Page 5017 – Christianity Today (2025)

A revolution in New Testament studies has challenged traditional understandings of Paul’s critique of Judaism.

Today if a seminary graduate of the late 1970s were to take a refresher course in Pauline theology, he or she would find new questions being posed—and some unexpected solutions being offered.

The most significant area of reinterpretation has been of Paul’s theology of the law and the Jewish people. A decade ago an evangelical scholar could describe the Jewish background for Paul’s statements about the law with the words: “For the Jews the law was the pre-eminent means of salvation.” Nearly everyone would have agreed. Today many would call that statement a gross caricature of Paul’s Jewish background and a misleading assumption for understanding Paul.

What has happened in the meantime? The story begins with the 1977 publication of E. P. Sanders’s detailed study, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Fortress). Sanders, who formerly taught at Oxford but will begin teaching at Duke this fall, presented formidable evidence from rabbinic and other Jewish literature that first-century Judaism was a “covenantal nomism” in which salvation was understood to be granted by grace, not according to a righteousness based on merit-earning works.

Law keeping was understood by Jews to be the proper response to God’s initiating grace. It was necessary for staying within the bounds of the covenant. But keeping the law was not the covenant entrance requirement or a means of salvation. For this the Jews relied on God’s electing grace by which he had made Israel his covenant people.

While Sanders was not the first to set out this perspective on first-century Judaism (G. F. Moore and Jewish scholars had done so before him.), he presented it with new and compelling force. His extensive arguments and documentation, his frontal attack on a long-standing scholarly assumption, and his proposal for understanding Paul against this background caught the attention of the scholarly world. By the early 1980s Sanders’s work was generally becoming recognized as a landmark in Pauline studies. In 1983 Sanders published a follow-up work, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Fortress), further clarifying his understanding of Paul.

Reassessing Paul

In the past, conservative scholars read Paul to be saying that Judaism, having misunderstood the gracious nature of God’s covenant with Moses, perverted it into a system of attaining righteousness by works. Paul exposes the Jewish dilemma as either succeeding in keeping the law—and falling prey to the sin of boasting—or failing to keep the law and being condemned for the transgressions. Paul’s negative statements regarding the law, therefore, do not refer to the law as a revelation of God’s will, but to Jewish misunderstanding and misuse of the law.

The new perspective claims that we have misunderstood Judaism and consequently distorted Paul’s criticism of the Jewish religion. It also tries to show how Paul arrived at his conclusions.

A major premise behind these claims is that Paul did not arrive at faith in Christ through being dissatisfied with the law or frustrated by an inability to keep it. He was not hounded by the demands of the law, burdened by a sense of guilt and so psychologically primed for conversion. He was a man of robust conscience and confident of his standing before God. Most scholars today recognize that the key to Paul’s theological perspective lies in his Damascus Road encounter with Christ.

According to Sanders, Paul’s Damascus Road experience entailed a giant leap that left his theology in disarray. Against the backdrop of Jewish covenantal nomism, Paul, the converted rabbi, wrestled with a dilemma posed by two central convictions: God gave the law and it is good, but Jews and Gentiles are saved only by faith in Christ.

Paul’s statements regarding the law, Sanders argues, were derived not from analyzing the human dilemma and then concluding that Christ is the solution, but the other way around. In his theologizing, Paul starts with the solution (Christ) and then proposes the problem. The result is a series of statements about the law that, taken as a whole, are unsystematic and at times inconsistent. Sanders explains that Paul, in the course of his ministry, produced an assortment of arguments to support his views and meet the needs of the hour. But these arguments were not the true reasons for his own commitment to Christ and his Christian understanding of the law.

Sanders criticizes Luther and his successors who have interpreted the Judaism of Paul’s day as if it were a first-century Semitic form of medieval Catholicism. He finds no instance of Paul objecting to Judaism on the grounds that it encourages men and women to earn merit before God. Paul does not reject the law because keeping it leads to boasting or because its requirements are unattainable. After all, Paul states that as a Jew he had no trouble keeping the law (Phil. 3:6; Gal. 1:14). He reckons the righteousness of the law worthless because he has found something far superior—Christ (2 Cor. 3:4, 18; Phil. 3:3–11). Paul’s chief objection to Judaism is that it rejects Christ.

But, Sanders argues, a secondary line of thinking also guides Paul’s critique of the law within Judaism. Christ—the universal Lord—has commissioned Paul as apostle to the Gentiles, and Paul has come to understand that law keeping stands as an obstacle to the salvation of the Gentiles. The law, a peculiarly Jewish institution that relies on Israel’s privileged election, has been done away in Christ. Now Paul preaches salvation to Jews and Gentiles on equal terms—faith in Christ.

Evangelical interpreters of Paul as well as others who hold the mind of the apostle in high regard have been unwilling to accept this or any other proposal that reduces Paul’s theology of the law to a collection of ad hoc statements without logical consistency. Isn’t it possible that while Paul’s arguments may not reflect his original reasons for arriving at his conclusions, they may nevertheless be logical and coherent?

Some have pointed out that one of the most puzzling aspects of Sanders’s Paul is that he ends up disavowing a pattern of religion (“covenantal nomism”) that is remarkably similar to what many have understood to be Paul’s Christian understanding of grace and good works (salvation by grace with works as the evidence of that grace). Was Paul’s rejection of Judaism arbitrary, or did he have a fundamental and consistently reasoned objection to Judaism other than simply its rejection of Christ?

Works Of The Law

A more recent proposal for understanding Paul and the law has come from James Dunn, professor of divinity at the University of Durham. In his two-volume commentary on Romans (Word), Dunn has fine tuned Sanders’s basic insights and pursued a solution that promises to expose the cutting edge of Paul’s critique of Judaism. At the same time he reveals a logic that integrates Paul’s positive and negative statements about the law.

Dunn claims to have discovered something that Sanders, and other interpreters through the centuries, have missed: The Pauline phrase “works of the law” does not refer to Jewish striving after works righteousness. Instead, they are works performed in the service of the law by which members of the covenant people identify themselves as Jews and maintain their status within the covenant. Specifically, the “works of the law” are represented in circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath keeping—familiar Jewish practices in the ancient world that were widely recognized as marking off Jews from other people.

These boundary-defining features distinguished Israel in the flesh (Rom. 2:28) and encouraged Jews to boast in their national identity (Gal. 6:13). They were an obstacle to the extension of God’s grace to the nations through Christ. So when Paul says of the Jews that “they sought to establish their own righteousness” (Rom. 10:3), he is not speaking of a righteousness they have earned on their own but of a righteousness belonging to Jews in particular—to the exclusion of the Gentiles.

Dunn sees Paul’s criticism of Jewish religion as having a new edge. The issue at stake, particularly in Galatians, is not something generally true of religious men and women—a basic inability to fulfill all that the law requires and so achieve righteousness before God. The issue is that Jews define the people of God as those who keep the works of the law; their confidence is that by doing the works of the law they do all that the law requires. This is a specifically Jewish shortcoming that identifies God’s people by outward, physical, and nationalistic factors. In this they neglect all that the law requires (Gal. 3:10). That is, they neglect to live by the Spirit in faith and love. Because of this they fall under the curse of the law—a curse directed against those who exclude Gentiles from the blessings of the covenant by insisting on nationalistic boundary markers.

This line of argument leads Dunn to a surprising but perhaps inevitable conclusion. When Paul writes, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13), he is saying that Christ redeemed Jews from the curse that had befallen them for their narrow and wrong understanding of the law. Christ’s death has opened the blessings of the covenant to both Jews and Gentiles in the sense that Jews have been redeemed from the curse and Gentiles from the alienating effects of that curse. The blessings of Abraham are now opened to all in Christ.

Dunn finds this same critique of Jewish law keeping at work in Romans. In Romans 2, Paul gradually narrows the focus of his diatribe against Jewish presumption, climaxing his argument with the issue of circumcision. In 2:28–29, Paul indicts Jewish religion for its superficial understanding of the law, evident in its stress on the outward, physical, and visible aspects of the law, particularly circumcision. A true Jew is not identified by physical, visible, and ritual measures, but by the hidden working of the Spirit in the heart—a work that disregards fleshly boundaries between Jews and Gentiles.

The key phrase for understanding Paul’s critique of Judaism—“works of the law”—crops up in the third chapter of Romans (vv. 20, 28, and in the shorthand “works” in 3:27; 4:2, 6; 9:12, 32; 11:6). As in Galatians, it is a polemical term, honed to combat the presumption of devout Jews—the presumption that their covenant standing would preserve them on the day of judgment.

Dunn would undoubtedly maintain that the New International Version generalizes Paul’s meaning and misses the point by translating Romans 3:20: “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law.” Rather, he translates it as, “For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified before him.” Paul does not have in mind religious people in general who think that acts of piety and good works can earn merit before God. That, after all, was not the understanding of Jews, who relied on God’s grace, acknowledged the need for repentance, and depended on the means of atonement provided by the law.

But on a general front, would Paul have opposed works righteousness? Dunn would probably answer yes. Although Paul would define this grace in terms of Christ, his emphasis on salvation by grace rather than works would not fundamentally distinguish him from Jewish theologians. Paul, according to Dunn, maintained a continuity between the old and new covenants. His criticism of Judaism was focused on its exclusive understanding of election and the covenant.

Inasmuch as technical commentaries can be exciting reading, Dunn’s certainly is. The freshness of his proposal and his unflagging pursuit of the new perspective on Paul instills a sense of adventure and rediscovery of Paul’s mind and ministry. For this experience alone, serious readers will become convinced that this is not just one more commentary on Romans—it is a tour de force. But is it a correct rendering of Paul? Has a more traditional rendering of Paul been needlessly sacrificed at the altar of the new perspective? Is it possible that Judaism was not guilty of legalism in any sense of the word?

The Doing Of The Law

A dissonant voice in the debate is that of Stephen Westerholm of McMaster University in Ontario, whose Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith (Eerdmans) offers a helpful overview and penetrating assessment of the new perspective, and a new solution to the problem of Paul and the law.

Westerholm agrees with the new-perspective insight that Judaism did not conceive of salvation as being earned by human achievement. But he qualifies this by adding that Judaism on the whole had a more optimistic view of the value of works and human initiative than did the converted Paul. Contrary to the new perspective, Westerholm maintains that grace and works did not play an identical role in both Judaism and Paul. Paul’s radical reassessment of the nature, function, and power of the law called for exclusive reliance on God’s grace and arose out of his encounter with the risen Christ. It was this exclusive reliance on grace that was foreign to Judaism.

Westerholm argues that in Paul’s usage, ‘Taw” (nomos) most frequently refers to the specific commandments given on Mount Sinai, not to an alleged Jewish perversion of the law. Paul finds in the Sinaitic legislation divine requirements that demand “doing,” but he concludes that life through the law has proven an unobtainable goal. Thus Paul’s critique of law keeping includes what Westerholm calls the “soft legalists” of Judaism, who believed God required them to obey the law out of covenantal love.

