has dropped to 15. He said the school is very concerned about one student, Khader, who was picked up at the beginning of February by the Israeli secret police. As of last month, Khader had been held without charge and placed in an isolation cell. “Khader is a Christian and loves the Lord,” Awad said. “We are not aware of him being involved in any political activities.”

In addition, Awad’s brother, Alex, who had been finishing his master’s degree at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky, has been denied permission to return to Bethlehem and his duties as dean of the college. Awad, who holds an American passport, had hoped to return to pastor a church in Jerusalem and continue his work at the Bible college.

As the level of violence increases in the Territories, Christian Palestinians, often with the help of American missionaries and relief groups, are working to help the injured, widowed, and displaced persons. Israeli rubber bullets and tear gas have created an overload for medical facilities. For example, in Gaza, which is the site of daily confrontations between youth and the military, the Episcopal-run Ali Arab hospital is often filled with victims of gunshot wounds, beatings, and tear-gas raids. Many of the patients are children and teenagers. Charitable groups are also beseiged with individual cases where family homes have been demolished or family members have been imprisoned or suffered particular hardships.

Some Christians have become very deeply involved in the cause of Palestinian independence. Anglican Bishop Elie Khoury has generated controversy in some church circles because of his position on the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Khoury says his work with the PLO shows that Palestinian Christians and Muslims can “live together beautifully” and work as equals. “Our strategy is for peace,” Khoury said. “Pluralism has become a necessity.”

Victor Diab, the Palestinian pastor of an Episcopal church in Amman, Jordan, said those who were initially critical of Khoury’s involvement with the PLO “are seeing it may be good” in light of recent events. “The church has been involved in the national aspirations of the people and community at large,” Diab said. “I don’t know where you can draw the line between church and politics.”

Christian Arabs In Israel

The intifadah has created difficult situations as well for Christian Arabs living within Israel and holding Israeli citizenship. Riah Abu Assal, pastor of the Christ Evangelical Episcopal Church in Nazareth, said that while Israeli Arabs have held a few strikes in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in the Occupied Territories, most “don’t support the intifadah as much as I’d like them to.” Assal said many of the Palestinians within Israel view the West Bank “like it was on the Iran/Iraq border,” or somewhere else far removed from their daily lives. “They don’t want the Israelis to view them like the other Palestinians,” he said. “They want good relations with the Israelis.

Assal himself has been outspoken in support of the intifadah. He is general secretary of the Progressive List for Peace party, a political party of Jews and Palestinians that currently holds two Knesset seats. He has been forbidden to enter the West Bank and restricted in other travel because of his political activities.

Other Palestinians within Israel are finding increased burdens placed upon them as a result of the intifadah. Father Elias Chacour, a Melkite priest who is active in reconciliation efforts, is battling for permission to build a second building for his Prophet Elias school near Galilee (named for the prophet Elijah). The school has 580 Christian and Muslim students for grades 9–12, and two Jewish teachers. School officials had hoped to add a second building to increase enrollment to 800 and add further facilities.

Chacour applied for a permit to begin construction on the second building, but never received any reply from the authorities. Deciding he “needed a school more than a permit,” Chacour began building and immediately heard from the authorities, who got a court injuction to forbid him from building any further. He has since received all the required approvals, but the Ministry of the Interior claims the foundation of the new building is ten meters too far in one direction. Authorities are threatening to bulldoze the building. Chacour is known in American evangelical churches for his autobiography, Blood Brothers (Chosen Books, 1984).

Tear Gas Is a Verb, Too

At the Near East Council of Churches’ (NECC) educational center in the Gaza Strip, an English class for young Palestinian women was learning about gerunds—words that are both nouns and verbs. When the time came for examples, the teacher chose a term she thought would be meaningful.

“Tear gas is a verb, too,” she told the students.

In the world of the Gaza refugee camps, where tear gas, gunfire, beatings, curfews, and arrests are commonplace methods to put down the intifadah, the teacher’s example was indeed apt. The uprising was born in Gaza, and Gaza remains a hotbed for ferment and violence.

In the midst of the turmoil, the NECC Committee for Refugee Work is attempting to equip Palestinian refugees to help themselves. At the Gaza center, in addition to English courses, women can participate in secretarial studies, computer studies, family studies, and cooperative projects in knitting, weaving, dressmaking, and sewing. Course work in accounting and business administration is also under consideration. For young men, the center offers vocational training in such skill areas as metal and electrical works, welding, and carpentry.

But the NECC self-help project has been hampered by the effects of the intifadah. Students and instructors have difficulty coming to the center because of curfews, strikes, and travel restrictions. Classes have also been interrupted by the arrests and detentions of students and teachers. And students have endless stories of personal and family harassment by the Israeli soldiers attempting to quell the uprising.

Still, the NECC works to keep the projects going. “The Gaza Strip has been neglected for a long time, and therefore it is imperative to extend every possible support to meet some of the needs in order to alleviate the suffering of the people, especially during these difficult days,” said NECC executive secretary Constantine Dabbagh.

Supporting Israel

Israel’s tiny Messianic Jewish population has also been touched by the uprising. “The intifadah has been such a trauma to the land and the country and believers,” said David Stern, a Messianic leader in Jerusalem and author of the book Restoring the Jewishness of the Gospel.

Stern is critical of a “replacement theology,” which says that since the Jews did not live up to their covenant with God, believers in Jesus Christ have become God’s chosen people. Stern, like most Messianic Jews, instead believes in an “olive tree theology,” by which Gentiles have been “grafted into the chosen people.”

Most Messianic Jews share the concerns and fears of the Israeli government and support its positions on the Palestinian issue. For many of these Christians, the restoration of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy and signals the coming of Christ. One Jewish believer, whose parents moved to Israel from Yemen in 1938, argued that “the God of Israel is standing with Israel because that is his purpose.” “It’s a matter of survival,” she said. “The Jewish people are fighting for their lives.”

