LIKE IT MEANS NOTHING
No Beatniks have yet appeared in our split-level community. We read about them, though, with morbid fascination. According to Time (February 9) this cult of the beat generation is now the rage of the literary upper crust.
The studied dishevelment in dress and speech which appears to be the rigid norm of Beatnik conformity will no doubt furnish another high school fad. In fact, samples of beat babble suggest that its incoherence is an aggravated form of prevailing adolescent jargon. Some statements are a little ponderous for a high school senior to bring off: “Fried shoes. Like it means nothing. It’s all a big laughing bowl and we’re caught in it.” Those shoes are presumably French fried in the existentialist manner. But the “crazy like a daisy” phrase, and the “drag-creep” vocabulary are standard speech at the American secondary level.
I therefore shudder to note the publicity given a leading Beatnik who has never combed his hair. After the duck-tail and the flat-top, the beat-mop!
Beatnik exhibitionism may be juvenile as well as delinquent, but its very superficiality makes it a thin disguise of real demoralization. The bleary irrelevance of Beatnik verse is more significant, and more human, than the sharp lyrics of a TV commercial. Awareness of despair can be the first step toward the kingdom.
But compassion for sinners lost in despair does not require wearing their fried shoes. I observe with shame that, although my hair is combed, my desk is sheer Beatnik. Disorder and despair go together in the disruption of sin. God is not a God of confusion, but of peace; in the church of Christ all things must be done decently and in order.
The glory of the new order in Christ is that it is an order of the Spirit. Beatnik slovenliness is an understandable reaction to the inhuman precision of secularized science, but both lack the joy of the Holy Spirit. God’s order is not mechanistic, nor is His freedom chaotic.
We are called to walk in the Spirit where joy casts out despair and replaces sloppy living and loose thinking with sobriety, theology, and worship!
RACE TENSIONS
In your latest fence-straddling treatise on the race question, “Race Tensions and Social Change” (Jan. 19 issue), which is chiefly a pro-integrationist article, you flatly contradict the Scripture from my letterhead which you quote: “He (God) hath driven asunder the nations (the Bible word for race is always “nation”). His ways are everlasting” Hab. 3:6. Then you say: “By creation—we are told in segregationist propaganda—God made the black, yellow, red, brown and white man, thus intending and designating their perpetual segregation.” Pray tell me, by what argument from either Scripture or reason can you prove that God has ever intended for these races to be merged—especially after having just quoted one of the many Scriptures which say that he intends for them to stay apart?
I also resent your comparing me in that article with the advocates of slavery who sought a biblical justification for their views. We segregationists do not believe what you and the N.A.A.C.P. teach or imply—that the Negroes are still being enslaved and will continue to be until they are given full social equality (which of course includes marriage equality). But we do believe what God’s Word teaches, that the Lord himself assigned the Canaanites, the servile division of the Hamitic, or Negro race a place of servitude, not slavery (cf. Gen. 9 and Josh. 9). And woe be to any white man who tries to take the Negroes out of the place where God put them.…
You also say in your recent article that the charge that “integration is Communist-inspired” is a “slander.” Race-mixing is itself godless communism and … our present racial trouble in this country is largely the result of a plot that was hatched in Moscow 31 years ago.
Dallas Church Chapter
White Citizens’ Council of America
Dallas, Tex.
While I do not have time at the moment to comment in detail on your editorial “Race Tensions and Social Change,” I do want you to know that I liked it and think you are to be strongly commended for taking a stand for Christian moderation in this difficult area of human relations.
Austin, Tex.
POLISH AND POWER
The article by a fellow alumnus, Carlos Greenleaf Fuller, on “How to Preach with Power” (Jan. 5 issue) was very helpful. It reminded me that polish is not enough.… And yet … why must we undercut the importance of polish when we argue for power? Must truth compete against beauty? I am told that some Barthians glory in small crowds at church because it is a sign of preaching with power in truth! To preach with power should not even imply that we ought to be sloppy.
First Methodist Church
Loomis, Calif.
PLACE OF THE PULPIT
My disappointing experience of the past few years as a hearer rather than a preacher, leads me to conclude that one of our greatest needs today is a revival of fervent, inspirational preaching.
With the modern emphasis on counseling, psychiatry, and religious education, the art and power of preaching is losing out. Not denying the value of personal work, and the need of study and instruction in the same, it still holds true that the pulpit is the center of the life of the Church, or should be.
No matter how we build additions to our edifices for the purpose of Christian education, the people need to hear the Word of God proclaimed and expounded from the pulpit, and the fact remains that the only way the majority of adults can know the truth about themselves and God, the only way they can receive the light and power of the Gospel, is by preaching in the Church.
Athol, Mass.