The principal sin of Jews was not self-righteousness—though this, too, is excluded by faith in Christ. Paul’s point was that human works of any kind cannot justify an individual before God. Since Christ has superseded the law, Paul has been forced to conclude that though the law promised life, it could not deliver it. But God’s Word does not fail; he must have planned this from the beginning. Hence Paul goes to some length in explaining the role of the law in God’s plan of redemption.

In the end, Westerholm argues, Paul proclaims a law-free gospel. Though Paul’s ethic may overlap with the law at significant points, it does not depend on the law for its prescriptions. Christian fulfillment of the law is like that of a master musician, who fulfills the intention of the rules imposed on novice musicians without always observing them. The decisive difference for Christians is the indwelling Spirit who serves as their moral guide and enabler.

Westerholm’s thesis is provocative and well argued, teasing out the broader theological perspective lying behind Paul’s response to the issues of the moment. He raises serious questions both for proponents of the new perspective and for those who hold more traditional views of Paul and the law. Time—and debate—will tell whether his attempt to reset the focus on legalism will hold.

Like the optical illusion that appears at one moment to be the outline of a rabbit and the next as a bird, the new perspective yields alternative configurations of Paul’s theology from the same data. Those who take Pauline studies seriously cannot avoid interacting with the new perspective, and responsible communicators of the Pauline gospel will certainly want to refine their understanding of the Jewish context of Paul’s mission. No matter what the conclusion, it will lead to a fresh understanding of Paul.

A noted Catholic lawyer urges Catholics and evangelicals to become partners in the battle against rampant secularism.

I come of Protestant and Catholic parentage. My first ancestor on this continent was Edward Ball, Puritan, whom the records show lived in Connecticut in 1642. My other immigrant ancestor was William Foley, arriving here in 1871 from County Limerick, Ireland. From childhood on, I have been able to appreciate much that is good in both traditions, as well as the sufferings that have marked each. Over the years, I have witnessed much prejudice and fear on both sides, but from an unusual vantage point—not only as one of mixed parentage, but also as legal counsel in cases involving religious freedom.

Last October, the Catholic lay journal Crisis published my article “Catholics and Evangelicals—We’d Better Hang Together.” In that article, I urged Catholics to be more appreciative of and cooperative with their evangelical brethren. In this article, I write to a largely evangelical audience, offering observations based on my experience in relating to evangelicals in court.

Who Should Hang Together?

Following my article in Crisis, two leading evangelical lawyers wrote me heartfelt positive reactions, but one of them brought me up short on a critical point—namely, that there does not exist one body of people, holding identical beliefs, whom one can pinpoint as “The Evangelicals.” There is, rather, a broad spectrum of believers who are comfortable with being labeled “evangelicals”—even though all of them may not be comfortable with certain other evangelicals being labeled evangelicals.

I had been trying to say that certain Catholics and certain evangelicals should be hanging together. Excluded, for example, would be those Catholics whose sentiments are clustered in such progressivist publications as National Catholic Reporter, or who—like Father Richard McBrien of Notre Dame—attack John Paul II as a reactionary and whose ideological compass needles invariably point to political causes of the Left. Under that tent are the Edward Kennedys, the Mario Cuomos, various gay-rights folk, socialists, and do-your-own-thing doctrinaires. They are not the Catholics with whom I plead that evangelicals should hang together.

But neither do I urge Catholics to hang together with evangelicals who are “moderates” on abortion, who support the secularizing of education and eschew the Protestant religious school, whose interest in religious liberty does not go beyond political sanctuary, who decry interventions by religious leaders in the political order, especially on “single issues” (unless the “single issue” is sexism, the environment, or federally mandated child-care regulation).

The group I have urged to hang together is, alas, a discrete minority. But it is nonetheless numerous, and it nonetheless stoutly bears a Christian witness. It is our society’s common-sense core and its principal human resource for resisting the militant secularism that Francis Schaeffer predicted would dominate our “post-Christian” world. The media orchestrations that accompany the trends in our courts and legislatures are of strong significance in a growingly illiterate, sensation-prone populace. We may laugh at the cocksure doom-saying of some electronic preachers, but the warnings of Orwell, Ellul, Yeats, John Paul II, Richard Neuhaus, and many another thoughtful observer in the past six decades, may not be dismissed.

If these Catholics and these evangelicals were to draw up a document called “What We Stand For” (meaning not the things we endure, like tax burdens and media biases, but the things we affirm), it would consist, as Thomas Howard has said, “in the ancient creeds of the Church”—the one triune God, the divinity of Christ who is our personal Savior, the Virgin Birth, the Holy Spirit, the inerrancy of Holy Scripture, the existence of Satan, man as created by God in his image and likeness, man’s salvation through Christ.

From these common beliefs, many Catholics and many evangelicals derive clear positions on issues of law and public policy: affirming the sanctity of human life, and hence militantly rejecting policies favoring abortion and euthanasia; stressing the duty of religious witness-bearing in the political forum; protecting churches and ministries from arbitrary governmental intrusion; calling for parental freedom of choice in schooling and child care; resisting the secularization of our society; militating against the breakdown of morality, especially in the areas of sex, law observance, and the conduct of business and government affairs; protecting and encouraging family life.

I refer to those who hold the above theological and policy positions as “the orthodox”: “orthodox” evangelicals (OEs) and “orthodox” Catholics (OCs). That, I believe, is how they perceive themselves.

There are two common misperceptions of the orthodox: First is pinning the label “conservative” on OCs and OEs (unless that term is given the meaning that Russell Kirk attaches to it, with its emphasis on belief in a transcendent order). Some members of Congress, “conservative” in defending interests of business, would not agree with a single one of the seven policy positions above.

It is also a mistake to view the OEs and OCs as “negative” in outlook and lacking in constructive programs to build a better society. The orthodox believe that a good society is built from the bottom up (that is, in family-endorsed values and in voluntary social endeavors), not from the top down. As sociologist Brigitte Berger recently remarked, Sweden—a planned society constructed upon the belief that government money and government-controlled social organizations must inevitably result in a strong, prosperous, and happy society—has proved to be a disaster. An overtaxed, profoundly dependent, listless populace now witnesses the economic collapse of the government provider.

Far from being negative, OEs and OCs are constructive and affirmative. Nothing could be a better affirmation of the possibility of a good and peaceful society than resisting the forces of disintegration so evidently succeeding in our country. I do not think that my perspective as a lawyer exaggerates the dangers that confront society. Instead, it is from observing the trends in our courts and legislatures that the most realistic picture of where we are heading emerges.

The OEs and OCs are wary of religious leaders who, at the very time their congregations are declining in fervor and spiritual certainty, volubly opine on the Strategic Defense Initiative and other matters on which they have no professional competence. The unwelcome image of Mrs. Jellyby in Dickens’s Bleak House comes to mind—that lady, so energetic and zealous for Borrioboola-Gha on the left bank of the Niger while her own household was in chaos.

Fears Of “Cobelligerency”

Anyone who advocates the cooperation of OCs and OEs inevitably must address the fears some have of “cobelligerency.” Carl F. H. Henry, whom I have long revered, discussed some of those fears on these pages last November. Those fears centered on Christians who “concern themselves only or mainly with their own interests as one of the numerous faith communities,” who “exhaust their energies in what they oppose, or in promoting single-issue special interests.” He pleaded that they instead focus on the fact that American society is today religiously plural, that there exists no moral and religious consensus. He speaks favorably, then, of the Williamsburg Charter, which is predicated on those facts. He appears to ask Christians to abandon their single-issue, sectarian political causes—especially when they seek to embrace theonomism or place “ecclesiastical controls” upon others. They should instead embrace a “public philosophy,” one aimed at promoting “the common good of society.” Henry sees that “public philosophy” as “not located in sectarian religious tradition but in universal revelation and public reason, without disavowing the crucial importance of special revelation.”

I suppose that what I have said so favorably about the public policy positions of the OEs and the OCs could be taken as running counter to Henry’s views. In important ways it does; but in important ways it does not. If Henry’s concern over the promotion of the sectaries’ “self-interest” refers to religious fakirs who overload the mails and airwaves with their emergency pleas for money, he is dead right. But when “sectarian” evangelicals and Catholics join arm-in-arm in the March for Life each January 22, whose “self interest” is being promoted? That of millions of our unborn. It is the common good we seek.

That brings me again to “single-issue” activity. No progress for the common good has ever been made except on a single-issue-by-single-issue basis. Often the single issue has had to be advanced by a single group that cares so intensely that it is willing to fight alone for a good thing. The Aid to Education of the Handicapped Act of 1970 began as the single-issue cause of a single group. In 1986, the Pennsylvania General Assembly enacted a statute to protect basic freedoms of all religious schools. This had been an OE-OC effort, pursued against heavy opposition.

OEs and OCs, we must note, typically have financial resources ranging from meager to zero to support their public-policy witness. They depend principally upon the dedication and sacrifice of their members. The prolife movement and the Christian-school movement are conspicuous examples. Not infrequently must OEs-OCs, in pursuit of the common good, contend against such heavily financed organizations as Planned Parenthood and the National Education Association and their networking allies. Almost always the power of the media is directed to denigrate OE-OC causes (as witness the disparate treatment given the April 28 “Rally for Life” and NOW’s proabortion rally last August).

I could not agree more, however, with Henry in his plea that the OE-OC cobelligerents embrace a public philosophy aimed at promoting the common good. Our differences lie, first, in the fact, I think, that by and large, OE-OC cobelligerents do have such a philosophy, and second, in the fact that that public philosophy is located not merely in “universal revelation and public reason, without disavowing the crucial importance of special relevation,” but is based solely upon commonly held teachings of Christianity. I do not understand Henry to mean that Christians should act in the public forum only upon those issues on which a majority of religious (and nonreligious) advocates agree—for example, to campaign to save the whales and baby seals, but not to save unborn human beings. Nor do I understand his brief reference to “race discrimination and ecological pollution” to imply that anything to which those labels may be attached are issues on which we can and should all stand together. On some forms of affirmative action, or with respect to pleas for population control to help the ecology, wide differences necessarily exist.

As a participant in the drafting of the Williamsburg Charter, I find no inconsistency with the charter in the fact that OEs-OCs pursue their public-policy positions. Most of those whom I encounter are keenly aware that we are indeed a religiously plural society and know that to persuade one does not villify. OEs’ and OCs’ cobelligerency does not mean, by and large, that each tries to be as belligerent as the other! They agree with the charter’s warning to religious advocates against “a misplaced absoluteness that idolizes politics, ‘Satanizes’ their enemies and politicizes their own faith.” But the charter states:

Freedom of conscience and the right to influence public policy on the basis of religiously informed ideas are inseverably connected. In short, a key to democratic renewal is the fullest participation in the most open possible debate.

