The Word & Theology

It will take 6 1/2 tons of Mimeograph paper to publish the reports, speeches and other documents that emanate from Evanston. The first week's harvest of paper produced some exciting debate.

On the Christian Hope. The Rector of Heidelberg University, Dr. Edmund Schlink of Germany's Evangelical Church, opened the discussion on the assembly's main theme: "Christ--the Hope of the World." Speaking for the characteristic European point of view, Professor Schlink saw Christ's salvation not of the world but out of it. "Christ is the end of the world," he said. "The name of Christ is taken in vain if it is used as a slogan in this world's struggle for its own preservation . . . Jesus Christ then is the hope of the world . . . because he liberates us from all the binding ties of this world."

High on the dais, coatless and perspiring in the muggy heat. Bishop Eivind Berggrav of Norway leaned to a colleague while Schlink was talking and got off a clerical crack. "The Word was made the ology and did not dwell among us," he whispered.

Then Yale Theology Professor Robert L. Calhoun, a Congregationalist, rose to speak for the more here-and-now point of view commonly found in the U.S. What is often called "American activism." said Calhoun, owes its origins partly to "frontier evangelism . . . among the log cabins, in the forests and prairies . . . [with] little use for theological subtlety," and partly to the "social gospel" that came with the "growth of cities, industrialization, scientific and technical advance and development of state-supported schools and universities that exclude dogmatic religious instruction . . ."

This theology takes "seriously in practice . . . the traditional judgment that the Christian gospel is a word for this world ... Its characteristic hope looks for the ever clearer manifestation of God's sovereignty and the power of his promises in human history."

On the Challenge of Communism. Greek Orthodox Layman Charles Malik, Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S. and head of one of the assembly discussion groups, called for the World Council to produce "a ringing, positive message--one of reality, of truth and of hope." Communism, he continued, "exposes the inadequacy, if not indeed the bankruptcy, of the Western-imperialistic and smug-Christian approach of the past ... At the present degree of spiritual impotence ... it is only a matter of time before the whole of Asia and Africa, and maybe even Europe, will be engulfed by Communism."

On Iron-Curtain Christianity. No delegate was more sought after by the press--and more nervous about it--than hand some Bishop John Peter of the Reformed Church of Hungary, a member of Parliament in his Communist satellite country. In a formal address to the assembly, he said that his church was prospering in Hungary under the government-separation of church and state.

Afterwards, to a question from the floor: "Have any avowed atheistic Communists been converted to Christianity? If so, have they suffered any social or political disability?" Bishop Peter replied: "The answer to the first question is yes, and the answer to the second question is no." But the Rev. Guenter Jacob of Cottbus in the Soviet Zone of Germany saw things differently. "It is impossible." he said in a later speech, "to believe in both our Christian dogma and in the Communist dogma . . . It is an either-or proposition for any single-minded person."

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