Many Messianic Jews also share the Israeli skepticism about a peaceful, democratic Palestinian state. They fear the rise of Muslim fundamentalism in the Middle East and are concerned that a Palestinian state would be the stepping stone for a “holy war” against Israel and Christians living there.

Questions about human-rights abuses are uncomfortable for many Jewish believers. Some are involved in the Israeli Peace Movement and protest action against the Palestinians, but others, while acknowledging there are abuses, argue that in light of the past and continuing violence done by Palestinians, the Israeli behavior is “quite ethical.”

For still others, the question is larger than current political events. “I’m not so interested in defending the Jewish behavior,” Stern said. “The solution to the problem of the land is to come to biblical faith, to bring the gospel to the Jewish people, and Gentiles too.”

There have been some attempts at fellowship between Palestinian and Jewish believers, but both sides admit the road has been difficult. “We know the body is one … and a unified group of believing Arabs and believing Jews would be … a powerful one,” Stern said. “But it’s hard to know where the line between politics and religion is drawn.” Stern and Bishara Awad have been in correspondence and have met together to discuss each other’s theologies regarding the land and the Jewish people.

While Christians on both sides of the conflict agree on little politically, they do share a common fear and a common hope. The fear is that an even greater bloodbath will occur if extremists are allowed to seize power on either side before a meaningful solution can be found.

The common hope is found in the gospel. “Just because we live in a religiously polarized society is no excuse to be timid about our Jesus and our great salvation,” Bishara Awad said. “It is our prayer that the church of Jesus Christ will get bold again, look up to God, be filled with his Spirit, and recognize that the church’s mission is to be witnesses.”

Time Is Beastly

How completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none.… For those out of Christ, time is a devouring beast; before the sons of the new creation time crouches and purrs and licks their hands.

—A. W. Tozer in The Knowledge of the Holy

Not Just A Storybook

Reading Bible stories to children is never an innocent act. It is useless to pretend that the Bible is simply another collection of tales, that Abraham, Noah and Moses are only another group of heroes, different from but equal to Achilles, Rama or Thor. One proof is that nursery school classes are replete with Jacobs and Joshuas, but now that the sixties are over one would be hard pressed to find a tiny Alcibiades or Krishna in the sandbox. We in the West are formed by or against the stories of the Bible, and when we read them to our children we are really saying, “This is how you and I inhabit the world.”

—Mary Gordon in the New York Times Book Review (Nov. 8, 1987)

The Elusive Jesus

[Lloyd] Douglas’s most important decision in his book [The Robe] was not to permit Jesus on stage. We learn about Him through the memories and experiences of those who did know Him.… The Lord, not to put too fine an edge on things, is a slippery one. He can be captured, more or less, by the visual arts because they do not require that He speak or move or act. But in the literary arts He appears either too good to be human or too human to be good. Sometimes, as in the case of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the author manages both errors. Douglas, by keeping Jesus offstage, preserves that which is essential in Jesus: His elusiveness, His disconcerting refusing to fit into any of the categories with which we attempt to capture and contain Him.

—Andrew M. Greeley in the introduction to the paperback edition of The Robe

Lost Reality

Ministries that genuinely touch the world all can be traced to movement of the Holy Spirit. This is a truth that seems lost to today’s church.

—Ray Stedman in a private conversation

No Shortcuts

Christian communicators … face the temptation, as Jesus did, to test God and find a shortcut to success. If Jesus had jumped from the pinnacle of the temple, it would have been the ultimate publicity stunt. But that wasn’t the way God wanted to usher in the Kingdom.

—Ron Wilson in The Next to the Last Word

God’S Grace

As murder storywriters assume, and as most of us learn in experience, we have in us capacities for fury, fear, envy, greed, conceit, callousness, and hate which, given the right provocation, could make killers out of us all—baby-batterers or Bluebeards, professional thugs or amateur hit men. G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown explained his method of detection by saying, “You see, it was I who killed all those people”—in the sense that he looked within himself to find the mentality that would produce the crime he was investigating, and did in fact discover it there.…

Brown, though fictitious, states fact. When the fathomless wells of rage and hatred in the normal human heart are tapped, the results are fearful. “There but for the grace of God go I.” Only restraining and renewing grace enables anyone to keep the sixth commandment.

—J. I. Packer in Lord, I Want to Be a Christian

No Deprived Childhood

I’m grateful … that from my mother’s example, I found the base for worship—that I found a love of sitting and reading the Bible for myself and looking up things in it.

How many of us, the South’s writers-to-be of my generation, were blessed in one way or another, if not blessed alike, in not having gone deprived of the King James Version of the Bible. Its cadence entered into our ears and our memories for good. The evidence, or the ghost of it, lingers in all our books.

“In the beginning was the Word.”

—Eudora Weltys in One Writer’s Beginning (Reader’s Digest condensation, Sept. 1986)

ROBERT BROW¹Robert Brow is rector of Saint James’s Anglican Church in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Dear Doctor:

You wondered what I was doing praying with one of your patients in the hospital. I’ll tell you, by explaining seven principles, or means, of spiritual healing.

The first principle has to do with relief from guilt. You know the vast literature about the consequences of guilt. You have seen the ulcers, skin conditions, sleeplessness, migraines, cancer, and other problems that come from an overwhelming sense of moral failure. And most of the people you send to a psychiatrist are bothered by guilt. I try, therefore, to help the person I visit to recognize his or her sense of moral failure and accept forgiveness from God.