THEY DON’T WANT HIM
Recently the Roman Catholics have selected a man who is about 77 years of age to be … pope. This man will reign over 500,000,000 people with a power and influence no king on earth has or ever will have unless it’s the antichrist when he comes. On the other hand I question if you can find a Protestant church in America that would call a pastor if he is much past 50 years of age, even though that church may have only 150 members. I figure if a man can’t preach better at 70 than he could at 30, … he never should have preached at all. Why do we waste man power like this?… It looks like when the minister has lost his sex appeal they don’t want him.
Huntington Beach, Calif.
INDISCRIMINATE AGAPE
I am thankful for the review of my book Christ and the Christian in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Jan. 5 issue). Your review helps break down barriers and demonstrates the Christian spirit.… Fundamental to Christ and the Christian is the contention that we must start with Christ himself, not with personal experience, nor with the Bible, nor with history, but with the Bible interpreted through Christ, with experience judged and interpreted by Christ, and with Christian history insofar as it is fulfilled and receives its standard from Christ. I have tried to give Christology positive interpretation at its center: the fullness of God in the fullness of man in the fullness of time. Edmund Schlink has said that my position stands halfway between a dynamic monarchianism and a dynamic adoptionism. I believe that halfway point is the Godman who can be interpreted only as the true presence and power of God in Jesus Christ, and as the true man, both by development and fulfillment. I have been inspired and am constantly thankful to God for the vision of how Christ, interpreted at the very center of the Christian affirmation, gives meaning to life, judges our sins, and offers us fullness of salvation.
The reviewer does not give my several pages of definition of Agape that start with the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament, the living God who is Creator and Lord and whose judgment is at the center of human experience and history. Agape is unconditional concern and universal concern, but the holiness of God must, under no circumstances, be compromised the slightest bit. God is completely holy because he is completely Agape. Agape is to be seen in the Cross and the Resurrection.
Never have I rejected a doctrine of hell. My contention is that hell eternally is inconsistent with the final and full victory of God. The reviewer also complains that I cannot do justice to the problem of evil. Everything that I do and think springs out of my conviction that in Christ and his cross we have the central approach to the problem of evil. Only there can there be both an understanding of evil and an overcoming of it.
I am genuinely happy for the review in CHRISTIANITY TODAY because I want to gather all people who believe at the depths of their lives and commitments in the God who came in Christ, the living, personal God who answers prayer. Our day, and all days, are too dangerous for quibbling about minor issues. The main affirmation must join us together. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.
Andover Newton Theological School
Newton Centre, Mass.
Re Dr. Ferré’s letter: It is true that I did not quote the several pages in which Dr. Ferré describes Agape. I tried to select the main unambiguous statement, viz. that Agape is indiscriminate kindness to all. This implies universalism and is inconsistent with the existence of hell.
Dr. Ferré says that he has never rejected a doctrine of hell. He has, however, rejected the doctrine of hell; for hell in all orthodox forms of Christianity continues forever.
What he calls hell is not the biblical doctrine of hell; what he calls Agape is not the particularizing love of God that is the good news of the Bible; and the Jesus whose ego is not the second person of the Trinity is not the Jesus of the Gospels (who was born of a virgin).
I grant that the review was too brief, though longer than CHRISTIANITY TODAY asked.
Butler University
Indianapolis, Indiana
ADVICE FOR ANGLERS
Pastor Max A. Greene (News, Jan. 5 issue) ought to remember that fishermen do their best work right at the water’s edge, without the frustration of bargaining to get the fish to leave their environment and attend church. That will naturally come later.
Deeper Life Publications
Warrenville, Ill.
CHAPEL AT WEST POINT
There is … a fundamental misstatement of fact involved in Chaplain Jack R. Bacher’s letter (Jan. 5 issue).
Chaplain Bacher asserts that “the only type of service these men learn to worship under is the ‘liturgical’ service.” If Chaplain Bacher had been to West Point or spoken to a graduate of West Point within the last five years, he would have known that this statement is untrue. Because cadets at West Point come from such an incredible variety of church backgrounds, 50 per cent of the Cadet Chapel services are by conscious design non-liturgical. The 11 o’clock service, which Protestant cadets attend every other Sunday, is definitely liturgical, with a processional and recessional by the 170-man Cadet Chapel Choir.… However, the service at 8:50 a.m., which cadets also attend every other Sunday, is about as non-liturgical as services can be. This service unfolds according to the following pattern: opening hymn, call to worship, extemporaneous prayers, silent prayer, Lord’s Prayer, reading of the Scripture lesson by a cadet acolyte, sermon hymn, sermon, closing prayer and benediction.
Since West Point is such a unique place (the cadet slang vocabulary is unlike anything else in the world), it would take any man a long time to learn enough to function effectively as Chaplain of the United States Military Academy. Chaplain Bacher’s suggestion that: “I think the Army would do well to make this a one-year U. S. Army chaplain’s assignment alternating between the liturgical and non-liturgical chaplain,” would lead to nothing but sheer chaos.