Finally, Henry stresses “the importance of public evangelical identification with the body of humanity, no less than with the body of Christ.” To the OEs and OCs, it is identification with the body of Christ that enables them to serve the body of humanity.

Overcoming Negative Perceptions

Reading the jeremiads that OCs and OEs publish concerning the state of our society, it is remarkable that they do not make greater efforts to enhance their effectiveness by concerted endeavors. The reason lies mainly in a history of mutually negative perceptions. Evangelicals carry with them knowledge (sometimes family knowledge) of Catholic pre-Vatican II teachings respecting religious liberty, and mindsets of some Catholics respecting Protestants personally. Catholics naturally carry with them remembrances of traditional Protestant hostility toward them, still quite vibrant when that rather un-Catholic Catholic, John F. Kennedy, was running for President.

Were I to counsel OCs, I would begin by taking them for a visit to an ACSI (Association of Christian Schools International) school. There they would find a vitally God-centered environment, the promotion of virtue, teachers who sacrificially pursue what, in Catholic parlance, are “religious vocations,” a pervasive spirituality, and children (of all races) being well started on the Christian pilgrimage.

As they became familiar with the community of believers in which this school was centered, they would experience the joy of finding people ever so much like their brother and sister OCs—people of prayer and of unshakable belief in Christ. They would realize, too, that OCs need not go it alone in resisting materialism and hedonism in our society, but that here are cultivators of the soil of society, at the root level, as contrasted with the statist-minded, who would cover society’s fertile earth with lifeless pavement. Moral courage, too, that most unfashionable virtue, the visitors would find—a love of freedom, with a despising of license.

I regret the occasional example I see of Catholic defensiveness toward evangelicals. Where evangelicals compete aggressively to convert Hispanic Catholics, Catholics should charitably correct any misrepresentations of their faith; but where conversions do occur, they should ask themselves why, twice over, and learn from the answers.

Were I to counsel OEs, I would have them visit my parish in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I have been surprised when fundamentalist clients of mine, on hearing I am Catholic, ask me: “But do you really accept Christ as your personal Savior?” The name of my parish, indeed, is Sacred Heart of Jesus—a reverent phrase loaded with the tenderest meaning. We OCs, as Protestants know, believe that we receive the actual body and blood of Jesus when we receive Communion. That fact testifies to our literal adherence to the Bible, as also does Catholic teaching on contraception. Were an OE to come to my parish, he would find a spiritual at-homeness with us. Our families—white and black, Slovak, Polish, Irish, Hispanic, Slovenian, Italian—express the moral and spiritual strengths of traditional Catholic family life. Catholics are comforted by the rootedness of their church in history—“great and respected,” in the words of Macaulay, “before the Saxon had set foot in Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca.”

Are there not Catholics today—indeed in the political limelight—who defy Christian moral teachings, even giving scandal by their personal lives? Certainly. But “let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” Too many stones have been thrown in the past, and the time is at hand to publicize, instead, one another’s virtues—indeed, to celebrate them.

To understand what it means to be male and female, we must listen to all five acts of the biblical drama.

My younger son once asked me why people don’t get as excited about Pentecost as they do about Christmas and Easter. He thinks we should send up fireworks on Pentecost. (“After all, that’s when God sent fire down, isn’t it?”) I agree. Pentecost is an exciting act of the biblical drama. Peter explained it as a fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy:

And in those last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; yea, and on my manservants and my maidservants in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. (Acts 2:17–18)

Pentecost is the fourth act in the five-act biblical drama—Creation, Fall, redemption, Pentecost, and renewal. To understand the biblical meaning of male and female, we must read act 4 first, before we tackle the earlier scenes. In the first chapter of Acts we read that just before he ascended into heaven, Jesus told his disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they received power to become his witnesses. Significantly, both women and men waited in prayer for this promised coming of the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost has sometimes been called “women’s emancipation day” because of women’s inclusion with men in the outpouring of the Spirit. Before, it had been the Jewish custom to recognize only males as full members of the community through the sign of circumcision. After Pentecost, the church baptized men and women alike. Before, it was considered at best unnecessary and at worst scandalous for women to study the Scriptures beside men in the synagogue. Now they broke bread and participated in worship services with the men. Before, women’s freedom of movement was rigidly restricted because of the rabbinic assertion that public contact between nonmarried women and men was bound to produce lust. Now women assumed positions of leadership even in mixed gatherings and were acknowledged and praised by Paul at various points in his letters.

It is important to remember that not only did the barriers between men and women come tumbling down after Pentecost; so did those separating Jews from non-Jews and slaves from free persons. “You are all one in Christ Jesus” is how Paul summarized it (Gal. 3:28).

Kari Malcolm has pointed out that whenever the church has been in a state of revival—a “mini-Pentecost”—arguments about which sex should do what seem to recede into the background. At other times men and women alike seem to regress to a pre-Pentecost anxiety about gender roles and become preoccupied with details concerning headship and submission. The terrible irony of this regression (often rationalized as a “return” to the most important requirements of Scripture) is captured by Malcolm’s comment on it: “We have a world to win for Christ. The ship is sinking, and we [stand] on the shore arguing about who should go to the rescue, men or women.”

In light of Pentecost, we are all called to proclaim the lordship of Christ and the healing and hope he offers, so that through active witness and self-sacrificing service our fellow sinners may be drawn to God and share in the building up of his kingdom. All other callings—whether as wife or husband, married or single, clergy or laity—are secondary offices within this larger calling. A Christian is a saved one who is Spirit-filled in order to become a sent one. Women and men are thus equally saved, equally Spirit-filled, and equally sent. This does not imply, however, that there are no differences between men and women.

Act 1: Created In God’S Image

Throughout the Bible we are told that all persons are made “in the image of God” (see Gen. 1:26–27; 5:1; 9:6; Jas. 3:9). Yet nowhere does the Bible give us an exact list of characteristics that make us like God. Scholars have differed as to what these qualities might be. I am going to focus on two that I believe to be of particular importance for our understanding of sex and gender, namely, sociability and accountable dominion.

The account of humankind’s creation begins in Genesis 1 with the following words: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our own likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (vv. 26–27).

Strikingly, God refers to himself in the plural. This may be our first hint about the existence of the Trinity—the God/Logos/Spirit through whom all things are created and sustained. If God is a social tri-unity whose image is in all persons, then it comes as no surprise to read in Genesis 2 that it is “not good” for the man to be alone. So God creates the woman. Like God, both men and women are intrinsically social.

A second thing is immediately apparent in Genesis 1:26–27. Not only are both male and female created in God’s image as social beings, but both are given dominion over the rest of creation. Man and woman are told to fill the earth and subdue it, to be fruitful and multiply, and to have dominion over every other living thing.

Act 2: Trouble In Paradise

Both human sociability and dominion over the earth were to be exercised within limits set by God alone. But the man and woman exceeded those limits. Led astray by a rebel angel in disguise, the woman abused her dominion by eating of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:17). The man, in turn, abused his sociability by accepting some of the fruit from her even though he knew that their unity as man and woman was not to supersede their obedience to God. From then on, the creation love story, with its intended mutuality and equality, goes sadly awry. Genesis 3 tells us how.

First of all, the woman and man hide from each other. Their differing sexuality is now a source of self-consciousness rather than delight, and so they clothe their bodies. Then they hide from God. And when God finds them and questions the man about his disobedience, the man first blames God (for giving him the woman in the first place), then blames the woman (for giving him the fruit). Only then does he reluctantly confess, “And I ate” (Gen. 3:12). The woman, on the other hand, tries to pass the buck to the serpent, completely ignoring her husband in her confession.

We read in Genesis 3 what features of that outcome they shared. They were banished from the garden with the prospect of painful labor while reproducing the race and feeding it, with death as their final outcome. But for our purposes, one consequence needs to be understood in greater detail. God announces to Eve in Genesis 3:16: “I will greatly multiply your pain in child-bearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

Biblical scholar Gilbert Bilezikian concludes that in Genesis 3:16 the woman is being warned that she will experience an unreciprocated longing for intimacy with the man.

[The woman’s] desire will be for her husband, so as to perpetuate the intimacy that had characterized their relationship in paradise lost. But her nostalgia for the relation of love and mutuality that existed between them before the fall, when they both desired each other, will not be reciprocated by her husband. Instead of meeting her desire, he will rule over her.… [In short], the woman wants a mate and she gets a master; she wants a lover and she gets a lord; she wants a husband and she gets a hierarch.

Now let’s first be clear about what is not being said here. It is not the case that positive, mutual interdependence between man and woman totally disappeared after the Fall. We are still created in God’s image, even though this image is distorted. Nor is it the case that being a “master” or “lord” is totally against the creation order. Human abuse of power is possible only because we were originally given that power by God—to exercise accountable dominion over the creation.

But what I take God to be saying in Genesis 3:16 is that as a result of the Fall there will be a propensity in men to let their dominion run wild, to impose it in cavalier and illegitimate ways not only on the earth and on other men, but also upon the person who is bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh—upon the helper corresponding to his very self. Legitimate, accountable dominion all too easily becomes male domination.

This is not to say that all men at all times behave this way toward all women. But it does mean that there is something akin to a congenital flaw in males that makes it all too easy for them to assume that they have a right to dominate women. However, this is not the end of our exegesis of Genesis 3:16.

Although there is something creationally right about the woman’s desire for intimacy with the man, Genesis 3:16 warns us that this desire has become distorted by sin. The peculiarly female sin is to use the preservation of relationships as an excuse not to exercise accountable dominion in the first place. Thus, the woman’s analog of the man’s congenital flaw, in light of Genesis 3:16, is the temptation to avoid taking risks that might upset relationships.

Despite the progressive removal of external, legal barriers to women’s achievement, many psychologists have noted with distress that women still seem to have enormous internal barriers to overcome. The titles of best-selling books that have been written on this subject are very telling: Sweet Suffering: Woman as Victim, Women Who Love Too Much, Why Do I Think I Am Nothing Without a Man?, and perhaps most telling of all, in light of Genesis 3:16, Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them.

These authors have done a remarkable job of documenting some of the empirical effects of Genesis 3:16, at least on the psychological level. But they share with many other psychologists the error of trying to reduce such problems to the way women have been socialized. They do not realize (or refuse to admit) that something much deeper is at work: something that cannot finally be eradicated by psychotherapy or by institutional change, however important both of these may be.