Three years ago a woman drove 100 miles to see me because of guilt. She felt responsible for the suicide of her brother-in-law. She had nightmares, headaches, and skin sores. No medicines had helped. I asked her if she believed God forgives murderers, and she said yes. So I asked her to accept God’s forgiveness as if she had really murdered her brother-in-law. Actually, all she felt guilty about was failing to answer his call for help. But when I prayed, and assured her of forgiveness, she drove home, slept well, and was healed within days.

There is a second reason I pray with some of your patients. You know as well as I that hatred, anger, jealousy, and resentment have terrible effects: They cause high blood pressure, palpitations, and pain in the guts—to use layman’s language. So the second principle of spiritual healing is that the person must be helped to transmute hatred, anger, jealousy, and resentment into love. One way I do this is to listen carefully, and then help the person express the bad feelings in prayer to God.

Our Need For Rest

You also deal with people every day who are sick because of pressure, frustration at work, and worries about money, all of which relate to the third principle of healing: our need of rest. I get little arthritic pains myself when I have too much running through my mind. But while I have acquired the happy ability to lie down and drop off to sleep within two minutes, and have a cottage to escape to on my day off, what of those who do not enjoy such luxuries? Some solve the problem with increasing amounts of alcohol. You have pills that can help. My task is to help a patient relax in God’s care, rearrange life’s priorities, and take time for genuine recreation.

You have also doubtless read the massive evidence that shows that babies who are not touched and cuddled can literally die. This need of ours to be touched, whatever our age, has to do with another aspect of healing. That is why I often sit by a sick patient’s side and hold his or her hand as I pray. I am amazed not only at how much the patient appreciates it, but also at how often he or she can then find courage to start getting better.

I remember a very capable nurse from our church in Toronto who seemed unable to shake a case of the blues. After visiting her for several weeks in the hospital, one day I did a rather unprofessional thing for a minister: I took her in my arms and hugged her—for two or three minutes. I can’t imagine what you would have thought had you stopped in on your rounds, but she thanked me, and went back to work three days later.

When The Patient Is Lonely

A fifth aspect of healing has to do with chronic loneliness. I try to visit a hospital patient two or three times a week, and keep the person in touch with other members of our church who also drop in. I would like to think that no one could remain unloved and lonely if he or she belonged to our church family. Often we fail. But if loneliness is a cause of sickness, then I assume that being a part of a loving community is one means of spiritual healing.

The sixth means of healing that you recognize every day is the importance of faith. One of your main tasks as a doctor is to maintain the patient’s faith in you. When faith goes, healing is hindered. And as you know, doctors have proved you can give a placebo of pink water, a bread pill, or a harmless injection, and, if the patient believes such things will cure him, healing often takes place. The problem is that doctors—and ministers—are fallible; it is important as soon as possible to transfer a person’s faith from the human means to God himself. Whenever we do that, spiritual healing can happen. And if healing should not come, a patient who has faith will be more ready to die with dignity and in peace, which is a kind of healing in itself.

Rooting For The Sick

Let me mention one more means of healing, which you may find more problematical. Whenever someone really cares and longs for the good of another, there is prayer. When you found yourself waking up and praying again and again that night when your own daughter was in intensive care, you were praying, even though I know you insist you are an agnostic. I believe that when a lot of people are rooting for a person who is sick, healing is very much easier than if everybody wished that person were dead. So one of my tasks was to assure your patient in the hospital that I was praying for her. I also told her that many other people were praying for her, and that we mention her by name in our services.

We also give thanks when we pray for her—especially now that she is on the road to recovery.

COLIN BROWN¹Colin Brown is professor of systematic theology and associate dean and director of the Center for Advanced Theological Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. He is the author of two books on miracles: Miracles and the Critical Mind (Eerdmans) and That You May Believe (Eerdmans).

In our secular society, even Christians need to be reminded of the supernatural reality of God’s intervention in our lives. But when some Christian leaders teach that we should expect miracles—especially healing miracles—to attend the contemporary church, many Christians don’t know what to think.

In this essay, adapted from the book Tough Questions Christians Ask (Christianity Today/Victor Books), theologian Colin Brown treads the treacherous path between those who deny God’s miraculous activity today and those who shape their entire ministries around the supernatural.

“Should we go?” The question floored me. If she had asked me about the finer points of the Arian controversy or the date of the Exodus, I could have spoken for an hour or two. But the mother addressing me was not interested in such topics. She was worried about her daughter and her medical problem. She was asking whether she should take her to the healing service held in the church down the road.

Although this happened 30 years ago, the memory of it is fresh. I had been ordained barely a month before. Despite three years of cramming my head with answers to all kinds of intellectual questions in order to get my theological degree, the one question I was not ready for was “Should we expect miracles today?”

As the weeks went by, I began to think more deeply about healing and miracles. I read books. I attended meetings. I got to know the minister who held the healing services. “You are only preaching half the gospel,” he used to say, “if you are only preaching about forgiveness and salvation. When Jesus was on Earth, he healed as well as taught. He does the same today.”

Thirty years later, I keep hearing the same challenge. But now—as then—I keep running into the same problems.

Among Christians, two schools of thought have emerged in regard to miracles today. One says that the age of miracles is past. Miracles were given as divine attestation to the authority of Jesus and to the truth of the gospel. Once that proof was given, there was no need for it to be repeated.

But to the second school of thought this answer sounds almost like deism—as if God is no longer active in the world. Some members of this school go so far as to say that miracles are needed in the world today to convince people of the power of the gospel. Without “power encounters” that demonstrate the superior power of Christ, they believe the gospel would make little headway. But to members of the first school this seems to say that if miracles did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them. And to these observers, many of the present-day claims to miracles just do not ring true.

Which school is right? How should we go about making up our minds? There are two tests that we can apply: We can look at appeals to experience, and we can examine the teaching of Scripture.