Chaplain
United States Military Academy
West Point, N. Y.
MISSISSIPPI LAYMEN
Your editor’s note insertion … under heading, “Baptist Trends,” (Dec. 22 issue) … requires some further clarification for the casual reader.… It should be noted that my article was based on actions of official Baptist groups. Baptist Laymen of Mississippi is not an official Baptist group related to the Mississippi Baptist Convention nor to the Southern Baptist Convention.… Mississippi Baptist Convention in its official meeting did not take any action regarding Brooks Hays. The Baptist Laymen of Mississippi made their announcement calling for Hays’ resignation during the week of that Convention, thus confusing many, including secular recognized news channels of communication.…
Asst. Director
Baptist Press
Nashville, Tenn.
THROUGH EYES OF ARMINIUS
As a Wesleyan, I confess to deliverance from carnal temper, but such a smug begging of the question as is involved in calling the apostle Paul “the greatest Calvinist of all” raises my righteous indignation to a dangerous point. It has been my habit to read CHRISTIANITY TODAY just before going to bed. If there are many more statements of this kind, I shall have to read it in the morning instead—it keeps me awake.
I’m sure the learned author is an urbane Christian gentleman who will not resent my twitting. Besides, this letter is one of those “picayune events” which is “the perfect outworking of an infinitely wise and good will of an eternal sovereign God.” Perhaps it does prove Mr. Gerstner’s point after all. All things do work together for good. Only the good in this case is that some of us are more profoundly grateful than ever that we are predestined to read the Bible through the eyes of James Arminius and John Wesley, rather than through the spectacles of Augustine and John Calvin (Jan. 5 issue).
Seriously, can the learned editor, or Mr. Gerstner, or anyone else, tell me how such a theology as the author describes is kept from dissolving into a complete and thorough pantheism? All the ingredients are there. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Augustine came to Christianity after dabbling in Manichaeism, and that Calvin’s first book was a commentary on the work of the pantheistic and deterministic Stoic Seneca. Perhaps we need another article on how you can have a complete and rigid determinism without pantheism.
Really, I do enjoy CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Even my negative reactions are worth the subscription price!
Nazarene Theological Seminary
Kansas City, Mo.
• Pantheism affirms that God is all things, predestination that he wills all things. The Christian doctrine of predestination is distinguished from fatalistic views of the universe by the biblical teaching that predestination (1) is “in Christ,” hence rational, moral, purposive, and providential; (2) does not dissolve human responsibility, but is consistent with prayer and spiritual obedience as means for fulfilling God’s purposes.—ED.
For the first time in my life I understand clearly what Calvinism stands for and also the real pitfalls in neo-orthodoxy that they never mention in seminary.
Dongola Lutheran Parish
Dongola, Ill.
CREEPING FORMALISM
As a completely unreconstructed member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South …, I wish to take exception to Brother D. E. Walden’s “Methodist Stirrings” (Eutychus, Jan. 5 issue). As if we did not have enough “isms” to battle, now we must go to war with “creeping formalism.” I would agree, most thoroughly, that Methodism needs to do some mighty works in the field of theology but I doubt that anything good will come out of a creedal, formalistic church. As a rebel with many a cause I prefer the circuit rider as an example of Methodism rather than the English church. To me John Wesley has been a man to respect and admire—but never to love.
And further, if we could get some of Saturday night’s enthusiasm into Sunday morning’s worship we might soon find the church in a position to stop wagging its tail and barking and beginning to bite—bite where it would do the most good.
First Methodist
Hebronville, Texas
TELEVISION AND PRAYER
How many Christians … will pledge unto themselves and to the Lord that they will devote one-half as much time to the study of the Bible and to prayer as they now spend in watching television? If we will do this, revival is certain!
Lamesa, Tex.
CHOICE OF AUTHORS
In your December 8 edition appears “The Christian Approach to the Jew” by a Hebrew Rabbi. You might as well run an article by Judas Iscariot. He brought about only one death for our Lord—the Talmud today gives Him five sadistic deaths, and every Hebrew Rabbi subscribes wholeheartedly to the Talmud.
Chicago, Ill.
I would … like to … assure your correspondent (Jan. 19 issue) that there is no Jewish or Zionist conspiracy to control the world. But having been butchered throughout the ages by the hands of pagans and so-called Christians, Jewish Zionists, socialists, yea, even Hebrew Christians join hands in seeking some solutions that will give us some protection for our lives.…
Exec. Dir.
New York Messianic Witness
New York, N. Y.
TIMELY APPLICATION
Our … electronic organ was delivered to our church Dec. 9th. We had a beautiful and impressive Christmas service which was greatly enhanced by the organ music. We are grateful to CHRISTIANITY TODAY for the announcement which enabled us to send in a timely application for a gift organ.
Corning, Ohio