By way of summary, it seems that the effects of Genesis 3:16 reflect the peculiar way in which each party sinned in the garden. The man and the woman were equally created for sociability and dominion. But in reaching out to take the fruit, the woman overstepped the bounds of accountable dominion. As a consequence, her sociability was mixed with the problem of social enmeshment, which continues to hamper the proper exercise of her dominion in the world at large. By contrast, the man, in accepting the fruit from his wife, overstepped the bounds of human social unity. As a consequence, his legitimate, accountable dominion became laced with the problem of domination, which has been interfering with his relationships—to God, to the creation, and to other people, including women—ever since. In each case, the punishment seems to fit the original crime.

Acts 3 And 4: Redemption And Renewal

In Biblical Affirmations of Women, religion scholar Leonard Swidler compiled close to 100 pages of Bible passages on Jesus’ teachings about men and women. Considered together, they show that it was Christ’s clear intention to reverse the consequences of Genesis 3:16. Since we now take for granted the rights women have achieved, it is difficult for us to realize how revolutionary Jesus’ teaching on men and women sounded to his hearers. The writings of the period show that the Jews of Jesus’ time had an overwhelmingly negative attitude toward women—an attitude that the women, moreover, seemed to accept, since to do otherwise would be to risk having no place in the community whatever. Throughout the Old Testament period, Genesis 3:16 was working itself out in predictable fashion.

Into this setting came a rabbi who almost never told a parable using male images and activities without also using a parallel one involving women. To a culture that allowed easy divorce and even polygamy for men, but not women, he insisted on monogamy and the elimination of divorce. (His disciples were so stunned by this teaching that they suggested it would be easier not to marry at all!) To a culture that was obsessed with blood ties, and in which barren women were a disgrace, he taught that the family of God was so much more important that it might even divide parents from children. In a culture that refused to recognize women as teachers or as witnesses in court, he allowed women to be the first witnesses of his resurrection and a woman to proclaim that event to his male disciples. The list could go on and on. Over the course of the four Gospels, there is a total of 633 verses in which Jesus refers to women, and almost none of these is negative in tone.

Significantly, those that are negative seem mostly to rebuke women who, in the wake of Genesis 3:16, are caught up in the problem of social enmeshment. Jesus tells Martha of Bethany that being busy in the kitchen over food is not as good a choice as sitting at the master’s feet learning. He chides his mother for trying to make him place blood ties before kingdom ties. To the woman in the crowd who cries out to him, “Blessed is the womb which bore you, and the breasts which nursed you!” he quickly replies, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:27–28).

Already in his earthly ministry, Jesus is setting men and women up for the “emancipation proclamation” of Pentecost. But if Christ preached a clear reversal of the effects of Genesis 3:16, and if Pentecost empowered the early church to overcome them, why are there still so many problems surrounding gender and sex in the lives of Christians as well as everyone else?

Theologian Oscar Cullmann compared the period between Pentecost and Christ’s final return with the period between D-day and V-day of World War II. By D-day, everyone knew that the turning point of the war had come; the Allies would win. But between that day and the surrender of the German army, some of the most vicious fighting of the war took place, with many casualties. It was as if Hitler, furious that his defeat was inevitable, wanted to drag the whole of European civilization down with him. The present period in salvation history is like that. Our “ancient foe,” the Devil, knows he has been defeated by Christ’s death and resurrection, but still “seeks to work us woe.” And the more Christians can be kept from acting like post-Pentecost men and women, the less effective will be their witness to the world around them and the less likely will others be to respond to God’s offer of salvation.

We cannot, in such a situation, always be at our Pentecostal best, in gender relations or any other area. Our full healing awaits the fifth act of the biblical drama, the inauguration of the new heaven and the new earth. But in Francis Schaeffer’s words, we are called to set up “pilot plants,” or self-conscious attempts to work out the implications of our salvation in every area of life, whether that be science, the arts, politics, technology, or relations between women and men.

At the same time we are not to grow triumphalistic. Christians are not to assume that, because they have accepted God’s salvation and are well intentioned, they can get everything figured out once and for all. For this, too, can be a trick of the Devil; it can blind us to the sin that remains and make us resistant to reforms that may be desperately needed. Still, substantial healing is possible between D-day and V-day, during this time between the times.

CT readers reveal what they think it means to be created male and female.

Little solid research exists on evangelicals’ varying attitudes, behavior, and theological beliefs when it comes to gender roles. As a partial answer to that need, CHRISTIANITY TODAY conducted a major survey of 1,250 subscribers. Close to 750 subscribers and/or their spouses, divided almost evenly among the sexes, responded to the mailed, random-selection questionnaires, giving a fascinating picture of readers’ views on male and female roles in home, church, and society. We asked Jack and Judith Balswick, colleagues on the faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, to interpret the results.

If the CHRISTIANITY TODAY gender-roles survey demonstrates anything, it is that CT readers have not insulated themselves from the contemporary debate on what it means to be male or female. In the face of challenges to traditional role definitions, CT’s predominantly evangelical readers have coped with the changes in ways both predictable and surprising.

The challenges, of course, have come from several quarters. The social sciences have demonstrated that many of the characteristics of masculinity and femininity are the result of cultural conditioning. The explosion of electronic and computer technology has rendered men and women equally qualified for most of the work that needs to be done in modern society. And new contraceptives have allowed women the freedom not to give birth to a large number of children, making it possible for them to pursue employment more easily outside the home.

Not only has the church not escaped the influence of such changes, it has also often been at the center of controversy itself. The publicity surrounding organizations such as the Evangelical Women’s Caucus, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (formulators of the Danvers Statement), and Christians for Biblical Equality is but one example of the keen interest—and heated opinions—gender-role issues arouse.

The Domestic Side Of Gender

When asked to identify the issues of greatest concern, a large majority singled out items related to women who have children and who work outside the home. Many were especially concerned about how effective working women with young children were as mothers and as employees. With trends showing a steady rise in the number of wives working outside of the home, it is hardly surprising that dividing household duties between working spouses also emerged as a key issue for respondents.

In response to the statement, “When both husband and wife work full-time they should share equally in parenting and household tasks,” a substantial 94 percent of females and 91 percent of males marked either “strongly agree” or “agree.” More than nine out of ten males and females, in other words, accept in principle that spouses should equally shoulder parenting and household tasks when both work. Only 1 percent of females and 5 percent of males disagreed.

Those numbers do not tell the whole story, however. When we compare the views of CT respondents with their answers to specific statements about actual practice, we notice an intriguing difference: Only moderate shifting of household responsibility occurs when the wife works full-time.

The data behind that conclusion offer interesting glimpses of domestic life. Females and males report that when the wife works, husbands do participate more in household tasks such as vacuuming, washing dishes, and cooking meals. A majority of male and female respondents, not surprisingly, identify doing the yard work and maintaining the car as mainly the husband’s responsibilities. It is significant, however, that men and women differ in the amount of household work they do even when the wife works. This is consistent with a recent study that found that husbands of working wives spend an average of only 20 minutes more per day working in the home than husbands of nonworking wives. Since parenting and housework entails considerably more than 40 minutes per day, working wives frequently do double duty.

This is the thesis sociologist Arlie Hochschild argues in her noted book, The Second Shift. From her study of 50 mostly middle-class couples, Hochschild concluded that instead of having it all, most working wives are merely doing it all, coming home after a day of work to a “second shift” of housework and childcare.

When it comes to parenting, responsibilities seem a bit more evenly distributed among CT readers. Female and male respondents report that they “shared equally” in administering discipline (74% and 81% respectively), giving attention to children’s spiritual growth and development (72% and 86%), listening to children’s problems when they are hurting (65% and 78%), and playing with the children (75% and 86%). In each of these areas of parent-child involvement, fathers more than mothers believe that the male contributes an equal share to child care.

It is interesting that while there are no parenting tasks that are reported to be done mainly by husbands, the vast majority of parents report that it is mainly the mother who changes diapers, coordinates children’s schedules, cares for children (dresses, feeds, bathes), and takes care of other parenting duties.

Do men actually involve themselves more in these parenting activities when the wife works outside the home? In comparing homes in which mothers do and do not work outside of the home, we find that husbands report helping out more in coordinating children’s schedules and caring for them, though wives’ reports would tend to dispute that perception. The sharing of the remaining six parenting tasks (administering discipline, listening to problems, playing with the children, changing diapers, giving attention to spiritual development, and managing needs such as clothes shopping) changes little even if the mother works outside the home. In the vast majority of cases, then, women have the same child-rearing responsibilities, whether they work outside the home or not. A recent article in Newsweek on the “reluctant father” reported similar findings. While 74 per cent of dads in the Newsweek survey said they “should share child-care chores equally with the mother,” only 13 percent do so.

How do CT readers feel about women who have young children and who work outside of the home? An equal number approve and disapprove of this involvement. While a near-equal number of females agree (40%) and disagree (39%) with the statement, “Working women with young children are less effective as mothers,” males are much more likely to agree (52%) than disagree (31%) with this statement.

The interest in this issue only confirms the seriousness of the question of who will be available to and responsible for our children. Since the industrial revolution, most children living in urban areas have been deprived of daytime contact with their fathers. With an increasing number of mothers now working outside the home, the problem is accentuated.

Demographic data also suggest that nearly half of all children in the United States spend part of their growing-up years with just one parent in the home.

Has the Christian community contributed to this problem? Have Christians subtly devalued fathering in their efforts to honor and elevate mothering? To shed light on such issues, the survey sought responses to two statements: “Many Christians today do not think highly enough of the values of fatherhood and active involvement by fathers in raising their children,” and “Many Christians today do not think highly enough of the values of motherhood and vocational homemaking.” An overwhelming majority (nearly 80%) of the respondents agreed that both fatherhood and motherhood have been devalued.

We believe that the answer will not be found in a retreat to traditional patriarchal family forms in which female and male gender roles are sharply separated. Fathers as well as mothers will need to invest themselves in making the necessary sacrifices to ensure that their children are adequately cared for.

Confusion In The Church

Although only approximately 20 percent of women and men agree that “the issue of gender roles has caused strife in the church I attend,” 86 percent of female and 90 percent of male respondents agree that “there is a lot of confusion about male and female roles in the Christian world today.” Much of the confusion seems to center on the role of women in the church.

Historically, leadership within the church has been reserved mostly for males. While some traditions have sought to silence women in the church, 90 percent of females and 88 percent of males in our sample disagree or disagree strongly with the statement, “Women should be silent in the church and not speak.” Less than 20 percent would prohibit women from teaching adult men and women, and about four out of ten would restrict women from being elders or being ordained. Well over a third of men and women believe the position of deacon should be held only by men. The most debated issue seems to center on the role of women in top leadership positions in the church. There is not a great deal of difference between male and female respondents to each statement on women’s roles in the church.

The strength of opposition to women’s participation in the church does, however, differ significantly by theological persuasion. Persons who identify themselves as “fundamentalist” are twice as likely as “evangelicals” to agree strongly that women should not hold the positions of deacon, deaconess, or elder, or receive ordination.