Appeal To Experience

Unfortunately, many claims to miracles are open to criticism. Stories are published about answered prayer for healing, but the reader is rarely told of the relapses that followed. Testimonies are given to healings, but the role of medical treatment is often downplayed. In some circles, when healing occurs, the charismatic healer receives the credit. When it fails to happen, the failure is attributed to other factors.

For instance, the minister who held the healing services down the road from my first pastorate insisted that people were regularly being healed. But when I asked members of the staff of his church whether they had seen anything they would claim to be a miracle, they were more guarded. The only straight answers that I got were negative answers.

To say this is not to deny that God wonderfully answers prayer for healing today. Rather, it is to admit frankly that the church needs to do a better job of tracking and substantiating claims to miracles. We must recognize that when we claim miracles occur, we are putting God’s reputation on the line. As a charismatic friend of mine once said to me, “Integrity can get lost in the middle of excitement.”

One way to evaluate the claims of miraculous experience is to look at its frequency in the history of the church. Seventy years ago the great evangelical scholar B. B. Warfield wrote a book entitled Counterfeit Miracles (reprinted by Banner of Truth), which remains the most thorough examination of testimony to the miraculous from the early church down to Lourdes and Christian Science in Warfield’s own day. Based on the evidence presented by Warfield, and supported by others, we can draw two conclusions: On the one hand, God has not ceased to answer prayer for healing, sometimes in extraordinary ways, but most often not apart from loving care and proper medical treatment. On the other hand, there is a lack of solid documentation to support the claim that miracles of the kind found in the Bible have continued down the ages. There are no grounds in history for saying, “If only we had the faith, God would resume doing the miracles that he did in New Testament times.”

Three Mistakes

Does Scripture encourage us to expect miracles today like those depicted in the Gospels? In applying this second test we shall first note three common mistakes and then look at some passages that are often quoted by those who say we should expect biblical miracles today.

The first common mistake is to assume that certain passages of Scripture that have a specific application can be applied generally today. The classic case is Luke 4:18: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.” Many see in these words a statement of the mission of the church. But when Jesus said them, he was reading Isaiah 61:1 in the synagogue at Nazareth. After he sat down, he declared, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). In its context we see that this prophecy applies to Jesus alone. It refers to his anointing by the Holy Spirit after his baptism. By reading from this Scripture and applying it to himself, Jesus was laying claim to be the Messiah, which means” anointed.” Jesus alone is the Christ, the Anointed One, and no one else may lay claim to this anointing and this role.

Other examples of misapplied texts are found in the Epistles. When Paul spoke of “the signs of an apostle” (2 Cor. 12:12), he was referring to his own ministry. The office of apostle ceased with the close of the first century. Another example is Hebrews 2:4, which says that God “bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his own will.” This refers to the ministry of Jesus and the founding of the church. The passage is not talking about what happens when the gospel is proclaimed in each and every age.

The second common mistake is to fail to distinguish between the different commands of Christ. Jesus instructed the Twelve to “heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons” (Matt. 10:8). But this was a special mission. Jesus went on to say: “You received without pay, give without pay. Take no gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff; for the laborer deserves his food” (10:9–10). It is funny how some people appeal to the first part of these instructions and claim that they apply today, but ignore the rest. Even a cursory glance at this passage, however, shows that the disciples’ mission had limited goals. They were forbidden to go to the Gentiles and Samaritans and were charged with going to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” (10:6).

When we turn to the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, we find no mention at all of miracles or healing. The commission of the risen Christ to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded, makes no mention of miracles (Matt. 28:19–20). Nor, for that matter, does Luke’s account (Luke 24:47). Both Luke and John stress forgiveness of sins (John 20:23). John mentions “signs,” but the signs that he is concerned with are those that Jesus performed in his earthly life. It is these signs that are the ground for faith (John 20:30–31).

The third common mistake we need to recognize is the claim that salvation means wholeness here and now: If the kingdom has come, we should expect to see the blessings of the kingdom. Various arguments are put forward in support of this claim. It is sometimes said that there is healing in the Atonement. It is sometimes argued that the privileges of the believer under the New Covenant are greater than those under the old. It is also argued that God’s concern is for our shalom, our peace, which includes our health and prosperity. None of these arguments, however, adds up to a promise that we can expect a continued succession of miracles today.

As a matter of fact, the Bible knows no single composite picture of wholeness consisting of health, wealth, and happiness as the birthright of every born-again Christian. The Beatitudes say nothing about material wealth, health, or ongoing miracles (Matt. 5:1–12; Luke 6:20–23), though they have much to say about hardships and the cost of discipleship.

Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor. 12:7) is a further reminder that even an apostle who worked miracles (2 Cor. 12:12) could also suffer affliction. It is sometimes said that Paul is talking here about a “weakness” and not an illness, and that the “thorn in the flesh” was perhaps an opponent.

Though we will probably never know for sure what it was, some things are certain. One of them is that the word translated as “weakness” (astheneia) also means “sickness” or “infirmity” in numerous places (see Luke 5:15; 8:2; 13:11–12; John 5:5; 11:4; Acts 28:9; 1 Tim. 5:23; and Heb. 11:34). Of particular interest is its use in Galatians 4:13, where Paul says: “You know it was because of a bodily ailment [astheneia] that I preached the gospel to you at first.” Evidently his ailment compelled him to remain for a time in Galatia, where he took the opportunity to preach the gospel. The passage goes on, moreover, to suggest that the problem in question was something to do with Paul’s eyesight. For he recalls that they would have plucked out their own eyes and given them to him, if it would have done any good (Gal. 4:15). It is further supported by his reference to the large letters that he wrote with his own hand at the end of the letter to the Galatians (6:11), and it also fits with the fact that Paul’s letters were regularly taken down by companions who served as secretaries (for example, see Rom. 16:22; 1 Cor. 1:1; 16:21; Col. 4:18).

