After nearly a century of division the Presbyterian Church in the United States (the southern church) and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (the northern church) attempted to unite in 1954. The southern Presbyterians voted against the merger and kept America's two largest Presbyterian bodies divided. Although little was said concerning race relations during the debates on unification, there is reason to believe that the race issue was extremely important in the defeat of the plan in the South. Two sociologists, perhaps exaggerating, have concluded that it was the key factor in the failure of union. In 1955 the moderator of the southern church told the General Assembly of the North that he felt the Negro question, in particular the Supreme Court's decision on school desegregation, affected the vote; and the organ of the North, Presbyterian Life, echoed this opinion.

One of the major strengths of a political and technological system is its ability to absorb into itself and to direct toward social purposes the aspirations and abilities of diverse groups and peoples. Empire, as opposed to despotism, traffics in the relentless proclivity of societal man to find contentment in the culture's values and personal advancement within the society's political, social, and economic structures. To paraphrase an old political maxim, a man who can be rewarded by the social system can be ruled by it. In this proclivity of societal man to make a place for himself in the social structures lay one of the major dangers to the church of Tertullian's day. Tertullian's attempt to lay the foundations for a divine community which could withstand the “pull” of society's “success” or “status” ethic on Christians is the focus of this article. It goes without saying that Tertullian's understanding of the essentially unique and separate character of the Christian community was also formulated against the heretics' theological “push,” but I would like to concentrate on the social problem in keeping with the theme of the meeting.

When Canadians showed themselves off to the world at the international exposition at Montreal in 1967, Canadian Christianity presented itself in strikingly symbolic fashion.1 In the ecumenical spirit flourishing at the time, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churches—which together represented the vast majority of Canadians—jointly sponsored a pavilion. In the experimental and critical spirit also flourishing at the time, the pavilion offered some disturbing reflections upon the fair's theme, ”Man and His World.“ A kaleidoscope of dramatic pictures and texts celebrated the possibilities of the “secular city,” but also reminded visitors how badly so many men (and women and children) were faring in their world.

The three essays presented in this session raise issues that remind me of two classic representations of the problem of interpretation. In the Japanese film Rashomon, four differing and incompatible accounts of the same event are presented by the central characters, leaving the viewer to wonder which, if any, is the “true” version. Similarly, in the “Doubloon” chapter of Melville's Moby Dick, Captain Ahab nails a Spanish gold coin to the mast as a potential reward for the first man to spot the white whale; subsequently, each member of the crew gazes at the doubloon and falls into his own unique chain of associations that it evokes. Each of these fictional situations evokes the dilemma of the historian in general and the religious historian in particular: how can I deliver an accurate, persuasive, and satisfying account of my material, given the inevitable differences in perception and value that separate me not only from my professional peers but from the vast numbers of individuals and groups whose account might well be different from mine? As Stephen Stein indicates, the dilemma is not purely “academic,” since our students expect a coherent narrative from us, and will inevitably go away frustrated if we simply give them fragments that seem to form no discernible whole.

It has become almost a commonplace of both historical and systematic theology to interpret the doctrine of the Trinity as an elaboration of the christological faith and formulations of the early church. That is true of such radically divergent interpreters of that doctrine's origin as Adolf Harnack and G. L. Prestige. Both these scholars agree in seeing the trinitarian dogma as a response to the question whether, in Harnack's words, “the divine that has appeared on earth and reunited men with God is identical with that divine which created heaven and earth, or whether it is a demigod.” Or, as Prestige elaborates the thesis: “If the godhead was not unitary, it was as simple to conceive of three Persons as of two; hence the deity of Christ carried the weight of trinitarian controversies without any necessity for extending the range of dispute, and as a matter of history, the settlement of the problems connected with the Father and the Son was found to lead to an immediate solution of the whole trinitarian difficulty.”

Historians are in agreement that the Presidential election of 1928 aroused the concern of American Protestantism. Many observers have expended thousands of words discussing this election. Curiously, while most investigators chide the churches for their indifference to secular affairs, in this instance condemnation is usually because the Protestant churches displayed too much rather than too little interest.