Interestingly, a respondent’s theological orientation was likely to have a bigger effect on men than women. The difference between fundamentalist and evangelical men is greater than the difference between fundamentalist and evangelical women. Whereas 25 percent of both evangelical women and men believe that “only men should be ordained,” 55 percent of fundamentalist women and an even larger 71 percent of fundamentalist men strongly agree with this statement.

Who Works And Why

Equal opportunity and treatment in the work place has been a major goal of the women’s movement in the past 20 years. It is therefore noteworthy that 98 percent of female and 96 percent of male CT respondents “agree” that “women should receive equal pay for work that is equal to that of men.” It should also be noted, however, that while 74 percent of women “strongly agree” with this statement, only 58 percent of males do so. Although attitudes towards gender equality in work have changed, women still earn less than men for the same work.

Respondents believe women are likely to experience discrimination in the work place, as six out of ten respondents disagree with the statement, “Women on the job have the same chance of being promoted to executive positions as men do.” Only one out of twenty respondents agree that “promotion of women of child-bearing age should be limited because they may get pregnant.”

Why do couples choose to have both spouses work outside the home? The major reason seems to be economics, as approximately half of all respondents report that they both work in order to provide for basic needs such as housing, food, and clothing. Approximately 25 percent say they are both employed because they “want a higher standard of living than just one income could provide.” About six out of ten of the respondents indicate that they work because of the enjoyment and fulfillment received, and over a third work because the second income allows them to save for things such as future education for the kids and their own retirement.

Couples who have both spouses working full-time only make 23 percent more than when one person works. Obviously, the investment of 100 percent more time is returning a relatively low economic dividend. It may very well be that the decision not to work for some wives is a luxury derived from the fact that their husbands have jobs that pay about one-third more than those of men whose wives also work full-time. If given the choice, six out of ten of the wives who are working would prefer to be part of a marriage in which only one partner worked.

Male And Female In Christ

Although many of our attitudes toward gender roles are shaped by society at large and our familial background in particular, Christians seek to base their thinking and behavior about gender roles on a solid biblical and theological foundation. Two central theological beliefs held by almost all respondents (at least 98%) are that: (1) “redemption in Christ gives men and women an equal share in the blessings of salvation,” and (2) “both Adam and Eve were created equal in God’s image, equal before God as persons and distinct in their manhood and womanhood.” More than nine out of ten (91% females and 93% males) agree with a third statement: “God made men and women to be equal in personhood and in value, but different in roles.”

In response to the statement, “Adam’s headship in marriage was established by God before the Fall, and was not a result of sin,” 62 percent of females and 65 percent of males agree, even though only 25 percent strongly agree and nearly 20 percent strongly disagree with this statement. Husbands from traditional marriages (where he works full-time and the wife is a homemaker) are twice as likely to agree strongly with this statement than are husbands who are married to a woman who works outside the home. Seventeen percent of men and women are “not sure” how to respond to this statement.

When it comes to the question of male headship, approximately half of females (47%) and males (51%) strongly agree with the statement, “the Bible affirms the principle of male headship in the family.” An additional 44 percent of females and 37 percent of males agree with this statement. This leaves only 9 percent of females and 12 percent of males in the sample who either are not sure or disagree with the statement. Fundamentalists are much more likely to agree strongly with this statement.

It is interesting to speculate about what “headship” means to the respondents. A variety of views can be found among Christians, ranging from a position that holds that the husband has ultimate responsibility for all major decisions in the family, to a view that considers the husband as a suffering servant to his family. Fortunately, our questionnaire contained a statement that defined headship in specific terms: “The husband holds ultimate responsibility for all major decisions in the family and the home.” In response to this statement, 59 percent of females “strongly agree” or “agree,” and 62 percent of males “strongly agree” or “agree.” Thirty-six percent of females and 34 percent of males either “disagree” or “strongly disagree.” Although the majority adhere to this definition of headship, slightly more than one-third of both female and male respondents seem to disagree with this definition.

The American Backdrop

How do views of CT readers compare to Americans as a whole? A partial answer is given by comparing responses to several of the questionnaire statements that were also a part of a Roper national opinion poll. Respondents in the CT and national poll are in general agreement that women’s roles in society will continue to change, that there are more advantages in being a man than a woman, that the women’s movement has helped more than hurt the working woman, and that men find a self-sufficient woman more appealing than a dependent woman.

In a number of areas, however, the views of CT readers differ from the national sample. In general, CT readers:

• Are less in favor of, and more opposed to or undecided about, the efforts to strengthen women’s status in society today;

• Are more likely to believe that over the past 20 years, the women’s movement has hurt homemakers;

• Are less likely to be satisfied in a marriage where both husband and wife work and share household tasks and child care;

• Are more likely to be satisfied in a marriage in which the husband provides for the family and the wife manages the house and children;

• Are more likely to believe that in a marriage, the one who usually sacrifices the most freedom is the woman;

• Are more likely to believe that if a woman has children under 18, her working outside the home should hinge more on the ages of her children than personal choice;

• Are more likely to feel uncomfortable in a marriage in which the wife earns more than the husband;

• Are less likely to respect a man if he decides to stay home and take care of the children while his wife works;

• Are less likely to believe a woman should call a man for a date.

If given the choice, CT females more than national opinion poll females would prefer to stay home and take care of family and house rather than have a job outside the home. CT respondents are more traditional than the national opinion poll respondents on every gender-role issue.

Where The Changes May Take Us

The women’s movement, which found its roots in the turbulent 1960s and grew as a separate movement in the 1970s, has significantly affected attitudes and behaviors in North America. Evangelical Christians have also changed, but not to the degree that persons in the wider society have. Sociologically, a case can be made that some of the resistance of conservative Christians to changes in gender roles grows out of the generally conservative context that constitutes the subcultures of conservative churches. This includes a more conservative political orientation, a greater representation in suburban and rural areas, residence in smaller, nonmainline denominations, and persons who can trace their family background to the working class.

This resistance to change can have obvious negative effects when the institutional church simply accepts a cultural form of social structure and works to interpret Scripture in a way that finds support for these views. It is not easy, if not impossible, to read Scripture free from cultural bias. For example, in hindsight most evangelicals would now wish that the conservative church in the United States had taken a more active role in the 1950s and 1960s in standing up for blacks in their struggle for justice and civil rights.

But resistance to change can also sometimes play a positive role. Christians who hold to a high view of biblical authority will question societal changes in light of their interpretation of scriptural principles and directives. There are times when current social trends seem to sweep people off their feet and everyone clamors to get on the bandwagon. Without being convinced through careful consideration of and reflection on scriptural implications, it is possible to end up with unbiblical positions.

Christian womanhood and manhood must not be defined by a simple adherence to traditional definition or an uncritical embracing of current cultural trends in society. The current redefinition of gender roles provides an opportunity to re-examine gender roles and concerns in the light of Scripture. God has indeed created us male and female, equal before God and distinct. Christians should continue to seek to understand the interconnectedness as well as the unique contributions we can all make to one another’s journey toward wholeness in relationship with others and with God. As Christian men and women interact with one another and others in love, forgiveness, servanthood, and with caring attitudes and actions, perhaps a living image of an even truer womanhood and manhood will emerge.

THE GENDER ROLES SURVEY—JUST THE FACTS, MA’AM

It is easy for magazines to trumpet the results of a survey. It is more difficult for readers to know just how reliable or significant those results are. To judge for themselves, careful readers always want to know basic facts about opinion research. Here is what you might want to know about CT’s gender-roles survey.

CTi Research, the corporate research department of Christianity Today, Inc., sent questionnaires to the households of 1,250 randomly selected subscribers. Each survey packet contained two questionnaires (one to be completed by spouses of subscribers who were married). Over 40 percent of households responded, with a total of 739 surveys returned. Male and female response rates were nearly identical (381 female and 358 male respondents). In the case of 231 respondents, both husband and wife completed questionnaires.

A detailed, 50-page copy of the survey report is available from CTi Research, 465 Gundersen Drive, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188, for $25 postpaid.

It happens every time we publish something about Women in Leadership (WIL). It happened after we ran a profile of Roberta Hestenes, president of Eastern College. It happened after we printed a two-page advertisement from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. It happened after we ran a competing message from another group, Christians for Biblical Equality. And as sure as the sun will come up tomorrow, it will happen in response to articles in this issue: Mary Van Leeuwen’s essay on the meaning of Pentecost for gender issues; and a report on a CT survey of readers’ attitudes.

What happens is that we get lots of (predictable) letters. If an article endorses women in leadership roles, many letters object and a few congratulate. If the article endorses a male hierarchy, many object and a few congratulate. Letters come from men and women alike, though we have not studied trends to see how either sex tends to respond to the issues.

Usually, our letters to the editor include a certain percentage from axe-grinders. But the letters on WIL are from serious-minded evangelicals who have strong beliefs on this subject and want to share them. Many are filled with solid exegesis. Others passionately marshal theological, philosophical, sociological, and psychological data. These are not harsh, unknown critics, but friends of CT.

Perhaps the mail response is so passionate because CT readers are still trying to work out gender issues in their own lives. Our survey data show that while CT readers’ beliefs are consistently more conservative than those of the general populace, in actual practice, the gender aspects of their lives are very similar. This clash between lifestyle and values suggests a serious tension in CT readers’ families.

But our readers are not the only ones divided on this issue. Members of our in-house editorial staff also line up on opposite sides of the question. As do our senior editors and our board members.

We have not made a hard-and-fast position on WIL a crusade. But there are certain elements of the issue we are willing to crusade for: We believe women should be treated as well as men; we believe God has gifted each of us, male and female, and expects us to help all believers exercise their gifts; we believe sexism is real and should be eradicated.

But that does not exhaust all the elements of the question: Should women be ordained? What is the full meaning of Paul’s statements in 1 Corinthians 14:35 and 1 Timothy 2:12? What role does culture (both Paul’s and ours) play in how we decide WIL issues?

What is the role of a magazine like CT when it confronts an issue on which its core audience is divided? Although we have taken editorial positions on aspects of WIL in the past, our tone has not been dogmatic because we realize that this question needs continuing work from the best theological minds. We would like CT’s pages to be a platform where divisive issues can be debated with logical yet loving force. As you read Mary Van Leeuwen’s essay in this issue, senior editor J. I. Packer is writing out his reasons (to be published early in 1991) for not making women presbyters. Although Drs. Packer and Van Leeuwen disagree on such issues, they provide excellent models for carrying on the WIL discussion.

We believe that WIL should not divide us. Resolution can be achieved without radical surgery, without cutting off any limb from the body of Christ. Indeed, it must be if the conclusions are to carry any weight. We pledge our pages to work toward that end.

By Terry C. Muck.