Although we cannot know with certainty what exactly was Paul’s “thorn in the flesh,” we do know that it did not go away. Paul made it a matter of persistent prayer. He received God’s answer. God did not remove the “thorn in the flesh” but told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).

The Promises Of God

The sufficiency of God’s grace is a central theme of Scripture. Failure to recognize this lies at the root of so many false expectations, misguided actions, spiritual depressions, and disillusionments. This failure is really a failure to appreciate and accept what God has promised.

So what about those passages in the New Testament that seem to promise that we can expect miracles today? Let us look at three: the promise concerning greater works, the saying that faith moves mountains, and the teaching in James about prayer for the sick.

John 14:12–14 contains the promise of Jesus: “He who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father.… If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” Does this mean that we should all expect to perform miracles? Perhaps the best clues to the meaning of the passage are provided by the other verses about the “work of God” in this Gospel. John 5:20 speaks of “greater works,” which are explained as the Son giving life to the dead and granting eternal life to those who believe. The “work of God” is described in John 6:28–29 as believing in him whom God has sent.

Not even the disciples did greater miracles than Jesus. Although they did astonishing things, not even the raising of Dorcas (Acts 9:36–43) could compare to the raising of Lazarus who had been in the tomb four days (John 11:39).

If we follow the thought of John 14:12 as it is worked out in the rest of the Gospel, we see that the disciples are given the promise and the charge to bear fruit (John 15:16), which again is linked with the invitation to ask the Father in Jesus’ name. The disciples are promised the Paraclete, who will convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:7–11). And finally, in John 20:22–23 they are given the Holy Spirit, with the authority to forgive and retain sins. These are the “greater works” we are called to do.

In other words, there is nothing in John 14 or in the rest of John to suggest that the “greater works” are greater physical miracles. Physical miracles are in fact lesser works compared with those that have to do with the conviction of sin, forgiveness, judgment, salvation, and eternal life.

The same must be said about the promise concerning the mountain being cast into the midst of the sea (Matt. 21:20–22; Mark 11:20–24). People often talk about faith moving mountains. Jesus was not talking about mountains ingeneral, however, but about “this mountain.” The saying was prompted by the disciples’ wonder at the withering of the fig tree that Jesus had cursed. The imagery in Jesus’ statement weaves together a number of Old Testament themes: the mountain of the Lord (Isa. 2; Mic. 4), the setting of God’s king on Zion, his holy hill (Ps. 2:6), the mountains shaking in the midst of the sea (Ps. 46:2). If “this mountain” refers to Mount Zion, the saying is a word of encouragement to the disciples in turbulent times. The old order, centered on Jerusalem as the mountain of the Lord, had rejected Jesus. It had failed to bear fruit in response to the coming of Jesus, and it was about to destroy him and threaten the lives of his followers. But the disciples are told that this seemingly insufferable threat will be overcome.

But what about James 5:13–16? The sick are instructed to summon the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. The assurance is given that “the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up.”

Two things are clear from this passage. First, if he is talking about healing at all, James is talking about prayer for healing in general and not about miracles as such. Second, James is not speaking about evangelistic healing services to which anybody may come. James is talking about sick people within the church and what the elders should do for church members who are sick. Even so, the promise cannot be regarded as absolute. For sooner or later everyone has to die.

In view of this, it is possible that James is not talking about the healing of the sick, but about ministry to the dying. This was the view that was widely held in the early church. The words save and raise up can be used to refer to healing and to raising from the sickbed. But they are also used to refer to healing from sin and death and to resurrection to eternal life. The word heal can mean restoration to health. But it can also mean healing from sin. Perhaps James’s statement that the prayer of faith will save the sick and that the Lord will raise him up is an assurance to the dying that those who are reconciled to God and the church will be raised in the resurrection and have their sins forgiven.

Simple Solutions

I think it was H. L. Mencken who observed that for every complex problem there is always a simple solution—which is almost invariably wrong. The same can be said about miracles and healing. The simplistic solutions of the extremists on both sides are attractive precisely because they are simple. But it is as wrong to say that the church has no part at all in the ministry of healing as it is to say that the only thing that prevents people from being healed today is their lack of faith in miracles.

A hard look at the evidence does not support the claim that miracles like those described in the Gospels are continually happening today. Nor does Scripture encourage us to expect that miracles will be part of everyday life.

But to say this is not the same as saying that gifts of healing have totally disappeared (1 Cor. 12:9–10; Gal. 3:5). There are those who have special ministries of prayer and healing of the sick in body and spirit. Such ministries today, however, are ministries that work in conjunction with the medical and healing professions. In the case of Jesus, his miracles were performed independently of those professions. Moreover, the “miracles” that people talk about today are primarily miracles of healing. They do not include nature miracles, like those of Jesus.

C. S. Lewis distinguished between two kinds of miracles: “miracles of the old creation” and “miracles of the new creation.” In a “miracle of the old creation,” God, drawing on the resources that are already present in nature, interferes with the present order of things. In a “miracle of the new creation,” the reality of the new order of the world to come breaks into our present reality. In the case of the resurrection of Jesus, his resurrection body, which belongs to the new order of the world to come, entered our order of space and time.

For this reason it is not surprising that such miracles do not occur in our everyday experience. The resurrection of Jesus gives us a glimpse into the world to come. But it is not part of our present reality. It is a mistake, therefore, to expect realities that belong to the world to happen with regularity in the here and now. Scripture encourages us to live by the promise of God. God has given his covenanted promise that those who turn to him for forgiveness of their sins will have their sins forgiven. But we do not have a similar, parallel promise of miracles here and now. We can say to all people that God will forgive them if they truly turn to him. But we cannot say to them that God will perform a miracle for them if only they believe. This does not mean that God cannot work miracles today or that he has not worked miracles since the days of the New Testament. But it does mean that we need to recognize the difference between God’s covenanted mercies and God’s uncovenanted mercies.

PETER KREEFT¹Peter Kreeft is the author of Knowing the Truth About God’s Love (Servant).

When I am weak, then I am strong.” “Power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9–10). We have heard these words from the apostle Paul many times, but have we understood them? Can anyone ever understand this great mystery?

By definition, a mystery is something we cannot understand wholly, but it is not something we cannot understand at all. The key to this mystery of strength in weakness is the Cross of Christ. Without the Cross, it is not a mystery but an absurdity, darkness. With the Cross, we can begin to shed light on how weakness becomes strength.

The Cross is not a freak occurrence but a universal truth incarnated, not merely a once-for-all event outside me in space and time, in Israel in A.D. 29, separated from me by 8,000 miles and 2,000 years, but also a continuing event within me, or rather I within it. What we really want to know when we ponder this mystery is how to live with weakness: How should we enact the Cross in our lives?

Paradoxical Doubleness

There are two equal and opposite errors in trying to respond to our weaknesses: humanism and quietism, activism and passivism. Humanism says that all is human action, that we must fight and overcome weakness—whether it be failure, defeat, disease, death, or suffering. We must overcome our cross. But, in the end, we never do. Humanism is Don Quixote riding forth on a horse to fight a tank.

Quietism, or fatalism, says simply, Endure it, accept it. In other words, don’t be human. Go gentle into that good night; do not rage against the dying of the light.

Christianity is more paradoxical than the simple no of humanism or the simple yes of fatalism. We can see this paradoxical doubleness in the Christian answer to three particular weaknesses: poverty, suffering, and death.

Poverty is to be fought against and relieved, and yet it is blessed. Helping the poor to escape the ravages of their poverty is one of the essential Christian duties; if we refuse it, we are not Christians, we are not saved (Matt. 25:41–46). Yet it is the rich who are pitied and pitiable, as Mother Teresa so startlingly told a Harvard audience: “Don’t call my country a poor country. India is not a poor country. America is a poor country, a spiritually poor country.” It is very hard for a rich man to be saved (Matt. 19:23), while the poor in spirit—those willing to be poor, those detached from riches—are blessed (Matt. 5:3).

The same paradoxical doubleness is found in Christianity’s view of death. Death is on the one hand the great evil, the “last enemy” (1 Cor. 15:26), the mark and punishment of sin. Christ came to conquer it. Yet Christians have also viewed death as the door to eternal life, to heaven. It is the golden chariot sent by the Great King to fetch his Cinderella bride. “Thou hast made death glorious and triumphant,” wrote Jean Pasquel and William Charles MacFarland, “for through its portals we enter into the presence of the living God.”

The same is true for suffering. On the one hand it is to be relieved; on the other hand it is blessed. We honor saints mainly for two reasons: they heroically and compassionately give their all to relieve others’ sufferings, and they love God so much that they accept and offer up their own sufferings heroically and even joyfully. They both fight and accept suffering. They are more active than humanists and more accepting than quietists.

Second Fiddle

Before we can begin to understand the mystery of strength out of weakness, we need to give some thought to the nature and variety of our weaknesses themselves.

First, there is the weakness of being second, playing second fiddle, responding rather than initiating, following rather than leading, obeying rather than commanding.

In the world, power rules, and the strong impose themselves on the weak; obedience is a mark of inferiority. But not in the church. Here, everything is different: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them.… It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve” (Matt. 20:25–28).

Our resentment against being second is totally foolish, for God himself includes this “weakness”! From all eternity the Son obeys the Father. No one was ever more obedient than Christ. Therefore obedience is not a mark of inferiority. To respond, to play second fiddle, to sing alto, is not demeaning, for the Christ, who is Very God of Very God, was the perfect Obeyer.

Jesus was equal to the Father, yet obeyed. Difference in role does not mean difference in worth. If that simple but revolutionary fact were understood and appreciated, we would have a new world: not the ancient world of slavery and oppression, nor our modern world of uprootedness and disorder, of unnatural leveling and resentful competition. We would have, instead, love.

Love makes strength. The “weakness” of Christ in obeying the Father made him strong because it was the obedience of love. Had Christ disobeyed the Father’s will, as Satan tempted him to do in the wilderness, he would have lost his strength, as Samson did, and succumbed to his enemy. His obedience was a mark of his divinity, not his humanity. In the same manner, if we obey the Father completely, accepting the “weakness” of being his followers, we are transformed into participants in the divine nature. For repentance, faith, and baptism, the three instruments of that transformation, are all forms of obedience. We are commanded to repent, believe, and be baptized.

Living With Limits

A second form of “weakness” is proper only to us, not to Christ, but this second form too is not to be resented. It is our finitude, our creatureliness. We were created. We are therefore dependent on God for everything. Nothing we have is our own, because our very being is not our own. God owns us.

How silly to resent this “weakness.” And how silly to resent God’s and nature’s compensation for that weakness—namely, mutuality, cooperation, solidarity, interdependence, unselfishness. When we bear one another’s burdens, Paul says that we fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2). I think “the law of Christ” is operating here more like “the law of gravity” than like “the law of the land.” Falling apples fulfill the law of gravity, and bearing one another’s burdens fulfills the law of Christ.

Marriage is a prime example of bearing one another’s burdens. Men need women, and women need men. Both often resent that need today. That is rebellion against the law of Christ, which is inscribed in the law of human nature (the very image of God is identified in Genesis 1:27 as both “male and female”).

East Of Eden

Finally, there is a third form of weakness, which it is right to rail against: the weakness of sin and its effects. It is good to be finite, but not to be fallen. Our dissatisfaction with this weakness implicitly testifies to our knowledge of something better, of a standard by which we measure ourselves and our world, and find them wanting. It is our memory of Eden that causes our present lover’s quarrel with the world, with this wilderness world “east of Eden” (Gen. 3:24).