Our Golden Megaphone Award for Freedom of Speech goes to the Honorable Sandra Day O’Connor and the seven Supreme Court justices who joined her in upholding the constitutionality of the Equal Access Act. The act was Congress’s 1984 attempt to guarantee to high-school students interested in religious and political issues the same freedom of speech accorded to their chess-playing and SCUBA-diving classmates.

The court recognized that high-school administrators create a “limited open forum” by allowing extracurricular clubs to meet after school. O’Connor showed well-placed confidence in our teenagers when she wrote: “There is a crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion … and private speech endorsing religion. We think that secondary school students are mature enough … to understand that a school does not endorse or support student speech that it merely permits on a non-discriminatory basis.”

We rejoice that student-formed Bible clubs are now free to meet (as long as administrators allow any co-curricular clubs). We also recognize that the door is open to other competing clubs. At the Nebraska high school around which this test case revolved, students have already filed a petition to form an atheists’ club. Perhaps that is not all bad. Bible club meetings can easily become times for chorus singing and warm fuzzies. But students who know they exist in a marketplace of ideas are more likely to study the reasons for the faith.

Civics Lesson

We have a different award—the Alfred E. Neuman School of Justice Medallion—for other members of the judiciary who seem bent on stifling the free-speech rights of an unpopular movement. It seems that Lady Justice has been peeking around her blindfold, for in recent months grossly excessive fines have been levied against antiabortion activists, even as protesters with more trendy causes have received only a mild slap. Peaceful prolife “rescuers” were slapped with a $450,000 fine—a marked contrast to the paltry $100 assessed against the rowdy homosexual activists who interrupted a mass where New York’s Cardinal O’Connor was officiating.

Some of those closely watching the antiabortion movement are concerned not only that the fines have grown out of proportion, but that police handling of protesters and jail sentences have grown increasingly harsh and unreasonable. While some disparity is inevitable, even expected, the evidence is mounting that political motivations and pure cussedness are behind these judicial actions. That is not good news for those of us committed to free speech.

The liberal Charlotte Observer woke up to that fact in May when the Supreme Court upheld a Georgia judge’s injunction forbidding Operation Rescue protesters from going within 50 feet of any Atlanta abortion facility. As wary journalists, the Observer’s editorial writers recognized that restraint on the protesters’ “protected exercise of free expression” as every journalist’s nightmare: “If that is not the same as prior censorship,” they wrote, “it comes dangerously close.”

Operation Rescue’s leadership emphasizes that what they do is not protest (and therefore not protected speech). They are involved in the rescue of human life. Nevertheless, the courts have persistently viewed OR’s activity as protest, and any injunctions or inordinately large penalties assessed against them have a chilling effect on the exercise of First Amendment freedoms.

By David Neff.

Take four men, known for their bloody, gun-toting Ku Klux Klan activities. Put them in a room with five black civil-rights leaders. Order the four to sit through two hours of lectures on loving their neighbor, whatever his or her skin color. And tell them to shut up and listen, because a U.S. District Court says they have no choice.

Sound like a recipe for a nasty confrontation? Or an exercise in futility?

It turned out to be neither. Last fall, we commented on the unusual sentence handed down from the U.S. District Court in Huntsville, Alabama (“The Klan Goes to School,” Oct. 6, 1989, p. 15). In question was a lawsuit stemming from a KKK attack on a civil-rights march in 1979. The court ordered several of the Klansmen to sit through the two-hour session led by Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and organizer of the 1979 march.

We supported the creative approach but wondered if it would help much.

Now the jury is in. “All of us,” said Lowery as he emerged from the session held some weeks ago, “had a feeling that a great deal of repentance took place today.” He said the meeting began and ended with prayer, with all but one of the participants joining hands at the end.

While some commentators called the plan naïve when it was first publicized last year, the meeting showed that sitting down to talk and listen can change attitudes. Indeed, sociologists find that when people increase their interaction with one another, a corresponding increase in regard and appreciation follows. When it comes to distrust and distance, small steps toward understanding can lead to impressive strides.

Small steps the church might take include encouraging “sister-church” partnerships among congregations representing different racial and ethnic groups—at the least, swapping youth groups or adult choirs for special events, for example. Or, with a bit of effort, regional conferences on urban ministry, prayer, or abortion can be even greater chances for Christians of every color to come together on issues that unite.

The possibilities abound. When it comes to improving race relations, the next step may be simpler—and more productive—than we thought.

By Timothy K. Jones.

I recently spent a few minutes in our local shoe-repair shop. I watched as the young shoemaker casually nailed new heels on my favorite wingtips, his real attention riveted to a small TV set blaring on his workbench. He was so deeply engrossed in the mid-afternoon soap operas, it was a wonder he didn’t nail his thumb to my shoe. I suspect his thoughts and values are shaped by the lives and lusts of the soap-opera stars.

Contrast him with William Carey two centuries ago. Poor and limited in formal education, Carey spent long hours making and repairing shoes. In 1779 a fellow apprentice had introduced him to Jesus Christ. With Bible and books propped up on his cobbler’s bench, Carey taught himself the Scriptures and mastered the biblical languages. He learned other languages, too, and studied all he could about the peoples of the world. Soon Carey began to preach, and in 1786, while continuing his craft, he assumed his first pastorate.

By 1792 Carey had become a persistent proponent of world evangelization, founding the Baptist Missionary Society.

Heeding his own call, Carey sailed to India where he spent the next 40 years in an astounding array of ministries. He evangelized, planted churches, founded schools and a college, and expanded his linguistic skills. Supporting himself as the foreman of an indigo factory three months out of the year, Carey, the “tentmaker missionary,” spent the other nine months in ministry.

Carey’s lifetime productivity was phenomenal. Six complete and twenty-four partial translations of the Bible, grammars and dictionaries, and English translations of numerous classics of Eastern literature would be more than enough to establish his record. But this amazing servant was also active in medical relief and social reforms. For instance, Carey led the mostly successful campaign to abolish sati, the Hindu practice of widow-burning. He founded the Agricultural Society of India and in 1823 was chosen a Fellow in the Linnaean Society in recognition of his research in botany and horticulture to fight famine and malnutrition.

All of this shows the breadth of Carey’s vision. In bold and far-reaching ways he pursued the implications of the gospel in his witness and work. His best-known maxim, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God,” rings true for his life.

My reflection on the two shoemakers suggests two lessons.

Carey’s cobbler’s bench can be a powerful model for Christian colleges and seminaries. Study and employment do go well together. Even though many campus jobs go unclaimed, most students must work to make ends meet. Although in rare instances a student’s employment may be excessive, no evidence suggests that labor harms grade point, maturation, or retention. In fact, the contrary seems to be true. Calluses and dishpan hands are not unbecoming a student called by God. The key is the vision that motivates the student.

Carey suggests something else to me: a caution. Ministry and missions agencies all have vested interests in maintaining traditional requirements for credentials. Today Carey would be up against our “system.”

As the world changes, ministry and missions change right along with it. The locus of kingdom action has shifted away from majority groups toward emerging minority communities; from the northern to the southern hemisphere; from bureaucratic to entrepreneurial structures.

All of this favors bivocational and lay ministries, second-career calls, short-term assignments, and experimentation in missions format. Academic degrees are still important in some cases, but not in all. It won’t be easy, but our organizational structures must take these challenges into account.

God’s way of preparing tomorrow’s missionaries may not be ours. He is probably raising up some new William Careys, and we need to be ready to encourage these servants of Christ.

I don’t expect to see my shoemaker leave his video tube, though I’d be happy if God surprised me. I do pray that the Lord will raise up his servants in his own way.

No Limits

Thank you for Colin Chapman’s “The Riddle of Other Religions” [May 14]. I went to Japan as a missionary in 1928 with the then-prevalent idea that Jesus’ words “no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6) meant that only through the Christian gospel could one be saved. But living among thousands who had no chance to hear it made it increasingly preposterous. Was it possible that God, who loved the world so much that he gave his own Son, would leave them hopelessly condemned?

If Jesus had said the same thing in positive instead of negative words—“Everyone who comes to the Father comes through me”—we would perhaps have remembered that the speaker was the One who also said, “Before Abraham was I am.” He said, without conditions, that “everyone who asks receives, and to him who knocks the door will be opened.” He did not say, “this is the Way,” but, “I am the Way.” There are no limits to him.

Rev. John C. deMaagd

Santa Barbara, Calif.

I cannot agree that there are “Christians” who do not believe in the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. That seems to be a contradiction in terms. Apparently, the author does not believe his own opening statement since he proceeded to refute the statement throughout the article. I wonder what he really believes.

Wanda F. Miller

Ellicott City, Md.

Scripture’s witness is that all persons participate in the saving grace of Christ except those the Bible expressly tells us will be finally lost: only those who throughout their lives willfully and finally reject, or remain indifferent toward, whatever revelation of himself God has given them.

More passages in Scripture speak of all persons coming to new life in Christ than those that speak of all men dying in Adam. These “universalistic” texts are generalizations (not universals), and Scripture alone may and does provide the exceptions to its declarations of universal salvation.

Holding to the uniqueness of Christ with the biblical perspective, we can acknowledge, appreciate, and account for evidences of God’s grace and truth operating in the life and religion of persons who have not been exposed to the Christian gospel. Christians ought to approach those of other religions with: “What you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23, NIV).

Neal Punt

Christian Reformed Church

Evergreen Park, Ill.

We can still stand on our belief that there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we might be saved. But can we not live Christ’s love and accept those of other faiths, speaking to their needs in the same way that Jesus did? Let’s develop a greater understanding of the ways in which other faiths operate.

Bruce Cromwell

Greenville College

Greenville, Ill.

Why is it that so many of God’s children seem finally to come to the conclusion that “We must do more than simply reassert the uniqueness of Christ”? What more can we do?

Clay Belles

Omak, Wash.

Understandably, only selected passages can be referred to in one article. But the passage in 2 Corinthians 4:1–6 deals with truth. Paul says, “… by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.… The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

It seems to me that in a pluralistic society it is imperative that the Christian, by prayer and loving witness in words and deed, communicate the truth.

Rev. Ralph E. Brown

Royalston, Mass.

How can we afford to make the classic mistake, which it appears the author has done, of elevating human reason above divine revelation? The consequences historically are a dangerous distortion of the biblical message and therefore a weakening and perversion of the gospel.

Dave Couric

Duncanville, Tex.

Congratulations for publishing this and other articles that, in my opinion, not only keep a delicate balance between a full gospel faith and intellectual integrity, but also showcase the magazine within good principles of journalism.

Robert R. Schwartz

The International Assoc. of Lions Clubs

Oak Brook, Ill.

Middle-class Blues

Last Saturday morning, Mike Klevner exploded on the way home from our men’s fellowship breakfast. The speaker had just been to war-torn El Salvador and Mike had heard enough:

“Okay, so my Christian life is not perfect,” he began.