Weakness is one effect of sin. We are all morally weak: easily tempted and easily succumbing to temptation. We are all commanded to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” We are all spiritual cripples. Religion is indeed a crutch. That is why it is so “relevant.”

We are not only morally weak but also intellectually weak—ignorant and foolish. Sin is not mere foolishness, and certainly its cause is not only ignorance; but while sin is not the effect of ignorance, it is the cause of ignorance.

We should accept our first two weaknesses (being followers and being finite). But should we also accept our third weakness, our sinfulness? Yes and no. Sin is like cancer. When we have cancer, we should “accept that fact” with our intellect but not with our will. We should accept the truth but not the goodness of the cancer, because canceris not good. Thus we should fight it. The same is true of sin.

People are often confused about this simple point. Even a great mind like Carl Jung seems to descend into this deadly confusion when he tells us to “accept our own dark side, our shadow.” No! God had to die and suffer the horrors of hell to save us from that dark side; how dare we “accept” it when the Holy One has declared eternal war against it? How dare we be neutral when God takes sides? Only one fate is proper for such spiritual wimpiness; look it up in Revelation 3:16. What God has vomited up, let no man try to eat.

The Substance Of Nothing

I now venture into deeper, more perilous areas of our problem.

Our weakness becomes our strength when God enters into our weakness. Like a doctor anesthetizing a patient so that he does not hop about on the operating table, God weakens us so that he can operate on our souls. In order to be healed, we need the weakness of death. The heart into which God wants to penetrate must, so to speak, stop beating for that operation to take place.

The same principle works in lesser ways before death. God has to knock us out first in order to rescue us from drowning, for we flail about foolishly. He has to slap our hands empty of our toys to fill them with his joys.

So far, so good. We have found that we must both accept and rail against our weakness, that God uses our weakness to perform redemptive surgery. These principles are well known. But is there more we can say about living with weakness?

I think the Christian mystics have something to teach us here. When we read the mystics, we hear their strange language about “becoming nothing,” the consummation of weakness. We shake our heads in incomprehension and suspicion. Yet the mystics’ “nothingness” is strength through weakness taken to its logical conclusion. If God’s strength fills us when we are weak, and God’s greatness fills us when we are little, then God’s all fills us when we are nothing.

We are not here talking about the “nothingness” of the Oriental mystics where the soul is nothing because it is not real, being only an illusion of individuality. Rather, the “nothingness” of the Christian mystic is the nothingness of no self-will and no self-consciousness. “Thy will, not mine, be done” is a fundamental formula for all sanctity, not just that of the mystics. There is nothing particularly mystical about it. But when, ravished by God in a foretaste of heaven’s beatific vision, these graced mystics lose all consciousness of themselves, they see themselves as nothing because they are no longer looking at themselves, only at God.

The Christian mystic experiences a bliss in this total weakness to the point of nothingness, for it is total trust, total relaxing in God’s arms, being grasped by Abba, Daddy. All worry and self-concern melt away. This is total humility. As pride is the first sin, the demonic sin, so humility is the first virtue.

Pride does not mean an exaggerated opinion of your own worth; that is vanity. Pride means playing God, demanding to be God. Søren Kierkegaard once said, “If I had a humble servant who, when I asked him for a glass of water, brought instead the world’s costliest wines perfectly blended in a chalice, I would fire him, to teach him that true pleasure consists in getting my own way.” That is the formula for pride: “My will be done.”

Humility is “thy will be done.” Humility is not an exaggeratedly low opinion of yourself; humility is self-forgetfulness. The humble person never tells you how bad he is; he is too busy thinking about you to talk about himself. That is why humility is such a joy and so close to the beatific vision, where we will be so fascinated with God that we forget ourselves completely.

Combining the will’s “not my will but thine be done” and the mind’s total self-forgetfulness, we can begin to understand how the mystics find joy in becoming nothing, in being weak.

The Omnipotence Of Love

“Thy will, not mine, be done” is not only the hardest thing we can do (what sin has done to us), but it is also the most joyful, liberating thing we can do (what grace has offered us). A trillion experiments have proved that whenever we aim at happiness by exerting our power and control, we end up in unhappiness, whether we get what we wanted or not. But whenever we become nothing, become utterly weak, whenever we say and mean, “Not my will but thine be done,” we find the greatest happiness, joy, and peace that is ever possible in this world. Yet despite the trillions of experimental confirmations of this truth, we keep trying other experiments with happiness outside of God and outside of submission to God, thereby repeatedly selling our birthright of joy. In other words, we are insane. Sin is insanity.

How is the Cross related to this? In addition to saving us from sin, the Cross manifested the nature of God’s Trinitarian ecstasy, the Spirit of self-giving love between Father and Son, the very secret of God’s inner life. The weakness of the Cross is the very power of God, the secret of God’s true omnipotence. God is not omnipotent merely because he can create a universe or perform miracles; God is omnipotent because he is love, because he can yield to himself, because he can be weak. If Godwere only One, as in Islam, he could not be totally omnipotent. Only the Trinity, only the God who can continually empty himself to himself, can be omnipotent.

Omnipotence arises only through the Spirit, who is the love binding Father and Son to each other. When this Spirit enters us, the whole Trinity enters us, and lives the divine life in and through us. The glorious Cross of the eternal Trinity and the bloody Cross of Calvary mingle in our souls and lives as we participate in the joy of divine love and in the suffering of divine redemption.

SPENCER PERKINS¹Spencer Perkins is one of the pastors of Voice of Calvary Fellowship, Jackson, Mississippi.

Abortion—and the prolife movement—present black evangelicals with a dilemma. It is not that we question the evil of abortion; Jesus clearly would have condemned it. But for me, a black man, to join your demonstrations against abortion, I would need to know that you understand God’s concern for justice everywhere.

It is hard for me, for example, not to be distracted by the faces I see leading the prolife crusade. Aren’t some of these the same people who 20 years ago were calling Martin Luther King, Jr., a Communist? Are they not the same people who 15 years ago moved out of the neighborhood in which I now live because too many blacks were moving in? Or aren’t they the same Christians who opened private schools as soon as the courts ordered desegregation in the South in order to avoid any contact with us?

When it comes to abortion, these experiences have led to a credibility gap. Ever since I can remember, it has been almost axiomatic that if we blacks took a stand on an issue, conservative evangelical Christians would line up on the opposite side of the street, blocking our way. The gulf between us is so deep that it is hard to imagine us on the same side of an issue.

When Love Is Costly

When I was growing up in Mississippi, we were taught that the evidence of love for Christ was love for neighbor. I always asked if that meant that I had to love white people, too. The answer was always the same: “especially white people.” Even after my father, John Perkins, was severely tortured and beaten almost to death by angry white men blinded by hatred and prejudice, the answer was the same: “especially white people.” Since it was increasingly obvious in the sixties that white people did not love us, I wondered if there were no white Christians south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

The wounds of racism and oppression still cut deep. Just how deep was made plain to me by comments made by a black single mother while she watched white antiabortion protesters on the evening news. “Do you think they would care if only black babies were being aborted?” she asked. Many of us, even now, struggle with our answer. I know this sounds callous, but such sentiment demonstrates the magnitude of the gulf between us and illustrates our desperate need for reconciliation.

The issues get even more complex. For blacks who have a huge stake in the well-being of the black neighborhood, what does the reality of “zero abortions” mean? How many more female-headed households would be created? How many more young women would be trapped in the cycle of poverty and dependence on welfare? How many more gang members would these families produce? Wouldn’t the ghettos be twice as large in just a few years? Wouldn’t the crime rate soar? Wouldn’t the prisons overflow? Who would take care of all of these children?

Am I not right in assuming that as the ghettos became larger and more dangerous, these same antiabortionists would move farther and farther into the suburbs, taking little or no responsibility for the social consequences of the lives they helped save?

Hope For Healing

These questions are real to us; before I can pick up a picket sign and join in this parade—before I can join hands with you and sing “We Shall Overcome,” and certainly before I can go to jail with you—some of my fears need to be calmed. I need to feel secure that you have had a change of heart. I have heard very few Southern evangelicals admit they were on the wrong side of the race issues back in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies. I have never heard any of them say that they should have blocked the entrances to the jails where we were beaten and tortured, or taken a stand with us when we wanted equal access to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In fact, over the past few years there have been only a few Southern, white, evangelical Christians who have asked our forgiveness and extended a hand in reconciliation. On the contrary, for every step we take in their direction, it seems that most take another step toward the suburbs.

This is the truth as we see it—the truth that needs to be heard in order for healing to take place in the Christian church, black and white. Healing will be hindered as long as Christians let their “Thus saith the Lord” on one issue be the evidence of their righteousness—at the expense of a lifestyle of justice. As Christians we are called to be “prolife,” but that must have more than a narrow meaning, for life without dignity is a fate worse than death. A true prolife perspective must include a concern for justice in all its forms.

A recent incident illuminates the contradictions and frustrations surrounding the abortion issue because this broader prolife concern has not always been in evidence. One of the black women in our church was tending the nursery a few months ago while a Right to Life meeting was being held. Our church, Voice of Calvary Fellowship, is unusual for a Southern church in that the racial make-up is approximately half black and half white. Some of the white brothers and sisters of our church are passionately involved in the prolife movement, which is probably why the meeting was held at our church. One local white woman obviously did not realize our racial mix and did not prepare her children for what they would encounter. When they walked into the building, the first thing they saw was the skin color of our black children. One of the woman’s boys immediately asked in disgust, “What kind of church is this?” His brother’s response summed up what these young boys felt about their black brothers and sisters: “We’d better be careful what we touch here,” he said, drawing his hands back as if fearing contamination.

I have to wonder at the answer these young white children are given in words and deeds when they ask the question, “Does loving my neighbor mean loving blacks too?”

Where Strategies Meet

Being prolife and demanding an unborn baby’s “right to life” is a high calling. But I believe that God cares about a deeper principle—a “right to justice”; that is, a right to a decent quality of life.

It is not a simple, glib response, then, when I must counsel an unwed black teenager against an abortion, even though I believe with all my heart that abortion is morally wrong. I feel that if the love of Christ compels me to save the lives of children, that same love should compel me to take more responsibility for them once they are born. Until Christians like me are willing to offer more than counseling for prospective mothers, until the Christian church is willing to take responsibility for the quality of life of these mothers and children, whatever that may entail, then our crusade for the lives of unwanted children will continue to be perceived as lacking integrity, especially in the black community.

For me, the issue is not about abortion—whether it is wrong or right to kill unborn children. The issue for me is much deeper—whether together we will embrace a Christianity committed to justice for all, or whether we will remain apart and fight our separate battles. Perhaps the abortion controversy is the vehicle God will use to bring us together.

As for answering the question, “Where do black Christians stand on abortion?” it looks to me as if we are on the same side of a moral issue. But if, from where you stand, you insist the battle is against abortion, while we believe the battle is against injustice, our strategies must remain different. We believe your plans for an all-out war on abortion will prove to be shortsighted. When and if you win the abortion battle, the war will be over for you and you will be able to return home. Then we will be left to undertake the reconstruction. Therefore, our strategy must continue to be the fight against injustice—a war with many battle fronts. Where abortion will rank in our battle plan will depend on the strength of the relationship we can establish in the future and on how much your burdens and concerns, because of that relationship, can become ours.