When Mike starts out this way, we know we’re in for a doozie.

“So I take material things for granted. So I eat too much while others go hungry. So my faith is not as urgent, as relevant, as it would be in El Salvador.”

The rest of us cleared our throats a lot. Tim Neegus said something about the weather, but that didn’t stop Mike.

“I’m tired of hearing about it. I’m especially tired of all those speakers telling me how pure and real the faith of believers overseas is, how much they enjoy church, how sincere they are in prayer and Bible reading.”

Okay, Mike, feel better now that you got that off your chest?

“Life isn’t so easy here you know.”

Somehow it always comes to this with Mike. “I’d like to see how those Third World people would handle my mortgage payment. Or my boss, for that matter. Every time I turn around I’ve got another insurance bill. And just yesterday my garage door opener quit, two days after the warranty ran out.”

Sometimes I think there’s no problem with our faith that an all-out, no-holds-barred, economy-crushing war couldn’t solve.

EUTYCHUS

A headline [in the Chapman essay] reads “There are now more Muslims than Methodists in the U.S.” The graph on page 19 shows 5 million Muslims listed for 1990. But in the U.S. there are currently 8,940,836 lay members and 38,177 ministerial members of the United Methodist Church.

Rev. Nancy Wheeler Hardlon

Centenary United Methodist Church

Mankato, Minn.

Islam is difficult to track statistically. Muslims keep no official registration records, and reputable estimates vary widely; some are less than the chart’s figure of 5 million, and some double that. The assertion that Muslims outnumber Methodists in the United States is difficult to document, and we regret any confusion.

—Eds.

Confession And Christian Lifestyles

Charles Colson [“From a Moral Majority to a Persecuted Minority,” May 14] makes an important point that Christians have become a persecuted minority in this day. In the same issue in “Reflections” a quote from Karl Rahner agrees with Colson’s premise: “Those who proclaim God with their mouths and deny Him with their lifestyles is what an unbelieving world finds simply unbelievable.”

When the Christian community is chastised by strong voices in both Protestant and Catholic disciplines, it is time to take note. There are multiple biblical references regarding the value of deeds to make faith evident. Have we created our own perception by failing to live Christian lifestyles?

Suzanne D. Schutze

Austin, Tex.

Both of the major phrases in Colson’s title demand serious scrutiny. But the piece’s colossal misguidedness is its equation of his circle’s agenda with the Christian agenda and his interpretation of “bringing moral values back into the mainstream of American life” with the Christian interpretation.

Many of Colson’s fellow churchmen and -women regard the 1980s as a profound low point in our nation’s moral history. Materialism, hardly ever addressed by his company of the devout, was the true besetting sin of the society. And, one is pained to ask, when in American public life has there been so little compassion?

Experience has taught me to hold in higher regard conversion to radical positions under the sovereignty of God than conversion from one form of conservatism to another. I found this column grievously deficient, a condition not offset by the pieties of his historical references.

Samuel S. Hill

Boone, N.C.

At last Colson wrote an article I can agree with. As a Christian radio talk-show host I know it is high time we Christians honestly face the question, “Which came first—the hen or the egg?” For example, a nationally aired Christian columnist sarcastically said recently that National Organization for Women president Molly Yard is “meaner than a junk-yard dog and looks like one, too.” How much “anti-Christian bias” do you suppose that mean statement fomented?

Ken Campbell

Spokane, Wash.

Still Unthinkable

Concerning “Lambs in Actor’s Clothing” [The Arts, May 14]: Lamb’s Players are not the only professional nonprofit theater organization in the U.S. that does not receive government funds. Covenant Players, the oldest, largest, and most prolific Christian drama ministry, receives its only financial support from performing engagements and occasional donations. Neither is long-term commitment to the ministry unusual to Lamb’s. I have been a full-time Covenant Player for seven years, and there are over 100 others who have been at it longer than I have.

Though much progress has been made since 1963, and despite its power and effectiveness in communicating the gospel, Christian theater is still “downright unthinkable” in many circles.

Andy Rice

Covenant Players

Oxnard, Calif.

In Good Company

I absolutely loved the review of my book, God in the Pits, alongside that of Chewning’s book, Biblical Principles and Business [Books, May 14]. It is wonderful to be in such company. Though it was not complimentary of my book, more than any other review it beautifully demonstrates the fundamental flaw in twentieth-century theological inquiry. The issue is succinctly summarized when the reviewer pounds the final nail into the coffin of “all testimonial approaches” by stating, “With anecdotes there is no ‘Thus saith the Lord!’” Jesus told one anecdote after another—whether real or fictional didn’t seem to matter—to demonstrate his eternal truth. It was the quintessential “Thus saith the Lord.”

The gospel has lost its power precisely because it has been reduced to “rigorous exegetical” theological proposition. But the real power of the gospel lies in its ability to change lives—a fact that can never be demonstrated by theological propositions, but only by story. No wonder Christ relied so heavily on story. I consider it an unspeakable personal honor to keep up the tradition.

Mark Ritchie

Chicago, Ill.

One Way Or No Way

Terry Muck’s editorial, “Many Mansions?” [May 14], was well thought out, except for his first statement: “There are two kinds of Christians—those who believe in the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and those who don’t.” This is patently false. If one does not believe in the unique Son of God, he/she is not a Christian. Jesus Christ is not merely one way—he is either the only way or no way at all. If Jesus Christ is not the unique Son of God, the only Savior of the world, the entire foundation of Christianity falls apart.

John Sloper

Phoenix, Ariz.

To say that someone could be a Christian and not believe Christ is the only way to salvation is to so dilute the meaning of the name as to make it nonsense. That is the real problem in the church in America. Until we Christians begin to confront unbelief and unchristian behavior in the church, we can expect no true progress.

David C. Crenshaw

Covenant Community Church

Bakersfield, Calif.

Is Ray Bradbury A Prophet?

I began my day by reading a review of Ray Bradbury’s book Zen in the Art of Writing. Noting his desire to teach people to “get rid of the concept that they have to be thinking all the time,” I filed this information away as another example of our culture’s capitulation to non-Christian world views. Imagine my dismay to come across Calvin Miller’s paean of praise for Bradbury—whom he deems a “prophet” and “deliverer” [“Energized by Sister Electrico,” May 14]. If it is not bad enough to call Bradbury’s patent humanistic hubris a “Christian positivism,” Miller begins by pouring contempt on Christian studies. Hermeneutics and apologetics, he tells us, dull the imagination.

The problem is not with apologetics or Calvinism or the Book of Exodus. It is like the way Malachi describes the priests of his day concerning the things of God: “You say ‘What a burden!’ and you sniff at it contemptuously.” I want instead to catch what the psalmist had: “Oh how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long!”

Rev. Richard C. Klueg

Baptist Church

Northville, N.Y.

I was surprised and delighted to read Miller’s article. It is refreshing to find a godly scholar who feels free to step out of the theological section of the library to explore other forms of literature. If Christ himself chose to communicate spiritual truths through the use of fiction, why then are we so reticent to do so as well? Despite the tremendous strides we have made in the past few decades in reclaiming the arts for the church, we still have a long way to go.

Rob Vajko, Jr.

Waukegan, Ill.

SPEAKING OUT

Don’t Crowd Eastern Europe

Having lived and worked in Eastern Europe for years, I often scoffed at the official Soviet justification for erecting the Iron Curtain. While the Soviets claimed they simply wanted to protect Eastern Europe from Western exploitation, keeping undesirables out—not fencing citizens in—I knew better. Now I wonder if they were as wrong as I have always assumed. As we watch doors swing open in Eastern Europe, the West—including the church—must face some challenging questions.

Could it not be that addiction to power (expressed politically, socially, and economically), combined with a feeling of cultural superiority, drive many of those now coming from the West to help Eastern Europeans reconstruct their economic and political systems? The “help” that businesses and political parties bring often appears to be more beneficial to those who offer it than to those who receive it.

Businessmen and politicians are not the only ones rushing to Eastern Europe. Ministry in this part of the world has become quite fashionable among American Christians; more dollars are being spent by missions executives on exploratory trips to Eastern European countries than ever before. Throughout the U.S., visions are shared in four-color brochures and advertisements; plans are discussed at the highest levels of missions leadership; funds are collected; personnel are recruited. The saints are marching in.

But is it not fair to ask what drives these efforts? No doubt the American penchant for seizing every opportunity plays a large role. Could not these activities also arise from a misguided drive for power, camouflaged by spiritual-sounding visions and plans, and nurtured by the belief that “we know better”?

Like those who set out to “save” Europe in conjunction with the Marshall Plan, this new generation of missionaries may be harboring a not-so-subtle triumphalism. Because the West’s politics seem to have prevailed for now, they argue, will not Western missions groups have a better plan for reaching the people? Only God knows true motivations, but one fact is obvious: Much of the ministry being planned now in the West is more for and to Eastern Europeans than it is with Eastern Europeans.

The church in the West should remember that political emancipation was not the only fruit of last year’s revolutions. The events have also freed Eastern Europe’s own consecrated minds and impassioned hearts to envision and implement the ministry that will best serve the kingdom of God. God has blessed the church here with godly men and women who have worked out their salvation in the midst of complex and difficult social forces. They are the ones who should be charting the course of Western missionary involvement in Eastern Europe.

The church of the West does have a role, of course. Believers in Eastern Europe need help in pushing back the borders of spiritual darkness and ignorance. Resources from the West (personnel, literature, equipment, finances, and so on) are important, but they will be most beneficial when they are (1) offered in a spirit of genuine partnership with Eastern Europeans, (2) offered out of a deep respect for the history and culture of each country, and (3) designed to build unity rather than competition between groups of believers.

The opportunities for meaningfully proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ in the midst of the turbulent change in Eastern Europe are staggering. Let’s make ourselves available to help, but not to control, those who know best how to fill the gaping spiritual void left in the ruins of communism, namely, those who have served Christ under its curse.

By Mark Young, academic dean of Biblical Theological Seminary of Poland, Wrocław, Poland.

Speaking Out offers responsible Christians a forum for their views on contemporary issues. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

CTi research director John LaRue is responsible for telling us what our readers think. On a recent visit to our end of the building, John seemed to have lost a few inches off his six-foot-six-inch frame. “That gender-roles survey gave us a mountain of data,” he said in an uncharacteristic lapse into exasperation. “Even after I analyzed shovelfuls of it, the mountain is still there.” Clearly, our four-page survey tapped a mother-lode of information about how men and women who read CT think about and relate to each other.

Providing data for articles is just one way the CTi research department serves us—and you. On behalf of the six magazines published by our parent company, John and his staff regularly perform brain surgery (via the U.S. Postal Service) on a sampling of readers. Not only do they discover which articles enjoy the highest readership, they learn a few things about the readers themselves. For example, most of you are 46.4-year-old men. More than one-third are clergy and 57 percent are college graduates.

Of course, research produces some surprises. This survey turned up a few CT readers married to the same sex—and some who are neither male nor female. John assures us those respondents merely goofed in filling out the survey.

After picking your brains, it’s only fair that we give you a closer look at us. The photos illustrating our cover story feature some CTi employees and their spouses.

LYN CRYDERMAN, Senior Associate Editor

1812: Birth at Landport, Portsea, on February 7, 1812.

1824: Father, John Dickens, imprisoned for debt.

1836: Writes Sunday Under Three Heads. Begins Pickwick Papers. Marries Catherine Hogarth on April 2.

1837: First child, Charles Culliford Boz Dickens, born.

1838: Oliver Twist published in three volumes.

1842: First visit to the United States.

1843: A Christmas Carol published; it immediately sells 6,000 copies.

1849: Writes The Life of Our Lord for his children; publication delayed at his request until 1934.

1850: David Copperfield published. Dickens starts his own magazine, Household Words.

1852: Tenth and final child, Edward Dickens, born.

1853: First public reading of A Christmas Carol.

1858: Separated from his wife.

1859: A Tale of Two Cities published.

1861: Great Expectations published.

1869: Begins work on his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

1870: Dies from a seizure June 9, leaving The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished. Buried in Poets’ Comer, Westminster Abbey.

Stephen Rost, a writer from Mesquite, Texas, is the editor of eight volumes in the Christian Classics Series (Nelson, 1988–9).

Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Constantine has earned a place in history for many reasons—not least because he brought to an end the persecutions of Christians by the pagan Roman Empire. A concordat agreed to with his fellow emperor, Licinius, at Milan in 313 granted “both to Christians and to all others full authority to follow whatever worship each person has desired.… Every one of those who have a common wish to follow the religion of the Christians may from this moment freely and unconditionally proceed to observe the same without any annoyance or disquiet.” In retrospect, the agreement forms one of the major watersheds in the history of Christianity, bidding farewell to the age of the martyrs and presaging the era of the Christian Empire.

What sort of man was he, this Constantine “the Great,” the first emperor of Rome to come out unambiguously on the side of the Christian church? How significant were the so-called Edict of Milan and the other actions he took as patron of the church? How truly Christian was he himself?

Early Days

Constantine was born on February 27, probably in 272, in the military town of Naissus—modern Nis in eastern Yugoslavia. His father, Constantius, was an army officer; his mother, Helena, was a woman of lowly origins whom Constantius later (probably by 290) found it prudent to divorce as his political aspirations took shape. Not much is known for certain about their religious attitudes. Helena became a Christian—and one of outstanding piety only after her famous son’s conversion. Constantius enforced without enthusiasm only the first of the anti-Christian measures of the Great Persecution in Britain and Gaul (France)—the sector of the Empire he took charge of in 293 as a junior emperor (Caesar). One of his children by his second wife was named Anastasia, from the Greek word for “resurrection,” which implies pro-Christian sympathies going beyond mere tolerance. Eusebius later portrayed him as a worshiper of the one true God, but not in unmistakably Christian terms. The evidence suggests that Constantine could have acquired from his father a predisposition to take a serious look at Christianity when the opportunity offered.

As the son of a Caesar and hence potentially an emperor himself, Constantine spent a dozen years (from about 293 to 305) in the East in the court of Diocletian, the senior emperor (Augustus), and Galerius, his deputy (Caesar). Constantine could be regarded both as an imperial apprentice and as a hostage (ensuring the good conduct of his father). He passed the time partly in Diocletian’s palace at Nicomedia (modern Izmit, Turkey, not far from the eastern shore of the Bosporus) and partly in the field on military campaigns. Constantine’s religious development in these formative years is largely hidden from us, but he could hardly have been unaware of the Christians in an area of the Empire where they were thickest. The ranks of Diocletian’s officials and perhaps even his close family included some Christians, and the church building in Nicomedia was easily visible from the palace windows.

Taking over

The Great Persecution initiated from Nicomedia in 303 304 must have been highly distasteful to Constantine. In circumstances that scholars debate (did he flee at the first opportunity and take steps to prevent pursuit?), Constantine left Nicomedia soon after Galerius succeeded Diocletian (as Augustus) on May 1, 305, and made his way to Britain to his father—now also a senior emperor (Augustus). On Constantine’s father’s death at York on July 25, 306, his troops saluted Constantine as Augustus in his place. This was scarcely a regular (though not uncommon) route to the imperial throne, and Constantine would have to vindicate his right to rule on the battlefield.

To cut a tangled story short, on October 28, 312, he defeated Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge, a dozen miles up the Tiber from Rome, and thereby became sole master of the Western Empire. Twelve years later, he finally routed the forces of Licinius and became “Ruler of the Entire Globe”—or at least of the whole Empire.

Favoring the Christians

From the winter of 312–313 onward—that is, from soon after his triumphant entry into Rome as controller of the West—Constantine’s actions reveal increasing favor toward the Christian church. During those months he sent three letters to Carthage (near modern Tunis), the capital of Roman North Africa. The first ordered the Roman governor to restore to “the catholic church of the Christians in any city” all the property it had formerly owned, irrespective of its present owner. The second letter informed the bishop of Carthage that funds would soon reach him for distribution to “certain specific ministers of the lawful and most holy catholic religion,” and also assured him of protection against elements disruptive to the catholic church. The third letter, again to the governor, exempted clergy from the burdens of inherited responsibilities as local councillors. The reason given is highly significant: “The setting at nought of divine worship … has brought great dangers upon public affairs, and its lawful restoration and preservation have bestowed the greatest good fortune on the Roman name and singular prosperity on all the affairs of mankind (for it is the divine providence which bestows these blessings).” The clergy, “when they render supreme service to the Deity, … confer incalculable benefit on the affairs of the state.”

Religious Convictions

Sentiments like these resonate throughout Constantine’s letters and edicts. They reveal a deeply religious man who believed that the well-being of the Empire was dependent on God, and that God would prosper the fortunes of the Empire so long as he was truly worshiped by its inhabitants. This true worship (so Constantine held, with ever-sharpening clarity) was the worship offered by the Christian church, and the true God was the God of the Christians.

How Constantine came by these controlling religious convictions has long been disputed. Two Christian writers, Lactantius and Eusebius, had direct contact with Constantine in later years. They write that on the eve of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine had a dream (Lactantius) or a vision (Eusebius) that convinced him to enter the fray, trusting in the Christians’ God, and to display a distinctively Christian emblem. The veracity of these accounts is, in the last resort, beyond corroboration. Nevertheless, they speak, in however embellished a form, of a decisive shift in religious allegiance—a conversion—and this is acknowledged today by eminent Roman historians, like Ramsay MacMullen and Timothy Barnes, who have no ecclesiastical axe to grind. As Norman H. Bayne wrote, Constantine’s action in confronting Maxentius “is more explicable if Constantine was convinced that the Christian God had assured him victory.”

It must be stressed, though, that the genuineness of Constantine’s pro-Christian stance does not depend on the historicity of the dream and the vision. It is writ unmistakably large in his words and deeds from shortly after the decisive victory. This consideration, for those who carry no prejudice against divine communications through dreams and visions, may properly count in favor of their authenticity in Constantine’s case.

Superficial Faith?

Constantine probably never gained a good grounding in Christian doctrine, however. As late as 324 he could regard the momentous divide opening up between the heretic Arius and his opponents as “a small and very insignificant question.” Only gradually and never frequently does he speak of “Christ” and “our Savior” rather than simply of “God” or, in more impersonal terms, “the divine power,” “providence,” “the supreme Deity,” etc.

Constantine was baptized only after the onset of his final illness, not many days before his death on Pentecost, May 22, 337. But if only then do we see him as a penitent (and delayed baptism was the norm at the time), the explanation lies largely in a circumstance too often forgotten or minimized by critics who depict him as a hypocrite, an impostor, or even a monster. It is simply this: Constantine was the emperor of Rome, the civil and military (and religious) head of the Empire. Our sources give us little access to the private Constantine. His letters and edicts are all official utterances. It is perhaps more remarkable that they make his religious convictions so clear than that they speak so little of Jesus Christ in terms of personal devotion.

Intermingled Paganism

Constantine’s religion is from first to last that of an autocratic ruler of an empire secured by military might—and still overwhelmingly pagan. If pagan elements did not disappear from his coinage immediately after his conversion, that should scarcely surprise us. Constantine’s legislative and executive actions can be fairly understood only when judged not anachronistically, against some ideal portrait of the Christian monarch (there were, after all, no precedents, no available role models, to guide a Roman emperor who was also a Christian), but historically, in a brutal age that took harsh retributive punishments for granted. And so his wife and eldest son had to die for offenses of treason. Not in vain did this Constantine bear the sword.

Yet in many details a Christian inspiration can be glimpsed in his legal enactments—for example, on the treatment of prisoners and slaves, on the status-less underclass of Roman society, on the exposure of surplus children, on celibacy and marriage and extra-marital infidelity.

But it is important not to make Constantine out to be more consistently Christian than he was. His conversion was not accompanied by a sharp break with his former paganism. Rather, a transition is discernible from the worship of the divine Sun to the service of the one true Christian God. When, in 321, he made the first day of the week a holiday, he described it as the day of the sun (but so do Christians today!). Christian regard for the Lord’s Day, however, alone motivated this ruling.

Consequences

Few individuals have set as many precedents as Constantine. He launched the church on its way to becoming the official, established religion of the Roman Empire—a journey it completed half a century later under Theodosius the Great. And by founding Constantinople as a “New Rome,” a Christian Rome, he laid the foundations for the noble Christian civilization of the Byzantine or East Roman Empire that would survive for a millennium after the Empire in the West had disintegrated. By his patronage Constantine aligned the former church of the martyrs—persecuted, powerless, and pacifist—with the military might and earthly glory of the state. Christianity would never be the same again.

Soon the wars of the Empire became holy wars; church leaders looked for civil sanctions to back up their ecclesiastical judgments (the Council of Nicaea deposed Arius; Constantine exiled him); rulers began to convene synods of church leaders and to influence or intimidate their proceedings; the church hierarchies learned how to invoke state coercion against heretics and schismatics, and they came to control increasing property and wealth. Persecution soon resumed of Christians by Christians, of pagans by Christians, of Jews and Moslems by Christians.

Yet if blame must be apportioned, much belongs not to Constantine but to those church leaders who not only, it seems, failed to teach him any better, but even, like Eusebius above all, constructed an extravagant theology of the Christian emperor that made him almost the earthly embodiment of divine power.

David F. Wright is dean of the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh.

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